Yet in California, Democrats have a similar ritual — and it draws not fire but praise from many of the state’s editorial pages. It’s the Legislature’s habit of passing tough gun control rules that are obviously going to be tossed by federal courts for cramping the Second Amendment’s right to bear arms.

Why do I say “obviously going to be tossed”? Because while it seems to have failed to sink in with most of the media, America is in a new era when it comes to gun rights. After decades of  justices’ wobbling, bobbing and weaving, the U.S. Supreme Court now has a majority that has firmly and consistently held that the Second Amendment isn’t part of a “living document.” It means what it says.

Guns aren’t just guaranteed to militia members

The turning point came at term’s end in June 2008:

WASHINGTON — The Supreme Court on Thursday embraced the long-disputed view that the Second Amendment protects an individual right to own a gun for personal use, ruling 5 to 4 that there is a constitutional right to keep a loaded handgun at home for self-defense.

The landmark ruling overturned the District of Columbia’s ban on handguns, the strictest gun-control law in the country, and appeared certain to usher in a fresh round of litigation over gun rights throughout the country. The court rejected the view that the Second Amendment’s “right of the people to keep and bear arms” applied to gun ownership only in connection with service in the “well regulated militia” to which the amendment refers.

Justice Antonin Scalia’s majority opinion, his most important in his 22 years on the court, said the justices were “aware of the problem of handgun violence in this country” and “take seriously” the arguments in favor of prohibiting handgun ownership. “But the enshrinement of constitutional rights necessarily takes certain policy choices off the table,” he said, adding: “It is not the role of this court to pronounce the Second Amendment extinct.”

Justice Scalia’s opinion was signed by Chief Justice John G. Roberts Jr. and by Justices Anthony Kennedy, Clarence Thomas and Samuel Alito Jr.

That’s from The New York Times. This most important ruling of Scalia’s career has swung like a wrecking ball ever since, helping along by a 2010 Supreme Court ruling declaring that the Second Amendment applies to local and state laws, not just federal law.

State law struck down by … 9th circuit!?!

This piece from last week in the Los Angeles Times showing a surge in concealed-carry permits reflects the new strength in Second Amendment enforcement. A state law permitting counties to set their own restrictions on such permits was struck down in February by … drumroll, please … no less a liberal pillar than the 9th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals.

Then there is this development last week:

In another setback for California’s tough gun-control laws, a federal judge ruled Monday that the state can’t require gun buyers to wait 10 days to pick up their newly purchased weapon if they already own a gun or have a license to possess a handgun.

U.S. District Judge Anthony Ishii of Fresno said the 10-day wait for current gun owners is a restriction on constitutional rights that isn’t justified by safety concerns. He noted that all firearms purchasers, including second- and third-time buyers, must pass a state background check of their criminal and mental-health records, but said it was unreasonable to make gun owners wait the full 10 days to acquire another weapon.

That’s from the San Francisco Chronicle.

Observation about Dems holds for media

But as Bee columnist Dan Walters recently pointed out, there are still more weak laws this year coming out of a Legislature whose Democrats see guns as no less than a “secular sin.”

Dan could have noted that largely holds true for the California media as well. In 2004, New York Times ombudsman Daniel Okrent wrote a powerful essay about gun owners being among  “the groups The Times treats as strange objects to be examined on a laboratory slide.” The CA media offer the same incredulity about anyone who believes in the Scalia interpretation of the Second Amendment — in my personal experience, incredulity tipped with disdain.

Good people, you know, abhor guns! They just do! Or they’re not good.

“On Monday, a GOP gubernatorial candidate’s inflammatory rhetoric likening illegal immigration to war came to light. The previous day, a conservative website on California politics was launched, featuring a raunchy photo-shopped image of House Minority Leader Nancy Pelosi — a depiction that prompted the most powerful Republican congressman from California to remove his column from the site.

“The trouble came as the state Republican Party has been trying to claw its way back to relevance, with GOP voter registration in California at a historic low and every statewide office held by Democrats.

“At the California Republican Party’s recent convention, attention was showered on a new class of candidate that included many women and minorities. The grooming of a diverse bench, party leaders said, was key to the rebound effort.”

If CA Dems so powerful, why aren’t they held accountable?

But if this analysis by LATer Seema Mehta was fair, there’s a bigger issue: what might be called the meta bias of the California media. As the analysis noted, Democrats absolutely dominate the state. So shouldn’t they be held accountable for the sad shape California is in? Instead of the amazing and bizarre narrative that holds Gov. Jerry Brown has miraculously put the Golden State back on the right track, when will we see MSM analyses that take a look at the larger picture of California 2014?

SACRAMENTO — It’s one of the conundrums of California life: At a time of mass poverty, why does the state’s dominant political party seem so impregnable?

Government statistics show nearly one in four Californians live in poverty, the highest rate in the nation. One in six adults who want to find full-time jobs are unable to do so — with only Nevada in worse shape.

Part of it is the unappealing alternative offered by California Republicans, whose focus on divisive social issues makes many nonwhites uncomfortable and alienates many younger voters.

But part of it is a California media culture that in some key ways functions as an extension of the state Democratic Party. GOP claims that other states are much better at creating jobs and that heavy regulation and pro-union policies limit economic growth are more likely to be depicted as GOP talking points than taken seriously. Instead of focusing on the impoverished masses, California journalists identify with the more contented Democratic factions — starting with socially liberal urban professionals.

Serious intellectual arguments out of academia are also rarely examined. When it comes to income inequality, plenty of economists believe that the presence of relatively low-skilled illegal immigrants limits the job prospects and depresses the wages of relatively low-skilled legal residents. But those who actually offer this empirical argument are more likely to receive media coverage hinting they are racist than have their points be given respectful and serious consideration.

OK, OK, OK, I know — those last two paragraphs of mine were pure fantasy. The media will never take a self-critical look.

Focus on struggling weak party — not failing dominant party

But the first three paragraphs? I’ve never seen anything like them on the news pages of a California publication.

Instead of talking about mass poverty and who’s responsible for it and what can be done to alleviate it, the reporters and editors in Golden State newsrooms would rather focus on dysfunction in the politically marginalized state GOP.

What about the people in charge? Yunno, the Democrats?

The media will happily do think pieces about how the current state Senate corruption scandals may hurt the Dem brand. But what about the much more important problem of being a state in which nearly one-quarter of the people live in poverty?

Somehow, that’s not a story.

Pathetic, infuriating and typical — your California mainstream media.

The lead story on the top right of the page was a news account of President Obama’s Tuesday “victory lap” press conference in which he said that the fact that 7.1 million Americans had allegedly enrolled under the Affordable Care Act was proof that he was right and everyone who criticized the ACA was wrong. The headline pushed readers to accept this view; the subhead made the case that only selfish people opposed the law.

In the story itself, the first half by David Lauter and Christi Parsons of the Times’ Washington bureau gave no larger context at all — it was all “victory lap.” Among the 40 relevant things it didn’t mention, most significant was the fact that it chose not to say that so many past claims about Obamacare proved wildly in error. Nor did it emphasize that it appears that there were more people signing up for the ACA through government exchanges because they lost their coverage due to ACA rules then there were of people who previously had no health insurance.

The whole point of Obamacare was supposed to be to get health insurance to the uninsured — not to create churn among the insured that pushed them into having to use government alternatives. Yo, David! Yo, Christi! Isn’t this, yunno, news?

‘Trust the prez’ side-by-side with ‘Don’t trust the prez’

But the patheticness of this cheerleading for Obama was triply underscored because just underneath the story was another piece that also had as a core element the question of whether the White House could be trusted: LAT reporter Brian Bennett’s detailing of the dishonest way the Obama administration had reported deportation numbers to buy it political cover. The (pathetic) headline: “Figures Skew Numbers Obama Deports.” Not “Obama Skews Numbers Of Deportations.”

However painfully biased the headline was, the story made plain the duplicity of Obama’s White House:

“WASHINGTON — Immigration activists have sharply criticized President Obama for a rising volume of deportations … But the portrait of a steadily increasing number of deportations rests on statistics that conceal almost as much as they disclose. A closer examination shows that immigrants living illegally in most of the continental U.S. are less likely to be deported today than before Obama came to office, according to immigration data.

“Expulsions of people who are settled and working in the United States have fallen steadily since his first year in office, and are down more than 40% since 2009.

“On the other side of the ledger, the number of people deported at or near the border has gone up — primarily as a result of changing who gets counted in the U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement agency’s deportation statistics.

“The vast majority of those border crossers would not have been treated as formal deportations under most previous administrations. If all removals were tallied, the total sent back to Mexico each year would have been far higher under those previous administrations than it is now.

“The shift in who gets tallied helped the administration look tough in its early years …”

So next to an article that says Obama grossly manipulated the numbers for years for political advantage on a huge national issue is an article that says the numbers Obama cites on another huge national issue somehow offer confirmation that he’s right and others are wrong.

The Los Angeles Times has never looked dumber.

1) Isn’t doing that well signing up young people, who are essential to the economics of the Affordable Care Act, despite a heavy marketing campaign aimed at them.

2) Is having trouble signing up Latinos, who are a primary target of the ACA.

The story mentions that Kaiser Permanente has signed up 8,250 state residents. It doesn’t mention that Kaiser has cancelled the policies of 160,000 such residents. Nor does it mention that while 80,000 people have signed up with Covered California, more than 1 million Californians have had their policies cancelled.

The story has one anecdote about premiums, and it is a positive one:

“San Jose couple Rosario and Justine Consiglio, both 57, say they were surprised at how much they saved when they enrolled in a Gold-level plan from Blue Shield of California last week. Their monthly premiums will drop from $1,100 now to $850 next year, helped by a premium subsidy. And they will pay far less out of pocket for prescription drugs and other medical expenses.

“This is a much better healthcare plan than we had previously, and we’re paying a lot less,” Rosario Consiglio said. “I wasn’t sure how all this would affect us.”

What about the evidence that Californians in general will pay far more under Obamacare? It’s never mentioned.

And how does Chad Terhune describe this overall picture in the lead? He depicts Covered California as being off to a great start, a “bright spot” for the Obama administration nationally.

Sigh. This isn’t journalism. This is ideological cheerleading.

“SACRAMENTO — In the closing days of the Legislature last year, Gov. Jerry Brown helped forge a compromise on a sweeping overhaul of the workers’ compensation insurance system and persuaded Democratic and Republican lawmakers to pass it into law.

“Now he is taking on another big challenge: He wants to fix the state’s financially ailing unemployment insurance program, which pays jobless Californians up to $450 a week.

“With one of the nation’s highest unemployment rates for several years, the state has had to borrow money from the feds to keep the program going. Now that the jobless rate has fallen to 8.5%, Brown would like to start paying down a $10-billion debt.

“His administration is circulating a draft bill that would put the system on an even keel by raising payroll taxes paid by employers. ….

“People close to the process say that [Brown aide Marty] Morgenstern is proposing an increase in the amount of wages subject to unemployment insurance taxes from the first $7,000 of annual pay to $9,500 and eventually $12,000.”

Impact of higher taxes? What impact? Who cares?

Nowhere in the story are we told that polls show many Californians strongly object to higher taxes.

Nowhere in the story are we told about California’s level of taxation relative to other states.

Nowhere in the story are we told how much working Californians would have to pay extra if $12,000 of their income were subject to the unemployment insurance tax instead of $7,000.

All of these details matter. So does the bizarre way California got in this mess. It wasn’t because unemployment has been high — as the LAT strongly and wrongly implies. It was because a dozen years ago, the genius Democrats in the Legislature had the majority of votes to raise unemployment benefits sharply — by 96 percent over four years — but they didn’t have the two-thirds vote needed to raise the payroll tax to cover the additional costs of benefits.

So what did they do? You weren’t expecting competence or sanity, I hope.

In Sacramento, dumb-de-dumb dumb

“Republicans strongly objected because they thought the big increase was unjustified and that the higher taxes to be imposed on employers to pay for it would be burdensome. … [Nevertheless,] Democrats forced through the benefit hike on a simple majority vote. … The accompanying bill to raise taxes on employers to fund the boost failed to achieve the necessary two-thirds support because of GOP objections.

“The sheer stinking dumbness of this gets even worse. In 2002, the state bureaucrats running the jobless benefits program told The Sacramento Bee this wouldn’t be a problem.”

Shades of CalPERS and SB 400. Math is not a strong suit with state budget officials. That excerpt was from an editorial I wrote last year. Another relevant point from that piece:

“Nevertheless, despite the frequency with which we see such stories, the Sacramento political and media establishment remains resolute in its belief that the real problem with California is Californians – you know, the numskull voters who demand services but balk at paying for them.

“As if voters wanted state employees to be among the highest paid in the nation with pension benefits most Californians would die for. As if voters wanted the number of workers paid by the state to increase by nearly 25 percent since 1997. As if voters wanted the state government to do something as apocalyptically stupid as increasing unemployment benefits by 96 percent without funding the gigantic increase.

“The blame for all these brilliant decisions falls on state leaders and state leaders alone.”

Well, maybe not alone. Some heat should go to the Sacramento media — starting with those who blithely treat proposed tax hikes as if they were something that the public has no opinion about and unworthy of even cursory examination, such as to determine how much they would cost every employed California.

By Chris Reed

The new Los Angeles Times poll showing sharp skepticism among Californians about hydraulic fracturing — the newly improved oil-gas drilling process that has triggered a brown energy revolution — should trigger fierce pride among Times reporters Neela Banerjee, Evan Halper, Julie Cart, Wes Venteicher, Bettina Boxall, Shan Li, Michael J. Mishak, Kathleen Hennessey, Amy Kaufman, Kenneth Turan, Nicole Sperling, Ronald D. White, Tiffany Hsu, Ruben Vives and Michael Hiltzik.

A Nexis hunt shows that over the past year, each of these L.A. Times’ reporters has written about fracking WITHOUT EVER MENTIONING THAT THE OBAMA ADMINISTRATION DISMISSES ENVIRONMENTAL CRITICISM OF THE PROCESS.

Why do I uppercase this? Because it is literally incredible that journalists for an important, powerful newspaper think that the position of the greenest president in the history of the nation is irrelevant to one of the most pitched public policy debates in the nation.

Energy and interior secretaries, EPA chief, task force all call it safe

To recycle some of what I’ve written before:

— A task force commissioned by the Obama administration’s Energy Department concluded in a 23-page report issued in November 2011 that fracking was just another heavy industry, one with significant but manageable pollution concerns.

— The president’s first energy secretary, UC Berkeley’s Steven Chu, said: “We believe it’s possible to extract shale gas in a way that protects the water, that protects people’s health. We can do this safely.”

— Chu’s replacement, MIT physicist Ernest Moniz, said the risk that fracking posed to water supplies was “challenging but manageable.”

— The president’s first Environmental Protection Agency director, Lisa Jackson, disputed claims that fracking, which occurs 5,000 feet below the surface, had polluted water tables which are usually less than 1,000 feet below the surface. She testified before a House committee that she was “not aware of any proven case where the fracking process itself has affected water.”

Neela Banerjee: Serial factual omitter

The single most graphic example of the fact that there is a calculated decision made to not mention the Obama administration’s views comes from a recent article by Neela Banerjee — who has written more than any other LATer about fracking — and Wes Venteicher. Published on May 17, it dealt with Sally Jewell, Obama’s interior secretary, and her announcement of new federal fracking rules for drilling on public and Indian lands.

Banerjee and Venteicher noted the controversy over fracking and turned to an industry spokesman to offer the context that fracking has been around decades and hasn’t been the devil.

“‘States have been successfully regulating fracking for decades, including on federal lands, with no incident of contamination that would necessitate redundant federal regulation,’ said Kathleen Sgamma, vice president of government and public affairs for Western Energy Alliance, a Denver-based trade group.”

The New York Times covered the same press conference and, like Banerjee and Venteicher, also quoted Jewell. But while the LAT offered mushy generalities from the interior secretary, veteran NYT reporter John M. Broder believed it was somewhat more significant that she said this:

“Anticipating criticism from environmental advocates, she said: ‘I know there are those who say fracking is dangerous and should be curtailed, full stop. That ignores the reality that it has been done for decades and has the potential for developing significant domestic resources and strengthening our economy and will be done for decades to come.’”

Fracking safety: NYT cites Obama Cabinet member, LAT quotes flack

How does Banerjee sleep at night, slanting things this dramatically? When trying to steer the public toward an opinion on fracking’s safety, she quotes an oil industry flack. The New York Times quotes OBAMA’S SECRETARY OF THE INTERIOR. And it’s a quote the LAT reporter could have used but chose to ignore.

I rest my case.

By Chris Reed

Among the many severe problems with Obamacare that a cheerleading media chose to ignore in the run-up to its March 2010 enactment, perhaps the most obvious was the fact that it would be impossible to sharply expand medical coverage in a thoughtful way in a nation where many states already had shortages of primary-care or “family” physicians.

California is one of those states. California also has the nation’s oldest coterie of family doctors. Ergo, California was sure to be severely stressed by Obamacare. Now, 37 months after its passage, the state’s media is finally pointing this out. On Friday, the San Jose Mercury-News editorial board shared some grim truths:

“California doesn’t have enough primary care physicians. Forty-two of its 58 counties fall short of the federal government’s most basic standard. The state needs another 2,000 doctors, and the situation will get dramatically worse next year — even in Silicon Valley =– when 2-4 million Californians obtain health insurance under Obamacare and go looking for a doctor.

“The California Medical Association wants to build more medical schools and expand opportunities for young doctors. Good plan — but thinking it will solve the immediate problem is like expecting a Band-Aid to heal a bullet wound. Training a doctor takes a decade. That’s a long time for a patient to sit in a waiting room.”

Health providers already ‘overwhelmed’ even before expansion

And then there was this today from the Torrance Daily Breeze and, presumably, other Los Angeles Newspaper Group members:

“The state’s publicly funded health insurance program for low-income and disabled residents will soon launch a huge statewide expansion. But making a promise of health care is one thing, and delivering is another.

“In some places, it’s already difficult for many poor California residents with state Medi-Cal insurance to find a doctor who is able — or willing — to care for them.

“Health providers throughout the Southland who currently see these patients say they are overwhelmed and underfunded, a situation that could worsen when those newly covered by Medi-Cal arrive for care on Jan. 1, 2014, when the program is expanded.

“More than 7 million Californians are now covered under Medi-Cal, California’s version of Medicaid, and expanding the program is a major piece of President Obama’s signature health law, the Affordable Care Act. Between 2014 and 2019, roughly 1 million to 1.4 million more Californians will enroll in Medi-Cal as a result, according to UCLA and UC Berkeley estimates.”

Now the California media think this angle is important?

Not in 2009 and early 2010, as the Affordable Care Act was being debated and allegedly refined?

Now the California media points out this stark, ugly truth, that a strained system is near-certain to become a dysfunctional one, where a shortage of doctors is likely to be addressed by pretending nurses are doctors?

Thanks, California media. Thanks so much.

By Chris Reed

If you had to fashion a nut graph to explain why so many local California governments are in deep fiscal trouble, here’s my nominee for an honest generic overview:

Over the past 20 years, the city/county/district’s political leaders have often acceded to union demands for higher benefits and pay, including retroactive increases in pension formulas and automatic annual raises typically granted just for accumulating years on the job. When the economy is strong and revenues increase, the policies are costly but sustainable. When the economy is weak and revenues level off or fall, the city/county/district is forced to reduce services or fight with powerful unions to impose layoffs. This often leads to budget gimmicks and/or questionable uses of bond funds — policies that protect public employees’ interests over the public’s.

Here’s a boiled-down version of the usual generic overview from California’s mass of mediocre journalists:

It’s the fault of the failing private-sector economy. It didn’t create enough tax revenue to keep the status quo going.

So now we have San Bernardino’s bankruptcy unfolding — with big court decisions possible this year —  and which journalistic outlet is doing the best job at giving a comprehensive, smart analysis of what’s going on, one that doesn’t buy the lazy dishonesty of overview no. 2?

Oddly enough, it’s Reuters, the international wire service that generally hasn’t particularly shined in its U.S. coverage.

This is from a March 19 story:

“LOS ANGELES, March 19 (Reuters) — The bankrupt city of San Bernardino, California, approved over $1 million in pay increases for police and firefighters despite claims it can barely make payroll, let alone afford the salary hikes.

“Monday night’s pay increases, for a city that appears before a federal judge again this week to plead for bankruptcy protection, are a result of its charter. It mandates that pay for safety workers must be tied to salary levels for 10 similar-sized California cities, all of which are wealthier than San Bernardino.

“The bankruptcy of the city 65 miles east of Los Angeles is a national test case on whether the pensions of government workers take precedence over other payments in a municipal bankruptcy. It is a high-stakes issue for pension plans and their beneficiaries, and for Wall Street bondholders who lend money to governments.

“Moves to have the city charter overturned, so the city can set its own pay levels, have failed to get the majority needed on the city council in the past year.”

Police morale at ‘low ebb’ — oh, the humanity!

This if from a Feb. 12 story:

“RIVERSIDE, Calif., Feb 12 (Reuters) — San Bernardino’s police and firefighters unions will ask a judge later this week to let them sue the bankrupt city over pay and benefit cuts, arguing that officials have abused bankruptcy laws to impose concessions on safety workers.

“A lawyer for the city’s police union, Ron Oliner, on Tuesday told the federal judge overseeing the case, Meredith Jury, that after recent cuts to police pay, pension benefits and staffing levels, morale in the force was at a ‘low ebb’ and they had no alternative but to try to sue the city in state court.

“An attorney for the stricken city’s firefighters union, Corey Glave, said they would do the same, in coordination with the police union.

“The large and growing burden of public pension debt, in addition to salaries and overtime — particularly for San Bernardino’s safety workers — has become a prominent issue in the city’s bankruptcy as it seeks to cut costs.”

This is from Reuters’ magnum opus, a Nov. 13, 2012, story that dug up all the bodies:

“The city’s decades-long journey from prosperous, middle-class community to bankrupt, crime-ridden, foreclosure-blighted basket case is straightforward — and alarmingly similar to the path traveled by many municipalities around America’s largest state. San Bernardino succumbed to a vicious circle of self-interests among city workers, local politicians and state pension overseers.

“Little by little, over many years, the salaries and retirement benefits of San Bernardino’s city workers — and especially its police and firemen — grew richer and richer, even as the city lost its major employers and gradually got poorer and poorer.

“Unions poured money into city council elections, and the city council poured money into union pay and pensions. The California Public Employees’ Retirement System (Calpers), which manages pension plans for San Bernardino and many other cities, encouraged ever-sweeter benefits. Investment bankers sold clever bond deals to pay for them. Meanwhile, state law made it impossible to raise local property taxes and difficult to boost any other kind.

“No single deal or decision involving benefits and wages over the years killed the city. But cumulatively, they built a pension-fueled financial time-bomb that finally exploded.

“In bankrupt San Bernardino, a third of the city’s 210,000 people live below the poverty line, making it the poorest city of its size in California. But a police lieutenant can retire in his 50s and take home $230,000 in one-time payouts on his last day, before settling in with a guaranteed $128,000-a-year pension. Forty-six retired city employees receive over $100,000 a year in pensions.

“Almost 75 percent of the city’s general fund is now spent solely on the police and fire departments, according to a Reuters analysis of city bankruptcy documents — most of that on wages and pension costs.”

Reuters offers striking contrast with LAT’s Halper, Skelton

Have you ever seen anything in the L.A. Times as succinct as the Reuters’ copy quoted above in the Times’ coverage of California’s various local and state fiscal meltdowns?

Nope. The fish rots from the head down. Instead, you see Sacramento bureau chief man Evan Halper use the rhetorical tricks of a Democratic propagandist in writing about budget policies. And you have the incomparably compromised Sacramento columnist George Skelton, both the embodiment and the tool of the state’s intertwined political/media establishment, writing that he’s never met anyone who didn’t think higher taxes were the answer to California’s woes.

Too bad Reuters doesn’t cover Sacramento with the vigor it covers San Bernardino.

By Dave Roberts

It hasn’t been a great year for the California Department of Forestry and Fire Protection. In January, the Los Angeles Times revealed that for seven years Cal Fire has been hoarding a slush fund that grew to $3.66 million. In February, the Sacramento Bee reported that Cal Fire fees that were supposed to be used for fire prevention measures had instead been used to investigate wildfires, according to the legislative counsel.

And earlier this month, the Howard Jarvis Taxpayers Association served Cal Fire and the state Board of Equalization with a lawsuit seeking to nullify Cal Fire’s $150 annual fee (or tax) on homeowners in mostly rural California for fire prevention. In addition, three bills have been introduced by Republicans in the Legislature seeking to do likewise.

The slush fund was a major black eye for Cal Fire. Instead of following the law by depositing money from legal settlements into the state General Fund, fire officials put it into the care of the California District Attorneys Association. In addition to paying CDAA a fee to hold the money, fire officials spent it on digital cameras, evidence sheds, GPS equipment, metal detectors and a conference at a Pismo Beach resort, among other expenditures.

Cal Fire faces bipartisan fire over slush fund

Coming on the heels of the revelation of the state Department of Parks and Recreation’s secret $54 million slush fund, Cal Fire was pilloried on editorial pages up and down the state:

— “Once again, California residents have been asked to pay higher taxes to help revenue-challenged state agencies fund important services — only to learn that those agencies had hidden large sums of money in secret accounts to keep it away from public scrutiny,” editorialized the Orange County Register.

— “Its arrogance underscores the larger issue: The money doesn’t belong to some bureaucrat with a badge. It belongs to the people,” lectured the Sacramento Bee.

Gov. Jerry Brown was quoted in the Bee calling the slush fund “a relatively boring story, to tell you the truth.” But the governor added that he would look into it. Senate Republican Leader Bob Huff, R-Diamond Bar, responded that “’boring’ is the last word I would use to describe these very disturbing revelations of hidden funds.”

Cal Fire spokesman Dennis Mathisen said in an interview that there was no effort to conceal the fund.

“The reality is that the fund had been publicly known,” he said. “We initiated our own audit of the fund a few years ago. The audit tried to determine the appropriate way of administering the fund. We are going through the process of re-evaluating it and determining the correct method of administering the fund.”

Scathing audit was three years old

Apparently that re-evaluation process has been going on for more than three years. The 26-page audit report, which was issued in November 2009, contains numerous criticisms of the way Cal Fire was handling the money:

— The funds collected from legal settlements were not reported to the Cal Fire Departmental Accounting Office or the Law Enforcement Program, and did not become part of the state’s accounting system.

— The money was dubbed a “Fire Investigation Trust Fund” — but was never placed in a trust account — in order to ensure it wouldn’t go into the state’s General Fund. “It is not clear what authority Cal Fire has to separate the Fund money from State money,” the audit states.

— There was no documentation of how the fund committee made its decisions on spending the money.

— State purchasing guidelines were not followed for hundreds of thousands of dollars spent on equipment.

— Travel expenses for training conferences were improperly documented, including numerous overcharges for lodging and unapproved travel to conferences in other states.

Slush fund depicted in benign light

Mathisen defended the expenditures, saying, “The sole purpose of that fund is to help support fire investigation-related things such as equipment and training. That involves Cal Fire investigators, local agency investigators, district attorneys.” The Pismo Beach conference focused on fire investigation training, he said, adding that “the hotel charged the typical government rate, which is lower than the standard rate.”

Mathisen also disputed the Bee’s report that fire prevention fees were not supposed to be spent on wildfire investigations.

“One of the fire prevention activities that’s mentioned in the law, it’s very clear that it includes the activities involved in fire investigations,” he said. “We look at the act of investigating fires and determining the cause, whether negligence or a crime such as arson. [If arson is suspected] we go through case development and district attorneys to prosecute. In the case of accidents, [investigation] helps us educate the public on how to prevent those things from happening in the future.”

The enabling legislation for the fire prevention fee, ABX1 29, does not specifically cite wildfire investigation as one of the uses for the funds. Money can be spent on public education, fire prevention projects and activities as well as fire severity and hazard mapping.

But there is no definition for what constitutes a “fire prevention project.” The legislation leaves it up to the Cal Fire board to determine that. In essence, the fire prevention fee, which was projected to total as much as $89 million annually, is potentially another slush fund for Cal Fire officials to use as they see fit as long as they can call it a fire prevention project or activity.

The goals of the Howard Jarvis lawsuit

And that’s what concerns the HJTA, which filed its class-action suit in Superior Court in Sacramento in October.

“This tax was dreamed up by politicians in Sacramento who are so desperate for revenue that they were willing to ram this through the Legislature without the proper two-thirds vote,” said HJTA President Jon Coupal in a press release. “The fire tax is a direct violation of Prop. 13. It is our goal to overturn this tax, prevent the politicians from taking more money from hardworking people for a program they were already paying for, and help taxpayers to get a refund from the government.”

The suit argues that the fire prevention assessment does not fall under the state constitutional definition of a “fee.” Therefore, it’s a tax requiring two-thirds approval in the Legislature, which it did not receive due to strong Republican opposition.

Article 13 A, section 3, subdivision (b) of the California Constitution defines a tax as “any levy, charge, or exaction of any kind imposed by the state” unless it’s imposed for a specific benefit, privilege, service or product provided directly to the payer that is not provided to those not charged, and which does not exceed the reasonable costs to the state of providing the benefit, privilege, service or product.

It’s likely that state attorneys will argue that fire prevention fits the definition of a fee instead of a tax, because it’s: 1) a specific service provided directly to people living in the mostly rural 31 million acres of California that are in Cal Fire’s State Responsibility Area, 2) that it is not provided to people outside of that area who are not charged a fee, and 3) it does not exceed the cost of providing that service.

A version of that argument was made by the author of ABX1 29, Assemblyman Bob Blumenfield, D-Los Angeles, on the Assembly floor just before the bill was approved on June 15, 2011.

“This approach has long been supported by the LAO [Legislative Analyst’s Office],” he said. “It reduces the financial exposure of the state to fight fires in the State Responsibility Areas, especially at a time when local governments continue to approve developments that increase fire risk. … We worked very closely when the Senate sent this over with leg[islative] counsel. And the key distinction here [making this a fee instead of a tax] is that it deals with prevention rather than protection. And so it’s not replacing existing services. But there’s a direct nexus. And that’s why this is an acceptable bill.”

Prediction of fire tax’s demise

Blumenfield was responding to then-Assemblyman Kevin Jeffries, R-Lake Elsinore, who predicted the fire assessment would soon be doused.

“We’ve seen this bill before,” he said. “At least I have over previous terms here. A funny thing happened: it failed in previous versions. When it was a $50 tax — you can call it a fee — but when it was a $50 tax it required a two-thirds vote. Now that it has moved to a $150 tax, somehow it’s been changed to a majority vote. I’m wondering if the leg[islative] counsel has issued a new opinion reversing their previous opinions that said this was a tax. It clearly violates Proposition 26 [requiring two-thirds support for tax hikes], and will last maybe a week at best until any number of interest groups, property rights proponents, any group out there who just happens to have a spare moment, and this bill will be dead. This tax will die a fast, quick death.”

Despite Jeffries’ assurance, the assessment is very much alive and well nearly two years later. The first billing for about 750,000 habitable structures was sent out from August through mid-December last year (in alphabetical order by county). A little over $73 million has been collected so far.

That’s short of the estimated revenue because 20 percent of respondents have declined to mail back their payments. More than 87,000 have filed an appeal. About 71 percent of the appeals, which were based on the fee being an illegally passed tax, were denied, according to Mathisen. More than 12,000 appeals were granted, however, as those assessments were based on misinformation from incorrect records.

“When this law was created there was no database in existence that identified all habitable structures in the SRA,” said Mathisen. “That was a significant task to put together that database. So we knew that there were going to be some inaccuracies. We are making those corrections as we move along.”

Fighting fire tax: The big picture and at individual level

The second round of billing for the current fiscal year was due to start in April. But it will be delayed, according to the Associated Press, to allow more time to sort through the thousands of complaints stemming from the initial billing.

In the meantime, three bills seeking to kill the fire prevention assessment are due to be heard in committees this legislative session: AB 23, AB 124 and SB 17. Click here for more information on the assessment from Cal Fire’s perspective. For the HJTA’s take, including instructions on filing an appeal, click here.

By Chris Reed

The Los Angeles Times reported over the weekend that public employee unions are suing to block some of the pension reforms that Gov. Jerry Brown got through the Legislature last fall.

“Advocates for the changes said the cuts were necessary to help reduce California’s mounting bills for retirement benefits, which are expected to cost many billions more in coming decades than the state and local governments have set aside for them. The pension law signed by Brown last year affects retirement systems at the city, county and state level.”

But the lengthy L.A. Times article — incredibly — fails to mention that the Brown administration is trying to block pension reform in San Diego, courtesy of Brown’s appointees to the state Public Employment Relations Board.

The reporter, Chris Megerian, is not someone whose track record I am familiar with. He’s not Evan Halper, employing the language issue-framing tactics recommended by a liberal professor, or Tiffany Hsu, butchering easy stories with lame interpretations.

But whatever Megerian’s background, isn’t it, yunno, news, that Jerry Brown’s adminstration whines about some lawsuits targeting pension reform while it pursues others?

Of course.