EAST BAY REGIONAL PARK DISTRICT BOARD LEGISLATIVE COMMITTEE Friday, May 14, 2021 12:30 p.m.

COMMITTEE MEMBERS AND STAFF WILL ATTEND VIA TELECONFERENCE

Pursuant to Governor Newsom’s Executive Order No. N-29-20 and the Alameda County Health Officer’s current Shelter in Place Order, effective March 31, 2020, the East Bay Regional Park District (“Park District”) Headquarters will not be open to the public and the Board Legislative Committee and staff will be participating in the meetings via phone/video conferencing.

Members of the public can listen to the meeting via the Park District’s YouTube channel: https://youtu.be/2aHMPHIxgX4

Public comments may be submitted one of three ways: 1. Live via Zoom. If you would like to make a live public comment during the meeting this option is available through the virtual meeting platform: https://zoom.us/j/99290097681 Note, this virtual meeting platform link will let you into the virtual meeting for the purpose of providing a public comment. If you do not intend to make a public comment, please use the YouTube link at https://youtu.be/2aHMPHIxgX4 to observe the meeting. It is preferred that those requesting to speak during the meeting contact the Legislative Committee Assistant by 4:00 p.m. on Thursday, May 13, 2021 via email at [email protected] or voicemail (510) 544-2002 to provide name and the subject line public comments – not on the agenda or public comments – agenda item #. 2. Via email to recording secretary [email protected] by 4:00 p.m. Thursday, May 13, 2021. Email must contain in the subject line public comments – not on the agenda or public comments – agenda item # followed by their name and place of residence, followed by their comments. 3. Via voicemail at 510-544-2002 by 4:00 p.m. Thursday, May 13, 2021. The caller must start the message by stating public comments – not on the agenda or public comments – agenda item# followed by their name and place of residence, followed by their comments.

Comments received during the meeting and up until the public comment period on the relevant agenda item is closed, will be provided in writing to the Board Legislative Committee, included transcribed voicemails. All comments received by the close of the public comment period will be available after the meeting as supplemental materials and will become part of the official meeting record. Please try to limit your written comments to no more than 300 words. The Park District cannot guarantee that its network and/or the site will be uninterrupted. To ensure that the Park District receives your comments, you are strongly encouraged to submit your comments in writing in advance of the meeting.

If you have any questions about utilizing the video stream, please contact the Assistant of the Committee, Yulie Padmore, at [email protected] or at 510-544-2002. To ensure the best opportunity for Park District staff to address your question, please contact the Assistant prior to 4:00 p.m. the day before the scheduled meeting.

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.

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. U.C. DAVIS ENVIRONMENTAL POLICY AND I Pfuehler/Baldinger MANAGEMENT MASTERS STUDENT PROJECT

II. FEDERAL LEGISLATION / OTHER MATTERS A. NEW LEGISLATION – RECOMMENDED BILLS FOR R Landreth/Pfuehler SUPPORT 1. S. 280 (Markey D-MA) and H.R. 744 (Clarke D-NY) – FEMA Climate Change Preparedness Act 2. S. 425 (Markey D-MA) and H.R. 1289 (Cohen D-TN) – Complete Streets Act 3. S. 487 (Wyden D-OR) and H.R. 1162 (Neguse D-CO) – 21st Century Conservation Corps Act 4. S. 559 (Collins R-ME) and H.R. 1548 (Cartwright D-PA) – Native Plant Species Pilot Program 5. S. 614 (Cardin D-MD) – Transportation Alternatives Enhancement Act 6. S. 684 (Markey D-MA) – Connecting America’s Active Transportation System 7. S. 1248 (Bennet D-CO) – Outdoor Restoration Partnership Act

B. OTHER FEDERAL MATTERS I Pfuehler/Baldinger 1. Rebuilding American Infrastructure with Sustainability and Equity (RAISE) Federal Transportation Grant Update 2. American Jobs Plan Update 3. Wildfire Update 4. Other Matters

III. STATE LEGISLATION / OTHER MATTERS A. NEW LEGISLATION – RECOMMENDED BILLS FOR R Landreth/Pfuehler SUPPORT 1. AB 30 (Karla D-San Jose) – Equity in Outdoor Access to Nature 2. AB 564 (Gonzalez D-San Diego) – Biodiversity Protection and Restoration Act 3. AB 614 (Agular-Curry D-Winters) – Nesting Bird Habitat Incentive Program 4. AB 1255 (Bloom D-Santa Monica) – Fire Prevention Local Assistance Grant Program 5. AB 1512 (Bauer-Kahan D-Orinda) – Preservation of Alameda-Tesla Expansion Area 6. SB 624 (Hueso D-San Diego) – Environmental Equity and Outdoor Access Act

B. OTHER STATE MATTERS I Pfuehler/Baldinger 1. Tree and Vegetation Mortality Update 2. AB 959 (Mullin D-South San Francisco) – Nuisance Abatement Legislation Update 3. Governor Newsom May Budget Revise 4. Other Matters

IV. 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.

V. ARTICLES

VI. BOARD COMMENTS

(R) Recommendation for Future Board Consideration Future Meetings: (I) Information January 15 July 16 (D) Discussion February 19 August – NO MTG Legislative Committee Members March 19 September 17 Ayn Wieskamp (Chair); Dee Rosario, Dennis Waespi, Elizabeth Echols, Alternate April 13- CANCELLED October 15 Erich Pfuehler, Chief of Government and Legislative Affairs May 14 November – NO MTG Lisa Baldinger, Legislative and Policy Management Analyst June 18 *December 10

TO: Board Legislative Committee (Chair Ayn Wieskamp, Dee Rosario, Dennis Waespi, alt. Elizabeth Echols)

FROM: Sabrina Landreth, General Manager Erich Pfuehler, Chief of Government and Legislative Affairs Lisa Baldinger, Legislative and Policy Management Analyst

SUBJECT: Board Legislative Committee Meeting WHEN: Friday, May 14, 2021 12:30 PM

WHERE: For members of the public interested in joining the meeting on Zoom or watching it live on YouTube links are included in the meeting agenda. ______

Items to be discussed:

I. U.C. DAVIS ENVIRONMENTAL POLICY AND MANAGEMENT MASTERS STUDENT PROJECT A team of U.C. Davis masters’ students are developing Local Community Information Guides of survey, demographic and mobility data aligned with the six East Bay Regional Park District Interpretive and Recreation zones. Project Manager and Legislative and Policy Management Analyst Lisa Baldinger will introduce the students to share background about their academic program and work on the guides.

II. FEDERAL LEGISLATION / OTHER MATTERS A. NEW LEGISLATION – RECOMMENDED BILLS FOR SUPPORT 1. S. 280 (Markey D-MA) and H.R. 744 (Clarke D-NY) – FEMA Climate Change Preparedness Act These companion bills would create a Subcommittee to FEMA’s National Advisory Council explicitly focusing on climate change. They direct FEMA to include climate risks in its strategic planning. Last year, a record 22 weather and climate disasters cost the United States a combined $95 billion in damages. FEMA – as the federal agency charged with responding to climate events such as hurricanes, wildfires and flooding – is in an appropriate position to determine and mitigate climate risks. They also have the responsibility to help the country prepare for, respond to and recover from climate-fueled events.

Specifically, the legislation: • Directs FEMA to immediately re-insert climate change risks and impacts into the Agency’s current strategic plan and all future plans. • Makes it the official policy of FEMA to recognize climate change as a significant near and long-term threat to United States homeland security. • Establishes a Climate Change Subcommittee to FEMA’s National Advisory Council to make national preparedness recommendations pertaining solely to climate change risks and impacts. • Directs FEMA to perform a national assessment on climate change risks and preparedness to be updated every four years.

1 2. S. 425 (Markey D-MA) and H.R. 1289 (Cohen D-TN) – Complete Streets Act The Complete Streets Act would promote safer and more accessible transportation routes across the United States. A “complete street” is one designed to provide safe and accessible transportation options for multiple modes of travel, as well as for people of all ages and abilities. Complete streets can accommodate pedestrians, bicyclists and public transit users, not just cars and freight vehicles. A complete street is also safe for children, seniors and individuals with disabilities.

This legislation would require states to set aside a portion of their Federal highway funding to create a grant program aimed at funding complete streets projects. Through this program, eligible local and regional entities will be able to apply for technical assistance and capital funding to build safe street projects – such as sidewalks, bike lanes, crosswalks and bus stops.

Under the Complete Streets Act: • States would be required to set aside five percent of their Federal highway money to create a “Complete Streets” program. • Eligible entities would need to adopt a complete streets policy, participate in technical assistance and create a prioritized plan for projects in their jurisdictions to access the funding. • States and Metropolitan Planning Organizations (MPOs) would be responsible for certifying complete streets policies meet minimum requirements set out by the United States Secretary of Transportation. • The U.S. Secretary of Transportation, States and MPOs would be required to adopt design standards for Federal surface transportation projects aimed at providing safe and adequate accommodation of all users. The standards would apply to all phases of project planning, development and operation.

3. S. 487 (Wyden D-OR) and H.R. 1162 (Neguse D-CO) – 21st Century Conservation Corps Act These companion bills would provide critical funds to support a natural resource management and conservation workforce. They would bolster wildfire protection and preparedness. They are also consistent with the Biden Administration’s climate and economic agenda.

The impacts of Covid-19 on public health and the economy, combined with high levels of drought, created unprecedented fire mitigation and wildland fire fighting challenges in 2020. There was an increased challenge to safely address the dry and dying vegetation while taking Covid-19 precautions. These challenges continued in the response to wildland fires. Additionally, those at increased risk for adverse health effects due to wildfire smoke exposure – people who suffer from heart or respiratory diseases – are also particularly vulnerable to Covid-19.

The 21st Century Conservation Corps Act aims to address the results of these challenges directly by investing in workforce training and jobs. The corps will support conservation programs and reforestation in a manner which improves community and ecosystem health. Projects would include restoring public lands; addressing deferred maintenance; expanding recreation access to public lands; providing direct relief for outfitters and guides; improving access to clean drinking water; and mitigating the risk of catastrophic wildfires.

2 This legislation: • Establishes a $9 billion fund for qualified land and conservation corps to increase job training and hiring aimed at restoring public lands and providing jobs. • Provides $2 billion for the FEMA Building Resilient Infrastructure and Communities (BRIC) program to improve resiliency for communities impacted by wildfire. • Provides $6 billion for U.S. Forest Service, $6 billion for the National Park Service and $2 billion for the Bureau of Land Management maintenance accounts to create jobs, reduce the maintenance backlog and expand access to the outdoors. • Provides an additional $3.5 billion for the U.S. Forest Service and $2 billion for the U.S. Bureau of Land Management to support science-based projects aimed at improving forest health and reducing the risk of catastrophic wildfire. • Provides $3.5 billion for reforestation projects on a combination of Federal, state, local, tribal and NGO lands, with over one hundred million trees to be planted in urban areas across America by 2030. • Provides $2 billion for the National Fire Capacity program, which helps the Forest Service implement FireWise, aimed at preventing, mitigating and responding to wildfire around homes and businesses on private land. • Increases access to public lands through expanding and investing in programs like Every Kid Outdoors and the Outdoor Recreation Legacy Partnership. • Helps restore and improve rangeland health by providing an additional $150 million for the North American Waterfowl Management and Joint Ventures program, and $150 million for the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Partners for Fish and Wildlife. • Establishes a $2 billion fund to provide economic relief for outfitters and guides holding U.S. Forest Service and U.S. Department of the Interior special use permits. • Supports voluntary climate stewardship practices on over 100 million acres of farmland by providing supplemental funding for U.S. Department of Agriculture working lands conservation programs.

In considering support for this legislation, a recent survey of East Bay residents found strong support (65%) for funding a summer jobs corps for local youth, to provide park and trail- related work in parks.

4. S. 559 (Collins R-ME) and H.R. 1548 (Cartwright D-PA) – Native Plant Species Pilot Program These companion bills would create a new pilot program at the National Park Service (NPS) aimed at supporting the use and establishment of native plants to enhance parkland habitats. They would direct NPS to review existing data and study the cost-effectiveness of using native plants.

Some of the advantages of native plants include: • Requiring fewer pesticides and fertilizers. • Requiring less water and maintenance since they have adapted to local weather conditions. • Providing shelter and food for local wildlife. • Preventing disruption to native wildlife and larger ecosystems.

In order to maintain these benefits, native plants need help to confront threats such as non- native pests, non-native plants, diseases and a changing climate. Of the 20,000 known native plant species in North America, it has been estimated approximately 30 percent are at risk

3 of extinction as a result of factors such as habitat loss, invasive species, temperature shifts and pesticide use.

5. S. 614 (Cardin D-MD) – Transportation Alternatives Enhancement Act This bill would make several improvements to the Transportation Alternatives Program (TAP). The TAP funds a variety of small-scale community transportation projects, rather than highway construction. Projects include bicycle facilities and infrastructure, pedestrian safety and access to transit improvements, environmental mitigation and more. Specifically, the bill would increase funding for TAP and ensure more of it is made available for local governments and agencies to fund and implement these projects. The legislation seeks to restore more local control, an element of this program which was reduced under the 2015 Fixing America’s Surface Transportation (FAST) Act. FAST converted the TAP program into a set-aside in the Surface Transportation Block Grant Program and mandated state reporting on their transportation alternatives plans. This legislation also allows for Federal TAP funding to be used for recreational trails. Eligible entities include “a local government” and “a natural resource or public land agency.” The bill limits the amount of funds controlled by regional Metropolitan Planning Organizations to no more than 50% of funds allocated to a region. In the Bay Area, this would limit the Metropolitan Transportation Commission’s ability to distribute all the funds. This legislation has strong potential to support the District’s overall trails program. The Park District has taken a support position on the House version of this bill, H.R. 463 (Espaillat D-NY).

6. S. 684 (Markey D-MA) – Connecting America’s Active Transportation System This bill provides $500 million in funding for each of the fiscal years 2022 through 2026 aimed at a Federal grant program to foster connected active transportation routes including trails, sidewalks and bikeways which support community health. “A multicounty special district” is eligible to receive the funds. This bill could be incorporated into the reauthorization of Federal transportation bill. It could also be included in an infrastructure / stimulus bill.

According to the Rails-to-Trails Conservancy (which supports this bill) nearly half of all trips Americans take are within a 20-minute bicycle ride and more than 20 percent of all trips are within a 20-minute walk. Creating connections between existing infrastructure for walking and biking will allow more people to safely walk, bike and roll to the places they go every day to work, study, shop, dine, play and live.

S. 1248 (Bennet D-CO) – Outdoor Restoration Partnership Act This bill would create or sustain over two million jobs in the outdoors by investing in forest and watershed restoration. This legislation will provide direct support to local, collaborative efforts to restore habitat, expand outdoor access and mitigate wildfire. It will also spur Federal investment in areas at high-risk of wildfire, with high priority wildlife habitat or in the wildland-urban interface – where homes and businesses meet wildland vegetation – to build climate resilience.

The Outdoor Restoration Partnership Act would: • Establish an Outdoor Restoration Fund to increase support for local collaborative efforts aimed at restoring forests and watersheds, reducing wildfire risk, cleaning up public lands, enhancing wildlife habitat, removing invasive species and expanding outdoor access. The bill establishes an advisory council of local, industry,

4 conservation and national experts to advise on funding priorities, coordinate with existing regional efforts and provide oversight. • Empower local leaders by making $20 billion directly available to state and local governments, tribes, special districts and non-profits to support restoration, resilience and mitigation projects across public, private and tribal lands. • Partner with states and tribes to invest $40 billion in targeted projects to restore wildlife habitat and reduce wildfire risk across the country. This investment allows Federal agencies to partner with local stakeholders, improve forest and watershed health, and build climate and community resilience. Tackling the backlog of restoration and resilience projects across public, private and tribal land will contribute to the economy. • Create or sustain over two million good-paying jobs, primarily in rural areas, to support existing industries like agriculture and outdoor recreation, while providing an opportunity for communities to address long-standing restoration needs and draw in new business. • Save landowners and local governments money by investing in wildfire prevention and natural hazard mitigation, which is three to six times more cost effective than recovering from natural disasters like wildfires or post-fire floods. • Generate over $156 billion in economic output, with a return of up to $15 for every dollar spent on restoration, while upgrading natural infrastructure.

Park District General Manager Sabrina Landreth is quoted in the April 20, 2021 announcement of the bill’s introduction.

B. OTHER FEDERAL MATTERS 1. Rebuilding American Infrastructure with Sustainability and Equity (RAISE) Federal Transportation Grant Staff and Federal Advocate Peter Umhofer will provide a verbal update about the ongoing effort to apply for a RAISE (formerly BUILD) grant.

2. American Jobs Plan Update President Joe Biden announced a nearly $2.3 trillion American Jobs Plan (AJP) on March 31, 2021. The AJP proposes a multi-trillion-dollar infrastructure and jobs investment over eight years, paid for with increased corporate taxes over 15 years.

The biggest chunk, $1.3 trillion, would go toward a combination of community and transportation infrastructure spending to build, repair and upgrade highways; provide affordable housing; build new schools; and more. The AJP allocates $580 billion for research and development, workforce development and manufacturing. The proposal also includes $400 billion to support home and community-based care for the elderly and disabled.

Staff and Advocate Umhofer will provide a verbal update about the Park District’s advocacy to be eligible for these funds.

3. Wildfire Update Staff and Advocate Umhofer will provide a verbal update about efforts to raise awareness about tree mortality at the Federal level.

4. Other Matters

5 III. STATE LEGISLATION / OTHER MATTERS A. NEW LEGISLATION RECOMMENDED BILLS FOR SUPPORT 1. AB 30 (Karla D-San Jose) – Equity in Outdoor Access to Nature This bill would recognize access to nature as a basic human right and direct state agencies to ensure policies reflect the need of all Californians for safe, convenient outdoor recreation opportunities. While studies indicate profound benefits of time spent outdoors in natural settings, research also shows communities of color are three times more likely than white communities to live in nature-deprived areas. Research also indicates 70 percent of low-income communities live in nature-deprived areas. In addition, Black, Latinx, Asian and Indigenous people more often encounter hostility or threats when trying to enjoy time outdoors.

AB 30 codifies in state policy outdoor access to nature is a human right and would direct all relevant state agencies, including: the Natural Resources Agency, the State Department of Public Health, the Department of Transportation and state boards to act accordingly when drafting or revising policies affecting outdoor access.

2. AB 564 (Gonzalez D-San Diego) – Biodiversity Protection and Restoration Act On September 7, 2018, former Governor Jerry Brown issued an Executive Order, which launched the California Biodiversity Initiative. It directed the Secretaries of Food and Agriculture and Natural Resources to implement the initiative. It calls for an examination of threats to California’s biodiversity. Areas of emphasis include ways to: protect native vegetation; manage and restore natural and working lands and waterways; and explore appropriate financing options. The order directed all state agencies to work together to achieve these goals.

Similarly, on October 7, 2020, Governor Gavin Newsom issued an Executive Order, which established the California Biodiversity Collaborative to protect and restore the state’s biodiversity. The order sets the goal for the state to conserve at least 30 percent of California’s land and coastal waters by 2030. It requires the California Natural Resources Agency and other relevant state agencies to develop a report by February 2022 to include strategies aimed at meeting the 30 by 30 goal.

AB 564 affirms and codifies the biodiversity protection provisions of both executive orders. It requires all state agencies, boards and commissions to utilize their authority in advancement of the executive orders. The bill will also help slow the loss of biodiversity and natural lands by requiring public agencies only approve projects consistent with the strategies developed by the Natural Resources Agency to meet the 30 by 30 goal of Governor Newsom’s executive order.

3. AB 614 (Agular-Curry D-Winters) – Nesting Bird Habitat Incentive Program This bill would add $5 to the state upland bird and waterfowl validations aimed at giving a boost to efforts in protection of California's waterfowl and pheasant breeding populations, which are suffering habitat declines. The revenue would support the Nesting Bird Habitat Incentive Program, which was created by AB 2697 (James Gallagher, R-Yuba City) in 2018, but not funded. The incentive program can pay farmers and other landowners to fallow, grow cover crops like vetch or enhance existing nesting habitat. Monies could also be used on state wildlife areas and national wildlife refuges to improve breeding habitat. The Department of Fish and Wildlife would manage the “Nesting Bird Habitat Incentive Program

6 Account” created by the bill. The Department can partner with public agencies in releasing project funds.

4. AB 1255 (Bloom D-Santa Monica) – Fire Prevention Local Assistance Grant Program This bill would require CAL FIRE to create grant programs aimed at facilitating regional, habitat-specific and area-specific approaches to fire risk reduction, prevention and restoration. Grants would fund projects which improve community safety, protect sites and structures, restore burned habitat, reduce catastrophic wildfires, and protect natural resources.

5. AB 1512 (Bauer-Kahan D-Orinda) – Preservation of Alameda- Tesla Expansion Area This bill, co-authored by Senator Steve Glazer, would require the Department of Parks and Recreation to preserve the portion of the Carnegie State Vehicular Recreation Area known as the “Alameda-Tesla Expansion Area” for conservation purposes. The bill would make implementation of this provision contingent upon at least $9 million being appropriated by the Legislature in the annual Budget Act or another statute, transferred or donated to the Off-Highway Vehicle Trust Fund for its purposes. The District has joined Alameda County, City of Livermore, Livermore Area Recreation and Park District, and the Friends of Tesla, in seeking to preserve the Tesla property. Assembly Member Bauer-Kahan’s legislation is consistent with past bills the District has supported. On Monday, April 26th, Board President Dee Rosario testified before the Assembly Water, Parks and Wildlife Committee to support this legislation.

6. SB 624 (Hueso D-San Diego) – Environmental Equity and Outdoor Access Act This bill seeks to create an environmental justice-oriented framework aimed at ensuring all state agencies, boards, offices and conservancies take actions toward equity. Although no particular mandates are required, the legislation calls for actions aimed at ensuring all people have access to natural resources and recreation opportunities. A special emphasis is placed on creating and promoting access for people and communities who face disproportionate barriers to access. The bill further seeks to ensure all people of the state have equal protection from environmental degradation and the impacts of climate change. A special emphasis is placed on those who face elevated risks and exposures to environmental harms and climate impacts. The bill calls on promoting inclusivity among the staff at the Natural Resources Agency to ensure all Californians and visitors of the state feel safe and welcome in the outdoors.

B. OTHER STATE MATTERS 1. Tree and Vegetation Mortality Update Staff and State Advocate Doug Houston will provide an update about the Park District’s advocacy for funding and regulatory relief to address the tree mortality issue.

2. AB 959 (Mullin D-South San Francisco) – Nuisance Abatement Legislation Update Staff and Advocate Houston will provide an update about the Park District’s sponsored bill to provide Public Resources Code 5500 park districts the ability to abate nuisances and recovery costs when doing so. On May 5, 2021, AB 959 was heard in the Assembly Committee on Local Government. The bill passed unanimously 8-0. Assistant District Counsel Jason Rosenberg testified in support.

7

3. Governor Newsom May Budget Revise On the same day of this Legislative Committee of the Board meeting, May 14, 2021, the Governor is scheduled to announce his revised 2021-22 budget. Between additional Federal and state revenue, it is estimated there is a $40 billion state surplus. Much of it is likely to go into reserves and one-time expenditures. Staff and Advocate Houston will provide a verbal update to the extent possible given the timing of the committee meeting and Governor’s announcement.

4. Other Matters

V. OPEN FORUM PUBLIC COMMENT

VI. ARTICLES

VII. BOARD COMMENTS

8

Board Legislative Committee May 14, 2021 – Articles and Other Media

Biden’s plan would boost conservation of U.S. lands, waters

Politics May 6, 2021 2:49 PM EDT WASHINGTON (AP) — The Biden administration on Thursday detailed steps to achieve an ambitious goal to conserve nearly one-third of America’s lands and waters by 2030, relying on voluntary efforts to preserve public, private and tribal areas while also helping tackle climate change and create jobs.

A report, with the lofty title “America the Beautiful,” calls for a decade-long commitment on projects nationwide to make the conservation and restoration of lands and waters an urgent priority. The plan would purify drinking water, increase green space, improve access to outdoor recreation, restore healthy fisheries, reduce the risk of wildfires and recognize the “oversized contributions” of farmers, ranchers, forest owners, fishers, hunters, rural communities and tribal nations.

In the process, the effort will produce thousands of new jobs and a stronger economy while also addressing climate change and environmental justice, including expanded access by disadvantaged communities to the outdoors, the report said.

President Joe Biden has set a goal of conserving at least 30% of U.S. lands and waters by 2030. If successful, the plan will help slow global warming and preserve some of the nation’s most scenic lands for future generations of Americans, the report said.

About 12% of the nation’s lands and 25% of its waters are currently protected, according to research by the Center for American Progress, a left-leaning think tank. Those protected areas include not just parks but also wilderness areas, game refuges, agricultural lands, forests, ranches and other sites with conservation easements.

The plan released Thursday recommends a series of actions, including expansion of a federal grant program to create local parks, especially in cities and other “nature-deprived communities.” The report also suggests grants for Native American tribes to support tribal conservation priorities; expansion of fish and wildlife habitats and corridors; increased access for outdoor recreation; and creation of a “civilian climate corps” to work on conservation and restoration projects nationwide.

The plan follows through on a Biden campaign promise and builds on the Great American Outdoors Act, a 2020 law passed by Congress that authorizes nearly $3 billion for conservation projects, outdoor recreation and maintenance of national parks and other public lands.

Supporters call the law the most significant conservation statute in nearly half a century. It provides dedicated annual funding for parks and open space projects across the country.

Even with that injection of federal dollars, the Biden plan relies heavily on voluntary conservation efforts by farmers, ranchers, forest owners and fishing communities. No cost estimate for the project was provided. Much of the spending could be done through department budgets, as well as the 2020 outdoors law, the 2018 farm bill and Biden’s proposed $2.3 trillion infrastructure plan, officials said.

“The president’s challenge is a call to action to support locally led conservation and restoration efforts of all kinds and all over America, wherever communities wish to safeguard the lands and waters they know and love,” the report says. “Doing so will not only protect our lands and waters but also boost our economy and support jobs nationwide.”

The report was signed by three Cabinet members — Interior Secretary Deb Haaland, Agriculture Secretary Tom Vilsack and Commerce Secretary Gina Raimondo — along with

Brenda Mallory, who leads the White House Council on Environmental Quality.

“Nature plays an important role in improving resilience to climate change and creating a thriving economy,” Haaland said at a news conference Thursday. “‘America the Beautiful’ is the beginning of an important effort that we can only do together.”

White House climate adviser Gina McCarthy said the Great Outdoors law, which bankrolls the popular Land and Water Conservation Fund and takes aim at a growing maintenance backlog at national parks, was a “down payment” on the conservation initiative. The law authorizes $900 million a year for that fund and an additional $1.9 billion per year on improvements at parks, forests, wildlife refuges and range lands. “There are many tools available to us” to pay for the conservation program, McCarthy said. The report is only the “starting point” on a path to fulfill Biden’s conservation vision, she and other officials said.

“Where this path leads over the next decade will be determined not by our agencies, but by the ideas and leadership of local communities,” the Cabinet officials said in the report.

“It is our job to listen, learn and provide support along the way to … pass on healthy lands, waters and wildlife to the generations to come.”

Environmental and outdoors groups hailed the initiative.

“The bottom line is that healthier public lands and waters mean more opportunities for Americans to recreate outside and for communities’ economies to thrive,” said Jessica Turner, executive director of the Outdoor Recreation Roundtable, a coalition that represents a range of outdoor businesses.

Alex Taurel of the League of Conservation Voters added: “We are all-in to help reach and exceed” Biden’s goal.

Chris Wood, president of Trout Unlimited, a fisheries conservation group, said that “the most lasting and durable conservation is the most local.” His organization will work with the administration and others “to advance solutions that empower local communities, support landowners, protect trout and salmon and — most importantly — leave a healthier land and water legacy for our kids.”

By — Matthew Daly, Associated Press

Mass tree death in East Bay parks raises alarm ahead of fire season Drought is the likely culprit in the first die-back pattern researchers have seen in the Bay Area.

By Eden TellerMay 2, 2021, 6 a.m.

Crews noticed a die-back of trees across East Bay Regional Parks in October 2020. Credit: US Forest Service, Pacific Southwest Research Station

A broad pattern of tree deaths across the East Bay Regional Park District has raised alarms for the park’s fire risk management team as the Bay Area enters an extreme drought and a high-risk fire season.

Around 1,000 acres of trees, from invasive eucalyptus and acacias to native pines and bay laurels, are dead or dying, according to the park district. That includes around 62 acres in Tilden, which is 2,079 acres total, and 624 acres in Anthony Chabot, which is 5,067. EBRPD totals 124,909 acres.

Researchers are posting updates on the Bay Area tree die-back “It’s bigger than the park district. It’s really a regional issue” affecting woodland throughout Alameda and Contra Costa counties and starting to affect areas in Marin and San Mateo counties, said Aileen Theile, EBRPD’s fire chief. And as a dry summer approaches, she added, “it’s quickly going to become a public safety issue.”

Park staff noticed the tree death and die-back in October 2020 while doing standard fire reduction and vegetation care in various areas of the parks. The increase in dead wood is “right in the middle of the wildland-urban interface,” which is particularly worrying for fire management, Theile said A map of tree mortality in the East Bay. Credit: East Bay Regional Park District

After noticing the tree damage last fall, EBRPD surveyed the parks from a helicopter to estimate its extent. It’s easy for visitors to the parks to spot the die-back: “All they really have to do is look up and east,” Theile said. Crews have been hard at work everywhere from along Grizzly Peak Boulevard to the Brazil Building and Reinhardt Redwood Regional Park, removing low- hanging dead branches, clearing dead foliage and checking in with the Bay Area Air Quality Management District to burn the detritus quickly while conditions allow. In mid-May, there will also be a small prescribed burn in Tilden of an area that the park district has been monitoring and maintaining for years, Theile said.

“It’s obviously a dynamic and evolving situation, and we have a lot more to learn [but] doing nothing is not an option,” Theile said.

The EBRPD will use funds from Measures CC and FF (which voters passed in November 2018 to protect against wildfires, restore natural areas and maintain public access in regional parks) to tackle the costs of tree removal and continue surveillance and action against wildfire danger. Staff plan to ask the board of directors to approve a bid for funding from CalFire, FEMA and the Coastal Conservancy.

“It’s not one and done, it’s constant maintenance,” Thiele said during an April 26 committee meeting.

A table documenting tree mortality shown during an April 26 EBRPD committee meeting. Credit: East Bay Regional Park District

The wide variety of species that are struggling or dying, plus recent weather conditions and the geographic distribution of the die- backs, point to drought stress as a root cause, according to Natalie van Doorn, a research urban ecologist, and Susan Frankel, a plant pathologist, both at the US Forest Service’s Pacific Southwest Research Station in Albany. The stress of drought makes trees more susceptible to pathogens and parasites, such as two fungi that researchers have seen damaging many of the acacia in the recent die-off, van Doorn and Frankel said via email. Since “problems of this type do not respect property boundaries, and resources are scarce,” multiple local, regional, state and federal organizations are working together to untangle this problem, van Doorn and Frankel said, including the USDA Forest Service, the UC Berkeley Forest Pathology and Mycology Lab, Cal Fire and EBRPD. Even small organizations like the Friends of Sausal Creek and Friends of Joaquin Miller Park are helping raise awareness and reporting patches of dead trees, they added.

Drought has caused problems for forests in California before. From 2012 to 2015, a severe drought in the Sierra Nevada killed 140 million trees, mostly conifers, van Doorn and Frankel said. Climate change-fueled heat waves magnified the impact of that drought and others across the state, according to climate researchers. However, the die-back noticed last fall is the first time researchers have seen a pattern of mortality and die-back in the Bay Area, the pair wrote.

Land managers and researchers have found damaged and dying trees across the East Bay, like these ones in Oakland, since October 2020. Credit: US Forest Service, Pacific Southwest Research Station Some people use the terms “die- back” and “die-off” interchangeably, but distinguishing between trees that appear dead versus trees that are actually dead is surprisingly difficult, and the term “die-back” acknowledges that some of the trees may recover, van Doorn and Frankel said. Eucalyptus and acacia in particular are known to vigorously re-sprout after damage.

“The extent and severity of the die-back and die-off of trees in the Bay Area has not been fully documented yet, so it is difficult to compare to other die-off events. It may be that some of the trees recover, since the roots may not be dead,” van Doorn and Frankel wrote.

EBRPD’s work to manage the die-back shouldn’t affect visitors to Tilden or the district’s other parks unless high wind or other heightened fire danger events force the district to close a park, Theile said. And though the park may be closed, staff are still working to protect the land and the people living nearby.

This story was updated at 12:15 p.m. on May 4 to include a map of areas affected by the die-back, a list of acres impacted by park and more information from an EBRPD committee meeting.

WEATHER Critical fire conditions: 1,000 acres of dead trees in Bay Area parks pose yet another threat By J.R. Stone Monday, May 3, 2021 11:58PM

Bay Area firefighters are saying "beware," as they highlight another growing concern this fire season - dead trees.

ALAMEDA COUNTY, Calif. (KGO) -- There is now a red flag warning in effect in Solano County, fire season is nearly upon us, and firefighters are saying '"beware." They're also highlighting a growing problem - dead trees.

Monday we flew our SKY7 chopper above the East Bay Hills. While what we saw may not look concerning to you, look closer and you'll see dead trees in some areas, something that is alarming to firefighters in the East Bay Regional Park District, which covers 123,000 acres in the Bay Area.

"When you have trees that are dead and standing like that, if they do catch fire, the danger is that they're going to throw embers aloft up in the wind," says East Bay Regional Park District Fire Chief Aileen Theile.

Chief Theile says there are 1,000 acres of dead trees scattered amongst the brush in their park land, located in Alameda and Contra Costa Counties. The park service has been working to remove them, but will up their efforts next week in Redwood Regional Park.

Some of the dead trees are in Tilden Regional Park.

Some people we talked with don't notice any major differences.

"It's a little bit drier than it normally would be but in general, nothing too different than a usual year," says Andrew Coulter of San Francisco.

Others do notice changes that have come earlier in the season.

"The fuel is everywhere you walk, it will just take a little spark and the whole place will go up, even when you have some greenery around you that doesn't mean that there isn't a dead plant around it," says Amanda Herr who lives in the East Bay.

And while you might not notice all of the changes being seen, crews out there say they do, and it's one of the reasons that fire season will officially be starting more than a month early this year.

"This is the kind of weather pattern that we're really worried about over the next several months in California because you got very low relative humidity, a wind out of the north that is typically hotter drier air coming off the continent, and there's just not a lot of humidity in the air," says Chief Theile. Theile also says that while those dead trees are concerning, the amount of moisture in live trees, or lack thereof it, is also a danger as we approach fire season.

LOCAL//ENVIRONMENT Padilla proposes increased protection for 1 million acres of California wilderness Kurtis Alexander May 3, 2021Updated: May 3, 2021 4:19 p.m.2

Sen. Alex Padilla’s bill would add 109,000 acres to the San Gabriel Mountains National Monument. Dania Maxwell / Special to The Chronicle 201

Sen. Alex Padilla, D-Calif., announced Monday that he is introducing legislation to increase protection of more than 1 million acres of public lands in California, mirroring part of a wilderness bill approved by the House earlier this year.

The proposal would preserve redwood forests along the north coast, create a trail stretching from Monterey County to Los Angeles and expand the popular San Gabriel Mountains National Monument in Southern California, among other things.

The conservation push comes as the new administration in Washington encourages protection of the nation’s wildlands. President Biden has been a champion of the 30 by 30 campaign, an effort to safeguard 30% of U.S. land and waters by 2030. “It is incumbent upon us to be thoughtful stewards of these special places so that our communities can enjoy them and benefit from America’s natural resources for generations to come,” Padilla said in a statement.

In February, the House passed the Protecting America’s Wilderness and Public Lands Act, which expands land preservation and recreation opportunities across several states. Padilla’s bill, co- sponsored by Sen. Dianne Feinstein, is limited to California. It’s dubbed the Public Lands Act, short for Protecting Unique and Beautiful Landscapes by Investing in California.

The legislation would designate more than 300,000 acres of public lands in Del Norte, Humboldt, Mendocino and Trinity counties as “wilderness,” the most restrictive classification of federal land. It would create a 400-mile long Condor National Scenic Trail in and around the Los Padres National Forest. It would increase the size of the San Gabriel Mountains National Monument by 109,000 acres and establish a national recreation area along the San Gabriel Valley foothills.

The proposal is likely to face at least some pushback in the Senate, notably from Republicans wary of limits the bill would put on commercial activities, such as logging, mining and ranching. The protections that are proposed, like in the House bill, pertain almost entirely to federal land and do not, for the most part, affect private holdings.

If the legislation is approved by the Senate, a big if given the Democrats’ razor-thin majority, how the Senate bill and House bill are reconciled remains to be seen. Pieces of both could be included in a larger bill, perhaps on infrastructure or the budget.

Kurtis Alexander is a San Francisco Chronicle staff writer. Email: [email protected] Twitter: @kurtisalexander Written By

Kurtis Alexander

Reach Kurtis on

Kurtis Alexander is a general assignment reporter for The San Francisco Chronicle, frequently writing about water, wildfire, climate and the American West. His recent work has focused on the impacts of drought, the widening rural-urban divide and state and federal environmental policy.

Before joining the Chronicle, Alexander worked as a freelance writer and as a staff reporter for several media organizations, including The Fresno Bee and Bay Area News Group, writing about government, politics and the environment.

LOCAL // LOCAL POLITICS What the Oakland A's Howard Terminal ballpark proposal means for taxpayers

Sarah Ravani April 30, 2021Updated: May 3, 2021 11:36 a.m.

New renderings released of the Oakland A's plans to build a waterfront stadium at the Port of Oakland's Howard Terminal.

The Oakland A’s released a term sheet April 23 that details their financial plans to develop a new ballpark and mixed-use development along the city’s waterfront. But City Hall officials were surprised by the long-awaited details.

Dave Kaval, the president of the A’s, said his team of attorneys and consultants met with the city three times a week for close to eight months to develop their proposal and he added that city officials “were fully aware of all the terms and conditions in the agreement.” Now, he wants City Council feedback and is pushing for a council vote by July.

“We had gotten to the point where we had really felt strongly that this document needed to be something where we got the perspective and input from the City Council,” he said. “We thought the best way to do that was make it public.” Mayor Libby Schaaf, who has supported the project, told The Chronicle she is committed to getting the term sheet ready for a City Council vote by July. But, she said, in the weeks ahead, the city will be in “continual dialogue” with the A’s to make sure this is a good deal for city resident

“This is a very expensive and complicated project,” she said. “Not only is there the ballpark ... but there are a lot of improvements to our transportation system and community benefits that Oaklanders deserve as part of this project. That is the part we are looking at now.”

Opponents say the fine print makes clear the project isn’t a good deal for the city’s taxpayers.

How much do the new ballpark and the adjacent development cost, and why is it so expensive?

The A’s total budget of $12 billion for the project would make it one of the most expensive developments in the entire country. The entire project’s cost would be more than triple the assessed value of the Bay Area’s single most valuable building, Apple’s headquarters in Cupertino. A challenge for the A’s project is the Bay Area’s construction costs, which are among the highest in the world. One new apartment unit in the Bay Area can cost upwards of $500,000 to build.

The $12 billion will fund a ballpark with a capacity for 35,000 attendees, 3,000 residential units, up to 1.5 million square feet of commercial uses, up to 270,000 square feet for retail, an indoor performance center for up to 3,500 people, 400 hotel rooms and up to 18 acres of publicly accessible open space.

The development will span 55 acres of land in and around Howard Terminal in Jack London Square. The land closest to the waterfront and the ballpark will be leased while the land used to build condos and commercial real estate will be purchased, Kaval said.

Who will pay for it?

The ballpark is expected to cost more than $1 billion. On-site project costs will be paid for through private financing and project-generated revenues. The term sheet lays out a plan for the city to develop two infrastructure financing districts: the Howard Terminal Infrastructure Financing District and Jack London Infrastructure Financing District.

The tax revenue generated from those districts will go toward paying the A’s back for all infrastructure costs.

The term sheet estimates that $855 million in tax revenue will be used to fund on-site and off-site infrastructure upgrades.

Schaaf said the project requires certain improvements, but there are other improvements — pedestrian safety, traffic flow — that would be beneficial to the Jack London neighborhood regardless of whether there is a ballpark or not.

The city is “critically examining” claims that the growth in tax revenues is enough to fully fund those investments, said Justin Berton, a spokesman for the mayor.

“The commitments requested by the A’s would predetermine the use of a substantial portion of tax revenue from this part of the city for years to come,” he said. “We will also explore whether there are other financing tools that could preserve the project’s viability while reducing the level of commitment” of future taxes that would be promised as part of the infrastructure districts.

What’s an infrastructure financing district?

Infrastructure financing districts are created to finance public infrastructure projects and are commonly used for big development projects. The special district diverts some property tax revenue to pay for infrastructure upgrades and other costs. San Francisco, for example, has nine big infrastructure financing districts to fund upgrades in areas of the city including Transbay and Mission Rock.

How much will Oakland get in community benefits and affordable housing?

Oakland will get $450 million in community benefits from tax-generated revenue from the two infrastructure financing districts. The maximum amount of time that the infrastructure financing districts will last is 45 years. Kaval said the $450 million in community benefits could come to the city within 15 to 20 years.

The A’s estimate that the city will get $1.4 billion from the Jack London Financing District. Their term sheet specifies that $360 million of that should be used to fund offsite infrastructure, $280 million should go to community benefits like affordable housing and offsite infrastructure and $760 million should go to the city’s coffers.

The A’s estimate that the Howard Terminal Financing District will generate $860 million — with $495 million of that used to fund all on-site infrastructure costs, including environmental remediation, seismic improvements and sea level-rise improvements. The term sheet states that $170 million of that revenue should be used for community benefits like affordable housing and $195 million to be given to the city’s coffers.

How long will it take to build?

The first phase of the project includes the ballpark, 540 residential units, 250,000 square feet of commercial office, 30,000 square feet of retail and restaurant space, 400 rooms for hotels, about 12.3 acres of open space, and 4,818 parking spaces. The first phase is expected to take two years to build once construction starts, according to the draft environmental impact report, but it’s not clear when building will begin.

The A’s say nothing else can be built until the ballpark is completed. The overall project could take at least eight years to be built and likely much longer.

What are the environmental concerns?

In 2019, The Chronicle reviewed regulatory documents that showed the soil and groundwater on the site contain hazardous and cancer-causing chemicals that would need to be remediated before the ballpark can be built at the Howard Terminal site.

Environmental groups submitted letters to the city that say the draft environmental impact report fails to disclose and mitigate environmental concerns around air quality, greenhouse gas emissions, transportation, hazardous materials, water quality and other issues. “Simply put, the Project is proposed for a dangerous toxic site, imperiled by sea level rise, with an inadequate remediation plan,” a letter written by the San Francisco Baykeeper states.

San Francisco Baykeeper criticized the project’s plan to raise the site and its plans to manage storm-water runoff by redirecting it away from the site.

What infrastructure upgrades need to be made?

The draft environmental impact report states that the ballpark would be surrounded by pedestrian streets with limited vehicle access. Transit options include BART, AC Transit, ferry service and bus shuttles, and a transportation hub that would have a raised pedestrian and bicycle crossings to the ballpark.

Infrastructure upgrades include pedestrian grade separation, new bike lanes, sidewalk improvements and more.

Melvin Mackay, the president of Local 10 ILWU, which represents 1,400 workers in the longshore division, said the ballpark and overall development would create “total gridlock” at the port. He worries that port workers will lose their jobs if the development is built.

“We are the third largest port in the country,” he said. “Where will we get our goods from when the waterfront boards up?”

San Francisco Chronicle staff writer Roland Li contributed to this report.

Sarah Ravani is a San Francisco Chronicle staff writer. Email: [email protected] Twitter: @SarRavani

OPINION Walters: President’s federal tax plan could hit California hard

Evan Vucci/Associated Press President Joe Biden, it was revealed, will ask Congress this week to nearly double taxes on capital gains of the highest-income taxpayers. By DAN WALTERS | PUBLISHED: April 30, 2021 at 4:45 a.m. | UPDATED: April 30, 2021 at 5:01 a.m. A cosmic convergence of events in Washington and Sacramento last week demonstrated how strongly federal and state tax systems are interconnected.

President Joe Biden, it was revealed, will ask Congress this week to nearly double taxes on capital gains of the highest-income taxpayers, on top of an increase in taxes on their ordinary incomes he had proposed earlier to pay for infrastructure improvements.

California’s budget is extraordinarily dependent on those same taxpayers, with the top 1% — about 150,000 tax filers in a state of nearly 40 million — accounting for nearly 50% of the state’s general fund revenues. Much of those revenues from the state’s wealthiest residents come from their capital gains, which have increased sharply in recent years.

Although the state is still coping with a severe recession from COVID-19 shutdowns, the taxable incomes of the state’s most affluent have continued to grow — in part from a surging stock market — and have generated a cornucopia of revenues. The state Department of Finance reported last week that during the first nine months of the 2020-21 fiscal year, revenues are running nearly $17 billion above the budget’s estimates, the vast majority from income taxes on affluent Californians.

Revenue gains are so robust that the Legislature’s budget analyst, Gabe Petek, last week declared that some of the excess money may have to be returned to taxpayers under the “Gann limit,” a ballot measure passed by voters four decades ago. Moreover, Petek said, “Our analysis suggests the (Gann limit) will be an even more important factor in the state budget in the coming years” as revenues surge beyond the limit’s parameters.

The connection between Biden’s tax proposals and California’s budget is how high-income taxpayers would react should his plans be enacted.

Capital gains are largely discretionary. That is, profits in stocks and other investments only become taxable when they are sold and a sharp increase in federal taxes to 43.4% would encourage wealthy investors to hold them to avoid the new levies, which would also depress state revenues from those gains.

California has the nation’s highest marginal income tax rate, 13.3%, which is one reason why the state’s revenues have continued to grow during the recession. Raising the top 37% federal tax rate on wages and other ordinary income to 39.6%, as Biden proposes, would push the combined marginal rate on high-income Californians to nearly 53%.

That would increase the financial impetus for the wealthy to flee to states that have low or no income taxes, such as neighboring Nevada and Texas – especially since the last major federal tax overhaul four years ago limited the deduction for state and local taxes to $10,000.

Governors of high-tax states such as California and New York have pleaded with Congress to repeal the $10,000 cap, fearing that an exodus of the wealthy would cut deeply into their revenues. So far, there’s only been a trickle of tax refugees, which is another reason why California’s revenues have been so strong, but a bigger federal tax bite could be a tipping point for some.

Senate Majority Leader Chuck Schumer, who’s from New York, and House Speaker Nancy Pelosi, who’s from California, have insisted that repealing the $10,000 cap be included in any new tax legislation, but doing so would reduce the federal revenues that Biden wants for new infrastructure and education spending.

California politicians often portray the state as a “nation-state” that’s largely independent, but as Biden’s proposals demonstrate, Washington calls the tune on tax policy and California must dance to it.

Dan Walters is a CalMatters columnist.

News Proposed Niles Canyon Trail would link Sunol and Fremont Aims to create bike, pedestrian access while preserving historic water, rail infrastructure by Julia Baum / Pleasanton Weekly Uploaded: Mon, Apr 26, 2021, 2:41 pm 9 Time to read: about 2 minutes

The proposed 5.8-mile Niles Canyon Trail would run from east Fremont to unincorporated Sunol, as seen on this map from Alameda County Public Works Agency. (Courtesy image)

Tri-Valley residents may one day be able to travel on foot or bike through Niles Canyon on a nearly six-mile proposed trail that would link the eastern end of Fremont and the unincorporated community of Sunol -- which Alameda County officials also said would ''preserve the historic water and rail infrastructure within Niles Canyon."

In a public update on the project last month, officials said, "Improving access in the canyon is a gateway to open space for Alameda County residents."

Rick Yeung of the Alameda County Public Works Agency, which has also partnered with the Public Utilities Commission and the East Bay Regional Park District for the project, told the Weekly that development of the 5.8-mile bicycle and pedestrian connection will use a combination of new trail sections, portions of the former Sunol Aqueduct, and existing railways for a route running from the Niles District in Fremont to Sunol.

"Much of Phase 1 from Niles to Palomares Road uses existing roadways for the trail," Yeung said. "Phase 2, which is from Palomares Road to the Niles Canyon Railway Yard near Brightside, re-purposes the aqueduct as a trail for about 25% of the route. About 70% of Phase 3 from the Niles Canyon Railway Yard to Sunol requires the construction of new trail."

Yeung said planners may need to secure an easement to cross private property, "which would require payment for the full market value of the land," though a private landowner is not required to grant an easement.

The area in question is small, but Yeung said, "If this becomes an issue, the project will need to adjust the trail's location, which may increase construction cost and complexity."

With some parts of the proposed trail adjacent to the Niles Canyon Railway or Highway 84, or near steep slopes, features like retaining walls and a pedestrian bridge at Palomares Road will need to be built. Parts of the aqueduct will also get a layer of asphalt on the top surface, as well as a second concrete exterior wall and handrail for pedestrians.

Visitor parking at the existing Niles Plaza parking facility and the Alameda Creek Staging Area would be linked to the trail, along with a new parking area at Palomares Road and the future EBRPD Tyler Staging Area.

Because of "a significant increase in people experiencing homelessness within Niles Canyon over the last decade," Yeung said "unfortunately, this has led to illicit activity including the disposal of waste and toxic substances such as spray paint," and will require cleaning the canyon.

However, Yeung said officials believe the trail's development "will create 'eyes on the canyon' that will help to prevent encampments and illegal waste disposal."

"It is difficult to predict the number of trail users," Yeung said. "However, when looking at other regional trails in the Bay Area, we anticipate a peak of about 400 people on a nice weekend day."

According to Yeung, the entire trail "exceeds $100 million to complete," with the first phase at a total development cost of about $29 million. The Alameda County Transportation Commission, Alameda County, Metropolitan Transportation Commission, and city of Fremont have all provided funding for the project.

A source of construction funds has not been identified yet, but Yeung said "a project of this scale will likely receive a combination of funds from local, state, and federal sources."

The county is currently developing an environmental impact report; a scope session will be held in the early summer and open for public comment. To learn more about the project, visit www.nilescanyontrail.org.

POLITICS California to lose seat in Congress for first time ever as population growth lags

Tal Kopan April 26, 2021Updated: April 26, 2021 8:14 p.m.

WASHINGTON — California will lose a representative in Congress for the first time in the state’s history, according to new numbers released by the U.S. Census Bureau on Monday.

California will still have the largest delegation in the House of any state by a large margin for the next decade, though its closest competitor, Texas, gained two seats, making the margin 52 to 38. But California’s population growth lagged behind that of the country as a whole since 2010, and with the House capped at 435 members, it joined Rust Belt and Northeastern states including West Virginia, Pennsylvania and New York in surrendering seats to states that have grown far more in the past decade. The announcement kicks off what could be a contentious redistricting in California over the next year, a process that will reshape congressional maps and will leave the state’s 53 lawmakers in a game of musical chairs to keep their jobs.

It will be a new experience for California, which gained congressional representation after virtually every census from when it joined the union in 1850 until 2010, when it remained flat.

The redistricting process will still take time, as the data necessary to redraw districts will be delayed for several more months. The Census Bureau has promised it will arrive by Sept. 30. Outside experts who have analyzed population data expect that the Bay Area’s delegation will remain largely intact, with Los Angeles County the likeliest to lose a seat.

“Slow growth rates in parts of Los Angeles County mean those regions are likely to see their influence reduced in Sacramento and Washington, while relatively high growth rates in the San Francisco Bay Area and the San Bernardino/Riverside County Inland Empire mean those areas are likely to increase their influence after the 2021 redistricting,” Rose Institute fellow Douglas Johnson said in a statement accompanying a report he helped author for the Claremont McKenna College organization.

California’s population in 2020 was 39,538,223, a growth of 6.1% over 2010. But that was the smallest increase for the state going back to 1910, the period for which data was readily available. It also trailed the national gain of 7.4%.

California’s political lines for the 2020s will be redrawn through a nonpartisan process for the second time, thanks to a ballot measure that state voters approved in 2008 to take reapportionment out of the hands of the Legislature. A 14-member citizens redistricting commission, consisting of five Democrats, five Republicans and four unaffiliated members, has already been selected and is holding meetings.

Still, politicians may attempt to influence the redrawing process. When the nonpartisan system was used for the first time in 2011, ProPublica reported that Democrats organized groups that claimed to be local community members to testify representing party interests. Democratic officials denied the report.

A man wearing a face mask walks past a sign encouraging people to complete the 2020 Census in Los Angeles on Aug. 10, 2020. ROBYN BECK / AFP via Getty Images

Forty-three of California’s 53 congressional seats are now held by Democrats, with only a handful of true swing districts located mainly in Orange County and the Central Valley.

Monday’s announcement starts a sprint to redraw the districts in time for the February 2022 candidate filing deadline for the June primary elections. While the California Constitution requires maps to be redrawn by Aug. 15, the state Supreme Court extended the deadline to Dec. 15 in light of census data delays.

The 2020 census was beset by problems, including lengthy litigation over policies by the Trump administration that attempted to exclude undocumented immigrants from being counted toward state populations. They ultimately were stopped from going into effect.

The coronavirus pandemic further delayed census takers from conducting the decennial population count. California spent a record $187 million on outreach to ensure an accurate tabulation, more than six times what it spent in 2000 and 2010 combined.

In a news conference announcing the results, census officials emphasized they were confident in their counts despite the problems. Overall, the nation’s population growth was the second-lowest in history, the Census Bureau said. It now totals nearly 331.5 million.

Seven congressional seats shifted between 13 states, the smallest such change in the history of the apportionment process. Many of the changes were smaller than predicted, with several states holding onto seats they were expected to lose.

California was joined by Ohio, Illinois, Michigan, New York, Pennsylvania and West Virginia in losing one seat apiece. Texas gained two seats and Colorado, Florida, Montana, North Carolina and Oregon each gained one.

The competition was close: Census officials said that if New York had just 89 more people, it would have kept the House seat it lost and Minnesota would have dropped one instead.

California Republicans were quick to cast the results as a referendum on Democratic policies, though the states that gained and lost seats were a mix of blue and red ones.

“It is not surprising that California would lose a seat in Congress for the first time in state history because years of failed Democrat policies have taken our state backward,” said state GOP Chair Jessica Millan Patterson. “Californians will have one less voice to speak for us in Washington, which proves yet again that it’s time for change and real leadership.”

While Republicans control state governments and the redistricting process in more states than Democrats, including some of the states that picked up seats in Congress, it’s not clear how redistricting will affect the makeup of Congress. Some of the flows of migration within the U.S. are also likely to affect the makeup of the voting population in those states.

Tal Kopan is The San Francisco Chronicle’s Washington correspondent. Email: [email protected] Twitter: @talkopan

California’s new Attorney General pledges to police the police Former Assemblyman Robert Bonta becomes state’s top law enforcement official Former East Bay Assemblyman Rob Bonta was confirmed last week as state Attorney General. By SOLOMON MOORE | [email protected] | PUBLISHED: April 26, 2021 at 6:30 a.m. | UPDATED: April 26, 2021 at 6:35 a.m. It would be easy to assume that Rob Bonta, 49, California’s new attorney general, is simply the right man at the right time.

Bonta, the first Filipino-American to hold the job, made a name for himself advocating for police reform as a Democratic assemblyman representing Oakland, Alameda and San Leandro. So it was no surprise that his colleagues focused on that record during his confirmation hearings this week, held a day after a jury convicted disgraced Minnesota police officer Derek Chauvin for crushing George Floyd’s neck with his knee.

But to say that Bonta was made for this moment and this role would discount the single-minded drive and preparation that made his appointment possible.

Bonta assumes the office with a war chest exceeding $2.4 million, making him one of the state’s most prodigious fundraisers, despite the fact that he has never run for statewide office. Bonta has been a favorite of law enforcement groups, who donated approximately $190,000 since he first ran for his Assembly seat, but says he will no longer accept contributions from police and prison guard unions as attorney general. In October 2020 he donated the remainder of contributions from law enforcement groups, $14,625, to the 2020 campaign supporting the initiative to end cash bail.

In an interview with the Bay Area News Group, Bonta acknowledged that he had his eye on the attorney general’s office for years and colleagues said his largess is a sign that he was preparing to run for the position even before his predecessor, Xavier Becerra, left to join the Biden administration.

The day Gov. Gavin Newsom informed Bonta during a Zoom call last month that he would select him to lead the California Department of Justice, Bonta filed papers to defend his incumbency.

“Yes, I am running for election. I’m running in 2022. I intend to stay in the seat, to run a robust campaign and to continue to be able to work for and fight for the people of California,” he said.

Bonta’s wife of 23 years, Mialisa Villafane, is running for his vacated Assembly seat. They have three children.

Bonta assumes the attorney general’s office at a time of deep mistrust of law enforcement and calls for greater police accountability. One of his first tasks will be establishing a new enforcement division — authorized by legislation he supported — to investigate police shootings of unarmed suspects.

“Based on historical data, we anticipate that there could be 40 of those incidents per year,” Bonta said. Police shooting investigations are expensive, politically fraught and, at the state level, exceedingly rare. Becerra and former AG — and current Vice President — Kamala Harris each presided over only one such investigation.

Bonta said he will also advocate for broader implementation of federally mandated police reforms in California, after U.S. Attorney General Merrick Garland reversed a Trump administration policy to restrict the Justice Department’s authority. California attorneys general have traditionally partnered with federal civil rights monitors in police misconduct cases.

Continued federal partnerships will “be an important tool in the toolbox of the attorney general to create more justice in California,” Bonta said.

Oakland and Los Angeles Police Departments have both been subject to years-long consent decrees designed to force sweeping reforms. In addition, the California Department of Corrections and Rehabilitation has been under a separate federal receivership for decades.

Bonta also said he expects fewer federal challenges to California’s vanguard environmental laws during the Biden presidency. During the Trump administration, then-Attorney General Becerra defended the state against dozens of federal actions brought by the U.S. Department of Justice and Environmental Protection Agency aimed at curtailing California’s clean fuel standards, carbon emissions trading agreements with Canadian agencies and other state climate initiatives.

“But that doesn’t mean that the threats to our environment, go away,” Bonta said. “We need to look inward, in our state at bad actors and polluters.”

Robert Andres Bonta was born in Quezon City, Philippines, and immigrated to California in the 1970s. His parents were deeply involved in the United Farm Workers labor movement and raised him in Fair Oaks.

He attended the University of Oxford and Yale University for his undergraduate degree and also earned his law degree from Yale.

After clerking for U.S. District Judge Alvin W. Thompson in Connecticut, Bonta practiced corporate law in San Francisco, and while there he became a deputy city attorney.

“When we met, he was in the City Attorney’s office, and I was a former civil rights attorney and prosecutor, but neither of us had thought deeply about our political careers – we were just interested in public service,” said Assemblyman David Sen-Fu Chiu (D-San Francisco).

After Chiu’s name also emerged as a potential replacement for Becerra, he publicly withdrew from consideration to back his friend’s candidacy.

“Rob has been a statewide leader on criminal justice reform, leading the bail reform conversation, leading the conversation about immigration detention, opposing the death penalty,” Chiu said. “He’s been a leader on all the issues of the day that matter.” Raphael Sonenshein, executive director of the Pat Brown Institute at Cal State Los Angeles, a state policy research organization, said that each attorney general lends their own imprimatur to the position.

Kamala Harris was known as a fierce prosecutor when she assumed the role. Becerra was a U.S. Congressman and so was focused on national matters such as California’s leadership of various state coalitions opposed to Trump’s legal and regulatory initiatives.

“Now that Trump is gone, the world is changed,” Sonenshein said. “And you have to wonder if Bonta, who was a state lawmaker, will advocate for more legislation.”

Lateefah Simon, president of the Akonadi Foundation in Oakland, a racial justice and policy advocacy group, said she remembered seeing Bonta when he attended community events while working for the San Francisco City Attorney’s Office. In 2014, when Simon’s husband, a prominent Oakland journalist, died from leukemia, she became closer to the couple.

“Rob and his wife, I don’t know how they knew, but they knocked on my door and they had a bunch of books for my three-year-old,” she said.

Eventually, she volunteered and supported one of Bonta’s early Assembly campaigns.

“Our job as people of faith, is going to be to keep him accountable … but I don’t see him becoming someone we can’t trust,” she said. “We need him there.”

Solomon Moore Solomon Moore is a reporter for the Bay Area News Group. He previously worked for several news organizations, including The Los Angeles Times, covering criminal justice, California politics and foreign affairs. [email protected]

Biden taps Montana environmentalist for US public lands boss By MATTHEW BROWN April 23, 2021

FILE - In this Dec. 14, 2012, file photo, Tracy Stone-Manning, left, is named by Gov.-elect Steve Bullock to run the Montana Department of Environmental Quality, in Helena, Mont. Stone-Manning has been nominated by President Joe Biden to lead an agency that oversees about a quarter-billion acres of public lands in western states. (AP Photo/Matt Gouras, File)

BILLINGS, Mont. (AP) — President Joe Biden has nominated a longtime environmental advocate and Democratic aide to oversee the vast expanses of federally owned land in Western states — the latest political appointment raising concerns among Republicans as Biden moves to curtail energy production from public reserves.

Tracy Stone-Manning of Missoula, Montana, was nominated late Thursday to direct the Interior Department’s Bureau of Land Management, which has jurisdiction over about a quarter-billion acres (100 million hectares) and one-third of the nation’s underground minerals, including huge reserves of oil, natural gas and coal. The agency regulates drilling, mining, grazing and other activities and is set to play a key role in Biden’s commitment announced Thursday to cut climate warming emissions from fossil fuels by half by 2030. Stone-Manning, 55, spent the past four years at the National Wildlife Federation, where she led the group’s efforts to preserve public lands for wildlife, hiking, hunting and other nonindustrial uses.

She previously worked as chief of staff to former Montana Gov. Steve Bullock, as an aide to Montana Democratic Sen. Jon Tester and three decades ago as a spokesperson for the activist environmental group Earth First.

If confirmed, Stone-Manning would serve under Interior Secretary Deb Haaland, a former Democratic congresswoman from New Mexico who was confirmed over opposition from Republicans citing her criticisms of the oil and gas industry.

The White House dropped plans to install progressive Elizabeth Klein as deputy Interior secretary following objections from Alaska Republican Sen. Lisa Murkowski and West Virginia Democratic Sen. Joe Manchin.

The confrontations resemble political fights that took place over many of former President Donald Trump’s appointees — only now it’s environmentalists and progressive activists under scrutiny versus the industry lobbyists favored by Trump.

Stone-Manning opposed Trump’s drilling-friendly policies as destructive to public lands and said in 2019 that the Republican’s agenda had thrown the balance between conservation and development “out of whack.”

Haaland said in a statement that Stone-Manning and Bryan Newland — whom Biden nominated Thursday to be assistant secretary for Indian Affairs — would “help lead the Interior Department’s efforts to pursue a clean energy future, engage Tribal communities and governments, and protect our land, waters and wildlife habitats for generations to come.”

Newland was tribal president of the Bay Mills Indian Community in Michigan and served as a policy adviser for Indian Affairs at Interior under former President Barack Obama.

Montana Sen. Steve Daines said Friday that he and fellow Republicans will look closely at Stone-Manning’s ties to conservation groups that poured money into the 2020 election.

Stone-Manning is listed as a board member and treasurer for Montana Conservation Voters, which sponsored ads targeting Daines when he was challenged by Bullock last year.

“She comes from a very partisan, left-leaning organization and we’re going to have to make sure she represents balanced views here in Montana that reflect where most Montanans are,” Daines said in an interview.

Spokesperson Katie Schoettler said Daines wants to ensure federal lands remain open for both conservation and energy development. Tester said in a statement that Stone-Manning was a “tireless public lands champion with a lifetime of experience” who would bring much-needed change to the land bureau.

National Wildlife Federation CEO Collin O’Mara said he has known Stone-Manning since she led Montana’s Department of Environmental Quality for two years beginning in 2013 and considers her a “common-sense conservationist.”

“I think Tracy understands the way we manage our public lands isn’t an either or choice,” he said. “Her track record is really balanced throughout her career, especially over the last 20 years.”

The land management bureau’s director post went unfilled for four years under Trump, who instead relied on a string of acting directors to execute a loosening of restrictions on industry. Chief among them was conservative lawyer William Perry Pendley, who before he took the position advocated for selling off federal lands.

Pendley was ordered removed by a federal judge after leading the bureau for more than year without required Senate confirmation and getting sued by Montana’s governor.

Stone-Manning lined up with Bullock in that fight and sharply criticize Pendley as an illegal appointee who “thumbed his nose at a federal judge” by staying on at the bureau after his authority was removed.

Montana Petroleum Association director Alan Olson, who worked with Stone-Manning on a climate council established by Bullock, described her as highly intelligent and “left of center” but not extreme in her politics and willing to listen to opposing views.

But Olson added that he expects her to get as much pushback from Republicans as Trump appointees got from Democrats and their allies, including Stone-Manning.

“Tracy went after Pendley. She can expect the same,” he said.

___

Follow Matthew Brown on Twitter: @MatthewBrownAP

___

This story has been corrected to show that Sen. Joe Manchin is from West Virginia, not Virginia.

Rob Bonta is confirmed as California attorney general — the first Filipino American to fill the role

Assemblyman Rob Bonta (D-Alameda) has been confirmed to become California’s attorney general. (Alexis Cuarezma / For The Times) By PATRICK MCGREEVYSTAFF WRITER APRIL 22, 2021 UPDATED 11:03 AM PT

SACRAMENTO — The state Legislature confirmed Democratic Assemblyman Rob Bonta as California attorney general on Thursday, backing the appointment of an advocate for criminal justice reform who told his colleagues in hearings this week that he would hold law enforcement accountable for excessive force and other misconduct.

Bonta, 49, will be the first Filipino American to serve as the state’s top cop when he takes the oath of office to head the Department of Justice at a ceremony as early as Friday. He was previously the first Filipino American to serve in the state Assembly when he was elected in 2012 to represent an east Bay Area district that includes Oakland and San Leandro.

“I think it is critical that we, California, have a progressive voice as attorney general, even more so as this nation moves to reevaluate our approach to public safety,” said Assembly Speaker Anthony Rendon (D- Lakewood) moments after that house’s 62-0 bipartisan vote to approve the appointment. The Senate vote was 29-6, with Republicans in opposition or not voting.

Bonta was emotional as he thanked his colleagues in the Assembly.

“I am extremely humbled, deeply appreciative and very, very honored,” Bonta said. “I am clear-eyed about the challenges that lie ahead for the state of California, the Department of Justice.”

CALIFORNIA Column: In Rob Bonta, Newsom picks an attorney general who embodies American dream, new California March 25, 2021 The veteran lawmaker brings with him a legislative record of pushing for significant changes to the criminal justice system, including proposals to end cash bail in many cases and abolish the death penalty, as well as a law phasing out the use of private prisons and immigration detention centers.

“California DOJ must be an organization that infuses more justice, more humanity, more fairness and more safety into our institutions,” Bonta told the Senate Rules Committee during Wednesday’s confirmation hearing.

“There are still too many who are wronged in California,” he added, noting those who are victims of human trafficking, corporate misconduct, hate crimes and “too many who are treated unfairly by the many broken parts of the criminal justice system and who deserve more justice, more humanity and a second chance.”

Gov. Gavin Newsom nominated Bonta for the job last month to fill the vacancy created when Xavier Becerra was appointed by President Biden to become U.S. Health and Human Services secretary. Newsom had been under pressure from Asian and Pacific Islander leaders who supported Bonta as the right person to address a recent increase of violence against Asian Americans. Last month, a white gunman in the Atlanta area allegedly killed eight people, including six women of Asian descent.

CALIFORNIA California’s next attorney general will enter office with a full plate of major challenges April 1, 2021

The Legislature confirmed Bonta’s appointment just two days after a jury convicted former Minneapolis Police Officer Derek Chauvin, who is white, of murdering George Floyd, a Black man, when he pressed his knee into Floyd’s neck for more than nine minutes.

“Obviously police reform and restorative justice are needed more than ever,” Senate Leader Toni Atkins (D-San Diego) said during the confirmation hearing.

Assemblyman Reggie Jones Sawyer (D-Los Angeles) cited recent fatal police shootings in arguing that Bonta would have an important role to play in holding members of law enforcement accountable when they use excessive force.

“We will heavily rely on the attorney general to serve as a backstop and final arbiter in cases of abuse or misconduct by law enforcement,” Sawyer told Bonta. “Too many Californians die or have their lives forever altered by the actions of bad law enforcement officials.”

Bonta, a resident of Alameda in the Bay Area, said the creation of a new unit of investigators and prosecutors to investigate fatal police shootings of civilians was “one of the most important things the attorney general will do.”

CALIFORNIA California attorney general-designee Rob Bonta is already gearing up for the 2022 election March 27, 2021

The new unit is mandated by legislation supported by Bonta that was signed into law last year.

“We’re in a racial justice reckoning and a reckoning on how we police,” he told lawmakers, adding that “we need to rebuild trust between law enforcement and communities.”

Assemblyman Tom Lackey (R-Palmdale), a retired California Highway Patrol sergeant, voted to confirm Bonta. But he questioned Bonta’s decision to author a bill ending cash bail for many crimes after state voters rejected another bail reform law last year, as well as his backing of the governor’s moratorium on executions although voters have upheld the death penalty.

“How can Californians trust that you will respect their voices and not override them with your office?” Lackey asked.

Bonta said his new bail reform bill contained proposals that were not part of the law overturned by Proposition 25.

He called the death penalty “racist” and said it was not a crime deterrent.

“The death penalty in my view is inhumane,” he said.

Bonta said he recognized that as the state’s top attorney he would have an obligation to act consistently with the state Constitution, but he said he would also “identify a proper pathway for reform that is consistent with my responsibility and my duties.”

The former assemblyman said he supported the consideration of ideas including changing immunity laws for police officers and also supported a bill decertifying those who engaged in misconduct so they were not fired from one job and then hired by another law enforcement agency.

Bonta told lawmakers he was also very concerned about a rise in hate crimes against members of the Asian American and Pacific Islander community.

He was accompanied to the Senate confirmation hearing by his wife, Mialisa, who is running for his Assembly seat, as well as his parents, who worked for the United Farm Workers when Bonta was a child.

Dozens of people testified in support of Bonta’s appointment, including labor and civil rights leaders and advocates for criminal justice reform. His confirmation hearing drew opposition from Sam Paredes, executive director of the group Gun Owners of California, who also spoke on behalf of the National Rifle Assn.

“We know we can’t stop him,” Paredes told the Senate panel. “The history is that we have had a rather contentious relationship legislatively throughout his career with regards to gun control matters.”

Senate Republicans Patricia Bates of Laguna Niguel and Shannon Grove of Bakersfield abstained from the vote after peppering Bonta with questions on state gun laws that he has supported.

Grove said some of the laws had been onerous to law-abiding gun owners while criminals continued to get firearms that were then used to commit violence.

“They are just going to hurt or restrict law-abiding citizens,” Grove told Bonta of new laws he supported.

Bonta, who as attorney general will have to defend several gun laws being challenged in court by the NRA, said he supported “common sense” gun safety laws to save lives.

“I have problems with kids being shot en masse in schools,” Bonta responded to Grove. “And I think it’s important that we see that as the problem that it is.”

Bonta assured Republican legislators that he would work to reduce the persistent backlog of criminals who have guns that should have been confiscated.

More than four hours of confirmation hearings were held Wednesday at the Capitol by the Senate Rules Committee and the Assembly Special Committee on the Office of the Attorney General.

The position of state attorney general has an annual salary of $182,189, and Bonta faces a full plate of challenges in taking over the role.

As attorney general, Bonta will be in charge of implementing the bill he voted for last year that requires the state DOJ to investigate fatal police shootings of unarmed civilians. The attorney general’s office has estimated that law will require about 40 investigations each year with the office also prosecuting cases in which criminal wrongdoing is found.

At the county level, Bonta has also called for a mandate that prosecutors recuse themselves from investigating law enforcement misconduct if their election campaigns have taken campaign contributions from law enforcement unions.

Born in Quezon City in the Philippines, Bonta was 2 months old when he immigrated to California with his parents, missionaries who became union organizers in the U.S.

He received a degree from Yale Law School. Bonta served as a deputy city attorney for San Francisco as well as a private attorney before his election to the Assembly. Bonta faces a short turnaround before he must campaign to keep the post in the 2022 election. His Assembly reelection campaign has $2.3 million that he can put toward his first statewide campaign.

Patrick McGreevy is a reporter covering California state government and politics in the Sacramento Bureau. He previously worked in the Los Angeles City Hall Bureau for The Times. He is a native of San Diego and a graduate of San Jose State University.

California ‘burn bosses’ set controlled forest fires. Should they be safe from lawsuits? BY RYAN SABALOW AND DALE KASLER APRIL 22, 2021 05:00 AM, UPDATED APRIL 22, 2021 05:57 PM

Brian Crawford and Shelly Allen of the U.S. Forest Service talk on Friday, May 24, 2019, about prescribed burns in the Tahoe National Forest and how policies might change to allow natural fires to burn longer if conditions are right. BY PAUL KITAGAKI JR.

Across California, property owners and their “burn bosses” are setting fires. When the weather is cool, calm and wet enough, these planned forest fires are designed to clear overgrown vegetation that could accelerate a wildfire in dry months.

They do this knowing they risk financial ruin from a lawsuit if something goes wrong.

Now, Native American tribes, ranchers, timber companies and conservation groups are teaming up to reduce those liability risks in a battle that pits them against the state’s powerful trial lawyers and insurance industries.

New legislation introduced by Sen. Bill Dodd, D-Napa, would buffer state-certified burn bosses — and private property owners on whose land the fires are set — against personal liability lawsuits if a fire escapes and hurts someone or damages property. They could still be sued, but only if the burn was “conducted in a grossly negligent manner.”

There is near-universal agreement from scientists and fire officials that intentionally set “prescribed” fires are critical to restoring the health of California’s forests and easing the misery of the state’s increasingly long fire seasons.

For their part, Native American tribes have known this for centuries. And at least three California tribes support the new legislation, Senate Bill 332.

“There are a lot of barriers out there in the world to being able to scale up our cultural and prescribed fire use in California and throughout the West. And liability is one of the big ones,” said Bill Tripp, the natural resources and environmental policy director for the Karuk Tribe.

In legal parlance, gross negligence means someone shows a reckless and conscious disregard for a clear risk of danger, beyond routine carelessness.

The insurance industry, which is opposing Dodd’s bill, argues the proposed legislation would let someone off the hook even if their actions are careless.

Seren Taylor, senior legislative advocate at the Personal Insurance Federation of California, said his organization isn’t opposed to prescribed fires but thinks Dodd’s bill goes too far in absolving a burn boss if a prescribed fire gets loose. He said burn bosses should “act reasonably” and should be held to that standard. California should try to “make sure we don’t have prescribed burns that get out of control.” Taylor’s organizations lobbies for the major property-casualty insurers doing business in California.

Generally, burn bosses working for Cal Fire and the U.S. Forest Service are protected if something goes awry. But private bosses, working primarily on private land, face the prospect of litigation if a fire gets out of control, said Lenya Quinn-Davidson, who heads the Northern California Prescribed Fire Council.

Gov. Gavin Newsom’s $1 billion wildfire budget already includes $65 million specifically for increasing the rate of controlled burns, and the state is currently ramping up its efforts to certify more burn bosses, many of whom can’t get insurance to cover them under the current liability standards, Dodd told The Sacramento Bee in an interview Wednesday.

Dodd said there shouldn’t be “any opposition to this, given what this state has gone through, and the magnitude of the work that we have to do, and the fact that burn bosses are not able to get insurance readily. (That) could set back the state’s ability to burn the amount of acreage that it needs to burn.”

TOO LITTLE FIRE FOR TOO LONG Advocates for prescribed burns say the state is paying the price for a century of trying to put out every fire as quickly as possible to protect timber stocks and development. As a result, much of the state’s wild places are unnaturally dense with small trees and brush ready to ignite during the state’s dry summers and falls, a problem made all the more dangerous as the climate warms.

One solution, advocates say, is to bring fire back when conditions are safer and the fuels aren’t tinder-dry, similar to how native Californians prior to European settlement burned large swaths of the state every year to protect villages and keep habitats healthy.

Researchers estimate that prior to the arrival of Europeans, fires burned around 4.5 million acres of land every year, much of them intentionally set. Last year, the state’s worst wildfire season in modern history, burned 4.25 million acres.

“If you look at just the scale of the fires that happened in 2020, the scientists are saying that’s a pretty close match to how much would have burned in California annually,” said Tripp of the Karuk Tribe, one of the supporters of Dodd’s bill. “It’s just that most of that would have burned at a different time of year when it wouldn’t have behaved in such a volatile manner.”

California has been ramping up its prescribed fire regime, and currently intentionally burns about 125,000 acres each year, according to estimates by the California Air Resources Board.

Still, that’s barely making a dent in the buildup of fire fuels. California has 33 million acres of forests, plus another 15 million acres of grassland and scrubby terrain called chaparral, the dense brush that surrounds many foothill communities up and down the state.

There are numerous barriers to starting more prescribed fires — from air quality concerns to environmental reviews that can take years to burn just a few thousand acres — on top of the fear of getting sued.

“There are a lot of burn bosses out there who are well experienced about burning, and they have the time and the resources to do it,” said Kirk Wilbur of the California Cattlemen’s Association. “But they’re so afraid of being sued for those very rare circumstances in which a fire escapes … This keeps them from entering into more contracts and blackening more acreage.”

The Northern California Prescribed Fire Council’s Quinn-Davidson said SB 332 would be critical to making prescribed burns more widely used in California. States such as Florida, which use prescribed fire much more frequently, offer their burn bosses the type of liability protections SB 332 would provide, she said. Florida deliberately burns about 2 million acres a year — or about 16 times more than California, a state with far greater wildfire risk. Dodd said Colorado and Washington also have similar standards.

Quinn-Davidson said the problem isn’t just liability, “it’s also perceived liability — people are scared to get involved in prescribed fire. Escape rates are very limited but for the private practitioner who wants to get involved in this work, it’s a barrier.”

CHOOSING WHEN CALIFORNIA BURNS Runaway prescribed burns are rare — advocates say less than 1 percent of them escape and are usually small in size — but they tend to generate considerable publicity and can turn public opinion against what is still a controversial concept.

A recent local example occurred in October 2019, when the Forest Service lost control of a prescribed burn deep in the Eldorado National Forest, not far from the Kirkwood ski resort. Several days after it started, the fire escaped its pre-set boundaries and became an official incident called the Caples Fire.

While it wasn’t huge — the fire only burned an additional 325 acres and no one was hurt — the Caples Fire was unsettling because it took place during a PG&E Corp. “public safety power shutoff.” Communication was spotty and residents weren’t sure what was going on.

Other incidents have had more serious ramifications. In 2016, a prescribed fire that got loose near Reno destroyed 23 homes. A jury convicted the Nevada Division of Forestry of negligence and the state paid $25 million in damages.

One of the nation’s worst out-of-control prescribed burns came in 2000, when a fire in the Bandelier National Monument in New Mexico escaped containment. The fire burned 75 square miles, destroyed more than 200 homes and damaged the Los Alamos nuclear weapons laboratory.

Blasting the planning behind the fire as badly flawed, then-Interior Secretary Bruce Babbitt and Agriculture Secretary Dan Glickman ordered a 30-day suspension of all prescribed fires in the western half of the United States so a stricter approval process could be implemented.

Prescribed fire planning and implementation have improved since then, advocates say, but they acknowledge there’s no way to completely reduce the risks.

Still, the devastating wildfires in recent years show that the risks of not using prescribed fire more widely are far worse, said Don Hankins, a Chico State University professor and “cultural fire practitioner,” someone who uses the fire management methods of the people native to an area.

“You’re either doing it when the conditions are favorable, or wildfires are going to happen,” Hankins said. “I look at it as that’s the real liability — that it’s going to happen at some point anyways potentially.”

A fallen tree separates burning piles of forest debris as two firefighters make their way up a hill to ignite more at a prescribed burn at Van Sickle Bi-State Park near South Lake Tahoe on Thursday, Feb. 11, 2021. This material was cut and piled two seasons ago and now we are coming back, when conditions are right, to burn it and reduce the fuel loading in this area, said Milan Yeates, forest management coordinator at the California Tahoe Conservancy. RENÉE C. BYER [email protected]

Ryan Sabalow covers environment, general news and enterprise and investigative stories for McClatchy’s Western newspapers. Before joining The Bee in 2015, he was a reporter at The Auburn Journal, The Redding Record Searchlight and The Indianapolis Star.

House passes bill adding 535,000 acres of new California wilderness areas Largest wilderness bill since 2009 would add protections in Redwood National Park, Carrizo Plain, San Gabriel Mountains

U.S. Forest Service lands along the South Fork Trinity River, in Trinity County, Calif., would be designated as federally protected wilderness under a bill passed Feb. 26, 2021 by the House of Representatives. The area, in the Shasta-Trinity National Forest, is home to Chinook salmon, steelhead trout, bald eagles and other wildlife. (Photo: Jeff Morris, Northwest Mountains and Rivers Campaign / special to the Mercury News)

By PAUL ROGERS | [email protected] | Bay Area News Group PUBLISHED: February 26, 2021 at 3:32 p.m. | UPDATED: February 28, 2021 at 5:28 a.m. The U.S. House of Representatives on Friday passed a far-reaching bill to provide new wilderness protections to 1.5 million acres of federal lands — 535,000 acres of which are in California, an area roughly 18 times the size of the city of San Francisco.

The measure also would ban mining around the Grand Canyon and set aside more than 1,000 miles of rivers in California and other Western states from dams and other development. Approved by the Democratic majority on a 227-200 vote, the bill would be the largest wilderness preservation legislation in 12 years. That is when President Obama signed The Omnibus Public Land Management Act of 2009, which set aside 2.1 million acres of federal land as wilderness. To become law, it still must pass the U.S. Senate. President Biden has said he will sign it if it reaches his desk. Among the areas slated for new wilderness protections in California are federally owned lands in Redwood National Park, and along the Eel and Trinity rivers in Northern California, the Carrizo Plain in central California, and the San Gabriel Mountains in Southern California.

“Over the past year with lockdowns and isolation we have seen how important getting outside has been for our well-being,” said Rep. Jared Huffman, D-San Rafael, one of the bill’s sponsors. “We all depend on the ecological, economic and mental health benefits that our public lands provide.”

Under the Wilderness Act of 1964, a landmark environmental law signed by President Lyndon Johnson, new logging, mining, road building, oil and gas drilling and other development is prohibited on federally owned like national forests, national parks and Bureau of Land Management preserves that are designated as wilderness areas.

The act describes wilderness as “an area where the Earth and its community of life are untrammeled by man, where man himself is a visitor who does not remain.” Wilderness designation is the highest level of protection on federal lands. Overall, the federal government owns about 28% of all 2.3 billion acres that make up the United States, and of that federal land, 109 million acres is designated as wilderness, or about 5% of the entire country.

Critics of Friday’s bill said it would limit economic activity. Many asserted that the federal government already owns too much land.

“Everything we enjoy on this planet is either grown or mined,” said Rep. Tom McClintock, R- Roseville. “And fortunately nature has given us a super abundance of resources and left it to us to responsibly reap and to manage this bounty. But it is precisely these resources that the Left has waged war against for an entire generation. The very things that make us prosperous and comfortable are the things the Left attempts to place off limits.”

The bill, known formally as the Protecting America’s Wilderness and Public Lands Act, still must pass the U.S. Senate, where Democrats hold a very narrow majority due to the ability of Vice President Kamala Harris to break ties.

Supporters say its language may have to be added to a larger bill, like President Biden’s proposed proposed infrastructure plan, or a budget bill at the end of the year, to overcome a possible Republican filibuster that would otherwise require at least 60 votes for passage. In this Feb. 20, 2011 photo, the San Gabriel Mountains rise above Pasadena, Calif., with Brookside Golf Course in the foreground. (AP Photo/John Antczak) For now, environmental groups are celebrating. They said the bill would expand tourism, recreation and fish and wildlife.

“Protecting nature and increasing access to the outdoors provides immense benefits to our health, economy and environment — especially at a time we need it most,” said Roberto Morales, a senior Sierra Club staff member and chairman of the Nature for All Coalition.

The bill would expand wilderness protections in Arizona, California, Colorado and Washington. Among its highest profile items, it would ban new uranium mining claims on 1 million acres north and south of the Grand Canyon. The measure also would establish new wilderness on 660,000 acres of public lands in Colorado in the San Juan Mountains, Maroon Bells area near Aspen, along the Continental Divide and other areas. And it would create 126,000 acres of new wilderness designations in Washington state’s Olympic National Forest, along with designating 19 rivers in the forest and Olympic National Park as wild and scenic rivers. Specifically in California, the bill would:

– Establish 317,000 acres in Del Norte, Humboldt, Mendocino and Trinity counties as wilderness, along with designating 379 miles of new wild and scenic rivers.

– Designate 245,000 acres of new wilderness in the Los Padres National Forest in Ventura and Santa Barbara counties, and the Carrizo Plain National Monument in San Luis Obispo County, along with 159 miles of new wild and scenic rivers. The measure also establishes a 400 mile-long trail, the Condor National Scenic Trail, which would connect the northern and southern portion of the Los Padres National Forest.

– In the Los Angeles region, the bill would expand the San Gabriel Mountains National Monument by 109,000 acres to include the western Angeles National Forest. It also would set aside 30,000 acres as protected wilderness and 45 miles of wild and scenic rivers throughout the San Gabriel range.

– Also in Southern California, the bill would add roughly 191,000 acres to the Santa Monica Mountains National Recreation Area. The land, known as the “Rim of the Valley” is a wildlife corridor for mountain lions, eagles and other animals, stretching from the Simi Hills and Santa Susanas to the Verdugos and San Gabriel Mountains.

Native American nominee's grilling raises questions on bias

US Biden Cabinet Bias Questions FILE - In this Tuesday, Feb. 23, 2021, file photo, Rep. Deb Haaland, D-N.M., listens during the Senate Committee on Energy and Natural Resources hearing on her nomination to be Interior secretary, on Capitol Hill in Washington. Some Republican senators labeled Haaland "radical" over her calls to reduce dependence on fossil fuels and address climate change, and said that could hurt rural America and major oil and gas-producing states. The label of Haaland as a "radical" by Republican lawmakers is getting pushback from Native Americans. (Jim Watson/Pool Photo via AP, File)

FELICIA FONSECA and MATTHEW BROWN February 25, 2021·5 min read FLAGSTAFF, Ariz. (AP) — When Wyoming U.S. Sen. John Barrasso snapped at Deb Haaland during her confirmation hearing, many in Indian Country were incensed. The exchange, coupled with descriptions of the Interior secretary nominee as “radical” — by other white, male Republicans — left some feeling Haaland is being treated differently because she is a Native American woman. “If it was any other person, they would not be subjected to being held accountable for their ethnicity,” said Cheryl Andrews-Maltais, chairwoman of the Wampanoag Tribe of Gay Head Aquinnah in Massachusetts. At Wednesday's hearing, Barrasso wanted assurance that Haaland would follow the law when it comes to imperiled species. Before the congresswoman finished her response, Barrasso shouted, “I'm talking about the law!” Barrasso, former chairman of Senate Indian Affairs Committee, later said his uncharacteristic reaction was a sign of frustration over Haaland dodging questions. “My constituents deserve straight answers from the potential secretary about the law,” he said in a statement. “They got very few of those.” Among Haaland supporters across the nation who tuned in virtually, it was infuriating. “It was horrible. It was disrespectful,” said Rebecca Ortega of Santa Clara Pueblo in Haaland’s home state of New Mexico. “I just feel like if it would have been a white man or a white woman, he would never have yelled like that." The Interior Department has broad oversight of energy development, along with tribal affairs, and some Republican senators have labeled Haaland “radical” over her calls to reduce dependence on fossil fuels and address climate change. They said that could hurt rural America and major oil and gas-producing states. Louisiana Sen. John Kennedy after two days of hearings called Haaland a “neo-socialist, left-of-Lenin whack job.” Andrews-Maltais saw “radical” as a code for “you’re an Indian.” But Republican Sen. Steve Daines of Montana said it’s not about race. Daines frequently uses the term to describe Democrats and their policies, including President Joe Biden and former Montana Gov. Steve Bullock, whom Daines defeated in November. “As much as I would love to see a Native American be on the president’s Cabinet, I have concerns about her record. ... To say otherwise is outrageous and offensive," he told The Associated Press. Civil rights activists say Haaland's treatment fits a pattern of minority nominees encountering more political resistance than white counterparts. The confirmation of Neera Tanden, who would be the first Indian American to head the Office of Management and Budget, was thrown into doubt when it lost support from Democratic Sen. Joe Manchin of West Virginia. He cited her controversial tweets attacking members of both parties. Critics also have targeted Vanita Gupta, an Indian American and Biden’s pick to be associate attorney general, and California Attorney General Xavier Becerra as Health and Human Services secretary. Conservatives launched campaigns calling Gupta “dangerous” and questioning Becerra’s qualifications. Democrats pushed back against Haaland’s treatment and questioned if attempts to block her nomination are motivated by something other than her record. Former U.S. Sens. and cousins Tom Udall of New Mexico and Mark Udall of Colorado said Haaland “should be afforded the same respect and deference” as other nominees. The hearing itself, in which Haaland was grilled on oil and gas development, national parks and tribes, represented a cultural clash in how the Democrat and many Indigenous people view the world — everything is intertwined and must exist in balance, preserving the environment for generations to come. That was seen in Haaland's response when asked about her motivation to be Interior secretary. She recalled a story about Navajo Code Talkers in World War II who prioritized coming up with a word in their native language for “Mother Earth." “It's difficult to not feel obligated to protect this land, and I feel that every Indigenous person in this country understands that,” she said. That broader historical context is missing from Republican talking points against Haaland that instead simplify the debate to a battle between industry and environmentalists, said Dina Gilio-Whitaker, a lecturer in American Indian studies at California State University, San Marcos. “There's obviously a really huge conversation about how the land came to be the United States to begin with,” she said. “That's the elephant in the living room nobody wants to talk about.” Andrew Werk Jr., president of the Assiniboine and Gros Ventre Tribes on Montana’s Fort Belknap Reservation, said Republicans' brusque treatment of Haaland was unfair to her and to Americans. But he doesn't see any racial bias in Daines' actions for dismissing Haaland as a “radical,” only hardened partisanship. “For all the reasons Sen. Daines opposes her, those are all the reasons we support her in Fort Belknap,” Werk said. “Our land is our identity, and as tribes we want to be good stewards and protect that.” Despite Republican opposition, Haaland has enough Democratic support to become the first Native American to lead the Interior Department. The Senate Energy and Natural Resources Committee is expected to vote on the nomination next week before the full Senate chimes in. Haaland, 60, weaved childhood memories, experiences on public land and tribes' rights into her answers during the hearing. She talked about carrying buckets of water for her grandmother down a dusty road at Laguna Pueblo, where she's from, careful not to spill a drop because she recognized its importance. She talked about harvesting an oryx, a type of antelope, that fed her family for a year, about her support for protecting grizzly bears indefinitely and her ancestors' sacrifices. Frank White Clay, chairman of the Crow Tribe, which gets much of its revenue from a coal mine on its southeastern Montana reservation, said Republicans have “legitimate concerns about natural resources.” But he urged them to consider the historic nature of Haaland's nomination. “A Native woman up for confirmation — her issues are Indian Country issues,” White Clay said. Haaland pledged to carry out Biden's agenda, sidestepping specifics on what she would do if confirmed. While the vagueness rattled Republicans, her backers said it showed she's a consensus-builder. “She did not lose her cool,” said Kalyn Free, who is Choctaw and supports Haaland. “To me, that's not an indicator of her performance. ... That's because she had to put up with this crap for 60 years. This was not a new experience for her.” ___ Associated Press writer Matthew Daly in Washington contributed to this report.

A's plan to build a new waterfront stadium at Oakland's Jack London Square takes big step forward

Sarah Ravani Feb. 26, 2021Updated: Feb. 26, 2021 7:36 p.m.

Oakland released the draft environmental impact report Friday for the A’s proposed stadium at Howard Terminal. Oakland A’s

Oakland released a key environmental document Friday for the A’s proposed baseball stadium at Howard Terminal in Jack London Square — a big step in the multiyear effort to build a 35,000-seat waterfront ballpark, 3,000 units of housing, 1.5 million square feet of offices and 270,000 square feet of retail space.

The draft environmental impact report is the first analysis of the A’s proposed stadium and development plans, which would entail moving their operations from the Oakland Coliseum. “We are really excited to get the draft out there … and to advance the project forward so it can be voted on by the City Council this year, which is really our key goal,” said Dave Kaval, the president of the A’s.

Over the years, city officials have aspired to transform Jack London Square into a major waterfront destination in the East Bay, a hub for transit, recreation, nightlife and food. The A’s stadium project could generate long-term growth and be a huge potential economic boost to Oakland. Though the team hasn’t threatened to leave, city leaders have worried that if the A’s don’t get their ballpark, they could depart in the wake of two sports teams that have already left.

“I’m excited about keeping our A’s rooted in Oakland,” Mayor Libby Schaaf said in a statement. “The Howard Terminal ballpark requires the highest environmental standards while giving us an opportunity to expand our entertainment district near Jack London Square, increase housing, provide good jobs, and keep our beloved waterfront working.”

But opponents have expressed concerns over transportation, environmental and neighborhood impacts. Maritime tenants and dockworkers say the development could hurt the port’s shipping business.

“We know that Oakland’s working waterfront is no place for a stadium, office and luxury condominium complex,” said Mike Jacob, the vice president of the Pacific Merchant Shipping Association, “and this environmental review must ultimately shine a bright light on the many significant adverse impacts of building the proposed stadium complex at this location.”

The document said the development would worsen traffic congestion on roadways and violate the city’s noise ordinance. Construction of the project could emit pollutants that exceed the city’s thresholds and pose health risks.

A 2019 Chronicle review of regulatory documents found that soil and groundwater at Howard Terminal contain hazardous and cancer-causing chemicals that would need to be cleaned up before building. The California Department of Toxic Substances Control is overseeing cleanup on the site.

Margaret Gordon, the co-founder of the West Oakland Environmental Indicators Project, said any project must be equitable and avoid environmental hazards for the West Oakland community.

“Benefits haven’t happened for this community for the last 50 years,” she said. The project includes 50,000 square feet of indoor performance space, 8,900 parking spaces, up to 400 hotel rooms in one or more buildings, and 18.3 acres of open space, according to the document. Buildings could be as high as 600 feet.

The ballpark would be surrounded by pedestrian streets with limited vehicle access. Transit options include BART, AC Transit, ferry service and bus shuttles, and a transportation hub would have a raised pedestrian and bicycle crossing to the ballpark.

The document also studied the possibility of having a gondola above Washington Street, extending from downtown to Jack London Square.

Interactive: See maps and renderings of the A's plan for a new ballpark on Oakland's waterfront Carl Chan, the president of the Oakland Chinatown Chamber of Commerce, said he supports the project because it will create much-needed jobs and housing. Chinatown would be heavily affected by game-day traffic, but that’s OK, Chan said, if patrons visit Chinatown businesses.

“If some of these businesses can benefit when people are coming through to go to the ballpark … then (that) traffic will be good,” Chan said.

Kaval said the project was initially expected to finish construction by 2023. But the pandemic and a lawsuit filed by opponents has delayed it.

Earlier this month, an Alameda County Superior Court judge ruled in favor of the A’s in a lawsuit that would have derailed the team’s plans to streamline the project.

A coalition of opponents that includes Pacific Merchant Shipping Association, Schnitzer Steel, the Harbor Trucking Association and the California Trucking Association has filed an appeal.

“Because there is still a lawsuit pending on this very question in state appellate court, we are very disappointed that the A’s and the City are moving forward with the release of this draft EIR prior to the final resolution of this critical issue,” Jacob said.

Friday’s report states the project would demolish all existing buildings and structures on the Howard Terminal site except the four existing shipping container cranes.

Construction of the first phase of the development will take at least two years and includes the ballpark, up to 540 units of housing, 250,000 square feet of office space, 30,000 square feet of retail and restaurant space, hotels with up to 400 rooms, about 12.3 acres of open space, and just under 5,000 parking spaces. Construction of the entire development could take eight years.

The A’s are negotiating a development agreement with the city. The Oakland City Council still has to approve the project.

The A’s lease for the Coliseum, where they are part owners, ends in 2024.

As recall threat grows, California Gov. Gavin Newsom shifts his governing style, pushing reopenings

Long Beach Mayor Robert Garcia elbow-bumps California Gov. Gavin Newsom after touring a COVID-19 vaccination site Feb. 22 in Long Beach.

(Patrick T. Fallon / AFP/Getty Images) By TARYN LUNASTAFF WRITER FEB. 27, 2021 5 AM PT SACRAMENTO —

Throughout the course of the COVID-19 pandemic, Gov. Gavin Newsom has often talked about his desire to reopen schools. It wasn’t until the final days of last year, however, that he introduced a plan to speed up a return to the classroom. Facing the very real possibility of a recall election in the fall, getting children back to class — and stemming growing frustration among parents — has emerged as a top priority for Newsom.

“Parents want to know when their kids can go back to school safely,” said Robin Swanson, a Democratic political consultant, who added that safeguards such as vaccines for teachers and personal protective equipment are important to many parents. “If you lose parents, you lose California.”

Newsom flatly rejects the suggestion that politics have played a role in his pandemic decisions and has not publicly acknowledged the recall effort even as he shifts to campaign-style events in major media markets across the state. But his aides have acknowledged the obvious: Newsom’s chances of beating back the effort would be higher if schools are open and Californians are widely vaccinated before a possible election, allowing fatigued voters to resume their daily lives.

The timing of Newsom’s Dec. 30 announcement of a $2-billion package of incentives to reopen schools — after insisting for weeks that he had provided enough guidance on the matter last summer — was widely interpreted among political observers in Sacramento as a reaction to the recall effort, a possible attempt to appeal to parents as winter break came to a close with no end to distance learning in sight.

The governor unveiled his proposal just one day after news that a $500,000 donation had been made to the GOP campaign working toward a recall election this year. Newsom’s public image had been battered for weeks after he attended a lobbyist’s birthday party at the upscale French Laundry restaurant in Napa Valley despite advising Californians to avoid similar gatherings.

With his plan bogged down in the Legislature, Newsom announced last week that California would reserve a portion of its weekly vaccine supply for teachers and school staff in an attempt to return educators to campus. Even so, the political pressures have continued to mount.

With former San Diego Mayor Kevin Faulconer and 2018 GOP candidate John Cox announcing they would run for governor if the recall qualifies and polls showing a steep decline in Newsom’s approval ratings, the governor launched a tour touting his work on vaccines across the state and invited local reporters to tag along — a marked change in media outreach compared with his many internet-only appearances since the start of the pandemic.

The events, at which fellow Democrats have joined the governor and lavished praise on his handling of the pandemic, have allowed Newsom to campaign against the recall without having to voice his opposition to it.

“No governor has faced a crisis like this one — unexpected, statewide, affecting every Californian, putting unprecedented strain on our healthcare system and lasting now for over a year,” said Assemblyman Robert Rivas (D-Hollister) at Newsom’s news conference in Fresno on Friday. “In other states, you have some governors that haven’t acknowledged the science of COVID-19, have stepped back from the hard work of leadership. Ours did not.

“And Gov. Newsom has led with an unrelenting focus on those groups most affected by this virus, and time after time he has stood up for the most vulnerable here in California.”

But not everyone from the Central Valley has been impressed by the governor. Fresno County Supervisor Ernest “Buddy” Mendes cast Newsom’s more frequent appearances in his region over the last month as politically motivated and driven by the recall effort.

“He never used to come to Fresno, and now all the sudden they are having photo-ops in Fresno,” he said.

Meanwhile, as Newsom navigates the complex web of pandemic and recall politics, the governor is finding himself caught between the labor unions that helped him ascend to power and the public pressure he has to respond to in order to retain it.

The new urgency to reopen more schools created an awkward situation with some of Newsom’s most loyal supporters: the unions representing teachers and other school employees who want to prioritize and enforce safety for their members over a quick return.

This week, Faulconer latched on to Newsom’s earlier sluggishness in reopening schools as evidence of his acquiescence to teachers at the expense of children and families.

“Gavin Newsom has waited too long to clean up this mess and our kids will be living with his mistakes into adulthood,” he said. “He left the union holding all the cards and he wasn’t willing to hold them accountable.”

The California Teachers Assn. and other school groups pushed back on the governor’s plan to reopen schools as early as Feb. 15 — a date that came and went without any action. The proposal did not align with the union’s calls to vaccinate school staff before they return to work in-person, and teachers wanted additional safety measures.

As the Legislature negotiated with the governor over the availability of vaccines for educators and whether to incentivize reopening in the areas hit hardest by the virus, the CTA launched a $1- million television ad buy Feb. 13 that argued that opening schools without prioritizing safety — including vaccines for educators — would only worsen the spread of the coronavirus.

The union says the ads, which were careful not to mention the governor, were in line with earlier digital advertisements that attempted to get its point across and combat growing resentment toward educators. At a news conference last week, Newsom said he had a great relationship with the teachers union, “but people can disagree.”

Despite publicly disagreeing with the union’s position that school employees should have access to the vaccine before returning in person, Newsom said Feb. 19 that the state would offer up to 75,000 vaccines each week for staff heading back to the classroom, an announcement seen as an attempt to help placate teachers and staff and facilitate a deal with the Legislature on reopening schools amid mounting pressure from parents.

The battle with the teachers union is just the latest episode in Newsom’s on-and-off-again relationship with organized labor.

His surprise Jan. 13 announcement that the state’s vaccine distribution rules were changing to prioritize those 65 and older dealt a blow to unions representing janitors, security guards and other essential workers who lost their place in line. Early in the pandemic, unions made repeated calls for the state to address basic needs, such as inadequate supplies of personal protective equipment in the workplace. Demands to extend COVID-19 paid sick leave have also gone unanswered.

At its executive council meeting last week, the California Labor Federation, an umbrella group for 1,200 unions in the state, tabled a motion to publicly oppose the recall effort. Leaders of many of the state’s largest unions weren’t expecting to vote on the issue when someone made an impromptu motion to take it up.

Labor sources cited different reasons for why the council balked, with some questioning whether taking a stance would validate the recall campaign against the governor before it qualifies. Some said the lack of action spoke to the tensions between the governor’s office and labor unions and a hesitancy to publicly back him at a time when so many rank-and-file union members are frustrated.

There’s little doubt that the federation and individual labor unions will eventually oppose the recall, but many are weighing just how much support to throw behind Newsom.

The 20,000-member National Union of Health Care Workers is already stepping up to back the governor. The union launched a $100,000 ad buy in an attempt to convince voters on the left that the state’s progressive agenda would go down with Newsom if he’s recalled.

Jim Araby, who previously led UFCW Western States Council and now directs strategic campaigns for UFCW Local 5, said unions need the governor as much as he needs them.

“I believe the governor needs labor to win,” Araby said. “There’s some natural tension there, but at the end of the day for us, for our union, we know we have a person in the governor’s office that will listen to our concerns and will discuss and negotiate with us to get to a deal that we can always continue to build on. If he gets recalled, that ain’t gonna happen.” With unions unlikely to support Newsom’s Republican opponents, some political consultants say it’s unclear why Newsom doesn’t push harder to reopen schools immediately. Parents are among the most important populations to court in California politics because of their tendency to be high- turnout voters. Though not all parents believe schools should open immediately, some who do are becoming more vocal.

Open Schools California, an advocacy group for parents of California schoolchildren, is calling for the governor and lawmakers to open schools now.

“Parents are incredibly frustrated,” said Megan Bacigalupi, an advocate for the group and parent of two children in the Oakland Unified School District. “We’re approaching the one-year mark of kids being out of school. We look to our leaders in Sacramento for their leadership but also to act expeditiously when it’s obvious what the right thing is to do, and the right thing to do right now is to reopen schools as quickly as possible.”

Times staff writers Melody Gutierrez and Phil Willon contributed to this report.

Editorial: California must pass emergency wildfire prevention funding

Flames from the Glass Fire consume Chateau Boswell Winery in St. Helena, Calif., on Sept. 27, 2020. (AP Photo/Noah Berger)

By MERCURY NEWS & EAST BAY TIMES EDITORIAL BOARDS | PUBLISHED: February 28, 2021 at 5:30 a.m. | UPDATED: February 28, 2021 at 2:13 p.m. It’s inconceivable that the California Legislature earlier this month failed to approve $323 million in emergency funding for wildfire prevention.

The Legislature’s focus on fighting the pandemic and reopening schools is understandable. But that’s no excuse for neglecting to act on what is also a pressing issue. Especially after the Legislature failed to pass a bill last August that would have provided $500 million for wildfire prevention.

Lawmakers shouldn’t wait another day to approve the emergency wildfire prevention funding. Every day that passes is another day in which the state could be working on projects to save lives, protect homes and keep our skies clear of smoke. The lack of rainfall this winter and the continuing impact of climate change could make California especially vulnerable to wildfires in 2021. The average annual temperature in California continues to rise after increasing by about 3 degrees since 1895.

As a result, Californians experienced five of the six biggest wildfires in state history in 2020. All told, last year California wildfires killed 31 people, destroyed more than 10,000 homes and structures and burned more than 4 million acres. The acreage that went up in flames is roughly equivalent to burning the state of Connecticut and represents more than 10% of California’s total forest acreage.

The Legislature’s failure to pass the $500 million for wildfire prevention last August stemmed from a disagreement on how the money would be generated.

Some legislators wanted a fee on electricity bills to be extended for a decade, while others maintained the money should come from the state’s cap-and-trade funds. The two sides were unable to reach an agreement before the deadline for approving legislation passed.

In January, Gov. Gavin Newsom responded by proposing that his 2021-22 state budget would provide $1 billion to increase the pace and scale of fire prevention and forest resiliency work in California. The idea was to ramp up funding for forest management and reduce the impact of climate change. The governor’s $1 billion proposal matches the amount President Joe Biden allotted for wildfire prevention in his proposed budget. California and the U.S. Forest Service agreed in principle last August to annually treat 500,000 acres of California forest and rangelands by 2025.

But in order to accomplish that goal, Newsom’s plan included the $323 million in “early actions” to jump-start fire prevention projects before the fire season started this year.

Cal Fire has fire prevention projects ready to go. All it needs is the funding to put crews to work. These are projects that shouldn’t be delayed until June when the Legislature will determine its final budget priorities.

California spent about $2.5 billion fighting wildfires in 2020. The wildfires caused an estimated $10 billion in damage. The Legislature should give CalFire the $323 million emergency funding it needs to help the state do everything possible to reduce the damage done by wildfires this year.

House approves bill giving California half million acres of new wilderness Kurtis Alexander

Feb. 26, 2021Updated: Feb. 26, 2021 7:19 p.m.

More than 1 million acres of public land in California and other Western states would be preserved as undeveloped wilderness under a Biden administration plan headed toward the Senate. Save the Redwoods League More than 1 million acres of public land in California and other Western states will be preserved as undeveloped wilderness if long-stalled legislation that’s back in play under the Biden administration can make it through Congress. The ambitious bill, which combines eight previously introduced conservation initiatives, would provide pandemic-weary Californians with more redwood forests to explore in the north state, a 400-mile scenic trail to hike along the Central Coast and expanded national recreation areas to visit in Southern California.

“It’s historic,” said Laura Navar, an outreach manager for the National Parks Conservation Association, which promotes the protection of parks and natural lands. “We are all, especially in these times, looking to connect with these spaces.”

The House passed the Democrat-sponsored bill on Friday, and President Biden has said he supports the package. The prospects remain less certain in the Senate, where Democrats hold the thinnest of majorities and Republicans have expressed concern about restrictions on oil drilling and other commercial activities. Past efforts to advance the initiatives, some of which date back decades, often faltered amid Republican opposition.

The land proposed for new protections is managed by the federal government and, for the most part, would not affect private property.

The legislation calls for safeguarding about 3 million acres, with roughly 1.3 million designated as “wilderness,” the most restrictive classification for federal land. In this tier, roadbuilding, logging and energy exploration are all prohibited. The bill also calls for more than 1,000 miles of rivers to be designated as wild and scenic, similarly barring development.

About 288,000 acres of wilderness area would be established in the Carrizo Plain National Monument under the bill. Robyn Beck / AFP / Getty Images 2017 In Northern California, under proposals by Rep. Jared Huffman, D-San Rafael, more than 300,000 acres would receive protection, mostly in Mendocino, Humboldt and Trinity counties. About 262,000 acres of that would be classified as wilderness.

The popular Trinity Alps Wilderness would be expanded under the new bill, and eight new wilderness areas would be established, including the Chinquapin Wilderness in Trinity County. This 26,890-acre area contains the largest groves of unprotected ancient forest in California. The legislation also calls for studying the possibility of establishing a Bigfoot National Recreation Trail. The path would run 360 miles from the Mendocino National Forest through the Klamath Mountains to Redwood National Park, briefly crossing the state line into Oregon.

New visitor centers, providing recreation advice and history information to the public, also would be authorized for Weaverville (Trinity County) and Crescent City (Del Norte County).

“The fact that we’re having a vote on this so early in this Congress shows the importance of public lands,” Huffman said at a media event over Zoom on Thursday.

He called the outdoors a “way of life” for Northern Californians.

The Protecting America’s Wilderness and Public Lands Act does not allocate new funding. But the designations that come with it open the door for Congress to start sending money.

California Reps. Adam Schiff, D-Burbank, Judy Chu, D-Pasadena, and Salud Carbajal, D-Santa Barbara, also contributed proposals to the legislative package.

Environment

The authors outlined many benefits of their measures, from providing green space near urban areas to protecting wildlife to sequestering heat-trapping carbon pollution.

In Central California, about 288,000 acres of wilderness area would be established in the Carrizo Plain National Monument and the Los Padres National Forest under the bill. The 400- mile Condor Trial, which runs through the Los Padres National Forest from Los Angeles County to just south of Monterey County, would receive official trail designation.

In Southern California, the 191,000-acre Rim of the Valley Corridor would be added to the Santa Monica Mountains National Recreation Area, and the San Gabriel Mountains National Monument would grow by 109,000 acres.

The legislation would make similar conservation moves in Washington, Colorado and Arizona, including heading off a bid to mine uranium near the Grand Canyon and drill for oil and gas in Colorado’s Thompson Divide.

Wildfire smoke is up to 10 times more harmful to breathe than other air pollution, new study finds Remember the orange skies? Increasing wildfires in California and the West pose growing health threat, experts say

OAKLAND, CA – SEPTEMBER 09: Orange sky glows above the Fox Theater on Telegraph Avenue in downtown Oakland, Calif., on Wednesday, Sept. 9, 2020. The unusual orange and red-hued skies were a result of smoke from the Northern California wildfires. (Jane Tyska/Bay Area News Group)

By PAUL ROGERS | [email protected] | Bay Area News Group

PUBLISHED: March 5, 2021 at 5:30 a.m. | UPDATED: March 6, 2021 at 5:56 a.m.

Choking smoke from record wildfires blanketed Northern California last summer and fall. It turned Bay Area skies an otherworldly orange, raising health concerns over a hazard that is increasing as temperatures continue to climb and poorly managed forests burn out of control each year across the West.

With this winter being extraordinarily dry, the chances of another big wildfire year are high. But the flames may not pose the biggest danger to the most people: A new study published Friday found that tiny particles of soot from wildfires, which millions of Californians are breathing in, are up to 10 times as harmful to human respiratory health as particulate pollution from other sources, such as car exhaust, factories or power plants. “We’ve been really successful in reducing air pollution across the country by improving standards for automobiles, trucks and power plants,” said Tom Corringham, a research economist who studies climate and atmospheric science at the Scripps Institution of Oceanography at UC-San Diego. “The trend has been a decrease in air pollution. But these wildfires are getting worse.”

Corringham and his fellow researchers studied the number of people admitted to hospitals with respiratory problems daily from 1999 to 2012 in Southern California. They compared it to data from fires, Santa Ana winds and smoke plumes from San Diego to Santa Barbara.

They found that when air pollution of tiny particles called PM 2.5 — for particulate matter 2.5 microns or smaller, so small that 30 of them can line up along the width of a human hair — increased modestly, the number of people admitted to hospitals for respiratory ailments such as asthma increased by 1% on average. But when PM 2.5 levels from wildfire smoke went up by the same amount, or 10 micrograms per cubic meter, there was a 10% increase in those hospital admissions.

The tiny particles can penetrate deep into people’s lungs, enter the bloodstream and increase the risk of heart attacks, strokes and other serious health issues.

Last year, 4.2 million acres — an area 13 times the size of the city of Los Angeles — burned in California, the most in modern times. Fires from the Santa Cruz Mountains to the Southern Sierra sent enormous plumes of smoke over the state’s largest cities and as far away as the East Coast. On Sept. 9, smoke mixed with the marine layer, turning Bay Area skies an apocalyptic orange.

The Bay Area Air Quality Management District called 30 “Spare the Air” days in a row from August 18 to September 16. Soot levels nearly as bad blanketed the Bay Area during the Camp Fire in 2018 and Wine Country fires in 2017. In the Sierra, the Sacramento Valley and parts of Southern California, air quality was even worse last year, reaching 10 to 15 times the federal health standard.

A study by Stanford researchers concluded that the fires last fall caused 1,200 excess deaths and 4,800 extra emergency room visits in California, mostly among people 65 and older with pre- existing conditions such as respiratory problems, diabetes and heart disease. More is on the way. Wildfire risk is expected to be high this summer due to the unusually dry winter. Last fall, state and federal officials signed an agreement to double the rate of thinning forests that have grown unnaturally thick due to generations of fire suppression. Gov. Gavin Newsom added $1 billion to California’s state budget this year for increased forest management, fuel breaks, fire inspections and fire crews. But Corringham said that as the climate continues to warm and wildfires increase, government agencies must directly address the health risks of smoke, particularly to the elderly and low-income people. More “clean room” cooling centers, rebates for home air purifiers and better public education campaigns are key, he said.

Other health officials generally agreed. Dr. John Balmes, a professor of medicine at UC San Francisco and a member of the California Air Resources Board, said some types of particle pollution, such as diesel soot, can be more dangerous than wildfire smoke. But overall, he agreed with the Scripps researchers’ conclusions that wildfire smoke poses a growing threat to the state’s residents as the climate warms.

“There’s no question it’s a huge air quality problem that has major health impacts,” Balmes said.

“There was a ring of fire last year around the Bay Area,” he added. “We are going to have to spend billions of dollars to maintain our forests better. It is going to take years. It can’t be done overnight.”

Scientists don’t know precisely why wildfire smoke is more harmful than most other particulate pollution. One theory is that when buildings burn, everything toxic in them, from heavy metals to plastics to pesticides, is sent airborne in smoke. Another theory is that the carbon nature of the particles causes more inflammation and stress on the lungs than other types of pollution.

“They are saying that wildfire smoke is more toxic. And that’s probably true,” said Dr. Mary Prunicki, director of air pollution and health research at Stanford University’s Sean Parker Center for Allergy and Asthma Research. “Usually direct deaths from wildfires are smaller than the effects from the smoke.”

BONNY DOON, CA – AUGUST 20: As the CZU August Lightning Complex fire burns houses near by, a Santa Cruz County Central Fire Protection District firefighter works in a residential neighborhood near Empire Grade to protect the remaining homes in Bonny Doon, Calif., in the early morning of Aug. 20, 2020. (Dai Sugano/Bay Area News Group)

Why is East Bay congressman Eric Swalwell suing Donald Trump? ‘Within the Democratic Party, there really isn’t much of a downside to suing Trump’

Rep. Eric Swalwell talks to the media before hosting a community forum on ending gun violence and domestic terrorism in the Hayward City Council Chambers in Hayward, Calif., on Wednesday, Aug. 7, 2019. (Doug Duran/Bay Area News Group)

By EMILY DERUY | [email protected] | Bay Area News Group

PUBLISHED: March 5, 2021 at 3:35 p.m. | UPDATED: March 6, 2021 at 5:18 a.m.

When East Bay Rep. Eric Swalwell filed a lawsuit Friday against Donald Trump and several of the former president’s allies over the storming of the U.S. Capitol, Republican rivals instantly dismissed the Dublin Democrat’s ploy as a publicity stunt.

But could the former Alameda County prosecutor prevail? Some experts have suggested the suit could be stymied by free speech protections and that Trump might be able to claim immunity since he was still the sitting president when the violence occurred. But that hasn’t stopped Swalwell’s quest to hold Trump accountable for the insurrection after the Senate last month failed to convict him following his January impeachment in the House of Representatives.

“It’s good politics,” said Jessica Levinson, a professor at Loyola Law School. “I don’t think it’s any secret that Eric Swalwell has been out in front of this for a long time. People on both sides of the aisle use lawsuits to provide legitimacy to their political arguments, but I don’t think that’s purely what this is…I don’t think it’s frivolous.”

Swalwell, who launched a short-lived long-shot presidential run in 2019, also names Donald Trump Jr., Trump adviser Rudy Giuliani, and Congressman Mo Brooks — who told rioters, “Today is the day American patriots start taking down names and kicking ass” — in addition to the former president in the suit, accusing them of inciting the riot and inflicting distress on members of Congress, who blockaded themselves in conference rooms and offices for hours as an angry mob tore through the Capitol complex.

Swalwell has said he feared for his life that day, preparing himself to fight and texting his wife that he loved her and their children.

Pointing to social media posts and other commentary, the suit, which seeks unspecified damages and demands a jury trial, accuses the men of negligence and suggests that “the horrific events of January 6 were a direct and foreseeable consequence of the defendants’ unlawful actions. As such, the defendants are responsible for the injury and destruction that followed.”

In a tweet, Brooks called the suit a “meritless ploy.” Trump Jr. retweeted a tweet calling it “a stunt,” and a Trump spokesman has said the suit has no credibility. Giuliani could not be reached for comment.

Filing the suit, Levinson said, could lead to what’s known as discovery in the legal world — a process that could bring new emails, text messages or other damning information from depositions under oath to light.

And, noted Claremont McKenna College politics professor Jack Pitney, the suit gives Swalwell a chance to keep the insurrection — and himself — in the limelight.

“It’s a way of keeping the story in the present tense,” Pitney said, adding that while hardcore Trump supporters aren’t going to waver in their support, Democrats could use whatever news the suit turns up to hammer Republicans heading into the midterms. “Within the Democratic Party, there really isn’t much of a downside to suing Trump.”

Swalwell isn’t the only Bay Area lawmaker focused on the events at the Capitol in January. South Bay Rep. Zoe Lofgren recently published a log of what she considers inappropriate social media activity from her Republican colleagues, which she suggested could potentially be used to remove or punish members who contributed to the violence.

“Statements which are readily available in the public arena may be part of any consideration of Congress’ constitutional prerogatives and responsibilities,” the San Jose Democrat wrote in foreword to the report, which calls out California Republican Reps. Darrell Issa, Doug LaMalfa, Kevin McCarthy and Devin Nunes for, among other things, suggesting Joe Biden’s victory was stolen or somehow fraudulent — claims that are not supported by actual evidence. It’s not yet clear how the report will be used. And Swalwell isn’t the first to sue Trump over the events of Jan. 6. Mississippi Democratic Rep. Bennie Thompson filed a lawsuit last month alleging in part that Trump is to blame for the insurrection.

Swalwell and Lofgren both declined to be interviewed.

Levinson said it’s “upsetting” that Republicans who voted to acquit Trump in January by saying they opposed his actions but didn’t think the impeachment trial was the best venue for holding him accountable haven’t stepped forward to join litigation — suggesting a bipartisan legal push would have more “heft” than a purely Democratic operation.

So far there is no indication that Republicans will join any effort to hold Trump accountable through the court system. And if Swalwell’s attorneys want his lawsuit to succeed, they’ll need to overcome a few other hurdles, said UC Hastings College of the Law professor David Levine. Trump’s team will almost certainly argue that because he was president at the time, he is protected by presidential immunity. Swalwell’s team, Levine said, will need to show essentially that he acted outside the scope of the presidency.

“Trump could hold that up for a long time,” Levine said. But, he added, referring to an expression from Don Quixote about battling imaginary enemies, “It’s far from crazy to do this…It’s a far stronger case than, let’s say, tilting at windmills.”

Alameda County approves largest solar farm in Bay Area Board of Supervisors denies appeals

By ANGELA RUGGIERO | [email protected] | Bay Area News Group

PUBLISHED: March 4, 2021 at 7:19 p.m. | UPDATED: March 5, 2021 at 4:35 p.m.

A 350-acre solar farm could rise from agricultural land north of Livermore after the Alameda County Board of Supervisors unanimously approved the controversial project on Thursday.

But opponents of Intersect Power’s proposed solar farm — which would be the Bay Area’s largest — say they will keep fighting to halt the project, this time by suing.

Opponents, which include Friends of Livermore, Save North Livermore Valley and Friends of Vineyard and Open Space, contend the Aramis Renewable Energy Project would tarnish the scenic character of rural north Livermore and conflict with requirements of Measure D, which county voters approved in 2000.

Measure D aims to prevent development from sprawling to eastern Alameda County by protecting agriculture, open space and wildlife. In three separate appeals of a zoning board’s November approval of the solar farm, opponents argued that industrial solar operations aren’t compatible with agriculture and Measure D mandates that any proposed changes to land use must be OK’d by residents.

They asked that supervisors not take any action until the county could craft a policy saying where large-scale solar projects should go, if anywhere. The county indicated such a policy would require too much time to research and draft.

“It’s never too late to do the right thing,” Stephen Cassidy of Friends of Vineyard and Open Space told the Board of Supervisors.

Rob Selna, an attorney and representative of Save North Livermore Valley, said in an interview Thursday that a “coalition of farmers, ranchers, environmentalists, Alameda County voters and proponents of good government” intend to file a lawsuit. During the meeting, he called the project “a betrayal of the public trust,” referring to Measure D.

When complete, Intersect Power said its 100-megawatt solar farm near Livermore would be the largest in the Bay Area. MCE Solar One opened a 60-acre, 10.5-megawatt solar farm in Richmond in 2018. Early in the board’s 10-hour special meeting, Supervisor Richard Valle suggested sending the proposal to the Planning Commission for review, saying it should have gone there first. But when county staff estimated it would take at least 90 days to schedule the project for a commission meeting, Intersect Power representative Marisa Mitchell told supervisors the 90-day delay would “kill this project and all its benefits.”

Asked if a potential lawsuit could delay the project enough to kill it, Mitchell told this news organization in an email, “We are unable to speculate what the impact could be at this time.”

Even though it received the East County Board of Zoning Adjustments’ approval in November, Intersect Power also appealed the decision because of conditions imposed, such as bigger distance setbacks than requested and a requirement that it plant olive trees or vineyards on the property. The supervisors denied its appeal and upheld the conditions, with some minor changes.

Almost 80 people spoke during the meeting, split for and against.

Among the proponents were members of various workers unions throughout the region who said the project would bring 400 jobs to the East Bay. Others, like the Sierra Club, lauded it because of the renewable energy the panels would generate, helping to bring the state closer to its goal of using 50% carbon-free renewable energy sources by 2030 and 100% by 2045.

Intersect Power says the solar farm will have about 300,000 solar panels. If all goes well, construction could start in mid-2022 and operations could begin by mid-2023, according to Intersect.

David Rounds, of Friends of Livermore, told the board that despite the need for renewable energy, the project isn’t critical to the state’s 2030 and 2045 energy goals. Alameda County is doing a great job and California is leading the nation in clean energy, he said.

“Solar fields can go many places, but they cannot and should not go everywhere,” he said.

As part of its proposal, Intersect Power plans to continue some agricultural practices of the area. That would include beekeeping, which aims to produce some 5,000 pounds of honey per year, a chicken flock to produce about 70,000 eggs per year and sheep grazing during parts of the year.

The company also will dedicate an easement of the property for a public hiking trail, likely to be managed by either the Livermore Area Recreation and Park District or the East Bay Regional Parks District.

The Aramis project and the nearby 81-acre Livermore Community Solar Farm proposed by Oakland’s SunWalker Energy together are expected to provide enough power for up to 25,000 homes and businesses. Opposition also has surfaced against the 81-acre SunWalker project, which hasn’t been approved yet.

The county previously approved two smaller solar farms: the 2-megawatt GreenVolts near Mountain House on the eastern edge of the county, and Cool Earth Solar in the Altamont. The supervisors approved the Cool Earth project in 2012 on appeal.

NEWS ANALYSIS After Stimulus Victory in Senate, Reality Sinks in: Bipartisanship Is Dead

With Republicans poised to block Democrats’ top priorities, the party-line vote on the $1.9 trillion pandemic aid package showed the gulf between the parties was too wide to be bridged.

By Carl Hulse March 6, 2021

WASHINGTON — President Biden ran for the White House as an apostle of bipartisanship, but the bitter fight over the $1.9 trillion pandemic measure that squeaked through the Senate on Saturday made clear that the differences between the two warring parties were too wide to be bridged by Mr. Biden’s good intentions.

Not a single Republican in Congress voted for the rescue package now headed for final approval in the House and a signature from Mr. Biden, as they angrily denounced the legislation and the way in which it was assembled. Other marquee Democratic measures to protect and expand voting rights, tackle police bias and misconduct and more are also drawing scant to zero Republican backing.

The supposed honeymoon period of a new president would typically provide a moment for lawmakers to come together, particularly as the nation enters its second year of a crushing health and economic crisis. Instead, the tense showdown over the stimulus legislation showed that lawmakers were pulling apart, and poised for more ugly clashes ahead.

Mr. Biden, a six-term veteran of the Senate, had trumpeted his deep Capitol Hill experience as one of his top selling points, telling voters that he was the singular man able to unite the fractious Congress and even come to terms with his old bargaining partner, Mitch McConnell, Republican of Kentucky and the minority leader.

But congressional Democrats, highly familiar with Mr. McConnell’s tactics, held no such illusions. Now, they worry that voters would punish them more harshly in the 2022 midterm elections for failing to take advantage of their power to enact sweeping policy changes than for failing to work with Republicans and strike bipartisan deals.

Congressional Democrats want far more than Republicans are willing to accept. Anticipating the Republican recalcitrance to come, Democrats are increasingly coalescing around the idea of weakening or destroying the filibuster to deny Republicans their best weapon for thwarting the Democratic agenda. Democrats believe their control of the House, Senate and White House entitles them to push for all they can get, not settle for less out of a sense of obligation to an outdated concept of bipartisanship that does not reflect the reality of today’s polarized politics.

“Looking at the behavior of the Republican Party here in Washington, it’s fair to conclude that it is going to be very difficult, particularly the way leadership has positioned itself, to get meaningful cooperation from that side of the aisle on things that matter,” said Representative John Sarbanes, Democrat of Maryland.

But the internal Democratic disagreement that stalled passage of the stimulus bill for hours late into Friday night illustrated both the precariousness of the thinnest possible Democratic majority and the hurdles to eliminating the filibuster, a step that can happen only if moderates now deeply opposed agree to do so.

It also showed that, even if the 60-vote threshold to break a filibuster were wiped away, there would be no guarantee that Democrats could push their priorities through the 50-50 Senate, since one breakaway member can bring down an entire bill.

Keep up with the new Washington — get live updates on politics.

Republicans accused Democrats of abandoning any pretext of bipartisanship to advance a far-left agenda and jam through a liberal wish list disguised as a coronavirus rescue bill, stuffed with hundreds of billions of extraneous dollars as the pandemic is beginning to ebb. They noted that when they were in charge of the Senate and President Donald J. Trump was in office, they were able to deliver a series of costly coronavirus relief bills negotiated between the two parties.

“It is really unfortunate that at a time when a president who came into office suggesting that he wanted to work with Republicans and create solutions in a bipartisan way and try to bring the country together and unify, the first the thing out of the gate is a piece of legislation that simply is done with one-party rule,” said Senator John Thune of South Dakota, the No. 2 Republican. At their private lunch recently, Republican senators were handed a card emblazoned with a quotation from Ron Klain, the White House chief of staff, calling the coronavirus bill the “most progressive domestic legislation in a generation,” a phrase that party strategists quickly began featuring in a video taking aim at the stimulus measure.

The comment was a point of pride for liberal Democrats, but probably not the best argument to win over Republicans.

“I don’t understand the approach the White House has taken. I really don’t,” said Senator Susan Collins of Maine, a leader of a group of 10 Republicans who had initially tried to strike a deal with the White House but offered about one-third of what Mr. Biden proposed. “There is a compromise to be had here.” Frequently Asked Questions About the New Stimulus Package

How big are the stimulus payments in the bill, and who is eligible?

The stimulus payments would be $1,400 for most recipients. Those who are eligible would also receive an identical payment for each of their children. To qualify for the full $1,400, a single person would need an adjusted gross income of $75,000 or below. For heads of household, adjusted gross income would need to be $112,500 or below, and for married couples filing jointly that number would need to be $150,000 or below. To be eligible for a payment, a person must have a Social Security number. Read more. What would the relief bill do about health insurance?

What would the bill change about the child and dependent care tax credit?

What student loan changes are included in the bill?

What would the bill do to help people with housing?

Yet even as Mr. Biden hosted Republicans at the White House and engaged them in a series of discussions that were much more amiable than any during the Trump era, neither he nor Democratic congressional leaders made a real effort to find a middle ground, having concluded early on that Republicans were far too reluctant to spend what was needed to tackle the crisis.

Democrats worried that if they did not move quickly, negotiations would drag on only to collapse and leave them with nothing to show for their efforts to get control over the pandemic and bolster the economic recovery. They wanted to go big and not wait.

“We are not — we are not — going to be timid in the face of big challenges,” said Senator Chuck Schumer, Democrat of New York and the majority leader. “We are not going to delay when urgent action is called for.”

While Mr. McConnell lost legislatively, he did manage to hold Republicans together when there was an appetite among some to cut a deal. He learned in 2009, when President Barack Obama took office at the start of the Great Recession, that by keeping his Republican forces united against Democrats, he could undermine a popular new Democratic president and paint any legislative victories as tainted by partisanship, scoring political points before the next election. The same playbook seems to be open for 2021. As they maneuvered the relief measure through Congress using special budget procedures that protected it from a filibuster, Democrats were also resurrecting several major policy proposals from the last session that went nowhere in the Republican-controlled Senate.

Foremost among them was a sweeping voting rights measure intended to offset efforts by Republicans in states across the country to impose new voting requirements and a policing bill that seeks to ban tactics blamed in unnecessary deaths. House Republicans opposed both en masse and the outlook for winning the minimum 10 required Republican votes in the Senate is bleak.

Senator Mitch Mitch McConnell, the minority leader, lost legislatively, but did manage to hold Republicans together when there was an appetite among some to cut a deal.Credit...Anna Moneymaker for The New York Times

In the coming weeks, House Democrats plan to pass more uncompromising bills, including measures to strengthen gun safety and protect union rights — two pursuits abhorred by Republicans. Democrats fully recognize the measures will run into a Republican stone wall, but that is the point.

In getting Republicans on the record against what Democrats see as broadly popular measures, they are hoping to drive home the idea that, despite their party’s control of Congress and the White House, they cannot move forward on the major issues of the moment with the filibuster in place. They want voters to respond.

“We can’t magically make the Republicans be for what the people are for,” said Representative Steny H. Hoyer of Maryland, the No. 2 Democrat. “The people are overwhelmingly for the agenda we are passing, and democracy works, so if the people want these bills to pass, they will either demand that we do away with the filibuster or demand that some Republican senators who refuse to do what the people want leave office.”

Frustrated at their inability to halt the pandemic measure, Republicans lashed out at Democrats and the president. “They are doing it because they can,” said Senator Lindsey Graham of South Carolina, the top Republican on the Budget Committee, who said Mr. Biden’s pledges on fostering unity now rang hollow. “This is an opportunity to spend money on things not related to Covid because they have the power do so.”

Democrats would agree — they are using their substantial leverage to reach far beyond what Republicans can support, and say they are justified in doing so.

“Let’s face it,” Mr. Schumer said on the Senate floor. “We need to get this done. It would be so much better if we could in a bipartisan way, but we need to get it done.”

Nicholas Fandos contributed reporting.

Will the Biden boom be followed by stagnation? By Paul Krugman It's morning in America! People are getting vaccinated at the rate of 2 million a day and rising, suggesting that the pandemic may be largely behind us in a few months (unless premature reopening or variants mostly immune to the current vaccines set off another wave). The Centers for Disease Control and Prevention has already declared that vaccinated adults can safely mingle with one another, their children and their grandchildren. On the economic front, the Senate has passed a relief bill that should help Americans get through the remaining difficult months, leaving them ready to work and spend again, and the bill will almost surely become law in a few days. Economists have noticed the good news. Forecasters surveyed by Bloomberg predict 5.5% growth this year, the highest rate since the 1990s. I think they're being conservative; so does Goldman Sachs, which expects 7.7% growth, something we haven't seen since 1984. But then what? I'm very optimistic about economic prospects for the next year or two. Beyond that, however, we're going to need another big policy initiative to keep the good times rolling. President Joe Biden's American Rescue Plan is what the name implies. It's a short-term relief measure meant to address an economic emergency. There are some elements Democrats hope will become permanent - child tax credits, enhanced subsidies for health insurance - but the great bulk of the spending will fade out within a year. And once the big spending is behind us, we're all too likely to find ourselves back in a condition of "secular stagnation," an old concept recently revived by Larry Summers. I know it's an obscure piece of jargon. But what it means is a condition in which the economy has persistent trouble maintaining full employment, even with ultralow interest rates. An economy subject to secular stagnation will still have occasional good times, but policymakers will find it difficult to offset bad news, like the bursting of a financial bubble. This is a bad place to be. Financial markets are signaling that they expect a return to underperformance once the Biden boom is behind us. How can we avoid it? The answer is actually obvious: a large program of public investment, paid for largely with borrowing, although with a case for new taxes, too, if it's really big. Such a program would do double duty. Macroeconomics aside, we need to spend a lot to rebuild our crumbling infrastructure, fight climate change, and more. And public investment can also be a major source of jobs and growth, helping to pull us out of the stagnation trap. The good news is that the Biden administration's economists understand all of this perfectly well, and by all accounts they're already in the process of putting together a very ambitious infrastructure plan. The bad news is that getting such a plan enacted will be very hard politically - probably even harder than getting to yes on short-term economic rescue. Every bit of polling evidence I've reviewed also showed that Americans - including many Republicans - supported the American Rescue Plan. Yet not a single elected Republican voted for it. Republicans will probably offer similar lockstep opposition to anything Democrats propose on infrastructure. In fact, the very popularity of infrastructure spending will stiffen their opposition, because what they want, above all, is to make the Biden administration a failure. So the big question is whether Democrats can pull off another political miracle, and pass a second round of crucial economic legislation in the face of scorchedearth Republican opposition. The answer to that question will determine whether the Biden boom will endure. Paul Krugman is a New York Times columnist.

How Biden's stimulus package delivers for the Bay Area By Ro Khanna Nearly one year ago today, Santa Clara County Health Director Dr. Sara Cody wisely ordered the nation's first stayat-home directive as the novel coronavirus rapidly spread. We later learned this virus took its first American victim right here in San Jose. After more than 525,000 lives lost, we are still battling this menace. But hope is on the horizon thanks to the American Rescue Plan, which provides $1.9 trillion in support as our nation faces dual health and economic crises. This bill invests in pulling us out of a pandemic-induced recession, expediting mass vaccinations and a return to normalcy, and putting money in American families' pockets. This legislation will tangi- bly improve people's lives. Everyone in a household making under $150,000 per year will immediately receive a $1,400 check. Additionally, the bill expands the child tax credit, which will send checks for up to $3,600 per child to families earning under $150,000. A Columbia University study found that this policy alone will cut child poverty by 45%. To put it in perspective, a Bay Area family with two parents collectively earning under $150,000, a 5-year-old and a 2-year-old will receive $12,800 because of this bill. For 17 million childless, lowwage workers, the work-incentivizing earned income tax credit is increased, too. We are also providing an essential lifeline to laid-off workers struggling to put food on the table and keep a roof over their heads. The weekly $300 boost to unemployment benefits is ex- tended through the summer, $37 billion is dedicated to rent, mortgage and utility assistance, and the 15% increase in monthly food stamp benefits passed last year is extended through September. We aren't leaving anyone behind. Without this package, it would take another four years of hardship before America's real gross domestic product returned to pre-pandemic levels. We don't have that kind of time. It provides $1.3 billion to support the recession-ravaged budgets of Santa Clara, Alameda and Contra Costa counties and the cities of Cupertino, Fremont, Milpitas, Newark, San Jose, Santa Clara and Sunnyvale. This investment will prevent layoffs and keep essential services running. The bill also invests in safely reopening schools. We need all hands on deck to beat this virus and save lives. This package takes a science- based approach to doing that. It invests in public health infrastructure, including $20 billion for a national vaccination program. It boosts Affordable Care Act subsidies and incentivizes Medicaid expansion to cover the 14 million people who lost their job-based health insurance. The bill allocates $51 billion to increase testing, contact tracing and medical supply production. Thanks to this, the Levi's Stadium and Oakland Coliseum sites will soon vaccinate over 20,000 people per day. We still have hundreds of millions of vaccine doses to administer until we can return to normal; the American Rescue Plan gets us there as quickly as possible. Make no mistake, this bill is not perfect. I am disappointed the Senate stripped the Housepassed $15 minimum wage provision we fought so hard to in- clude. I will continue my push to ensure it's in the reconciliation package later this year. I also oppose provisions that further entrench for-profit health insurance and will continue to advocate for Medicare for All. But, ultimately, this is life-changing legislation. Last year, it would've been unfathomable to imagine a relief package focused on working- and middle-class Americans. I was proud to vote for it. The American Rescue Plan shows us precisely why elections matter, and the Biden administration learned from the mistakes of the 2008 financial crisis recovery. We went too small, and Americans suffered because of it. That isn't happening again. Rep. Ro Khanna, D-San Jose, represents the 17th District in the U.S. House of Representatives.

Job losses jolt Bay Area, state in January By George Avalos [email protected] Job losses continued to jolt the Bay Area and California during January, according to a new report Friday that also revealed that the coronavirus dealt a harsher economic blow to the region and state than first estimated. The Bay Area lost 4,800 jobs during January, with the South Bay and the San Francisco-San Mateo region suffering the biggest declines. The East Bay and Marin County were bright spots with sturdy job gains, according to the report from the state Employment Development Department. Overall, California lost 69,900 jobs. “The recovery completely stalled in November, December and January as the virus surged,” said Jeffrey Michael, director of the Stockton-based Center for Business and Policy Research at the University of the Pacific. “I wouldn’t classify it as a double-dip recession, but it is close.” In addition, total job losses in 2020 turned out to be worse than the EDD originally estimated, which suggests an employment rebound remains elusive. “This is pretty dire,” said Patrick Kallerman, research director with the Bay Area Council’s Economic Institute. “This is pretty serious stuff. The Bay Area is down. The state is down.” The state labor agency initially had projected that California lost 1.41 million jobs during 2020. But in its annual revision released Friday, the EDD said the state shed 1.62 million jobs, 9.2% “The recovery completely stalled in November, December and January as the virus surged. I wouldn’t classify it as a double-dip recession, but it is close.” — Jeffrey Michael, director of the Stockton-based Center for Business and Policy Research at the University of the Pacific of the positions the state had in February 2020, back when California set a record of 17.6 million nonfarm payroll jobs. "The latest job report is a sobering read even for the Bay Area and shows how much labor market repair the region still needs to see to get back to any semblance of normal," said Scott Anderson, chief economist with San Franciscobased Bank of the West. The revised picture for the Bay Area job market is similarly grim. The EDD's first estimate placed 2020 losses in the Bay Area at 360,800. The new number: 427,500 positions. "I still think we have turned the corner, just a bigger hill to climb back," said Steve Levy, director of the Palo Alto-based Center for Continuing Study of the California Economy. However, putting a damper on the optimism, 2021 is off to a dismal start for the Bay Area. In January, the South Bay lost 1,800 jobs while the San Francisco-San Mateo region shed 4,800 positions. Sonoma County suffered a loss of 2,100 jobs in January. But the East Bay posted a gain of 2,300 jobs in January, while Marin County added 2,600 positions. All of the numbers were adjusted for seasonal volatility. The hotel and restaurant sector remained weak throughout the Bay Area at the start of the year, shedding 15,000 jobs, according to seasonally adjusted figures provided to this news organization by Beacon Economics and UC Riverside's Center for Economic Forecasting. That included 6,700 jobs in the San Francisco-San Mateo region, 2,700 in the South Bay, 2,300 in the East Bay and 2,600 in Sonoma County. Tech companies in January chopped 1,800 jobs in the San Francisco-San Mateo area but added 1,200 in the South Bay and 500 in the East Bay. The construction industry also offered a mixed picture in the region, adding 2,600 jobs in the East Bay but dropping 1,300 jobs in the South Bay. "How quickly we recover jobs will depend on the pace of (business) reopenings, vaccinations and school openings," said Michael Bernick, an employment attorney with law firm Duane Morris and a former EDD director. Some economists hold out hope that the job market could rebound significantly this year as more businesses reopen. "Things are already picking up," said University of the Pacific's Michael. "The second half of 2021 should see very strong growth." In the only encouraging part of the jobs report, the California unemployment rate improved in January to 9%, down from 9.3% in December. In stark contrast, however, the California jobless rate was a record-low 3.9% in February 2020. "It would take a hiring surge of unprecedented proportions" to restore the California labor market to its typical growth trends, said Taner Osman, research manager at Beacon Economics and the UC Riverside center. "In fact, we'll do well to just recover all the jobs lost in 2020 this year." The three major urban centers in the Bay Area, the South Bay, the East Bay and the San Francisco-San Mateo region, all must climb economic mountains simply to return to the record heights of February 2020, economists said. During 2020, the South Bay lost 101,100 jobs, the East Bay shed 115,600 jobs, while the San Francisco-San Mateo region was the worst off, with a loss of 151,800 positions, this news organization's analysis of the EDD figures shows. "These are severe losses for the Bay Area," Kallerman said. "We are in a much worse place than we thought we were." Contact George Avalos at 408-859-5167.

Democratic push to revive earmarks divides Republicans By Kevin Freking The Associated Press WASHINGTON >> Can law- makers bring home the bacon without it being pork? It's a question that's vexing Republicans as they consider whether to join a Democratic push to revive earmarks, the much-maligned practice in which lawmakers direct federal spending to a specific project or institution back home. Examples include a new bridge, community library or university research program. Earmarking was linked to corruption in the 2000s, leading to an outcry and its banishment in both the House and Senate. But many in Congress say the ban has gone too far, ceding the "power of the purse" to party leaders and the executive branch and giving lawmakers less incentive to work with members of the other party on major legislation. Democratic appropriators in the House see a solution and are proposing a revamped process allowing lawmakers to submit public requests for "community project funding" in federal spending bills. To guard against graft, the process includes safeguards to prevent conflicts of interest. Whether earmarking becomes bipartisan could have enormous implications not only for the allocation of spending across the country, but for President Joe Biden, who is gearing up for a massive infrastructure push that he hopes will attract significant Re- publican support. With earmarking in place, bipartisanship could prove easier to achieve as lawmakers on both sides of the aisle could have reason to support bills they otherwise would oppose. "This is a matter of allowing members to serve their own constituents," said Rep. Tom Cole, R-Okla. "Somebody is going to be making these decisions - and I don't want to bash federal bureaucrats - but somebody who has never been to my district probably doesn't know the needs as well as I do." With Congress having allocated nearly $6 trillion responding to the COVID-19 pandemic, some conservatives are aghast at the prospect of Republicans participating in a Democratic spending spree. They say their party should resist earmarking, not revive it. "This is not the time to fall into the swamp, or into the dark hole of earmarks," said Rep. Ted Budd, R-N.C. "We've got to draw a bright line between Republicans and Democrats right now." For now, the debate over earmarks is taking place mostly behind the scenes, with House Republican leadership having a listening session on the issue Monday night. "It really feels like a jump ball," Budd said. "Some are adamantly opposed, as am I. The older members who have been here a lot longer, they tend to be for it." Worried about what's ahead, Republican members in both chambers of Congress have sponsored legislation this year to prohibit earmarks. Eleven Republicans have added their name to a bill sponsored by Sen. Steve Daines, R-Mont., and 10 Republicans have signed onto a House version from Rep. Ralph Norman, R- S.C.

Rep. Tom Cole, R-Okla., speaks on Capitol Hill in Washington in June. A dirty word for many Republicans is making the rounds on Capitol Hill — earmarks. For nearly a decade, both chambers of Congress have abided by a ban on earmarks, But Democrats are moving to bring back the practice, leaving GOP lawmakers divided over how to respond. About three dozen lawmakers also signed onto a letter Wednesday urging the leaders of the appropriations committees in both chambers to avoid a return to earmarking. Budd spearheaded the effort and said he's telling groups outside the Beltway and inside to contact their members and let them know "how precarious this is." The end of earmarking came swiftly a decade ago, when House Republicans took the majority and quickly banned the practice. President Barack Obama pledged during a State of the Union address that "if a bill comes to my desk with earmarks inside, I will veto it." The Senate Appropriations Committee soon followed up with a moratorium of its own. It was a popular move after headlines focusing the nation's attention on Alaska's $223 million "bridge to nowhere" and Rep. Randy "Duke" Cunningham's guilty plea to accepting bribes from companies in exchange for steering government contracts their way. President Donald Trump pardoned the eightterm GOP congressman earlier this year as he was exiting the White House. Over the years, the mor- atorium has been enforced by party rules and committee protocols. It does not exist in House or Senate rules, or by force of law. In late Februar y, as Chairwoman Rosa De-L auro, D - C onn., took charge of the powerful Appropriations Committee, she said it was time for a change. Done properly, she and other Democrats say, a defined process for funding requests can make lawmakers more responsive to their constituents. She has spelled out several requirements that must be met for lawmakers to request funding, including; • All requests must be made online. • Members must certify that they and their family have no financial interest in the projects they request. • Members may request funding for state or local government grantees and for nonprofits, but not to help for-profit corporations. A maximum of 10 requests will be considered per member. • The overall amount of spending on projects must not exceed 1% of discretionary spending. Such spending doesn't include entitlement programs such as Medicare and Social Security, or the cost of financing the federal debt.

Why Californians do not recover their beverage container deposits By Liza Tucker Good luck these days getting your bottle and can deposits back in California. Those willing to go the extra mile for their nickels and dimes find redemption centers shuttered or the lines hours long. Out of 58 counties, 31 have five or fewer redemption centers still open. And beverage retailers that signed up to be a last resort are illegally turning away up to twothirds of consumers trying to redeem inside stores. But the real culprits are waste haulers and the state. The haulers collect empties, and the deposits on those beverage containers, put in curbside recycling bins because consumers have nowhere else to go. And the state dramatically overpays those haulers for contaminating and landfilling them. In successful systems like those in Oregon, Michigan and Vermont, consumers have wide access to convenient reverse vending machines and automated drop-off points that take empties. This enables consumers to get back up to 89% of their deposits. But Californians get back little more than half of the $1.5 billion they pay each year in checkout lines. Much of the rest goes to waste haulers and redemption centers. In 2017, haulers operating recycling programs were paid $170 million by the state for container recycling. But they recycled only 12% of the containers in the program, according to analysis of state data by the nonprofit Container Recycling Institute. Redemption centers, however, were paid only $155 million for handling 88% of the containers. That's in part why redemption centers have closed in droves, leaving consumers with few places to get their deposits back. Supermarkets and other retailers legally required to redeem deposit containers when there are no redemption centers nearby lack financial incentives to do so. Meanwhile, waste haulers reap a windfall. California pays them 20 times their costs for separating materials at giant sorting facilities, according to an unpublished 2018 report Cal-Recycle ordered and Consumer Watchdog obtained via a Public Records Act request. Waste haulers and state politicians like it this way. Billiondollar companies such as Recology, Republic Services and Waste Management donate hundreds of thousands of dollars to California politicians to keep the gravy train going. Waste haulers' "single stream" curbside collection bins defeat the purpose of the state bottle recycling system. Empty beverage containers get tossed in with greasy pizza boxes and sticky peanut butter jars. In transit, garbage trucks jostle loads, break bottles and lace contamination throughout. By the time loads exit giant sorting plants, at least a quarter of empty beverage containers get landfilled. Adding insult to injury, California is the only state that pays haulers for processing these empties and the only state that allows them to keep the container deposits. The dirty truth is waste haulers want our bottle deposits, but not a functioning redemption system. A system this deformed deprives in-state manufacturers of clean materials to make new containers and increases landfilling, litter and greenhouse gas emissions from making new products from scratch. This defeats Gov. Gavin Newsom's call for a "circular economy" that treats waste as an economic resource to be reduced, reused or remanufactured. That is why lawmakers must pass Senate Bill 38, authored by Sen. Bob Wieckowski, D-Fremont. The bill hands responsibility for recycling empty containers to the companies that make, distribute and sell the beverages. As other states have shown, setting a high redemption target and letting an industry consortium keep unclaimed deposits results in modernized systems with high redemption rates. Giving the beverage industry that profits off the beverages the responsibility to recycle their wrappers will get the bottle deposit program back on track. Only then will California have a true circular economy and be a true climate leader. Liza Tucker is a consumer advocate with Consumer Watchdog.

Celebrate Women's History Month: Certify the ERA By Jean H. Baker

This month, the one that comes in like a lion and goes out like a lamb, Americans celebrate women's history. The theme in 2021 - "Valiant Women Refusing to be Silenced" - is a continuation of last year's COVID-postponed centennial celebrations of the 1920 ratification of the women's suffrage amendment. Throughout the month we can expect talking heads to ask their guests, as they did about Black heroes last month, what woman has influenced their lives. (No fair naming mothers, whose moment comes in May on Mother's Day Sunday.) Promoted by Maryland's own Rep. Barbara Mikulski, Women's History Month was officially designated as such by President Jimmy Carter in 1980. Ever since, it has brought welcomed attention to both women's issues and the often forgotten women who fought for equality and refused to be silenced. Still, if you need a promotional month, you aren't equal. There awaits in Congress an opportunity to truly celebrate a major step on the long and tortuous path to women's equality by certifying the Equal Rights Amendment as the 28th Amendment to the U.S. Constitution.

Congress established deadlines for the ratification of the ERA that have expired, and much of the opposition to the ERA focuses on procedural grounds. As several senators, including Maryland’s Ben Cardin, have pointed out, what Congress has established, it can remove.

SARAH SILBIGER — GETTY IMAGES FILE

Like the suffrage amendment, the ERA was buried in congres- sional committees for years after its first presentation to Congress in 1921. Written by the indomitable suffragist-turned- equal-rights advocate Alice Paul, its main article reads "Equality of rights under the law shall not be denied or abridged by the United States or by any state on account of sex." In 1972, after a burst of interest in civil rights and the work of many valiant women refusing to be silenced, the ERA received the necessary two-thirds vote in Congress. Campaigning then began for the required approval of 38 (three-quarters) of the states. Thirty states had ratified within two years and another five by the deadline imposed by Congress of seven years. And then the movement stalled, three states short of the requirement. Right-wing forces led by Phyllis Schlafly, along with economic interests such as insurance companies, had initiated an anti-ERA campaign based on contradictory lines of thinking. The first claimed that the ERA would lead to unisex bathrooms, require women to serve in combat, eliminate protections for women in the workplace and at home, and lead to more abortions. In effect, it would overturn American civilization. The second set of arguments claimed that the ERA was not needed because women were already protected by the equal protection clause of the 14th Amendment and Title 7 of the Civil Rights Act (women were famously included in the latter piece of legislation in an unsuccessful effort to torpedo the act overall). Over 20 states, including Maryland, already have equal rights provisions in their state constitutions, this thinking goes. So why clutter up the U.S. Constitution with an unneeded amendment? For various reasons these supposed protections have had only a limited effect on the stubborn discriminations against women, however. A case in point: As late as last year Baltimore's Enoch Pratt Library was paying lower wages for similar work to female library supervisors than a male supervisor. The ERA would provide tangible changes in the relationship of women to the law. Presently sex is not subject to judicial strict scrutiny nor is it an inherently suspect legal category like race or ethnicity. The ERA would create a proper federal foundation to end various forms of discrimination. Additionally, it would serve as a powerful symbol of our national commitment to sex equality. There is now an opportunity to certify the ERA. Thirty-eight states have now approved the amendment; the last, Virginia, did so in January 2020. But the amendment still faces two hurdles. One, Congress had established deadlines for the ratification of the ERA that have expired, and much of the opposition to the ERA focuses on procedural grounds. As several senators, including Maryland's Ben Cardin, have pointed out, what Congress has established, it can remove. Secondly, four state legislatures have rescinded their vote for the ERA, a clearly unconstitutional effort that would open the serious amendment process to continual partisan pandering. By a simple majority, Congress can support the Cardin- Murkowski-Speier resolution rescinding the time deadlines and certifying the ERA as the 28th Amendment to the Constitution. As Justice Ruth Bader Ginsburg once explained, "I would like my granddaughters when they pick up the U.S. Constitution to see that … women and men are persons of equal stature. I'd like them to see that that is a basic principle of our society." Jean H. Baker is a professor emerita at Goucher College. © 2021 The Baltimore Sun. Distributed by Tribune Content Agency.

oe Biden is a transformational president By David Brooks This has been one of the most quietly consequential weeks in recent American politics. The COVID-19 relief law that was just enacted is one of the most important pieces of legislation of our lifetimes. As Eric Levitz writes in New York magazine, the poorest fifth of households will see their income rise by 20%; a family of four with one working and one unemployed parent will receive $12,460 in benefits. Child poverty will be cut in half. The law stretches far beyond COVID-19 relief. There's a billion for national service programs. Black farmers will receive over $4 billion in what looks like a step toward reparations. There's a huge expansion of health insurance subsidies. Many of these changes, like the child tax credit, may well become permanent. As Michael Hendrix of the Manhattan Institute notes, America spent $4.8 trillion in today's dollars fighting World War II. Over the past year, America has spent over $5.5 trillion fighting the pandemic. In a polarized era, the legislation is widely popular. Threequarters of Americans support the law, including 60% of Republicans, according to a Morning Consult survey. The Republican members of Congress voted against it, but the GOP shows no interest in turning this into a great partisan battle. As I began to write this on Thursday morning, the Fox News homepage had only two stories on the COVID-19 relief bill and dozens on things like the royal family and cancel culture. Somehow low-key Joe Biden gets yawns when he promotes progressive policies that would generate howls if promoted by a President Bernie Sanders or a President Elizabeth Warren. This moment is like 1981, the dawn of the Reagan Revolution, except in reverse. It's not just that government is heading in a new direction; it's that the whole paradigm of the role of government in American life is shifting. Biden is not causing these tectonic plates to shift, but he is riding them. Reaganism was the right response to the stagflation of the 1970s, but Bidenism is a sensible response to a very different set of economic problems. Let one set of statistics stand in for hundreds: According to a team of researchers led by Raj Chetty, in 1970, 90% of 30-year-olds were making more than their parents had at that age. By 2010, only 50% were. There was a premise through American history that if you worked hard, you would earn economic security. That's not as true for millennials and Gen-Z or many other people across America. These realities have created a different emotional climate that the pandemic has magnified - a climate of insecurity and precarity. These realities have also produced an intellectual revolution. It was assumed, even only a decade ago, that the Fed could not just print money with abandon. It was assumed that the government could not rack up huge debt without spurring inflation and crippling debt payment costs. Both of these concerns have been thrown out the window by large numbers of thinkers. We've seen years of high debt and loose monetary policy, but inflation has not come. So the restraints have been cast aside. We are now experiencing monetary and fiscal policies that would have been unimaginable a decade ago. The role of government is being redefined. There is now an assumption that government should step in to reduce economic insecurity and inequality. Even Republicans like Tom Cotton and Mitt Romney, for example, are cooking up a plan to actively boost wages for American workers. This is not socialism. This is the Transfer State: government redistributing massive amounts of money by cutting checks to people and having faith that they spend it in the right ways. Both parties are adjusting to the new paradigm. With the wind at their backs, Democrats are concluding that Biden's decision to eschew bipartisanship to pass a relief package is better than Barack Obama's attempts to attract it. I don't know if the filibuster will go away, but it certainly looks like it will be watered down. I'm worried about a world in which we spend borrowed money with abandon. The skeptical headline on the final preretirement column of the great Washington Post economics columnist Steven Pearlstein resonated with me: "In Democrats' progressive paradise, borrowing is free, spending pays for itself and interest rates never rise." But income inequality, widespread child poverty and economic precarity are the problems of our time. It's worth taking a risk to tackle all this. At first Biden seemed like the third chapter of the Clinton/Obama centerleft era. But this is something new. David Brooks is a New York Times columnist.

Editorial: Voting rights under assault across the U.S. Chronicle Editorial Board, Chronicle Editorial Board

March 7, 2021Updated: March 7, 2021 4 a.m.

Voters had to wait two to three hours at this Atlanta polling place in June 2020. John Spink / Atlanta Journal-Constitution / TNS In a U.S. Supreme Court hearing last week, a lawyer for the Democratic National Committee observed that “more voting restrictions have been enacted over the last decade than at any point since the end of Jim Crow,” a reference to the laws in the late 19th and early 20th century designed to enforce racial segregation.

“The last three months have seen an even greater uptick in proposed voting restrictions, many aimed squarely at the minority groups whose participation Congress intended to protect,” said Democratic attorney Bruce Spiva, arguing to overturn two Arizona laws that invalidated ballots cast in the wrong precinct and prohibited the collection of early ballots for delivery to polling places.

It’s abundantly clear that the Republicans’ response to an election in which they lost the presidency and control of the U.S. Senate in record turnouts is to find new ways and old to make it difficult to vote. The strategy is as cynical and undemocratic as it is obvious. Former President Donald Trump is among many Republicans who have made the point out loud: the more people vote, the better for Democrats.

“The things they had in there were crazy,” Trump said of a package by congressional Democrats to significantly raise funding for mail voting. “They had things — levels of voting that, if you ever agreed to it, you’d never have a Republican elected in this country again.”

Now Republicans across the nation appear determined to roll back provisions designed to raise turnout — and add new obstacles for Americans who want to vote. The Brennan Center for Justice, a policy institute at New York University, has counted more than 250 bills in 43 states that would create impediments to voting.

Nowhere is the move to suppress the vote more blatant or critical than in Georgia, a once- reliably Republican state that Democrat Joe Biden carried and two Democrats, Jon Ossoff and Raphael Warnock, flipped U.S. Senate seats. Trump has continue to insist that those races were rigged against Republicans and rife with fraud, a claim that has been resoundingly refuted by the Republican Secretary of State Brad Raffensperger and corroborated by recounts and audits.

Nevertheless, GOP legislators in Georgia are pressing forward with proposals for a wave of voting constraints on the argument that they are necessary as a defense against that phantom widespread fraud. One state Senate bill takes aim at absentee voting, which was used by 1.3 million Georgians, two-thirds of whom voted for Biden. It would restrict absentee ballots to voters who are 65 or older, have a physical disability or would be out of the area on election day.

The Georgia House approved a sweeping package of suppression schemes (HB531) to limit Sunday voting, require identification to vote absentee, restrict early voting buses, ban funding of elections from nonprofit groups and disqualify provisional ballots cast in the wrong precinct. It would even make it a misdemeanor to pass out free food or drink to people waiting in line to vote.

Some of these measure have a distinct racial impact. For example, African Americans tend to vote on Sundays in larger proportions than other demographic groups. Also, the hours-long lines to vote — and thus the need for food and water — have occurred in predominantly minority communities. And it was not by happenstance in Georgia. The outrageous levels of suppression in the 2018 gubernatorial race, in which Democrat Stacey Abrams narrowly lost to Republican Brian Kemp, inspired the defeated candidate to launch a nationwide voting- rights campaign that was credited with boosting her party brethren in Georgia and beyond in 2020.

In Georgia, the fate of those bills rests with the state Senate. In those two Arizona cases before the Supreme Court, the justices appeared to be leaning toward preserving the laws that were considered unfair to minorities. In 2003, the high court — then less conservative than now — effectively gutted the Voting Rights Act by striking a key provision that required states with a history of discrimination to receive federal clearance before changing their laws.

Meanwhile, the U.S. House of Representatives last week passed HR1, a top priority of Speaker Nancy Pelosi, that includes an array of voting-rights measures. But it is considered a long shot in the evenly divided U.S. Senate. Americans need to speak up to their elected representatives. Democracy hangs in the balance in state after state.

This commentary is from The Chronicle’s editorial board. We invite you to express your views in a letter to the editor. Please submit your letter via our online form: SFChronicle.com/letters.

Next up for Biden: Passing funding for roads, bridges Both parties normally back bills on infrastructure, but GOP might balk By Hope Yen The Associated Press WASHINGTON >> House Speaker Nancy Pelosi on Sunday pledged swift work by Congress on a job and infrastructure package that will be “fiscally sound,” but said she isn’t sure whether the next major item on President Joe Biden’s agenda will attract Republican backing. Fresh off a major legislative victory on the $1.9 trillion virus relief package that passed on near-party lines, Democrats face long and tough battles ahead in winning GOP endorsement of the administration’s plans. Road- and bridge-building legislation has a long history of support from both parties as lawmakers aim to deliver on projects back home. But Republicans disagree with Biden’s focus on the environment and the possibility of financing any program with debt after the government borrowed heavily to address the economic fallout from the coronavirus pandemic. “Building roads and bridges and water supply systems and the rest has always been bipartisan, always been bipartisan, except when they oppose it with a Democratic president, as they did under President Obama, and we had to shrink the package," said Pelosi, D-Calif. "But, nonetheless, hopefully, we will have bipartisanship," she said. Pelosi has directed key Democratic lawmakers to begin working with Republicans on a "big, bold and transformational infrastructure package." During the presidential campaign, Biden laid the groundwork by proposing $2 trillion in "accelerated" investments to shift to cleaner energy, build half a million charging stations for electric vehicles, support public transit and repair roads and bridges. The plan emphasizes the importance of creating unionized jobs and addressing climate change. The White House originally planned to come out with a plan in February, but more recently hasn't committed to a timeline. A rollout is likely to slide into April as the administration embarks on a nationwide push over the coming weeks to sell Americans on the benefits of the COVID-19 relief bill. Sen. Tom Carper, DDel., chairman of the Senate Environment and Public Works Committee, and Rep. Peter DeFazio, D-Ore., chairman of House Transportation and Infrastructure Committee, hope to pass a bill out of their committees in May. The package could include policy changes - on green energy and immigration - and even try to make permanent some of the just-passed COVID-19 assistance such as child tax credits. "It is going to be green and it is going to be big," DeFazio told The Associated Press. Democrats used a fasttra ck bud get process known as reconciliation to approve Biden's COVID-19 relief plan without Republican support, a strategy that succeeded despite the reservations of some moderates. But work on passing infrastructure legislation in a Senate split 50-50 with Vice President Kamala Harris providing a tiebreaking vote will probably prove more difficult. Moderate Sen. Joe Manchin, D-W.Va., recently made clear he will block infrastructure legislation if Republicans aren't included. Wyoming Sen. John Barrasso, the No. 3 Senate Republican, said he wants to see bipartisan support for an infrastructure legislation. But he said the House in the last Congress refused to embrace a $287 billion bill unanimously passed by a Senate committee and changed it in a way that Republicans could not accept. "What did the House do? They replaced our highway bill with the Green New Deal," Barrasso said. "So they ignored what we have done in a bipartisan way. If they would take the model that we came up with in the committee in the Senate for highway and transportation, I think that's a very good start. I talked with the secretary of transportation, Pete Buttigieg, about it, and I think that is the model on which we should move forward on transportation and infrastructure." On Sunday, Pelosi declined to say whether tax increases would be required for the House legislation, stressing that Congress would explore all options, including generating revenue with something similar to the Obama administration's Build America bonds. Cost will be a major hurdle in passing an infrastructure plan. There's little political interest in increasing the 18.3-cent-per-gallon federal gas tax, which generates revenue for the Highway Trust Fund, even though the rate has not increased since 1993. Biden promised during the campaign he would not increase taxes on people making less than $400,000 a year. "This is about broadband. It's about water systems. It's about mass transit, it's about good paying jobs all over the country," she said. "It's also about schools and housing and the rest. … So the goal is to promote good growth, creating good-paying jobs as we protect our planet and are fiscally sound." Pelosi and Barrasso spoke on ABC's "This Week." Associated Press writer Josh Boak contributed to this report.

Haaland becomes first-ever Native American in presidential Cabinet

The progressive Democrat had faced stiff opposition from Republicans.

Democrats and Native Americans hailed Rep. Deb Haaland's nomination a historic moment for the Indigenous people who had long suffered from the federal government. | Graeme Jennings/Pool via AP

By ANTHONY ADRAGNA and BEN LEFEBVRE 03/15/2021 06:26 PM EDT

Deb Haaland won confirmation in the Senate to lead the Interior Department on Monday, making the Congresswoman from New Mexico the first Native American ever to serve in a presidential Cabinet.

Haaland's rise from poverty to Congress and now to President Joe Biden's cabinet ushers in a new chapter for the agency that once sought to extinguish the cultural identity of Native American who were driven onto reservations to open up vast areas of the country for settlers. As head of the Interior Department, she will oversee the agency that not only guides the federal government's relations with tribes, but manages 20 percent of the U.S. land and nearly a quarter of the nation's oil and gas production.

That fossil fuel production was the central issue in her contentious nomination process, since Haaland, one of the most progressive members of the House, had advocated a "keep it in the ground" approach for oil and gas production and participated in a protest against a pipeline in North Dakota. Those views drew sharp criticisms from Republicans, particularly those from western states whose economies depend on oil, gas and coal output, often from the federal acreage Haaland will now oversee.

In the final vote, only four Republicans joined all Senate Democrats present in the 51-40 tally that will install her as Interior secretary. Those votes came from Alaska's Lisa Murkowski, who said she "struggled" with her support, Susan Collins of Maine, Lindsey Graham of South Carolina and Dan Sullivan of Alaska.

To win those votes, Haaland, a member of the Laguna Pueblo, softened her opposition to fossil fuel production at her hearing, saying the responsibilities of Interior secretary were different than those of a member of the House, and she pledged to work with states on the access to federal lands for energy development.

Democrats and Native Americans hailed her nomination a historic moment for the Indigenous people who had long suffered from the federal government.

"Given the long and troubled relationship between the federal government and tribal nations, the ascension of Rep. Haaland to the top of the Interior Department is a profoundly important moment for America," Senate Majority Leader Chuck Schumer (D-N.Y.) said on the floor. "For too long tribal nations have been denied a seat at the table where decisions were made that affected their lives and their land.”

Julia Bernal, director of the Pueblo Action Alliance in New Mexico, said she had been hearing from leaders of pueblos in New Mexico who hoped that Haaland winning the position would mean they would have louder voices in Interior decisions on the land and water issues affecting them, including reconsidering the Trump administration’s decision to open up lands near Chaco Canyon — a site held sacred by tribes — to new energy production.

“There’s a lot of hope coming out of pueblo leadership,” Bernal said. “The opinion is that an indigenous person needs to be in that position, and much better that it’s an indigenous woman. I really believe a shift in perspective can really come up with solutions to problems like climate change and drought.”

At Interior, Haaland will play a major roll in implementing Biden’s aggressive climate goals, including regulations that may weigh on oil, gas and coal production, as well as increasing the share of wind and solar power produced on federal acres. The agency could also ease the way for new high-voltage electric transmission lines connecting solar and wind farms to population centers, and address push to expand mining of critical minerals needed to feed the supply chains to build Biden's clean energy economy.

Haaland also begins her new role staring down a series of deadlines outlined under Biden’s initial climate change executive order for priorities like the Civilian Conservation Corps and push to conserve 30 percent of the planet's lands and waters by 2030. She’s expected to begin listening sessions to gather input from groups as varied as the nation’s sportsmen, oil and gas producers and Native American tribes.

“I’ve never seen someone with the level of empathy and understanding of what people are going through,” said Collin O’Mara, president of National Wildlife Federation who helped prepare Haaland for the confirmation hearings. “She’s lived the good and the bad — the betrayals but also the economic engine that can come from healthy public lands. She’s the perfect crucible of everyone’s experience of public lands all wrapped into one.” Notably, Haaland was introduced to her confirmation hearing by Alaska Rep. Don Young, a conservative Republican who said he's struck up a productive collaborative partnership with her at the House Natural Resources Committee. And O’Mara said Republicans ruling out working with her or dismissing her commitment to outreach are making a mistake: “The Republicans who know her best, like her.”

In remarks on the Senate floor on Monday, Sen. Tina Smith (D-Minn.) blasted the Republicans she said had held a woman of color to “a different standard” than they would have for a white man, echoing criticisms made by tribal voices throughout the confirmation process.

“We need to be honest with ourselves about what is going on here,” Smith said. “We have got to come to grips with the reality that time after time, strong women — and especially women of color — are attacked when white men with the same views are welcomed to walk right through the door, unopposed.”

Sen. Steve Daines of Montana embodied many of the attacks from conservatives by calling Haaland a “far left idealogue” and attempted to block Haaland’s nomination from going to the full senate even after it had cleared committee. He railed against her nomination on the floor, saying her views are outside of the mainstream in areas like fossil fuel development, wildlife management and access to public lands for recreation.

“I’m not opposed to Representative Haaland’s confirmation because she’s a Democrat, because she was nominated by President Biden — in fact, I’ve supported many of the President’s nominees. This is about her record, her very far-left, divisive positions that will fail to represent the West,” he said last week.

Halaand will also have to deal with oil and gas companies that are looking nervously at the Biden administration’s pause on new oil and gas leases on federal land. The fossil fuel industry, which had become accustomed to riding shotgun when the Trump administration was making policies over federal lands is now preparing for a time when it will be regulated to the back seat.

“She has done little to dispel the industry's trepidation over what her tenure at DOI is likely to mean for fossil fuels as her bias keeps showing,” said Stephen Brown, a long-time energy lobbyist. “Bottom line — the industry is in for a rough four year ride, but that was already pretty much a given once Biden was elected."

California is getting a $150 billion windfall. Will we spend it wisely? By Dan Walters Let's assume that your rich Uncle Harry died and when his will was read, he had left you $50,000. The unexpected inheritance gives you three choices. You could put the money into a savings account or investment and have it available should you need it in the future. You could use it for a one-time purchase such as a new car, college tuition or a down payment on a house. Or you could ramp up your lifestyle by $50K a year and hope that Harry's brother George dies and leaves you enough money to continue the party. Something like that is occurring now as Uncle Joe (Biden) sends out nearly $2 trillion in "stimulus" payments both to low- and moderate-income families and state and local government entities to offset losses of income during the COVID-19 pandemic and, it's assumed, kick-start the pandemic-ravaged economy. California will be a case study in how the massive transfer of money that the federal government is borrowing from buyers of its bonds and treasury notes plays out. California is expected to receive the nation's largest single share of the pot, at least $150 billion. Nearly half will be in the form of cash payments to families ($40 billion) and supplemental payments to the roughly 800,000 unemployed work- ers now drawing unemployment insurance benefits ($30 billion). Most of that money, it's assumed, will go directly into the consumer economy, plus another $3.8 billion for direct assistance on rent, food and other necessities. The remainder of the $150 billion will mostly go to state and local agencies as both unrestricted revenue and money for specific purposes, such as $15.9 billion to help schools reopen, $5 billion for colleges, $4 billion for mass transit services, and $3.9 billion for child care. Throughout California, officials in the specific government agencies that will benefit from Uncle Joe's largesse are busily deciding how to spend it - and they face the same three choices as Uncle Harry's beneficiaries would. The political pressure to spend it on new commitments will be immense. Advocates of specific programs, such as those seeking universal prekindergarten education and child care, will want to expand their reach. Public employee unions will seek increases in salaries and benefits. Elected political figures don't like to say "no" to demands for immediate gratification and few have the courage to insist that one-time windfalls should be carefully husbanded rather than spent. There's already a mini-version of the syndrome underway in California. The state has perhaps $15 billion in unexpected revenues because the pandemicinduced recession had little, if any, impact on high-income taxpayers and Gov. Gavin Newsom is under pressure to spend the windfall on program expansions, even though the state faces projected budget deficits in following years. The problem, of course, is spending windfall money on new commitments, such as salaries, benefits and program expansions, backfires when the money is gone. Those commitments morph into entitlements and their beneficiaries then demand that politicians generate new income streams to pay for them. There's already a debate underway in Washington over how much of the stimulus spending will become permanent and whether the federal government should continue borrowing to pay for it, or raise taxes. Left-leaning Democrats in both Washington and Sacramento are floating new tax proposals, such as a "wealth tax" on those sitting atop the economic ladder. Newsom simultaneously embraces, in principle, big expansions of entitlements, such as universal prekindergarten and single-payer health care, while warning that he won't embrace new taxes, apparently fearing they would chase away the highincome taxpayers who supply a huge portion of the state's revenues. Dan Walters is a CalMatters columnist.

Safer RV parking program rejected City Council concedes to neighbors’ complaints about lot near Hilltop Mall By Annie Sciacca [email protected] RICHMOND >> The Richmond City Council has dropped the idea of sanctioning a site where people without homes can live in their cars or RVs. The proposed program, which would have provided security guards and services such as water and restrooms for vehicle dwellers, has been a source of controversy for weeks as city officials tried to find the best spot. City Council members decided in February to launch the program at the near-vacant Hilltop Mall parking lot, but after intense opposition arose from the shopping center’s neighbors, they backed off and turned their eyes toward the Civic Plaza parking lot at 25th Street and Barrett Avenue. The city intended to finance the year-long pilot program through a $260,000 grant from Contra Costa County plus $300,000 from its own affordable housing program. But on Tuesday, the City Council nixed the plan entirely and decided to instead form a committee of three council members to work with the county to use the pooled money to provide services at existing RV encampments in Richmond and develop a longterm plan to help the residents transition to more stable housing. City officials estimated there are more than 80 RVs and other vehicles in encampments throughout Richmond. One of the larger RV encampments is located along Rydin Road, near the Point Isabel Regional Shoreline. While grassroots groups have tried to help organize the community and provide services like trash pickup, some city leaders had hoped to move the bulk of those camps to a city-sanctioned location that could be managed by a nonprofit. But with that plan now dropped because of neighbors' opposition, the city is looking for other solutions. "This acknowledges that the council's action to cre- ate a safe RV park does not remove all the RVs currently on Rydin Road and currently on Castro Street," Contra Costa County Supervisor John Gioia told the City Council on Tuesday. "The Civic Center site is relatively small and would handle just a portion of the RVs that are at the other two sites." Under the council's new plan, the Housing Consortium of the East Bay would help manage the existing RV site at Rydin Road and provide sanitation services and security, as well as help residents find other housing options. Gioia noted that the county's homeless shelter in North Richmond will reopen in the summer after having closed because of the coronavirus pandemic. The county is extending its lease with the Hilltop Marriott hotel to provide shelter, Gioia said, and there could be an opportunity to extend its lease with a motel at the corner of Canal and Cutting boulevards that's been housing people with COVID-19 and homeless residents. At the same time, the Bay Area Rescue Mission will be opening its shelter this summer as more people are vaccinated, and the city of San Pablo is using federal money to build 60 apartment units as transitional housing for previously unhoused people. "There will be substantially more (housing) opportunities for those who live on the street and in RVs," Gioia said. District 5 Councilwoman Gayle McLaughlin said she supports all that but worries about leaving the Rydin Road encampment in place. "These are very crowded conditions," McLaughlin said. "More and more vehicles keep coming. The Rydin Road site in particular is not conducive to laying out services." Mayor Tom Butt noted the encampments on Rydin Road and Castro Street pose some danger. The Castro Street side is close to the train tracks, he said, and the Rydin Road camp has had safety and trash problems in the past. The idea with the safe parking program was to move those vehicle dwellers to a safer, secure site bec ause there a re not enough shelters or other housing options to accommodate all of them, added But t , who had pushed for the Hilltop Mall site. "Now we are returning to a narrative where we are not really going to move anybody. We're just going to hope that some of them will go away," he said. The council voted 6-1, with Butt dissenting, to move forward with providing some services to existing camps while the committee tries to come up with better ideas. "I hope the intention and intensity behind this conversation continue so we can effectively deal with the homelessness crisis that has only been exacerbated by the pandemic," Councilman Melvin Willis said.

Biden preparing to spend up to $3T to boost economy Goals: Narrow inequality, reduce carbon emissions, aid manufacturing, tech By Jim Tankersley The New York Times WASHINGTON >> President Joe Biden’s economic advisers are preparing to recommend spending as much as $3 trillion on a sweeping set of efforts aimed at boosting the economy, reducing carbon emissions and narrowing economic inequality, beginning with a giant infrastructure plan that may be financed in part through tax increases on corporations and the rich. After months of internal debate, Biden’s advisers are expected to present a proposal to the president this week that recommends carving his economic agenda into separate legislative pieces, rather than trying to push a mammoth package through Congress, according to people familiar with the plans and to documents obtained by The New York Times. The total new spending in the plans would likely be $3 trillion, a person familiar with them said. That figure does not include the cost of extending new temporary tax cuts meant to fight poverty, which could reach hundreds of billions of dollars, according to estimates prepared by administration officials. Officials have not yet determined the exact breakdown in cost between the two packages. Biden supports all of the individual spending and tax cut proposals under consideration, but it is unclear whether he will back splitting his agenda into pieces, or what legislative strategy he and Democratic leaders will pursue to maximize the chances of pushing the new programs through Congress given their narrow majorities in both chambers.

President Joe Biden speaks with members of the press on the South Lawn of the White House in Washington, D.C., on Sunday after stepping off Marine One.

Administration officials caution that details of the spending programs remain in flux. But the scope of the proposal under consideration highlights the aggressive approach the Biden administration wants to take as it tries to harness the power of the federal government to narrow economic inequality, reduce the carbon emissions that drive climate change, and improve American manufacturing and high-technology industries in an escalating battle with China and other foreign competitors. While the $1.9 trillion economic aid package that Biden signed into law earlier this month includes money to help vulnerable people and businesses survive until the pandemic ends, it does little to advance the longer-term economic agenda that Biden campaigned on. The package under consideration would begin that effort in earnest. The first legislative piece under discussion, which some Biden officials consider more appealing to Republicans, business leaders and many moderate Senate Democrats, would combine investments in manufacturing and advanced industries with what would be the most aggressive spending yet by the United States to reduce carbon emissions and combat climate change. It would spend heavily on infrastructure improvements, clean energy deployment and the development of other "high-growth in- dustries of the future" like 5G telecommunications. It includes money for rural broadband, advanced training for millions of workers and 1 million affordable and energy-efficient housing units. Documents suggest it will include nearly $1 trillion in spending alone on the construction of roads, bridges, rail lines, ports, electric vehicle charging stations and improvements to the electric grid and other parts of the power sector. Whether it can muster Republican support will depend in large part on how the bill is paid for. Officials have discussed offsetting some or all of the infrastructure spending by raising taxes on corporations, including increasing the corporate income tax rate above the current 21% rate and a variety of measures to force multinational corporations to pay more tax in the United States on income they earn abroad. That strategy is unlikely to garner Republican votes. "I don't think there's go- ing to be any enthusiasm on our side for a tax increase," Sen. Mitch Mc-Connell of Kentucky, the Republican leader, told reporters last week. He predicted the administration's infrastructure plan would be a "Trojan horse" for tax increases. Biden's team has debated the merits of aggressively pursuing compromise with Republicans and business leaders on an infrastructure package, which would most likely require dropping or scaling back plans to raise taxes on corporations, or preparing to move another sweeping bill through a special parliamentary process that would require only Democratic votes. Biden's advisers plan to present the proposal to congressional leaders this week. "President Biden and his team are considering a range of potential options for how to invest in working families and reform our tax code so it rewards work, not wealth," said Jen Psaki, the White House press secretary. "Those conversations are ongoing, so any speculation about future economic proposals is premature and not a reflection of the White House's thinking." Biden's broader economic agenda will face a more difficult road in Congress than his relief bill, which was financed entirely by federal borrowing and passed using a special parliamentary tactic with only Democratic votes. Biden could again attempt to use that same budget reconciliation process to pass a bill on party lines. But moderate Democrats in the Senate have insisted that the president engage Republicans on the next wave of economic legislation, and that the new spending be offset by tax increases. Large business groups and some congressional Republicans have expressed support for some of Biden's broad goals, most notably efforts to rebuild roads, bridges, water and sewer systems and other infrastructure across the country. PATRICK SEMANSKY — THE ASSOCIATED PRESS FILE

Rising sea levels, wildfires endanger state park system By Julie Cart CalMatters Of all the existential threats California parks face - dwindling budgets, more visitors and costly, long-deferred maintenance - now comes a climate-driven conundrum: When is a park no longer a park? When its namesake trees disappear in a barrage of lightning strikes? When its very land is washed away by ever-rising seas? The California Department of Parks and Recreation is coming to terms with this dilemma after a climate-reckoning moment last August, when more than 97% of Big Basin Redwoods, California's oldest state park, was charred by a lightning-sparked wildfire. The shock of it was almost greater than the devastation: Coastal redwoods, the socalled asbestos forests of iconic, giant trees, hadn't been hit by such ferocious blaze in living memory. The fire incinerated buildings and roads along with many trees; it was the most unexpected, indiscriminate and comprehensive destruction of a California state park, ever. Established 119 years ago, Big Basin remains closed. Although all state agencies face the threat of climate change, state parks - with the depth and breadth of their 2,300 square miles of land - are singularly jeopardized. Caretaker of the nation's largest state park system, the department is responsible for all of its historic structures, roads, bridges, land, beaches, forests, water, plants and animals. "Every bit of California is going to be impacted by climate change. It's going to affect every person in the state and every acre of land in the state," said Jay Chamberlin, chief of the state parks' natural resources division. "State parks are not only vulnerable, but some are uniquely vulnerable." Managing California's nearly 300 parks will now require a top-to-bottom rethink: How to make public land more resilient to wildfires, rising seas, drought and extreme weather. The price tag for arming state beaches, thinning forests, moving restrooms and visitors' centers, and other climate-resilience projects has not been calculated. But experts say if the money isn't spent now to protect parks from rising seas and intensified fires, the damage and costs will multiply. "There's needs to be a climate resilience plan for every park unit," said Rachel Norton, executive director of the nonprofit California State Parks Foundation. "This is what's coming: Drought, fire, sealevel rise, loss of habitat for species. There's a lot more work to be done to understand the scope of the potential threat." In particular, making California's state parks resilient to sea-level rise and f looding is critical; the agency manages about a quarter of the state's coastline. Although the state's climate change response is ongoing and frequently updated, a comprehensive sea-level rise plan for parks is being finalized, officials said. Chamberlin said the agency is transitioning "to a stance where we consider climate in everything we do." "I'm talking about planning our capital investment, the vehicles we purchase or how we plan projects. When it comes to coastal issues, do not build in harm's way. If a building needs roof repair, harden it if it's in a wildfire zone. We are believers in building resilience into everything we do."T he legislature is watching to see what the parks department comes up with. "I tend to think, is there an engineering solution or a technology solution to this?" said Luz Rivas, a Democrat from Arleta who chairs the Assembly Natural Resources Committee. Rivas, who has a degree in electrical engineering from the Massachusetts Institute of Technology and an advanced degree from Harvard, wonders if California can apply its ample brainpower to come up with solutions. "We are very fortunate to have many research institutions and national labs working on this. California is a leader in climate change policy but also technology. I think we should meld the two."

A redwood tree burns near Big Basin Redwoods State Park Headquarters & Visitor Center in Boulder Creek on Aug. 20, 2020. Worsening wildfires are growing as a state threat. RANDY VAZQUEZ — STAFF ARCHIVES

Future fires Even those deeply familiar with every woody acre of Big Basin Redwoods - home to ancient trees of such stature that many are named and curated - the aftermath was unsettling. "Going back into the park for the first time, it was very hard to believe what I was seeing," said Chris Spohrer, state parks superintendent for the Santa Cruz region. "To see what a fire of that intensity could do was disorienting. The landmarks were gone, the colors were monochromatic. It took several visits for it to sink in, to get your bearings. It was shocking." Even though the bulk of the contents of Big Basin was damaged or destroyed, the idea of the park, a celebration of the tallest living things on the planet, remains intact, officials say. While redwoods were burned, their bark is thick and fire-resistant, so park managers expect many of the big trees to survive, although other species, such as Douglas Firs, are not as hardy. But things will be different. Managing a park to be resilient to fire is going to require change in a fundamental way in the decades to come: Visitors will have to alter their definition of a healthy park to include the sight of fewer trees and more prescribed burning. Managers may have to reduce the forest in order to save the park, and consider building future visitor centers and other facilities out of more fire-resistant materials like metal or concrete rather than charming but flammable wood. Beginning in 1900, the Sempervirens Fund, a nonprofit conservation group, purchased about 17,000 acres of redwood forests and transferred them to the state, essentially creating Big Basin Redwoods. That work paid dividends during the blaze, resulting in a low-intensity fire that cleared out overgrown vegetation but spared the giant trees on the group's land, providing an object lesson for the adjacent park. "There's no one quick fix to any of this," said Laura McLendon, the Sempervirens Fund's director of land conservation. To su r v ive cl i m at e change, she said, California's forested parklands must be aggressively managed for fire using an array of approaches. "There needs to be a suite of activities - fuels reduction, reintroducing fire to the landscape where it has historically occurred, rethinking where we develop and the materials we use." Twenty-two state parks were hit by fire last year, according to the State Parks Foundation. Climate scientists say California can expect more frequent fires and more damaging megafires. Rising threats Darren Smith doesn't need to read a report about climate change to understand the threats to state parks. He's living it every day. Smith, who is the natural resources manager for the park department's San Diego Coast District, is fighting water - from all sides. "We are being squeezed," he said, gesturing to the ocean on a recent visit to South Carlsbad State Beach. Turning, Smith points to the cliffs behind him and the city of Carlsbad on the other side of a highway. El Nino-powered storms create runoff that gushes over bluffs or percolates into porous sandstone, carving fissures that pockmark and destabilize the cliff face. "We don't have anywhere to go." As for a park campsite on a promontory affording a magnificent view of rugged coastline, "it's a goner," he said. The Pacific Ocean is inexorably rising on the beaches he manages, slamming into bluffs and undermining parking lots, campsites and restroom facilities. The parks department is on a penny-pinching budget - $858 million for 2021-22, down 34% from the previous year because of onetime bond appropriations. Coronavirus closures cost the agency lost revenue from entrance fees and concessions. Parks are threatened by other aspects of climate change, too: Extremes of heat and cold stress facilities and operations. Drought threatens animals' habitat and makes trees more susceptible to disease and insect infestation. Chamberlin, the parks' resources chief, said future investments will be assessing whether a proposed facility is going to eventually be underwater or vulnerable to fire. Whether it's fire or water, climate change will continue to eat away at California's parks - and the agency's budget.

Overstimulated? Stocks soar 75% in historic 12-month run By STAN CHOEMarch 22, 2021

FILE - In this Wednesday March 10, 2021 photo provided by the New York Stock Exchange, trader Phyllis Arena Woods works on the trading floor. A year earlier, a terrifying free fall for the stock market suddenly ended, ushering in one of its greatest runs. (Nicole Pereira/New York Stock Exchange via AP)

NEW YORK (AP) — It was one year ago that the terrifying free fall for the stock market suddenly ended, ushering in one of its greatest runs.

On March 23, 2020, the S&P 500 fell 2.9%. In all, the index dropped nearly 34% in about a month, wiping out three years’ worth of gains for the market. That turned out to be the bottom, even though the coronavirus pandemic worsened in the ensuing months and the economy sank deeper into recession. Massive amounts of support for the economy from the Federal Reserve and Congress limited how far stocks would fall. The market recovered all its losses by August.

As time passed, the quick development of coronavirus vaccines helped stocks shoot even higher. So did growing legions of first-time investors, who suddenly had plenty of time to get into the market using free trading apps on their phones.

It all led to a 76.1% surge for the S&P 500 and a shocking return to record heights. This run looks to be one of the, if not the, best 365-day stretches for the S&P 500 since before World War II. Based on month-end figures, the last time the S&P 500 rose this much in a 12-month stretch was in 1936, according to Howard Silverblatt, senior index analyst at S&P Dow Jones Indices.

All the furious movement has also raised worries that stock prices may have gone too far, too fast. Here’s a look at five trends that helped shape the market over the last year:

— TWO BULL MARKETS IN ONE

Wall Street’s big rally actually had two distinct stages. Early on, Big Tech stocks and winners of the suddenly stay-at-home economy pulled the market higher. Amazon benefited as people shopped more online, Apple hoovered up sales as more people worked from home and Zoom Video Communications surged as students and adults started meeting online. Tech stocks as a group are the market’s biggest by value, so their gains helped make up for weakness across other sectors as the economy continued to struggle.

Since last autumn, though, excitement for an economic liftoff has caused a more widespread upturn. Banks, energy producers and smaller companies whose profits would be the biggest beneficiaries of a stronger economy have led the way, as coronavirus vaccines roll out and Washington delivers even more financial aid. Those gains are also picking up the slack for technology stocks, which have lost momentum as interest rates rise on worries about higher inflation.

— FIRST-TIME INVESTORS JOIN, AND THE GAME DOESN’T STOP

Stuck at home with little to do, people looked for ways to use some dollars that might have otherwise been spent on a movie, restaurant meal or vacation. Many turned to the stock market via their phones, as trading apps made it easy to buy and sell shares with a few taps, commission free.

Clients under the age of 40 accounted for 35% of trading last month at Charles Schwab, nearly double the rate of two years earlier. Accounts less than a year old are doing more trading in total at Charles Schwab than accounts that have been around more than 10 years.

Many of those traders have been using money they got as stimulus payments from the U.S. government. The Robinhood trading app popular with many novice investors saw an increase in the percentage of deposits of exactly $1,200 or $2,400 after the government sent out checks for those amounts last spring, just after the stock market hit bottom, for example. A new round of government payments — $1,400 to individuals — is underway.

Social media has only amplified the trend, as traders talk on Reddit, Twitter and elsewhere about what stocks to buy. They’ve been helping to push up the stock market broadly, but their influence is most evident in what have come to be known as “meme stocks.” GameStop surged 1,625% in January, for example, even though the video game retailer has struggled financially. The gains for GameStop, AMC Entertainment and other meme stocks defied gravity — and, in the opinion of nearly every professional investor on Wall Street, common sense.

— A SPAC-TACULAR BOOM RAISES CONCERNS

The frenzy around stocks has raised worries along Wall Street that prices may have shot too high. Much of the criticism is focused on how much faster stock prices climbed than corporate profits.

Another potential signal of too much greed and not enough fear: Investors are so hungry for the next big thing that they’re pouring billions of dollars into investments, before they even know what the money could go toward. These investments are called special-purpose acquisition companies, though they’re better known by their acronym, SPACs. Armed with cash raised from investors, SPACs look for privately held companies to buy so that the company can easily list its stock on an exchange.

Last year, SPACs raised $83.4 billion, more than six times the prior year. They’ve already surpassed that level in less than three months this year.

— A GLOBAL RECOVERY

The coronavirus really knows no geographic boundaries. As it devastated populations and economies around the world, global financial markets sustained sharp losses.

The recovery has also been worldwide. Stocks from China, South Korea and other emerging markets as a group are up almost the exact same percentage as the S&P 500 since March 23, 2020. Japan’s Nikkei 225 index is also up a similar amount.

European markets have been lagging, although their performance is much better when seen in dollar terms instead of euros. Worsening infection rates are raising worries of a “third wave” on the continent and are forcing governments to bring back some restrictions on daily life. But the hope is that the continued rollout of vaccines will get economies and trade back to normal across the world.

— WHO’S GETTING LEFT BEHIND?

Even with so many first-time investors joining the market, not everyone is benefiting from rising stocks. Only a little more than half of all U.S. households owned stocks in 2019, whether by day-trading stocks or holding an S&P 500 index fund in a 401(k) account.

Likewise, not every stock has participated in the market’s run higher over the last year. A handful of stocks within the S&P 500 are actually lower, headlined by Gilead Sciences, which is down 9.8%. The stock soared early in the pandemic as its remdesivir drug became a treatment for COVID-19 but fell back in part on concerns about upcoming patent expirations.

Other early stock winners of the pandemic have also tailed off since the market took off a year ago, including Clorox, whose disinfecting wipes became like currency, and Spam-maker Hormel Foods.

PUBLIC LANDS Outdoor industry to Biden: Go local on conservation Jennifer Yachnin, E&E News reporterPublished: Tuesday, March 23, 2021

Outdoor recreation representatives met yesterday with the White House Council on Environmental Quality and federal agencies on President Biden's land conservation goals. Jennifer Yachnin/E&E News

Advocates for the outdoor recreation industry are pressing the White House to look to locally led efforts to meet the administration's aggressive conservation targets, arguing that federal public lands alone will be insufficient.

Representatives of groups including the Outdoor Industry Association, Conservation Alliance and Outdoor Alliance raised the issue yesterday during a meeting with White House and agency staff to discuss President Biden's "30x30" pledge, or protecting 30% of the nation's lands and waters in a natural state by 2030.

"There's a lot of federal lands and waters out there, and that's going to be an essential piece of this puzzle, but it's inadequate to reach the goal," Outdoor Alliance Executive Director Adam Cramer told E&E News.

He added: "If you take into account goals for climate resiliency and biodiversity, different parts of the country are going to be able to contribute to that goal in different ways. To make this a resilient effort, we've got to get support from a diversity of stakeholders."

The Interior Department is tasked with submitting a report on April 27 that will serve as a first draft of sorts, recommending steps the nation can take to meet the conservation goals — bringing some form to what has been a largely hazy proposal to date.

The lead-up to that report, which will go to the National Climate Task Force, has seen Interior, along with the White House Council on Environmental Quality, Agriculture Department and NOAA, hosting a series of stakeholder meetings.

A statement from CEQ noted that those sessions include tribal leadership, conservation groups, fishermen, ocean advocates, forest owners, ranchers, farmers, hunters and anglers, as well as state and federal elected officials. Outdoor Industry Association Executive Director Lise Aangeenbrug told E&E News that yesterday's meeting was largely a "listening session" and did not include any administration proposal.

"We are very interested in this and see it as an opportunity to really marry a lot of things that our industry cares about," Aangeenbrug explained. "We hope that it is community driven, really thinks about equity in the outdoors that we care about, upholds the sovereignty of tribal nations and also recognizes that for private landowners it's going to have to be voluntary conservation."

She added that participants expressed that they would like to see a program that is "locally led and collaborative with federal support."

"It's going to take a village to figure out how this can work," Aangeenbrug said.

Conservation Alliance Executive Director Brady Robinson like-wise said participants emphasized that conservation efforts do not need to focus solely on large swaths of lands but could also include "small green spaces" in urban areas.

The conservation plans must also strike a balance between access and recreational use, Robinson said. He rejected suggestions that the 30x30 plan could "lock up" lands, as critics on Capitol Hill have argued.

"There's an acknowledgment that people absolutely have to figure into this," Robinson said.

Twitter: @jenniferyachninEmail: [email protected]

Yellen, Powell: More needed to limit U.S. economic damage By Martin Crutsinger The Associated Press WASHINGTON >> Treasury Secretary Janet Yellen and Federal Reserve Chairman Jerome Powell told Congress on Tuesday that more must be done to limit the economic damage from the coronavirus pandemic. Powell also reiterated that he does not expect programs aimed at reviving the economy will trigger unwanted inflation. Both officials struck upbeat notes about the U.S. economy’s outlook in their appearances Tuesday before the House Financial Services Committee. They said that, while there are encouraging signs of a rebound, it is important that government support continue in order to make sure the millions of people who have lost jobs can return to the labor market. Several Republican lawmakers expressed worries that run-way inflation could be triggered by the more than $4 trillion in support provided by Congress last year, the Biden administration’s recently approved $1.9 trillion support package, coupled with the Fed’s ultralow interest rates. Addressing those concerns, Powell said that the Fed remains strongly committed to its two policies goals of achieving maximum employment and stable prices, which it interprets as price increases averaging 2% per year. As progress is made against the virus and the economy opens, the Fed expects inflation will rise over the course of this year, he said. “Our best view is that the effect on inflation will be neither particularly large or persistent,” Powell said. And as he has done in the

Treasury Secretary Janet Yellen pledged a rapid rollout of the new relief plan. She noted that within the first week, the Treasury and IRS distributed more than 90 million direct payments to qualifying individuals.

JACQUELYN MARTIN — THE ASSOCIATED PRESS past, he said that if inflation did start to increase in worrisome ways, the Fed had the tools necessary through its control of interest rates to keep it under control. Republicans lawmakers pressed Yellen about reports the administration is preparing a new $3 trillion "Build Back Better" spending plan for infrastructure projects and improving education and job training. The measure would be partly financed by increasing taxes on the wealthy and corporations. Yellen said that the administration is considering boosting the corporate tax rate from the current 21% to 28%. It was cut in the Trump administration from 35% as part of the 2017 tax bill. "We have had a global race to the bottom in corporate taxation and we hope to put an end to that," Yellen said. Rep. Barry Loudermilk, R-Ga., cited comments from critics that the administration's relief package was more than six times larger than it needed to be. Yellen said that the country has lost 9.5 million jobs and if discouraged workers are counted, the jobless rate now would be over 9%. "We have a huge problem of joblessness" that needs to be addressed, Yellen said. The Tuesday hearing marked the first joint appearance by Powell and Yellen in their current jobs and it was Yellen's first congressional appearance since taking over as Treasury secretary. Yellen said the $1.9 trillion American Rescue Plan held out the prospect of returning the country to full employment next year. "With the passage of the rescue plan, I am confident that people will reach the other side of this pandemic with the foundations of their lives intact," Yellen said. The economy fell into a deep recession a year ago with an initial loss of 22 million jobs, many of them in service industries such as restaurants and retail stores. Powell acknowledged that a recovery is far from complete. The Fed will "not lose sight of the millions of Americans who are still hurting, including lower wage workers in the services sector, African Americans, Hispanics and other minority groups that have been especially hard hit," Powell said. The Fed kept its benchmark interest rate at a record low of 0% to 0.25% at its meeting last week.

THE WORK CONTINUES Analysis: Biden’s oil and gas leasing pause will not curtail LWCF’s conservation obligations

Teresa Martinez | Colorado Newsline Mar 24, 2021

Black Canyon Kent Raney / Shutterstock.com

On the same day that President Joe Biden signed an executive order which, in the face of climate change, called for a pause on new oil and gas leases on federal land and the reassessment of the leasing system, Western Energy Alliance denounced the order as a threat to the Land and Water Conservation Fund (LWCF). Fortunately, the concern by oil and gas trade association WEA for the underfunding of LWCF is totally unfounded and, frankly, a red herring.

LWCF, for those who may not know, is the most successful conservation program in the United States. Enacted by Congress in 1965, the program is responsible for protecting America’s irreplaceable lands and waters and ensuring that all Americans have access to outdoor recreation. The primary source of income to the fund is fees and royalties paid to the Bureau of Ocean Energy Management, Regulation and Enforcement by companies drilling offshore in federal water for oil and gas.

In August 2020, the Great American Outdoors Act (GAOA) was signed into law, guaranteeing that LWCF will be funded at $900 million per year. This was a historic moment for protecting public lands, and certainly the Continental Divide Trail, since LWCF funds have played an integral part toward completion of the trail, where some sections are forced off public lands. All told, GAOA directs $1.3 billion annually in oil and gas leasing and production revenue toward conservation. But none of that funding is impacted by any proposals to limit new leases. A review of the Department of the Interior’s Bureau of Ocean Energy Management and Office of Natural Resource Revenue websites reveals that the pause will have zero effect on LWCF funding.

The drilling scenario on the Outer Continental Shelf, even with no new leasing, shows that vast areas are untapped and remain available for new production — 77 percent of the existing shelf leases (1,752) have never been drilled.

Public lands protections that LWCF provides are also an investment in Colorado communities. Moreover, every year revenue from existing lease production far exceed amounts needed for full funding of LWCF. Over the past two decades, Outer Continental Shelf production has brought an annual average of just over $6 billion into the U.S. Treasury. Legally required deposits to LWCF plus all other obligations total about $1.5 billion each year, leaving about $4.5 billion in surplus Outer Continental Shelf Treasury revenue after all obligations are met. Even the impact of the COVID-19 pandemic on 2020 shelf revenue has not affected funds for LWCF and other obligations, with more than $2.5 billion remaining in the Treasury after all disbursements were made. In Colorado, LWCF has already funded dozens of sites where Coloradans and visitors may recreate outdoors and learn about culture and history along the Continental Divide. Iconic places like Black Canyon of the Gunnison National Park, and Browns Canyon National Monument are just a few of the locations that could have been lost to incompatible development forever if not for these funds.

Public lands protections that LWCF provides are also an investment in Colorado communities. Gateway communities along the Continental Divide Trail, as well as many other towns and local businesses across the West, depend upon conservation protections to ensure the pristine outdoor experiences that attract throngs of nature lovers and recreationists. The coronavirus pandemic has reminded us how important being able to get outside is for reconnection and recharging.

Biden’s moratorium is meant to begin to fix our broken oil and gas leasing system, so that we may better address the damaging impact of oil and gas drilling on the environment and climate, and ensure we all have opportunities to recreate on our public lands. Given the critical importance of land conservation in tackling the dual climate and nature crises, we no doubt need to prioritize investments in conservation and recreation and ease up on energy dominance policies that unwisely downplayed the dangers of climate change.

In the meantime, as we make this transition, the numbers show that there remain enough existing drilling permits to allow oil and gas companies to operate for years, and we can rest assured that the Land and Water Conservation Fund will continue to protect America’s great outdoors and cultural treasures.

Colorado Newsline is part of States Newsroom, a network of news outlets supported by grants and a coalition of donors as a 501c(3) public charity. Colorado Newsline maintains editorial independence. Contact Editor Quentin Young for questions: [email protected]. Follow Colorado Newsline on Facebook and Twitter.

Bonta named attorney general By Paul Rogers and Robert Salonga Staff writers Gov. Gavin Newsom on Wednesday announced he has chosen Assemblyman Rob Bonta, an Oakland Democrat, to be California's next attorney general - a high-profile job and frequent steppingstone to higher office that was the epicenter of the state's relentless lawsuits against the Trump administration over the last four years. Bonta, 48, was the first Filipino American elected to the state Legislature in 2012. A close ally of Newsom who earned a law degree from Yale, he represents the 18th Assembly District, a Democratic stronghold that includes much of the East Bay, stretching from Oakland to San Leandro and including Alameda. The nomination is subject to confirmation by the California State Assembly and Senate within 90 days, where approval is expected. "Rob has become a national leader in the fight to repair our justice system and defend the rights of every Californian," Newsom said. "And most importantly, at this moment when so many communities are under attack for who they are and who they love, Rob has fought to strengthen hate crime laws and protect our communities from the forces of hate. He will be a phenomenal attorney general, and I can't wait to see him get to work." The state's top law enforcement job became open after President Joe Biden nominated California's previous attorney general, Xavier Becerra, to be secretary of the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services. Becerra was narrowly confirmed by the U.S. Senate 50-49 in a vote last week. "As California's Attorney General, I will work tirelessly every day to ensure that every Californian who has been wronged can find justice and that every person is treated fairly under the law," said Bonta, whose appointment runs through the 2022 election. In Sacramento, Bonta has garnered a reputation as a liberal, working on immigration, civil rights, tenants' rights and public safety issues. He was co-author of SB 10, a bill that made California the first state in the nation to eliminate money bail for suspects awaiting trial and replace it with a risk-assessment system. After former Gov. Jerry Brown signed the measure into law, the bail bond industry put it on the state ballot and it was overturned by voters last November. Bonta also co-authored bills that Newsom signed to ban private, for-profit prisons in California, and to compel state Department of Justice investigations of police shootings of unarmed civilians. As California's attorney general, he will lead the state Department of Justice, following in the footsteps of Becerra, Vice President Kamala Harris and Brown in one of the state's most politically powerful jobs. The agency has roughly 4,700 employees. It prosecutes people and companies who violate state laws, defends state government agencies in court cases and advises the state government on legal issues. A number of other political leaders, including U.S. Rep. Adam Schiff, D-Burbank, Contra Costa County District Attorney Diana Becton, and U.S. Rep. Ted Lieu, D- Torrance, were believed to be on Newsom's short list. But choosing a Democrat from Congress would have further shrunk the Democrats' very slim majority in the House. And after Newsom chose former Secretary of State Alex Padilla of Los Angeles to fill Harris' U.S. Senate seat when she was elected vice president, some pundits expected a Northern California pick for the next big job. Bonta's selection comes amid several high-pro.le attacks against elderly Asian Americans in the Bay Area, former President Donald Trump calling the coronavirus "the China .u," and a shooting in Atlanta that killed eight people, six of them Asian women. "Hate crimes targeting the API Pacific Islander) community have skyrocketed over the last year, and we need a champion who will make the pursuit of justice for these victims a top priority," said Assemblymember Evan Low, D-Campbell, who serves as vice chair of the API Leg- islative Caucus. "I have full faith Attorney General Bonta is the right person to meet this moment." Bonta and his wife, Mialisa, live in Alameda with their three children.

Assemblyman Rob Bonta speaks shortly after Gov. Gavin Newsom announced Bonta’s nomination as California’s attorney general Wednesday in San Francisco. NOAH BERGER — THE ASSOCIATED PRESS

Bonta's parents were missionaries working in rural villages in 1972 when he was born in Quezon City, Philippines. His fa- ther, Warren, a U.S. citizen from Ventura County, had joined Martin Luther King s civil rights organizing in Selma, Alabama, in the 1960s to pass the Voting Rights Act. His mother, Cynthia, who was at the event Wednesday in San Francisco where Newsom made the announcement, has worked for decades in the Filipino social justice movement. Shortly after Bonta was born, former Philippines President Ferdinand Marcos declared martial law and the family moved back to the United States. They lived in a trailer at Nuestra Señora Reina de la Paz, the United Farm Workers of America headquarters near Keene, California, and the home of legendary labor leader César Chávez. Bonta's parents worked for Chávez and the UFW and organized Filipino and Mexican American farmworkers when he was a child. Later, they moved north to Fair Oaks, a Sacramento suburb. Bonta graduated as class valedictorian at Bella Vista High School, where he also was a soccer player. After high school, he attended Yale University, where he was captain of the soccer team, then attended Oxford University in England to study political science, philosophy and economics, before returning to Yale, where he graduated in 1998 with a law degree. From 2003 to 2012, Bonta worked as deputy city attorney of San Francisco. He entered politics in 2010, winning a seat on the Alameda City Council before being elected to the state Assembly in 2012. Brian Marvel, president of the Peace Officers Research Association of California, a prominent statewide police lobbying group, issued a statement welcoming Bonta's selection. "We look forward to working with him to address the many important challenges and opportunities facing California's law enforcement community today," Marvel said, "and to ensure the practice of law enforcement ref lects our shared California values." Contact Paul Rogers at 408-920-5045 and Robert Salonga at 408-920-5002.

Dems take first steps on sweeping changes By Nicholas Fandos The New York Times The Senate took its first steps on Wednesday to advance one of Democrats' top legislative priorities, convening an opening hearing on a sweeping elections bill that would expand voting rights and blunt some Republican state legislators' efforts to restrict access to the ballot box. Chock-full of liberal priorities, the bill, called the For the People Act, would usher in landmark changes making it easier to vote, enact new campaign finance laws and end partisan gerrymandering of congressional districts. The legislation passed the House along party lines earlier this month. It faces solid opposition from Republicans who are working to clamp down on ballot access, and who argue that the bill is a power grab by Democrats. Democrats on the Senate Rules Committee hope that testimony from former Attorney General Eric Holder, prominent voting experts and anti-corruption advocates will help build on a rising drumbeat of support from liberals. "Today, in the 21st century, there is a concerted, nationwide effort to limit the rights of citizens to vote and to truly have a voice in their own government," said Sen. Chuck Schumer, D-N.Y. and the Senate majority leader. He called the voting rollbacks in the states an "existential threat to our democracy" reminiscent of Jim Crow segregationist laws, chanting "Shame! Shame! Shame!" at the Republicans promoting them. Republicans are equally adamant in their opposition to a measure that promises to be an extraordinarily heavy lift for Democrats. They call it an attempt by Democrats to give themselves a permanent political advantage by driving up turnout among minority groups and by preventing Republicans, who control a majority of statehouses, from drawing new congressional districts this year that would tilt the playing field in their favor. "This bill is the single most dangerous bill this committee has ever considered," said Sen. Ted Cruz, R-Texas. "This bill is designed to corrupt the election process permanently, and it is a brazen and shameless power grab by Democrats." He falsely claimed that the bill would register millions of unauthorized immigrants to vote and accused Democrats of wanting the most violent criminals to cast ballots, too. In fact, it is illegal for noncitizens to vote, and the bill would do nothing to change that or a requirement that people registering to vote swear they are citizens. It would extend the franchise to millions of former felons, as some states already do, but only after they have served their terms. So far, not a single Republican supports the nearly 800-page bill, and Democrats are unlikely to win support even from all 50 of their senators without substantial changes. Democrats' best hope for enacting the legislation increasingly appears to be to try to leverage its voting protections - which many liberals view as a life-ordeath matter not just for American democracy, but for their own political chances in the future - to justify triggering the Senate's so-called nuclear option: the elimination of the filibuster rule requiring 60 votes, rather than a simple majority, to advance most bills.

In Bonta, Newsom picks an AG who embodies American dream By George Skelton Rob Bonta is another American dream story: Born in the Philippines and brought up by parents who helped César Chávez and Dolores Huerta unionize farmworkers. Bonta's mother, Cynthia, immigrated to California by slow boat in the 1960s. His father, Warren, grew up in Ventura County and became a voting-rights organizer for the Rev. Martin Luther King Jr. in Alabama. Mom and dad were missionaries in the Philippines when Rob was born. They brought Bonta to California when he was 2 months old and moved to a little trailer near Keene, a town in the Tehachapi Mountains, adjacent to the United Farm Workers headquarters. His parents' job was to organize Latino and Filipino farmworkers. When he was a teen, the family moved to a Sacramento suburb where Rob played high school soccer and became class valedictorian. Inspired by the Atticus Finch character in "To Kill a Mockingbird," Bonta says, he wound up getting a law degree at Yale University. He became a deputy city attorney in San Francisco, was elected to the Alameda City Council and in 2012 won a seat in the state Assembly, where he's assistant majority leader. So, skeptics who say the American dream is no longer real for people without riches need only look at Bonta, who was chosen Wednesday by Gov. Gavin Newsom to be the next attorney general of the nation's most populous state. "It's one of the most important positions, not just in the state, but arguably in the United States of America," Newsom said at a San Francisco news conference announcing his selection. It's considered California's second-most-important elective state office. Newsom lauded the previous attorney general, Xavier Becerra, for filing more than 100 suits and "pushing back against Trumpism." The coveted job has long been a springboard to higher office in California. Depending on how Bonta performs, he could be in a good position to run for U.S. Sen. Dianne Feinstein's seat in 2024, assuming she doesn't seek reelection at age 91, or for governor when Newsom's term expires in 2026 if he survives the current recall effort and is reelected next year. It's a good bet that Feinstein won't run and Newsom will survive. The next major hurdle for Bonta will be getting elected next year. And he needs to start running immediately. He has never run statewide before and isn't really known outside his Alameda County Assembly district. Moreover, Bonta has a very liberal legislative record, and there's plenty to shoot at by a centrist Democrat, if one decided to challenge him in a primary - or a moderate Republican, if there still is any in California. Newsom praised Bonta as "a leader in the fight to reform our justice system and stand up to the forces of hate." "Rob represents what makes California great - our desire to take on righteous fights and reverse systematic injustices," Newsom said. "Most importantly at this moment when so many communities are under attack for who they are and who they love, Rob has fought to strengthen hate crime laws and protect communities from the forces of hate." Newsom was obviously influenced in part to appoint Bonta - who will be California's first Filipino American attorney general - by the recent rise in anti-Asian violence throughout the country. The governor had been under heavy pressure from organizations representing Asian Americans and Pacific Islanders to select Bonta, who also had strong labor support. His selection leaves California's eight-member group of statewide elected officials as one of the most diverse in the nation. Bonta will be the third Asian American or Pacific Islander among the eight. Two are Black - one of them, Secretary of State Shirley Weber, was also appointed by Newsom. Two are white and one is Latino. Newsom is the only white male. But geographically, there is little diversity among the state's top elected officials. Six are from the San Francisco Bay Area: the governor, lieutenant governor, attorney general, treasurer, controller and superintendent of public instruction. Only the insurance commissioner is from Los Angeles County. The secretary of state's home is San Diego. Newsom passed on appointing a high-profile candidate from L.A. County, U.S. Rep. Adam B. Schiff of Burbank. Another rejected contender was Sacramento Mayor Darrell Steinberg, a former state Senate leader who had a close working relationship with the governor. Also turned down was the most seasoned prosecutor of the group, Santa Clara County District Attorney Jeff Rosen. All three men are white. Instead, Newsom found someone embodying the American dream from an immigrant family of color - and symbolizing the new California. George Skelton is a Los Angeles Times columnist.

Bay Area powers to big job surge during February Region adds 16,700 positions, nearly half in Santa Clara County, EDD reports By George Avalos [email protected] Led by a huge employment surge in Santa Clara County, the Bay Area powered to big job gains during February, an upswing that offers hope the region is poised to rebound from coronavirus- linked business shutdowns and massive layoffs. The nine-county region in February posted its largest monthly gain in jobs since August, with the bulk of the increase coming in the especially hard-hit leisure and hospitality sector. Experts say this could indicate that the slow easing of government restrictions may be allowing more businesses to open their operations and hire workers. “I think we’re seeing the actual light at the end of the tunnel here,” said Patrick Kallerman, research director with the Bay Area Council’s Economic Institute. “The fundamentals that made the Bay Area the hottest economy in the nation are all still here, for now." During February, the Bay Area added 16,700 jobs, which ended two months of job losses in December and January, according to a report released Friday by the state Employment Development Department. Santa Clara County gained 7,400 jobs, nearly half of the jobs added in the Bay Area in February, the report showed. "Silicon Valley is poised to lead the Bay Area and the state once again," said Stephen Levy, director of the Palo Alto-based Center for Continuing Study of the California Economy. "Silicon Valley is on a good path now." The San Francisco-San Mateo region added 2,600 positions, while the East Bay added 1,600 jobs. Marin County added 2,000 jobs, Sonoma County and Napa County each gained 1,200, and Solano County added 700 positions. Santa Cruz County had no change in its job totals in February. All of the num- bers for the Bay Area were adjusted for seasonal variations. "Most of the February gains, in the Bay Area and statewide, are in the hardhit hospitality sector after state and local governments took initial steps to relax COVID restrictions in late January," said Jeffrey Michael, director of the Stockton-based Center for Business and Policy Research at the University of the Pacific. The Bay Area leisure and hospitality sector was among the hardest hit by layoffs. Restaurants, hotels, drinking establishments and entertainment and arts centers lost 195,400 jobs over the one-year period that ended in February - a jaw-dropping 45% of all the jobs lost in the Bay Area during those 12 months. California gained 141,000 jobs in February, which was the largest one-month gain in employment since last June, according to seasonally adjusted numbers released by the EDD. "After a dark winter when the California labor market recovery stalled, February has brought signifi- cant hope to the state's displaced workers," said Taner Osman, research manager at Beacon Economics and the UC Riverside Center for Forecasting. For the Bay Area's three largest urban centers, the jobless rates all improved in February compared with January. In February, the South Bay unemployment rate was 5.5%, down from 5.9% the month before; the San Francisco-San Mateo region was at 5.8%, down from 6.3%; the East Bay was at 7.1%, down from 7.6%. Still, the region has a long way to go to recover from the damage to the economy during the COVID-19 era: Over the one-year period that ended in February, the entire Bay Area lost 433,600 jobs. The San Francisco-San Mateo region shed 158,100 of those positions, the East Bay lost 116,900 jobs, and the South Bay lost 100,000 jobs. The statewide jobless rate in February improved to 8.5%, down from 9% in January. "February marks the lowest unemployment rate California has seen since the onset of the pandemic last year," the state Labor Department and the governor's office said in a prepared release on Friday. The battered California economy remains far removed from its glory days of early last year. In February 2020, the month before coronavirus-linked business lockdowns began, the statewide unemployment rate was 3.9%. Some measuring sticks point to ongoing weakness in the employment sector statewide, said Michael Bernick, an employment attorney with Duane Morris and a former director of the EDD. California unemployment claims remain elevated, Bernick noted. Bernick also cited statistics posted at the tracktherecovery.org website that shows smallbusiness openings are in a slump, small-business revenues remain feeble, and job openings aren't plentiful. "How sustainable is this employment growth? The monthly job numbers are not consistent with the other main employment indicators for California released in the past two weeks," Bernick said. And the leisure and hospitality sector has a long way to go before it can re- cover from its job losses. "It will take some time for restaurants to recover, for tourism to rebound, and for small businesses to pick up the pieces," Kallerman said. Leisure and hospitality employers during February added 5,000 jobs in the South Bay, 3,400 in the San Francisco-San Mateo region and 1,400 jobs in the East Bay, figures provided by Beacon Economics show. Hotels and restaurants, which are part of this category, added 2,700 jobs in the South Bay, 3,100 in San Francisco-San Mateo and 1,200 in the East Bay. In February, retailers added 1,100 jobs in the San Francisco-San Mateo region, 900 jobs in the East Bay and 600 in the South Bay. Some experts believe the robust February job gains suggest a significant hiring upswing is on tap for the Bay Area. That could occur as businesses are allowed to operate in COVID- linked tiers with fewer restrictions. "Job growth should accelerate in March and April with the Bay Area moving to the orange tier," Levy said. Contact George Avalos at 408-859-5167.

Dems poised to raise taxes By Jim Tankersley and Emily Cochrane The New York Times WASHINGTON >> Democrats have spent the last several years clamoring to raise taxes on corporations and the rich, seeing that as a necessary antidote to widening economic inequality and a rebuke of former President Donald Trump's signature tax cuts. Now, under President Joe Biden, they have a shot at ushering in the largest federal tax increase since 1942. It could help pay for a host of spending programs that liberal economists predict would bolster the economy's performance and repair a tax code that Democrats say encourages wealthy people to hoard assets and big companies to ship jobs and book profits overseas. The question is whether congressional Democrats and the White House can agree on how sharply taxes should rise and who, exactly, should pay the bill. They widely share the goal of reversing many of Trump's tax cuts from 2017 and of making the wealthy and big businesses pay more. But they do not yet agree on the details - and because Republicans are unlikely to support their efforts, they have no room for error in a closely divided Senate. For Biden, the need to find consensus is urgent. The president is set to travel to Pittsburgh on Wednesday to unveil the next phase of his economic agenda: a sprawling collection of programs that would invest in infrastructure, education, carbon-reduction and working mothers and cost $3 trillion to $4 trillion. The package, which follows on the heels of Biden's $1.9 trillion economic aid bill, is central to the president's long-term plan to revitalize American workers and industry by funding bridges and roads, universal prekindergarten, emerging industries like advanced batteries, and efforts to invigorate the fight against climate change. Biden plans to finance that spending, at least in part, with tax increases that could raise upward of $2.5 trillion in revenue if his plan hews closely to what he proposed in the 2020 presidential campaign. Aides suggest his proposals might not be entirely paid for, with some one-time spending increases offset by increased federal borrowing. Others in his party, including his own transportation secretary, have pushed Biden to explore tax plans he did not campaign on, like taxing consumption, wealth or vehicle miles traveled. (A Transportation Department spokesperson said Saturday that there would be no vehicle-milestraveled tax in the infrastructure proposal.) Biden has stressed his broadbrush desire to increase the tax burden on wealthy Americans who largely earn their money through inheritance or investment, to fund spending programs meant to help people who earn their money primarily through wages. "I want to change the paradigm," Biden said Thursday during a news conference. "We start to reward work, not just wealth." Democratic lawmakers have promised for decades to raise taxes on companies and the wealthy, a desire that kicked into overdrive after Trump signed a tax-cut package that delivered an outsize share of its benefits to corporations and high earners. But they have struggled to muster the votes for large tax increases since President Bill Clinton signed a 1993 law that included a variety of hikes intended to help reduce the budget deficit. Business groups, conservative activists, lobbyists and donors across the ideological spectrum have largely blocked such attempts. President Barack Obama campaigned on ending tax cuts for the rich signed into law by President George W. Bush, but after the 2008 financial crisis, he cut deals with Republicans to extend those cuts before allowing some of them to expire at the end of 2012. Liberal economists say this year could be different, thanks to the unique political and economic circumstances surrounding the recovery from the pandemic recession. With Biden's signing of a $1.9 trillion economic relief bill, financed entirely by federal borrowing, forecasters now expect the economy to grow this year at its fastest annual clip since the 1980s. Republicans and some economists have begun to warn of overheating growth spurring runaway inflation, which could reduce the salience of warnings that tax increases would cause growth to stall. Public polling shows broad support, even among many Republican voters, for raising taxes on large corporations and high-income individuals. The most conservative Democrats in the Senate, who hold great sway over Biden's legislative agenda, say they favor trillions of dollars in infrastructure spending, so long as there is a plan to pay for it. That includes Sen. Joe Manchin, D-W.Va., who told reporters last week that Biden's infrastructure plan was "going to be enormous" and that its costs needed to be covered. He signaled openness to making changes to the 2017 tax overhaul, adding that the benefits in that legislation were "weighted in one direction to the upper end." "Where do they think it's going to come from? How are they going to fix Amer- ica?" he said, when asked about Republican resistance to tax increases. "I don't think that's reasonable." Democrats widely share a desire to raise the corporate income tax rate after it was cut to 21% in 2017. And they want to raise the top marginal rate for individuals back to 39.6% from 37%. But there are disputes in the rank and file, with some favoring Biden's plan to set the corporate rate at 28% and others preferring a lower one, like 25%. There are also questions over which high-earning individuals should see a tax increase. Biden has pledged not to raise taxes on people earning less than $400,000. Some of his progressive allies, including Sens. Bernie Sanders of Vermont and Elizabeth Warren of Massachusetts, have advocated raising taxes on a broader group. Democrats like Manchin have pushed him to consider additional tax plans that do not solely target the rich, like a European-style tax on consumption, though that type of tax could fall more heavily on low-income Americans than wealthy ones. Republicans are unlikely to support any plan to raise taxes, leaving administration officials and leading congressional Democrats to hammer out a plan on their own. But absent Republican support in the Senate, where both parties hold 50 seats and Vice President Kamala Harris can break ties, Democrats would need to secure total consensus within their caucus to pass the legislation and use a fast-track budget process known as reconciliation to bypass the 60-vote threshold for ending a filibuster. Business groups and Republican lawmakers, who supported the 2017 tax cuts, predict that any tax increase will slow economic growth and undermine the competitiveness of U.S. companies. They contend that the economic and wage growth in the run-up to the pandemic prove that Trump's tax cuts worked, an argument Biden's advisers reject, citing research from the International Monetary Fund and others. "He wants a massive tax increase, and he wants to allocate the tax responsibility in this country on the basis of class," said Sen. John Kennedy, R-La. "That's a hell of a way to make tax policy. Sound tax policy is made on the basis of economics." Many liberal economists say there are good reasons to raise taxes, starting with using those funds to invest in workers and help build economic opportunity. Spending on physical infrastructure, like roads and water pipes, or on programs like education and child care that are meant to help people earn more money could help curb persistent inequalities in income and wealth. The economists also say that tax increases that are properly set up would provide incentives for multinational companies to keep jobs in the United States and not shift profits to lower-tax foreign countries Key Democrats are trying to bring the party to consensus. The top tax writer in the Senate, Ron Wyden, D-Ore., is drafting a series of bills to raise taxes, many of them overlapping with Biden's campaign proposals. "I'll be ready to raise what the Democratic caucus decides is required to move forward," Wyden, chair of the Senate Finance Committee, said in an interview.

Delay in data scrambles plans for state redistricting By David A. Lieb The Associated Press Stymied by delayed census data needed for redistricting, some states are considering postponing their 2022 primaries or turning to other population estimates to start the oncea- decade task of redrawing voting districts used for U.S. House and state legislative elections. The U.S. Census Bureau was supposed to provide redistricting data to the states by March 31, but after setbacks from the pandemic, it won't be ready until mid- to late August and might not be available in an easy-to-use format until Sept. 30. That's later than the legal deadlines to complete redistricting in some states and could mean less time for court challenges, candidate filing and ballot creation. The delay has sent states scrambling to adapt. Some face the decision to sidestep their constitutional deadlines or draw stopgap maps that might not fully reflect population shifts in the past decade. "States that have done the exact same thing for decades in a row now have to look for alternatives," said Wendy Underhill, director of elections and redistricting at the National Conference of State Legislatures. In many states, redistricting is done by lawmakers subject to a gubernatorial veto. A growing number will use independent or bipartisan commissions, but Republicans will have ultimate control over redistricting in more than twice as many states as Demo- crats. Political control allows officials to draw districts that make it easier for their candidates to win future elections - something Republicans did more effectively than Democrats after the 2010 census. Although the census is typically used for redistricting, only about half the states have laws or constitutional provisions explicitly requiring them to use census data, according to the NCSL. Lawsuits over redistricting are a near certainty in many states as political parties angle to get preferential maps. A decade ago, courts twice delayed the Texas primaries because of legal challenges to the maps drawn by the Republicanled Legislature. Candidate filing for Texas' March 1 primary is scheduled to run from mid-November to mid- December. But Republican Rep. Phil King is sponsoring legislation that would allow the governor, lieutenant governor and House speaker to agree to delay the primaries to July 1. The California Supreme Court already has pushed back the deadline for the state's redistricting commission to finalize new maps from Aug. 15 to Dec. 15. But that was on the assumption census data would be available by July 31. For every day the data is delayed beyond that, the court has automatically extended the deadline by an equal amount. That means it could bump up against California's mid-February deadline for candidates to submit petitions for the 2022 primaries.

Economic Policy White House dramatically increased tax proposal as it sought to address tensions over next big spending plan Biden aides see next major legislative effort as comparable to LBJ’s Great Society but face divisions among key allies

President Biden walks to board Marine One on the south lawn of the White House on March 26. (Demetrius Freeman/The Washington Post)

By Jeff Stein March 29, 2021 at 2:41 p.m. PDT

When President Biden’s team began putting together his infrastructure and jobs package this February, the White House National Economic Council circulated an internal proposal calling for about $3 trillion in new spending and $1 trillion in new tax hikes, according to three people with knowledge of the matter. But soon enough, some members of the economic team second-guessed themselves, concerned that the plan could jeopardize the nation’s long-term financial stability. The officials worried that the large gap between spending and revenue would widen the deficit by such a large degree that it could risk triggering a spike in interest rates, which could in turn cause federal debt payments to skyrocket, said the people familiar with the matter. The two-pronged package Biden will begin unveiling this week includes higher amounts of federal spending but also significantly more in new tax revenue — with possibly as much as $4 trillion in new spending and more than $3 trillion in tax increases, said the people, who spoke on the condition of anonymity to describe private dynamics. One person familiar with the matter said that the early infrastructure draft did not include every tax increase the White House was eventually considering including in its ultimate proposal, and that the administration believes the tax hikes can also advance its goal of reducing income inequality. Still, the choice to increase the bill’s tax hikes in part because of its effects on the deficit reflects how concerns over the nation’s spending imbalance are shaping the White House’s internal policy debate. But it also sets up the administration for an enormous political challenge in convincing Congress to pass a package of tax increases on wealthy Americans and companies that together would represent the largest tax hike in generations. The shift in strategy reveals just one of the many ways the White House has grappled with shaping Biden’s second major legislative effort, which the administration will kick off this week at an event in Pittsburgh. Biden to unveil major new spending plans as Democrats eye bigger role for government Biden’s “Build Back Better” agenda is ambitious in scope, aiming to confront global climate change, rebuild the nation’s infrastructure, revive domestic manufacturing and transform U.S. child care, among other goals. The path toward crafting the legislation has exposed the White House to crosscutting demands from key allies. This account is based on interviews with seven senior administration officials involved in the effort, as well as more than a dozen congressional officials, labor leaders, activists and economists involved in the crafting of the package. One core tension is to what degree Democrats should emphasize investments in traditional physical infrastructure seen as more likely to garner GOP support — such as roads and bridges — rather than child care and other social spending that liberal economists increasingly have emphasized as critical to ensuring robust economic growth. It is unclear to what extent Biden has the political capital to do both. Already, the administration has decided to trim its sails somewhat and is not expected to make a child anti-poverty initiative permanent or embrace a plan from Sen. Elizabeth Warren (D-Mass.) to devote as much as $500 billion to push mass transit away from fossil fuels. “We know that Republicans and particularly blue-collar men really like the physical building kind of infrastructure and see that as leading to good paying jobs for men in particular. And women and the Democratic base really respond to what you might call softer infrastructure — child care; school; caregiving responsibilities — which have come home very vividly during covid,” said Celinda Lake, a Democratic pollster who advised Biden’s 2020 presidential campaign. “It’ll be a challenge, but they have a major opportunity here to do both in a way that both helps these constituencies and is majorly appealing to them as voters.” White House prepares massive infrastructure bill with universal pre-K, free community college, climate measures Republicans have already begun to attack the White House for embracing large spending and tax plans — which would largely reverse former president Donald Trump’s 2017 tax cut — that reflect Democratic priorities with very narrow majorities in Congress. Biden’s coming push to raise the corporate tax rate would damage the competitiveness of American firms and push them to relocate jobs abroad, conservatives say. Although Biden hosted a bipartisan group at the White House for infrastructure discussions, Republican lawmakers have complained of little outreach from the administration or interest in their ideas. “It’s like Republicans saying, ‘We’ll do infrastructure, but pay for it by reversing the Affordable Care Act.’ They don’t really have a seat at the table,” said Donald Schneider, who served as chief economist to Republicans on the House Ways and Means Committee. “This process seems even more insincere than the way the stimulus played out.” Despite their narrow margins, administration officials have begun comparing their coming efforts to Franklin Delano Roosevelt’s New Deal or Lyndon B. Johnson’s Great Society programs. They see their proposals as more impactful than those put forward by any modern Democratic president, including Barack Obama. “If you look at what makes the Democratic Party what it is, and what’s considered our greatest hits — our ‘Abbey Roads,’ if you will — it’s not doing something small with Dwight D. Eisenhower or when Bill Clinton triangulated. It’s about creating programs that create a floor of justice and decency in this country,” said Rep. Andy Levin (D-Mich.), who met with officials at the White House last week to discuss the infrastructure plan. “We have that opportunity again now.” On Wednesday, Biden will unveil the first part of his agenda focused on jobs and improving America’s economic competitiveness. The plan will center on proposals to repair the nation’s physical infrastructure, such as its bridges, railways, ports, water systems and more, as well as revive domestic manufacturing, invest in research and development, expand clean energy investments, and create a nationwide infrastructure for electric vehicles. This part of the plan also will include major investments in child care and educational facilities, and major investments in caretakers for the elderly and those with disabilities amid the nation’s major aging crisis. The second part of the plan, which will be unveiled next month, is expected to include initiatives to expand child care; provide paid family and medical leave; approve an expansion of health care and the Affordable Care Act; and extend a larger child benefit recently approved by Congress, among other measures. White House officials have said no decisions have been made about which of the proposals they would aim to move through Congress first. The proposals are the result of months of behind-the-scenes work across numerous agencies to forge consensus on dozens of knotty policy questions. Although they had some disagreements over its provisions, Democrats in the House and Senate were unified in clamoring for a coronavirus relief bill and gave the White House leeway in shaping the new president’s first bill. The senior White House officials tasked with assembling the package — primarily National Economic Council Director Brian Deese and Susan Rice, director of the Domestic Policy Council — faced much fiercer tensions among allies than they did over the $1.9 trillion stimulus plan. Over the past two months, leading business groups privately told the administration that the infrastructure package should be focused primarily on physical capital projects — such as roads and bridges — rather than on the caregiving priorities, such as child care, three people familiar with the internal conversations said. Lobbyists urged the White House to jettison the care economy investments, which also would reduce the amount of tax revenue necessary to fund the package. Centrist Senate Democrats also are more interested in big investments in roads and bridges than in the care-economy investments, which some viewed as reflective of a liberal wish list. That is in part because Republicans are more likely to support an infrastructure package, and many moderate Democrats such as Sen. Joe Manchin III (D-W.Va.) have said they want to return to bipartisan policymaking. “There’s some broad skepticism we can do the other piece in a bipartisan way and there’s a strong desire for the next bill to be bipartisan,” said one aide to a centrist Democratic senator, speaking on the condition of anonymity to frankly reveal internal dynamics, about the White House’s caregiving proposals. Democrats may use the parliamentary procedure known as reconciliation to approve an infrastructure package with a narrow majority that would not require Republican votes, the same way they approved the coronavirus relief bill. Bill Hoagland, senior vice president at the Bipartisan Policy Center, citing conversations with Senate Democratic staffers, said: “The difficulty is all the advocacy groups have seen the possibility of using reconciliation to move their agendas [for] things that do not normally fall into definition of infrastructure — child care; public health care. The moderates and the center will say, ‘Wait a minute; let’s deal with those through the normal appropriations process.’” But White House officials assembling the package also faced demands from key constituencies to not let the caregiving proposals be of secondary importance to more-traditional infrastructure investments. Some people close to the White House said they feel that the emphasis on major physical infrastructure investments reflects a dated nostalgia for a kind of White working-class male worker. In private discussions with the White House National Economic Council, the Council of Economic Advisers and the Domestic Policy Council, SEIU International President Mary Kay Henry urged the administration to follow through on its promise to approve major investments in the care economy. Henry said she reminded the White House of promises Biden had made in person to low-wage service workers — disproportionately minorities and women who also helped elect him in the fall. On National Equal Pay Day, Council of Economic Advisers economists Cecilia Rouse and Heather Boushey talked at the White House media briefing about the need for major caregiving investments. On a private Zoom call earlier this month, economists Heidi Shierholz, Darrick Hamilton and Larry Katz presented Rouse, Boushey and other senior Biden officials with evidence that federal investments in care work would do more to generate jobs and economic growth than physical infrastructure, Shierholz said. “We’re up against a gender and racial bias that this work is not worth as much as the rubber, steel and auto work of the past century,” Henry said. “The key job right now is we have to in the public imagination and in the congressional debate widen the lens, so that people understand that investment in caregiving is an investment in infrastructure.” Part of the jockeying over the second effort reflects the broader uncertainty surrounding the administration’s next priority. Biden had initially pledged to release an infrastructure and jobs package that included caregiving investments in February. The process was delayed as the administration worked to finalize and implement the relief package. But the infrastructure package also involved much more extensive input from a range of senior officials than the relief bill, which was modeled largely after prior coronavirus relief bills. The climate components of the bill were written in part by Gina McCarthy, White House national climate adviser and former head of the Environmental Protection Agency. Her deputy — Ali Zaidi, a former Obama administration official — took extensive meetings with climate activists as they pressed the administration on how to approve Green New Deal-like investments in clean energy. Jennifer Granholm, secretary of the Energy Department, was also closely involved in producing the bill. A former governor of Michigan, Granholm pushed for provisions aimed at blunting the impact of job loss in Appalachia and other parts of the country dependent on fossil fuel industries, particularly through money for retraining. Mark Mazur, a former Obama administration official tapped to deal with tax policy at the Treasury Department, took the lead in drafting a menu of tax increases that were then submitted to the White House for review. Kimberly Clausing, who was an international tax and trade expert at UCLA, helped draft the provisions aimed at taxing multinational profits abroad. The tax component is expected to be the heaviest lift politically for the administration. The White House is studying a range of tax hikes on wealthy investors, corporations and rich people to pay for the package. Steve Rosenthal, a tax expert at the nonpartisan Tax Policy Center, said the tax increases would be the largest in decades. But in other ways, the process revealed the limits of the White House’s willingness to be ambitious in its policy goals. Biden’s campaign plan called for more than $7 trillion in health, energy, infrastructure and child-care investments, according to estimates from Americans for Tax Fairness, a left-leaning think tank. Lindsay Owens, a liberal economist at the Groundwork Collaborative and former aide to congressional Progressive Caucus Chair Rep. Pramila Jayapal (D-Wash.), said of early reports of Biden’s plan: “Congress will need to beef up the draft significantly to come anywhere close to addressing decades of underinvestment in infrastructure and to take on the climate crisis.” Almost immediately after the relief legislation passed, Sens. Sherrod Brown (D-Ohio), Cory Booker (D-N.J.) and Michael F. Bennet (D-Colo.) began a campaign to lobby the White House to permanently extend the expanded child benefit in the stimulus, according to two people familiar with their efforts. The Democratic senators pressed Vice President Harris, Deese, White House Chief of Staff Ron Klain and White House Council of Economic Advisers member Jared Bernstein, the people said. The White House agreed to the Democratic senators’ demand only in part, including in the package an extension only through 2025. Making it permanent would increase the 10-year cost of the bill by as much as $500 billion. “It’s really worrisome — they’re raising a ton of money in this package and this is our opportunity to ensure this lasts,” one senior Democrat involved in the effort said. “This is the chance, right now, to really slot this in.”

Newsom's choice of Bonta as AG was preordained By Dan Walters Given California's current political climate, Gov. Gavin Newsom's selection of Assemblyman Rob Bonta to be attorney general was virtually preordained. Newsom ardently embraces the identity politics that dominate his Democratic Party and therefore feels compelled to pay homage to its major ethnic, gender and cultural components via appointments. Thus, when Newsom made his first state Supreme Court appointment last year, he proudly declared that retired appellate court justice Martin Jenkins "would be the first openly gay California Supreme Court justice and only the third African American man ever to serve on the state's highest court." Just a month later, California Sen. Kamala Harris, who identifies both as Black and Asian American, was elected vice president, giving Newsom another shot at a high-level appointment. Newsom was under pressure to appoint a successor who represented at least one of her three identities, but chose, instead, a male Latino, Secretary of State Alex Padilla, while simultaneously naming a Black woman, Assemblywoman Shirley Weber, as Padilla's successor. Newsom hailed them as "California's first Latino U.S. senator (and) the firstever African American secretary of state." With Weber, Newsom was clearly compensating for not naming a Black woman to succeed Harris, but he was giving her an office several notches below a seat in the U.S. Senate. Therefore, as the campaign to recall him heated up, Newsom sought to fend off any residual disappointment among Black leaders by publicly promising to choose a Black woman to replace Sen. Dianne Feinstein should she retire before her term expires three years hence. All of those appointments - and the promise vis-à-vis Feinstein's seat - left one major group, Asian Americans, still waiting for its due in the complicated machinations of identity politics. When, therefore, Attorney General Xavier Becerra was tapped by President Joe Biden to become health and human services secretary, Newsom was virtually compelled to name an Asian American successor - even more so in response to the recent spate of anti-Asian violence. By choosing Bonta, who was born in the Philippines and as a child came to California with his parents, Newsom closed the circle of identity appointments and ensured that all of the major groups would remain loyal during the ensuing recall campaign. Bonta, in fact, is a twofer appointment in that he also identifies with the most liberal, or progressive, wing of the Democratic Party and thus may placate its activists who sometimes fault Newsom for moving leftward too slowly. Beyond identity politics, Bonta's ideological positioning is the most important aspect of his selection, because it gives a big boost to those seeking to overhaul California's criminal justice system to make it less punitive and more restorative. Bonta has championed the cause in the Legislature, including landmark legislation to abolish cash bail that was overturned by voters last year. "Too many Californians have faced unfairness in the many broken parts of our criminal justice system," Bonta said, "and they deserve more compassion, more humanity and a second chance." Bonta will be aligned with a small cadre of reform- minded prosecutors, led by George Gascón, who had been district attorney of San Francisco before defeating Los Angeles District Attorney Jackie Lacey last year. Gascón and several other like-minded district attorneys founded their own group, the Prosecutors Alliance of California, that is waging open warfare with the California District Attorneys Association. Pointedly, the new organization praised Bonta as "a leader that has dedicated his career to protecting and uplifting vulnera- ble communities." Dan Walters is a CalMatters columnist.

POLITICS Biden to lay out infrastructure plans as part of massive economic proposal PUBLISHED TUE, MAR 30 20214:40 PM EDTUPDATED TUE, MAR 30 20216:33 PM EDT

Kevin Breuninger@KEVINWILLIAMB

A Florida Turnpike interchange construction site is seen on May 22, 2019 in Miami, Florida. Joe Raedle | Getty Images

KEY POINTS

• Joe Biden will travel to Pittsburgh on Wednesday to detail a plan to overhaul U.S. infrastructure and manufacturing — the first of two sweeping economic recovery proposals. • The administration’s economic team is still ironing out the details of the second package, which will involve huge investments in U.S. health care and child care.

• Biden’s speech sets the stage for his second major legislative battle in less than three months as president, following the passage of the $1.9 trillion Covid relief bill.

President Joe Biden on Wednesday will detail a plan to overhaul U.S. infrastructure and manufacturing, setting the stage for his second major legislative battle in less than three months as president.

Biden will travel to Pittsburgh to unveil the first of two sweeping economic recovery proposals. Together, they will likely carry a multitrillion-dollar price tag that dwarfs the $1.9 trillion Covid relief plan he signed into law earlier this month.

The administration’s economic team is still ironing out the details of the second plan, which will involve huge investments in U.S. health care and child care. The White House says it will roll out that proposal sometime in April.

The speech in the Steel City — Biden’s first trip to western Pennsylvania since taking office — comes as the president prepares to shift his gaze beyond the immediate threat of a still-raging pandemic and focus on longer-term issues.

The first leg of the double-barreled recovery package will focus on repairing America’s infrastructure — its roads, bridges, railways, water systems and other structures. Biden is also set to call for investments in domestic manufacturing, research and development and the caregiving workforce.

Experts say an infrastructure update is long past due. The American Society of Civil Engineers’ most recent “report card” gave the nation’s infrastructure an overall C-minus grade.

The group estimates that the U.S. faces an infrastructure “investment gap” of nearly $2.6 trillion over 10 years. Continued underinvestment will cost more than 3 million jobs and $10 trillion in GDP by 2039, it said.

Biden’s handling of the pandemic has so far garnered high approval ratings and buoyed his popularity, polls show. But he could soon have to tap into built-up political capital, as the White House moves to hike taxes to pay for the new infrastructure plan.

Lawmakers from both parties have long pushed to revitalize America’s aging infrastructure. Republican former President Donald Trump’s administration, for instance, repeatedly postured about plans to address infrastructure. Those plans never came to fruition, and “infrastructure week” became a running joke in Washington.

But Biden has already faced steadfast opposition from congressional Republicans, none of whom voted for his broadly popular Covid rescue plan. The staggering costs of Biden’s forthcoming economic recovery package — possibly more than $3 trillion, The New York Times reported — and the threat of higher taxes are bound to spark the GOP’s ire.

Some moderate Democrats are also raising concerns, Axios reported.

Wall Street is watching, as well. Strategists expect Biden will push to reverse some of the Trump-era tax cuts and raise others on individuals and businesses. Some warn the stock market could take a hit from tax hikes.

The administration has reached out to industry leaders ahead of the legislative rollout. White House climate advisor Gina McCarthy last week discussed infrastructure plans with oil and gas executives, the Times reported. Biden has promised not to raise taxes on those making under $400,000 a year. The White House recently clarified that income threshold would apply to individuals and families.

The president “believes that we have an opportunity to rebalance” parts of the tax code that are “out of date,” White House press secretary Jen Psaki told reporters Monday. She said that “some could pay more in our country that are not currently.”

Psaki later added: “I can assure you that when the president lays out his infrastructure plan, he will also lay out a plan to pay for it.”

The administration has revealed few specifics, but some administration officials have raised eyebrows with their comments.

Transportation Secretary Pete Buttigieg on Friday suggested to CNBC that several possible levies, including a vehicle mileage tax, could be on the table to finance the infrastructure project.

He later said a gas or mileage tax would not be part of the plan.

In the wake of the polarized fight in Congress over the latest Covid relief bill, administration officials have signaled they don’t want to shut Republicans out of future talks.

“Throughout this process, we look forward to working with a broad coalition of members of Congress to gather their input and ideas, and determine the path forward,” Psaki said Monday.

She also declined to take a stance on whether Biden supports the reported efforts by Senate Majority Leader Chuck Schumer, D-N.Y., to enable the evenly split Senate to pass more legislation through budget reconciliation. The process would allow Democrats to pass a bill without Republican votes.

“The White House and the President will leave the mechanics of bill-passing to Leader Schumer and other leaders in Congress,” Psaki said.

Once the package is unveiled, the administration’s focus is “on having that engagement and discussion with members of Congress.”

“If they share a goal of building our infrastructure for the future but don’t like the way he’s going to propose to pay for it, we’re happy to look at their proposals,” she added.

“If they don’t want to pay for it, I guess they can propose that too. Maybe they don’t support infrastructure spending.”

Biden unveils $2.3T plan to rebuild infrastructure By Jonathan Lemire, Kevin Freking and Zeke Miller The Associated Press PITTSBURGH >> President Joe Biden outlined a huge $2.3 trillion plan Wednesday to reengineer the nation’s infrastructure in what he billed as “a once-in-a-generation investment in America” that would undo his predecessor’s signature legislative achievement of giant tax cuts for corporations in the process. Speaking at a carpenters union training center in Pittsburgh, Biden drew comparisons between his hard-hatted proposed transformation of the U.S. economy and the space race — and promised results as grand in scale as the New Deal or Great Society programs that shaped the 20th century. “It’s not a plan that tinkers around the edges,” Biden said. Bumpy road ahead for Biden’s infrastructure plan. C9

President Joe Biden delivers a speech on infrastructure spending at Carpenters Pittsburgh Training Center in Pittsburgh on Wednesday. Biden said his proposed $2.3 trillion plan “will create millions of jobs, good- paying jobs.”

EVAN VUCCI — THE ASSOCIATED PRESS

"It's a once-in-a-generation investment in America unlike anything we've seen or done since we built the interstate highway system and the space race decades ago. In fact, it's the largest American jobs investment since World War II. It will create millions of jobs, good-paying jobs." White House officials say the spending would generate those jobs as the country shifts away from fossil fuels and combats the perils of climate change. It is also an effort to compete with the technology and public investments made by China, which has the world's second-largest economy and is fast gaining on the United States' dominant position. "I'm convinced that if we act now, in 50 years people are going to look back and say this is the moment when America won the future," Biden said. It's not yet clear what the infrastructure package might mean for California and the Bay Area - Biden administration officials on Wednesday did not detail specific projects that would receive funding. But there are plenty of local candidates. Money could flow to a seismic retrofit of the Golden Gate Bridge, the extension of BART service through downtown San Jose and work to electrify the Caltrain system and extend the end of the line to downtown San Francisco, to name a few, Metropolitan Transportation Commission spokesman Randy Rentschler said. One of the biggest questions is how much the package would give California's bullet train out of the $80 billion it dedicates to rail infrastructure. That proj- ect does not yet have funding in place for several of its most important and complex pieces, including the $13 billion segment connecting San Jose with the Central Valley. A spokeswoman for the California High Speed Rail Authority said officials were hoping to learn more about the infrastructure proposal "in the weeks to come." The Democratic president's infrastructure projects would be financed by higher corporate taxes - a trade-off that could lead to fierce resistance from the business community and thwart attempts to work with Republican lawmakers. Biden hopes to pass an infrastructure plan by summer, which could mean relying solely on the slim Democratic majorities in the House and the Senate. The higher corporate taxes would aim to raise the necessary piles of money over 15 years and then re- duce the deficit going forward. In doing so, Biden would undo the action by President Donald Trump and congressional Republicans to lift the corporate tax rate to 28% from the 21% rate set in a 2017 overhaul. Wednesday's announcement will be followed in coming weeks by Biden pushing a companion bill of roughly equal size for investments in child care, family tax credits and other domestic programs. That nearly $2 trillion package would be paid for by tax hikes on wealthy individuals and families. "Wall Street didn't build this country," Biden said. "You, the great middle class, built this country. And unions built the middle class." Biden's choice of Pittsburgh for unveiling the plan carried important economic and political resonance. He not only won Pittsburgh and its sur- rounding county to help secure the presidency, but he launched his campaign there in 2019. The city famed for steel mills that powered America's industrial rise has steadily pivoted toward technology and health care, drawing in college graduates in a sign of how economies can change. The White House says the largest chunk of the proposal includes $621 billion for roads, bridges, public transit, electric vehicle charging stations and other transportation infrastructure. The spending would push the country away from internal combustion engines that the auto industry views as an increasingly antiquated technology. An additional $111 billion would go to replace lead water pipes and upgrade sewers. Broadband internet would blanket the country for $100 billion. Separately, $100 billion would upgrade the power grid to deliver clean electricity. Homes would get retrofitted, schools modernized, workers trained and hospitals renovated under the plan, which also seeks to strengthen U.S. manufacturing. The new construction could keep the economy running hot, coming on the heels of Biden's $1.9 trillion coronavirus relief package. Economists already estimate it could push growth above 6% this year. To keep companies from shifting profits overseas to avoid taxation, a 21% global minimum tax would be imposed. The tax code would also be updated so that companies could not merge with a foreign business and avoid taxes by moving their headquarters to a tax haven. And among other provisions, it would increase IRS audits of corporations. Staff writer Nico Savidge contributed to this report.

A bumpy road ahead for Biden's infrastructure plan By Josh Boak The Associated Press Infrastructure was a road to nowhere for former presidents Donald Trump and Barack Obama. But Joe Biden believes he can use it to drive America to the future after a dozen years of false starts. The trip is unlikely to be smooth. Biden's $2.3 trillion infrastructure package, released Wednesday, would go well beyond the usual commitments to roads and bridges to touch almost every part of the country. It's a down payment on combating climate change, a chance to take on racial inequities, an expansion of broadband, an investment in manu- facturing and a reorienting of corporate taxes to pay for everything. To succeed where his predecessors stalled, Biden will have to navigate a conflicting set of political forces with winners and losers all around. "It's big, yes, it's bold, yes, and we can get it done," the president said in a Wednesday afternoon speech in Pittsburgh. "In 50 years, people are gonna look back and say, this was the moment that America won the future." Biden sees infrastructure as a fundamental promise that must be honored before Democrats face voters in 2022. The president resisted calls by business groups to pay for his plan with higher gas taxes and tolls, since the costs would be borne by working Americans and Biden had promised no tax hikes on anyone making less than $400,000. That's according to “It’s big, yes, it’s bold, yes, and we can get it done. In 50 years, people are gonna look back and say, this was the moment that America won the future.” — President Joe Biden

President Joe Biden discusses infrastructure spending at Carpenters Pittsburgh Training Center, Wednesday in Pittsburgh.

EVAN VUCCI — THE ASSOCIATED PRESS an administration official who insisted on anonymity to discuss private conversations. Yet the decision to keep that particular promise likely dooms any chance of wider bipartisan unity. Biden's proposal would gut the core of Trump's 2017 tax cuts - an affront to many Republican lawmakers, who would also prefer that infrastructure stay in a narrow lane. The corporate tax rate would jump to 28% from 21% under Biden's plan, and a global minimum tax would be charged to prevent companies from avoiding taxes. Even before Biden delivered his opening speech on the plan, Republicans had latched on to Reaganera labeling, dismissing the package as tax-and-spend liberalism. That's an attack designed to erode public support as different components of the package get divvied up among congressional committees and begin their journey through Congress. Senate Minority Leader Mitch McConnell of Kentucky called the plan a "Trojan horse" for tax hikes. Trump issued a statement saying the big winner would be China because U.S. jobs would move overseas due to higher taxes. "It is the exact OPPOSITE of putting America First-it is putting America LAST!" said Trump, whose own repeated attempts at an "infrastructure week" failed to capture political momentum and became something of a punchline. Some Democratic lawmakers, on the other hand, fear Biden's plan does too little over eight years. Others see it as a chance to tinker by repealing the $10,000 taxpayer limit on deducting state and local taxes, or SALT, that was instituted under Trump. Each possible Democratic defection matters because vacant seats leave House Democrats with the thinnest of majorities. And in the evenly split Senate, Democrats must rely on Vice President Kamala Harris' tie-breaking vote for their edge. "I can only vote for a bill that has meaningful tax impact for my constituents if it addresses the SALT cap," tweeted Rep. Tom Malinowski, D-N.J., one of four lawmakers demanding to expand deductions. Some environmentalists, meanwhile, say the plan doesn't do enough to stop the tides of climate change, even with its proposed upgrades to the power grid and plans to build 500,000 elec tr ic-vehicle cha rging stations. They could push Biden to go even bigger, though he plans to announce a second package in the coming weeks focused on child care, family tax credits and other domestic programs, paid for by tax hikes on wealthy individuals and families.

Development at weapons station could move forward By Shomik Mukherjee [email protected] CONCORD >> A major undertaking to redevelop the former Concord Naval Weapons Station is finding new wings as the city begins its search for another master developer to succeed the one that left the job over a labor dispute. If the City Council approves a proposed application process at its meeting Tuesday, prospective developers can begin putting their names forward for a chance to transform the 2,300-acre site into full-fledged community with 12,000 housing units. The $6 billion project has been on pause since previous master developer Lennar walked away more than a year ago after the city insisted it hire local union labor for construction work. In trying to find a replacement, the city has created a 134page document that outlines the project’s scope and needs. The document contains several essay questions intended to gauge the applicants’ qualifications. “We’re trying to move quickly but cover all the bases,” Concord Economic Development Director Guy Bjerke said. “The last effort fell apart on perceived ambiguity; Lennar read it one way, we read it another. So this is an exhaustive document, and we’ve attempted to make it as clear as possible to ensure the process is successful.” The city hopes to secure a new master developer by August. Lennar had been on the project for almost four years before its labor dispute with the Contra Costa Building and Constructions Trades Council prompted the city to release it from the agreement. Then, late last year, the City Council formed a committee to initiate the search for a new developer. The draft application asks respondents how they would ensure that 25% of the housing units are affordable and requires them to affirm their commitment to local labor pacts. In addition to housing and office buildings, the city’s early plans for the development include a tournament sports complex, community centers, public schools, parks, fire stations and a “transit-rich community,” the latest document states. After selecting a new developer in the summer, the city plans to square away a specific plan for the project and then an environmental impact report. The U.S. Navy, meanwhile, will be responsible for cleaning up toxic chemicals that may have built up at the site over its years as a weapons station. The Environmental Protection Agency is currently assessing the site’s soil for PFAS, a highly toxic fluorinated chemical. After cleanup, the Navy will transfer the land to the city of Concord. About 15 interested developers spoke with Concord staff last year about taking on the project, a sign that the city is not perceived as “radioactive” after parting ways with Lennar, Bjerke said. “In other words, we were worried that no one would touch it,” he said. “If Lennar, the largest home developer in the country, can’t make this work, who could possibly make this work? What we found was that there were a couple of skeptics, but by and large, everyone looked at it and said, ‘This could work.’” In those unofficial discussions, city officials have indicated an openness to bringing on developers in teams, rather than hiring just one firm to complete the project.

INTERIOR Jefferson Memorial is first of 165 projects to win new funding Rob Hotakainen and Emma Dumain, E&E News reporters Published: Friday, April 2, 2021

The National Park Service will spend $3 million from the Great American Outdoors Act to restore the exterior of the Jefferson Memorial in Washington. National Park Service

The Interior Department said today it will spend $1.6 billion this year on 165 maintenance projects on public lands and tribal schools, with the first $3 million going to finish repairs on the Jefferson Memorial on the National Mall.

The 2021 project list includes recreational facilities, visitor centers, dams, water and utility infrastructure, schools, roads, trails, bridges, parking areas and other historic structures.

The department said the projects will create an estimated 18,851 jobs and contribute $2 billion to the nation's gross domestic product this year.

At the Jefferson Memorial, the cash will pay for the complete restoration of the exterior and use of specialized lasers to remove black biofilm —- a collection of algae, fungi and bacteria.

Congress approved the funding as part of the Great American Outdoors Act, which will allow an equal amount of spending for each of the next five years to help fix a backlog of projects at national parks and other land managed by Interior.

The money will be set aside in the newly created National Parks and Public Land Legacy Restoration Fund, which will pay for this year's projects on properties run by the National Park Service, Fish and Wildlife Service, Bureau of Land Management and Bureau of Indian Education. "We must address the long-delayed maintenance needs of the nation's aging buildings and infrastructure," said Interior Secretary Deb Haaland, who made the announcement this morning. "Importantly, this funding also honors our commitment to tribal communities by investing in Bureau of Indian Education-funded schools for current and future generations."

The announcement marked a significant development in the implementation of the Great American Outdoors Act, the landmark conservation bill Congress passed last summer in the midst of a raging pandemic and economic meltdown.

While Democrats — including Haaland, then a New Mexico representative — carried the bill on Capitol Hill, Republicans took credit for getting it signed into law, with vulnerable Senate GOP incumbents hoping it would save them in tough reelection fights and then-President Trump making comparisons to his party's most famous conservationist, President Theodore Roosevelt.

But the Trump administration came under harsh criticism for botching the early days of implementing the new law.

First, it missed a key deadline for producing a prioritized list of projects to be funded by the Land and Water Conservation Fund.

Congressional appropriators were relying on this information to write their year-end spending bills in a narrow time frame, while stakeholders across the country were anxiously waiting for details that would inform grant proposals and federal land acquisition deals.

When Interior finally released these project lists, they were non-specific and failed in many cases to meet statutory requirements.

Haaland's predecessor at Interior, David Bernhardt, wrote a secretarial order restricting use of LWCF dollars, including a new requirement that governors and leaders of local jurisdictions would have veto power over land acquisitions facilitated through the LWCF — a stipulation that ran afoul of the Great American Outdoors Act.

Finally, on the eve of President Biden's inauguration, Bernhardt transferred $150 million out of a competitive grant program for urban parks to bolster LWCF funding for states.

That transfer, in effect, gutted the Outdoor Recreation Legacy Partnership Program, which primarily serves low-income, minority communities — an action that disregarded appropriators who had earmarked the money to go toward that specific initiative.

The Biden administration reversed the secretarial order and the ORLP funding transfer in early February, while also pledging to move forward in implementing the public lands package in the spirit of the legislation's intent.

Twitter: @HotakainenRobEmail: [email protected]

Harris returns, touts jobs plan By Annie Sciacca [email protected] OAKLAND >> For the first time since her historic ascension as the nation's first female vice president, Kamala Harris returned to her native Oakland on Monday to promote the Biden administration's ambitious proposal to rebuild the country's infrastructure and create jobs. Along with Gov. Gavin Newsom, a longtime political ally, Harris toured the East Bay Municipal Utility District's water treatment plant, speaking to employees and touting the district as the kind of operation that should be emulated. "It is great to be in Oakland, and to be home," Harris told a small pool of reporters and photographers outside the facility after pulling up in a black SUV with a number of Secret Service agents and others in her entourage. After Harris and Newsom mingled with several EBMUD leaders and employees, the vice president noted the utility district "has been doing work that is a model for the country of what we need to do." Harris' tour of the facility comes days after President Joe Biden unveiled the American Jobs Plan, a proposal to invest $2.3 trillion into infrastructure and jobs by upgrading roads, airports and transit systems, replacing all lead pipes and service lines in drinking water systems, and building and renovating housing, schools and commercial buildings. The jobs plan hinges on getting congressional approval for reforming the tax code to increase the amount corporations must pay in taxes. If passed, it would set the corporate tax rate at 28% and close various elements of the 2017 tax law that allowed companies to use the taxes they pay in some countries to "shield profits in tax havens," which the Biden administration says encourages offshoring of jobs. Harris highlighted the water portion of the plan, saying the goal is to invest in jobs that can build up, replace and modernize water infrastructure - all with the goal of getting clean drinking water to everyone.

Vice President Kamala Harris and Gov. Gavin Newsom tour a water treatment plant in Oakland Monday with David Briggs, right, operations director of the East Bay Municipal Utility District. JACQUELYN MARTIN — THE ASSOCIATED PRESS

She briefly mingled with a couple of employees who had been promoted from union apprentices to, eventually, district plumbers and carpenters, asking them what they had learned during that time and what skills are needed for modern water plant jobs such as those of pipefitters, electricians and machinists. Those are the kinds of union jobs the infrastructure proposal aims to create, she said. "It's about building up A merica's workforce." T he a dmin ist rat ion wants to give grants to individual property owners in rural communities who have water well and sewage systems that need upgrades but can't afford to make them, Harris explained. "We must understand how precious this resource is," she said. Newsom thanked the vice president for drawing attention to the state's water issues. "As you can hear, you don't need to educate the vice president about water policy," Newsom said after Harris outlined her concerns about making sure everyone has access to clean water. Newsom noted that the recent California snowpack survey registered at just 59% of average, marking another dry year in the state. Much of the West Coast faces "mega drought conditions," making water issues critical, Newsom added. That's why the infrastructure plan is a "game changer" that would "complement the efforts happening at the local level," he said. Harris also visited a small catering business in West Oakland, Red Door Catering, to showcase how businesses benefited from the federal relief package recently passed to address the economic fallout from the coronavirus pandemic, according to reports from the media pool. Harris' tour in Oakland lasted about five hours, and at 2:30 p.m. she was scheduled to travel back to Los Angeles, where she had spent the weekend. Harris was born in Oakland and raised in Berkeley. She started her career as a prosecutor with the Alameda County District Attorney's Office and called the Bay Area home for years as San Francisco District Attorney. Contact Annie Sciacca at 925-943- 8073.

Political stench still lingers over Concord weapons station plans Concord city officials are setting the stage for another politically corrupted search for a developer to build the East Bay's largest home construction project. They apparently haven't learned from the tainted selection in 2016, when the City Council picked Lennar as the master developer for about 12,000 homes and about 6 million square feet of commercial space on the Concord Naval Weapons Station, an area equal to half the city of Pleasant Hill. This time, under rules the council is slated to consider tonight, the council's labor union backers will be guaranteed the wage rates they have wanted, and the developers seeking to head the project will again be able to use campaign contributions to try to influence the selection. In the last round, Lennar was picked in 2016 after the other leading contender, Catellus Development Corp., bailed when the stench of the city's politics became too much to put up with. The City Council picked Lennar even after an independent city investigation revealed the company had violated the prohibitions against lobbying council members during the selection process. Then, Lennar bailed last year when it couldn't agree to trade unions' insistence on unusually generous labor agreements. Now the City Council, with the project set back about seven years by the delays, must start the selection process over again. It is scheduled tonight to set the ground rules for picking a replacement developer. The proposed rules and process, recommended by a council subcommittee, fail to prohibit the sort of developer influence-peddling that tainted the first round. They also provide unions the labor terms they've been insisting on. The rules effectively require that builders on the project pay union wages for all phases of the construction. And they require that 40% of the workforce come from within the county, although it's unclear whether that means the employees must live in the county or the contractor firms must be based in the county. It's not unusual for cities to require union wage rates for infrastructure such as utilities and public buildings, a socalled project labor agreement like those that have become increasingly common in California. But the developer will also be required to include lockedin wage rates for residential homes in the project. While the proposed ground rules limit the communication between developers and the City Council, they do not prohibit applicants from giving council members campaign contributions during the selection process. Which is one of many key ways the selection process was tainted seven years ago. As an independent investigator hired by the city revealed, four entities linked to Lennar made maximum allowable contributions in 2015 to then-Mayor Tim Grayson's state Assembly campaign. One admitted contributing at Lennar's suggestion; another cleared it with the firm; and two others wouldn't say whether they acted at Lennar's request. As the investigator, attorney Michael Jenkins, pointed out, some cities specifically preclude campaign contributions by entities actively bidding on city contracts. Such prohibitions, as a condition of participating in the selection process, do not violate First Amendment speech protections. This would be the obvious time for Concord to pass a "pay-to-play" prohibition and make such a restriction an explicit condition for submitting a proposal on the weapons station project. For now, the political stench continues to linger.

Plans for development of the Concord Naval Weapons Station were set back about seven years when the first developer bailed last year.

JANE TYSKA — STAFF ARCHIVES

Senate leader has plan to keep drought from becoming a crisis By George Skelton California's big reservoirs are about half empty. We're heading into another drought. But Sacramento's vault is overflowing while Washington is pumping in more dollars. Here's an idea: Spend some windfall money on no-brainer, quickie public works projects to help us confront the drought and prepare for an unstable climate future. Credit state Senate President Pro Tem Toni Atkins, D-San Diego. It's her idea. Atkins is writing legislation to capitalize on state government's unexpected fiscal bonanza, created mainly by upper-income prosperity during the pandemic and a free- spending federal government. She proposes to swiftly spend $2 billion on strategic, noncontroversial waterworks. Yes, government rarely does anything swiftly. But the Senate leader believes there's ample reason to break the norm this time. The money is sitting idle, and the need is clear. We just came through our second straight dry winter. The statewide snowpack was only 59% of normal last week. Shasta Lake, California's largest reservoir and the cornerstone of the federal Central Valley Project, was just 53% full. That's 65% of average for April 1. Oroville, the main reservoir in the State Water Project that helps supply Southern California, was 41% full - 53% of average. The federal and state water projects are projecting severe summer cutbacks in deliveries to farms and cities. Meanwhile, Gov. Gavin Newsom and the Legislature are reveling in a state budget surplus of around $20 billion. President Biden's $1.9 trillion coronavirus stimulus package, the so-called American Rescue Plan, includes $26 billion for California state government. There are also a few hundred million dollars left over from state water bonds approved by voters. So, money's no object. That's not even counting a potential cascade of tax dollars from Biden's new $2 trillion-plus infrastructure proposal. It contains $111 billion for waterworks. But Congress will be fighting over that for months. "We have a once-in-ageneration opportunity with one-time available funds and federal stimulus dollars on top of existing bond funds, and I say let's turn on the tap and get those dollars flowing now," Atkins told me in an email. "Investing in storage, groundwater banks, water recycling and consumer rebates for making watersaving investments in yard landscaping are options we know help" in a drought, Atkins said. She isn't thinking about building dams. Those are too controversial and costly. And the projects drag on for years. She envisions major groundwater replenishment. She suggests using the state money for other water projects to help San Joaquin Valley agriculture. An example: Recharging aquifers that have been over-pumped, causing water tables to drop so low that wells have dried up. Her legislation would provide $500 million so small towns could clean up drinking water and create more storage, such as erecting new water tanks or hooking up to larger water systems. There'd be $500 million in rebates to homeowners and small businesses for replacing water-guzzling vegetation with droughtfriendly landscaping. There'd also be $300 million to help water districts meet a state requirement that all groundwater pumping be sustainable by 2040. Falling aquifers have caused land to sink in some areas, cracking aqueducts and canals - and creating massive water leakage. Atkins doesn't propose to patch the aqueduct leaks, because paying for it is too contentious. The Legislature could get bogged down. Environmental activists demand that local water districts - mainly agriculture - finance the patching. The districts counter that it's a state problem; the more water saved, the better for everyone. That makes sense. Sen. Melissa Hurtado, D-Sanger, is pushing a bill to spend $785 million on repairing leaky canals and sunken roads. "Some canals are facing water losses of between 15% and 60%," she says. Meanwhile, Atkins is looking for the quickest way to get California ahead of its next big crisis: a drought. Hopefully, she'll be joined by Assembly leaders and Newsom. George Skelton is a Los Angeles Times columnist. © 2021 Los Angeles Times. Distributed by Tribune Content Agency.

Embracing the softer side of infrastructure proposal By Paul Krugman Republicans have been having a hard time explaining why they oppose President Joe Biden's American Jobs Plan. Their real motives aren't a mystery. They want Biden to fail, just as they wanted President Barack Obama to fail. And they're especially opposed to public programs that might prove popular, and thereby help legitimize activist government in voters' minds. Being who they are, they can't help going to ludicrous extremes, and their claims that only a few percent of the proposal is "real" infrastructure are easily debunked. The only way to get anywhere close to their numbers is to declare, bizarrely, that only pouring concrete for transportation counts, which means excluding spending on such essentials for a modern economy as clean water, reliable electricity, access to broadband and more. It's true, however, that much of the proposed spending involves intangibles - outlays on research and development, broader support for innovation, and investment in people. So what you need to know is that the case for these intangible investments is every bit as strong as the case for repairing decaying roads and collapsing bridges. Let's start with technology. The idea that investment isn't real if it doesn't involve steel and concrete would come as news to the private sector. These days more than one-third of business investment is spending on "intellectual property," mainly R&D and purchases of software. Investment in technology, especially in renewable energy, was only a small fraction of the Obama stimulus, but it's the piece that got the worst rap. Remember how Republicans harped endlessly on how loan guarantees for the solar-power company Solyndra went bad? The thing is, if your technology strategy produces only winners, you're not taking enough risks. Private investors don't expect every bet to succeed; 3 out of 4 startups backed by venture capital fail. The question is whether there are enough successes to justify the strategy. And the Obama investment in green technology produced many successes. You've probably heard about Solyndra; have you heard about the crucial role played by a $465 million loan to a company named Tesla? More broadly, the years since 2009 have been marked by spectacular progress in renewable energy, with solar and wind power in many cases now cheaper than electricity from fossil fuels. What about spending on people, which accounts for hundreds of billions and will reportedly be the main focus of an additional proposal? There's overwhelming evidence that this is a good idea. The truth is that it's hard to assess the payoff to spending on physical infrastructure, because we don't get to observe the counterfactual - what would have happened if we didn't build that bridge or road. By contrast, we know a lot about the effects of investing in people, because some of our most important family-oriented programs, like food stamps, were rolled out gradually across America. The results are clear. Children who received early aid did better than those who didn't by every measure: education, health, earnings. The social return on aid to families, especially children, turns out to be huge. Should the softer, less tangible parts of the Biden spending agenda - encouragement of new technologies, especially electric vehicles, aid to education and more broadly to families with children - be considered "infrastructure"? The right answer is, who cares? It's all productive investment in the nation's future. And the future needs work. Recovery from the pandemic should be only the start; we need a strategy to cure our longer-term problems of sluggish productivity growth and weak private demand. Large-scale public investment, whether or not it looks like some people's idea of infrastructure, is the way forward. Paul Krugman is a New York Times columnist.

Biden fiery: ‘We will not be open to doing nothing’ President willing to compromise on infrastructure — not inaction By Josh Boak The Associated Press President Joe Biden drew a red line on his $2.3 trillion infrastructure plan Wednesday, saying he is open to compromise on how to pay for the package but inaction is unacceptable. The president turned fiery in an afternoon speech, saying that the United States is failing to build, invest and research for the future and adding that failure to do so amounts to giving up on “leading the world.” “Compromise is inevitable,” Biden said. “We’ll be open to good ideas in good faith negotiations. But here’s what we won’t be open to: We will not be open to doing nothing. Inaction, simply, is not an option.”

President Joe Biden speaks about the American Jobs Plan in the South Court Auditorium at theWhite House onWednesday.

EVAN VUCCI — THE ASSOCIATED PRESS Biden challenged the idea that low tax rates would do more for grow th than investing in care workers, roads, bridges, clean water, broadband, school buildings, the power grid, electric vehicles and veterans hospitals. The president has taken heat from Republican lawmakers and business groups for proposing that corporate tax increases should finance an infrastructure package that goes far beyond the traditional focus on roads and bridges. "What the president proposed this week is not an infrastructure bill," Sen. Roger Wicker, R-Miss., said on NBC's "Meet the Press," one of many quotes that Republican congressional aides emailed to reporters before Biden's speech. "It's a huge tax increase, for one thing. And it's a tax increase on small businesses, on job creators in the United States of America." Biden last week proposed funding his $2.3 trillion American Jobs Plan largely through an increase in the corporate tax rate to 28% and an expanded global minimum tax set at 21%. But he said Wednesday he was willing to accept a rate below 28% so long as the projects are financed and taxes are not increased on people making less than $400,000. "I'm willing to listen to that," Biden said. "But we gotta pay for this. We gotta pay for this. There's many other ways we can do it. But I am willing to negotiate. I've come forward with the best, most rational way, in my view the fairest way, to pay for it, but there are many other ways as well. And I'm open." He stressed that he had been open to compromise on his $1.9 trillion coronavirus relief plan, but Re- publicans never budged beyond their $600 billion counteroffer. "If they'd come forward with a plan that did the bulk of it and it was $1.3 billion or four ... that allowed me to have pieces of all that was in there, I would have been prepared to compromise," Biden said. "But they didn't. They didn't move an inch. Not an inch." The president added that America's position in the world was incumbent on taking aggressive action on modern infrastructure that serves a computerized age. Otherwise, the county would lose out to China in what he believes is a fundamental test of democracy. Republican lawmakers counter that higher taxes would make the country less competitive globally. "You think China is waiting around to invest in this digital infrastructure or on research and development? I promise you. They are not waiting. But they're counting on American democracy, to be too slow, too limited and too divided to keep pace." His administration on Wednesday was pressing the case for tax increases. Treasury Secretary Janet Yellen said it was "self-defeating" for then-President Donald Trump to assume that cutting the corporate tax rate to 21% from 35% in 2017 would make the economy more competitive and unleash growth. Yellen said that competing on tax rates came at the expense of investing in workers. "Tax reform is not a zerosum game," she told reporters on a call. "Win-win is an overused phrase, but we have a win-win in front of us now." Yellen said the tax increases would produce roughly $2.5 trillion in revenues over 15 years, enough to cover the eight years' worth of infrastructure investments being proposed. The roughly $200 billion gap between how much the taxes would raise and how much the administration wants to spend suggests there is space to address critics, such as West Virginia Sen. Joe Manchin, a key Democratic vote, who would prefer a 25% rate. Commerce Secretar y Gina Raimondo said businesses and lawmakers should come to the bargaining table, noting that there could be room to negotiate on the rate and timeline. "There is room for compromise," Raimondo said at a White House briefing. "What we cannot do, and what I am imploring the business community not to do, is to say, 'We don't like 28. We're walking away. We're not discussing.' " Key to the Biden administration's pitch is bringing corporate tax revenues closer to their historic levels, rather than raising them to new highs that could make U.S. businesses less competitive globally. Trump's 2017 tax cuts halved corporate tax revenues to 1% of gross domestic product, which is a measure of the total income in the economy. Revenues had previously equaled 2% of GDP. That higher figure is still below the 3% average of peer nations in the Organization for Economic Co-operation and Development, the Treasury Department said in its summary of the plan. Business groups such as the U.S. Chamber of Commerce and the Business Roundtable argue that higher taxes would hurt U.S. companies operating worldwide and the wider economy. The Penn-Wharton Budget Model issued a report Wednesday saying the combined spending and taxes would cause government debt to rise by 2031 and then decrease by 2050. But following the plan, GDP would be lower by 0.8% in 2050.

Newsom unveils $536M plan to fight fires By Marisa Kendall mkendall@\\bayareanewsgroup.com Following a record-setting w ildfire season, Gov. Gavin Newsom on Thursday revealed a $536 million plan to help California prevent future fires. The proposal, which comes as the rain-deprived state is facing another potentially devastating round of fires, would help boost forest health, improve defensible space and protect homes against fires while also investing in fire prevention grants and workforce training. It includes vegetation management on public and private lands, community-focus prevention efforts and economic relief for the forestry economy. “The hots are getting hotter. The dries are getting drier. There’s a new reality,” Newsom said Thursday from the Shaver Lake area of Fresno County, near the area the Creek fire tore through last year. “If you don’t believe in climate change, if you don’t believe in science, you believe your own damn eyes. Something is happening as it relates to the issue of climate that's exacerbating conditions and making the challenge of wildfire suppression and prevention that much more ominous." Newsom in January proposed spending an unprecedented $1 billion on fire prevention and suppression in the fiscal 2022 budget. Thursday's measure would deploy more than half of those funds more quickly.

The funding package, introduced as Senate Bill 85 and Assembly Bill 79, also is backed by Senate President pro Tempore Toni G. Atkins, D-San Diego, and Assembly Speaker Anthony Rendon, D -Lakewood. Newsom said he's confident he has the votes he needs in the Legislature to pass the package as early as Monday, freeing him up to sign the measure Tuesday.

The LNU Lightning Complex wildfire burns a hillside behind the Canyon Creek Resort in Winters on Aug. 20, 2020.

FILE: ANDA CHU STAFF PHOTOGRAPHER "With California facing another extremely dry year, it is critical that we get a head start on reducing our fire risk," Newsom, Atkins and Rendon wrote in a joint statement. "We are doing that by investing more than half a billion dollars on projects and programs that provide improved fire prevention for all parts of California." The announcement comes a week after Newsom said the state will hire nearly 1,400 additional firefighters. Last year, 4.2 million acres burned throughout the state, the most in modern times. Smoke billowed across California and in September mixed with the marine layer and turned Bay Area skies an apocalyptic orange. Experts worry an unusually dry winter could bring another extreme fire season this year. San Francisco is in the second-dri- est two-year period in recorded history, and the just-ending rainy season is the third-driest ever in California. In more bad news, the annual April 1 Sierra snowpack survey registered a disappointing 59% of the historical average, a low number for the second straight year. Most of the money announced Thursday would come from the state's general fund, with $125 million coming from the state's Greenhouse Gas Reduction Funds. The lawmakers acknowledged more is needed and said they expect additional funding as discussions continue around the fiscal 2022 budget. Speed and urgency are crucial, Newsom said. "Let's be realistic," he said. "Fire season has already started." Staff writers Rick Hurd and Paul Rogers contributed to this report. Contact Marisa Kendall at 408-920-5009.

Why Oakland should back the A's Howard Terminal plan By Libby Schaaf In March, our vision to see a new waterfront ballpark built at Howard Terminal passed an exciting milestone. The project's longawaited and comprehensive draft environmental impact report was shared with the public and we have received a tremendous amount of community feedback. Now, along with the A's, the city has several more important tasks to complete before a full proposal can reach the City Council for a final vote this year. Over the next few months, Oaklanders and A's fans are going to dig into the details of the project and engage in vigorous debates, just as we should. Here's why the waterfront ballpark is a once-in-a-generation project for Oakland and how I will work side-byside with the A's in the coming months to shape a clear vision and a historic project that will benefit both our community and the A's organization. First and foremost: I want the A's to remain in Oakland forever. A prominent new home on the waterfront will help keep them here and keep their business a financially viable one well into the future. Major League Baseball has an excellent track record for creating beautiful new ballparks that reinvigorate city centers and spawn new neighborhoods, from San Francisco to Baltimore; we want no less for Oakland. A development at Howard Terminal would finally connect Oakland's downtown to our waterfront and anchor the Jack London district. A new water- front ballpark with beautiful public parks and gorgeous communal spaces for people to live and work will bring people past the freeway and create a worldclass development while protecting our nearby world-class port. My goals and values for this project are straightforward and shared by the A's. We need to ensure that Howard Terminal is a good deal for the city and for the A's. We need specific, tangible and - most important - equitable jobs, housing and other direct benefits for all of our residents. And, most critically, we need to ensure that our taxpayers will be protected and not left on the hook, as they have been in the past. I am confident this deal will come together. I am pleased with the commitment the A's have shown to build a modern, privately financed ballpark and to privately finance the adjacent residential and commercial developments. I support the city's doing its part by using some of the new tax revenue generated by the project to help pay for new affordable housing, waterfront parks and the public infrastructure improvements that will bring fans to the game and Oaklanders to the waterfront. I am committed to working with the A's to establish a fund to support ongoing community benefits - not just one-time deals - for the life of the project. And, of course, our agreement with the A's will have to include a binding promise from the A's to remain in Oakland far, far into the future. I look forward to the A's joining the city of Oakland and deeply engaging with our com- munity stakeholders in the coming months to finalize the package of community benefits and cement an ongoing partnership to make sure this project is a winner for Oakland and a winner for the A's. My shared goal with the A's is clear: We want to get the project in front of the City Council for final approvals by the end of this year. We are working hard to bring to Oakland a world-class ballpark and a new neighborhood that enhances our working waterfront, and we cannot wait to see this dream realized. Together, we can get this deal done and keep our beloved A's rooted in Oakland. This is our year. Libby Schaaf is mayor of Oakland.

How massive infrastructure proposal would help California By Shawn Hubler The New York Times "This is a game changer," Gov. Gavin Newsom exulted last week during a news conference. "We are very, very enthusiastic." Was he talking about his recent coronavirus vaccination? The latest poll in the recall campaign? No, he was reveling in news from what has long been California's sweet spot - infrastructure, baby. Perhaps more than any other part of the country, California stands to benefit from the $2.2 trillion proposal introduced last week by President Joe Biden. The sweeping plan would inject huge sums of money into wider roads, faster internet, highspeed trains, charging stations for electric cars, airport terminals, upgraded water pipes and much more. If it passes - a big if - the state that conjured Los Angeles out of the chaparral and the nation's agribusiness capital out of the swamps of the Central Valley will have big plans for the federal money. The infusion is being seen not only as the path to a longoverdue upgrade of the freeways, dams and aqueducts that have long been California's hallmark but also as a way to scale up and export the state's ambitious climate policies. Take, for example, the bill's implications for the ports of Los Angeles and Long Beach, which together handle about 40% of the container cargo that comes into the United States. The diesel trucks that carry goods from the docks to mega-warehouses many miles inland have long been a target in a state where worsening wildfires have become a year-round reminder of the peril of global warming. Port trucks spew so much pollution on their way out of Long Beach on Interstate 710 that the route's nickname is "Asthma Alley." The federal infrastructure bill would underwrite not only clean trucks, but also tens of thousands of heavy-duty charging stations between the ports and the mega-warehouses inland where their goods are delivered. Perhaps more important, it would put the weight of the federal government behind California's ongoing struggle to persuade shipping companies from other nations and states to lower the emissions from their port equipment. Matt Petersen, who heads the nonprofit Los Angeles Cleantech Incubator and leads a regional project to significantly lower greenhouse gas emissions from Los Ange- les traffic, said last week that if he could pick just one project to fund from the Biden bill, it would be to accelerate the replacement of those aging port trucks. "That would be it," he said, "in terms of the biggest overall impact." The bill would speed up California's push to curtail carbon emissions in other ways as well. • Cars: California has been weaning itself from fossil fuels for decades. The state requires utilities to use increasing amounts of wind and solar power each year, and last year Newsom issued an executive order requiring that all new cars sold in the state be zero-emission vehicles by 2035. The Biden plan would supercharge that effort with federal incentives to drive zero- emission vehicles rather than gas guzzlers and fund the build-out of tens of thousands of charging stations to make electric cars more convenient to drive. • Buses: The state's transit agencies are moving toward replacing all diesel-fueled buses within the next two decades. The Biden bill would replace 50,000 diesel public transit vehicles and 20% of school buses with vehicles that run on alternative fuel. That would not only cut down on emissions in the state but also support the state's clean tech sector. At least four alternative fuel bus manufacturers are based in California, as are companies such as Silicon Valley's Zum, which is replacing Bay Area school buses with a fleet of electric buses. • Rail: The package as proposed would provide $80 billion for rail projects in California. The state's embattled high-speed rail project, passed by voters in 2008 but politically shunned in recent years as too expensive, is unlikely to score a windfall, but other projects could benefit, according to a Los Angeles Times analysis. Among them: high-speed electrification of the rail system between Anaheim and Burbank; construction of a mile tunnel to extend passenger rail into downtown San Francisco; and shortening the ride from Los Angeles to San Diego by straightening that rail line. The San Francisco Chronicle reports that the plan also could increase the capacity of BART, extending it to San Jose and Santa Clara and perhaps connecting high-speed rail to the region. Amtrak also wants to create 30 new routes with the proposed funding, including between Los Angeles and Las Vegas, and to add more trains between San Diego and Los Angeles. • Water: Rural communities throughout the state contend with contaminated drinking water, particularly in the Central Valley. The state has struggled with the cost of cleanup for years. The Biden bill has $66 billion to address water systems nationally. • Broadband: In the state that gave rise to Silicon Valley, more than a quarter of public school students still lack reliable internet access - an issue laid bare during the past year as schools shifted to remote instruction during the pandemic. The bill would spend $100 billion nationally on highspeed broadband. • In-home care: The bill also includes $400 billion to expand access to caregiving for people who are older and disabled, and to improve pay and benefits for caregivers.

an Francisco Bay: Protection from costly disasters is being thrown away, scientists say Sea level rise threatens billions in flood damage, but dredged mud to raise shoreline isn’t being used

Sea level rise threatens homes, businesses, roads and sewage treatment plants around San Francisco Bay with flooding. The Dumbarton Bridge straddles salt ponds and marshes between Fremont and Menlo Park, Monday, July 10, 2017. (Karl Mondon/Bay Area News Group)

By PAUL ROGERS | [email protected] | Bay Area News Group

PUBLISHED: April 13, 2021 at 5:30 a.m. | UPDATED: April 13, 2021 at 2:49 p.m.

For more than 100 years after California’s Gold Rush, developers and city leaders filled in San Francisco Bay, shrinking it by one third to build farms, freeways, airports and subdivisions.

All that changed in the 1970s with modern environmental laws. But now as sea level rise threatens to cause billions of dollars of flooding in the coming decades, the bay is going to need to be filled again — but this time in a different way, according to a new scientific report out Tuesday. Twice the amount of sediment excavated for the Panama Canal will be needed to build up the bay’s shoreline, researchers say, to protect communities from disastrous flooding and rising seas that could climb as much as six feet by the end of the century.

The Bay Bridge as it spans San Francisco Bay is seen from above in San Francisco on October 9, 2015. More mud and dirt will be required to build up the height of marshes and mudflats that ring the bayÕs shoreline to combat rising sea levels. (Josh Edelson/AFP via Getty Images)

The best source for that immense volume of fill is the mud and silt scooped up when the bay’s harbors and shipping channels are dredged every year. But currently, that material is being dumped into the ocean 60 miles off the Golden Gate, or sent to the bottom of the bay near Alcatraz Island.

The report calls for a radical change in those disposal practices.

“It’s not a waste product. It’s a valued resource. It should be used for the public good,” said Letitia Grenier, a co-author of the report and a senior scientist at the San Francisco Estuary Institute, a non-profit research organization in Richmond. The study, called “Sediment for Survival,” was written by San Francisco Estuary Institute scientists, with input from researchers at UC Davis, the U.S. Geological Survey, the Environmental Protection Agency, the San Francisco Bay Conservation and Development Commission, and other bay experts.

The math is fairly simple.

To raise the wetlands and mudflats around the bay by 6.9 feet over the next 80 years, the high end of most estimates of sea level rise, 477 million cubic yards of mud and dirt will need to be added to them. That’s the equivalent load of 48 million dump trucks. Or enough to fill the massive Hangar One at Moffett Field 265 times.

If nothing is done, between 150 million and 170 million cubic yards will come into the bay naturally from streams, rivers and other sources. That leaves a shortfall of about 300 million cubic yards. The good news? About 60% of that deficit can be made up with mud and silt from dredging, Grenier and her colleague Scott Dusterhoff estimate. The rest can be produced by scooping out vast amounts of sediment trapped behind dams, removing dams, rerouting flood-control projects or shifting inland dirt from construction projects over the coming generations.

Using what has been considered a waste product to protect the bay from flooding would be a transformation similar to society realizing that aluminum cans and glass bottles shouldn’t be thrown in landfills, or that wastewater could be cleaned and used again for irrigation, said David Lewis, executive director of Save the Bay, an environmental group in Oakland.

“Let’s stop wasting this valuable resource and use it to protect our communities and our wetlands before sea level rise swamps them,” he said. “There are places where we are going to need to raise levees and seawalls. But in most of the bay we can use natural infrastructure. And that costs less than seawalls and brings more benefits.”

A flock of egrets gather in wetlands near the Western side of the Dumbarton Bridge in Menlo Park, Calif., on Thursday, July 23, 2020. (Anda Chu/Bay Area News Group)

Among those benefits are habitat for birds, fish and other wildlife, and recreational trails for the public.

According to tide gauges, San Francisco Bay has risen 8 inches since 1900. Hotter temperatures are melting polar ice caps around the world and causing ocean water to expand in volume. Scientists project the bay will rise another 1 foot or more by 2050 and another 3 feet or more by 2100. Heavy winter storms already cause flooding in some parts of the Bay Area, especially during high tides. Billions of dollars of infrastructure, including high-tech company headquarters like Facebook and Yahoo, wastewater treatment plants that serve millions of people and communities like Alviso and Foster City, are at risk.

The Facebook offices are situated near marshlands in Menlo Park, Calif., on Thursday, March 11, 2021. (Anda Chu/Staff Archives)

San Francisco International Airport is moving forward with a $587 million plan to build a major new sea wall of steel and concrete around the entire 10- mile perimeter of the airport and its runways, which serve 55 million passengers a year. The Santa Clara Valley Water District is working to raise earthen levees in parts of the South Bay. And in 2018 voters in San Francisco approved a $425 million bond measure to begin work on an enormous, 30-year, $5 billion project to rebuild the seawall along the Embarcadero from the Giants ballpark to Fisherman’s Wharf.

But around much of the rest of the bay, researchers say, it’s cheaper, and environmentally smarter, to expand the size of wetlands and raise their elevation.

Lewis said a key challenge is convincing the Army Corps of Engineers, the federal agency that does most of the dredging, to change its longstanding practices. Several projects have used dredge materials already, barging it in and spreading it with pumps, including 648 acres of wetland restoration at Hamilton Airfield in Marin County, and 566 acres of restored marsh at Montezuma Slough in Solano County. But the practice is still in its infancy, and some soils contaminated with PCB, DDT and other old toxins can’t be used or must be buried and sealed.

Another big challenge is the pricetag. It costs $10 a cubic yard to dispose of dredge materials off Alcatraz, about $20 in the ocean, and about $30 in the Hamilton and Montezuma wetlands projects, said Jim Haussener, executive director of the California Marine Affairs & Navigation Conference, an organization that represents ports and harbors.

Haussener said “beneficial reuse” of dredge spoils is a good idea, but if the federal or state government doesn’t provide more funding, he worries local ports either won’t be dredged as often or will see their fees go up.

“Everybody supports it,” he said. “The question is who pays?”

LOCAL//ENVIRONMENT The simple local solution to sea level rise? Mud from the bottom of San Francisco Bay Tara Duggan

April 13, 2021Updated: April 19, 2021 2:11 p.m.

Ilyas Mailibayev his wife Alem stop for a picnic at Bedwell Bayfront Park in Menlo Park, Calif., on Sunday, April 11, 2021. The salt pond R4 on the right will be converted to a marsh like Greco Island on the left with sediment that will be dredged from the bay to help build up the area hopefully to alleviate sea level rise.Carlos Avila Gonzalez / The Chronicle Protecting the Bay Area from sea level rise may all come down to mud.

That’s the finding of a new report from San Francisco Estuary Institute that tries to address a two-part problem related to the looming threat of sea level rise: the lack of natural sediment coming into the bay and the need to reinforce its shorelines to protect the region from rising seas.

There’s a fairly straightforward solution, the nonprofit research organization proposes: Take the sediment that’s dredged from the bay’s shipping channels and barged out to sea or to deep parts of the bay — 2½ to 3 million cubic yards of mud a year — and use it to restore wetlands on the perimeter. The estimated cost is $25 million to $35 million a year, which the authors say is far less expensive than building seawalls or making emergency fixes to flooded highways and airports.

“Sea level rise is just a big challenge, but really because of the power of mud we can put our ecosystems back together and make them still resilient,” said Letitia Grenier, a co-author of the report. “It’s just that we have to undo some of our former practices that don’t end up being sustainable.”

One of those practices is widespread damming of rivers and streams that empty into the bay, which prevents natural sediment from trickling down as it used to. The amount of sediment needed to protect the bay from sea level rise by 2100 is more than 450 million cubic yards — more than twice the volume excavated to build the Panama Canal — according to the report.

Sea level is expected to rise by at least 1 foot by 2050, according to several models, though storms and surges could cause it to go higher. The California Ocean Protection Council recommends coastal communities make their shorelines sufficiently resilient to handle 3½ feet of sea level rise by 2050 and predicts the California coast could face sea level rise of 7.6 feet by 2100.

By 2100, 600,000 people and $150 billion in property could be at risk in the Bay Area if nothing is done to stop carbon dioxide emissions, the U.S. Geological Survey says. Threats include flooding to residential areas and to infrastructure like airports and water treatment plants.

Plenty of sediment used to wash into the bay, especially during the Gold Rush, when whole mountainsides were blasted for mining. That natural sediment has long since worked its way through the system, but dams were built that blocked sediment from coming into the bay.

Amy Hutzel, deputy executive officer at California State Coastal Conservancy, an agency that works on wetlands restoration and wasn’t involved in the report, said government agencies have long recognized that there isn’t enough sediment in the bay.

“That, along with sea level rise, is going to create challenges for wetlands in the future,” she said. “But also, there are things we can do. This is not happening tomorrow or next year. But there are things we need to be doing this decade to prepare for this.”

The state’s goal is to have a total of 100,000 acres of marshlands in the San Francisco Bay, which means restoring an additional 60,000 acres to add to the existing 40,000 acres. Hutzel said that is a lofty goal, but there are already plans and funding in place to restore at least 36,000 acres by 2030.

“The longer it takes to get these projects into place, the less chance the wetlands have of keeping up with sea level rise,” she said. “We need to restore them now so they can accumulate sediment and start to vegetate and then keep pace with sea level rise.”

Local news for a global problem

For more local climate change stories and solutions, sign up for the MicroClimates newsletter here.

Some wetlands restoration projects have used the mud that gets scooped up from the bottom of the bay, including sites at Sonoma Baylands near Sears Point and Hamilton Field in Novato. Sediment was pumped behind existing levees put up for agriculture or military uses and then the levees were breached. Eventually plants took root and marshland returned.

The U.S. Army Corps of Engineers is responsible for dredging most of the main shipping channels around the ports of Oakland, Redwood City and Richmond, the latter used mostly for oil refineries. It also dredges San Pablo Bay and Suisun Bay, which allows ships to head up to Stockton and Sacramento.

The federal government, which funds the dredging at around $50 million to $80 million annually, requires it be done in the most low-cost and ecological way possible. The least expensive disposal options are shipping the sediment 50 miles out to sea or dumping it at a deep site near Alcatraz Island, where some of it may eventually drift back into shipping channels and need to be dredged again.

The sediment sent for “beneficial reuse” or wetlands restoration, requires specialized equipment that adds to the cost. It also has to be tested for heavy metals or other contaminants. State bonds and parcel taxes have funded some of these projects.

“In my opinion the SFEI is correct, that sediment is going to be an increasingly valuable resource for the bay,” said Edwin S. Townsley, deputy district engineer for project management at the Army Corps. “The big question, as it often is for government programs, is who pays.”

In addition to buffering the coast against sea level rise, the ecological benefits of wetlands restoration include providing habitat for migratory birds and fish. Natural bay lands are also places where urban residents can easily get in touch with nature, unlike massive sea walls that separate them from the bay, report author Grenier said.

At Bedwell Bayfront Park in Menlo Park, visitors can see a mature marshland on one side and an old salt pond on the other that will be restored to its original state, thanks to wetlands restoration projects being done to prepare for sea level rise.

“It is expensive to move mud around,” Hutzel said, “but in the long run I think it’s worth the investment.”

Tara Duggan is a San Francisco Chronicle staff writer. Email: [email protected] Twitter: @taraduggan

Fed survey: Economy rebounding, helped by stimulus, vaccines By MARTIN CRUTSINGERApril 14, 2021

FILE - In this Dec. 1, 2020 file photo, Chairman of the Federal Reserve Jerome Powell appears before the Senate Banking Committee on Capitol Hill in Washington. A Federal Reserve survey has found that the economy was rebounding in late February through early April, helped by billions of dollars in a new round of stimulus payments and the stepped-up rollout of coronavirus vaccines. The new survey released Wednesday, April 14, 2021 showed that the Fed's business contacts around the country were expressing more optimism about the economy's outlook as activity accelerated. (AP Photo/Susan Walsh, Pool)

A Federal Reserve survey has found that the economy was rebounding in late February through early April, helped by billions of dollars in a new round of stimulus payments and the stepped-up rollout of coronavirus vaccines. The new survey released Wednesday showed that the Fed’s business contacts around the country were expressing more optimism about the economy’s outlook as activity accelerated.

The survey credited a range of factors, from vaccinations to the payments of up to $1,400 for individuals from the $1.9 trillion relief package that President Joe Biden pushed through Congress last month.

The survey, known as the beige book, will form the basis for discussions when Fed officials meet on April 27-28 to discuss what to do about interest rates.

Gus Faucher, chief economist at PNC Financial, said the message from the beige book is that business activity is picking up but “the economy still has a lot of room to strengthen further.”

While private forecasters have been busy boosting their economic projections for this year, Fed Chairman Jerome Powell has continued to stress that the central bank is not close to raising rates. The Fed released projections last month that indicated it will hold off raising rates until after 2023.

The beige book report, based on information from business contacts supplied by the Fed’s 12 regional banks, said that manufacturing activity continued to expand, with half of the Fed districts reporting robust manufacturing growth. Those gains came despite supply- chain disruptions in such critical areas as computer chips.

The survey found that the Fed’s regional bank in New York is seeing growth for the first time since the pandemic shut down the economy a year ago and that the expansion is “broad-based across industries.”

The Fed’s Philadelphia regional bank found that demand for goods and services is “on fire” but myriad severe supply constraints are continuing to hamper various industries.

Cleveland reported improvements in the hard-hit hotel and restaurant sectors. Similar improvements were reported by the Fed’s Atlanta regional bank, which covers tourist destinations in Florida.

Dallas reported that supply-chain disruptions have led to sharp increases in prices of goods, while the San Francisco district reported that residential construction remains strong.

The Fed survey found that many of its districts are seeing moderate price increases, specifically for materials such as metals, lumber, food and fuel.

The beige book reported that employment growth picked up as economic activity increased. It noted strong job gains in manufacturing, construction, and leisure and hospitality. In an appearance Wednesday before the Economic Club of Washington, Powell acknowledged rising concerns about inflation following a report Tuesday that consumer prices rose 0.6% in March, the biggest one-month gain since 2012.

But Powell, who has been predicting a temporary spike in inflation this spring, repeated the view that the central bank wants to see inflation rise “moderately above 2% for some time” to make up for a decade when inflation has failed to reach the Fed’s 2% inflation target.

Other Media:

MAR 9, 2021 CITY PARKS ALLIANCE APPLAUDS THE INTRODUCTION OF THE PARKS, JOBS, EQUITY ACT

By: Tom McCann | Press Release

Washington, DC – Representatives Nanette Barragán (D-CA), Mike Turner (R-OH), and Joe Neguse (D-CO) introduced the “Parks, Jobs, Equity Act” on March 9. This $500 million park bill is intended to provide stimulus as well relief for cities to help with the impact of COVID-19. The money would be funded through the current LWCF Outdoor Recreation Legacy Partnership Program and focuses on creating and renovating outdoor recreation facilities, supporting park personnel, and promoting job training, all with an emphasis on underserved communities.

The following statement is from Julie Waterman, Advocacy Director, City Parks Alliance: “City Parks Alliance applauds Representatives Nanette Barragán (D-CA), Mike Turner (R-OH), and Joe Neguse (D-CO) for introducing the “Parks, Jobs, Equity Act,” a bill that will help cities recover from COVID-19. During the pandemic, city parks across the country have experienced a substantial increase in park use, yet park budgets have been cut and staff laid off. This bill will improve outdoor recreation opportunities, provide job opportunities, and engage and empower youth in underserved communities. All critical to the recovery of our cities.”

For additional context, read Rep. Barragán’s statement on her work as well as Rep. Turner’s official release. Advocacy initiatives such as this one were a key element in our letter to the Biden-Harris administration from the Mayors for Parks Coalition sent at the end of 2020 as the current administration prepared to take office.

Since its launch in December 2013, the bipartisan Mayors for Parks Coalition, a project of City Parks Alliance, has encouraged Congress and the White House for increased federal investment for city parks.