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• After Meeting With Local Tribes, Congressman Huffman Doubles Down on Offshore Wind

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Press release from the office of Rep. Jared Huffman:

U.S. Representative Jared Huffman (CA-02) sent an urgent letter to U.S. Bureau of Ocean Energy Management (BOEM) Director Elizabeth Klein requesting the agency place a senior-level official in California to oversee tribal participation in offshore wind development and be responsive to tribal needs.

Representative Huffman’s letter follows a recent visit with Secretary of the Interior Deborah Haaland to Humboldt, California – the site of the new offshore wind project – where they engaged with tribal leaders directly to hear concerns.

“Tribes in my California congressional district are witnessing the advancement of a significant new clean energy industry in offshore wind, which has both the promise of confronting climate change and the potential to impact native people and their lands and cultures. Most tribal nations have limited capacity to participate in offshore wind development in its early stages and have serious concerns about the deployment of the technology,” Huffman said in his letter.

“I call on BOEM again to expeditiously place an official on the ground in California to oversee tribal participation in offshore wind development. This is vital to the offshore wind effort and is responsive to the federal government’s trust obligations to tribes,” Huffman said.

As part of his advocacy for tribes, Rep. Huffman recently introduced a bill to increase public safety for tribal citizens by promoting cooperation and information sharing between tribal, state, and local law enforcement agencies.

To view a full copy of the letter, click here.

Hear, hear! Please witness this fruitful display of young literary accomplishment. 

In a celebration Saturday, 49 local youth were awarded for their commendable submissions to the Redwood Writing Contest, a local competition for 3-12th graders. Their works of poetry, short story and nonfiction have been anthologized in a book illustrated by Cal Poly Humboldt student Lauren House and published by the Press at Cal Poly Humboldt. The anthology is available for purchase on Amazon for the humble price of $3.83, and a sneak peak of what’s in there is at the bottom of this post. 

The anthology, illustrated by Lauren House

Some of these local awardees also entered their work in a state-wide writing contest hosted by the California Association of Teachers of English (CATE). Two of them won: Fuente Nueva student Ian Sowerwine for the poem “Cave Music” and Arcata High student Kona Bettenhausen for the short story “The Perfect Clearing.” We’ve attached them below for you to check out!

The Redwood Writing Contest is a collaborative effort. It’s organized by the Redwood Writing Project, a Cal Poly Humboldt based non-profit that offers free professional development on teaching writing to local K-12 teachers and hosts youth writing programs. This year, the Redwood Council of Teachers of English helped judge the entries, and the organization Humboldt Sponsors bought every winner a copy of the anthology.

For the 2024 contest, students responded to the prompt: “Hidden Gems: write about a moment when a person, an experience, or the world revealed something unexpected to you. What was the impact of that revelation?” The contest received a total of 194 submissions – more entries than ever before, Redwood Writing Project Director Nicolette Amann told the Outpost. 

That said, the contest has inspired warming milestones in years past as well. Impressed by the 2023 contest entries of Hoopa Elementary students, 23rd Poet Laureate of the United States Joy Harjo visited the school [via zoom] to host a writers workshop last fall last spring. Harjo created and judged and selected 4th grade student Avery Benson as the winner.  Then, two Hoopa Elementary 2023 CATE winners, 4th grader Avery Benson and 7th grader Carmen Ferris, were invited by the organization Turnaround Arts California to present their poems in Washington D.C. at the Kennedy Center earlier this year. 

Anyway, attached below are a few of these pieces for your reading pleasure. Enjoy!

[We’ve updated this story following feedback from a former Hoopa Elementary teacher.]

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Cave Music
By Ian Sowerwine, 2024

The always noise:
dripping water
from the low cave ceiling
jewels glittering from
below the dark water
millions of tiny animals
with their own tiny noises
oddly peaceful and quiet
but still
the always noise:
Cave Music.

The Night of the Acorn Festival
By Avery Benson, 2023

My Dad had to go to work
far away

the night of the Acorn Festival
the first time my sister and I were going
to wear traditional clothing

The maple bark skirt scratched my legs
Maggie gave me a cap woven of white bear grass
and black maidenhair fern
to wear on my head

The deer hide belt hung heavy around my waist
heavy olivessa, abalone and clam shells
heavy pine nuts and deer hooves

The long necklaces
made of dentalia and glass beads
made a “tic-tic” sound
swaying back and forth as I walked

I felt a special part of my culture

I missed my Dad

the night of the Acorn Festival

I Come From A Place Called Hoopa
By Carmen Ferris, 2023

I come from a place called Hoopa
My home is on the Rez        
             where I go to the store
             and people say, “You are beautiful….
             just like your mother.”
I carry the swallowtail necklace my grandfather made for me
             on a silver chain around my neck
I offer the language of my people
             He:yung
             I know some words
             not all
             that’s better than none at all

I come from a place called Hoopa

I come from the bald eagle flying in the air
My home is with the black bear eating a steelhead
             by the river
I carry a salmon on the end of my fishing pole
I offer to care for my people

I come from a place called Hoopa

If I were not Native who would I be?

How could I ever try to change
and be someone else but me
how could I ever want to change
the color of my skin or
where I come from

how could someone not want
to be Native

like me

The Perfect Clearing
A short story by Kona Bettenhausen, 2024

Part I: The Discovery

I was 8 years old when we discovered the clearing. My brother, Mark, was 6. Our house was in a neat little neighborhood enclosed by a dense wood, and Crawford Elementary School was about half a mile away. To get there we traversed the forest via a pedestrian path before entering the district of grocery stores, restaurants, gas stations, and the constant hum of traffic.

In the early winter mornings, the forest was too dark and snowy. On those days we put on our gloves and wool coats and took the far route to school. Mark would clutch my hand as we crossed snowy intersections. In summer we stayed out late with our playmates, exploring the forest. One bright afternoon in May, my brother and I were out playing in the woods near our house.

“What’s that?” I asked.

My brother was holding something in his fist. His palm unfolded to reveal a small yellow-painted rock.

“Just a rock,” he said.

“Where’d you find it?” I asked. I grabbed it from his hand and examined its chalky surface.

“It was in Gracie’s garden!” He pawed at my hand to get it back, but I cranked back my arm and hurled it towards the canopy.

“Hey!” Mark yelled, and we both watched it arc through the tree branches and land in the distant underbrush with a clash. Mark took off toward the noise, leaping over ferns and logs and I ran after him.

“Slow down, you’ll get hurt!” I called out, but by then Mark had already stopped and was now surveying the forest floor. He stomped over to the base of a large stump and picked up the golden object. He held it in the air like a trophy.

“That was too easy,” Mark announced. He wheeled back his arm and chucked the rock as hard as he could. Thus, a game started, in which each of us tried to throw it the farthest without losing it for good. The bright object was never hard to find amongst the brown-and-green terrain. 

As we weaved through the forest, we ventured farther from our known world. The trees became more grand and vibrant, and the grass became tall. Up ahead, it seemed as though there was a wall of trees. Their branches tangled with each other and dense hedges surrounded their trunks. When it was my turn to throw the yellow stone, I catapulted it towards the thicket. Mark and I watched it disappear through a gap in the trees.

“You lost it!” he cried. We scampered over to the thicket and searched for the object, crawling under the massive hedges and dirtying our hair. Eventually, I found a tunnel through the hedge where I could see an empty clearing.

“Mark, come over here!” I saw the branches rustle and bend as Mark squirmed his way through the brush. As we pushed away the final leafy branches it felt like we had entered a portal. Our rock was lying in the center of a large dusty bowl, bordered by a lush, grassy creek. Large trees of all different kinds surrounded the clearing. Willows, cherry trees, beautiful blooming magnolias, and the tall oaks formed a wall around the entire place. Their branches seemed to arch over the clearing like a majestic gazebo of life. This was the most beautiful place I had ever seen in my life.

For the next two months, I would visit the clearing almost every day. After school, my friends and I would grab a soccer ball or some snacks and play in the clearing until our shadows stretched out across the dusty floor. Mark and his buddies would always tag along. My friends and I were older, so we tended to pick on them, claiming our territory and blocking it off from theirs. You needed the secret password to enter. Fallen branches were our swords. Old stumps were our fortresses.

Occasionally we would find garbage in the clearing. One time we uncovered an empty beer bottle filled with dirt. After emptying it, we used it as an instrument to sound the alarm for imaginary intruders. Other times, we used it to play keep-away or kick-the-can. Sometimes we just lay in the sunlight, in that grassy patch near the brook. No matter what happened, we always left the clearing with smiles on our faces.

Our fun was quickly extinguished when my father received a job offer in Boise, Idaho. Our family moved out within a month. I vividly remember our last visit to the clearing. The sun was already beyond the treetops. The clouds glowed above with the fading light of day. We took a final look around the clearing, before trudging back home. 

Part II: The Return

I had a dream last night where I was in the clearing. I was there with Travis, Zeke, April, and more of my friends from high school. There was some kind of controversy but I can’t remember. An oak tree here, some bushes there, an old stump we used to climb in—fragments of an ancient memory.

For the last two days, Mark and I have been visiting our Aunt Beth who resides in Crawford. I haven’t been here since we moved away almost 10 years ago. I’ve gone through middle school and high school without even thinking about this place. Yet as soon as I returned, those memories that had been locked away were restored.

My family and I are sitting in a cramped booth at Felix’s Diner. The restaurant is much older than me, but we seldom went out to eat during my childhood. This space is filled with clamor. Babies are crying, silverware is clanking, and the jukebox is playing a broken record. I’m beginning to realize why we never came here. I nudge my brother, Mark. 

“Look at them,” I murmur, nodding toward the family adjacent to us. Both parents have their heads bent down over their phones. I can see the screen’s colors reflecting off their eyes and faces. Mark leans his head out of the booth a little bit, and then quickly pulls it back in and puts his mouth to my ear.

“He’s watching TikTok,” Mark whispers. The couple’s child seems playful. She paws at the man’s arm, and we watch him produce an iPad from the bag beneath his chair. The child takes the iPad, and the family returns to their isolated state.

“It’s a good thing we didn’t raise them like that,” our mother says to Aunt Beth.

“Mark, you wanna go for a walk?” I ask.

“Sure. We’ll be right back, Mom.”

A bell jingles as I push open the glass door of the restaurant. Mark and I walk across the parking lot.

“Do you remember that spot we used to go to? In the forest?” I ask.

“Oh yeah, of course I do. Are we going there?”

“I just wanna see if it’s still there.”

We cross a barren road and set foot into the lush wilderness. The public forest has narrowed, due to the expansion of suburbia. The once-giant trees have shrunk down to saplings. I can see through the forest to an apartment complex on the other side. We follow the road down to a familiar cluster of madrones. The clearing should be in the center of this grove.

Mark and I walk through a gap in the wall of trees surrounding the clearing, and all of a sudden, we are children again. I remember my elementary school friends just as they were when I left them. Mark is 6 years old. He has a large grin on his face. His hands are muddied and his hair is tangled.

“Wow, this is crazy,” Mark exclaims, “it’s so much smaller than I remember.”

“Yeah I know, we were like this tall,” I say, raising my hand to my torso.

Mark starts strolling around the circumference of the clearing, looking at the trees and the changes to the landscape. I walk to the grassy area by the stream, remembering our old adventures here. Something clear and shiny catches a ray of sunlight through the grass.

We always knew that other people visited our clearing. There would sometimes be trash lying around, or abandoned clothing. I glance over at my brother. He is mature now, but I know he still has a pure memory of this place. I kick some dirt over the twisted latex condom lying on the ground. This is our safe space, and Mark should always know that.

Homelessness gets top billing in a measure likely to make it onto your November ballot. Whether the measure has anything to do with homelessness is debatable.

The initiative proponents are calling the “Homelessness, Drug Addiction, and Theft Reduction Act” would increase penalties for some drug and theft crimes, by rolling back Proposition 47 — the criminal justice changes California voters passed a decade ago. It also would force some people arrested three or more times for drug crimes into treatment.

But where does homelessness factor into this tough-on-crime measure? The initiative includes no money for housing, shelter or treatment beds — leading some experts to question how it would help get California’s more than 181,000 unhoused residents off the street in a state where recent research shows loss of income is the leading cause of homelessness. Nor does the measure allocate or create new funding sources to pay cities or counties to enforce it.

For Yolo County District Attorney Jeff Reisig, who helped author the proposed ballot measure, the philosophy is simple: The measure would slash the homeless population by pushing those struggling with drug addiction into treatment.

“The big part of this, which is the key to the program, is it’s going to be compelled,” Reisig said. “People are going to have to go through the program or accept the consequences.”

But according to Elliott Currie, a professor of criminology, law and society at the University of California Irvine, the measure is based on a false assumption.

“The theory is that people are homeless because we’ve been too lenient with drug addiction,” Currie said. “I think I can safely say that I don’t see one shred of serious evidence that that’s what’s going on.”

Did Prop. 47 increase homelessness in California?

The proposed ballot measure targets Prop. 47, which, when passed by voters in 2014, reduced certain theft and drug crimes from felonies to misdemeanors. In some circles, Prop. 47 now is being blamed for a perceived increase in crime – and a fierce debate is raging over whether, and how, to change it.

Backers of the measure, which is likely to qualify for the ballot after it recently submitted more than 900,000 signatures (about 547,000 valid ones are required), also blame Prop. 47 for California’s dire homelessness crisis.

In the decade that Prop. 47 has been in effect, homelessness in California has grown by more than half — and backers of the proposed ballot measure say the two are “directly connected.” They argue by watering down the legal consequences for drug use, Prop. 47 removed the incentives for homeless Californians to participate in mental health and drug treatment, and as a result, fewer are. Because of that, they argue, more people are living on the streets.

“One of the primary root causes of homelessness is serious addiction, which is debilitating and results in people not being able to function or even hold a job,” Reisig said in an interview with CalMatters.

It’s true that participation in drug courts dropped throughout the state in the wake of Prop. 47. In San Diego County, for example, more than 650 people went through drug court in the year before Prop. 47 passed. By 2021, it was down to just 255.

As evidence Prop. 47 is tied to homelessness, backers of the measure point to states with stronger drug laws and smaller homeless populations. Illinois, for example, has a homeless rate about five times less than California’s.

But there are a lot of other factors — especially housing costs — contributing to the state’s homelessness crisis. Fair market rent for a two-bedroom in Chicago is just $1,714 – nearly half the going rate in San Francisco. The San Francisco area rate increased 72% since Prop. 47 passed, hitting $3,359 this year, according to the U.S. Department of Housing and Urban Development.

The number one reason Californians end up homeless is a loss of income — not drug use, according to a UC San Francisco study

For some experts who study crime and homelessness, the ballot measure is baffling.

“I’m not aware of any data that shows a connection between Prop. 47 and homelessness,” said Charis Kubrin, a professor of criminology at UC Irvine. “So it’s a bit of a puzzle to me why they’re together like that.”

Blaming the state’s spike in homelessness on Prop. 47 is “preposterous,” said Sharon Rapport, director of California state policy for the Corporation for Supportive Housing. “All of the changes that the (ballot measure) is proposing have nothing, nothing whatsoever, to do with homelessness.”

The organization hasn’t even taken an official position on the measure, because, Rapport said, it’s not related to homelessness.

The number one reason Californians end up homeless is a loss of income — not drug use, according to a UC San Francisco study that provides the most comprehensive look yet at the state’s homelessness crisis. And in the six months before becoming homeless, the people surveyed were making a median income of just $960 a month.

That doesn’t mean drug use has nothing to do with homelessness. Nearly a third of people surveyed reported using methamphetamines three times a week, while 11% used non-prescribed opioids. Other studies have had varying results: a 2022 Stanford Institute for Economic Policy Research study, which cited research from multiple surveys across several states, showed 43% to 88% of the homeless population struggled with drug abuse.

Drug and alcohol overdoses are also the leading cause of death for homeless people nationwide, according to a February study examining mortality rates among unhoused people between 2011 and 2020.

But it’s clear not everyone on the streets has an addiction. Therefore, the proposed ballot measure would leave out a large chunk of the state’s homeless population.

If the measure helps even a third of California’s 181,000 unhoused residents — that’s a huge number, Reisig said.

“I’ll take that,” he said. “I’ll take that number to try and get those people well, and to get them reintegrated, and to keep them out of jail and prison, and keep them from dying on the street of overdose or murder.”

This measure might help some people get sober, said Benjamin Henwood, director of the USC Center for Homelessness, Housing and Health Equity Research. But for many people, that won’t be enough to end their homelessness, he said. While being sober might make someone more likely to get a job, it won’t make housing any less expensive.

“The question is: Once treatment is up, where do they go?” he said.

Under this measure, the answer to that question will depend on each individual county and how much, if any, housing they make available for people coming out of treatment.

How would the Homelessness, Drug Addiction, and Theft Reduction Act work?

If the proposed ballot measure is approved by voters, certain repeat drug offenses could be prosecuted as a “treatment-mandated felony.” That means the third time someone is arrested for a drug offense, they could be given a choice between jail or mandatory addiction and mental health treatment.

The measure says people participating in mandatory treatment also would be offered “shelter, job training, and other services designed to break the cycle of addiction and homelessness.” But it doesn’t say how any of that would be paid for. It would be up to counties to decide whether to offer shelter and other services, and how to fund them, Reisig said.

“That will have to be deployed in each county to the extent they can do it,” he said.

The measure also doesn’t specify how the mandatory drug and mental health treatment would be funded.

But without guaranteeing those housing services, the measure could actually worsen homelessness, Currie said. There’s already a robust jail-to-homelessness pipeline in California: 43% of those surveyed in the UCSF study were in jail or prison, or on probation or parole, in the six months before they became homeless.

“Anybody who says you’ve got to solve the problem by putting more people behind bars, but you then don’t say anything about how you’re going to help them re-enter when they come out — I think that’s pretty bogus,” Currie said.

The measure also doesn’t specify how the mandatory drug and mental health treatment would be funded.

Resources for treatment already are stretched thin in California. In a 2022 survey by the state’s Department of Health Care Services, 70% of California counties reported “urgently” needing more residential addiction treatment, while nearly 40% didn’t have any residential facilities at all.

In addition to providing no new funding, the proposed ballot measure could actually end up reducing funds for the very programs it’s trying to bolster, according to a report from the independent Legislative Analyst’s Office. That’s because Prop. 47 saved the state money in criminal justice costs by diverting people away from prison and jail. Those savings are earmarked for projects that provide mental health and substance use treatment (nearly $104 million was awarded between 2017 and 2020, and another $96 million between 2019 and 2023).

By gutting Prop. 47 and funneling more people into the state’s jails and prisons, the Legislative Analyst estimates the proposed ballot measure would eat away at those savings and increase criminal justice costs by as much as tens of millions of dollars per year. That could mean less money for mental health services and addiction treatment.

Reisig dismissed that worry, saying, at least in Yolo County, where he is district attorney, Prop. 47 savings haven’t made much difference. “There’s literally nothing that I fear losing through this program,” he said.

There is some new money available from other pots. In March, California voters approved a $6.4 billion bond to pay for 6,800 beds in facilities treating mental illness and addiction, and as many as 4,350 housing units for people who need those services. The state is set to start awarding that money in the spring and summer of 2025, Newsom said this month.

But at the same time, to plug a yawning budget deficit, Newsom has proposed cutting funds from the Behavioral Health Bridge Housing Program, which provides beds for people who need mental health and addiction services.

Currie said he is “skeptical” of the lack of funding mechanisms for treatment programs and other services to ensure homeless people stay off the streets post-treatment. That, he said, could burden counties that already struggle with insufficient funding for such services — one in five homeless people surveyed by UCSF researchers said they sought substance abuse treatment but failed to get it.

“You can’t just say, ‘Ok, you counties. Since you are swimming in so much money after all … we are going to mandate drug treatment for some people on top of the existing number of clients,’” Currie said.

The politics of homelessness

Some political strategists say the measure’s tie to homelessness represents the campaign’s attempt to capitalize on public concern about the problem. Homelessness is a top issue on California voters’ minds, according to a February 2024 statewide survey by the Public Policy Institute of California.

“This notion somehow that it addresses homelessness is deceptive and downright farcical,” said Garry South, a longtime Democratic consultant who has worked on ballot measures for more than 20 years.

Homelessness is ultimately due to a lack of housing, he argued, and measures aiming to address the problem without providing housing are “disingenuous.”

“You’ve heard the old saying ‘Putting lipstick on a pig,’” South said. “I’m not saying that this measure is a pig, but what I’m saying is it’s a standard procedure … to try to gussy it up with some reference or some provision that really strikes a responsive chord with voters when that’s not really what the initiative is about.”

If the measure appears before voters in November, “homelessness” won’t be in the title they see on their ballots. The official title of the measure, chosen by the state attorney general, is: “Allows felony charges and increases sentences for certain drug and theft crimes.”

A lot of thought, politics, and sometimes even litigation goes into drafting the title and summary of a ballot measure. While proponents of a proposition want to entice voters with their description, it’s ultimately the state attorney general’s job to make sure the language is fair.

Even without mentioning homelessness, South said the ballot measure could still “pass on its own merits.” He, for one, would likely vote for it as a way to decrease crime.

Drugs and homelessness

Tom Wolf, who has experienced both homelessness and addiction first hand in San Francisco, said the proposed ballot measure has great potential to help people who were like him.

An opioid addiction cost Wolf his job and his home, and landed him on the streets of San Francisco’s Tenderloin neighborhood in 2018. He said he worked as a “holder” for nearby drug dealers, safeguarding their stash of narcotics in case they were busted by the police. Sometimes he stole razor blades from a nearby Target and sold them for money to buy heroin.

Wolf says he was arrested on drug charges five times within three months, and was released back to the street each time. The sixth time he was arrested, the judge let him sit in jail for three months, where he got sober. Wolf finally called his brother, who said he would bail him out if Wolf went to drug treatment. Wolf agreed. He says that if he had been given the choice between jail and treatment the last time he was picked up, he would have chosen treatment.

In June, Wolf will have six years sober. He’s now an advocate for drug policy reform, and works as director of West Coast initiatives for the Foundation for Drug Policy Solutions.

“That accountability piece was the key to me getting off the street,” he said, “getting sober, becoming willing to accept an opportunity to go to treatment and give recovery an honest try.”

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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.

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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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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