BOARD LEGISLATIVE COMMITTEE Friday, January 26, 2018 12:30 p.m. EBRPD – Administrative Headquarters 2950 Peralta Oaks Court Oakland, California 94605
The following agenda items are listed for Committee consideration. In accordance with the Board Operating Guidelines, no official action of the Board will be taken at this meeting; rather, the Committee’s purpose shall be to review the listed items and to consider developing recommendations to the Board of Directors.
A copy of the background materials concerning these agenda items, including any material that may have been submitted less than 72 hours before the meeting, is available for inspection on the District’s website (www. ebparks.org), the Headquarters reception desk, and at the meeting.
Public Comment on Agenda Items If you wish to testify on an item on the agenda, please complete a speaker’s form and submit it to the recording secretary. Your name will be called when the item is announced for discussion.
Accommodations and Access District facilities and meetings comply with the Americans with Disabilities Act. If special accommodations are needed for you to participate, please contact the Clerk of the Board at 510-544-2020 as soon as possible, but preferably at least three working days prior to the meeting.
AGENDA
TIME ITEM STATUS STAFF 12:30 I. STATE LEGISLATION / OTHER MATTERS A. NEW LEGISLATION R Doyle/Pfuehler 1. AJR 29 – Prohibition on New Oil and Gas Drilling Offshore (Limon D-Santa Barbara) 2. HR 70 – Prohibition on New Oil and Gas Drilling Offshore (Baker R-Dublin) 3. AB 1775 and SB 834 – Prohibition on Infrastructure needed for Offshore Oil and Gas Development - (Muratsuchi D- Torrance and Jackson D-Santa Barbara)
B. OTHER MATTERS I Doyle/Pfuehler 1. Governor’s Budget 2. Park Bond Update 3. Other matters
II. FEDERAL LEGISLATION / OTHER MATTERS A. NEW LEGISLATION R Pfuehler 1. S. 2130 – Outdoor Economy Act (Tester D-MT) 2. S. 2176 – Safeguarding America’s Future and Environment Act (Whitehouse D-RI)
B. OTHER MATTERS I Pfuehler 1. 2018 Legislative meetings in Washington 2. Other Matters
III. STRATEGIC RESEARCH INSTITUTE TRACKING I Pfuehler/Doyle INSTRUMENT
IV. ARTICLES
V. OPEN FORUM PUBLIC COMMENT Individuals wishing to address the Committee on a topic not on the agenda may do so by completing a speaker’s form and submitting it to the recording secretary.
VII. BOARD COMMENTS
(R) Recommendation for Future Board Consideration (I) Information (D) Discussion Legislative Committee Members Future Meetings: Dee Rosario (Chair); Dennis Waespi, Beverly Lane January 8 & 26 July 20 Colin Coffey, Alternate February – NO MTG August – NO MTG Erich Pfuehler, Government Affairs Manager *March 9 September 21 April 20 October 19 May 18 November – NO MTG June – NO MTG *December 14 TO: Board Legislative Committee (Chair Dee Rosario, Dennis Waespi, Beverly Lane, Alt. Colin Coffey)
FROM: Robert E. Doyle, General Manager Erich Pfuehler, Government Affairs Manager
SUBJECT: Board Legislative Committee Meeting WHEN: Friday, January 26, 2017 12:30 PM Lunch will be served
WHERE: Board Room, Peralta Oaks ______
Items to be discussed:
I. STATE LEGISLATION / OTHER MATTERS A. NEW LEGISLATION 1. AJR 29 – Prohibition on New Oil and Gas Drilling Offshore (Limon D-Santa Barbara) This is a non-binding resolution supporting the current federal prohibition on new oil and gas drilling in Federal waters offshore of California. There have been no new offshore oil and gas leases in California since the 1969 blowout of a well off the Santa Barbara coast. Earlier this month, the Trump Administration proposed to permit drilling in pretty much all U.S. offshore waters – including the California coast. The proposal identifies 47 new areas where oil companies can buy leases between 2019 and 2024 – including protected waters. The North California Coast is one the 47 areas. A blowout or significant spill there could impact the Bay and District shoreline properties. Almost immediately after the announcement, the Trump Administration removed the Florida Gulf Coast from the list in the proposal, so now other states are actively looking for removal. This resolution helps the Governor and Federal elected officials push back against the Administration’s proposal.
Staff recommendation: Support
2. HR 70 –Prohibition on New Oil and Gas Drilling Offshore (Baker R-Dublin) This is also a non-binding resolution with similar goals as AJR 29 – supporting the continued prohibition on offshore oil drilling and calling on the Administration to exempt California from the planned new oil leases. Given the Assembly Member’s party affiliation, AJR 29 is more likely to be the vehicle that prevails. Since Assembly Member Baker represents a fair bit of the East Bay and has been helpful to the District, staff also recommends supporting her resolution.
Staff Recommendation: Support
3. AB 1775 and SB 834 – Prohibition on Infrastructure needed for Offshore Oil and Gas Development - (Muratsuchi D-Torrance and Jackson D-Santa Barbara) These companion bills prohibit the State Lands Commission from approving any new leases for pipelines, piers, wharves or other infrastructure needed to support new oil and gas development in the three-mile area off the coast that is controlled by the state. These bills stalled last year in the Assembly Appropriations Committee. The Trump Administration
1
proposal to open up the California coast for offshore drilling may provide more support to advance them this year. Given the exposure the Bay has if the California coast were to see a spill, this bill would provide some assurance the District’s shoreline properties would be better protected.
Staff recommendation: Support
B. ISSUES 1. Governor Brown’s 2018-19 Budget Released on January 10, 2018, Governor Brown’s final budget proposal continues to reflect his cautious approach to finances. He continues to warn of an “inevitable recession lurking” in the future. The Natural Resources section does call out SB-5, the park bond on the June ballot. He proposes to spend $1.02 billion for the first year of implementation should the measure pass. Proposals most relevant to the District include: • $463 million – Local and Regional Grant Programs for Neighborhood Parks and Greenway Trails ($186 million of this is for Per Capita Grants and $277 million is for disadvantaged communities) • $110 million – Climate Adaptation and Resiliency • $58 million – River Recreation, Creek and Waterway Improvements • $4 million – State Park System Enhancements The budget includes $1.2 billion ($147 General Fund) for the Department of Parks and Recreation and highlights the “Transformation Team” reforms including a new “Office of Partnerships” to better support partnership arrangements. The budget includes $2.3 billion for CalFire, including $200 million of cap-and-trade funds to support healthy and fire resilient forests. Advocate Doug Houston will provide additional details.
2. Park Bond Update The General Manager and Advocate Doug Houston will provide a verbal update.
3. Other matters
II. FEDERAL LEGISLATION / OTHER MATTERS A. NEW LEGISLATION 1. S. 2130 – Outdoor Economy Act (Tester D-MT) This bill would establish an Outdoor Recreation Advisory Committee to be established within the Department of Interior. The Committee would be tasked with studying increasing public access and “responsible recreation” on public land. The Committee will prepare a biannual report with recommendations about how to increase public access to public lands, address maintenance needs that impact recreational opportunities, reduce barriers for underserved communities to engage in outdoor recreation, promote new and existing service opportunities on public lands, and identify ways for the outdoor recreation community to assist in curtailing the spread of invasive species.
In addition to members from the Forest Service, National Park Service, Bureau of Land Management, Fish and Wildlife Service, Bureau of Reclamation and Army Corps of Engineers, the Committee will include one member representing each of the following groups, appointed jointly by the Departments of Interior and Agriculture: • State fish and wildlife agencies • Tribal governments
2
• Hunting organizations • Fishing organizations • Motorized recreation organizations • Horsemen organizations • Human-powered transportation organizations • Veterans service organizations • Organizations that provide education or outreach to encourage youth participation in the outdoors Given Senator Tester represents Montana and will be on the ballot in 2018, this list of groups makes sense. The District is looking into seeing if a category for “state, regional and local park agencies” could be added. If so, staff would recommend the District support.
Staff Recommendation: Support, if amended
2. S. 2176 – Safeguarding America’s Future and Environment Act (Whitehouse D- RI) This legislation would establish an integrated national approach to ongoing and expected effects of extreme weather and climate change. The Safeguarding America’s Future and Environment Act (SAFE Act) would require federal natural resource agencies to form an interagency working group to plan and implement a long-term national climate change adaptation strategy based on the best available science. This Federal proposal is similar to the California Climate Adaptation Strategy, which the District supported, authored by former Assembly Member Rich Gordon (AB 1482) and signed into law by Governor Brown in October of 2015. The SAFE Act calls upon state, local and tribal governments, as well as nongovernmental organizations, academic institutions and private sector representatives to lend their expertise to the working group. The legislation would require agencies to work together to identify and prioritize specific conservation and management strategies and actions to respond to extreme weather and climate change. It would also encourage the development of state-specific adaptation plans (which California obviously has).
This national strategy would guide federal adaptation plans and reduce redundancy and costs. The SAFE Act would also create the National Climate Change and Wildlife Science Center, to develop and compile scientific information on climate variability.
Senator Dianne Feinstein, Reps. Barbara Lee and Jerry McNerney all cosponsor. The legislation is consistent with the goals of the District’s Climate Action Team.
Staff recommendation: Support
B. ISSUES 1. 2018 Legislative meetings in Washington Staff will go over the priority asks for the District’s D.C. legislative meetings and provide an outline of the District’s annual work week in Washington D.C. The proposed week is February 11-15, 2018 during the Partnership for the National Trails System’s annual Hike the Hill conference.
2. Other Matters
3
III. STRATEGIC RESEARCH INSTITUTE TRACKING INSTRUMENT Dr. George Manross will present findings from a December 2017 District-wide voter survey.
VI. ARTICLES
VII. OPEN FORUM PUBLIC COMMENT
VIII. BOARD COMMENTS
4
Board Legislative Committee Attachment IV January 26, 2018
Trump may be loathed in California, but he continues to reshape its politics
By Joe Garofoli January 20, 2018 Updated: January 20, 2018 7:32pm
• Photo: Jim Bourg, Associated Press President Trump, with first lady Melania holding a Bible and daughter Tiffany at his side, waves after taking the oath of office.
President Trump is wildly unpopular in California, but it’s hard to dispute how much his election, and his first year in office, have reshaped California politics. It starts a game of political musical chairs. If Hillary Clinton had won the 2016 election, few people would be talking up freshman Sen. Kamala Harris as a Democratic candidate for president in 2020. Senior Sen. Dianne Feinstein likely would be enjoying another cakewalk to re-election. Instead, a prominent fellow Democrat, state Sen. Kevin de León of Los Angeles, is challenging her, saying she hasn’t been tough enough on Trump.
Single-payer health care might not be as high on Sacramento’s agenda if the Affordable Care Act weren’t threatened by Trump and the Republican Congress. Without Trump pushing to build a border wall and flip-flopping on what to do about “Dreamers” — those immigrants brought into the country as children — California might not have felt the need to pass a statewide sanctuary law.
If America hadn’t elected a president who has bragged about sexually assaulting women and had 19 women accuse him of inappropriate sexual behavior, there would not have been a Women’s March nor the cultural support for the #MeToo and #TimesUp movements in Hollywood and Sacramento. And perhaps there wouldn’t be a record number of Democrats, including many women, running for Congress here.
All of this has cemented California’s position as the center of Trump resistance. That extends from elected officials in a state dominated by Democrats to new grassroots groups that have sprung up to counter the president and elect Democrats to the U.S. House. Of the 6,000 chapters of the national resistance group Indivisible, 956 groups are in California, according to the organization.
“California is not only the center of the opposition, it’s the battleground of where Trump wants to do a lot of things — like coastal drilling and marijuana” legalization crackdown, said Robert Smith, a professor of political science at San Francisco State University and author of “Polarization and the Presidency: From FDR to Barack Obama.”
“It reminds me of the division between the Southern states and the federal government over civil rights (a half century ago),” Smith said. “It’s just a different set of issues.”
Here are a few areas where the White House and California will continue to clash in Trump’s second year in office: Health care: Advocates for single-payer health care say Trump’s attempt to cripple Obamacare by eliminating the individual mandate as part of the recently passed tax bill, combined with continued increases in premiums — will intensify the push for a different kind of health care system in California. Republicans say eliminating the requirement to buy health insurance allows citizens to decide whether they want to purchase coverage while saving the government money it would have paid in subsidies.
But Republicans don’t have much power in California, where state legislators are looking for ways to fill in the gaps created at the federal level. This week, Democratic lawmakers will hold a bill-pitching session in Sacramento to generate ideas. As state Sen. Ed Hernandez, D-Azusa (Los Angeles County), chairman of the Senate Committee on Health, told CALMatters last week, “Everything they are doing at the federal level, we are doing the opposite.”
If Clinton had won, “We would have been talking about tweaking Obamacare instead of getting rid of the individual mandate,” said Terri Bimes, assistant research director at the Institute of Governmental Studies at UC Berkeley. “Now, it puts the onus of protecting health care on California.”
That has elevated the debate over single-payer into a prime issue in the governor’s race. Two candidates — Lt. Gov. Gavin Newsom and former superintendent of schools Delaine Eastin — are strong supporters of SB562, a single- payer plan before the Legislature, while others are more skeptical if not outright opposed.
National Nurses United, the powerful union behind the state Senate measure, says Trump’s moves against the Affordable Care Act are accelerating the urgency in California to protect those who might lose their health insurance. Plus, those actions likely will affect local elections.
“We have a very strategic plan to be in every single Assembly district talking with voters about this,” said Bonnie Castillo, associate executive director for the California Nurses Association. “This provides an opportunity for California leaders to do a much better job now that (Trump) has gone so low in whittling away health care. This is a time we need to be aggressive and aim high.”
Photo: Godofredo A. Vasquez, Houston Chronicle Cynthia Adams (left) holds a “Save Obamacare” sign during a march outside Houston’s City Hall to protest the health care bill the Senate proposed.
House races: It’s unlikely that veteran Republican congressmen like Rep. Darrell Issa of Vista (San Diego County) and Rep. Ed Royce of Fullerton (Orange County) would be retiring rather than face a wave of well-funded Democratic challengers. In fact, it’s unlikely that wave of challengers would even have emerged in heavily GOP districts. Instead, Trump’s win and his stormy first year spurred Democrats to target 10 Republican-held congressional seats in California — Clinton won seven of these districts. They also motivated an extraordinary number of Democratic candidates to run for Congress. As of last week, 67 Democrats had registered to run in the state’s 14 congressional districts now held by Republicans. That’s more than ran in the last three election cycles — 2012, 2014 and 2016 — combined, said Rob Pyers of the nonpartisan California Target Book, which compiles information on campaigns.
These California Republicans “are enablers of Donald Trump,” said former California Sen. Barbara Boxer, who is managing a super PAC aimed at helping California Democratic candidates in House races and vulnerable incumbent Democratic senators nationwide. “What did they say when he came after immigrants? Nothing.”
Boxer’s position is indicative of how many California candidates are moving left and engaging in a competition of “How anti-Trump are you?”
“If Trump is taking a strong position, then in California, the immediate position people are taking is, ‘We’re on the other side of that,’” said David Mermin, a Democratic consultant and pollster. “So the candidates are looking around and saying, ‘Oh, I have to be tougher on Trump.’
“I’ve been polling over 20 years, and I’ve never seen a focus in which the national policy situation drives what happens at the state level,” Mermin said.
Civic participation: Even for people who dislike Trump, there has been an upside to his election: More people are not just following politics, they’re getting involved. “The Trump era has created a wave of civic participation that we haven’t seen in a long time,” said Aram Fischer, a leader of Indivisible San Francisco, which with 5,000 members is one of the nation’s largest chapters. “You have the labor movement and ‘Dreamers’ and the Movement for Black Lives working together now on stuff where they would have worked separately before. Now, it’s a much more coordinated action.”
Photo: Zach Gibson, Bloomberg Demonstrators rally for “Dreamers” outside the U.S. Capitol on Thursday.
But will street protests turn into voting? A survey of 900 registered Latino voters in California released last week by Latino Decisions found that 68 percent said they were “100 percent” certain that they would vote and 45 percent said they were following politics more than before.
“The first driver of this is the Trump effect,” poll Director Matt Barreto said. “People are very dissatisfied with the actions he’s taking, particularly on immigration.”
Trump’s election — and ongoing revelations of how several Democrat state legislators sexually harassed women in Sacramento — should continue to energize female voters to get more involved in politics. Two Democratic assemblymen resigned in the wake of accusations from women who said they had sexually assaulted them.
“Women who were phone banking a little bit before were suddenly speed dialing senators on all sorts of issues,” said Christine Pelosi, chairwoman of the California Democratic Party Women’s Caucus and a leader in the movement calling out sexual harassment in Sacramento. “When those women saw that even when someone is accused of harassment by multiple women can be elected president, they said, ‘Enough is enough. I’m getting into the arena. I’m getting involved. I’m running for office.’”
Politics: If Trump weren’t president, billionaire San Francisco activist Tom Steyer might have run for U.S. Senate or governor. Instead, Steyer has invested more than $20 million in a campaign — starring himself — to impeach Trump. And he pledged to spend another $30 million on grassroots organizing to help Democrats win House races. Democratic Attorney General Xavier Becerra would be unknown to anyone but political geeks. Instead, he’s remained in the headlines by continuing to challenge the federal government on reshaping immigration law, climate change rules, net neutrality and health care.
Yet, despite all of the animosity in California toward him, Trump does get some political benefit from being so loathed west of the Sierra. At least he does with Republicans in other parts of the country.
“Running against California helps Donald Trump,” Republican consultant Mike Madrid said. “The more that California picks these extreme positions, the more it helps him.”
Joe Garofoli is The San Francisco Chronicle’s senior political writer. Email: [email protected] Twitter: @joegarofoli
Joe Garofoli Senior Political Writer
Board Legislative Committee Attachment IV January 26, 2018
Democrats could win the shutdown blame game if they frame it right
By Joe Garofoli January 20, 2018 Updated: January 20, 2018 7:12pm
• Photo: Jacquelyn Martin, Associated Press Police tape marks a secured area of the U.S. Capitol.
A cynical political sideshow to the federal shutdown began hours before the government closure early Saturday, as both parties started jockeying to score political points by blaming the other for not doing its job.
For those following the shutdown blame game on social media, it was Team #SchumerShutdown vs. Team #TrumpShutdown. To many voters not already in one partisan camp, however, history shows that sort of insider sniping just sounds like more noise coming from Washington.
But this time things could be different, analysts said, because one party — the GOP — controls the House, Senate and presidency. That could help Democrats win the blame battle, at least in California, if they frame their position well and don’t buckle.
By stressing that they won’t budge on a funding bill unless it contains protections for the 700,000 “Dreamers,” undocumented immigrants brought to the United States as children, Democrats could strengthen their position in many of the seven Republican-held California Congressional districts they are targeting because Hillary Clinton beat President Trump there in 2016.
In more than half of those districts, at least 24 percent of the registered voters are Latino, and protection of the Dreamers is among their top priorities, Matt Barreto, co-founder of Latino Decisions, a nonpartisan polling firm that has done extensive polling in California, said Saturday.
Democrats usually get about 80 percent of the Latino vote in California. And in a survey of 900 registered Latino voters released last week by Latino Decisions, 68 percent said they are “100 percent” certain to vote this year, largely driven by Trump’s decisions on immigration, including ending the Deferred Action for Childhood Arrivals, or DACA, program. That’s an extraordinarily high figure.
“There’s a good chance if the Democrats stay on message, and say they’re standing up for Dreamers and are tired of the anti-immigrant excuses for not (protecting them), they can use it as a campaign issue,” said Barreto, whose firm did national polling for Clinton’s presidential campaign.
“But they have to message it. They can’t just shut down the government. There is overwhelming support for tying the Dreamers to the budget debate in the Latino community,” said Barreto, a professor of political science and Chicano studies at UCLA.
Photo: PETE MAROVICH, NYT Rep. Cathy McMorris Rodgers, R-Wash., chairwoman of the House Republican Conference, holds a news conference with members of the caucus about the government shutdown at the Capitol in Washington.
Among the districts that could be influenced by shutdown politics if Democrats get their message across are those of:
•Rep. Jeff Denham, R-Turlock (Stanislaus County), where 40 percent of the residents and 28 percent of the registered voters are Latino, according to the nonpartisan California Target Book, a compendium of statistics on the state’s political districts.
•Rep. David Valadao, R-Hanford (Kings County), where 71 percent of the population and 57 percent of the registered voters are Latino.
•Rep. Steve Knight, R- Lancaster (Los Angeles County), where 35 percent of the population and 24 percent of the registered voters are Latino.
•Rep. Ed Royce, R-Fullerton (Orange County), where 33 percent of the residents and 24 percent of the voters are Latino. Royce has said he is not running for re-election.
Holding their ground could also help the Democrats in another way, said Darry Sragow, publisher of the California Target Book.
“Democrats for quite some time now have been accused of not having a message,” Sragow said. “This gives them a chance to express their message that they are the party that helps people who are trying to work hard and play by the rules and do the right thing,”
But even if voters do blame an extended shutdown on Republicans, there’s is no guarantee they would carry their sour feelings into the voting booth. In 2013, polling showed that more voters blamed Republicans for the shutdown that year. But they seemed to have forgotten that by the following November, when Republicans maintained control of the House and took back the Senate from Democrats.
But Lanhee Chen, a chief policy adviser on Mitt Romney's 2012 presidential campaign who is advising Senate Republican candidates this year, said while immigration is a big issue in California, it isn’t in many Midwestern states, such as Indiana and Missouri. Incumbent Democratic Sens. like Sen. Claire McCaskill, D-Mo., and Sen. Joe Donnelly, D-Ind., are trying to win re-election in those states, which supported Trump overwhelmingly.
A December Morning Consult national poll found that while the Dreamers had a lot of support nationally, only 25 percent of the respondents were “definitely” willing to see the government shut down in support of their cause.
“It’s risky for both sides. Democrats risk overplaying their hand on immigration being an issue,” Chen said. “Obviously, they feel that it will motivate their base so they feel it is a calculated risk. For Republicans, because they’re perceived to be in charge of everything, the risk is obvious.
“So I’m not convinced it plays well for either side. And I’m also not convinced it matters to voters once we get to November. It’s a long time between now and November,” Chen said. “For a lot of voters, I think (assigning blame for a shutdown) is kind of a ‘pox on both their houses’ kind of dynamic.”
Former California Democratic Sen. Barbara Boxer, who served during previous shutdowns, agrees that “in general, (voters) do” blame both parties for the federal government grinding to a halt.
But “they’re going to blame the people who run the show,” Boxer said on The Chronicle’s “It’s All Political” podcast. “The truth is people are not dumb. They know who is running the show. A shutdown is a disaster for the country, and it’s horrible for those who are controlling the presidency, the House of Representatives and the Senate.”
Joe Garofoli is The San Francisco Chronicle’s senior political writer. Email: [email protected] Twitter: @joegarofoli
Board Legislative Committee Attachment IV January 26, 2018
California: The best alternative to Trump’s America
By Peter Schrag January 17, 2018 Updated: January 17, 2018 4:53pm
• Photo: Lea Suzuki, SFC Christopher Timbo` Temblador (left) signs a petition that Christina Roehl (right) was having people sign on campus at San Jose State University on Monday April 14, 2008 in San Jose, Calif. The voter ... more
It’s now almost a generation since Californians tried to make their state like the country that Donald Trump wants America to be. We didn’t say we’d prefer Norwegians over Haitians or Africans — or Mexicans. But with Proposition 187 (“Save Our State”) in November 1994, we voted by a margin of 59-41 to deny almost all public services to undocumented immigrants, including public education, all but emergency care from any public health facility, and all social services.
Proposition 187, which had the strong support of Gov. Pete Wilson, who linked his re- election campaign to it, also required public employees — cops, teachers, doctors, nurses, among others — to notify federal immigration officials of any undocumented immigrants who came to their attention.
And in a familiar refrain, Proposition 187 declared that the people of California “have suffered and are suffering economic hardship caused by the presence of illegal aliens in this state [and] have suffered and are suffering personal injury and damage caused by the criminal conduct of illegal aliens in this state.”
A federal judge declared major parts of the initiative unconstitutional, so it never went into effect, but not before Wilson rode it to his re-election victory. Part of that successful campaign was Wilson’s TV commercial of shadowy figures running across a freeway against the ominous words “They keep coming. ... Two-million illegal immigrants in California.”
Proposition 187 was just one of a cluster of California ballot measures that Trump and his attorney general, Jeff Sessions, would have cheered. On the same ballot in November 1994, voters passed Proposition 184, California’s “Three Strikes” criminal sentencing initiative, probably the most punitive such law of modern times.
Two years later, we enacted Proposition 209, banning all affirmative action by race or gender in public education, employment and contracting. That also had Wilson’s strong backing.
It goes without saying that California is in a very different place now. Things we ordered police officers and teachers to do in 1994, California’s sanctuary laws prohibit them from doing now.
Instead of lengthening criminal sentences, high prison costs have produced measures to reduce them. We’ve legalized marijuana; we allow undocumented university students to compete for financial aid on the same terms as all others. Our attorney general sues the federal government to protect Deferred Action for Childhood Arrivals individuals.
As many Californians know, there’s a direct link between the California of the 1990s and California now. Proposition 187 drove hundreds of thousands of Latinos to become citizens. And, given the ill-disguised hostility of Wilson and the Republican Party to immigrants, they immediately registered as Democrats.
Since Wilson’s re-election, only one Republican, Arnold Schwarzenegger in the quirky recall of Gov. Gray Davis in 2003, has been elected governor. Today, a Democrat holds every major state office. The California congressional delegation is composed of 39 Democrats and 14 Republicans — and several Republicans are in trouble. Two are quitting.
More important, despite recent tax increases and tough environmental laws, blue California, the world’s sixth-largest economy, has been outperforming the rest of the nation. Between 2012 and 2016, California accounted for 17 percent of U.S. job growth. In 2016, its gross domestic product grew at nearly twice the rate of the national economy. Some of that growth, maybe much of it, has been driven by the enterprise and skills of its immigrants.
Combine all that with the state’s tough environmental laws, its energy efficiency, its commitment, rather than its resistance, to science and research — and California, despite its many unsolved problems, becomes the best available model for an alternative to Trump’s America. We’ve been there and have come out of it. And unlike Congress and Trump’s White House, California’s government works.
All of which give California no end of reasons to resist the Washington of Trump, Paul Ryan and Mitch McConnell, as the state’s leaders have been doing — and which, in turn, have drawn Washington’s attacks on every possible California target, from taxation, immigration and offshore drilling to marijuana controls and greenhouse gas emissions.
It may not be quite “the war on California,” which is what state Senate President Pro Tem Kevin de León, D-Los Angeles, called it, but close enough. For Americans, even in red states committed to state’s rights, there couldn’t be a clearer choice.
Board Legislative Committee Attachment IV January 26, 2018
Democrats in droves seek to topple GOP in California’s congressional races
By John Wildermuth / January 14, 2018 Updated: January 14, 2018 9:41pm
• Photo: Bill Clark, CQ-Roll Call,Inc. No less than seven Democrats already have joined the campaign to defeat Republican Rep. Mimi Walters of Irvine.
For California Democrats, the flood of candidates looking to unseat GOP members of Congress could be too much of a good thing. There already are 43 Democrats, many of them with plenty of campaign cash, lined up to challenge Republicans in the top seven districts targeted by their party. And with more than seven weeks to go before the March 9 filing deadline, that number could grow.
For Democratic leaders, it’s the more the merrier, especially in a state where President Trump — and Republicans in general — are increasingly unpopular.
“I think it’s a good thing,” said Drew Godinich, a spokesman for the Democratic Congressional Campaign Committee. “As (New Mexico Rep.) Ben Ray Luján said, ‘No party ever lost an election due to too much energy and momentum.’”
The last thing Democratic leaders want is to hear discouraging words from California, which is key to their efforts to flip 24 GOP congressional seats and win back control of the House in November. The seven seats on the top of the party’s priority list — two in the Central Valley, one in Los Angeles County and four all or partially in Orange County — make up a big chunk of that wish list.
The campaign committee, invading the GOP stronghold of Orange County, has even moved its western headquarters to Irvine in an effort to show just how serious it is.
“In January 2016, the leader of the Orange County party was begging Democrats to get on board and run for Congress,” Godinich added. “Now we have multiple viable Democrats there who could compete and win.”
But that new enthusiasm comes with its own problems, said Tony Quinn, a former GOP consultant who is now an editor of the nonpartisan California Target Book, which looks at political races across the state.
“In almost every one of those (targeted) seats there’s a multitude of Democratic candidates, and many of them have money,” he said. And those people aren’t looking to spend hundreds of thousands to finish third in a primary where only the top two finishers, regardless of party, advance to the November election.
For example, in the 45th Congressional District, which Irvine GOP Rep. Mimi Walters first won in 2014, five of the seven Democrats running against her already have raised more than $250,000 each for their campaigns. That’s serious money that probably signals serious campaigns.
Expect the candidates to stake out an ideological stance and then go on the attack against their opponents, Democrats as well as Republicans, said Thad Kousser, a political science professor at UC San Diego.
The Democratic primary campaigns “may be reruns of Bernie (Sanders) versus Hillary (Clinton),” the 2016 primary fight that split Democrats across the country, Kousser said.
“Almost the only way Democrats can screw this up is with bruising primary battles that create wounds that can’t be healed,” he said.
It’s a concern, said Doug Linney, an Oakland consultant who is running Flip the 14, a group that looks to improve Democratic performance in all 14 of the state’s Republican- held congressional districts. The group already is thinking about telling candidates that if they want help in the fall, they can’t attack fellow Democrats in the primary, he said.
“Democrats have to stay focused on the prize,” Linney added. “They need to prove they can bring about the change they want in the district. ... There is no need to attack fellow Democrats.”
But even with the prospect of a primary free-for-all, a crowded primary field is still a good thing for the party, Linney added, because each candidate brings out Democratic and independent supporters, voters who otherwise might skip a typically low-turnout midterm election.
A voter who is engaged in June is likely to stay engaged in November, he said.
“It would be nice to have one guy who can start his general election campaign in the primary, but democracy is messy,” Linney said. “We’re going to support whoever emerges from the process,” which is what he expects the losing Democrats will do.
That doesn’t mean Democratic leaders won’t have a say in the primary races.
“The DCCC (Democratic County Central Committee) reserves the right to get involved in the primaries if necessary,” Godinich said, which could mean endorsements and other backing for favored candidates. “It will be on a case-by-case basis.”
Democrats are still smarting from a 2012 San Bernardino County congressional race in which a large field split the Democratic primary vote and allowed two Republicans to finish on top and face each other in November. Party leaders are convinced that direct support for then-Redlands Mayor Pete Aguilar would have given him the congressional seat he won two years later.
This year, however, Democratic leaders, not to mention voters, might have a tough time deciding whom to support in many of the congressional races. Virtually none of the Democratic candidates has ever served in office, even on a city council or school board. “None of these people are able to say ‘I did this’ or ‘I fixed this bridge’ or anything like it,’” said Quinn of the California Target Book. “People are going to have to choose, but they don’t have anything to compare.”
Take the campaign to unseat Rep. Dana Rohrabacher, R-Costa Mesa (Orange County), who was first elected to Congress in 1988. The leading Democrats in the race are Harley Rouda, an attorney who is in his family’s real estate business; Hans Keirstead, a doctor and CEO of a biomedical company; Omar Siddiqui, a trial lawyer and engineer; Michael Kotick, a business executive; and Laura Oatman, an architect.
But the prospect of facing a full field of Democratic challengers, politically experienced or not, already has persuaded two veteran GOP incumbents, Rep. Darrell Issa of Vista (San Diego County) and Rep. Ed Royce of Fullerton (Orange County), to hastily retire and avoid what pundits suggest could be a “blue wave” in California elections.
Photo: Molly Riley, Associated Press GOP Rep. Darrell Issa of San Diego County will retire rather than face the onslaught.
“If Republicans think that being a career politician is going to help a candidate these days, they haven’t been paying attention,” said Godinich, the DCCC spokesman.
In the age of Trump, who ran successfully against political business as usual, being an outsider — or even one of a pack of Democratic outsiders — is probably a strength, not a weakness.
“We know we need to concentrate our fire on Republicans, not on each other,” Godinich added. “The election is really about making the case that a Democrat is the best person for Congress.”
Board Legislative Committee Attachment IV January 26, 2018
Trump’s tweet the stuff of re-election dreams for Calif. Sen. Feinstein
By John Wildermuth January 10, 2018 Updated: January 10, 2018 5:06pm
• Photo: JIM WATSON, AFP/Getty Images Sen. Dianne Feinstein speaks during a Tuesday meeting with President Trump on immigration.
Sen. Dianne Feinstein, facing a re-election challenge from a fellow Democrat, has received some unexpected — and unintended — help from President Trump. In an angry tweet, Trump attacked her as “Sneaky Dianne” for releasing a transcript from the Senate Judiciary Committee probe into the Trump campaign’s possible collusion with Russian intelligence sources.
“The fact that Sneaky Dianne Feinstein, who has on numerous occasions stated that collusion between Trump/Russia has not been found, would release testimony in such an underhanded and possibly illegal way, totally without authorization, is a disgrace,” the president tweeted Wednesday morning. “Must have tough Primary!”
But if 84-year-old Feinstein was facing a tougher-than-expected battle from Democratic state Sen. Kevin de León, Trump inadvertently may have made her road to re-election a lot easier.
“Every Democratic politician is lining up to get in a Twitter war with Trump,” said Thad Kousser, a political science professor at UC San Diego. “This couldn’t be more perfect for her.”
While Feinstein, a former San Francisco mayor who was first elected to the Senate in 1992, always has been known as a consensus-seeking moderate, that’s not always a popular position in California during the Trump era.
The senator’s offhand suggestion in August that Trump still “can be a good president” if he learns from his mistakes and changes his positions, brought howls of anger and promises of retribution from California progressives.
Feinstein’s “primary (political) weakness was a concern that she has not been tough enough on Trump,” Kousser said. “Now she has exactly the battle scars she needs to bring back to show the California left.”
Feinstein, the ranking Democrat on the Senate Judiciary Committee, has been wrangling for weeks with GOP leaders over the direction the panel should take in the Russian influence probe. And while she has said, as Trump stated, that the committee had not found evidence of collusion, she has been quick to add that the investigation is not finished. On Tuesday, Feinstein released the 312-page transcript of the committee’s 10-hour interview with Glenn Simpson, founder of Fusion GPS, a private research company. The interview focused on the work Fusion GPS did for Democrats during the 2016 campaign, including a dossier assembled by former British spy Christopher Steele that suggested that the Trump campaign had dealings with the Russians.
Republicans on the committee were quick to attack Fusion GPS’ work as biased and Steele’s report as part of a “witch hunt” against Trump that contained possible criminal misstatements. They refused, however, to release the transcript of the interview.
Feinstein disagreed and, on her own, made the transcript public.
“The innuendo and misinformation circulating about the transcript are part of a deeply troubling effort to undermine the investigation into potential collusion and obstruction of justice,” she said in a statement Tuesday. “The only way to set the record straight is to make the transcript public.”
While the committee’s chairman, Sen. Charles Grassley, R-Iowa, was quick to claim that Feinstein’s move “undermines the integrity of the committee’s oversight work,” it played much better in California.
“We want Sen. Feinstein to know we support her in this decision” to release the transcript, said Steve Rapport, a leader of the progressive group Indivisible SF, adding that its members are “glad she’s doing what she can to resist the Trump agenda, especially in light of Trump’s direct personal attack on Twitter.”
Politics likely had at least something to do with Feinstein’s decision to challenge Trump and the GOP leadership directly, said Sherry Bebitch Jeffe, a political communications professor at the University of Southern California.
“If this wasn’t an election year, with her facing a fairly significant challenge, she might not have decided to release the transcript,” Jeffe said.
But this isn’t the first time Feinstein has decided to buck political leaders and push ahead with her own view of what’s best for the country. “She’s been in the foreign policy arena for so long that she trusts her judgment on what the American public needs to know,” Kousser said.
In 2014, Feinstein, then head of the Senate Intelligence Committee, decided to go against both Democratic and Republican leaders and release a 500-page summary of a far longer report on the use of torture by the CIA.
“Nobody wants to do something that is going to bring on any kind of attack,” Feinstein told reporters after her hour-long speech from the Senate floor describing the report. “But I came to the conclusion that America’s greatness is being able to say we made a mistake and we are going to correct it and go from there.”
That history makes Feinstein’s battle with Trump even more politically significant, Jeffe added.
“It’s smart politically, but not at all out of character,” she said. With the senator frustrated by Republican objections, blocked by the committee and confident that what she’s doing is right, “It’s a very Dianne Feinstein type of move.”
John Wildermuth is a San Francisco Chronicle staff writer. Email: [email protected] Twitter: @jfwildermuth
John Wildermuth Political Reporter
Board Legislative Committee Attachment IV January 26, 2018
Proposal for $9 tolls on Bay Bridge, $8 on other bridges gets big boost
By Lizzie Johnson / Updated 7:54 pm, Wednesday, January 10, 2018
•
Photo: Santiago Mejia, The Chronicle Willie Gutierrez, a toll collector at the Bay Bridge Toll Plaza, Wednesday, Jan. 10, 2018, in San Francisco, Calif. below; Traffic at the Bay Bridge Toll Plaza, Wednesday, Jan. 10, 2018, in San Francisco.
A measure to raise Bay Area bridge tolls to $9 on the Bay Bridge and $8 on others over several years took a major step forward Wednesday when a key transportation committee unanimously recommended putting it before voters in June. The Bay Area Toll Authority Oversight Committee unanimously voted in favor of the regional measure, which would increase tolls over six years, with $1 hikes in 2019, 2022 and 2025, if voters in the nine Bay Area counties approve it. The money would go toward three-dozen much-needed regional public transportation and roadway improvements. But to get before voters, the recommendation will need approval from the full Bay Area Toll Authority, which usually follows the committee’s lead. A vote is expect Jan. 24.
“This is not an easy decision of this commission,” said James Spering, a committee member representing Solano County. “I think everybody knows that. It’s going to be a campaign that has a lot of controversy. ... We have a responsibility to look at 5, 10, 15 years down the road. These are projects the public is demanding.”
If the authority gives the measure the go-ahead, the Board of Supervisors in each of the nine affected counties will make the final vote to place it on each county’s ballot for June 5 as Regional Measure 3. If it passes, the toll hikes will affect only drivers on the Bay Area’s seven state-owned bridges. The Golden Gate Bridge would be excluded. Commuters who cross two bridges to get to their destination would receive a 50 percent discount on their second crossing if they have a FasTrak pass.
The measure already seems to have some headwind. In polling in November and December, a majority of the 4,151 likely voters surveyed said they favored the measure. The hybrid phone/Internet survey was conducted by EMC Research of Oakland.
To become law, the measure would require a simple region-wide majority of those who cast ballots. In all, the toll increase would raise about $4.5 billion over 30 years to pay for expanding public transportation, including BART extensions to Berryessa, San Jose and Santa Clara, and easing traffic choke points on key highways like the Novato Narrows and the Dumbarton Bridge corridor, among other things.
“You’ve got a tremendously eager public,” said Michael Cunningham, senior vice president of policy for the Bay Area Council, a nine-county business organization. “The polls show that. Every one of our lives confirms this point. The public is desperate for public transportation solutions.”
Randy Rentschler, a spokesman for the Metropolitan Transportation Commission, agreed.
“The Bay Area is a jobs machine,” he said. “That comes with some congestion in the bridge corridors. We think people are interested in getting that solved.” For roadways, funding from the measure would be directed at expanding the Bay Area’s express lane project, which converts carpool lanes into shared carpool-toll lanes for solo drivers who want to buy their way in. Interchanges at Interstate 690-Highway 4 in Martinez, I-680 and Highway 84 near Sunol and Highways 101 and 92 in San Mateo also would be upgraded.
The measure also includes a proposal to create an inspector general whose job would be to examine BART finances and operations.
Committeeman Alfredo Pedroza, who represents Napa County, said it was important to stress the $1- plus-$1-plus-$1 model to voters to avoid sticker shock.
“It was interesting waking up in the morning for the past three days and seeing there would be a $3 increase in bridge tolls,” he said. “It’s making sure we get the messaging right. It’s phased over time, and this is a good step and investment in infrastructure.”
Whether or not the measure turns out to be controversial, it’s important to move it forward, Spering said. He compared it to Regional Measure 2 — which voters approved in 2004 — raising bridge tolls by $1.
“At the time, that took a lot of courage, and a lot of us took a lot of flak for supporting it, but it was the right thing to do,” Spering said. “Regional Measure 3 will be very similar. It really has an impact on the economy of the Bay Area and the social structure of the Bay Area.”
Lizzie Johnson is a San Francisco Chronicle staff writer. Email: [email protected] Twitter: @LizzieJohnsonnn
Board Legislative Committee Attachment IV January 26, 2018
Will Democrats benefit with Issa and Royce out of California races? Maybe
By Joe Garofoli January 10, 2018 Updated: January 10, 2018 5:10pm
Photo: Hayne Palmour IV, TNS U.S. Rep. Darrell Issa speaks to constituents at a town hall meeting last year. He announced Wednesday that he won’t run for re-election.
When GOP Reps. Ed Royce and Darrell Issa announced this week that they wouldn’t seek re-election, Democrats might have assumed their attempt to retake the House had gotten easier. Yet, the composition of their Southern California districts — districts won by Hillary Clinton in the 2016 presidential contest and targeted by the national Democratic Party in the 2018 midterm elections — makes that less than likely. The two retirements might have even strengthened the GOP’s hand.
That’s because even though Clinton beat Trump there, voters in those districts rarely vote for Democrats. And even though there is a lot of grassroots energy driven by opposition to Trump in Orange County, Democrats don’t have a strong record of turnout in years when there’s no presidential race.
“There was always a bit of irrational exuberance by Democrats who believed that they would easily win any of these Republican-held districts,” said Paul Mitchell, vice president of Political Data, which provides voter information to campaigns and pollsters in both parties.
Still, Democrats believe they caught their second huge break this week when Issa unexpectedly announced Wednesday he would not seek re-election. Even though Issa is one of Congress’ wealthiest members, he was facing several well-funded Democratic opponents and a virulent strain of opposition to Trump in California.
“While my service to California’s 49th District will be coming to an end, I will continue advocating on behalf of the causes that are most important to me, advancing public policy where I believe I can make a true and lasting difference, and continuing the fight to make our incredible nation an even better place to call home,” Issa, R-Vista (San Diego County), said.
That came two days after Royce, R-Fullerton (Orange County), a 13-term incumbent, announced he wouldn’t seek re-election, giving Democrats a chance to win another rapidly changing district that Clinton won in 2016. It buoyed Democrats hoping to recapture Congress by flipping 24 GOP-held seats — 10 of those are California targets.
But just because the incumbent is gone doesn’t mean those seats will be easy pickups for Democrats. In some way, the task might be even harder, analysts said. Ever since the state’s congressional districts were redrawn in 2012 to reflect the latest census, Issa’s and Royce’s districts have been politically red islands in California’s politically blue ocean.
“While it is true that Hillary Clinton beat Trump in those districts, no Democrat has won anything there ever,” said Darry Sragow, publisher of the nonpartisan California Target Book, a compendium of statistics on California’s political districts. “So the notion that somehow now that this is firm Democratic territory is just not true.”
Take Issa’s district, for example. Even though he won re-election by only 1,621 votes in 2016, it has long backed GOP candidates.
In 2012, Republican Mitt Romney defeated President Barack Obama there. In 2014, Republican gubernatorial nominee Neel Kashkari — who had never held public office — defeated incumbent Gov. Jerry Brown by 10 points there. In the U.S. Senate race that year, Republican Elizabeth Emken — also a political newcomer — beat incumbent Sen. Dianne Feinstein by seven points, Sragow said.
There’s a similar history in Royce’s district, where Romney, Kashkari and Emken all bucked statewide trends and won.
“That’s not to say that the Democrats do not have a chance to win,” Sragow said. “But with both Royce and now Issa, you’re talking about districts that are very favorable to Republicans.”
What is helpful to Democrats in those districts is that demographics are changing rapidly in their favor, particularly in Royce’s district, where once predominantly white, Republican Orange County has changed under his feet.
Now, 24 percent of the registered voters are Latino and 21 percent are Asian American. Roughly 80 percent of Latinos and more than half of Asian Americans support Democratic candidates, analysts say.
However, turnout among young voters and Latinos has been historically lower in non- presidential election years, Mitchell said. “We hear about all this enthusiasm,” Mitchell said. “But the big question is, ‘Will those voters turn out?’ A lot of those predictions of a big turnout are based on nothing more than pollsters’ intuition and wishful thinking. It’s not based on the historical data.”
There is another unknown for Republicans: While it is usually better to run as an incumbent — better name recognition and more money to spend — it might not be an advantage this year, particularly in California. GOP incumbents will be forced to defend President Trump’s policies, many of which are unpopular in California, particularly those related to the environment, immigration and the new tax law.
Already, several Republicans — including some current and former officeholders — have announced their candidacies. In Royce’s district, former California Assemblywoman Young Kim, R-Fullerton (Orange County) is running, and Royce has endorsed Kim, his former congressional staff member.
In Issa’s district, Assemblyman Rocky Chavez, R-Oceanside (San Diego County), announced Wednesday that he would seek the seat, as did Diane Harkey, a member of the state Board of Equalization and former member of the Assembly.
“They have not been in Washington,” said Jack Pandol, a spokesman for the National Republican Congressional Committee. “They have the freedom to run their own campaigns and define who they are. At the same time, they have served in public office.”
That distinction doesn’t matter to Democrats.
“We are going to continue to hold all Republicans responsible for the national Republican agenda,” said Drew Godinich, a spokesman for the Democratic Congressional Campaign Committee. Yet even after this week’s GOP retirements, Godinich acknowledged, “We know it’s still going to be a tough fight here.”
What is different from past years is that Democrats have several well-funded candidates running in both Issa’s and Royce’s districts. Several are political newcomers. But even though some are well-funded, they come without any natural constituencies.
Some analysts say there are too many Democratic candidates running. That means they could split the primary vote and then perhaps no Democrat would make the top two finishers in the June 5 primary who would advance to the general election in November. If that’s the case, Godinich said, “the DCCC reserves the right to get involved in the Democratic primary” and support one candidate.
Joe Garofoli is The San Francisco Chronicle’s senior political writer. Email: [email protected] Twitter: @joegarofoli
Joe Garofoli Senior Political Writer
Board Legislative Committee Attachment IV January 26, 2018
Jerry Brown unveils record $132 billion California budget for 2018-19
By Melody Gutierrez / Updated 3:52 pm, Thursday, January 11, 2018
Photo: Paul Chinn, The Chronicle
SACRAMENTO — Gov. Jerry Brown urged lawmakers to remain vigilant as they debate the record- setting $132 billion general fund budget he proposed Wednesday, saying that there’s an “inevitable recession lurking in our future.”
The January budget proposal kicks off six months of negotiations with the Democratic-led Legislature and will be the final budget under the termed-out governor ahead of the November election.
“This is a prudent budget,” Brown said. The plan includes $4.6 billion for transportation projects using newly passed vehicle registration fees and increased gas taxes. That money would repair neighborhood roads, state highways and commuter corridors and upgrade public transit.
Brown wants to put more money into the state’s rainy-day fund than required by law, by adding $5 billion in two payments to bring the total to $13.5 billion.
Most of that money is from a $6.1 billion surplus in tax revenue, which one Republican, Assemblyman Matthew Harper of Huntington Beach (Orange County), said should be returned to taxpayers. Other Republicans praised Brown for increasing the state’s rainy-day fund and called for more to be used to pay down debts.
“It’s good news for Californians that we have such a large budget surplus, but it also graphically illustrates the fact that Californians are over-taxed and it also graphically illustrates the fact that recently enacted tax increases on Californians, such as the gas tax increase that went into effect last November, were completely unnecessary,” said Assemblyman Jay Obernolte, R- Big Bear Lake (San Bernardino County ).
The state, however, estimates that even a moderate recession would drop state revenue by more than $20 billion each year for several years.
“California has a very volatile tax system,” Brown said. “It means that money comes in very generously, very buoyantly, but it goes out the same way. ... It’s so important that we prepare for that recession.”
Brown’s proposed budget is nearly $7 billion more than the current fiscal year budget for the general fund, which pays for basic state services such as education, prisons and social service programs. With special funds and bond funds included, the governor’s total spending plan is $190 billion.
The plan includes a new online community college and 4 percentincrease for community colleges overall, which includes $46 million to make the first year of community college free for first-time, full-time students. California State University and the University of California would each receive a 3 percent increase. CSU and UC leaders said that increase was less than they expected.
“This budget proposal could reverse any progress made in the last decade—diminishing student access, success, limiting degree attainment and depriving California’s industries of skilled professionals,” said CSU Chancellor Timothy White in a statement.
The governor’s budget does not address the recently approved federal tax changes, which analysts say could give a temporary economic boost but ultimately hurt millions of California taxpayers by limiting the amount of state and local taxes that can be itemized on federal returns next year. Brown, who opposed the federal tax plan, will include a preliminary analysis of its impact on the state in his revised budget in May.
“It does make our very progressive tax system more burdensome than need be,” Brown said. “And I think that was the point. This was an assault by the Republicans in Congress against California, New York, New Jersey, Maryland, Illinois, and Massachusetts. ... It’s really a dumb move on the part of the Republicans, and I hope the next Congress will be Democratic and they reverse that.”
Melody Gutierrez is a San Francisco Chronicle staff writer. Email: [email protected]. Twitter: @MelodyGutierrez
Board Legislative Committee Attachment IV January 26, 2018
10 Issues Congress Faces in January
Budget, DACA, health care, sexual harassment on to-do list
Posted Jan 3, 2018 5:04 AM / Lindsey McPherson @lindsemcpherson
As the second session of the 115th Congress kicks off Wednesday, lawmakers are confronted with a daunting January to-do list full of issues they punted on in 2017.
Typically, January is a slow legislative month leading up to the party caucuses’ annual retreats, where lawmakers formally develop an agenda for the year. House and Senate Republicans will hold a joint retreat from Jan. 31 to Feb. 2 at the Greenbrier resort in West Virginia, and House Democrats will huddle the following week in Cambridge, Maryland.
But last year, Congress deferred action on an omnibus spending bill for the current fiscal year and extended deadlines on expiring programs into the new year, procrastinating until at least January on those topics. So lawmakers face the prospect of confronting at least 10 major legislative issues before their party retreats. 1. Budget caps
More than three months into fiscal 2018, Congress is still hoping to pass an omnibus spending bill and end the run of stopgap measures it passed in 2017 to keep the government open. The current continuing resolution expires Jan. 19, and the key to getting an omnibus bill instead of another CR is negotiating an elusive deal to raise the sequestration budget caps.
Speaker Paul D. Ryan will host a meeting Wednesday with Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell, Senate Minority Leader Charles E. Schumer, House Minority Leader Nancy Pelosi, Office of Management and Budget Director Mick Mulvaney and White House Legislative Affairs Director Marc Short to discuss the budget caps and other pressing legislative matters.
Democrats have continued to call for “parity” in raising the caps, which they’ve defined as a dollar-for-dollar increase in defense and nondefense spending, but Republicans are seeking more for defense. A deal would need to be struck this week for appropriators to have enough time to draft an omnibus before the Jan. 19 deadline, although a short stopgap would likely still be needed.
President Donald Trump wants to strike a two-year deal on spending caps that will allow the government to meet the Pentagon’s needs, White House Press Secretary Sarah Huckabee Sanders said Tuesday.
She did not mention a specific funding level for national defense for fiscal years 2018 and 2019, however. 2. DACA
If Democrats are going to give up any ground on the budget caps, it would likely be to extract concessions from Republicans on a legislative replacement for the Deferred Action for Childhood Arrivals program that shelters immigrants brought to the country illegally as children from deportation. Democrats had hoped to address the matter, a top priority for the party, before the end of 2017 but agreed to push the fight off until January rather than force a government shutdown. Still, many Democrats voted against the CR last month in objection to inaction on DACA and other priorities.
Republican leaders do not see things so urgently, given that the program will remain partly in operation until March. However, McConnell has said that if senators and administration officials who have been negotiating on DACA, border security and overhauling parts of the immigration system reach an agreement by the end of January, he will bring it to the Senate floor for a stand-alone vote.
Four Things to Watch as 2018 Election Season Officially Nears
Trump jumped into the negotiations via Twitter, potentially complicating matters. He tweeted Friday that “Democrats have been told, and fully understand” that a DACA fix cannot occur without his promised border wall and an end to the visa lottery system and so- called chain migration immigration policies that allow permanent residents to sponsor extended family members seeking to enter the United States.
He followed that up Tuesday with a pointed criticism of the minority party on the issue: “Democrats are doing nothing for DACA — just interested in politics. DACA activists and Hispanics will go hard against Dems, will start ‘falling in love’ with Republicans and their President! We are about RESULTS.”
Senate Majority Whip John Cornyn of Texas said Tuesday before departing his home state for Washington that he believes Congress will “get this done before the March deadline, and I hope the president does not extend it because that puts the pressure on us.”
“I think Congress tends to respond when it’s put under pressure,” he said. 3. Health care stabilization
Another legislative matter that has become intertwined with spending negotiations is stabilization of the health insurance markets. GOP Sens. Susan Collins of Maine and Lamar Alexander of Tennessee, authors of two bipartisan stabilization measures, said they plan to offer their bills this month as Congress considers an omnibus spending measure. “Majority Leader McConnell has told us that he will uphold his commitment to schedule and support the legislation,” they said in a Dec. 20 statement. But House GOP leaders have not made the same commitment. Collins said Ryan told her the House is committed to passing legislation creating high-risk pools and other reinsurance mechanisms similar to the ones proposed in her bill.
But the speaker has not made any promises regarding Alexander’s bill that would fund the 2010 health care law’s cost-sharing reduction subsidies, or CSRs, for two years. The majority of House Republicans oppose funding the CSRs, which are designed to help offset insurers’ costs for reducing out-of-pocket expenses such as deductibles and co-pays for lower-income individuals, because they see it as propping up the 2010 law that they oppose.
Collins made her support for the GOP tax bill, which eliminated the penalty for not purchasing health insurance, contingent on passage of the stabilization measures. 4. FISA
In addition to the CR, Jan. 19 is the expiration date for government surveillance authority under Section 702 of the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act. Many conservative lawmakers oppose a straight extension of the current law and want to see a FISA overhaul that would ensure the government cannot spy on American citizens without a warrant. The House Freedom Caucus — in exchange for some of their members voting for the CR in December — secured a commitment from GOP leaders that a FISA reauthorization would be brought to the floor as a stand-alone measure and that their requested amendments would be made in order. 5. Disaster relief
Lawmakers had hoped the latest disaster supplemental — $81 billion in relief for states and U.S. territories affected by last year’s hurricanes and wild fires — would be signed into law before the end of 2017 but the measure stalled in the Senate right before the holiday recess. Schumer said the bill didn’t do enough to help California, Puerto Rico and the U.S. Virgin Islands, citing the lack of funds for Medicaid, drinking water and infrastructure, among other concerns. Any effort to add additional funds is likely to originate in the Senate given the House already passed the $81 billion measure. 6. CHIP While there is bipartisan agreement on the need to fund a long-term reauthorization of the Children’s Health Insurance Program, the obstacle to doing so has been offsets. The House passed a bill in November to extend CHIP for five years, but most Democrats opposed it because of Medicaid cuts that were included to pay for the funding. While the CR funds CHIP and community health centers through March 31, lawmakers on both sides of the aisle want to tackle the long-term extensions alongside the larger spending bill in January.
“There’s a lot of things that got kicked over to January the 19th,” Cornyn said Tuesday, when asked about CHIP. “Unfortunately, I think politics pervades everything we end up doing in Washington, D.C., and there is a sense that there’s probably more leverage to do other things because CHIP is a must-pass piece of legislation.” 7. Flood insurance
Another reauthorization Congress has to tackle is the National Flood Insurance Program, which expires Jan. 19 along with the CR. The House passed a five-year flood insurance reauthorization bill in November, but the Senate has not acted on it or any of the reauthorization measures introduced in that chamber. Areas of disagreement that remain include the role of private insurers in flood markets, limits on premium increases for policyholders and funding levels for flood mitigation programs. 8. Pensions
Democrats are pushing for legislation to ensure the solvency of underfunded pension plans be incorporated into any mass spending package. The Central States Teamsters pension plan, the United Mine Workers pension plan, and more than 200 others are on the brink of failure, Democrats have warned. Senate Republicans have an incentive to address the issue because of its impact in states such as Ohio, Pennsylvania and West Virginia, where they hope to unseat Democratic incumbents in the 2018 midterm elections. 9. Tax extenders
A handful of tax provisions that expired at the end of 2016, including a number of housing and energy-related perks that were not addressed in Republicans’ tax overhaul bill signed into law last month, must be retroactively renewed this month for taxpayers to be able to claim the incentives when filing their 2017 returns. Senate Finance Chairman Orrin G. Hatch introduced a tax extenders bill Dec. 20, but it’s unclear if there is enough support for the provisions to get the measure through both chambers. 10. Sexual harassment procedures
While Republicans and Democrats struggle to reach consensus on the aforementioned issues, they’re likely to easily find agreement on a soon-to-be-released bill to update congressional sexual harassment policies. House Administration Chairman Gregg Harper is planning to introduce a bipartisan bill next week that will overhaul procedures outlined in the Congressional Accountability Act related to filing and settling harassment claims. The goal, the Mississippi Republican said, is for the House to pass the measure by the end of the month.
John T. Bennett and Niels Lesniewski contributed to this report.