Frustration came through loud and clear as legislators hurled question after question at the head of the state’s homelessness interagency council: Why, after years of planning and billions of dollars invested, is there so little to show for the effort?

“You come into a budget committee and there’s no numbers,” Assemblymember Phil Ting, a San Francisco Democrat, said at the May 6 Assembly committee hearing. “Why is it taking so long?”

Assemblymember Vince Fong, a Bakersfield Republican, took issue with the council saying it needed more money to compile the data. And Chris Ward, a Democrat from San Diego, said he’d been asking the same questions since 2022: “The fact that we’re still now, three years later here as a state is incredibly frustrating because that guides our decision making here as a budget.”

But even without a full picture of how well the homelessness spending is working, Gov. Gavin Newsom is proposing cuts to cover the state’s budget deficit.

That’s just one example of how the state budget gets put together, often without fully knowing if a program is paying off. Revenue dictates decisions, and voter-passed initiatives direct some spending. After that, legislators use any data that’s available, but they also negotiate with other officials and listen to their constituents.

They’re also lobbied by advocates and interest groups. (More than 650 organizations spent money lobbying on the budget, as well as other issues.)

For the 2024-25 budget now before the Legislature, Newsom released a revised plan earlier this month that calls for dipping into reserves, canceling some new spending and cutting existing programs to cover a remaining shortfall of $27.6 billion. The independent Legislative Analyst’s Office, which assesses the budget picture through different calculations, cites the deficit as $55 billion, though it generally agrees with Newsom’s overall view of the state’s finances.

Starting today and through this week, the Assembly and Senate will conduct hearings on Newsom’s proposals. The Legislature faces a June 15 deadline to approve its version.

Jesse Gabriel, who leads the Assembly budget committee, noted that only a handful of legislators have dealt with a deep deficit before. The state had a record budget surplus as recently as two years ago, thanks to federal pandemic aid and a roaring stock market; the last lengthy recession ended in 2009.

“This is a new experience for a lot of people,” the Democrat from Encino told CalMatters. “I think we’re going to have to work really hard together to get on the same page and do the best we can in a really difficult situation.”

State bases money needs on prior year

Addressing California’s deficit is a two-part equation, where increasing revenue could help. But Newsom has ruled out increasing taxes and instead emphasized “right-sizing expenditures,” telling legislators they shouldn’t expect bills with high price tags to pass.

For Gabriel, the May 6 hearing by the revamped accountability and oversight committee hints at an appetite for culture change in the Legislature — though one that could take time.

“We want to be doing a lot more data-driven decision making about which programs and services are really delivering results for Californians,” he told CalMatters. “For us, that metric is not did the money go out the door? But was it impactful? Did it make a difference in results for the people it was intended to serve?”

Gov. Gavin Newsom unveiled his revised 2024-25 budget proposal at the Capitol Annex Swing Space in Sacramento on May 10, 2024. Photo by Fred Greaves for CalMatters

California currently uses “incremental budgeting:” Each department’s or program’s funding request starts with what they spent last year, updated with best estimates of what they need in the coming year. Also known as “baseline budgeting,” it’s the most common approach states take, according to the National Conference of State Legislatures.

Some public analysis of how programs are working comes from the nonpartisan Legislative Analyst’s Office and state agencies, sometimes at the request of lawmakers.

But a CalMatters analysis published in February found that 70% of the 1,118 state agency reports on how laws were working due in the past year had not been submitted to the Office of Legislative Counsel, which keeps reports. And about half of those that were filed were late.

California’s budgeting approach is in contrast to two other systems: performance-based budgeting and zero-based budgeting.

Performance-based budgeting ties funding to how well programs meet their goals, and allows departments more flexibility to use any savings. The data-driven approach can create more transparency, according to research commissioned by the Assembly’s Budget Committee in 2012. But it’s difficult to implement and can be inequitable, according to the National Conference of State Legislatures — for example by linking school funding to test scores.

Under zero-based budgeting, agency budgets start each year from $0. But no state uses the system in its true form, the conference notes.

While more states are moving towards performance-based budgeting — including Minnesota, New Mexico and Utah — more comprehensive efforts to change California’s system have fizzled.

This year, Fong, who is vice chairperson of the Assembly budget committee, introduced a bill to require state agencies to use zero-based budgeting, but the measure has not been heard in committee.

In 2011, then-Gov. Jerry Brown vetoed a bill requiring state agencies to use performance-based budgeting, saying it would impose a ‘’one size fits all” budget planning process on every state agency and function.

“The politically expedient course would be to sign this bill and bask in the pretense that it is some panacea for our budget woes,” he wrote in his veto message. “But the hard truth is that this bill will mandate thousands of hours of work — at the cost of tens of millions of dollars — with little chance of actual improvement.”Instead, Brown advocated what he described as a common sense approach to budgeting that would examine whether some programs or departments should exist at all.

Performance-based budgeting also has downsides: A program that’s underperforming may still deserve funding, said lobbyist Kristina Bas Hamilton. “That should be what the policy and budget-making process is about, is having that dialogue,” she said.

And just looking at departments or programs doesn’t show the full picture of state spending, argues Scott Graves, budget director of the California Budget & Policy Center, an advocacy and policy group. That’s because of business and other tax breaks, which are typically renewed year after year.“Rarely do policymakers come back around and ask, ‘Do they still make sense? Are they effective? Are they achieving the goal for which they were created?’ And as a result, we end up with a lot of waste on the tax expenditure side of the budget,” he said.

“If we’re going to argue for greater scrutiny of state spending and asking what we’re getting for our money, we need to do that not just on the budget side, but we also need to do it on the tax expenditure side.”

Giving taxpayers a voice

Where data doesn’t tell the whole story of which programs are worth funding, public input can fill in some gaps.

Both Senate President Pro Tem Mike McGuire and Gabriel told CalMatters that the budget hearings from January through June are key to the decision-making.

McGuire said his office also receives thousands of comments from the public — emails, postcards, requests for meetings and more.

“It’s not just one source of feedback, but multiple sources of feedback. And by the way, that’s the way it should be,” he said in an interview with CalMatters. “It’s coming from the public, from members themselves, shaped by their lived experiences and opinions, through advocates for nonprofits.”

Various interest groups have mobilized to push back on Newsom’s proposed cuts, including rallies at the Capitol or through virtual campaigns.

Julie Baker, CEO of CA Arts Advocates, said building coalitions has helped the arts community secure funding from legislators in the past.

“They need to know what their constituents care about, and showing up and telling them that we oppose, in this case, the arts cuts — letting them know how that will impact their own communities — is critical for them to understand the decisions that they’re making.”Greater transparency can help the public form an opinion about state spending, but getting that information isn’t easy. State Sen. Roger Niello, a Roseville Republican, introduced a bill that would have required state agencies to post their expenditures in a clear and accessible way for the public, but the Senate’s appropriations committee killed the bill in last week’s “suspense file” hearings.

Service Employees International Union California and youth advocates rallied at the state Capitol in Sacramento to protest proposed budget cuts on May 15, 2024. Photo by Renee Lopez for CalMatters

On May 1, advocacy groups California Budget & Policy Center, Catalyst California and the Million Voters Project launched the Budget Power Project, which plans to hold workshops to understand the budget, as well as lessons on how to advocate — at cities and counties as well as the state Capitol.

The idea was conceived during the windfall of federal pandemic aid to ensure that money reached communities most in need — and out of a concern that budgets are often crafted in the shadows.

Bas Hamilton — who wrote a book on how to advocate in the Legislature — says the power of public input shouldn’t be underestimated and challenged the notion that the same people, or the loudest people, advocating is a negative.

“They might be representing voices that are marginalized, and that might be the only venue they have to get these messages across,” she said. “I would say there’s a lot of lobbyists in the Capitol, but … some of them are fighting the good fight and having them be the loudest in the room, I would say, isn’t a bad thing at all.”

Changing the budget process

Although the effort to move the state to performance-based budgeting failed, California has seen some big changes to the process — though whether they’ve helped or hurt the state’s finances depends on who you ask.

In 2010, voters passed Proposition 25, which required the Legislature to pass a budget by June 15 or lose pay and also lowered the number of votes needed for passage. While that cut down on political gridlock, Jon Coupal, president of the Howard Jarvis Taxpayers Association, said it has led to a shoddy budget that is constantly amended the rest of the year.

Because Democrats hold a two-thirds “supermajority” and don’t need Republican votes to pass the budget, there’s no longer a “Big 5” committee, where leaders of both parties negotiate with the governor. It’s now just the Democratic leaders and Newsom. There’s also no Assembly-Senate conference committee, which held public hearings.

Other efforts to change the process have failed.

In 2020, Sen. Scott Wilk introduced a bill to create a two-year budgeting process — the first year for writing the budget, and the second to focus on oversight.

“The reason for that, frankly, is our government — we look at input,” the Republican from Lancaster told CalMatters. “We never look at output. I think there’s programs we start that are no longer effective, are no longer needed, yet, we’re still spending money because everybody’s building their fiefdom.”

A multi-year budget process could have benefits, said Chris Hoene, executive director of the California Budget & Policy Center. “One way to manage the fluctuations that are there would be to sort of admit that economic cycles don’t always adhere to an annual fiscal year.”

That could allow the state to put more money into its reserves, he said. That’s currently limited by the state constitution — another topic that comes up during every budget downturn.

The Legislature has also made some attempts at more oversight, such as splitting up the health and human services budget subcommittees to hone in on each topic, and revamping the accountability committee.

Legislators could also be more mindful of bills that add new costs — though they and the governor’s office won’t have a clear picture of added costs until measures are signed in the fall. Gabriel said he tried to send that message at a Democratic Assembly caucus retreat in January.

“We tried to be really mindful of the costs, because there may be a lot of great policy ideas that folks out there want to pursue,” he said.

Another option to rein in costs each year could be to limit the number of bills legislators introduce. But while members say the volume makes it difficult to really weigh what the financial and other impacts of each bill might be, they also say it could hamper their ability to represent constituents.

And sometimes, a pricey bill or program is worth the fight, according to some legislators.

“These draconian cuts have real life and death consequences and will push our most vulnerable children, families, and aging Californians into homelessness and starvation,” Sen. Caroline Menjivar, a Democrat from Van Nuys, said in a statement in response to Newsom’s proposal. “As legislators, we hold the power to save the most vulnerable among us … I plan to fight back with everything I have.”

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The CalMatters Ideas Festival takes place June 5-6! Find out more and get your tickets at this link.

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

A rite of passage for outdoor folk living in our glorious neck of the woods is to hike the Lost Coast Trail, the 25-mile path from the mouth of the Mattole to Black Sands Beach in Shelter Cove. A glance at a road map of California gives a feeling for the topography, with highways hugging virtually the entire length of the state, except for the stretch where Highway 1 turns inland north of Fort Bragg a mile north of Westport-Union Landing State Beach (and great campsites). The road doesn’t return to the sea for another 80 miles, west of Petrolia. That un-roaded stretch, where the King Range sweeps steeply thousands of feet down to the sea below, is the most rugged coastline in the contiguous U.S. No wonder early road builders gave up on it and built the Highway 101 inland.

The trip takes a leisurely 3-4 days, camping at one of the many inviting streamside gullies en route. Everyone we have seen on the trail is heading south, that is, starting at the Mattole campground, where it’s possible to leave a vehicle for several days. Even if you don’t go the distance, the day hike to the Punta Gorda light, a seven-mile round trip, gives a worthy taste of the wild coastline avoided by early road-builders. Don’t go without (1) checking tides, three stretches of the trail are impassable at medium to high tide, including between Mattole and Punta Gorda; and obtain backpacking and fire permits from the BLM if you’re camping.

Not much is left of the Punta Gorda lighthouse settlement now. Originally, in addition to the light itself, it comprised three houses, several storage sheds and a workshop. Supplies were brought in on horseback from Petrolia, 11 miles away. In winter, washed out roads and high winds cut the outpost off for weeks at a time. A diesel generator supplied power for the light.

The light was originally requested by the Lighthouse Board in 1888 following a series of wrecks, and between then and first light in 1912, nine more ships were lost. One of these, the schooner Columbia, was wrecked in 1907 with the loss of 87 lives, giving impetus to funding construction of the light. Up to 30 Spanish galleons may have foundered on the rocky shore south of Cape Mendocino, the lost ships out of hundreds that made the four-to-six month voyage from the Philippines to New Spain (now Mexico) between 1565 and 1815. Every year, over a 250-year period, between two and four huge “Manila galleons” built of Philippine hardwood made four-to-six-month eastbound voyage from Manila to Acapulco, bringing cargoes of porcelain, ivory, silks, wax, chinaware and spices. The voyages only ceased when the Mexican war of Independence put a stop to the trade in 1815, six years before Mexico finally seceded from Spain after a long struggle.

The route, which took advantage of easterly winds and the North Pacific Drift Current at around 45 degrees north latitude, had been pioneered by the near-mythical Basque seafaring monk, Andrés de Urdaneta (1508-1568), and used Cape Mendocino (California’s westernmost point) as a navigation point. From there, the galleons followed the coastline down to Acapulco.

Which brings us to the Legend of King Peak. In the July 1963 issue of Western Folklore magazine, Humboldt county author Lynwood Carranco retold a story he’d heard from legendary Humboldt Times columnist Andrew Genzoli. Genzoli claimed to have heard the following when he was a youngster from Johnny Jack, a Mattole and Wiyot tribal member who lived at the mouth of the Mattole: A Spanish ship carrying a rich cargo of gold, gems and silk was wrecked on the Lost Coast south of the Mattole. The crew either drowned or were killed by local Native Americans, who recovered the cargo and stashed it in a cave below King Peak, tallest mountain on the Lost Coast. An earthquake subsequently sealed up the opening of the cave, and (you have to take my word on this) the loot is there to this day.

Does this tale, passed down through the years by Mattole tribal members, explain the disappearance of one of the 30 missing Manila-Acapulco galleons? Get out there, locate the cave, and we’ll find the truth!

I grew up in a Christian home. Going to church, praying before meals and bedtime, reading the Bible, and singing worship songs were as regular for me as oxygen. It’s all I had ever known. It was the water I drank and the air I breathed. Being homeschooled with a religious curriculum, and not being in a public school, made it where most of my friends were also Christians since I met them in Sunday School and church choir and Christian clubs. I was soaked in Christian culture, but partly the kind of Christian culture where I’m a horrible sinner and God is pretty disappointed in me and just waiting for me to mess up and catch me in that mess, like God was some cop hiding behind the bushes to catch me speeding and give me a significant consequence. 

When I began making friends outside the bubble I lived in, I was confronted with other perspectives but I was also afraid of them not knowing Jesus and going to hell when they died. I felt massive pressure to evangelize them so they would know the truth. I would regurgitate how God hates sin and sinners and God can’t look at sinners so God sent his beloved son, Jesus, to die in your place so you can go to heaven if you just believed in him and asked him into your heart and then you wouldn’t burn in hell for all eternity. I wasn’t just afraid for their salvation, I was also always afraid for my own salvation. Like, what if I wasn’t on fire for God enough, I would get spit out of God’s mouth because God was so grossed out by me. But then how could I determine if I wasn’t being lukewarm? I would wonder what being “on fire” looked like or felt like and how does a person maintain that without eventually burning up or burning out? It was exhausting, trying to prove my worth to God or convince God that I was worth God’s time and attention, like if I did enough good works then hopefully God would be pleased with me.

It was in my Christian high school I began to see inconsistencies. My friends were the ones called into the office, had detention, smoked pot, drank, cursed, and skated. I loved them desperately. But they didn’t fit the religious mold or conform to the religious standards, so they got kicked out. And sadly, these were the lessons many of us were taught about God. If you keep “sinning” or keep making “mistakes,” you’ll get spit out. Compassion was scarce and do-overs had clear limitations. 

I had to deconstruct. I had to allow everything to get burned off and stripped away. My soul was created to seek God and the religious mold I was given gave no space to seek God. The God I knew as wrathful, judging, and angry didn’t fit with the Jesus I was craving. In my seeking, dismantling, deconstructing of long-held beliefs, I found myself reinvigorated and alive to the possibility that God was more good, more kind, more forgiving, more relational than the religious construct I was not only given, but required to pass along. 

It took me years to untangle my body and mind away from the fears of hell and separation. Even still, those neuro-pathways formed in childhood created long ruts I find myself falling back into if not mindful—penal substitutionary atonement trips me up from time to time. I preached sermons under the metaphorical “covering” of my husband, unbeknownst to him, for years—this one was a hard dismantling for me.

I heard it said by someone that when he began to set his understanding of God on fire, the Holy Spirit came in with a soft wind that blew the ashes away and what was left was his body curled up in the fetal position around Christ. How frightening this experience can be, full of raw exposure and probable wounding. Many good Christian people in my life had a hard time understanding, or even wanting to understand. Instead of openness and curiosity over such vulnerability, there was fear—for my salvation and how I was leading others astray.

But I wasn’t afraid. The more I questioned, the more confident I became. Wasn’t it Jesus who said what use is it to gain the whole world yet forfeit your soul? My soul was safely held as everything else was stripped away. I began to experience the intimacy of God, the closeness of relationship in such exposure. I began to know that perfect love casts out fear, especially the fear of being kicked out or left behind. That with God, there is no fear, only deeply abiding love and acceptance and grace. It wasn’t my good behavior that drew Jesus to me. It was just me. God just loved me, regardless of behavior.

I found a community with other voices during this time. Deconstructing on the fringe of the Emergent movement helped me know I wasn’t alone. And co-pastoring a church built on the coattails of the Emergent movement was extremely helpful. I was surrounded by disenfranchised, religiously marginalized people who couldn’t quit Jesus but needed to quit church. 

There wasn’t a straight path towards deconstruction and certainly no handbooks for me. But there was curiosity and honesty and late night robust theological conversations around wine and Cheez-Its long after Life Group ended. There was understanding and push-back, arguments and laughter and sometimes I would sit back, look at each beloved face with awe and think, “I’m pretty sure Jesus is in this place, too.” And every misguided and protective doctrinal layer the Holy Spirit stripped away, less padding and insulation, the more I could feel how close God was—as close as my very breath. 

There are still times such uninsulated exposure scares me and I shrug a layer over what’s been stripped away, convinced I need it to feel safe. But even those layers can’t actually separate me from God. Nothing can. 

Maybe deconstructing one’s beliefs seems sacrilegious, but I’ve found deconstructing my Christian faith to be a holy and sacred act I come back to over and over again. Thanks be to God.

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Bethany Cseh is a pastor at Arcata United Methodist Church and Catalyst Church. 

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The Redwood Coast Kite Festival has taken over Eureka’s Halvorsen Park for a weekend of kite-flying fun! 

Kites of all shapes and sizes filled the clear blue skies above the waterfront this Saturday afternoon. The third annual event, a collaboration between Humboldt Kiters and the Ink People Center for the Arts, drew hundreds of people out for what proved to be a near-perfect day of kite flying.

“Everybody plays with kites when they’re kids, right? It’s just good fun,” Mark Ahrens, the festival’s coordinator, told the Outpost. “There’s something in it for everyone. There are people here who can do amazing things with kites, you know, aerial displays, duets, and choreography – stuff that is just phenomenal. It’s really an art.”

If you weren’t able to make it out today, don’t fret: Kiters will be back on Sunday from 10 a.m. to 5 p.m. A schedule of events can be found here.

Keep scrolling for more pictures of today’s festival!

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Petey Brucker, stalwart defender of the Salmon River and friend to many, passed away on April 22, 2024.

On this week’s show, we are joined by his daughter, Allegra Brucker, and friends, Larry Glass and Nat Pennington, to talk about the impact Petey had on the planet on their lives.

LINKS:

• Listen to Petey’s music.
• Petey’s obituary.

Stanley Millard “Deerslayer” Poletski, went home peacefully to our Lord Jesus Christ May 10, 2024, at his home surrounded by family in Cave Junction.

Stan was born July 27, 1954, in Eureka, to Connie and Chet Poletski. He grew up in Humboldt County and made many memories with his siblings and friends.

Stan joined the Navy in 1972, aboard the ship USS Leonard F Mason, and he served in Vietnam. He met the love of his life, Sheri Fuller, and the two were married after a short courtship on Valentine’s Day 1974. They had their only child, Rene, in 1979. Stan saw to it that Rene learned all sorts of things, from making meatballs, raising pigs, the do’s and don’ts of gardening, changing a tire, hunting and baiting her own hook. Stan wasn’t a fan of the city and strived to be in the country or “the sticks,” as he called it. He moved his wife and daughter to Kneeland in 1985 and they resided there to live the country life, growing big elaborate gardens with the best veggies and feeding the deer and birds. Stan always had great pride in his home and always had a beautiful yard and property.

Stan worked as a bus driver for Ridgewood Elementary, later at Simpson Pulp Mill and then the County of Humboldt. He put in a lot of effort and was well-liked by his coworkers. He made work fun while getting the job done. Oftentimes, his work crew scored off the elaborate lunches Sheri packed for him and he saw to it that there were potlucks from time to time. He played adult league softball and was known for hitting it out of the park. Stan went to Faith Center in Eureka and he made sure Rene was in attendance too. Stan was an excellent provider and protector. Everyone that knew Stan was aware of his mental and physical strength. Heaven forbid someone mess with his brothers or sisters.

Stan was an avid outdoorsman, known for his tenacity and perseverance. Whether it was private or public land Stan always filled his tags and maintained the name “Deerslayer.” Annual hunting trips to Idaho with his brothers, nephews, and great nephews brought him so much joy. He harvested some big bulls and big bucks in his time here with us, and he always filled the freezer. He loved all kinds of fishing and had his fair share of catching them. His biggest thrill was hooking a steelhead, and he did that more times than we can count. He was infamous for his over the top stories, and he had a contagious laugh that echoed. Everyone was drawn to Stan for his quick wit and humor. He was a natural at communicating with everyone, and he always took the underdog under his wing. He had a huge heart for those that struggled because he too knew what struggling felt like. Whenever life had tough moments, Stan knew God was there with him and never failed to share that with others.

When his daughter Rene had children, Abbigayle and Tanner became his world. Stan was often spotted pacing the sidelines of his grandson’s football games, hollering at thier basketball games, and sitting in the bleachers of his granddaughter’s volleyball games, and he never missed the opportunity to hear Abby sing in concert. He would travel great distances in the worst of weather to watch their out-of-town games. Of all of his roles, Grandpa was his obvious favorite. Stan was his own cheering section with the loudest support for his grandchildren. He also kept a few referees in line a time or two. He always took the time to make each memory extra special. He had a bigger than life personality, and we sure are going to miss him.

Stan is survived by his wife Sheri, daughter Rene Jolley, grandchildren Abby and Tanner, sister Linda Johnson, sister Eleanor Faulk, his brother Al and sister-in-law Donna, brother-in-law Dennis, brother Bob, brother-in-law Harold, and his baby brother Jimmy and sister-in-law Sheila. He also has an abundance of nieces and nephews, all of whom have brought their ownunique joy to his life. Brother-in-law Gary Fuller and life long friend Rick Seely were Stan’s lifelong friends and they remained close throughout his life. Pastor and friend Mark McLean of Cave Junction became one of Stan’s close friends and hunting buddies as well.

He is preceded in death by parents, Connie and Chet, big brother Harry and sister in-law Rosemary, sister Joan Dahl, sister Helen Mills, and brother David Poletski.

Family and friends are invited to the celebration of life, which will be held on Wednesday, June 5, at 11 a.m. at Faith Center Foursquare Church, 1032 Bay Street, Eureka. Stan will be interred at Bayview.

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