Progress, But Not Yet Perfection: A Californian's Perspective on the New Farm Bill

Much has already been said and written about last week's passage of the Agricultural Act of 2014, otherwise known as the Farm Bill. Observers have offered a mix of lamentation and celebration, with weight on the former. Unexpectedly, I am more pleased than put off by the results because I see what may prove to be the beginning of a fundamental shift.

I see a Farm Bill that supports increased spending on research, specialty crops, healthy food access, small farmers, farmers markets and organic transition. This indicates the Congress is beginning to hear the message that public funds should be focused on growing health-promoting foods and programs that stimulate more diverse, regionally-oriented, ecologically sensitive farming systems across the nation.

Ecological Conservation

Although the bill remains overly generous to commodity crop farmers, the most egregiously indefensible subsidy payments are ending and the bill now requires farmers to observe conservation compliance. They must protect certain prairie lands in the Midwest and minimize soil erosion generally to qualify for an insurance subsidy equal to 65 percent of their premiums. Perhaps a new principle has been established that says the public will not protect farmers unless farmers in turn protect our soil and water. In the face of California's 500-year drought and other drastic weather events nationally (many erosion causing) this protection could not be more urgent.

That said, this environmental victory risks being offset by a nearly $4 billion cut in the primary USDA conservation programs that have offered payment and cost reimbursement to farmers and ranchers for ecological activities. But because of the new conservation compliance provision, farmers will need to be somewhat proactive ecologically. The net impact of these contradictory developments is unclear. Time will tell.

California and the 2014 Farm Bill

Crucial for California, the 2014 Farm Bill significantly increases public investment in the programs that impact fruits, nuts and vegetables. According to the Specialty Crop Farm Bill Alliance, which led the fight for increases, the nation will invest 55 percent more in growing these important healthy foods than it did in 2008. Most pleasing are the big increases to research programs specific to fruits, nuts and vegetables as well as the Specialty Crop Block Grant program.

Block Grants alone should bring over $20 million per year to California for investment in farming innovations and promotion of the consumption of nuts, fruits and vegetables. The California Department of Food and Agriculture does a fabulous job of using these block grant funds for grower, nonprofit and community-based initiatives. Grant recipients have improved healthy food access, reduced reliance on toxic chemicals, protected precious water supplies, and enhanced food safety measures, all supporting California's public health and ecological resilience.

There are also more funds for farmers markets, organic agriculture and small producers seeking to add value to their crops by processing and packaging. With about 10 percent of the nation's farmers' markets, 10 percent of the nation's total farms and 20 percent of the nation's organic farms, California is positioned to gain an additional $30 million over the first five years of allocations from these programs.

Funds for the Bill's primary Research Title rose by $1.1 billion, a critical improvement in this age of climate change and resource depletion. This will greatly benefit California agriculture, particularly research programs within the University of California's College of Agriculture and Natural Resources and Cooperative Extension. California's huge dairy industry will also benefit from $900M in price stabilization measures. And a timely disaster relief provision related to drought losses will mitigate some impacts to California's livestock producers. Clearly, the Bill is a "bonanza" for California's farmers and ranchers.

Fate of Nutrition Programs

Finally, some thoughts on the Nutrition Title, which is the heart of the Act, accounting for 70 percent of the Farm Bill budget (around $756 billion dollars over 10 years). Many are deeply disappointed with the new title because of the $8 billion cut to SNAP. Cutting money to the least privileged in tough economic times is unconscionable. If you add in the cuts to programs that serve what the Farm Bill calls socially disadvantaged farmers and ranchers (Native Americans, farmers of color and women), the dearth of compassion is even more pronounced. But there are actually some impressively positive developments in the Nutrition Title.

Native Americans, who suffer the highest obesity rates in the nation, are now authorized to purchase with federal benefits "traditional foods" which are often metabolically healthier than the highly processed foods in convenience stores and fast food joints ubiquitous on many reservations. Schools are now authorized to purchase local and seasonal produce. SNAP can now be used to purchase shares in Community Supported Agriculture projects. The new Healthy Food Financing Initiativechampioned by PolicyLink provides $125 million to promote development of healthy food retail sites, jobs and food hubs in communities where unemployment is rampant and fast food and liquor stores are the primary food source. And most important to me because of ROC's work to build the California Market Match Consortium, Congress created a new $100 million program to provide cash incentives for nutrition benefit clients who purchase fruit, nuts and vegetables directly from farmers.

Just as the Union of Concerned Scientists framed it, the Agricultural Act of 2014 contains the seeds of a new kind of Farm Bill. It is not yet the right bill for the 21st Century, but it is heading in the right direction. It offers conditional incentives to guide farmers and consumers to make choices that support health and resilience. It is a more future-focused bill, substantially increasing investments in research to stimulate innovation. It begins to emphasize healthy rather than cheap calories. Most of all, the changes to the bill indicate to me that the Congress is listening much more than in the past to the advocates for reform. That development alone bodes well for the future of food systems in this country.

This was previously posted on the Roots of Change blog.

via: http://www.huffingtonpost.com/michael-r-dimock/progress-but-not-yet-perfection_b_4776667.html?utm_hp_ref=politics&ir=Politics

Republican Faulconer elected mayor in San Diego

Six months after Democratic Mayor Bob Filner left office in disgrace because more than a dozen women had stepped forward to accuse him of sexual harassment, San Diegans have chosen a Republican to take over.

On Tuesday, "Kevin Faulconer was elected by a wide margin over fellow Councilman David Alvarez," our colleagues at KPBS report. "The veteran Republican councilman soundly defeated his Democratic opponent 55 to 45 percent (with 86 percent of the vote counted.)"

The San Diego Union-Tribune says Faulconer's victory marks "a new chapter for the city" after Filner's "scandal-plagued tenure." Also, the Union-Tribune says:

A Faulconer victory breathes new life into the local Republican Party by restoring its control of the mayor's office that its candidates have occupied for much of the past four decades. Faulconer also becomes the only Republican mayor of a top 10 U.S. city, making him one of the party's highest-profile leaders in the state. The results dashed the hopes of Alvarez to become San Diego's first Latino mayor and its youngest in nearly 120 years.Faulconer is 47. Alvarez is 33.

KPBS notes that "in a full-circle development, it was announced Monday that Irene McCormack-Jackson — the top Filner aide whose revelations of sexual harassment energized the campaign to oust him — settled her lawsuit against the former mayor and the city. McCormack-Jackson will get $250,000, according to her attorney and the San Diego City Attorney's Office."

In December, Filner was sentenced to three months of home confinement and three years of probation for harassing women while he was mayor of San Diego. He had pleaded guity to "one felony and two misdemeanors for placing a woman in a headlock, kissing another woman and grabbing the buttocks of a third."

The former congressman served less than a year as mayor.

Copyright 2014 NPR. To see more, visit http://www.npr.org/.

via: http://www.scpr.org/news/2014/02/12/42166/republican-faulconer-elected-mayor-in-san-diego/

Gov. Jerry Brown wins two more years to reduce prison crowding

SACRAMENTO — Gov. Jerry Brown on Monday won two more years to reduce prison crowding, a significant victory in his protracted battle with federal judges over inmate numbers.

The judges gave the governor until the end of February 2016 to ease crowding to levels they consider safe and imposed a schedule for doing so. In return, the administration must immediately make more inmates — mostly the elderly and ill — eligible for parole.

Monday's ruling averts a potentially explosive showdown between Brown and the judges before the governor officially launches his expected reelection campaign. It also reduces the chances that Brown will be forced to release inmates early — although if the state misses any of the court's new deadlines, a yet-to-be-named official will have the power to set prisoners free.

"It is obviously very good news for the governor," said Raphael Sonenshein, executive director of the Pat Brown Institute for Public Affairs at Cal State L.A. The prospect of public backlash over mass prison releases, even those ordered by a court, "did have potential for creating problems for what is largely a smooth reelection campaign."

The judges' first benchmark is June 30, by which time the state must shed 1,000 inmates from its lockups, despite an increase in the rate at which they are arriving.

California now has 117,600 prisoners in prisons built for 81,600, and just over 12,200 more are housed in contract beds scattered across four states. The administration's most recent projections show that without changes, California will add about 10,000 inmates in the next four years.

In agreeing to Brown's request for a delay, the panel of three judges — who last spring excoriated the governor for defying their orders — cite his proposal to end the legal tussle and to "consider the establishment of a commission to recommend reforms of state penal and sentencing laws."

The governor has not announced a concrete plan for the formation of such a panel.

cj

Lawyers for inmates say a constitutional crisis has been avoided now that the judges won't have to carry out their threat to hold Brown in contempt. But otherwise the attorneys found little to like.

"We're quite disappointed," said Michael Bien, lead lawyer for about 33,000 inmates in a class-action case over prison mental health care. "There is no justification for the delay. All of the things they are talking about doing now, they could have done years ago."

Republican critics of Brown's prison policies were upset that the state must now put more felons on parole, even through credits for good behavior.

"This court order is tragic," said a statement from state Sen. Jim Nielsen (R-Gerber), a frequent critic of Brown's criminal justice record. "Once released, these dangerous felons will threaten our local communities, where residents are already suffering from increased crime and where police agencies are overburdened."

But state Senate leader Darrell Steinberg (D-Sacramento), who had worked independently to negotiate a settlement between the state and the court, called the outcome "the best of both worlds."

The state now has the time to invest in rehabilitation programs aimed at keeping offenders from returning to prison once they are released, he said, while the inmate population "continues to be reduced in real and enforceable ways."

Steinberg, an advocate for the revision of California's sentencing laws, nodded to political realities by adding, "There's no question sentencing reform has to be the twin of these investments.... It is probably better in a non-election year."

Brown also has acknowledged the political realities of the prolonged crisis. He has been meeting with law enforcement agencies and prosecutors across the state to talk about the effects of his first pass at reducing prison crowding — a law that since late 2011 has diverted lower-level felons and parole violators to county jails, many of them already overcrowded.

Under the judges' Monday order, Brown must immediately go forward with plans he announced last month. Those include expanding eligibility for parole for inmates who are medically incapacitated or those over 60 who have spent at least 25 years in prison.

He must also allow "second-strikers" whose crimes were nonviolent to shave off up to a third of their prison time through good behavior or participation in rehabilitation programs. And those prisoners must be considered for parole when they have served half their sentence.

Brown's administration also agreed to open programs at 13 prisons to help prepare inmates for release and to pursue discussions on opening similar facilities in some counties.

The two-year grace period from U.S. District Judges Lawrence Karlton and Thelton Henderson and 9th Circuit Court of Appeals Judge Stephen Reinhardt frees up money Brown said he would have otherwise used to lease more custody beds. In his budget proposal last month, the governor earmarked $40 million for the reentry programs now required by the court.

The judges' order also comes with a continued freeze on the number of beds California can rent in other states.

paige.stjohn@latimes.com

via: http://www.latimes.com/local/la-me-ff-brown-prisons-20140211,0,607017.story#ixzz2t2NwoStC

San Bernardino County Sheriff’s Department opens expanded jail

ADELANTO >> Three years in the making, the $145.4 million expansion of the High Desert Detention Center adds 1,392 new beds to help relieve jail overcrowding brought about by the realignment of state prisoners.

On Thursday, hundreds rank and file from the San Bernardino County Sheriff’s Department and officials from across the county gathered at the High Desert Detention Center to celebrate the opening of the expanded jail. The project increases the jail’s footprint by 297,000 square feet to over 8 acres, and includes new medical and dental facilities that eliminate the need for deputies to transport inmates to West Valley Detention Center in Rancho Cucamonga for those services.

“We’ve constructed a facility that is truly state of the art,” Sheriff John McMahon said during Thursday’s event, where a tour of the jail’s expanded wing followed. “This is a great opportunity for us to keep moving forward in the corrections business.”

A special coating on the walls in the jail’s intake and medical areas reduces the spread of infectious diseases such as staph infections, which are common in jails, prisons, and other communal living facilities.

Not having to drive prisoners to Rancho Cucamonga from the High Desert allows deputies to get back to their patrol duties faster after booking them in Adelanto.

The jail’s expanded wing will open in three phases, as the Sheriff’s Department’s budget allows for staffing of the facility. The first phase will see 222 beds filled within the next couple weeks, and the inmates who get those beds will be those whose cases are being heard in High Desert courtrooms.

Construction on the project began in 2011 and included a new 25,00-square-foot booking building, three housing units, remodeled kitchen and laundry facilities, a new parking lot and fire access roads. A number of unforeseen issues during construction including design flaws and changes to building codes caused the project budget to increase by $25.4 million.

The facility is equipped with a high definition video-surveillance system, and video monitors in each housing unit will allow inmates to visit with family and others. They will no longer be allowed face-to-face visitations because inmate movement is being restricted for security purposes, said the jail’s commander Capt. Jon Marhoefer.

Video visitation has been in place for the past year at smaller jails in Barstow and Joshua Tree and is becoming a trend statewide, Marhoefer said.

“You will see more and more of this,” Marhoefer said, adding that the video visiting system at the High Desert Detention Center is the first time the county has implemented the technology on such a large scale.

As the county’s jails swelled in the 1990s and began reaching full capacity, the need for more became apparent. In 2008, the county applied for, and received, $100 million from the state for the expansion project, initially budgeted at $144 million.

The state funding was made available through the Offender Rehabilitation Services Act of 2007, which freed up $1.2 billion for jail construction projects across California.

California Republicans seek to redirect high-speed rail dollars

Saying California has betrayed the will of voters who approved a controversial high-speed rail project, Assembly Republicans on Thursday proposed giving those voters a redo.

"It's clear that the current high-speed rail project hardly resembles what the voters narrowly approved," said Assembly Republican Leader Connie Conway of Tulare.

Under the plan announced by a group of Republicans, voters would be able to decide whether to channel $8.5 billion in bond money, endorsed by voters via a 2008 ballot initiative, towards local transportation infrastucture projects.

The plan reflects both Republican ire over Gov. Jerry Brown's embattled project and the train's tenuous financial position. A Sacramento Superior Court judge in November ordered the Brown administration to tear up its funding plan, saying it had strayed from the terms of Proposition 1A, which authorized the bond issue back in 2008.

The Brown administration has since prevailed upon the California Supreme Court, and the high court ordered the case to be sent back to a lower court for an expedited review.

In addition to redirecting the high-speed rail money, the Republican package of four bills would dedicate up to $2.5 billion of a newfound state surplus to paying off transportation loans; ensure billions in fuel tax money flows annually into local infrastructure projects, per the terms of Proposition 42; and compel the state to repay $2.5 billion in gasoline tax revenue diverted elsewhere during lean budget years.


PHOTO: Assemblywoman Connie Conway, joined by fellow Republicans, unveils the caucus' transportation package in the State Capitol on February 6, 2014. The Sacramento Bee/Jeremy B. White.


via: http://blogs.sacbee.com/capitolalertlatest/2014/02/california-republicans-seek-to-redirect-high-speed-rail-dollars.html

Southern California leads in nation's domestic migration

California's population boomed in the two decades after World War II due to a high birthrate and massive migration from other states.

Population growth cooled off in the 1970s, then surged again in the 1980s with a wave of immigration from other nations, followed by a second baby boom among new immigrants.
More recently, the birthrate has been falling, foreign immigration has slowed to a trickle and the state loses more people to other states than it gains.

However, as a new Census Bureau report illustrates, the state - particularly Southern California - has been seeing a lot of movement, some to and from other states but also much within the state.

Between 2007 and 2011, as a severe recession hit California, Southern California counties were the nation's most active in terms of human movement.

The nearly 42,000 people who moved from Los Angeles County to adjacent San Bernardino County during the period was the largest county-to-county migration in the country. It was followed by the nearly 41,000 who moved from Los Angeles to Orange County and, interestingly, the more than 35,000 who moved to Los Angeles from Asia, the nearly 31,000 who moved from Orange to Los Angeles, and the more than 27,000 who moved from Los Angeles to Riverside County.

So the nation's five top relocations all involved Los Angeles County. Other Southern California population shifts are to be found in the nation's top 25, such as the nearly 20,000 who moved from Riverside to San Bernardino.

The report reveals that Los Angeles and San Diego counties were two of just five counties in the nation that lost population to at least 1,000 other counties. And it indicates that Southern California's shifts of population within the region were high at all income and education levels.

While Los Angeles was a net loser in the migration of residents to other nearby counties and other states, it was a net gainer in foreign immigration, particularly from Asia. It also attracted a high percentage of domestic and foreign migrants with advanced degrees, but was among the leaders in losing highly educated residents to other locales.


PHOTO: Rush-hour commuters line up on the 110 freeway, Dec. 14, 2000, in Los Angeles. Associated Press/Damian Dovarganes

via: http://blogs.sacbee.com/capitolalertlatest/2014/02/southern-california-leads-in-nations-domestic-migration.html

No Link Between California’s Prison Realignment and Increased Crime?

Despite being blamed by some members of law enforcement for a recent uptick in crime in some counties, there is no connection between California’s Prison Realignment and increased criminal activity, according to a report released Wednesday.

The Center of Juvenile and Criminal Justice report found little evidence of there being more crime due to realignment based on random crime trends in counties since the implementation of the law.

For example, Los Angeles County, which has one of the highest percentage of realigned offenders, has continued to see a steady drop in total crime, including an 11 percent decrease in violent crime.

This lack of a clear pattern of crime shows it’s still too soon to draw any conclusion when it comes to the relationship between realignment and crime, according to a Center of Juvenile and Criminal Justice news release.

“We are pleased that CJCJ took an impartial look at the data and found no causal relationship between crime and realignment…,” said Jeffrey Callison, spokesman for the California Department of Corrections and Rehabilitation.

Callison said crime rates are continually rising and falling, and they vary from one community to the next, and from one crime category to the next.

California was ordered to reduce the state prison population to about 110,000, or 137.5 percent of prison capacity, as a way to improve the quality of inmates’ health. To accomplish that, Assembly Bill 109, the state’s prison realignment law, shifted the responsibility of monitoring lower-level inmates from the state to the counties.

Under AB 109, those convicted of a triple-non offense — nonviolent, nonserious, nonsexual — would be eligible to be supervised by county probation departments or serve their sentences in county jail. AB 109 was implemented Oct. 1, 2011, as a way for the state to comply with a federal three-judge panel’s order to decrease the population of California’s prisons. The panel found the overcrowded conditions in state prisons led to inadequate medical attention for inmates.

However, high-ranking law enforcement officials from across the state have talked about the dangers of prison realignment.

Glendale Police Chief Ronald De Pompa has called the legislation “dangerous public policy,” and Fontana Police Chief Rod Jones has labeled the law a failure after an AB 109 probationer, David Mulder, allegedly fatally stabbed a woman in 2013 at a Fontana Park and Ride.

At this week’s Lakewood State of the City address, sheriff’s Capt. Merrill Ladenheim referenced a report from the Public Policy Institute of California that found a connection between AB 109 and property crimes. During his presentation at the meeting, Ladenheim called realignment, as well as the issue of county jail capacity, a challenge to public safety.

Along with finding no real connection between realignment and an increase in crimes, the Center of Juvenile and Criminal Justice report, which used data from 2010 to 2012, found that California’s 58 counties have seen varying crime rates since the implementation of AB 109.

Kings County had a 46 percent increase in violent crime trends, according to the data used for the report, while Humboldt and Napa counties saw a 26 percent drop.

Los Angeles County, which received a higher-than-average proportion of realigned offenders, has experienced a drop in violent as well as property crimes.

Only Placer, Sacramento, San Mateo and Tulare counties experienced similar, across-the-board crime reductions, however, they have relatively smaller populations compared to Los Angeles County.

San Bernardino County saw an increase in overall crime by about 10 percent from 2010 to 2012 but a slight decrease in violent crime.

Some experts said they feel it’s not necessarily those who are under county supervision who may be driving up some crime rates but those who are no longer under the watch of any agency.

“Realignment now permits offenders who are sentenced under AB 109 guidelines to be given straight or split sentencing, thus allowing them to avoid any supervision after serving a jail sentence instead of a prison commitment,” said Chris Condon, spokesman for the San Bernardino County Probation Department.

Under sentencing code 1170, a person convicted of a triple-non can opt to serve a portion of their time in county jail and then spend the remainder of their time being supervised by county probation. They can also serve their entire time in county jail and not require any supervision once their terms have been completed.

“These offenders do not fall under our jurisdiction, and recidivism rates cannot be determined,” Condon said. “We know that there has been a 40 percent reduction in recidivism for the AB 109 offenders we do supervise.”

via: http://justicenotjails.org/no-link-between-californias-prison-realignment-and-increased-crime/