California — a state whose officials love to tout it as the world’s fifth largest economy — is a year late in producing a report on its own financial health for the sixth year in a row.

The most recently available such report, from 2022, blamed the chronic lateness of the reports on, among other things, a state software changeover that started in 2005, the year the first YouTube video was uploaded.

The state’s annual comprehensive financial report, which aims to provide insight into California’s financial health, is significant because it helps maintain the state’s credit rating, which is important in situations where the state might need to borrow money.

While there isn’t a specific deadline for the reports under state law, bond certificates and federal funding require reporting by April 1 and March 31, respectively. State Controller Malia Cohen’s office said it typically tries to meet the March 31 deadline.

This is the sixth consecutive year that the report missed those deadlines. The last available report is for the fiscal year that ended in 2022, published this past March.

Cohen’s office attributed the delay of the 2021-2022 report to the “unanticipated” extension of personal and corporate income taxes by both the federal government and California in 2023, as well as to ongoing challenges with agencies’ transition to FI$Cal, the state’s replacement budgeting and finance platform.California launched the FI$Cal overhaul in 2005 to bring all of its budgeting and finance systems under one umbrella. If FI$Cal were a person, it would now be old enough to vote. The Legislature passed a bill to deem the project complete as of July 2022, but the state auditor noted that state agencies struggle to use the system.In the 2022 report, the state auditor raised concerns that continued delays could affect California’s ability to maintain a high credit rating and borrow money at low interest.

But the controller’s office told CalMatters via email that the reporting delays haven’t harmed California’s bond ratings yet due to the “availability of data from a number of other sources describing California’s financial position and ability to meet its bond obligations.”

Cohen, who took the helm as controller last year, pledged in the 2022 report published in March of this year to get the reports on track by March 2026.

The statement from her office said she “has taken substantial measures to mitigate the root causes” of delays, including streamlining processes and optimizing technology.

The state also allocated more resources to the controller’s office in the 2023-24 budget to address workload and provide state departments with technical assistance.

“These efforts are part of a comprehensive plan to return the State to timely reporting over the next several reporting cycles,” the email from the controller’s office said.

In April, a report from the Illinois-based government transparency group Truth in Accounting ranked California 48th in financial transparency, based on a mix of factors including the state auditor’s opinion and the timeliness of reports.

###

CalMatters.org is a nonprofit, nonpartisan media venture explaining California policies and politics.

Tucked between headline-grabbing opinions on presidential immunity, Jan. 6 rioters and homeless encampments, the U.S. Supreme Court closed out a momentous session late last month with a series of body blows to the federal bureaucracy.

Under three back-to-back rulings, regulations that touch nearly every aspect of the American economy and American life (see: rules on food safety, water quality, overtime pay, medical billing, carbon emissions, fisheries monitoring and housing discrimination, to name a few) may soon be harder to enforce, more convenient to challenge in court and easier to strike down once challenged. For the conservative legal movement and for major business interests who bristle under what they see as an overreaching federal regulatory apparatus, the rulings mark a once-in-a-generation victory against the “administrative state.”

But in California, the effects of those rulings may be a bit more muted, legal experts say. California has an administrative state of its own.

From worker safeguards to water regulations to LGBTQ-protections on college campuses, the rules enforced by California state agencies often meet and exceed the stringency of their federal counterparts. If judges begin swatting down federal regulations as a result of the recent decisions, California’s own rules could serve as a regulatory backup.

For critics of the court’s recent decisions, that’s some consolation.

“California is, in a way, better situated than some other states because it is big enough and it has enough expertise in state government to actually provide state law protections that can kind of compensate for weakened federal ones,” said Sean Donahue, a lawyer who represents the Environmental Defense Fund. “That may not be true in some smaller states.”

California has plenty of practice playing the role of Blue State bulwark against federal regulatory shifts to the right. During the Trump administration, the state’s Democratic leaders beefed up many state rules in the face of real or anticipated rollbacks out of Washington.

But as the state discovered then, there is a limit to how far California can go its own way. Many federal statutes explicitly prohibit states from overriding them. Such federal preemption has been decreed by the courts in other cases.

“Sometimes yes, California can go on its own,” said Ashutosh Bhagwat, an administrative law professor at UC Davis. “Sometimes it absolutely can’t, and sometimes it’s complicated.”

Three rulings against the bureaucracy

In what may be the most consequential of the session’s three regulatory rulings, the court’s conservative majority swept aside a 40-year-old judicial rule of thumb, known as “Chevron deference.”

The concept, named for the 1984 case that spawned it, required judges to defer to a federal regulator’s interpretation of how to implement a Congressional statute. In a high school civics class version of government, Congress passes the laws and the executive branch, with the President sitting at the top, simply enforces them. But enforcement is rarely simple. Congressional laws can be vague or fail to anticipate every eventuality, technological development or unforeseen problem. Since the New Deal, the federal government’s powers and responsibilities have expanded and grown more complex.

Chevron deference is the notion that if a statute is ambiguous and an agency’s interpretation is reasonable on its face, courts should let the bureaucracy call the shots.

No more.

In his opinion, Supreme Court Chief Justice John Roberts wrote that courts may “respect” federal agency expertise, but cannot automatically defer to it. “Agencies have no special competence in resolving statutory ambiguities. Courts do,” he wrote. The upshot: Regulated industries now have a better shot at successfully challenging the federal rules that govern them.

Building on the theme of putting a leash on federal bureaucrats, the majority also ruled against the Securities and Exchange Commission and put new limits on when agencies can use in-house administrative courts to levy fines, instead requiring agencies to take alleged rulebreakers to court.

In a third opinion, the Supreme Court ruled that the six-year statute of limitations for when an aggrieved business can challenge a federal regulation starts ticking whenever that suing party is first affected by the rule. Financial regulators in that case had argued that the shot clock starts when the rule itself is enacted, giving regulations a degree of finality once that time expires.

All three rulings were decided 6-3, with the court’s conservatives in the majority.

Climate change regulations especially vulnerable

In her dissent in the statute of limitations case, Justice Ketanji Brown Jackson, a Biden appointee, warned that together with the end of Chevron deference, the court’s rulings would unleash a “tsunami of lawsuits against agencies” with the “potential to devastate the functioning of the Federal Government.”

Legal experts are still debating just how consequential these rulings will be. Granting less flexibility to federal regulators and opening them up to the threat of indefinite legal challenge from regulated industries implicates an unknowably vast universe of rules. But no one knows which rules are most vulnerable until they wind up in court.

“We’ll probably see now a wave of litigation challenging regulations that many had thought of as being long-settled, and how that shakes out in terms of its application to California businesses and California residents and consumers, we just don’t know,” said Julia Stein, an environmental law professor at UCLA.

Climate change regulations may be especially ripe for challenge. Lacking much actual legislation on the subject from Congress, the Environmental Protection Agency has resorted to creative interpretations of old environmental statutes, like the 1970 Clean Air Act, to justify its rules governing greenhouse gas emissions.

Such creativity may no longer fly, at least with conservative judges.

“Agencies have no special competence in resolving statutory ambiguities. Courts do.”
— John Roberts, Chief Justice, U.S. Supreme Court

Federal regulators are “kind of hamstrung in the ability to take innovative approaches,” Stein said, now that the Chevron decision is history. “States, like California, are going to try to make up for that on the back end through their own authority and regulatory power, but it won’t be nearly as effective as if both those entities were working together.”

When a state can set its own rules isn’t always clear. Almost 60 years ago, Congress granted California the authority to set its own emission standards for vehicles. But a California mandate requiring major truck manufacturers to ramp up the sale of zero-emission vehicles might be an early test case, since experts are divided as to whether an interpretation of the Clean Air Act properly allows for such a law.

California, above and beyond

There are areas of the regulatory universe where California law clearly can, and often does, go far above what the feds require.

Labor law is one example.

Most California workplace laws are more protective of employees than federal rules. Not only is the state’s $16 minimum wage more than double that required nationwide, the state also maintains and enforces its own rules on overtime pay, independent contractor status, workplace discrimination and workplace safety.

Most recently, the federal Occupational Safety and Health Administration proposed a rule requiring employers to protect workers from heat illness. California’s own workplace safety agency has had such a rule in place since 2005 for outdoor workers and is expanding it to those working indoors this year.

Those rules will stand regardless of legal challenges at the federal level.

“California is, in a way, better situated than some other states.”
— Sean Donahue , Lawyer, Environmental Defense Fund

Such challenges are already on the way elsewhere. The same day the high court snagged final say over rulemaking from federal agencies, a Texas judge cited the Chevron-ending decision in putting a new Biden administration overtime rule on hold for state employees.

A long established stereotype of California would suggest that lawmakers here are already ideologically predisposed to out-red tape Washington. But many of California’s supercharged state rules are of recent vintage, born out of resistance to the Trump administration.

In 2019, then-California state Sen. Hannah-Beth Jackson authored a handful of laws to put the federal rules that govern gender discrimination in schools and universities into state statute. That was in anticipation of controversial changes to Title IX, a 1972 civil rights law, proposed by the Trump administration.

Federal education regulators have mined Title IX’s mere 37 words to justify regulations on everything from school sports to sexual assault reporting standards to scholarships.

Protections for wetlands and migratory birds and bans of certain pesticides were also ratcheted up in California during the Trump era.

But that blue state playbook didn’t always go as planned.

In 2019, San Diego Sen. Toni Atkins, then the top Democrat in the state Senate, authored a bill to anti-Trump “backstop, essentially copy-and-pasting the more stringent federal ​​environmental and workplace rules from the Obama era onto the state’s books. Gov. Gavin Newsom vetoed that bill, calling it “a solution in search of a problem.”

California: A vision of life after Chevron?

The raft of rulings were momentous, but not especially surprising to many court watchers. The Supreme Court had been either ignoring or actively chipping away at Chevron deference for years.

That has some legal experts, even self-described liberals, skeptical that the final effect will be as dramatic as the Supreme Court’s liberal dissenters and many alarmed commentators have suggested.

“The major clean water and clean air acts were passed in the ‘70s, long before Chevron,” said Bhagwat at UC Davis. “There was administrative law before that. So, the idea that you can’t have administrative law without Chevron is stupid.”

Ironically, anyone looking to see what a post-Chevron world might look like could turn to California. State courts never adopted a Chevron-like rule in reviewing regulations. Instead, they’ve taken a more holistic approach, in which agency interpretations might be granted more weight when they’ve been consistent over time and are based on its own area of expertise. That, in effect, is pretty similar to the new rules of the federal road laid out last month by the U.S. Supreme Court.

“So when people say, ‘Oh, this is kind of the end of the world, abolishing Chevron,’ it’s like, well, it hasn’t been the end of the world in California,” said Keith Bishop, a partner with the law firm Allen Matkins who used to work as a California state financial regulator. “At least, not yet.”

“The law doesn’t matter that much anymore.”
— Ashutosh Bhagwat, law professor, UC Davis

Still, there are reasons to believe that certain courts outside of California will be keener to uproot regulations than they have been in California. That isn’t a result of differences in legal doctrine between courts, but of political philosophy, said David Carpenter, an appellate lawyer and partner at the law firm Sidley.

“In California, there would be a view that courts are going to be relatively more inclined to abide by or to follow or consider or give weight or respect to agency interpretations,” he said. “Depending on what jurisdiction the challenge is raised in, you might expect more hostility between the federal court and whichever administration is in power.”

Bhagwat shares the view that the outcome of a regulatory challenge will depend largely on the ideology of a given judge or court. That has led him to offer a less dramatic forecast of the law after this year’s spate of anti-regulatory rulings. “They were ignoring Chevron anyway,” he said. But it has led him to a much more dramatic and darker view of the law in general.

“We’re seeing the judiciary starting to reflect the polarization generally in American society,” he said. “There’s this sort of brutal reality on the ground, which is that the law doesn’t matter that much anymore.”

###

Rachel Becker and Jeanne Kuang contributed reporting to this story.

CalMatters.org is a nonprofit, nonpartisan media venture explaining California policies and politics.

Aaron Abbott went onto his spiritual journey on June 30, 2024, in Eureka at the age of 32. Aaron was born in Nevada to Aaron and Nancy Abbott, and eventually the family relocated to Humboldt County. Aaron was a Yurok tribal member and the grandson of Charles “Bill” Abbott, who was the original member and creator of the transition team that helped establish the Yurok Tribe.

Throughout highschool, he enjoyed sports, especially football. Shortly after high school, Aaron began working for UPS, where he maintained his career and enjoyed his financial stability to care for his son and enjoy his extracurricular activities with friends and family.

Aaron was a wonderful and loving father to his son, Weston Abbott.

He is survived by his grandmother Sue Henderson, father, Aaron Abbott Sr.; his brother, Warren; his sister, Jessica; and his beloved nieces and nephews, aunts Charlene Abbott-White, Bonnie Zinda, Karen Marshall, Karen Blake~Reed, uncles Charles and Kyle Abbott and several cousins and relatives and of course his girlfriend Jenia, whom he adored and cared for. Aaron was preceded in death by his mother, Nancy Abbott, grandpa Charles “Bill” Abbott, great-grandmother Mae Abbott, grandfather Jerry Henderson.

Aaron was an amazing human being, full of charisma and positive energy, who impacted many lives. He loved to dance and was a highly motivated individual. He was a friend to many, a loving father, a wonderful brother, son, grandson, nephew, and cousin. Aaron will be greatly missed by all who knew and loved him.

The service will be held tomorrow, July 10, 2024, at 12 noon at the Awok Bonny Green Facility, located at 3400 Erie St, Eureka, CA 95501.

###

The obituary above was submitted on behalf of Aaron Abbot’s loved ones. The Lost Coast Outpost runs obituaries of Humboldt County residents at no charge. See guidelines here.

Eureka Symphony release:

Nancy Stephenson | Eureka Symphony

The Eureka Symphony’s new 2024-2025 season will present not just an exciting new lineup of musical performances and special guests, but also a new general manager.

Nancy Stephenson, a long-time local community organizer, brings 45 years of experience collaborating with Humboldt County artists, musicians, businesses, nonprofits and local government agencies. Most recently with the Redwood Coast Energy Authority for six years as their Community Strategies Manager, Stephenson also coordinated the Arcata Bay Oyster Festival and all of Arcata Main Street’s programs.

Her passion for event planning, fundraising, marketing and outreach earned her a Humboldt Heroes Award in 2006. Others know her as a goldsmith, jewelry designer, graphic artist and photographer. Her enthusiasm, diverse skills, community relationships, and willingness to accept new challenges make her a good match for the Eureka Symphony and its future.

The Board of Directors conducted an extensive search and was impressed by Nancy’s diverse skill set, history of community engagement and passion for promoting the arts,” said Board President Keenan Pool. “With Nancy’s capacity for leading an organization and Carol’s artistic vision, we could not be more excited for the future of the Eureka Symphony.”

Please reach out to Nancy if you would like to chat, have a question, or perhaps volunteer or donate. 

“Listening to live symphonic music immerses us in a personal journey that’s shaped by our individual perspectives and frame of mind, but we experience it alongside hundreds of others in the audience that we don’t even know. These experiences can have a bonding effect and may bring us closer as a community - enriched, inspired, and full of hope,” said Stephenson. “I want to nourish that potential. I’m honored to be able to work with Carol Jacobson, Eureka Symphony’s Artistic Director and Conductor, the distinguished Board of Directors, the experienced and devoted staff, volunteers, donors and sponsors and of course the musicians who make this all possible. We’ll be exploring new ways to bring this local treasure to a broader audience and be a catalyst for future generations.”

Both Stephenson and Jacobson feel they have struck a chord together.
“We are so thrilled to have Nancy on board with the Symphony. I am personally looking forward to working on exciting new ideas and projects with her,” Jacobson said.

The Eureka Symphony holds two major fundraising events each year. The next one, “Prelude to the Season Gala,” will take place on September 29 to kick off the 2024-2025 season. Ticket holders will enjoy the Temporary Resonance Trio (Terrie Baune, violin; John Chernoff, piano; and Carol Jacobson, cello), hors d’oeuvres by Brett Shuler Fine Catering, wine, and Claire Bent with her ukulele. Mike McGuire will host a live auction.

The Eureka Symphony, a community orchestra founded in 1991, performs five concert sets each season, with music performed by hundreds of community members, often joined by special guest artists from around the world.

For information about performances, events, tickets, or financial support, go to eurekasymphony.org.

###

PREVIOUSLY:

• The Shelly Fire has Burned 3,380 Acres in Siskiyou County

###

The Shelly Fire in Siskiyou County has nearly doubled in size since yesterday, spreading north and east over 6,216 acres as of this morning’s report. It is still zero percent contained. 

Smoke forecasts today predict that areas in Humboldt might see air quality impacts from the fire. The government website AirNow fire and smoke map reports moderate air quality in eastern Humboldt, while a National Weather Service forecast shows smoke blowing across the county.

Reached by phone, Debra Harris, Burn Program & Wildfire Response Coordinator at the North Coast Unified Air Quality Management District, said that smoke is most likely to reach the Highway 96 corridor and nearby river drainages, based on current weather conditions and the fire’s activity and proximity.

“At this point I don’t anticipate smoke impact making it to the coast,” Harris said. The North Coast Unified Air Quality Management District is keeping a close eye on the situation and will likely issue a general info advisory soon, she added.

In the meantime, it’s not a bad idea to prepare for smoke, Harris said. She suggested designating a clean air room in your house, setting aside water and making a plan for pets. 

“[It’s] always a plus when you can prepare ahead,” Harris said.

Here’s a tip sheet on how to prepare your home and your family for smoke impacts. Maybe download it! Chances are it’ll come in handy at some point this summer.

Below is a statement signed by several local environmental organizations about the a proposed sales tax to support road repair, which could appear on the November ballot:

We are caught in a dilemma. Humboldt County owns and is responsible for maintaining 1,200 miles of roads. Most of these road miles are rural, providing access to a small number of residences and businesses. Taxes associated with these rural properties are not sufficient to pay to maintain the roads that reach them. Gas taxes are not enough, either. Thus, we have found ourselves a trap: We have too many roads and not enough revenue to maintain them.

The County’s solution has long been to subsidize roads using other sources of revenue, including a state funding program that should go to meeting our local unmet public transit needs — of which there are many. But none of these subsidies have been enough. Now the County is preparing another new sales tax to put toward ever-increasing road costs. You may have already received mailers from the County about this tax measure, covered with pictures of roads and natural disasters. As environmental leaders, we harbor concerns that without major changes, the new tax would be regressive and harmful to meaningful climate action.

For environmental voters, the tax measure looks like a plan to maintain an environmentally damaging status quo. Transportation is the largest emitter of greenhouse gas emissions in Humboldt County. As the draft Climate Action Plan acknowledges, reducing greenhouse gas emissions from transportation requires investing in a more balanced transportation system, and particularly increasing the use of public transit. Part of the difficulty in convincing people to take the bus is that we do not finance our transit system adequately, resulting in long wait times and poor service on the weekends and holidays. As stated earlier, the County already siphons away money from public transit to rural roads.

And despite Humboldt County’s auto-oriented transportation system, many local people don’t or can’t drive and rely on public transit instead. Many kids use public buses to get to school, seniors use transit to get to the grocery store and doctor’s appointments, and people with disabilities use transit to get to jobs and services. At least 15,000 adults in Humboldt County don’t have a driver’s license at all, and many lower-income community members lack reliable vehicle access and rely on transit for most of their transportation needs. But sales taxes hit these same low-income people the hardest. It strikes us as fundamentally unfair to ask our lower-income friends and neighbors to bear the burden of subsidizing a road system they don’t even use, primarily for the benefit of better-off residents, without getting something in return.

In short, a new sales tax that only funds roads would be both deeply inequitable and environmentally irresponsible. That’s why Humboldt’s environmental leaders will oppose the County’s tax measure unless a substantial amount of the revenue goes to support public transit.

And the County does need a substantial amount of dedicated local transit funding: we cannot be satisfied with whatever pennies may be left over after road projects are funded. For example, to serve more bus commuters–and to give existing riders the service they deserve–we need buses every 15 minutes at all stops between McKinleyville and Fortuna. That requires a commitment to meaningful local transit investment. For any tax measure to gain support from environmental voters, we insist on holistic transportation funding that meets the needs of both roads and transit.

Colin Fiske
Coalition for Responsible Transportation Priorities (CRTP)

Tom Wheeler
Environmental Protection Information Center (EPIC)

Melodie Meyer
Redwood Coalition for Climate and Environmental Responsibility (RCCER)

Caroline Griffith
Northcoast Environmental Center

Dan Chandler
350 Humboldt

Press release from the City of Eureka:

Uplift Eureka announces the launch of the Old Town Stewards Volunteer Program, inviting passionate individuals to join as community ambassadors in Eureka’s historic Old Town neighborhood this summer.

Modeled after successful ambassador programs in other cities, Volunteer Stewards will play a pivotal role in fostering goodwill and hospitality, offering guidance on local resources, and assisting both residents and visitors alike.

Volunteer Stewards will engage in various activities including greeting community members and visitors, providing directions and recommendations, collaborating with local businesses, and participating in beautification projects such as landscaping and litter cleanup. They will also connect residents with essential local resources and spearhead initiatives aimed at enhancing the Old Town community.

Beyond its immediate impact on Old Town, the program offers a platform for residents, businesses, community groups, and social service providers to collaborate with the city on neighborhood-level issues.

To learn more about becoming an Old Town Steward and to express interest, visit this link or contact OldTownStewards@eurekaca.gov.