More than three-quarters of California’s local governments have declined to authorize retail stores to sell cannabis, as permitted by state voters with their 2016 approval of Proposition 64. Opposition has been led by moderate Democrats and conservative Republicans unconvinced that making the drug readily available for recreational use is good for society.

But much of California’s House delegation is supportive of helping the marijuana industry achieve a key goal: access to the banking system. Even with cannabis now legal in some form in 33 states, the great majority of banks and credit unions in the Golden State and elsewhere have declined to do business with marijuana-related businesses because possession and sale of the drug remain illegal under federal law.

Last week, the House passed the Secure and Fair Enforcement Banking Act 321 to 103. Every California Democrat backed the measure and so did four of the state’s seven Republican members: Majority Leader Kevin McCarthy of Bakersfield, Tom McClintock of Elk Grove, Devin Nunes of Tulare and Duncan Hunter of Alpine.

The passage of the bill after past efforts went nowhere was widely credited to a change in focus in lobbying. Leading the push this time was lobbyists for the financial services industry itself – not the cannabis industry. They argued that making a multibillion-dollar industry use cash only created headaches and safety risks for the many legitimate, longstanding businesses that dealt with cannabis companies.

Bankers say other businesses shouldn’t be inconvenienced

American Bankers Association President and CEO Rob Nichols told Politico, “The most compelling arguments have been centered around these secondary relationships. It’s the local plumber, it’s the local electrician, it’s the attorney, it’s the accountant who are doing business with a cannabis grower or dispensary who are then having challenges associated with getting banking products and services.”

The American Financial Services Association focused its lobbying on McCarthy and Speaker Nancy Pelosi, D-San Francisco, also emphasizing the need to stop inconveniencing so many established businesses.

The fate of the SAFE bill in the Senate is unclear. Senate Banking Committee Chairman Mike Crapo, R-Idaho, has said that he will schedule a hearing on the bill, but his aides said that should not be interpreted as support.

California’s Democratic senators, Dianne Feinstein and Kamala Harris, are expected to be supportive. After 35 years as a staunch supporter of the drug war, Feinstein reversed course in spring 2018.

“My state has legalized marijuana for personal use, and as California continues to implement this law, we need to ensure we have strong safety rules to prevent impaired driving and youth access, similar to other public health issues like alcohol,” she told a McClatchy reporter.

Harris has also changed her position. In 2010, while running for California attorney general, she opposed an initiative to legalize recreational marijuana use. 

“Spending two decades in courtrooms, Harris believes that drug selling harms communities,” her aide told Capitol Weekly. “Harris supports the legal use of medicinal marijuana but does not support anything beyond that.”

But her position softened over the years, and last year she signed on as a co-sponsor of a bill by Sen. Cory Booker, D-New Jersey, that would make cannabis legal under federal law.

Irvine-based Weedmaps – the very popular website that guides cannabis fans to stores – recently announced it would stop listing illegal retailers later this year. The decision is a rare dose of good news for the legal marijuana industry in California.

The Weedmaps site features information on the products offered by hundreds of sellers in the Golden State, details on the special sales they are offering, information on different products and consumer reviews of dispensaries and their inventories. It is considered such a key part of the marijuana scene in California that one legal seller told the Los Angeles Times that its decision to not list illegal stores would wipe out 80 percent of them.

The Newsom administration has been pressuring Weedmaps for months to stop listing illegal stores, which far outnumber legal stores in the Golden State. Because they don’t pay taxes – and don’t cover expensive safety packaging and product testing – illegal shops can have a price advantage of 40 percent or more on legal dispensaries.

Legal shops decried unfair competition

After Proposition 64 passed in 2016 – legalizing the sale of recreational marijuana in California as of Jan. 1, 2018 – the legal cannabis industry’s initial complaints were about the slowness of the state in providing permits to pot shops and about the refusal of three-quarters of cities and counties to authorize such shops.

But as 2018 unfolded, the focus of complaints shifted to what legal stores saw as deeply unfair competition from illegal stores. As CalWatchdog reported, state officials announced in February that only $345.2 million was generated in revenue from sales, excise and cultivation taxes in 2018 – about a third of what was expected. This led the state’s Cannabis Advisory Committee to blast the “fragmented and uncoordinated” law enforcement response to illegal cannabis sales.

This and other complaints led Gov. Gavin Newsom to seek and receive an increase of at least 74 percent in enforcement funding in the 2019-20 state budget, which will allow the state to add more than 200 new enforcement and compliance positions by July 2020.

The legal industry in recent months has been heartened by efforts in Los Angeles to target illegal dispensaries by turning off their utilities and citing not just shop owners and employees but landlords. There have also been raids in Mendocino, Sonoma, Siskiyou, Trinity and Riverside counties that seized nearly 300,000 marijuana plants being grown without a license. Authorities also seized 20 tons of cannabis in June in Santa Barbara County, which has unexpectedly emerged as a major growing area since Proposition 64’s passage.

Analyst: Illegal shops’ market share growing

But the good news was followed by a report this month from BDS Analytics, which tracks cannabis sales data, that illegal stores appeared to be increasing their market share in California. As of June, state residents were buying three times more marijuana from illegal stores than legal ones.

Industry experts say illegal shops don’t just have a pricing advantage. Since many emerged after California voters approved the sale of marijuana for medicinal purposes in 1996, they had a 20-year head start on legal sellers in establishing relationships with growers and building customer bases.

But Newsom, for one, never expected a smooth start to the legal California cannabis industry. In 2016, while campaigning for Proposition 64, he said he believed it would take the industry “five to seven years” to hit its stride after legal sales began.

Six-plus months into the beginning of California’s experiment with legal recreational marijuana, a review of Proposition 64’s effects shows a mixed and complicated record. Here’s a look at four broad categories:

Availability of legal pot stores: Even though local governments had nearly 14 months from when Proposition 64 was adopted in November 2016 and when it took effect this Jan. 1, local officials have been in no hurry to implement the law – either because of continuing disdain for recreational marijuana or sluggish bureaucracies.

The most recent Southern California News Group study, updated June 11, found that just 30 percent of cities (144 of 482) had permitted any recreational or medicinal marijuana sales and just 30 percent of counties (18 or 58) allowed such sales in their unincorporated areas.

The assumption that many budget-stressed cities would eagerly embrace recreational marijuana sales because of lucrative tax revenue – a source of funds not available with untaxed medicinal marijuana sales – has not been borne out. The Southern California News Group reports that fewer than one in seven cities have licensed recreational pot shops.

Marijuana supplies: Even in cities and counties which allow pot sales, availability of cannabis has reportedly been tight in many areas since July 1. That’s when provisions of state law went into effect requiring legal sellers to use new child-proof packaging and to test their products for the presence of mold and pesticides.

The Fox News team serving Sacramento and Central Valley TV markets reported last week that several dispensaries in the region “have empty shelves and have had to turn away customers and lay off staff.” The pot shortages could last, Fox reported, because of another shortage: in state labs certified to test marijuana for purity and healthfulness.

Criminal justice: A report issued earlier this month by the state Attorney General’s Office showed the number of marijuana-related arrested in 2017 in California had plunged 56 percent – going from about 14,000 in 2016 to a little more than 6,000.

Why didn’t the numbers drop even more? Because while possession of up to 1 ounce of marijuana is now legal, possession of larger amounts and growing cannabis is not. Selling pot without a license and using it in restricted areas or before driving remain crimes.

Elsewhere on the criminal justice front, Sacramento County District Attorney Anne Marie Schubert has won praise from social justice activists for using a provision in Proposition 64 to reduce or dismiss old marijuana convictions that are no longer classified as crimes under the measure’s weakened rules.

Sacramento Bee columnist Marcos Bretón has praised Schubert – long seen as something of a strict law-and-order conservative – for her policy.

The Bee reported that San Francisco and San Diego counties have similar efforts under way.

State pot tax revenue: In May, the nonpartisan Legislative Analyst’s Office reported total state tax revenue from the first quarter of the year was running more than 60 percent below expectations.

But the LAO remains optimistic that revenue from cannabis will rebound.

As reported by The Motley Fool website – which is keeping close tabs on the emerging legal marijuana industry as a possible lucrative investment niche – the LAO recently adjusted downward its forecast of how much the state would get from from its 15 percent excise tax on legal marijuana sales during fiscal 2018-19. But the reduction was only a modest 2 percent – going from $643 million to $630 million.

With the legal sale of recreational marijuana a week away, local governments across California have adopted policies on where and when permitted legal sellers can operate, following the ground rules set up by

But despite more than 13 months of lead time, state officials still haven’t figured out how to deal with a crucial problem: the fact that federally regulated banks can’t accept deposits or have any financial relationship with marijuana vendors or growers, given that pot sales and consumption remain illegal under federal law.

Cash-only medical marijuana dispensaries authorized by a 1996 ballot measure have long been plagued by armed robberies. With recreational pot sales expected to be a multibillion-dollar industry, pot-related crime could skyrocket.

Two separate proposals have emerged after what state officials say are months of discussions.

One under consideration by Gov. Jerry Brown’s administration seems a long shot given that it relies on the cooperation of the Trump administration – specifically Attorney General Jeff Sessions, who has opposed individual states’ efforts to legalize marijuana for recreational use.

The Los Angeles Times recently reported that the state had met with 65 banks and credit unions, as well as with federal regulators, about having one bank in California established as a clearinghouse for all marijuana-related accounts of various banks throughout the state. The “central correspondent” bank would process all transactions involving pot dollars.

Seeking assist from federal government after suing it 24 times

Brown administration officials appeared hopeful that this concept would go over well with federal regulators because, at least in theory, it would make it easier to keep close track of marijuana industry finances, and to spot suspicious payments or transfers of funds.

The problem for California is that this proposal is built on the presumption that the federal government wants to help the state – which has already sued the Trump administration 24 times. While federal regulators have met with state officials on the pot-banking issue, the final decision on whether to cooperate is up to Sessions. At a Nov. 29 press conference, he said his office was taking a hard look at rolling back Obama administration rules that let states allow recreational marijuana after basic public safety and health standards were met.

“It’s my view that the use of marijuana is detrimental, and we should not give encouragement in any way to it, and it represents a federal violation, which is in the law and is subject to being enforced,” Sessions said, according to the McClatchy News Service. “We are working our way through to a rational policy, but I don’t want to suggest in any way that this department believes that marijuana is harmless and people should not avoid it.”

Chiang: Consider setting up a state bank for pot transactions

The second proposal – touted by state Treasurer John Chiang at a Nov. 7 news conference – is to have the state study the feasibility of opening its own bank to deal with marijuana financial transactions. That was based on the recommendations of Chiang’s cannabis bank working group.

The group’s 32-page report also suggested California work with other states in setting up a network of such institutions. But the report noted the many obstacles to establishing such a bank, including the likelihood that it ultimately would still be subject to federal regulation and thus to Sessions’ objections.

Chiang told reporters at his November news conference that “a definitive, bulletproof solution will remain elusive” without changes in federal banking laws.

But the 2018 gubernatorial candidate said that “is not an excuse for inaction.”

Proposition 64’s

State Sen. Holly Mitchell, D-Los Angeles, won headlines last week for her pointed questions about whether the state will be able to meet its requirement of issuing marijuana sales permits and establishing a system to implement the 15 percent state tax on pot sales by Jan. 1, 2018, as it is supposed to under Proposition 64.

The primary immediate problem is uncertainty about what the Trump administration will do, if anything, to push back on the eight states that have legalized marijuana. The Obama administration for the most part stayed out of the way of states that liberalized pot rules.

If President Trump – who made controversial warnings about worsening crime a hallmark of his campaign – wanted to crack down, he has potent options. Federal law still considers marijuana possession a crime and still bans banks and credit unions from taking deposits made from marijuana sales. In Colorado –  home to what is so far the biggest state experiment in pot legalization – some banks appear to be looking the other way or having a “don’t ask, don’t tell” policy about pot dispensary deposits. Others permit marijuana companies to use their accounts to pay state taxes or employees but not to have the full range of banking services.

If Trump’s Treasury Department ordered stricter enforcement targeting all drug money in the financial system, that could make it far more difficult for California to meet its Jan. 1 target under Proposition 64.

Various uncertainties about possible “government actions” led the Legislative Analyst’s Office to release a short report last week saying marijuana tax revenue shouldn’t be included in the 2017-18 state budget.

Some cities still oppose ‘normalizing pot’

The LAO was not just talking about the federal government. At the local government level, some cities and counties are implementing rules to block what they call the “normalization” of pot use.

There’s now a new front in their war on Proposition 64 that goes beyond using zoning regulations to make it difficult or impossible for pot shops to open: private cultivation.

Proposition 64 allows residents older than 21 to grow up to six marijuana plants at a time. It allows local government to pass rules on pot cultivation so long as they don’t create such obstacles that they create a “de facto ban,” according to Sacramento attorney Richard Miadich, who helped write the proposition. 

But several cities around California – including Elk Grove, Galt, Palo Alto, San Jose, Santa Ana and Poway – have already adopted temporary bans on indoor cultivation.

Other cities are putting up obstacles by requiring costly permits and setting conditions on growing. The list includes three cities in the Coachella Valley – Indian Wells, Rancho Mirage and Palm Desert.

Indian Wells has the strictest rules. The city requires home growers to pay a $141 annual fee and to pay for a government background check to prove they have not been convicted of a drug felony in the previous five years. It also requires permit holders to allow city inspectors access to their homes and mandates that pot can only be grown in locked rooms with adequate ventilation.

Lawsuits likely over local permit fees, conditions

UC Irvine Law School Dean Erwin Chemerinksy told the Desert Sun newspaper that he thinks Indian Wells’ law wouldn’t stand up to a lawsuit.

If that’s so, many local laws could be at risk. Fontana will charge $411 for an individual permit. Leaders in Fillmore, a town in Ventura County, discussed having individual permits cost as much as $737.

In Orange County, Aliso Viejo and San Juan Capistrano have adopted ordinances requiring permits for indoor cultivation. But they have not yet set how much the permits will cost.

These concerns about local crackdowns on marijuana and a potential federal crackdown have created uncertainty about what Proposition 64 will look live in five to 10 years, after lawsuits are settled and private cultivation becomes more common.

There are striking differences in the expectations of two state agencies. The Department of Consumer Affairs predicts 6,000 pot shops will eventually open while the Board of Equalization only expects 1,700.

Californians have gone down in history as leading a nationwide charge to legalize the recreational use of marijuana.

“Voters on Tuesday approved Proposition 64, making California the most populous state in the nation to legalize the recreational use of marijuana,” the Los Angeles Times confirmed. “The approval of the ballot measure creates the largest market for marijuana products in the U.S. It comes six years after California voters narrowly rejected a similar measure. Activists said passage would be an important moment in a fight for marijuana legalization across the U.S.”

Among California ballot issues, Prop. 64 took shape as one of the most straightforward and likeliest to pass. While others boasted dramatic political expenditures, shared space with contradictory measures, or brought in high-profile outside officials to rally for their passage, Prop. 64 simply gathered support as Election Day neared. 

Laboratories of democracy

Nor was the Golden State alone in the trend. Massachusetts and Nevada voters followed the same path, opting to embrace legal weed. “Leading up to the election, recreational marijuana use was legal in four states: Alaska, Colorado, Oregon and Washington, along with Washington, D.C.,” the New York Times recalled. “With the addition of California, Massachusetts and Nevada, the percentage of Americans living in states where marijuana use is legal for adults rose above 20 percent, from 5 percent.”

“The federal government’s ban on the drug precludes the interstate sale of cannabis, even among the states that have approved its use. But Tuesday’s votes created a marijuana bloc stretching down the West Coast, and Gavin Newsom, the lieutenant governor of California, said he saw an opportunity for the states where recreational marijuana is now legal to ‘coordinate and collaborate’ on the issue, including applying pressure in Washington to relax the federal ban.”

And while pot advocates in a few states considering similar moves faced a higher hurdle, still other states took smaller strides toward looser regulation: “Local outlets in Maine are declaring victory for that state’s legalization measure, but with 91 percent of precincts reporting just a few thousand votes separate the ‘Yes’ and ‘No’ columns,” the Washington Post noted. “A similar legalization measure in Arizona did not gain sufficient support to pass, with 52 percent of voters rejecting it. On the medical side, voters in Florida, North Dakota and Arkansas have approved medical marijuana initiatives. Voters in in Montana also rolled back restrictions on an existing medical pot law.”

Culture shift

A complex combination of factors has contributed toward growing uncertainty over the status quo around marijuana regulations. “Public opinion about marijuana has been steadily shifting during the past decade, and the laws have been steadily changing,” as the Christian Science Monitor observed. “One concern is that too many Americans were serving prison terms for a drug many consider less harmful than alcohol or tobacco. Legalizing the drug, they say, can also provide tax revenue and reduce black-market crime.” Concerns around legalization have centered around its potential impact on children, public health and smaller, traditional growers and merchants. “The number of calls to poison control centers involving Colorado children has gone up, as has the number of children who’ve been taken to the hospital for treatment due to unintentional marijuana exposure,” CNN noted. “There have also been more school suspensions, marijuana-related traffic deaths, pet poisonings and lab explosions.”

But although attitudes toward marijuana use have gradually relaxed over the decades since modern-day pot culture arose during the 1960s, the drug’s popularity and mainstream positioning emerged late in the game. “The number of adults who have smoked weed has nearly doubled in three years,” CNN added, citing an August Gallup survey. “It is the No. 1 illicit drug of choice for Americans, according to the 2014 National Survey on Drug Use, although only one-third of users reported an addiction to the substance, unlike most all the other illicit drugs used.”

Although former House Speaker Nancy Pelosi, D-San Francisco, waited until the last minute, she sent an unequivocal message to voters and fellow Democrats: It’s okay to mainstream weed. 

On Friday, Pelosi revealed “she plans to vote for California’s Proposition 64, making her one of a small number of high-level politicians to support legalizing the recreational use of marijuana,” according to the Los Angeles Times. 

Political calculations

The influential Democrat wasn’t explicit about the delicate politics involved in judging the best way to catch California’s pro-marijuana wave — or not. “Pelosi told the Los Angeles Times Editorial Board and Times reporters that she has not taken public positions on many of the state ballot measures because she is focused on other races in her fundraising and public appearances.” As the paper explained, Pelosi’s support for Prop. 64 is broadly aligned with her favorable attitude toward many of the Golden State’s other big-ticket ballot initiatives this year, including Proposition 62 (repealing the death penalty), Proposition 51 ($9 billion in school bonds) and Proposition 52 (designating Medi-Cal funds).

“She also said she personally supports Proposition 56 to raise tobacco taxes by $2 per pack. She said she hasn’t gone public with positions for all of the measures because she feels some things should be done by the Legislature.”

The endorsement marked a sea change for Pelosi, auguring a bigger shift among Democrats not only in California but with national offices and profiles. “In 2010 — when, according to Gallup, 46 percent of Americans thought marijuana should be legal, compared to 60 percent today — Pelosi declined to take a position on Proposition 19, the last attempt to legalize marijuana in California,” Reason observed. 

Complicating factors

Although cultural trends in California tend to inflect politics with a taste for liberalization, the bid to legalize pot has come at a time when cross currents in some voter patterns could tap the brakes. “While a surge in Latino voters could help Hillary Clinton on Tuesday, it could hurt efforts to legalize marijuana in nine states,” McClatchy recently concluded. “Hispanics are less likely to back legalization than either white or black voters, according to a poll released last month by the Pew Research Center.”

“Forty-six percent of Hispanics said the drug should be legal, while 49 percent said it should remain illegal, the poll found. By comparison, big majorities of both black and white voters — 59 percent — said it was time to end the federal prohibition on marijuana.”

A cultural revolution 

Nevertheless, voter enthusiasm may turn out to be fairly unimportant relative to the broader trends in business that have smoothed the way for even very well established Californian officials to accede to the idea of recreational marijuana. “New Frontier Data estimates California’s marijuana industry will generate $7.6 billion a year in direct sales to consumers by 2020, and that’s not including sales generated when growers sell to processors and when processors sell to dispensaries,” the San Jose Mercury News noted — a figure exclusive of merchandise and accessories like pot-referencing t-shirts and bongs, according to New Frontier executive vice president of industry analytics John Kagia. 

With Democrats controlling state politics, and some Republicans looking for a new way to shore up their weaker position, bipartisan pressure has been strong to embrace those trends, which have been building so long and so steadily that it has become hard to see how they could be reversed. “At least six other members of California’s congressional delegation, including two Republicans, support this year’s initiative,” as Reason reported. “Sen. Barbara Boxer, D-Calif., who opposed legalization in 2010, says she is inclined to vote for it this year.” But many California officials have seemed most willing to accept legalized marijuana after the fact. “Lt. Gov. Gavin Newsom has long supported the marijuana ballot measure and has called, mostly without success, for other state elected officials to endorse it,” the Times recalled.

Despite a mixed bag of support for the many propositions on California’s voluminous ballot, legalized recreational in-state marijuana use appears to be headed from far-off dream to dawning reality. 

“Last month, the two most prestigious California public opinion outfits — the Field Research Corporation and Public Policy Institute of California (PPIC) — both pegged support for Proposition 64 at 60 percent,” Ed Kilgore noted at New York Magazine. “Field nostalgically noted that its first poll of California on the subject, in 1969, showed only 13 percent support for legalization. A new PPIC survey in October showed legal weed pulling a mere 55 percent with 38 percent opposed. That’s still a 17-point margin. Indeed, there has only been one bad poll for Proposition 64.”

A decisive year

Although California has long been forced into the role of bellwether state by policy activists hoping to go national with Golden State victories, broader change in a pro-pot direction has been largely recognized as nearly inevitable given the sheer size of the market for pot that Prop. 64 would legitimize and expand. “Californians are on the verge of tripling the number of American adults who can legally acquire marijuana without interference from doctors, dealers or cops,” Reason magazine’s Matt Welch observed at the Los Angeles Times. “If Maine and Nevada voters do likewise, as seems probable, that would further expand the zone of recreational freedom to cover nearly one-fifth of the U.S. population.”

Pro-pot advocates have cast a broad net this election season. “Voters in five states — Arizona, California, Maine, Massachusetts and Nevada — will decide whether to legalize recreational marijuana for adults,” as NBC News reported. “Medical marijuana is on the ballot in Arkansas, Florida, Montana and North Dakota.”

“Two national surveys released in mid-October confirm that, with the Pew Research Center revealing that 57 percent of U.S. adults say the use of marijuana should be made legal — while 60 percent were opposed a decade ago. The latest Gallup Poll showed that support for legalizing marijuana is at 60 percent, the highest ever recorded in this survey. After Colorado and Oregon became the first states to allow the recreational use of pot, in 2013, support for legalization reached a majority for the first time.”

Business first

Entrepreneurs have already begun a rush to fill current and perceived appetites for a new generation of recreational weed products and services. “Startups are cropping up throughout the Bay Area that put a signature Valley spin on the age-old practice of selling marijuana, offering sleek on-demand delivery apps for users and high-tech software for growers and dispensaries,” the San Jose Mercury News recently noted. “The business models are risky — marijuana is illegal under federal law and stigma around the drug prevents cannabis startups from scoring funding from many major investors. But with recent polls suggesting Californians are poised to expand marijuana consumption beyond medical use, experts expect cash to pour into the industry.”

Already, changes to state law governing how licenses are granted to new marijuana businesses have helped open the floodgates. “New pot businesses have been springing up under medical marijuana licensing rules signed into law by Gov. Jerry Brown last year,” the Sacramento Bee reported.  

Jump ball

Analysts have remained divided, however, on the partisan implications of legalization. While many traditional Republican critics have suggested that more permissive drug laws are of a piece with an expansive entitlement state, libertarian supporters like Welch have countered that more free-market innovations are likely to follow in Prop. 64’s wake. “What’s the 2016 equivalent of medical marijuana shops?” he asked. “Charter schools come quickly to mind. Wherever the one size is not fitting all to the end user’s satisfaction, there is an opportunity for governmental bodies to allow for some real or metaphorical outside lab work. Beware any entity that would prematurely close such experiments down.”

What happened to CA oil exploration?

Good morning. Hopefully everyone enjoyed the return of NFL football this weekend and is excited about the Rams/49ers game tonight.

But that’s tonight. This morning we’re talking about oil. 

It took some time, but a 2011 report by the Federal Energy Information Administration that estimated that California’s Monterey shale underground land mass formation had 15.4 billion barrels of accessible oil and a follow-up study that put the figure at 13.7 billion barrels of oil — about twice as much as the rest of the nation combined — got plenty of folks’ attention.

Advances in hydraulic fracturing, known as fracking, made extracting the oil cost-effective. … But it’s been all downhill ever since for those enthusiastic about oil exploration in the Golden State.

It’s not just that low oil prices have left energy companies facing a “world of hurt,” in the words of the Houston Chronicle, and without the resources to pursue large new drilling programs in California or elsewhere. It’s specific, daunting developments.

CalWatchdog has more.

In other news:

• “When key bills aimed at reforming the California Public Utilities Commission died last month, much of the blame was placed publicly at the feet of a Republican floor leader — someone not typically seen as a make-or-break figure in a Democrat-dominated Legislature. It turns out, the CPUC itself had some last-minute concerns about the overhaul that contributed to its demise.” The San Diego Union-Tribune has more.

• “In a sign that California’s pot initiative is getting national attention, a Pennsylvania millionaire has contributed $1.3 million to a nonprofit group that is raising money to oppose Proposition 64 on the November ballot,” reports the Los Angeles Times. Meanwhile, “California supporters of the statewide measure to legalize marijuana filed a complaint late Friday with the state’s political ethics watchdog alleging that an outside committee opposing Proposition 64 filed campaign finance reports months after the deadline,” reports The Sacramento Bee.

• The Orange County Register looks at the curious alliance between Republican Rep. Darrell Issa and Democratic Rep. Loretta Sanchez. The two Southern Californians are gambling on bipartisanship helping them through tough races.

• “Dr. Robert Sears is one of the leading voices in the anti-vaccination world, a hero to parents suspicious of childhood immunizations that public health officials say are crucial to preventing disease outbreaks. So when the Medical Board of California announced last week that it was moving to pull the Orange County pediatrician’s medical license, it immediately set the stage for a new battle in the long-running fight over whether schoolchildren should be vaccinated.” The Los Angeles Times has more. 

Legislature:

• Gone ’til December.

Gov. Brown: 

• Presenting Medal of Valor to eight public safety officers in his Capitol office at 11 a.m. 

Tips: matt@calwatchdog.com

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Recreational pot in trouble?

Good morning and happy Tuesday. Today we have lots of interesting bits of news, including about how there are signs suggesting the effort to legalize recreational marijuana may not be the slam dunk that it appears to be. 

On social media, the assumption is that come November, California is going to be the latest and the biggest state to allow recreational adult marijuana use. Advocates of Proposition 64, the California Marijuana Legalization Initiative, certainly appear optimistic.

However, this optimism may be premature. Polls show younger voters, including Republicans, are strongly predisposed to support proposals such as the Nov. 8 ballot measure. But voters who haven’t made up their minds may be dismayed upon learning what’s happened in Colorado since voters there approved pot legalization in 2012.

CalWatchdog has more. 

In other news:

• “A decade after California voters were promised $400 million worth of parks in some of the state’s poorest neighborhoods, an Associated Press review finds fewer than half of the 126 projects that received the money have been built, as Democratic lawmakers push to add another $1 billion to the program,” writes the AP.
• “Relocation of Highway 99 in Fresno, a key part of the bullet train project, is over budget, behind schedule and will cost millions of dollars more to complete,” reports the Los Angeles Times.
• “Back in 2005, just 1,841 retirees pulled down more than $100,000 a year in pension checks from the California Public Employees’ Retirement System. A decade later, membership in the so-called $100K Club had swelled by nearly 20,000 souls,” reports The Orange County Register.
• “Major labor, environmental and tenants groups have walked away from negotiations over Gov. Jerry Brown’s plan to streamline approval for housing developments that include setting aside a percentage of units for low-income Californians, further imperiling the plan’s chances of passing this year,” reports the Los Angeles Times.

Assembly:

• A few hearings.

Senate:

• Hearing on deal casino compacts negotiated by the Brown administration, reports The Sacramento Bee. 

Gov. Brown:

• No public events announced. 

Tips: matt@calwatchdog.com

Follow us: @calwatchdog @mflemingterp

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