Secure Choice, if implemented, would require employers of five or more people to automatically enroll employees into portable retirement accounts, with an opt-out clause for the individual.

Proponents of the measure say that while everyone already has the option of investing in a wide variety of retirement accounts, they aren’t — the approximately 7 million people in the state who don’t have employer-based retirement accounts need to be nudged into planning for the future.

“This is a mechanism to get Californians to save for retirement,” Assemblyman Mike Gatto, D-Glendale, said on the floor Thursday, adding that while skeptical at first, he eventually asked himself why he hadn’t thought of the idea.

Others remained skeptical, with concerns over the risk to taxpayers if the market tanks and whether diligent contributors will end up subsidizing those who have not contributed much. 

“I applaud (Senate President Pro Tem Kevin de Leon) for authoring this bill … however, we have some real challenges in this bill,” said Assemblyman David Hadley, R-Torrance, who was a financial adviser prior to his election to the Assembly. “This bill has the makings of an epic problem.”

Gatto reiterated that the accounts are individualized with no risk to the state. Others have pointed out that the accounts will be built on low-risk investments like treasury bills and would lower the demand on Social Security — although critics have pointed that low-risk investments have a low return on investment, which could give account holders a false sense of security. 

The program, if signed into law, would be administered by a nine-member California Secure Choice Retirement Savings Investment Board, which is chaired by the state treasurer.

The measure heads back to the Senate next, where it sailed through earlier this year.

The streetwise alternative energy dreams of one California officeholder have been given a tentative green light in Sacramento. If all goes well, the Golden State could roll out a technology that would turn vehicles’ rumblings over freeways into electrical energy.

“The office of L.A.-area Assemblyman Mike Gatto announced recently that the California Energy Commission has agreed to fund multiple piezoelectric pilot projects in the Golden State,” the L.A. Weekly reported. “The program’s schedule, including when ground will be broken, has not been revealed. The commission’s move follows years of research on how this might work on California’s busy freeways — and on whether it will be worth it for taxpayers. […] The state’s analysis concluded that a pilot demonstration of the technology would be the best way to determine if it’s worth our money — if we can actually squeeze some juice from concrete and asphalt.”

International precedent

Risk-averse politicians and policymakers had reason beyond the limitations of the pilot program to be cautiously optimistic. In other leading post-industrial nations, the tech being put to the test has already proven functional. “Gatto had a conversation with a friend who had just returned from Israel raving about a road that produced energy,” as the Fresno Bee noted, through the use of so-called piezoelectric sensors beneath roads and railways. “Gatto learned that engineers in Israel, Italy, and Japan had successfully installed piezoelectric sensors underneath roadways and railways. Those sensors, the size of watch batteries, are in effect the reverse of sonar: a vibration comes in, and an electric pulse goes out. Gatto said scientists estimate the energy generated from a 10-mile stretch of four-lane roadway can power the entire city of Burbank, comparable to Clovis,” the Bee added.

“You embed them right in the roadway and as cars and trucks drive over the roadway, it vibrates the road just a little bit, and these substances get charged from that,” Gatto told ABC 7 News. “It just makes sense in a car culture like ours to use that extra energy that is generated and put it to good use.”

Transforming transportation

Although environmentalist critics could be pressed to raise emissions objections to Gatto’s enthusiasm for so many cars on the road, other ongoing technological advances have begun to raise the prospect of substantially greater zero-emissions vehicles phasing out California gas guzzlers in the years to come. “Tesla’s goal of building 1 million vehicles per year by the end of 2020” — including buses and trucks — “depends on a fast-rising flow of batteries from the Gigafactory,” the company’s vast plant located in Nevada, the San Francisco Chronicle observed:

“The company has accelerated its work on the factory by roughly two years, planning to produce enough batteries in 2018 to supply 35 gigawatt-hours of electricity, the target originally established for 2020. ‘People really need to think of the factory as more important than the product itself, and with far greater potential for innovation,’ Musk said Tuesday at the plant.”

While Musk’s plans to date have focused on solar power’s applications in structures like homes, designers have also begun to turn to the sun’s energy in rethinking the way roads can be used to help power the grid. L.A.’s Michael Maltzan Architecture has proposed a tunnel overlay on a bridge section of the 134 freeway that would incorporate a host of alternate energy features, including emissions traps and rainwater collection. “A field of photovoltaic panels along the top of the tunnel would produce about 6 million kilowatt-hours of electricity annually — enough to power 600 homes,” the Los Angeles Times added. “Maltzan proposes that the cost savings made possible by the solar array — an estimated $1 million per year — be similarly fed back into the city, used to boost the budgets of the half-dozen Pasadena Unified School District campuses located within two miles of the freeway bridge.”

Treasurer Chiang will run for governor

Good morning! Happy Hump Day. 

It’s Twitterficial. Democratic state Treasurer John Chiang is running for governor, he announced on Tuesday — long expected since even before he said he was “strongly leaning towards running” back in February. 

Assemblyman Mike Gatto and Board of Equalization Chairwoman Fiona Ma, two other prominent Democrats, made Twitter announcements (Twouncements?) for their candidacies to replace Chiang as treasurer. 

CalWatchdog has more.

And for a bonus, the Los Angeles Times looks at who else may round out the governor’s race. 

In other news: 

• The state’s four-year graduation rate rose to 82.3 percent last year, the sixth straight consecutive increase. The San Jose Mercury News has more. 
• Sen. Dianne Feinstein is urging compromise on a package of drought relief bills before Congress, arguing that there’s no end to the drought in sight. The Los Angeles Times has more. 
• The state seems still split on the death penalty. As two competing initiatives struggle for enough signatures to qualify for the ballot, they have gained enough to trigger legislative hearings, reports The Sacramento Bee. 
• A state water agency is seeking its largest fine ever — $4.6 million — against the owner of a small island north of Pittsburg for filling and degrading tidal wetlands. The San Jose Mercury News has more. 

Assembly:

• Full slate of hearings.

Senate:

• Full slate of hearings. 

Gov. Brown:

• At around 7:50 a.m., Brown will speak the 91st Annual Sacramento Host Breakfast. 
• And at 1, Brown will attend the Governor’s Military Council meeting in Sacramento. 

Tips: matt@calwatchdog.com

Follow us: @calwatchdog.com @mflemingterp

New followers: @HaakeTranspo @nino275_k

Treasurer John Chiang made it official that he would be running for governor after announcing he was “strongly leaning towards running” back in February. If these things matter, Chiang drew 81 retweets and 109 likes by 5 p.m.

It’s official. I have opened a committee to raise funds for Governor. Hope to count on your support! #chiang2018 https://t.co/Grg4hVxK33

— John Chiang (@JohnChiangCA) May 17, 2016

Chiang is the second high-profile Democrat to announce his intentions for the state’s most powerful position. Lt. Gov. Gavin Newsom filed his paperwork in February 2015 and has $5.4 million in his account. While that’s a formidable head start, especially more than two years from the election, Chiang could carry over $3.2 million from his treasurer’s account.

Assemblyman Mike Gatto of Los Angeles announced that he’d be running for Treasurer, drawing 15 retweets and 38 likes. Gatto had previously opened an account for lieutenant governor and is sitting on $2 million. 

I'm in! I will be a candidate for Treasurer in 2018.

— Mike Gatto (@mikegatto) May 17, 2016

Fiona Ma, the chairwoman of the Board of Equalization broke the news later in the day. So far, Gatto is winning in both Twitter activity and campaign funds, as Ma only received five retweets and four likes and has a modest half million in her Board of Equalization account. 

Proud to announce my run for State Treasurer in 2018. I hope you will endorse me & join the #MaSquad! Thank you! https://t.co/lItULwZTaK.

— Fiona Ma (@fionama) May 17, 2016

Official Portrait – Chancellor Linda Katehi | Flickr, courtesy of UC Davis

Two state lawmakers took to Twitter on Thursday and joined the growing chorus of Democratic legislators who are calling for the resignation of UC Davis Chancellor Linda P.B. Katehi after a series of unflattering stories by The Sacramento Bee.

On Wednesday, The Sacramento Bee reported that the university paid consultants at least $175,000 to scrub the Internet of negative postings about the pepper-spraying of students in 2011, in an effort to improve the school’s and the chancellor’s reputations.

The Bee also reported that between 2009 and 2015, the school’s strategic communications budget increased from $2.93 million to $5.47 million.

In response, Democratic Assemblymembers Freddie Rodriguez of Pomona and Mike Gatto of Los Angeles took to Twitter to condemn Katehi and demand her resignation.

.@ucdavis don't spend millions to cover up a bad reputation. Invest in students. Time for Katehi to resign. https://t.co/Fodn4fNV7V

— Freddie Rodriguez (@AsmRodriguez52) April 14, 2016

Spend millions on PR while student costs soar? It is time for Katehi to resign. @dianalambert

— Mike Gatto (@mikegatto) April 14, 2016

Other incidents

In March, it was reported that Katehi, who receives $424,360 annually as chancellor, earned an additional $420,000 between 2012 and 2014 as a board member for textbook publisher John Wiley & Sons.

Katehi had also came under fire in March for violating University of California policy by accepting a $70,000 per-year seat on the board of DeVry, a for-profit university.

Katehi has since stepped down from DeVry board and pledged $200,000 in John Wiley & Sons stock to a scholarship fund. And she apologized.

But those actions weren’t enough and Democratic Assemblymembers Luis Alejo of Watsonville, Lorena Gonzalez of San Diego, Kevin McCarty of Sacramento and Evan Low of Campbell had called for her resignation, who Gatto and Rodriguez have now joined.

In Katehi’s defense

UC Davis spokesperson Dana Topousis would not say whether Katehi intended to step down (which likely means the answer is “no”). In a statement responding to only the most recent article from The Sacramento Bee, Topousis defended the overall cost of communications.

Here is the entire statement:

“Communicating the value of UC Davis is an essential element of our campus’s education, research, and larger public service mission. Increased investment in social media and communications strategy has heightened the profile of the university to good effect.

“As part of this overall communications strategy, it is important that the excellent work underway at UC Davis with respect to educating the next generation of students, pursuing groundbreaking research, and providing important services to the State is not lost during a campus crisis, including the crisis that ensued following the extremely regrettable incident when police pepper-sprayed student protesters in 2011. Communication efforts during this time were part of the campus’s strategic communication strategy. In fact, one of the main objectives during this time was to train staff on how to effectively use digital media to improve engagement with our stakeholders.

“Communicating the value of UC Davis is among the many reasons why our campus was able to increase its endowment to $1 billion last year, garner more than $700 million in research grants, and attract the highest caliber of students and faculty from around the country, with a record number of student applications this year.

“Most of the growth in the communications budget is tied to raising the visibility of our College of Agricultural and Environmental Sciences and the School of Veterinary Medicine, both rated the best in the nation.

“In a 2014 Chronicle of Higher Education Report titled, “Higher Ed Marketing Comes of Age,” the mean amount that universities spend on marketing was reported as $3.7 million, with the highest at $25 million. We believe UC Davis compares favorably with other institutions of higher learning. Communications spending represents a small fraction of the $4.3 billion operating budget of UC Davis.”

Under a new proposal put forth by Assemblyman Mike Gatto, D-Glendale, the new chairman of the Committee on Utilities and Commerce, the CPUC — long under fire for alleged lapses and mismanagement — “would be broken apart with many of its duties distributed to other state agencies,” U-T San Diego reported. Gatto, the paper detailed, “would place an initiative before voters as soon as November that would remove the commission’s regulatory authority from the California Constitution, effective July 1, 2018.”

Joined in the initiative by Assemblymen Scott Will, R-Santa Clarita, and Marc Levine, D-San Rafael, Gatto lambasted the CPUC’s performance. “The people of California are deeply concerned by the CPUC’s failures in recent years,” he said, according to California Newswire. “You have folks in the Bay Area justifiably concerned after a pipeline explosion, Orange County worried about nuclear waste, Sacramento and the Central Valley on edge with oil trains, and of course, Angelenos deeply concerned after a gas leak.”

The L.A. neighborhood of Porter Ranch has been sent reeling by massive emissions from a recent pipe rupture. The ordeal has added to a full plate of woes for the commission; “response to the San Bruno pipeline explosion in 2010 and the 2012 closure of the San Onofre Nuclear Generating Station have become the subjects of criminal investigations by state and federal prosecutors,” the Los Angeles Times observed.

Solar squabbles

The CPUC also recently ruffled feathers with a hotly contested vote on the way solar power is metered relative to traditional power. The commission cast its lot with the solar industry in “a dramatic 3-2 vote that saw two commissioners change their minds after a last-minute development favorable to the rooftop solar industry,” as the Desert Sun reported.

“The decision will require Southern California Edison and other utilities to keep paying solar-powered homes and businesses full retail rates for the electricity they generate. In an 11th-hour revision announced by Commission President Michael Picker on Wednesday, it will also ensure that solar customers don’t have to pay for the upkeep of transmission lines. The solar industry cheered that change, even as it prompted two commissioners to vote against a decision they said they otherwise would have supported.”

The move left some aggrieved. State “ratepayer advocates and the utilities, which lose out on electricity sales and some of the infrastructure costs that are bundled into retail rates, say that solar customers put an undue burden on nonsolar customers, who must make up that shortfall,” the New York Times noted.

Mustering support

Faced with news of Gatto’s plan, the commission signaled its hopes to forge ahead on the basis of support from other lawmakers. CPUC spokeswoman Terrie Prosper acknowledged “there is still much to do,” but added, “we look forward to working with the Legislature on any constructive and helpful reform initiative that is put forward,” as the Times reported. “Only by working together on real changes that have the ability to succeed can we make the CPUC stronger and more efficient, and our relationship with the Legislature more productive,” she said in a statement.

One bulwark for the commission has been the governor’s office. “Last year, Gov. Jerry Brown vetoed six bills that would have changed how the commission conducts business,” KQED recalled. “Three bills by now-Assembly Speaker Anthony Rendon would have established new oversight measures on the commission.

“Another of the vetoed bills, by state Sen. Mark Leno, D-San Francisco, would have tightened rules on private communications between utility executives and state regulators. It also would have tightened conflict-of-interest rules and limited the CPUC president’s powers. And two bills from state Sen. Jerry Hill, D-San Mateo, would have set performance criteria for the agency and included commission meetings in transparency laws.”

As yet, the station noted, Gov. Brown’s office has not offered comment on the Gatto scheme.

“The law expands the state’s definition of invasion of privacy to include sending a drone over private property to make a recording or take photos,” as BBC News reported. It was passed as Assembly Bill 856 and introduced by Assemblyman Ian Calderon, D-Whittier.

Wielding the veto

Just weeks ago, Brown had refused to sign yet another bill that would have extended trespassing law to include similar activity. The bill, Brown warned, “could expose the occasional hobbyist and the FAA-approved commercial user alike to burdensome litigation and new causes of action,” the Los Angeles Times noted.

Three other drone-curbing bills vetoed by Brown “would have prohibited civilians from flying aerial drones over wildfires, schools, prisons and jails,” the Times reported separately. “The governor rejected those and six other bills that would have created new crimes or penalties for misconduct including using bullhooks to handle elephants, allowing explosions in drug labs and removing GPS tracking devices from paroled sex offenders. Brown said in a veto message that there are already laws available to deal with any problems addressed by the bills.”

In his veto statement, Brown complained that the drone bills fell into the pattern of “finding a novel way to characterize and criminalize conduct that is already proscribed. This multiplication and particularization of criminal behavior creates increasing complexity without commensurate benefit.”

Legislative frustration

The author of the three bills, state Sen. Ted Gaines, R-El Dorado, made his dissatisfaction plain in recent remarks to the press. “I think it’s dumb,” Gaines said, according to Southern California Public Radio. “Aren’t we supposed to be protecting the public? If I’m an elected official — he’s the governor, I’m a senator — isn’t one of our key roles that we play in public service to protect the public, and certainly Cal Fire employees?”

The discovery that hobbyists’ drones had interfered with firefighting this summer had fueled the push for criminalizing that activity. “The U.S. Forest Service has repeatedly posted reminders warning people that a collision between a hobbyist drone and the low-flying aircraft and helicopters used to fight wildfire could cause damage to the aircraft and injuries to the pilots and people below,” Ars Technica reported. “Despite the warnings, drone sightings keep happening over wildfires, causing the U.S. Forest Service thousands of dollars in aborted flyovers.”

But the private use of drones raised broader concerns including the safety of commercial aircraft. “A couple years ago, it was 200,000, so it is increasing geometrically, and I think it was a mistake for the governor not to see ahead into the future in terms of the chronic aspect of drone use, in the wrong way, in the state of California,” added Gaines. Along with Assemblyman Mike Gatto, D-Glendale, Gaines had hoped to increase the penalty for interfering with firefighting to $5,000 and up to six months in jail “if the drone interference was ruled reckless and intentional,” Ars noted.

Analysts sympathetic to the legislation suggested that lawmakers were justified in their impatience with the federal government’s pace in crafting drone regulations of its own. “In the state of California, it is already a misdemeanor to ‘engage in disorderly conduct that delays or prevents a fire from being timely extinguished’ or to prevent emergency responders from discharging their duties,” noted Justin Peters in Slate. “Legislators’ attempts to get specific are a function of frustration, both with drone operators whose actions too often defy common sense and with a federal government that is taking its sweet time to come up with comprehensive regulations for an industry that desperately needs them.”

In the wake of a big legislative setback, Gov. Jerry Brown’s wish to use regulations to cut fuel emissions is swiftly coming true.

This month, Democratic lawmakers couldn’t muster enough votes to slash gasoline use by half within 15 years. Now, the state Air Resources Board has taken action widely seen as compensatory. “The action, coming two weeks after a stinging defeat for Gov. Jerry Brown’s planned 50 percent cut in petroleum use by 2030, signaled his administration’s determination to press forward with an aggressive environmental agenda through the regulatory process rather than by legislation,” noted the New York Times.

Resurgent regulations

In a unanimous, 9-0 vote, the board chose to reactivate California’s standards on low-carbon fuel, created years ago but recently held in legal limbo. The regime constituted “the first regulation of its kind in the U.S. when it was established in a 2007 executive order by then-Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger,” as the Wall Street Journal reported. “It had been frozen since 2013, as the state made revisions to the law following a court challenge.”

“The California regulation further tightens the state’s emissions regulations, already the most stringent in the U.S. It requires fuel makers to reduce emissions by developing cleaner fuels or adopting greater use of biofuels. It also requires fuel producers to take into account all emissions for delivering gasoline, diesel or biofuels to California customers.”

Tweaks to the rules made in the wake of the court challenge included “streamlining the application process for alternative fuel producers seeking a carbon intensity score,” according to Ethanol Producer Magazine.

The interventions quickly drew howls from the oil and gas industry, which views the rules’ requirements as unattainable. Tiffany Roberts, director for fuels and climate policy at the Western States Petroleum Association, told the Sacramento Business Journal they weren’t feasible, suggesting that “even if oil businesses are able to incorporate those pollution-cutting methods, they still cannot meet the program’s aggressive standards.” Defenders of the plan, meanwhile, focused on its perceived benefits. “It will drive new technologies, not only in transportation fuel but in hybrid cars, electric cars and other means of transportation,” Pacific Ethanol spokesman Paul Koehler told the Business Journal.

Political heat

Industry interests haven’t fueled the only criticism of Brown’s regulatory approach, however. Earlier this month, the administration heard out the complaints of a gaggle of state lawmakers — including Democrats — frustrated by the activism and assertiveness of the Air Resources Board. Their debate with Brown “turns on questions of how the state can meet its environmental goals with the right balance between the executive branch, which prizes the ability to act independently, and state lawmakers, who want their own stamp on government programs,” according to the Los Angeles Times.

That disagreement came to a head amid the collapse of the Senate’s planned 50 percent cut in statewide petroleum use. “If the board made decisions adversely impacting constituents, many of whom have already been struggling economically, the consequences could be dire,” uneasy Democrats feared, as CalWatchdog previously noted. “What’s more, angry voters would have little way to respond but at the ballot box.”

While state Senate pro Tem Kevin de Leon portrayed the cut’s failure as the consequence of a massive industry campaign, Assemblyman Mike Gatto, D-Glendale, instead focused on the Air Resources Board’s “tremendous arrogance,” the Times reported, “noting that he’s never taken campaign money from the oil industry but remains skeptical about the measure.”

But the board’s recent successes at advancing its agenda suggested its influence was set to grow. Tipped by concerned scientists, it launched the investigation into the Volkswagen Group of America that revealed the auto company’s secret years-long use of “a defeat device to circumvent CARB and […] EPA emission test procedures,” as emissions compliance chief Annette Hebert revealed.

Privacy vs. productivity

The bill cleared both chambers of the state Legislature “despite bipartisan concern about regulating the budding drone industry,” Courthouse News reported. “If signed by the governor, the bill would make it a trespass violation to fly an unmanned drone over private property without consent.” Any drone flying below 350 feet above private property without “express permission” would run afoul of the would-be law.

Drone industry figures and pro-tech activists have warned that excessively restrictive regulations would throw a monkeywrench into the explosive, lucrative and potentially very useful application of UAV technology. In a joint statement reported by Courthouse News, the Association for Unmanned Vehicle Systems International and the Consumer Electronic Association lambasted the bill. “SB142 would damage California’s leadership and handcuff innovation, just as this largely California-based and dynamically expanding industry is poised to bring major job growth to the state — adding roughly 18,000 new jobs and more than $14 billion in economic impact in the first decade once federal guidelines are implemented,” they warned.

In remarks supplied to Inc. magazine, Mike Winn, CEO of San Francisco-based software developer DroneDeploy, complained that the bill “doesn’t meaningfully address privacy issues,” instead “arbitrarily reducing the ways drones can create value. We’d encourage California and other law makers to enforce existing laws that prevent trespassing and provide remedies for privacy violations and focus on the bigger issues in the states,” he suggested.

But Assemblyman Mike Gatto, D-Glendale, a supporter of the drone-curbing bill SB142 introduced by state Sen. Hannah-Beth Jackson, claimed that “the 50-foot zone between private property and federally controlled airspace could potentially be used as a corridor for commercial drones performing such functions as delivering packages,” McClatchy reported.

Drone politics have not divided neatly along party lines. In the Assembly, the bill drew opposition from both sides of the aisle.

Improvising solutions

In the absence of statewide guidance, law enforcement officials availing themselves of drones have had to improvise a public relations and public safety strategy.

In Ventura County, where the police force became the first in Southern California to receive FAA drone authorization, the sheriff’s department had to use “the reverse 911 system [in the] immediate area to notify residents we were about to deploy a UAV,” Cmdr. Chris Dunn told lawmakers in a hearing of the Joint Legislative Committee of Emergency Management, according to the area paper the Moorpark Acorn.

“We do that so that, one, they won’t be shocked at the sight of the device in their area, and two, in hopes that they don’t interfere in the operation of the device by throwing things at it or trying to launch their own device in support of our mission,” he said.

Although SB142 would lift the burden of sorting out drone protocols from city and municipal officials, critics insisted that the problem of inconsistent, confusing and conflicting law would only be pushed upward. Without nationwide standards of guidance supplied by the FAA, “states will continue to set laws that will inevitably conflict with each other and will cause confusion about where and how operators can fly,” Christian Sanz, CEO of San Francisco drone manufacturer Skycatch, told Inc.

The FAA has slowly turned its attention toward the nationwide commercial use of drones. “In April, the Federal Aviation Administration granted Amazon authorization to test drones outdoors for its yet-to-be-launched Prime Air service, which hopes to use drones to deliver products to a customer’s doorstep within 30 minutes of an online order,” as the Sacramento Bee reported. But the proliferation of drones among hobbyists, rather than corporations, has remained the foremost preoccupation of legislators in California and elsewhere.

In an all-too-real conflict between man and machine, a string of high-profile clashes between drones and public servants has helped spur an effort to crack down on the airborne bots in California.

But at the same time, civil libertarian concerns have prompted a parallel controversy over law enforcement’s desire to use more drones to fight crime.

Crossing the line

Along with Golden State legislators, members of California’s Congressional delegation have grown concerned that so-called recreational drones, flown by private citizens, have become a serious threat to the state’s ability to safely operate in its own airspace. “Without common sense rules, I believe it’s only a matter of time before there’s a tragic accident,” said Sen. Dianne Feinstein, in an emailed statement reported by Emergency Management:

“Feinstein and other lawmakers are demanding that regulators revise existing law to plug a loophole sparing recreational drones from the regulations. They are also are seeking the use of software that would prevent drones from flying in prohibited areas.”

In Sacramento, meanwhile, lawmakers faced a battery of drone bills. One group focused on invasions of privacy; as the Orange County Register reported, state Sen. Ted Gaines, R-Rocklin, offered bills aimed at clearing the skies over public schools, prisons and jails — measures that have already passed the state Senate and await a vote in the Assembly appropriations committee. Other bills would extend trespassing and other privacy laws to cover the use of drones over private property and in otherwise private areas. 

Gaines has also partnered up with Assemblyman Mike Gatto, D-Glendale, to target drones flown over wildfires. As CalWatchdog reported previously, drones disrupted aerial firefighting in California four times over the course of the month of July alone. The Gaines-Gatto bills would make that kind of interference a misdemeanor and exempt firefighters from liability for neutralizing offending drones.

A spreading problem

In addition to complicating California’s efforts to fight fires, dismaying drone-related incidents have begun to spread across the country. As the Washington Post noted, “drones have smuggled drugs into an Ohio prison, smashed against a Cincinnati skyscraper […] and nearly collided with three airliners over New York City.”

“Earlier this summer, a runaway two-pound drone struck a woman at a gay pride parade in Seattle, knocking her unconscious. In Albuquerque, a drone buzzed into a crowd at an outdoor festival, injuring a bystander. In Tampa, a drone reportedly stalked a woman outside a downtown bar before crashing into her car.”

But California has remained a drone hotspot a cut above the rest. Drug runners have begun testing out the use of drones to ferry payloads across the border. “Drones as a drug-smuggling tool made news in January when one hauling meth crashed in the parking lot of a Tijuana shopping center, two miles from the U.S. border,” according to U-T San Diego. “It was loaded with about seven pounds of drugs and was likely being ferried from neighborhood to neighborhood, Mexican law enforcement said.”

Just this month, U-T added, two men pleaded guilty to picking up 28 pounds of heroin delivered by drone near Calexico, “a pickup that was captured on Border Patrol cameras on April 28, according to court records.”

Also this month, a helicopter air ambulance taking a patient to the hospital “had to take evasive action to avoid a mid-air collision with a drone aircraft Wednesday afternoon north of Fresno Yosemite International Airport,” according to the Fresno Bee. 

Police interest

The sense of uncertainty pervading the airspace has been compounded by Sacramento’s inability to deal with the prospect of expanded law enforcement drone usage. One bill underscoring the problem, AB56, set out to strike a balance by requiring warrants for drone surveillance over private property and new police standards for privacy, including the storage and deletion of video footage recorded by drone, as the Associated Press noted. 

But the bill hit against opposition from both sides, with the ACLU and law enforcement organizations both expressing displeasure over the attempted compromise. The bill’s author, Assemblyman Bill Quirk, D-Hayward, expressed his frustration to the AP. “There’s a middle ground that nobody likes,” he sighed.