Clary & Associates, Trial Lawyers
Yee and Pérez still waiting on Lake County
Lake County holds the last remaining uncounted ballots.
by Brian Leubitz
UPDATE June 30: Lake County News has an update:
The Board of Supervisors will meet in a special evening session next Tuesday to take up, among other things, the final canvass for the June 3 election. The board will meet beginning at 6 p.m. Tuesday, July 1 … Registrar of Voters Diane Fridley has until 5 p.m. Tuesday to complete the count, according to the Secretary of State’s Office.
Fridley’s office is the last of the 58 county election offices statewide to complete the final count for the June 3 primary, according to the unprocessed ballot posted by the California Secretary of State’s Office on Friday.
Maybe tomorrow we’ll have an idea of what is going on in Lake County for those last 6,000+ ballots.
The Controller’s race is now sitting at a 861 vote lead for BoE member Betty Yee over former Speaker John Pérez. And the only remaining outstanding mail-in ballots come from Lake County:
But before any decisions are made on a possible recount, there are about 6,000 ballots to count in Lake County, where Pérez outpolled Yee by about seven percentage points in election day results. Diane Fridley, the Lake County registrar, said Tuesday that the office plans to process 5,263 vote-by-mail ballots Thursday morning and will sometime later deal with 743 provisional and 47 damaged ballots. The office will finish its work no later than next Tuesday’s deadline, said Fridley, who is on light duty following surgery and has only a skeleton staff to help with the ballot work.
Fridley said it’s the first time in her 36 years at the office that any statewide race could come down to Lake County. Both campaigns have been in touch and plan to have representatives in her Lakeport office on Thursday.
“We’re working as fast as we can,” she said.(SacBee)
It does seem a bit odd that Lake County is now the focus, but we are still waiting on those results. In the results previously announced in that county, Pérez and Republican David Evans basically tied with 2326 and 2325 votes. Yee trailed behind with 1662 and Swearingen with 1134. If the proportions are the same with those 5,263 votes, Pérez (and Evans) would pick up about 390 votes on Yee. That would still leave Yee ahead by over 400 votes.
But to be clear, this is an extraordinarily close race. In the end, it could come down to a few thousandths of a point. In an election with about 4 million votes, the odds of that happening are just mind-boggling.
Lake County said that they would be counting on Thursday, but no results have been released on the web yet. I’ll update this post if results are released
Field: Big Lead for Brown, Legislature’s Approval Slips Back
Field Poll shows Legislature took hit after recent controversy
by Brian Leubitz
Field is in the midst of their most recent data dump, and you can’t help but feel that Gov. Brown is all smiles. First, there’s the fact that he has a 20 point lead over Neel Kashkari
The results of the latest Field Poll show incumbent Democratic Governor Jerry Brown leading Republican challenger Neel Kashkari by twenty points, 52% to 32%, among likely voters in this year’s gubernatorial election. … Brown is regarded favorably by 54% of likely voters, while 31% have an unfavorable opinion. Following his second place showing in the June primary, Kashkari is viewed favorably by 28%, while 16% of voters hold an unfavorable opinion of him.
In addition, the Poll finds 54% of voters approving of the job Brown is doing as governor, while 29% disapprove. (Field PDF)
The Governor’s approval rating during this term has been as low as 43%, before reaching a high of 59% in April of this year. While it did slip, when combined with his mound of campaign funds, the contest between Brown and Kashkari doesn’t really seem a fair fight. Barring some major shift of the political landscape, you have to feel that Brown should defeat Kashkari handily.
Now, on the other side, the Legislature was so close to actually having a net favorable rating. The institution’s ratings were trending up from a low of 19% in May 2012 before Prop 30. In December 2013, it hit 40% for the first time since 2002. In other words, a really long time. And then in the late March poll, approval was trending even higher, with a 46-40 split in the first few days of polling. Then the Leland Yee story broke, and the numbers fell back to earth.
Slightly more voters believe California is generally on the wrong track (46%) than say it is moving in the right direction (41%). In addition, more voters disapprove (47%) than approve (35%) of the job performance of the state legislature.
Opinions about both matters are directly related to the party registration of voters. Democrats offer a much more optimistic assessment of the direction of the state and hold more positive views of the job the state legislature is doing than Republicans. (Field PDF)
Still, this says a lot about the harmony of the post Prop 30 days. There are still budget fights, but they aren’t nearly as toxic as they once were. The majority vote budget means that the fights are basically all within the party. The scandal can’t help, but beyond a bad apple or two, this is a legislature that works for California.
With SF Ellis Act Bill dead, local housing advocates forced to look elsewhere
Ellis Act reform would have required waiting period before evictions
by Brian Leubitz
Well, after a lot of drama getting out of the Senate, the SF Ellis Act reform legislation died in the Assembly:
The Ellis Act reform bill introduced by Sen. Mark Leno, D-S.F., will not be moving forward this year, according to his office. The proposed legislation, Senate Bill 1439, sought to limit evictions in San Francisco by requiring new property owners to wait five years before invoking the Ellis Act, a state law that allows a landlord to evict their tenants if they intend to leave the rental business. …
“I am profoundly disappointed that the Assembly Housing Committee failed to pass critical legislation that would help mitigate the negative impacts of a recent surge in Ellis Act evictions in San Francisco,” said Leno in a statement following the Assembly Housing Committee vote. (SF Examiner)
The bill took a couple tries to get it through Assembly, and ultimately trying to make law for one county at the state level was just too high of a hurdle to clear. The bill only applied to SF because of the unique housing conditions, something of a perfect storm. Rising housing costs in both the rental and ownership markets, combined with a complicated rent control system leave a lot of loopholes to exploit and a lot of incentive to exploit them for speculators.
But ultimately, this was never any sort of silver bullet. It dealt with a small, but high-profile, loophole. San Francisco needs to look at a kitchen sink approach to try to bring housing costs under something resembling control, or the beautiful City by the Bay will lose the diversity that helped make it great.
The water bond and the tunnels
Water bond still faces tunnel stumbling block
by Brian Leubitz
There is little disagreement that our water infrastructure needs some work. Across party lines and the north-south divide, there is a consensus that we need to invest in our water system. The amount of the bond package is still in dispute, but those are minor disagreements.
But the one big stumbling block are the twin tunnels that Gov. Brown wants to build to bring water to Southern California from the Delta. The administration released a report on the potential job gains from the project:
The study’s author, Dave Sunding, a UC Berkeley agricultural and resource economist, predicts that construction of what is called the Bay-Delta Conservation Project would create an average of about 15,500 jobs a year over a decade of construction and habitat restoration. Once built, the project to make water supplies more reliable would spur an additional estimated 19,600 jobs a year over 50 years, he said.
“In the short, medium and long range, the Bay Delta Conservation would provide economic benefits to California,” said Nancy Vogel, spokeswoman for the Department of Water Resources. “The plan is essentially an insurance policy against species extinction and inadequate water supplies.” (LA Times)
To call these figures controversial is a big understatement. The job figures are being called highly speculative, on both construction and the long-term prospects. The tunnels, which were rejected by the voters during Brown’s first stint as governor in the 80s, are back again with the same controversy. Like then, the questions of drought are still very much present. If our current drought continues, or another, more vicious dry spell hits, there simply won’t be any water there.
Sen. Lois Wolk, who represents much of the Delta has been trying to move past this issue, and is taking the right tack. She is working hard to get a water bond on the ballot without any sort of authorization for the tunnels. And in the NBCLA clip below the fold, this is what Sen. Steinberg is endorsing, and warning against a bond that includes them.
The tunnels are a big conversation of their own, and tying the bond up with that political melee could backfire at the ballot. But with the deadline for the ballot getting closer, we should have a resolution soon.
What does Kevin McCarthy’s Ascension Mean for California? HSR? Immigration?
Potential new majority leader not normally in step with his home state’s leadership
Kevin McCarthy looks all but assured of assuming Eric Cantor’s old job as Majority Leader in the House. Raul Labrador is having troubles controlling his own state’s convention, let alone trying to wrangle votes for leadership, and there don’t appear to be any viable challengers. So, it appears that is just a matter of time until both the Majority and Minority Leaders are Californians.
Now, you might think that awesome for California. We’ll be flush with federal dollars for infrastructure and other development. Well, you may want to hold that thought. McCarthy is a Republican. In 2014. That means he must act like all federal programs are ridiculous and that states are awesome. Except California and our San Francisco values.
As I noted on the budget post below, McCarthy has been on the harshest HSR critics for years now. He does not like the project for a multitude of reasons. The cynical would say that it may have something to do with his overall chumminess with energy companies. And if you look at his energy policy, you won’t find too many disagreements with Big Oil. But if you ask him, it is about funding and protecting the California and federal budgets.
He aimed most of his ire at the bullet train project, which would receive $250 million in the next fiscal year and in subsequent years. The funds are 25% of revenues from the state’s cap-and-trade program, which collects fees on polluters.
“Time and again, the high-speed rail boondoggle has proven to be an unfeasible project that will put undue and damaging pressure on our state budget, ultimately hurting taxpayers,” McCarthy said in a statement. (LAT)
There area a multitude of other issues where he disagrees with a majority of the state. On water, he is hard-core in the agricultural corner, a stalwart for the farmers over fish people. And that isn’t really surprising considering his district. It is a strong GOP district, with Obama not managing to break 40% in either election.
But there are some other dynamics to his district. Check these demographics:
Race: 75.8% White, 6.8% Black, 5.2% Asian, 1.4% American Indian (National Percentages: 72.4% White, 12.6% Black, 4.8% Asian, 0.9% American Indian)
Ethnicity: 64.6% Non-Hispanic, 35.4% Hispanic (National Percentages: 83.6% Non-Hispanic, 16.4% Hispanic) (Politics USA)
McCarthy has never been hard line anti-immigrant. To be honest, it is hard to find a big difference on that front from Cantor. As he has a large farmworker population, and many large agricultural operations that rely on them, he is in a tough position with his more reactionary colleagues when he has support like this:
“There is no reason for Congressman Kevin McCarthy, as leader, not to take leadership on this issue,” said immigration reform activist Arturo Rodriguez, president of United Farm Workers. “Everyone will expect it and demand it. And we will step up all of our activities as a whole.” (CNN)
But McCarthy is a smart man. You don’t move up the ladder as quickly as he has if that wasn’t true. He sees the math, and understand the Republican predicament if they keep turning off Latino voters. In a district like his own, it would be hard to miss.
A few years ago, we thought we would have a great opportunity for reform. Republicans like Cantor and Boehner knew that the party had to change on the issue, or would continue to haunt them. But with Brat’s win over Cantor, will McCarthy continue to press the issue?
“I think his (McCarthy’s) views on immigration are similar to Cantor’s,” said Steven Camarota, director of research for the non-profit Center for Immigration Studies. “But after this week’s results, it seems much less likely he would push it. And even less likely still that he would move his members to push it.” (CNN
But McCarthy is capable of building coalitions, sometimes despite his own party’s reluctance. If he is willing to work with Boehner and Democrats, he could probably muster the votes. The question is how he deals with his own members. It is a question of threading a very, very fine needle. But it is a needle that he, and his party, need to thread. Electorally, Democrats would be better if he didn’t, but clearly comprehensive immigration reform would be the right course for the nation.
But on the plus side, he frequently says funny/incomprehensible things, so there’s that.
Budget Goes to Governor’s Desk: Republicans Freak Out About HSR
Budget Based on Compromises Leaves Questions
by Brian Leubitz
First, let’s get this out of the way: the budget ($156bn for those counting at home) has now been passed and just awaits a few formalities. It is a budget of compromises, but a solid foundation for California’s priorities. And there are no big public fights, no big accusations, and no sleepovers in Sacramento. This is all good, and says a lot about the improved process under the majority vote budget system. (And Prop 30, which gives the revenue breathing room that we need.)
All that being said, the Governor wanted to maintain a hard line on spending. It’s nice and prudent and all that, but there are a lot of gaping holes in the budget that should have been addressed. George Skelton’s review of the completed product outlines some of those holes:
But the governor refused to reverse a 10% cut in pay rates for doctors who treat patients in the Medi-Cal program that is greatly expanding under Obamacare. Because of the measly rates – lowest in the nation – more and more doctors are refusing to accept Medi-Cal patients.
And, shamefully, no one even tried to restore previously cut funding for the most vulnerable: the aged, blind and disabled poor living entirely off federal and state subsistence programs (SSI/SSP) – $880 (sic, it is actually $877.40 – BL) monthly for singles and $1,480 for couples. There are roughly 1.5 million Californians receiving SSI/SSP, which was reduced to the federal minimum during the recession. The state is still stiffing them. They’re not unionized and can’t make campaign contributions. Meanwhile, legislators keep raising the minimum wage, bumping up inflation and squeezing these impoverished folks even more.
So the governor and Democrats shouldn’t be patting themselves on the backs all that much for their budget compromise. ([George Skelton / LATimes)
There have been a few good editorials about the Medi-Cal question, including this one in the SF Chronicle. Boiling it down, our reimbursement rates are among the lowest in the nation. And while there is a sharp need to control medical costs. As you can see from the graph in this tweet, our costs are still out of control. But the problem here is that if the tightest controls are isolated to Medi-Cal, doctors simply won’t take Medi-Cal patients. And that is exactly what is happening. As you can see from the ad up top, this was a big deal for the state. But under the current budget, reimbursement rates are still far too low.
In addition to the heartbreaking failure to restore SSI/SSP funding for some of the state’s most vulnerable, the state’s contributions to CalSTRS are taking a big chunk out of the restoration of funding to K12 education. And even with the $250+ million for both early child education and vocational education, there are still big funding problems at all levels of California education.
The other big issue: yeah, that would be Republican Majority Whip Kevin McCarthy’s non-stop tirade over the high speed rail project. (Seen here looking hilarious in flick user donkeyhotey’s cartoon.) The budget allocates $250m from cap and trade revenue, but long-term funding issues are still out there. At this point, HSR leaders can point to several billion of funding that is out there for the project, but are still a ways off from the full price tag. And if McCarthy becomes Majority Leader as expected, comments like these could mean it becomes a lot more challenging to get federal assistance for the project:
“Governor Brown’s persistence shows he is more interested in protecting his legacy than communities that will be uprooted by its intrusion,” he added. “As long as I am in Congress, I will do whatever I can to ensure that not one dollar of federal funds is directed to this project.” (Melanie Mason / LAT)
But those decisions are for another day. Today, we have a budget that will keep the lights on throughout the state, and that’s good thing.
Budget Negotiations Continue
Process looks set for this weekend
by Brian Leubitz
The budget deadline is this weekend, and without the need to pull a few Republican votes, harmony seems to reign. Well, not so much real harmony, but something that passes for harmony in Sacramento when you look at the past budget fights before the majority vote budget and Prop 30 votes.
With closed-door negotiations bearing fruit, the joint budget committee is expected to meet Wednesday afternoon to nail down more details on state spending.
“We’ll get through most of it,” Assemblywoman Nancy Skinner (D-Berkeley), who is chairing the committee, said in an interview.(LA Times)
Everybody seems to be all happy-go-lucky on getting a deal done. But to be clear, there are a lot of tough choices to be made. K-12 funding is still too low. Court funding is getting a boost, but is probably still too low. Skinner and Steinberg are still fighting Brown’s intention to end overtime pay for homecare workers.
The bigger issue overhanging much of this is whether to include an additional $2.5 billion in projected capital gains revenue, with some sort of compromise likely.
Yes, the negotiations are more civil than in the past, but the issues are very real. Gov. Brown seems to be a bit hesitant to restore funding levels anytime soon, but there is a lot of gap to fill between how much the state needs in services and how much we are providing. The higher end of our economy has clearly recovered, but that is far from universally true across the income spectrum.
The Progressive Case Against the Vergara Decision
Progressives should have serious concerns with the judge’s tentative ruling in Vergara v. California.
First, let it be known that I’m a solid progressive public school employee union activist. I believe bad employees should be fired, but I also have seen egregious employer actions against good employees while ignoring bad employees. In California, we’re pretty darn lucky to have strict employment non-discrimination laws. Unfortunately, laws don’t stop employers from doing bad things…except apparently in case of tenure. I guess tenure is some sort of kryptonite to management. OR
As a gay man fighting against the ability of employers to fire LGBT folks without reason, I find the judge’s reason counter to our own fight for ENDA protections. 2) The judge states that low-income and minority students systemically have low-performing teachers. How is that a tenure issue? That sounds like poor recruiting and retaining of good teachers…probably because working harder for less money is something that isn’t fair. Just ask women who earn $.76 to a man’s dollar. Gov. Brown’s new LCFF is bringing millions into our poorest schools. This will go far in improving our ability to attract and retain good teachers in every school district…assuming administrators actually, you know, manage their personnel.
The Controller Race Continues
Betty Yee holds 2nd place (barely) as counting continues
by Brian Leubitz
Counties across California are making progress on the unprocessed ballots. For most races, this isn’t really a big deal. However, in the Controller’s race, where the 2nd place result is likely to be determined by a few thousand votes at most, every vote is critical. Here’s the situation as of 10AM today:
Swearingen: 870,625
Yee: 758,401
Pérez: 757,328
Evans: 752,556
Evans is falling behind a little bit, which is a very comforting sign for all the Democrats out there worried about a 2 Republican race. (Like, umm, me.) But with 791,885 unprocessed ballots, including over 148K in Los Angeles County alone, there is a lot of uncertainty left. You can check the most recent unprocessed ballots report here. The most recent report at the time of writing this is from last evening.
Counties have a little less than a month to certify their results to the Secretary of State, so a bit of patience is required. Not necessarily easy though.
UPDATE: John Pérez has now taken a small lead (1123 votes) as of Wednesday morning as a big batch of LA ballots came in. The total unprocessed votes now stands at 328,576.
UPDATE 2: Yee took the 2nd place spot back this afternoon. She now leads by 2,820 over Pérez.