Jerry Brown meets with wardens amid prison negotiations

Facing a three-month deadline to reduce California's prison population, Gov. Jerry Brown said he plans to meet today with 34 wardens and a dozen top administrators of the prison system.

At the meetings, tentatively scheduled for 2 p.m. to 9 p.m. today, the governor said he planned to ask the wardens about overcrowding, healthcare, drug treatment, mental health and vocational learning.

Brown said the appointments demonstrate his engagement in the process and commitment to the issue as the state continues negotiations with its court-appointed mediator. He described the meetings with the mediator as "collaborative and informative" and said talks with plaintiff's lawyers have made him optimistic about reaching a resolution.

"This is a matter that I am very interested in, very committed to getting it right," Brown told reporters Tuesday at a school event in Sacramento. "So that's why we are going very carefully."

The Brown administration has significantly reduced the number of inmates in part by shifting responsibility for certain low-level offenders from the state prison system to counties. The administration now wants more time to allow various rehabilitation programs to take hold as a way to avoid shuttling thousands more inmates to private prisons outside of California.

"We have to understand that when government embarks on major programs, it should do so with humility, and caution and a lot of planning," he said.

"So whenever people say, 'Hey, we need 10,000 fewer people in prison - do something,' I want to do that something very careful, particularly when it comes on top of 25,000 fewer, and on top of 15,000 fewer a few years before."

Editor's note: This post was updated at 2 p.m. to reflect the number of wardens.
PHOTO: Gov. Jerry Brown speaks at the California Chamber of Commerce's annual host breakfast in Sacramento on May 22, 2013. The Associated Press/Rich Pedroncelli

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California has nation's second highest job distress rate

California may be recovering from the worst recession since the Great Depression, and its official unemployment rate has dropped by a third, but by another federal measure of employment distress, the state is second only to Nevada.

The alternative number, known as U-6 in economic statistical circles, includes not only unemployment — the percentage of the labor force that's jobless — but "marginally attached workers, plus total employed part time for economic reasons, as a percent of the civilian labor force plus all marginally attached workers."

In other words, it represents every worker whose aspirations are being thwarted by economic conditions.

By the U-6 measure, California's employment distress rate is 18.3 percent for the 12 months ending June 30, according to a new report by the Bureau of Labor Statistics. California's rate is second only to Nevada's 19 percent and four percentage points higher than the national rate of 14.3 percent.

California's U-6 rate is also more than twice as high as the state's 9.1 percent rate calculated by the BLS for 2006, the last year before the housing bubble burst, plunging the state into recession.

North Dakota, which is experiencing an oil boom, has the lowest rate of 6.2 percent. Texas, with whom California is often compared, has a U-6 rate of 11.6 percent.

PHOTO: Binders full of resources at the Employment Development Department office in Sacramento on Thursday February 14, 2008. The Sacramento Bee/Randall Benton

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California fiscal analyst projects large surpluses

California's budget is on track for multibillion dollar surpluses in the coming years, the Legislature's nonpartisan fiscal analyst said Wednesday in an upbeat assessment of the state's fiscal picture.

An improving economy and continuing revenue from voter-approved tax increases in 2012 have left state finances in strong shape, Legislative Analyst Mac Taylor wrote in his office's five-year fiscal outlook released this morning.

The state is projected to have a $5.6 billion reserve by June 2015. Taylor, though, offered a note of caution in the report, the second-straight rosy review of state finances after years of red-ink warnings.

"Despite the large surplus that we project over the forecast period, the state's continued fiscal recovery is dependent on a number of assumptions that may not come to pass," he wrote.

Taylor projected annual surpluses to grow more slowly after the 2016-17 budget year, as tax increases from Proposition 30, Gov. Jerry Brown's ballot initiative last year to raise taxes, phase out. The impact will be felt over several years, however, and Taylor told reporters "you don't have one really dramatic year in which revenues fall off."

The revenue forecast remains highly dependent on capital gains. Taylor said the market "is not out of line like it was in the dot com boom."

Brown has taken steps in recent weeks to temper spending expectations ahead of the release of his annual spending plan in January, and his administration continued to urge caution Wednesday.

"Recent history reminds us painfully of what happens when the state makes ongoing spending commitments based on what turn out to be one-time spikes in capital gains," Michael Cohen, Brown's director of finance, said in a prepared statement. "We're pleased that the analyst's report shares the governor's view that discipline remains the right course of action. The focus must continue to be on paying down the state's accumulated budgetary debt and maintaining a prudent reserve to ensure that we do not return to the days of $26 billion deficits."

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Immigration reform: CA GOP members not giving up

House Speaker John Boehner slammed the door on comprehensive immigration reform this week, saying House action on the bill already passed by the Senate is “not going to happen.” That's not stopping a pair of California Republicans from lobbying fellow GOP members on the issue.

Speaker Boehner repeated his stance that the House GOP would work on a "common sense, step-by-step" approach to immigration reform. He said he had "no intention of ever going" to a conference committee to reconcile whatever measures the House passes with the 1,300-page Senate bill.

Instead, Boehner said the House GOP would work on " a set of principles" that will help "guide" the GOP as it deals with the issue. He did not mention the piecemeal immigration bills put forth by House Republicans.

That hasn’t discouraged Central Valley GOP members Jeff Denham and David Valadao.

Both Congressmen are in heavily Latino districts. Both are co-sponsors of the Democrats' immigration bill, which is based on the Senate bill that passed the Judiciary Committee and includes the House version of a border security provision. In fact, Denham and Valadao are two of the three GOP members who back HR-15. 

Denham said he has convinced three more Republicans to back HR-15. The challenge, he says, is that health care, the fiscal crisis and a farm bill have taken precedence on Capitol Hill. He says any issue that does not have an exact timeline always gets moved. "Immigration is one of those issues," he said. "That’s one of the things that makes it difficult."

The duo is "whipping" the House floor, talking to members during votes, pushing HR-15. But Valadao said that's a "tough jump" for many members. So the pair is also pushing a letter to Speaker Boehner, urging him to take  up immigration reform. Valadao said he tries not to pressure people on any specific piece of language, urging a debate on the floor and the opportunity to vote. "Fix what they don’t like about each bill as it comes, but go through the legislative process."

On Friday, the head of the campaign arm of the GOP – the National Republican Congressional Committee – said it was his "guess" that the immigration debate would happen “later next year." Next year, of course, is an election year and immigration is one of those hot button issues politicos like to avoid.

Congressman Greg Walden of Oregon, chairman of the NRCC, dismissed the notion that immigration can't be tackled in an election year. He told a breakfast gathering of reporters that most members have already staked out positions on immigration "and what they can and cannot support going into it."

NRCC spokesman Daniel Scarpinato gave a preview of how the debate is likely to play out in one word: "Obamacare." Scarpinato says the Affordable Care Act is a cautionary tale, "kind of a warning signal of what happens when you don't have a lot of transparency, when people haven't read everything that's in the bill." 

California releases proposed fracking regulations

California got its first glimpse Friday morning of proposed hydraulic fracturing regulations that will likely be heavily debated over the coming year.

In a conference call with reporters, California Department of Conservation Director Mark Nechodom heralded a proposal he said would strike a balance between strong safeguards and ensuring that California's oil and gas industry can "remain productive and competitive."

The release of the draft rules kicks off a yearlong process, with the goal of having final regulations in place by Jan. 1, 2015. Nechodom said he anticipates "a very active public regulation" process that could yield "substantial changes" to the current proposed language.
Hydraulic fracturing, commonly known as fracking, involves blasting a pressurized cocktail of chemicals and water underground to dislodge the gas trapped in rock formations. While many have praised fracking as a way to wean America off of foreign oil, environmentalists warn that fracking represents a public health hazard.

Pointing to fracking booms in other parts of the country and warning of a potential explosion of activity above California's Monterey Shale, several lawmakers introduced fracking bills in 2013. Of those, only Sen. Fran Pavley's bill received the governor's signature, with more stringent measures that included statewide moratoriums falling by the wayside.

The Pavley law will now guide the regulatory process. The draft rules released on Friday will require well operators to notify people living near new wells, create a groundwater monitoring regime, spur a statewide scientific review of fracking and mandate disclosure of the types and concentrations of chemicals used in fracking.

Despite the chemical disclosure requirement, the new law allows companies to invoke trade secret protections in some cases. Nechodom said it remains unclear how broadly that exemption will be used.

"It's hard to tell at this point how many trade secret claims may be made," Nechodom said. "There may be few or there may be many."

In the intervening year before final regulations take effect, well operators will need to certify to regulators in advance that they are in compliance. Starting in 2015, they will need to go through a specific permitting process that could trigger environmental review.

Nechodom tried to rebuff concerns that well operators will have free reign in the gap year, saying that operators will still have to win California Environmental Quality Act approval via county-level applications for conditional use permits.

"That has been a misperception, that CEQA does not apply in 2014," Nechodom said, adding that "by the time we get to 2015 that permitting event will essentially require some CEQA review."

In the final days of the 2013 legislative session, environmental groups abandoned Pavley's bill en masse, with many saying that a provision of the bill allowing for broad reviews that cover multiple wells would weaken oversight. Regulations governing the grouping of permits were not released Friday.

But Tim Kustic, state oil and gas supervisor for the Division of Oil, Gas, and Geothermal Resources, said during Friday's conference call that the division already has to be selective in the reviews it conducts.

"We have to prioritize," Kustic said, adding that "fields that have extensive hydraulic fracturing and they're doing, say, the 3,000th in the field" will be a lower priority than an initial exploratory well.

"It's unrealistic to think the division will be out there for every well stimulation," Kustic said.

PHOTO: In this March 29, 2013 file photo, workers tend to a well head during a hydraulic fracturing operation at an Encana Oil & Gas (USA) Inc. gas well outside Rifle, in western Colorado. AP/ Brennan Linsley.

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University of California president proposes tuition freeze

SAN FRANCISCO - University of California President Janet Napolitano on Wednesday proposed freezing undergraduate tuition for the 2014-15 academic year, a move she said will give officials time to consider overhauling the UC's tuition system.

Napolitano, speaking at her first meeting of the UC regents since becoming president, said administrators will look for a "better way" to set tuition to avoid dramatic price increases in future years.

"We need to figure out, in the real world in which we live, how to bring clarity to, and reduce volatility in, the tuition-setting process," she said. "It's time for this university to collaboratively come up with a better way."

One option she said officials will consider is a so-called "cohort tuition," in which students are assured the tuition they pay when entering college will not dramatically change during their four years in school.

Napolitano's proposal to keep undergraduate tuition steady for a third consecutive year is in line with Gov. Jerry Brown's funding proposals. The Democratic governor has called for moderate annual increases in the UC budget as long as the UC does not raise tuition at least through 2016-17 academic year.

PHOTO: Janet Napolitano, then director of the Department of Homeland Security, shown on April 17, 2013. Abaca Press/ MCT/ Olivier Douliery. 

Stanford University studies look at how California's prison realignment is playing out

The state's prison realignment program shifted thousands of would-be state prisoners to local control. But it didn't set up a mechanism for tracking what happened to the population or the impact on the counties where they ended up.

Now, two papers out of Stanford Law School's Criminal Justice Center look at how realignment is playing out in California counties. 

How realignment is perceived

In the first study, Stanford Law Professor Joan Petersilia spoke with 125 local stakeholders: police chiefs, district attorneys, public defenders, probation officers, judges, and sheriffs. The idea was to get a sense of how realignment is going. It resulted in "a portrait of counties struggling, often heroically, to carry out an initiative that was poorly planned and imposed upon them almost overnight."

Nonetheless, Petersilia found most law enforcement accepted that realignment is "here to stay," and that "the old system was yielding disappointing results." 

Perhaps the most optimistic and supportive group, probation officers, felt realignment: "gave them an opportunity to fully test whether well-tailored rehabilitation services can keep lower-level felony offenders from committing new crimes and returning to prison."

Petersilia also offers a number of recommendations based on the conversations:

• Create a database of state prisoners released to county probation supervision.
• Consider an offender's past crimes when determining his or her level of post-prison supervision (parole or probation).
• Cap county jail sentences at three years, and consider prison time for repeat probation violators (like sex offenders who cut off their GPS monitors). 

Such changes, Petersilia suggests, could help law enforcement deal with the challenges realignment has brought. 

Where the money is going

The second study examines how California counties are spending billions of dollars they've been allocated by the state to implement realignment.

Looking at the county's plans for the first year of realignment, University of Denver Sociology Professor Jeffrey Lin found that counties varied in whether they allocated more of their realignment dollars to law enforcement or treatment and rehabilitation.

Lin found counties that had relatively fewer per capita law enforcement personnel (like Riverside and Kings counties) used realignment dollars to beef up their law enforcement ranks.

Other counties that invested more heavily in law enforcement (like Los Angeles and Kern counties) may have felt compelled to invest in law enforcement because of higher crime rates and politically, their "relatively high preference for prison for drug crimes."

Those investing more in treatment and rehabilitation also shared some characteristics.

A category of counties that included Alameda and Sonoma tended to have high Black unemployment rates and popular county sheriff's. In these counties, Lin hypothesizes: "high confidence in the sheriff’s office may allow key leaders to address those needs in less politically popular ways—i.e., pursuing treatment as a solution to crime problems."

Overall, "Sheriff and Law Enforcement spending is generally a product of local needs (crime conditions and dedication to law enforcement) and preference for punishment."

Whereas, "Programs and Services spending fundamentally revolves around electoral
confidence in the Sheriff."

Lin adds the caveat that only the first year of planned realignment spending was included in the study. He plans to follow up to see how the trends hold up over time. 

Dianne Feinstein pushing for customers to keep their health plans

Sen. Dianne Feinstein believes if you like your current health insurance plan you should be able to keep it.

Feinstein, D-Calif., said Tuesday she was cosponsoring legislation honoring President Barack Obama's oft-repeated pledge allowing individuals who buy their own health plans to retain their current rates and health providers.

The bill by Sen. Mary Landrieu, D-La., would let those who purchased coverage after the passage of the federal health care reform to hold onto the plans unless their insurer pulls out of the individual market.

Feinstein's support, the first from a senator representing a deep blue state, underscores the discomfort among some Democrats with the health law's uneven roll-out, including computer glitches that have hobbled early enrollment in several states. Earlier Tuesday, former President Bill Clinton was quoted saying he believed Obama should stand by his original commitment.
In her statement, Feinstein said the bill "provides a simple fix to a complex problem."

"The Affordable Care Act is a good law, but it is not perfect," she said. "I believe the Landrieu bill is a commonsense fix that will protect individuals in the private insurance market from being forced to change their insurance plan. I hope Congress moves quickly to enact it."

Keeping the Affordable Care Act Promise Act would require that renewal notices inform customers of their options, including shopping for a new plan on the federal or a state insurance marketplace such as Covered California as well as mandate insurers to state why a plan does not meet new minimum standards established by the law.

Millions of Americans, including nearly 1 million in California, have been notified that their plans were being terminated Dec. 31 because they don't meet the minimum standards. Nearly 600,000 of the customers here can expect to pay more for coverage.

Feinstein said that in the last three months her office has received nearly 31,000 calls, emails and letters from constituents with many of them distressed by the cancellations and facing steep out-of-pocket monthly increases. A man from Rancho Mirage told the senator he would have to pay about $400 more a month through the exchange for essentially the same coverage.

"Too many Americans are struggling to make ends meet. We must ensure that in our effort to reform the health care system, we do not allow unintended consequences to go unaddressed.

A similar version to the bill is expected to be taken up in the GOP-led House later this week.


PHOTO: US Sen. Diane Feinstein talks to the Sacramento Metro Chamber of Commerce at the Sacramento Convention Center, Tuesday Aug. 12, 2008. The Sacramento Bee/ Brian Baer 

California's unemployment insurance deficit shrinking slowly

Although California's once-dismal employment picture is slowly improving, the state's Unemployment Insurance Fund is not only plagued by digital glitches, but is still paying out more in benefits than employers are paying into the UIF in taxes, according to a new report from the state Department of Employment Development.

Some other revenue, including earnings on fund balances, are offsetting the shortfall, so the immense deficit in the UIF, $10.2 billion at the end of 2012, will decline fractionally to $9.7 billion by the end of this year, the EDD report predicts, then continue to decline as employment improves and insurance benefit payouts drop.

The UIF deficit has been covered by loans from the federal government, on which the state is now paying interest, and the feds have also boosted their share of employers' payroll taxes to begin repaying the debt.

The department predicts that the UIF deficit will shrink to $7 billion by the end of 2015 as unemployment drops from 1.9 million workers in 2012 to 1.3 million in 2015 and payouts decline from $6.6 billion in 2012 to $5.7 billion in 2015.

Employers paid $5.4 billion into the UIF in 2012 and that is expected to increase to $6.2 billion in 2015. Additionally, the boost in federal taxes to repay the debt is expected to surpass $600 million this year and $1 billion by 2015.

The UIF pays basic benefits to unemployed workers and benefit extensions have been financed by the federal government. But due to the state's improving job picture, the 100 percent federally financed extension, which paid out $7.2 billion to jobless Californians in 2012, and $4.6 billion this year, will end on Dec. 31.

Gov. Jerry Brown has proposed changes in the unemployment insurance program to improve its ability to cope with economic downturns, but the Legislature has so far refused to act.

PHOTO: Former and current high school students attend a junior college exploration workshop sponsored by the Greater Sacramento Urban League. One of every three new high school graduates not going to college in the Sacramento region couldn't find work last year, census figures showed. The high school classes of 2009 and 2010 were about 40 percent less likely to find jobs out of school than their counterparts from three years prior. The Sacramento Bee/Randy Pench

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California still has highest poverty rate under new method

California still has - by a huge margin - the highest poverty rate of any state under an alternative Census Bureau calculation that includes the cost of living.

The Census Bureau report, issued Wednesday, says that nearly a quarter of California's 38 million residents live in poverty by the alternative method - almost 9 million - and the state's 23.8 percent rate is approached only by Washington, D.C.'s 22.7 percent.

Among other states, the second highest alternative poverty rate is found in Nevada at 19.8 percent while the lowest rates are found in Iowa (8.6 percent) and Wyoming (9.2 percent). Nationally, the alternative rate is 16 percent.while higher than the national official rate of 15.1 percent, it is surpassed by those of many other states.

The official rate is based on half-century-old criteria that have been criticized as being obsolete, leading the Census Bureau to develop the alternative method that uses broader indices, including the cost of living. The official rate assumes, in essence, that the cost of living is the same nationwide.

California scored the highest rate during the Census Bureau's first report on the alternative method and continues with that dubious title. A few weeks ago, the Public Policy Institute of California released a report using methodology similar to the Census Bureau's alternative and came up with similar results.

The official rate is used for a wide variety of federal and state programs. Were the alternative method to become the official one, there would be huge upheavals in those programs, possibly meaning a big jump in federal aid to California.

PHOTO: Kazoo Yang, 31, spent most of the day packing up her possessions as Sacramento police officers evict 150 homeless people from an illegal campground along the American River. The Sacramento Bee/Manny Crisostomo

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Blue Shield gives California policyholders three-month reprieve

Roughly 113,000 Californians whose individual health plans were set to expire at the end of the year will be given the option to extend their coverage though the end of March.

Those with individual plans issued by Blue Shield of California Life & Health Insurance Company will be allowed to retain their plans for an extra three months regardless of whether they purchased coverage before the March 2010 passage of the federal health care law - the cutoff for "grandfathered" policies.

State officials estimate upward of 1 million Californians were receiving cancellation notices. Nearly 600,000 residents who buy their own health insurance are bracing to pay more for new plans in large part because of the federal health care overhaul. Blue Shield had given a three-month notice to 119,000 subscribers that their plans would be withdrawn from the market and replaced with new compliant policies.

Insurance Commissioner Dave Jones suggested the cancellations required a six-month warning and threatened legal action if existing policyholders were not allowed to retain their plans until March 31.

"Our action today is solely related, as it should be, to the question of whether Blue Shield complied with the notice requirement. They did not," Jones said. "We told them they needed to comply, and we reached this agreement with them."

The cancellations have enraged customers nationwide and caused headaches for President Barack Obama, who last week was forced to walk back repeated assertions that Americans who were satisfied with their health plans could keep them.

Stephen Shivinsky, a spokesman for the company, said it was able to accommodate Jones' request because the insurance plans in question are regulated by the Department of Insurance. New plans offered on the state insurance marketplace, Covered California, are regulated by the Department of Managed Health Care and are bound by the model contract between the exchange and insurance companies.

Blue Shield is mailing letters to 80,000 households informing them of the change and letting them know that they would have to ask to extend their coverage in their current plan. The deadline to retain current coverage is Dec. 6.

Still, Shivinsky said the company is warning customers that an extension is not without complications. Significant risks include: Having to pay a deductible twice in one year; missing tax credits and cost-sharing subsidies for plans that meet new requirements of the federal health care overhaul and are purchased via the exchange; and needing to enroll in a new plan by March 15, 2014 to avoid a gap in coverage after March 31.

"We are providing a lot of cautions to our subscribers if they choose to extend their coverage," Shivinsky said.

PHOTO: Then-Assemblyman Dave Jones, D-Sacramento, holds a news conference to announce legislation on March 13, 2009. The Sacramento Bee/Brian Baer.

Editor's Note: Updated at 11:30 a.m. to reflect comments from Jones.

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World's 5th Largest Economy Takes on Climate Change

It's rare to be in the midst of an experience and realize that that very moment is history in the making. I just experienced such a moment.

I was a participant at a gathering in San Francisco where the Governors of California, Oregon, Washington and the Premier of British Columbia made a commitment to work as a region to combat global climate change. With passion and courage these four leaders boldly went where very few politicians have been willing to go.

By signing the Pacific Coast Action Plan On Climate and Energy, the four jurisdictions agreed to an ambitious agenda including putting a price on carbon in Washington and Oregon that will complement B.C.'s carbon tax and California's cap and trade programs. In effect this would establish a carbon market in the world's fifth largest economy.

The standing room only crowd consisted largely of business representatives. B.C. Minister of the Environment Mary Polak, said, "Leadership in climate action is good for your economy." She noted that due to the B.C. carbon tax the province's economy and population has grown while their fossil fuel consumption has dropped. Steve Clem, of Skansa, one of the world's largest construction companies, said they were in support of this action plan on climate and energy because it was good for their business, "We are growing as a company because of sustainable building practices not despite it."

Another unprecedented occurrence on a day filled with them was the participation by representatives of the West Coast's multi-million dollar shellfish industry. Their livelihoods are in grave danger as a result of carbon emissions. Oceans act like a massive sponge absorbing airborne carbon. This is changing the chemistry of the oceans, causing them to become more acidic. In fact ocean acidity has risen 30 percent since the Industrial Revolution. Due to its unique system of currents and upwelling events the Pacific Northwest is being impacted harder and sooner than any other place on the globe. Acidity levels in some places are already so high that oyster larvae cannot survive. Some shellfish growers have left the region; others have installed expensive monitoring equipment and shut down operations when ocean acidity is dangerously high.

Coupled with discussion of the compelling economic opportunities was a strong sense of urgency and moral imperative. Washington Governor Jay Inslee said, "We are the first generation to feel the sting of climate change and the last to be able to do anything about it." Oregon Governor John Kitzhaber stated that climate change was the greatest challenge we will face in the decades to come.

The West Coast region is not waiting for the federal government to take action. As Congress remains gridlocked and climate deniers wield bizarre, scientifically-baseless power in DC, West Coast leadership is stepping up to the most pressing global issue facing humanity.

As we headed back to Oregon our plane passed snow-covered Mt. Shasta glistening in the sun. I realized this was what was at stake, at the heart of the remarkable step the governors and premier had just taken. If we want our children's children to be able to experience awe at the beauty of a magnificent snow-covered mountain we must act.

It reminded me of the Wallace Stegner quote Governor Kitzhaber had used to close his speech:

"One cannot be pessimistic about the West. This is the native home of hope. When it fully learns that cooperation, not rugged individualism, is the quality that most characterizes and preserves it, then it will have achieved itself and outlived its origins. Then it has a chance to create a society to match its scenery."

I am a bit more hopeful today that might actually create such a society.

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