Gov. Gavin Newsom and fellow Democratic lawmakers have expressed no contrition for their failed attempt to force President Donald Trump to release five years of tax returns to gain access to the California ballot in the 2020 general election.

The California Supreme Court recently ruled unanimously that Senate Bill 27, signed by Newsom in July, violated the state Constitution. The opinion by Chief Justice Tani Cantil-Sakauye at times had an incredulous tone, noting that advocates appeared unaware of SB27’s obvious conflict with Proposition 4. That’s a 1972 amendment to the California Constitution easily passed by state voters that requires presidential primaries must be open to all “recognized” candidates.

Further reflecting the state high court’s view that the law was frivolous, the unanimous verdict was delivered just 15 days after justices heard testimony in the case. Court watchers said that was highly unusual.

A federal judge had already ruled the law violated the U.S. Constitution in September. That decision was appealed by Secretary of State Alex Padilla, but the appeal was dropped after the state Supreme Court’s ruling.

Nevertheless, a spokesman for Newsom continued to depict the now-void law as well-intentioned.

Jesse Melgar told the San Francisco Chronicle that the governor “would continue to urge all candidates to voluntarily release their tax returns. … Congress and other states can and should take action to require presidential candidates to disclose their tax returns.”

Padilla issued a statement expressing disappointment with the state high court’s decision but also declaring “the movement for greater transparency will endure. The history of our democracy is on the side of more transparency, not less.”

‘Ridiculous’ bill said to reflect ‘arrogance and hypocrisy’

Defenses of the law were scoffed at by opinion writers.

The Sacramento Bee editorial board – which had ripped SB27 as “silly and destructive” when Newsom signed it into law – wrote that the measure  “was so ridiculous and flawed that even California’s justices could barely conceal their disdain.” 

The Southern California Newspaper Group’s editorial noted that the state high court “quoted former Gov. Jerry Brown’s veto of a similar bill in 2017: ‘Today we require tax returns, but what would be next? Five years of health records? A certified birth certificate? High school report cards?’

“Democratic lawmakers and a new governor refused to learn from that message. They tried again and embarrassed themselves. They richly deserved the court’s smackdown.”

The Los Angeles Times editorial board wrote that the tax-returns law “accomplished only one thing: giving Trump more ammunition against the state he loves to mock.”

Times columnist George Skelton was the harshest critic of all, noting that many of the Democrats who claimed the moral high ground in backing the tax-returns requirement were not transparent about their own finances.

“This is not about whether Trump should release his federal tax returns,” he wrote. “Rather, it’s about Democrats enacting a blatantly unconstitutional law with a straight face for purely political reasons. It’s about arrogance and hypocrisy.”

Part of SB27 that was reportedly included at Newsom’s behest remains intact. It’s the requirement that gubernatorial candidates provide five years of tax returns to qualify for the ballot beginning with the 2022 election.

The bill was introduced by Sen. Mike McGuire, D-Healdsburg, and Sen. Scott Wiener, D-San Francisco. It passed in Senate on a 29-10 vote and in the Assembly on a 57-17 vote in early July.

A

Under Senate Bill 149, introduced by state Sens. Mike McGuire, D-Healdsburg, and Scott Weiner, D-San Francisco, presidential candidates would be ineligible for the California primary and general election ballots unless they had released their tax returns for the previous five years.

If Brown signs the bill, this would mean Trump couldn’t appear on the 2020 California ballot if he ran for re-election and secured the Republican nomination – at least if he stuck to his opposition to disclosing his taxes. McGuire and Weiner insist the bill is a serious attempt to respond to Trump’s refusal to release his returns during the 2016 campaign. Republicans and some Capitol insiders see it as one more attempt to convey Trump-loathing after a legislative session which saw similar frequent displays.

Enactment of the law seems certain to trigger a legal challenge. State-imposed term limits on members of Congress were thrown out in 1995 by the U.S. Supreme Court on the grounds that states couldn’t tell the federal government who was eligible for federal office.

But so far at least, a cross-section of legal authorities believe SB149 could be upheld if it becomes law, allowing California to impose requirements beyond the present basics that a presidential candidate must be a natural-born citizen who is at least 35 and who has lived in the U.S. for 14 or more years.

Given that the requirement is not onerous and is related to qualification for office, “our research and reflection lead us to conclude that tax return disclosure laws … comport fully with the U.S. Constitution,” wrote Laurence Tribe, Norman Eisen and Richard Painter. Tribe and Eisen have histories of Democratic allegiances, while Painter was an ethics lawyer for President George W. Bush.

UC Irvine law professor Richard Hasen, considered one of the nation’s top election-law experts, said it is difficult to anticipate what federal courts might hold, given that SB 149 appears to bring elements of the U.S. Constitution into conflict. In interviews earlier this year, when the McGuire-Weiner bill first won notice, Hasen stressed the measure’s novelty: “Nobody’s tried it before.”

Tactic could be used against Sanders, Clinton

One reason for that might be political operatives’ awareness the tactic could be used against their preferred candidates in future elections.

In swing states controlled by Republican legislatures and governors like Wisconsin and Ohio, for example, attempts could be made in 2020 to deny ballot placement to candidates who had not belonged to a major party over most of the preceding year (Sen. Bernie Sanders); who had not fully complied with document requests from federal investigators (former Secretary of State Hillary Clinton) or who didn’t offer full details on business deals undertaken with donors (many candidates). As Los Angeles Times columnist George Skelton wrote, the potential for mischief is immense:

What would be next? A requirement that every candidate release a thorough health fitness report disclosing all past illnesses? Make the candidates pledge to campaign in California for at least 10 days? And how would red states retaliate? Force every candidate to disclose whether they’ve ever voted for a tax increase?

But the San Jose Mercury-News recently pointed out a detail that suggests this debate could be academic. Brown refused to release his tax returns when running for governor in 2010 and 2014. Signing SB149 and going after Trump for his refusal to do so would seem problematic at best for the governor.

Sen. Mike McGuire of Healdsburg is author of SB643, “The Medical Marijuana Public Safety and Environmental Protection Act.” It won broad backing from the Assembly Business & Professions Committee last week after passing the state Senate on a 26-13 vote in June. Its next hurdle is the Assembly Health Committee; a hearing date has not yet been scheduled.

Both media in McGuire’s neck of the Golden State and the national media depict marijuana growing as a profound environmental threat. This is from the Lake County News:

… it is clear that large-scale rogue marijuana grows are having a negative impact on Northern California watersheds.

 

“The impacts are horrendous and the drought has had an exacerbating effect, especially on the North Coast. Entire rivers are running dry as marijuana grows expand and the fourth year of this historic drought sets in,” McGuire said.

 

Rogue operators have cut down tens of thousands of acres of Northern California forests illegally without regard for the environment, neighboring communities, downstream farms, or endangered species. 

 

In addition, tens of thousands of pounds of pesticides, rodenticides and fertilizers have been dumped into watersheds that flow through Northern California communities. 

 

Rogue marijuana grows are the number one source of sediment and nutrient load in Northern California rivers.

Marijuana growers are ‘sucking rivers dry’

Scientific American had a similar take in a July 3 story on its website headlined “California’s 50,000 pot farms are sucking rivers dry.”

The impacts of California’s drought on key fisheries have been of increasing concern for wildlife agencies across the state, which have worked for decades to restore fish populations to their historic levels. In 2014, warm water conditions contributed to a 95 percent mortality of winter run brood salmon in the Sacramento River system. This year, with cold water stocks in the Shasta Reservoir — located in Northern California about 9 miles northwest of Redding—at record low levels, Chuck Bonham, director of the California Department of Fish and Wildlife (CDFW), said the state faces another loss of brood stock this winter.

 

Across the state, there are an estimated 50,000 small pot farms. In the last decade, under the auspices of Proposition 215, which legalized marijuana for medical use, there has been a steady increase in the amount of cannabis cultivation in Shasta, Tehama and Humboldt counties, according to DeWayne Little, a lieutenant with CDFW’s Watershed Enforcement Team.

 

A study by CDFW and published in the journal PLOS ONE in March, found that in four watersheds that are home to both coho salmon and large numbers of marijuana farms — which use about 22 liters of water per day, per plant — the pot cultivation drained much of the river’s water … .

Farmers may get tough rules they want

This sort of media coverage and horror stories in farmers’ testimony to legislative committees are making it easy for McGuire to round up support — even in an era in which old attitudes about marijuana being a dangerous gateway drug seem to be fading.

Per the Lake County News, his bill would “provide a legal framework for those farmers who are working with McGuire on this legislation. The bill provides a regulatory framework for the industry covering the issues of environmental protection and water regulations, law enforcement, licensing, public health related to edibles and product testing, to marketing, labeling, taxing, transporting, zoning, local control and re-sale (and more).”

Here’s a link to the official Assembly analysis of the measure. The only formal opponent of the legislation is the Fresno Cannabis Association.

Whether you’re planning a weekend trip to Napa Valley or the family’s spring getaway to Disneyland, non-traditional accommodation services, such as Airbnb, provide travelers with a range of lodging options — from small studio apartments to luxury cabins. The service is widely popular with solo travelers that can use a person’s spare bedroom and families that can rent an entire home, rather than multiple hotel rooms.

“Airbnb hosts share their spaces in 190 countries and more than 34,000 cities,” the company, which was founded in 2008, explains on its website. “All you have to do is enter your destination and travel dates into the search bar to discover distinctive places to stay, anywhere in the world.”

But it won’t be that easy if one state lawmakers gets his way. State Sen. Mike McGuire, D-Healdsburg, plans to introduce legislation that would require Airbnb hosts to abide by a complicated maze of outdated local ordinances and mimic big corporate hotel chains in collecting transient occupancy taxes.

In some cities, Airbnb and other short-term rental services would be halted altogether, costing consumers more for accommodation and benefiting the bottom line of corporate hotel chains.

Local government revenue grab

McGuire has yet to put the specifics of his proposal into the text of Senate Bill 593, which currently references the Motor Vehicle Fuel Tax Law. However, he says that a new state law “will empower communities to protect the quality of life of their residents by upholding local ordinances that protect against the degradation of neighborhoods, or in some cases, not allowing vacation rentals based off of local Online Vacation Rental Businesses (OVRB) ordinances.”

“Where vacation rentals are legal, this legislation will provide cities and counties the tools they need to collect bed taxes which help build stronger neighborhoods,” McGuire said in a recent press release. “Where vacation rentals are illegal — the bill prohibits the online platforms from making the rental.”

He’s already lined up a long list of supporters from local governments that would see a boost in tax revenue.

“The California State Association of Counties (CSAC) greatly appreciates Senator McGuire’s leadership in making sure local communities have the ability to regulate on-line hosting platforms,” said CSAC Executive Director Matt Cate. “In particular, we support the Senator’s legislation to ensure cities and counties can collect transient occupancy taxes that fund critical services in our communities.”

Transient occupancy taxes are imposed by local governments for “the privilege of occupying” a lodging for 30 days or less. In some jurisdictions, this “invisible tax” is spent in ways that benefit big hotel chains and tourism-based businesses, such as infrastructure improvements near the hotels. Individual hosts with just one property are unlikely to see any benefit from the tax revenue.

Outdated local ordinances written before Airbnb

Many local ordinances governing short-term rentals, originally drafted to combat seedy motels, establish unreasonable or impractical burdens on hosts who are just trying to make ends meet. In San Diego, the city’s current regulations require hosts to obtain hard-to-get permits and secure additional parking in order to rent a spare bedroom.

“Hosts who rent rooms in their homes on a short-term basis would need either a neighborhood use permit or a conditional use permit, depending on the neighborhood in which they live,” explained Voice of San Diego’s Andrew Keatts. “The city’s own data, however, shows a resident can plan on waiting about a year to get one of those permits.”

Hosts that refuse to comply face threats and intimidation from local government officials. That’s what happened to a 70-year-old Burlingame woman who, according to the Voice of San Diego, was ordered to stop renting rooms in her home or face a daily fine of $2,500.

Bill would give local governments personal information

McGuire’s proposal also could put hosts in jeopardy of identity theft or home burglaries. His proposal would require hosts to disclose personal information, including their address, number of nights with visitors and amount paid by the guest to cities and counties in a manner that is “similar to the way hotels” do it. Such disclosure of personal information to city and county employees on insecure local government computer systems could put hosts at risk of identity theft.

Even secure state and federal government systems are vulnerable to attack by hackers. Last March, the California Department of Motor Vehicles announced it was investigating a possible data breach for credit card payments from Aug. 2, 2013 to Jan. 31, 2014. According to KPCC, the responsibility for the data breach rested with an “outside vendor they (DMV) use to process online credit card payments or from the credit card companies themselves.”

Earlier this month, the online security experts at KrebsOnSecurity shared a horror story of a taxpayer who had his tax refund stolen due to vulnerabilities at the federal government’s online tax system at IRS.gov.

“The IRS’s process for verifying people requesting transcripts is vulnerable to exploitation by fraudsters because it relies on static identifiers and so-called ‘knowledge-based authentication’ (KBA) — i.e., challenge questions that can be easily defeated with information widely available for sale in the cybercrime underground and/or with a small amount of searching online,” the security firm warned taxpayers.

In addition to online vulnerabilities, local government employees would have access to a list of unoccupied homes, a list of easy prey for burglars.

A December 2014 report by State Auditor Elaine Howle detailed numerous cases of “theft of state funds, waste of public resources, improper headquarters designation and improper travel expenses, dishonesty, incompatible activities, and other violations of state law.”

The legislation regulating Airbnb and other services also sets up another battle between California’s new high-tech companies and local governments similar to that involving Uber, Lyft and other ridesharing companies.

The state, which remains the global center of such start-ups, is being forced to work out compromises. Gov. Jerry Brown brokered one last September between the ridesharing companies and local governments influenced by powerful cab companies.

Richard Pan, a physician, took in just over $2,800 in gifts and travel payments, including a $440 outing at a San Francisco Giants baseball game, compliments of the Pacific Gas and Electric Co. Pan is now a Democratic state senator representing a Sacramento district.

And Jeff Stone, whose business, Innovative Compounding Pharmacy, is worth over $1 million, took 25 pages to document his property holdings, including a number of manufactured home rentals. The Riverside County Republican, too, is part of the state Senate’s freshman class.

Their financial information is part of the new filings of statements of economic interest for 2014, which went online Tuesday and are available for public perusal.

It’s the first filing for the freshman class of both the Assembly and the Senate — and for the public, it’s the first time to get a glimpse of their wealth as well as their perks.

Elected in November, taking gifts in December

Some got off to a quick start. Ling-Ling Chang, a new Republican assemblywoman from Chino Hills, declared $2,433 in travel payments over four days in December. In that period, she participated in an education symposium for the California Charter Schools Association for $1,258 and a policy summit for TechNet, a group that lobbies for tech giants with a hub in Los Altos, for which she claimed $1,175.

At the same TechNet event, freshman Assemblyman Bill Dodd, a Napa County Democrat, received $340. Both Chang and Dodd noted the money was for speech/panel participation.

Some like gifts in keeping with their interests. State Sen. Bob Hertzberg, a Los Angeles Democrat referred to as a “deal-making, cigar-smoking” guy in a 2004 L.A. Times profile, disclosed $765 in gifts involving cigars.

Hertzberg, a former speaker of the Assembly, is back in Sacramento after spending 13 years in the private sector.

Some of the financial disclosures are on the quirky side: Kansen Chu, a San Jose Democrat Assembly member, holds a financial interest of between $10,000 and $100,000 in NeuroSky, a company that sells a product that claims to use electrodes on your forehead to interpret brainwave electricity – and, yes, to read your mind.

Like most states, California requires annual disclosure of gifts as well as income and property interests. They are submitted to the state’s Fair Political Practices Commission, or FPPC, which also polices alleged violations of the state’s campaign laws.

At the state Assembly level, 18 of the 27 new state Assembly members come from the ranks of city councils. At the upper ranks, five of the 10 new senators are former Assembly members.

Lawmakers with a history of having hands slapped

The FPPC sends warnings to lawmakers who have violated the rules in the form of a public letter. And some taking new offices have already been warned of potential malfeasance.

Jeff Stone received a warning in 2010 about a 2009 vote when he was a supervisor in Riverside County, in which he “may” have violated conflict of interest provisions by awarding funds to a nonprofit that stood to benefit him.

“However, we have determined that an enforcement action for a violation is not warranted, because the funds awarded were restricted and could not be used for administrative costs of your source of income,” the note from the commission stated.

Pan has also received a warning about political behavior when he allegedly received services worth over $500 from a lobbyist who hosted a fundraiser for him in 2012.

Much is made of the staggering wealth of members of Congress, where California Sen. Dianne Feinstein is among the richest senators and Rep. Darrell Issa, R-Vista, is noted as the wealthiest among U.S. representatives.

At the state legislator level, wealth is not so easily tracked in California. Filers must note holdings in both real estate and stock ownership, which can indicate in increase in wealth.

Gifts, though, are more readily tracked. In California, the gift limit for 2013-14 was $440 for goods from a single source.

State Attorney General Kamala Harris in her filing for her final year in 2010 as district attorney in San Francisco reported no personal stock holdings. It was her last year before taking her current office and she received $1,869 in gifts, mostly flowers as a departure present.

In the previous year, 2009, she noted that her book, “Smart on Crime,” had earned her between $10,000 and $100,000 in royalties, although the book was released in October.

Book royalties are usually paid on a semi-annual or quarterly basis.

Newsom likes gifts; Harris, not so much

This year, Harris, the leading Democratic nominee in the race to replace retiring U.S. Sen. Barbara Boxer, has more holdings to declare due to her marriage in August to fellow attorney Douglas Emhoff.

Harris’ filing shows holdings in Comcast, Costco, Home Depot, Nike, Verizon and Visa, which she notes were held in Emhoff’s IRA and are held separately. Harris, as the state’s chief law enforcement officer, could potentially oversee activity involving some of those companies.

Her gifts this time around are more modest: just one receipt of flowers, from Fox Entertainment, declared at $101.

The man initially seen as her rival for Boxer’s U.S. Senate seat, Lt. Gov. Gavin Newsom, has for years accepted more lucrative gifts.

In 2010, Newsom’s last year as mayor of San Francisco, he declared $3,512 in gifts, including tickets to the opera, symphony, sporting events and Cirque du Soleil.

Last year, Newsom, who declared in January that he would not run for Senate, reported $3,781 that again included tickets to sporting events, a crystal trophy and a Christofle tray.