Environmentalists get big win

Good morning. Happy hump day. 

Speaking of getting over the hump, California environmentalists notched a major victory yesterday, as an extension and expansion of one of the state’s landmark environmental laws cleared the Assembly on Tuesday — all but guaranteeing the bill’s ultimate passage. 

Senate Bill 32 would require the Air Resources Board to ensure that greenhouse gas emissions in the state are reduced at least 40 percent below 1990 levels by 2030. Essentially, the bill builds on its predecessor, AB32, which required the ARB to achieve 1990 levels by 2020. 

To achieve these goals, the measure would continue to give the ARB the authority to create and implement regulations with blanket legislative approval, which has been one of the main critiques of the current program.

CalWatchdog has more. 

And if we needed yet another reminder that we’re in an election year, more than a dozen members of the Assembly switched their votes from last year to support the measure, reports the Los Angeles Times.

In other news:

• “The cap-and-trade market had another bad day Tuesday, with hundreds of millions of dollars worth of unsold carbon credits left over following the latest state-run auction. … It was the second straight quarterly auction in which scores of carbon credits failed to attract buyers, although there was higher demand this time around,” The Sacramento Bee has more. 
• “For the second straight year, California lawmakers have failed to pass any major legislation regulating police body cameras after a bill that would have allowed families of fallen police officers to block the release of body camera footage showing the officers’ deaths stalled in a legislative committee Tuesday,” reports the Los Angeles Times.
• A San Jose legislator’s efforts to abandon Daylight Saving Time ended Tuesday when the state Senate rejected a measure that would have allowed California voters to end the twice-annual ritual at the ballot boxes,” reports The San Jose Mercury News.
• “If Californians legalize marijuana under Proposition 64 in November, legal cannabis sales in the state likely will climb by $1.6 billion within the first year of implementation, according to a report released Tuesday.” The Orange County Register has more.  

Assembly:

• In at 10 a.m.

Senate:

• In at 10 a.m.

Gov. Brown:

• No public events announced.

Tips: matt@calwatchdog.com

Follow us: @calwatchdog @mflemingterp

New followers: @AMJ_AlexJohnson

• 

  Denise Cross / flickr

  Auto voter law to add millions to electorate, diversifies
• Legislature doin’ budget work
• How to become a pot tycoon
• No more low- and zero-emission car subsidies
• What’s going on with Rep. Hunter’s campaign finances?

Good morning! Welcome to Thursday.

California’s electorate could grow by more than 2 million voters once a new law implementing automatic registration through the DMV starts working in 2017, according to a new study.

The study, conducted by the Public Policy Institute of California, predicts that as voter registration increases, so will diversity in the electorate among underrepresented groups.

However, determining how much the electorate will grow largely depends on the rate with which eligible voters decline automatic registration at the DMV, according to the study. 

CalWatchdog has more.  

In other news:

• The Legislature approved a $170.9 billion budget on Wednesday “that increases some funding for social services but stashes more away in a rainy-day fund,” writes the Los Angeles Times.
• And on Thursday, the Legislature will consider bills that implement budget decisions. The Sacramento Bee has more. 
• The San Jose Mercury News has everything you need to know if you’re considering a career in the CA pot industry.
• State lawmakers are ending a program subsidizing individual purchases of low- and zero-emission vehicles. The Los Angeles Times has more. 
• Did Rep. Duncan Hunter, R-Alpine, pay for his kids’ school lunches with campaign funds? The San Diego Union-Tribune has more. 

Assembly:

• In at 9 a.m. 

Senate: 

• In at 9 a.m. 

Gov. Brown: 

• No public events scheduled.

Tips: matt@calwatchdog.com

Follow us: @calwatchdog @mflemingterp

New followers: @kjt231 @dfmworkers

Happy New Year!

Are you familiar with the state that has such an innovative and advanced marijuana industry that quality control extends to making sure pot brands consistently produce the same sensations? Where entrepreneurs are turning to increasingly sophisticated tools to improve their product and reach out to customers?

No, I’m not talking about Colorado or Washington state. I’m talking about California. Reason magazine’s Greg Beato has a fascinating look at the Golden State’s national leadership in a field, so to speak, that few know of. Beato considers this development an inspiring model of unrestrained, risk-taking, innovative capitalism:

“A previously forbidden sector of commerce has evolved into an increasingly professionalized multibillion-dollar industry, complete with a robust retail infrastructure, a lucrative trade in equipment and supplies, trade shows, media outlets, educational institutions, and a surprisingly vast supply of entrepreneurial stoners who seem to get at least as buzzed by marketing, product innovation, and event management as they do by a few puffs of Platinum Skywalker. All without any regulatory hand holding from Sacramento. …

“We live in an age of pervasive government intervention. The Code of Federal Regulations has added 43,504 pages since California first passed Proposition 215 in 1996. Yet while this bureaucratic bulwark was growing as thick as the Great Wall of China, our nation’s largest state, which doubles as the world’s eighth-largest economy, was permitting the sale of a substance that had been illegal for 60-plus years. In theory, this wild, wild west should have exploded into chaos, or at least something a little more raucous than a bunch of entrepreneurial Ph.D.s monitoring the fungus levels of freshly cultivated Lemon Kush.

“Yes, there has been drama over the years: NIMBY complaints, dispensary bans, and, of course, federal raids. But the most visible manifestations of California’s medical marijuana industry have been hydro stores in strip malls, advertisements in alternative weeklies, and $12,000 trim machines. While the threat of federal intervention and city-wide regulations have played significant roles in the industry’s evolution, capitalism arguably has been its most functional regulator.”

There is a downside to this tale

There is a downside to this tale that Reason’s article doesn’t address. CalWatchdog’s Katy Grimes had a grim piece over the summer about the toll some pot growers are taking on wilderness areas.

But as a libertarian who thinks the drug war is crazy and that excessive government regulation is destructive, I found Beato’s story deeply enjoyable.

Read it here.