As Silicon Valley rushes to stake out a lead in what’s hoped to be a robust market for driverless cars, the company spun off of Google has established a clear lead — perhaps giving the competition a reason to consider focusing their efforts outside the Golden State. 

“New data on tests of self-driving car technology in California suggest that Alphabet Inc.’s efforts remain ahead of many rivals in the intensifying race to bring fully autonomous vehicles to the roads,” the Wall Street Journal reported, noting that the company’s driverless unit, Waymo, clocked nearly 640,000 miles on California roads in a 12-month span encompassing the end of 2015 and most of 2016.

Pulling ahead

The newly released figures underscored how significant of an advantage in experience and testing the Google-spawned enterprise has gained over its rivals, which now include not only the likes of Tesla and Apple but old-line auto companies like GM and Ford that have begun to move into the driverless space as well. “The data show that Waymo, the driverless car unit of Alphabet, logged 30 times more miles of testing in autonomous vehicles than all of its competitors combined last year in California,” according to Financial Times. “Its cars were also the most accurate, with human intervention needed for safety reasons only 0.2 times per thousand miles.”

“The data provide the most comprehensive snapshot yet of competing driverless car technologies, at a time when carmakers and technology companies are racing to be the first to perfect autonomous vehicles. It shows Waymo, BMW, Ford and Nissan as the most accurate systems. California is unique in the U.S. for requiring that companies testing autonomous vehicles report their miles driven and ‘disengagements’ (when a human driver has to take over the wheel) each year. In the absence of federal laws on self-driving cars, these disclosures are the only comprehensive information that allow for side-by-side comparisons between carmakers.”

Only by racking up lots of miles on the road can driverless companies accumulate enough instances of disengagement to correct and refine its programming. Human takeover, Waymo explained in its report, “[is] a natural part of the testing process that allow our engineers to expand the software’s capabilities and identify areas of improvement,” Marketwatch reported. “It marked a 50 percent increase in total autonomous miles within California compared with the prior reporting period, which was two months longer than this reporting period, it said. The number of disengagements fell 75 percent to 124 last year from 341 in 2015, Waymo said.”

Greener pastures?

Despite the flurry of activity, some in Sacramento have found cause for concern. The same absence of federal law that helped make California such a hotbed of activity brought with it a potential downside — regulatory reactions against the modest risks that the development of driverless cars can bring to streets. In fact, in a recent tiff that rattled nerves, Uber refused to apply for state permits for its self-driving vehicles, drawing a reprimand that saw the powerful ride-sharing company opt to ship its driverless fleet to welcoming Arizona. Hoping to head off a stampede, a new bill introduced by State Sen. Jerry Hill, D-San Mateo, “would require the DMV to immediately accept or reject an application to put a driverless car on the road,” as the Los Angeles Times reported. If passed, the legislation would clear a considerable hurdle now facing companies like Uber in California. “The regulations the DMV has proposed, by contrast, would give the agency 180 days — nearly half a year — to decide yes or no.”

Competition has geared up nationwide for the favor of driverless car companies, which especially covet urban environments where they can be free to test their vehicles in complex but reasonably controllable environments. GM President Dan Ammann told the Chicago Sun-Times, “GM is awaiting the state Legislature’s approval before it can consider testing self-driving cars here, as it does already in California, Arizona and in the Detroit area,” the paper noted. “Yet even without the legislation, GM has introduced in Chicago its Maven car-sharing service, which is envisioned as eventually operating with driverless cars for hire, and Express Drive, which lets drivers for GM’s partner Lyft rent a car at a subsidized rate. The rental program is GM’s entry into developing a network that will eventually include driverless cars.”

Drought-busting levels of rain and snow have put pressure to lift emergency restrictions on usage, but California regulators declined to ease up on the longstanding curbs.

“Amid the ongoing succession of storms, water managers up and down the state are urging regulators in Sacramento to permanently cancel historic, emergency drought rules that have been in place for 18 months,” U-T San Diego reported late last month. “It’s an escalation of their ongoing opposition to these restrictions, which already have been eased considerably since homeowners and businesses were first forced to cut consumption by a statewide average of 25 percent. California doesn’t have an official definition for statewide drought, leaving it up to the governor’s discretion on when to announce an end to that designation.”

Swift, uneven progress

But in a new report, the State Water Resources Control Board insisted that the drought’s persistent impact had to be mitigated further before any changes could be considered. “Some reservoirs remain critically low and groundwater storage remains depleted in many areas due to the continued impact of prolonged drought,” they concluded, according to the Sacramento Bee. “Precipitation cannot be counted on to continue, and snowpack levels, while above average for the current time of year, are subject to rapid reductions as seen in 2016 and before.” While the extraordinary rules imposed to conserve water were on track to expire at the end of this month, the board planned to extend them 270 days into the future.

The caution struck a contrast to the swiftness of California’s transformation from dry to wet. “According to the U.S. drought monitor website,” HotAir noted, “there are no areas of exceptional drought left in the state.” Updated data, the site observed, “indicates that one year ago 64 percent of the state was considered to be under either extreme or exceptional drought conditions, the two highest categories. Now, largely thanks to the storms over the past month, that figure has dropped to 2 percent.”

Continued challenges

Water districts have now had to scramble to figure out how to store what could be excess water if the new trends continue. Although the pathway to new storage initiatives has been cleared and funded, the state’s bureaucratic process will add extra time. “In 2014, voters approved a $7.5 billion water bond, including $2.7 billion for storage projects, to provide funding to water projects and programs throughout the state,” KXTV recalled. “Since then, government agencies across the state have been developing the process for accepting proposals.” This month, the station added, “the Water Commission will consider bids on numerous water storage projects across the state.”

And milder drought conditions have persisted. “Overall, the monitor … showed 51 percent of California remains in some form of drought, but that’s down from just over 57 percent last week and compares with 81 percent three months ago,” CNBC reported. And in a twist adding an unexpected layer of politics to the fraught question of resource management in the most beleaguered parts of the state, some Central Valley water officials became the focus of a misspending scandal. “An irrigation district in Central California’s prime farming region gave its employees free housing, interest-free loans and credit cards that the workers used to buy tickets for concerts and professional sports games, possibly breaking the law,” said state officials according to NBC Bay Area. “Employees at Panoche Water District based in Firebaugh used the credit cards to buy season tickets to Raiders and Oakland A’s games and attend a Katy Perry concert, officials said.”

The long view

Meanwhile, Gov. Jerry Brown has kept a focus on what regulatory framework will persist even after all drought conditions have been adequately mitigated. “Brown has asked the state agency to design new conservation rules for water districts that will stay in place regardless of whether California is in drought,” according to U-T San Diego. “In the long run, the governor and state regulators are moving forward with their plan to establish permanent usage budgets tailored to each water district, as well as a suite of other regulations governing water consumption. The new rules are expected to include caps for both indoor use and outdoor water use, taking into consideration differences in weather patterns and other factors from one geographic region to another.”

Now, the nonprofit arms of these billion-dollar businesses are looking to gain a special exemption from the state’s rules on charitable fundraising.

A proposal speeding through the legislature would grant nonprofit organizations affiliated with professional sports franchises a special exemption from the state’s laws on charitable raffles.

Senate Bill 549, authored by state Sen. Isadore Hall, D-South Bay, would exempt nonprofits affiliated with sports franchises from Proposition 17, a 2000 ballot measure that allowed private nonprofit groups to conduct raffles. That voter-approved initiative requires 90 percent of a raffle’s proceeds to be spent on charitable purposes.

SB594 would allow sports-affiliated nonprofits to run a 50-50 raffle, where half of the proceeds can go to a gambler. According to the bill’s text, the only eligible organizations are those connected to “a team from the Major League Baseball, National Hockey League, National Basketball Association, National Football League, Women’s National Basketball Association, or Major League Soccer, or a private, nonprofit organization established by the Professional Golfers’ Association of America, Ladies Professional Golf Association, or National Association for Stock Car Auto Racing.”

Sports charity donates to California Legislative Black Caucus

Proponents of the special perk for sports franchises say that it encourages more philanthropic giving.

“Results of 50-50 charitable raffles in over 29 states have been tremendous,” Senator Hall, the bill’s author, recently testified before the Assembly Governmental Organization Committee. “This measure will supplement great charitable work done by professional sports franchises throughout the state.”

That charitable work includes a nonprofit organization managed by state lawmakers.

According to its most recent tax return, the Los Angeles Dodgers Foundation has contributed $15,000 to the California Legislative Black Caucus. The current vice-chair of the Black Caucus is none other than Senator Isadore Hall, III — the author of SB 549.

Last session, Asm. Reginald Byron Jones-Sawyer Sr., the chair of the California Legislative Black Caucus, authored a nearly identical bill, AB 1691. Jones-Sawyer’s bill faced strong opposition from the state’s tribal groups, which saw it as encroaching on their turf.

“When you go from a 90-10 split to a 50-50 split, you’re moving away from charity to something more like a lottery,” David Quintana, a lobbyist for the California Tribal Business Alliance told the Los Angeles Times last year. “This is a huge change.”

Questionable spending by sports charities

In addition to benefiting nonprofits managed by state lawmakers, CalWatchdog.com’s review of California-based sports franchises found that their charitable entities frequently spend money on questionable activities that often benefit the underlying pro sports business.

According to the group’s tax return, the San Diego Chargers Charities spent nearly $40,000 to run its “Junior Charger Girls” program. The group’s noble charitable function: to teach girls aged seven to fifteen “the performance routine from the official Charger Girls Dance Team.” The nonprofit also spent $5,891 on football tickets.

In some cases, the sports nonprofits lose money on lavish fundraising events. The Los Angeles Lakers Youth Foundation spent $100,000 to a rent a golf course for a fundraiser that lost money, according to the nonprofit’s most recent tax return.

The Oakland Athletics Community Fund spent thousands of dollars on promotional-type events and fundraisers, including $65,525 for a golf tournament, $53,611 for a “bowling bash” and $9,654 for player appearances, according to the organization’s most recent tax return. That doesn’t include the $98,774 spent on “grants” to the Athletics Investment Group, LLC, the company that owns and operates the Oakland Athletics. The grants were for tickets to A’s home games, yet the organization did not acknowledge a relationship between the two entities in its tax filings.

Senate Bill 549: Sweetheart deal for sports nonprofits

A statewide coalition of charitable organizations says the legislation provides a special perk to a small group of nonprofits.

“SB 549 lets professional sports teams and their foundations play by different rules than the rest of us,” CalNonprofits, a statewide advocacy group that represents more than 10,000 nonprofit organizations, wrote in opposition to the bill. “All other nonprofits – school bands, symphonies, humane societies, rotary clubs and food banks, and all the rest of us – would be limited to the current 90/10 rules, whether they prefer it or not. And that’s not fair.”

Because the bill amends a voter-approved initiative, it requires a two-thirds vote of both houses — giving Republican lawmakers rare power to influence public policy. The Republican Caucus’ analysis of the bill has raised concerns about the bill, especially its proposal to add a new $5,000 fee.

“There is a fee contained within this bill,” a Republican staff analysis of the bill warns lawmakers. “The bill requires eligible sports franchises, manufacturers and/or distributors of raffle related products and/or services to pay a $5,000 annual fee, in addition to a $100 fee for every individual raffle conducted at an eligible location to the DOJ in order to cover the administrative and enforcement provisions of the bill.”

Not a single lawmaker — Republican or Democrat — has voted against the bill.

To borrow one metaphor, California’s housing market has become a double-edged sword, reminiscent of the bonanza days before the 2008 economic crisis. That’s why, to borrow another, it has also become a political football. With residents increasingly priced out of the state’s coastal metropolises, politicians and policymakers have scrambled for an edge, creating a controversy reverberate across the local, state and federal levels.

Southland struggles

In the Los Angeles area, where housing in some neighborhoods is among the country’s hottest, homelessness has grown apace. Those nearer the middle have also begun feeling the squeeze. “Incomes across California are generally higher than those in other parts of the nation. It’s just that the cost of living, along with taxes, can make it hard to keep your head above water,” as the LA Weekly noted.

In a recent analysis calculating the best states to make a living, the Weekly observed, California’s high average wages failed to offset its high taxes and cost of living, netting a sixth-worst ranking overall. “Even those of you who earn L.A. County’s median per capita income of $27,749 — and many don’t — have a hard time making rent and finding affordable transportation,” the Weekly concluded.

A northern boom

In Silicon Valley, meanwhile, statistics told a similar story. “The median sales figure for a home in the county hit $900,000 in May, according to CoreLogic, which tracks the real estate market. The average rent for a two-bedroom dwelling in San Jose has jumped to $2,300 a month. Overall, county property values have reached a record $409 billion, Assessor Larry Stone announced,” the San Jose Mercury News reported.

The numbers reflected what some characterized as an economic dilemma, wherein good opportunities for employment decrease good opportunities for housing. “Between 2010 and 2014, the local economy created 189,000 new jobs and lured in 113,000 new county residents, Joint Venture Silicon Valley data indicates. Concern, though, is mounting that extreme housing costs might begin to strangle the economy’s growth,” according to the Mercury News.

The Texas comparison

Budget battles

California’s housing challenges have intensified pressure on Gov. Jerry Brown to give up his effort to allocate money from a federal settlement with mortgage lenders into the state budget. “A Sacramento County judge found that the governor and state Legislature unlawfully diverted most of a fund that was part of a $25 billion settlement between five major banks and nearly every state in 2012,” as Associated Press noted.

“Brown’s attorneys argued the state had the discretion to use that money in the state budget. But the judge sided with the community assistance groups in ruling the money should be used to help California homeowners affected by the mortgage crisis. The ruling by Sacramento County Superior Court Judge Timothy Frawley was issued last month, but it has not been finalized.”

Brown has the option to appeal, but has not yet determined whether or not he will do so.

Assembly Bill 357 affects California food and retail businesses with at least 10 stores and 500 employees that change or cancel a worker’s scheduled shift or require an employee to be “on call” to work. Those businesses must provide the following extra compensation for changed schedules:

• One hour of pay at the employee’s regular hourly rate if less than seven days’ notice but at least 24 hours’ notice is given to the employee.
• Two hours of pay for each shift of four hours or less if less than 24 hours’ notice is given.
• Four hours of pay for each shift of more than four hours if less than 24 hours’ notice is given.

When those businesses require an employee to be available to work but the employee is not called in to work, it must provide two hours of pay for a shift of four hours or less and four hours of pay for shifts of more than four hours.

In addition, AB357 prohibits these businesses from firing or discriminating against employees because they receive CalFresh food assistance or either receive CalWORKS cash aid or are a parent, guardian or grandparent of children who receive CalWORKs cash aid. The bill also allows employees to leave work for eight hours twice a year without pay to attend appointments at a county human services agency.

The Chamber of Commerce argues that the bill “dramatically increases the cost of doing business for a broadly defined ‘food and general retail establishment’ in California by exposing employers to significant penalties and litigation for accommodating employee and business scheduling demands, creating a new protected classification for employees, and a new leave of absence for employees.”

The Chamber has labeled it a job killer because it:

• “Creates significant penalties against employers for schedule changes, which will limit flexibility.
• “Discourages employers from offering additional work to part-time employees.
• “Creates new leave of absence for employees.
• “Creates a new, protected classification of employees.
• “Subjects employers to multiple threats of extensive litigation.”

CalChamber Policy Advocate Jennifer Barrera told the committee on April 22 that a similar ordinance is due to go into effect in San Francisco in July. “Why don’t we let that work out first in San Francisco before we impose this on a statewide mandate in California and to counties and cities that are not reflective of San Francisco?” she said.

Also speaking against the bill was Angie Manetti, representing the California Retailers’ Association.

“We believe this bill seeks to mandate a rigid, one-size-fits-all scheduling model for food and retail establishments,” she said. “Retail by nature is dynamic and highly competitive. As such, retailers are constantly undertaking the challenge of balancing the needs of employees, responding to customer demands, all while enhancing our customer experiences.

“AB357 fails to contemplate these unique needs. The bill instead creates a significant administrative burden for retail employers and doesn’t take into consideration the rapidly changing business environment of retail establishments.

“The reality is that retailers and employers need a predictive schedule in place just as much as our employees do. We do this to the best of our ability and provide as much flexibility that we can. Stores must consider, number one, employee scheduling requests. There’s also sales forecasts that are considered, store productivity, workload, in-store events, merchandise deliveries and customer traffic patterns. Additionally, at any given time those factors can change due to unexpected scenarios.”

Manetti agreed with Barrera that the state should wait to see how San Francisco’s scheduling regulations work out. But the bill’s author, Assemblyman David Chiu, D-San Francisco, who also authored the San Francisco legislation, responded that there has been significant interest from legislators around the state in implementing it statewide.

“We are not talking about a job killer policy,” Chiu said. “In fact, we know the minimum wage, health care, sick leave – those were also called job killer policies. I would suggest there’s a lot about this policy that helps people to maintain and to take on second jobs or third jobs, to actually be job creating.

“Major employers like Costco, like Starbucks, like Wal-Mart … understand it’s good for business. When you are an employee and you have a predictability in scheduling, you are a more productive employee, you’re a happier employee, and you do better and you want to work hard.”

Chiu said there more than three million low-wage food and retail workers in California. Eighty percent of them have unstable schedules, he said, and 40 percent receive a week or less notice on their upcoming schedule.

A co-author of the bill, Assemblywoman Shirley Weber, D-San Diego, said that one out of five California children live in poverty, and their mothers have to work two or three part-time jobs to make ends meet.

“We see [reliable scheduling] as being critical in how we reverse California poverty levels,” she said. “California has the highest poverty rate in the nation. They need security to say ‘this is when you work.’ It’s not unreasonable to ask employers to give some sense of predictability on how their schedule is going to be and how they manage their lives.”

Two grocery workers, one of whom has two college degrees, also testified in support of the bill. They said not having a predictable schedule makes it difficult to attend college on off days.

Unlike most so-called “job killer” bills, AB357 did not break down strictly along party lines. One Democrat, Assemblyman Evan Low, D-Campbell, voted against it. Although he agrees with Chiu that it’s not a job killer, he said he’s concerned that it will have an impact on businesses in his Silicon Valley district.

The committee approved the bill, 4-3. It will next be considered by the Assembly Appropriations Committee.

The 4^th District Court of Appeal struck down San Juan Capistrano’s tiered water fee plan because it violated Prop. 218’s restriction that any fee must be for the cost of service and no more. The court found that by creating a 4-tier fee plan that charged $2.47 per unit for first tier water usage up to $9.05 a unit for greater usage the plan was not based on the cost of the water service.

Paying for the service provided

The goal of Prop. 218 was explained in a Legislative Analyst’s Office paper written to help clarify the measure after it had become law:

In general, the intent of Proposition 218 is to ensure that all taxes and most charges on property owners are subject to voter approval. In addition, Proposition 218 seeks to curb some perceived abuses in the use of assessments and property-related fees, specifically the use of these revenue-raising tools to pay for general governmental services rather than property-related services.

The Analyst’s paper also noted under Prop. 218, “The amount of the fee may not exceed the cost of government to provide the service.”

In other words, some governments went beyond paying for the service provided. The local governments or agencies tacked on increased amounts beyond what was necessary to provide some services such as water and sewer charges. If the local governments wanted additional revenue they should have presented a tax measure to voters for approval. To avoid tax votes, many governments turned to revenue raising devices such as assessments and fees.

The unusual, extensive and improper use of assessment districts and fees employed by local governments prior Prop. 218 passing in November 1996 explains the measure’s solid support from voters on Election Day, 56.5 percent Yes to 43.5 percent No.

Examples of misuse

To get a sense of how the assessments were abused, some well-reported examples of misused assessments were included in the pro-218 argument in the official state ballot booklet:

(O)ne lawyer working with politicians wrote, assessments ”are now limited only by the limits of human imagination.”

How imaginative can the politicians be with assessments? Here are a few examples among thousands:

• A view tax in Southern California – the better the view of the ocean you have the more you pay.
• In Los Angeles, a proposal for assessments for a $2 million scoreboard and a $6 million equestrian center to be paid for by property owners.
• In Northern California, taxpayers 27 miles away from a park are assessed because their property supposedly benefits from that park.
• In the Central Valley, homeowners are assessed to refurbish a college football field.

It was the misuse exemplified in these property assessment examples that prompted the ballot measure passed by the voters. Prop. 218 did not make provisions for penalties, which in essence, the tiered tax water rates are.

The court, in its ruling, did not reject the use of tiered water rates and this case will not prevent conservation if the rate system is rewritten to satisfy the law. As Jon Coupal of the Howard Jarvis Taxpayers Association, the group that sponsored Prop. 218, wrote, “Water districts can restrict use through fines and penalties which they already do. Moreover, virtually all water – particularly in Southern California – is metered. Allotments can be fixed with hard caps on use with stiff penalties for use above allotments. A water district even has the power to terminate service. … The reality is that water districts have many tools in their arsenal of legal options to enforce conservation.”

By not adhering to the principle of fees-for-service the court said the water tiered plan violated Proposition 218.

Follow Joel Fox on Twitter @1JoelFox1

President Obama’s White House just released 3,415 new regulations, making 330 millions Americans into turkeys just before Thanksgiving. The Daily Caller reported:

While Americans are focused on what delicious foods they’re going to eat for Thanksgiving, the White House is focused on releasing its massive regulatory agenda — marking the fifth time the Obama administration has released its regulatory road map on the eve of a major holiday.

The federal Unified Agenda is the Obama administration’s regulatory road map, and it lays out thousands of regulations being finalized in the coming months. Under President Barack Obama, there has been a tradition of releasing the agenda late on Friday — and right before a major holiday.

Remember, if you violate even one of these intricate, indecipherable regulations, you can land in a federal prison for a long, long time.

It’s also rather sadistic for the Obama administration to release these regulations just as we settle down with friends and family for a good holiday dinner.

Among the regulations are more assaults on the coal industry, supposedly to fight a “global warming” that doesn’t exist — as shown by the record cold and snow blanketing much of the country.

But the alternative-energy profits must continue to be shoveled to enviro-billionaires such as Al Gore.

It doesn’t matter that Congress didn’t approve the new regulations; nor that American voters dumped Obama’s fellow Democrats from power in the U.S. Senate less than a month ago.

As we saw with his immigration amnesty edict, he just does what he wants, the Constitution be damned — just like any autocrat.

Anyway … Happy Thanksgiving!

This basic motivation is what let Harvard economist Robert Stavins — a supporter of AB 32 — to warn six years ago of the folly of AB 32 supporters depicting it as a job-creation program with almost no downside. If requiring California’s businesses to switch to cleaner but costlier energy would help their bottom line, of course they’d be for it, Stavins noted.

He’s not just another mouthy academic. He’s arguably the world’s leading environmental economist.

Minimum-wage hike? It’s all good!

Now, on the minimum wage, we are seeing the exact same phenomenon from the California left. Instead of essays that say raising the minimum wage is overall a good thing — even though it will hurt some companies and some niche fields by making them less competitive with rival companies that don’t have the same pay edicts — we’re seeing argument after argument that raising the minimum wage is a no-brainer with no downside. Take it away, San Francisco Chronicle:

Raising the minimum wage — at least in Oakland — would have widespread positive impacts, economic and otherwise, and almost no downside, according to a UC Berkeley report scheduled to be released Friday.

The findings generally hold true for other Bay Area cities considering minimum wage hikes, including San Francisco, Berkeley, Richmond and Concord, researchers said.

“Raising the minimum wage puts more money in the pockets of consumers, and they’ll tend to spend it locally, which is good for the local economy,” said Ken Jacobs, chair of the UC Berkeley Center for Labor Research and Education, which conducted the study. “What you don’t see with minimum wage increases is a negative impact on employment or the economy.”

In Oakland, raising the minimum hourly wage to $12.25 — a measure expected to appear on the Nov. 4 ballot — would boost the paychecks of up to 48,000 people by at least $115 million, according to the study.

That translates to fewer people dependent on taxpayer-subsidized social programs, lower worker turnover, higher worker performance and more money spent at local businesses, Jacobs said.

No media push-back against extreme claims

I know all sides of the political spectrum argue fervently for causes whether or not they have the facts on their side. But it really does seem to me in the Obama era that the left is pushing this tactic to an extreme, and that the media don’t respond with the vigor they should.

Remember, Stavins is one of the most respected economists in the world. His Occam’s razor, cut-to-the-chase point about the folly of asserting that regulations help business has never appeared in any California news story about AB 32 of which I’m aware. Instead, it has appeared on The Wall Street Journal’s opinion page and in what I’ve written for the Union-Tribune, Cal Watchdog and other outlets.

Why? I don’t know. But the idea that it’s 2014 and the claim from a “labor center” that regulation boosts the economy goes unchallenged in major newspapers like the S.F. Chronicle is pretty stunning.

And depressing.