HUMBOLDT TODAY: California’s strategy to combat homelessness has been largely unsuccessful despite billions invested, the Arcata City Council gets a li’l raise, plus self-driving Teslas are being recalled. Those stories and more in today’s newscast with John Kennedy O’Connor.

FURTHER READING: 

• Here’s Why KHSU Has Been Off the Air for the Past Week
• Cal Poly Humboldt is Bringing Back LUMBERJACK DAYS, but it Won’t Be Like the Old Lumberjack Days
• Local Woman Says Her Sister Forged Her Signature and Stole the Pet Store They Opened Together
• California Homelessness: Where Are the State’s Billions Going? Here’s the New, Best Answer

HUMBOLDT TODAY can be viewed on LoCO’s homepage each night starting at 6 p.m. Want to LISTEN to HUMBOLDT TODAY? Subscribe to the podcast version here.

###

When you think about an Irish pub, you might think of corned beef and cabbage, fish and chips, whiskey and Guinness. But do you think of drag shows?! Probably not.

Though you might not typically expect a drag show along with your fried food and beer, on the second Saturday of every month Gallagher’s Irish Pub on Highway 101 in Eureka transforms into a drag club where some of Humboldt’s most talented performers lip sync, death drop and vogue the house down in an impressive use of the tiny pub space.

Skyler Celeste, better known by his stage name Ultra Payne, has helped organize a monthly drag revue at Gallagher’s called Omega Drag, which features a regular cast of performers that he considers the “best of the best here in Humboldt County.” Local drag artists Komboujia, Gliterous Cliterous, Thrash and Recycling, Cocky Muffington, Felix Flex and, of course, Ultra Payne herself, hold regular spots at the show. Each month also features one special guest performer, which at the most recent show — Valentine’s GAY, on Feb. 11 — was drag and burlesque artist Baby Fontaine.

Felix Flex shows the crowd some V-day love

“I’m doing it this way because ever since COVID kind of slowed down and restrictions started lifting, drag exploded in popularity,” Celeste told the Outpost in a recent interview. “We’re getting all kinds of new shows here in Humboldt. So I feel like there’s enough space now for drag that people who are just starting out can get their start at other shows, and then we can still have shows with a set list of performers without anybody feeling excluded.”

And Celeste is definitely right. If you’ve been paying much attention to local drag, you may have noticed that Humboldt is experiencing an outpouring of drag, especially over the last year. If you grew up here, like Celeste did, you know that Humboldt used to have virtually no drag shows. Now, in addition to Omega Drag at Gallagher’s, regular drag shows take place at Septentrio Winery, Outer Space, Kiki Planet Clothing Store, Synapsis, and more are being added all the time. This month Greene Lily will host its first drag brunch and Ferndale Repertory Theatre is hosting a drag revue at the end of February.

Unlike in a big city where there are lots of gay bars and nightclubs, rural Humboldt doesn’t have a lot of venues that traditionally hold drag shows. So, the performers here have to be creative, working with local business owners to find spaces to showcase their art.

“It’s really funny,” Celeste told the Outpost. “Whenever I go elsewhere and perform, [the performers] ask, ‘where do you perform in Humboldt?’ And I’m like, ‘a winery, an Irish pub, a boutique shop, an aerial silks studio.”

Celeste and the other drag performers started working with Gallagher’s about four months ago, when the manager (who is very queer, Celeste said) expressed an interest in hosting a drag show at the pub. Celeste said that the Gallagher’s owner was totally on board and has been very supportive of the performers using the space.

This recent swell in local drag enthusiasm differs greatly from how things were when Celeste was first started doing drag. Celeste, who is 22 years old, grew up in Eureka and was often bullied in school for being queer. “It was rough,” Celeste said. “I never really had the space or opportunity within my community to be doing what I was doing. But also at the same time, I didn’t care. And I kind of paved my own path.”

Seeing the increase in queer representation in Humboldt is elating, Celeste said, not only because it means more people come to his shows, but also because it means that local folks, especially young people, feel more comfortable expressing their sexual orientation and gender identities.

In addition to the use of unconventional venues for shows, something special about Humboldt drag is the multitude of gender identities represented within the performances. Though drag has existed in many forms for many years, the biggest spotlight has traditionally been given to drag queens – most often gay men adopting exaggerated female styles and personas. In recent years there has been growing representation of female or non-binary performers adopting male personas, known as drag kings. Today’s drag, both locally and around the world, is embracing the full spectrum of gender identities, with trans, non-binary, gender fluid, genderqueer and non-gender conforming performers stepping into the limelight. For these folks, drag is not always about expressing a male or female persona. Sometimes they do both. Sometimes they do neither.

“Gender fuckery” is one term for it, said local performance artist Roux Kratt, who does drag under the stage name Cocky Muffington. On stage, Kratt often leans toward a masculine character, but as a non-binary person, they also sometimes perform highly feminine characters.

Kratt moved to Humboldt from Southern California about six years ago and started doing drag in late 2019, not long before COVID hit. When venues shut down because of the pandemic, Kratt moved their drag to an online platform, hosting virtual shows for Club Triangle. Now that restrictions have been lifted and venues are again open, Kratt is thrilled to see drag shows on the rise in Humboldt.

Like many other drag performers, Kratt utilizes their drag experience to help other budding performers get their start. Kratt has adopted many “drag kids” – young and/or inexperienced folks who Kratt teaches the art form, helping them learn how to do stage makeup, create costumes and develop their on-stage persona. Oftentimes youth who are not accepted by their biological families, will also look to their “drag parent” for support and encouragement in expressing themselves.

“It’s really important to me because it’s something that I wish I had when I was a kid,” Kratt told the Outpost, with tears welling up in their eyes. “Because I wasn’t allowed to be who I am.”

Of course, with the rise in drag performance in Humboldt there has also been a rise in pushback, with some groups and individuals publicly condemning local drag shows, especially all-ages shows. One Ferndale pastor’s attack on local drag, and subsequent threatening speech posted on social media, led to the cancellation of an all-ages fundraiser drag show that was scheduled at the Old Steeple. And another all-ages drag event at the Jefferson Community Center was disrupted by protesters who harassed and threatened the performers.

Hatred and violence directed at drag shows has become increasingly common across the country, and conservative media outlets and politicians have been making unfounded claims that these shows serve as an opportunity for sexual predators to “groom” children. Especially after last year’s shooting at Club Q in Colorado Springs, Colo. – which left five people dead and at least 17 injured – there is definitely an undercurrent of fear in the drag community.

“From seeing everything that’s happened elsewhere, I’m terrified of doing drag,” Celeste told the Outpost. “I still love it. I’m still going to do it. But to know that what I love could possibly be the end of me at any time – it is terrifying. It’s the darkest feeling in the world. Because drag has saved me from so much emotionally.”

Both Kratt and Celeste said that it shocks and saddens them to hear people accuse drag performers of “grooming” children, especially when the goal of holding all-ages drag shows is to provide LGBTQ+ youth with a safe space, and they view themselves as mentors of many of the young performers.

“When [protesters] disturb our shows, they are disturbing our family time,” Kratt told the Outpost. “Because that’s what it is when we’re having these all ages drag shows. It is our queer family. It is a safe space for trans kids.”

Celeste and Kratt also wanted to be clear that at the all ages drag shows, the performances are kept pretty tame. They are very different from the 21 and up shows, like the one at Gallagher’s, where the content might be more raunchy. Sometimes drag, like many types of entertainment, is sexual. “But there isn’t anything inherently sexual about drag,” Kratt said. “Drag is the exploration of gender.”

But despite the threats they face, these drag performers say they will never stop doing what they do.

“Nothing besides death will stop me from doing drag,” Kratt said. “These shows are really important and a lot of performers depend on it for their well being and for their livelihood. I’m thankful to all the other performers – kings, queens and things – that come out and put out this art. Because it really is for all of us, whether you’re in the audience or on the stage.”

The Omega Drag show takes place at Gallagher’s Irish Pub – 1604 4th St, Eureka – on the second Saturday of every month at 9 p.m. This show is 21+. So it might get wild. Get into it.

Short answer? “Technical problems.”

We called up Phil Wilke, general manager of both KHSU and North State Public Radio, both of which are now operated by Sacramento-based Capital Public Radio. He explained in a bit more detail.

“We think it is a failure of a piece of equipment at the main transmitter site,” he said, referring to one of the big radio towers atop Barry Ridge near Kneeland.

This failure took down KHSU’s over-the-air network last Thursday, though the online stream remains up and running. 

“We have ordered the parts and I believe we have those in our possession,” Wilke said in a phone interview Tuesday afternoon. “We have an engineer that should be arriving in Arcata tomorrow. His job is to go to the transmitter site and an additional site in McKinleyville for the Radio Bilingüe tower, which is also out.”

In another statement posted to social media Wilke said, “Unfortunately, we have two issues simultaneously. A clock issue that is firing local files 5-15 seconds before they are supposed to, talking over the top of national shows, and now an equipment failure that has taken the signal completely off air.”

When can listeners expect the station to return to the airwaves?

“I’ve learned when it comes to engineering not to put too optimistic a timeline on it,” Wilke said, adding, “We have what we think we need to fix it.”

He said that whenever he speaks with listeners about the matter he makes a point to thank them for their patience and “ask them to stick with us.”

# # #

PREVIOUSLY: KHSU Exploring Partnership With Capital Public Radio

How can you have Lumberjack Days without chainsaws, 100 kegs of Henry Weinhard’s and mass vomiting? We’re going to find out!

This morning Cal Poly Humboldt’s Gutswurrak Student Activities Center announced that the legendary Humboldt State bacchanalia is returning to campus this April in a slightly different form. It’ll be two weeks of stuff going on in the quad, including – on most days – rockin’ bands.

What else we got going on besides those rockin’ bands, the schedule for which you can find below? Well, Gutswurrak associate director Michael Moore tells the Outpost that the timbersports are out for this year – no log-rolling, no axes, no buck saws, certainly no chainsaws – but there will be several “make and take” activities for students to participate in. He mentioned, particularly: clay, paint, “slime” and “plant-a-plant.” Fun fun fun!

The general public is welcome to come up to campus and enjoy the bands, but the make-and-take activities are for students only, please. You are an adult; you can play with clay at home whenever you like.

In future years, Moore said, they’re looking to evolve New Lumberjack Days into something more like – though not exactly like, of course — the Lumberjack Days of antiquity. He mentioned that they’re thinking of a more concentrated event, over a weekend or something, and they’ve reached out to the university’s Logging Club to bring back some of that timber-feller flavor. He even mentioned that “adult beverages” could be back on the table!

Until then, check out that band schedule below! Maybe you want to wander up and reflect on time’s passage.

###

GA-20
Chicago blues
Monday April 17, 2023
Noon

Gabe Lee
Nashville heartache
Tuesday April 18, 2023
Noon

La Doña
Mission District nuevo chicanismo
Wednesday April 19, 2023
Noon

The Original Wailers
No introduction required
Friday April 21, 2023
Noon

L.A. Witch
Lipstick City garage rock
Tuesday April 25, 2023
Noon

Guapdad 4000
The future of hip hop
 Friday April 28, 2023
Noon

Leah Jimenez always dreamed of working with animals.

“I’ve grown up with dogs, cats, horses — I have always been an animal lover,” she said in a recent phone interview. A decade ago, Jimenez endeavored to make her dream come true, opening a pet store in McKinleyville with her younger sister, Jennifer Wrask, and two others: Jimenez’s then-husband and Wrask’s then-boyfriend. 

Tucked behind a CVS Pharmacy, Northern California Pet Supply and Grooming, or NorCal Pet for short, occupies two storefronts in a nondescript commercial development that sits a block and a half off the main drag of Central Avenue. 

“We kind of felt like there was a big need out in McKinleyville,” Jimenez said. “There was nothing like it out there.” 

The new proprietors catered to smaller animals in particular and stocked high-quality food. They also founded an animal rescue operation, saving dogs from high-kill shelters in Southern California and working with other rescuers to transport them up to Humboldt County. Local shelters tend to see a lot of larger dogs — pitbulls, shepherds, lanky mutts — so NorCal Pet focused on the smaller breeds.

“We had a lot of success rescuing the littles,” Jimenez said. “And then a few years later [the adopters] come back to visit you in the store. It’s a great experience.”

But after a few years, things started going sideways. Jimenez said her sister’s boyfriend was a bad business partner who eventually skipped town, but not before allegedly taking “what he felt he deserved,” including computers, supplies and about 75 percent of the store’s inventory. In 2016, Jimenez’s husband, former College of the Redwoods football star and Green Bay Packer James Lee, died of complications from diabetes. Jimenez and Wrask formed a business partnership the following November, becoming the sole owners of NorCal Pet. 

The partnership didn’t last. Last year, Jimenez filed a lawsuit against Wrask in Humboldt County Superior Court, accusing her sister of embezzling hundreds of thousands of dollars from the pet store and of forging Jimenez’s signature in order to dissolve their partnership and cut her out of the business entirely. She’s seeking $950,000 in damages, plus interest and attorney fees. She’s also seeking to have Wrask removed from any role in the operation or management of NorCal Pet.  

Jimenez also filed a criminal complaint, and the Humboldt County District Attorney’s Office has charged Wrask with two felonies: filing a forged document and grand theft embezzlement. 

She wishes the partnership hadn’t come to this. “It’s a really crappy thing to have to take your sister to court,” Jimenez said. “It’s definitely not where I thought things would be, but at the same time I worked really hard for that store. I need to get back what’s mine or get back what I deserve out of it.”

Each of the two storefronts has its own sign affixed to the roof out front, one reading “Nor Cal Pet” and the other “Northern California Pet Supply & Grooming.” The storefront windows display advertisements for various brands of pet food — Nulo, PureVita, Acana. 

During a recent visit, a pair of dry-erase boards were propped up outside one of the two entrance doors. On one, photos of adoptable cats and kittens had been taped above nametags with day-glow ink on black construction paper. The other advertised feeder mice, crickets and cockroaches (42 cents apiece for small ones, 52 cents for big ones). 

Inside the shelves were well stocked with chew toys, bags of food, supplements and more. There were three young women working behind the counter. When asked if Jennifer Wrask was around one said that she “barely comes in.” 

“It’s kind of random,” she explained. “She’ll pop in for like half an hour or an hour.”

Reached later by phone, Wrask said she can’t tell her side of the story.  “I’ve been advised by my attorney not to,” she told the Outpost.

The sisters were close growing up, according to Jimenez. Both attended Arcata High School, and Wrask was the maid of honor at Jimenez’s wedding. Shortly before her husband’s unexpected death, Jimenez was hired at North Coast Mercantile, a local beer distributor, though she continued to work at the pet store on weekends. 

According to the lawsuit, NorCal Pet was left in a dire position after Wrask’s ex absconded with money and merchandise, leaving the business with unpaid bills including $14,000 in tax liability. But Jimenez loaned the store enough money to get out of debt.

This bailout “also gave Jennifer [Wrask] the opportunity to gain some experience since her only real experience had been in dog grooming, not in running an actual pet supply store,” says the civil complaint, filed by Eureka attorney William Bertain. 

“I was letting her basically have a job and work there and run it,” Jimenez said. The sisters agreed as partners that they would each draw $1,000 per month from the business and that Wrask would get an additional $4,000 per month as compensation, a salary for her full-time supervision duties.

In 2020, Jimenez began to suspect that her sister was taking more than they’d agreed to, using the business bank account like her personal piggy bank and pulling money out for such things as home-improvement projects and a down payment on a truck. Wrask was showing up to work less and less, according to Jimenez. How much was she taking?

“It wouldn’t be a strange month for her to take eight or nine thousand dollars,” Jimenez said.

She confronted her sister multiple times, culminating with a serious talk in March of 2021.

“We had about a two-hour discussion, but it didn’t go anywhere because she didn’t want to hear it,” Jimenez recounted. “She said, ‘I don’t want to have a partner’ and I said, ‘You do. I’m the managing partner.’” 

The sisters didn’t talk much over the next few months, but Jimenez was still doing online banking for the business. On September 13 of 2021 she went to log into the account only to discover that it had disappeared.

“It was gone,” she said. 

Suspecting fraud — though not necessarily by her sister — Jimenez went into the bank the following day and talked to the manager, who informed her that Wrask had closed the business’s checking and savings accounts, which had been listed in both of their names, and opened new ones under only her own name.

“At that point I realized there was an issue,” Jimenez remarked.

The savings account had a balance of just over $17,000 while the checking account had nearly $11,000 more, according to the lawsuit. Wrask had also taken control of a Small Business Administration loan with proceeds of more than $150,000, the suit alleges.

In June of 2021 Wrask had filed a document at the county clerk/recorder’s office: a Statement of Withdrawal from Partnership, upon which she had allegedly forged her sister’s signature. 

She had also filed a Fictitious Business Name Statement — a legal requirement for establishing a new business — though instead of having it published in the Times-Standard or the North Coast Journal, where Jimenez might have come across it, Wrask published it in the Two Rivers Tribune, a tribe-owned newspaper whose distribution is mostly limited to the Hoopa Valley and surrounding communities. On the accompanying paperwork Wrask had listed an incorrect address for her sister, according to the suit.

The suit also alleges that Wrask sent letters to other area business owners informing them that she was now the sole proprietor of NorCal Pet. She sent one of these letters to the store’s landlord, Linda Sundberg, but Sundberg compared Jimenez’s signature to the one on the original lease agreement, saw that they didn’t match and declined to make any changes to the lease, the complaint says. Wrask also allegedly changed the locks and alarm code for the business office.

The sisters had arranged to pay their father’s monthly mortgage bill from the business’s account, with their dad, Tom Wrask, giving them $2,000 in cash each month to even things out. 

“Contrary to the agreement between Plaintiff [Jimenez] and Defendant [Wrask], Defendant took the cash from their father and deposited it to her personal account and then paid Mr. Wrask’s house payment from the business account,” the suit alleges.

“It’s been a long process getting it all figured out,” Jimenez said.

Wrask has pleaded “not guilty” to the two felony charges against her. The next court hearing, regarding setting, is scheduled for March 8. Both sisters have hired their own forensic accountant, Jimenez said.

The civil suit is effectively on hold pending the outcome of the criminal case.

“She’s taking the 5th Amendment on the civil side,” Jimenez said.

After dissolving the sisters’ business partnership, Wrask established a 501(c)(3) noprofit dedicated to the animal rescue portion of NorCal Pet’s operations, and Jimenez said her sister is now doing “remarkably more rescuing.” For all the distress caused by the dissolution of their business partnership and the damage to their personal relationship, Jimenez said that’s one bright spot.

“At the end of the day I’m glad to see the animals are doing well,” she said.

In Sacramento, there’s a word that keeps popping up during discussions about the state’s homelessness crisis: “accountability.”

Gov. Gavin Newsom has scolded cities and counties for failing to get more people off the street, hundreds of millions in state spending notwithstanding. “Californians demand accountability and results, not settling for the status quo,” the governor said last November.

Republicans in the Legislature have called for an audit of the state’s homelessness spending. Democrats are still absorbing the last one from 2021, but many want to see the state’s money come with strings attached. This week, Assemblymember Luz Rivas, an Arleta Democrat, introduced a bill that would demand “tangible results” from local governments before they receive homelessness grants — mirroring an idea from the governor’s own budget proposal.

The increasingly bipartisan chorus points to two stark, seemingly contradictory trends: The state keeps spending more to address the crisis, and the crisis keeps getting worse. So where, they ask, is all the money going?

On Wednesday, California lawmakers got something that resembles an answer.

The state’s Interagency Council on Homelessness, a state body tasked with overseeing the state’s homelessness strategy and divvying up funding to local governments, issued a report detailing just how much the state has spent on the crisis between 2018 and 2021 — and what it’s gotten in return.

The answer to those questions, according to the report: The state has spent nearly $10 billion and provided services to more than 571,000 people, each year helping more people than the last.

And despite all that, at the end of year three, the majority of those more than half a million Californians still didn’t end up with a roof over their heads. The number of unsheltered Californians continues to swell.

Presented at a three-hour joint committee hearing in the Assembly, the report has sent housing policy experts across the state into a twitter. Services for the homeless are so disjointed — split among nine state agencies, hundreds of county and municipal governments, nonprofits and charitable organizations — the 253-page document may be the first statistical birds-eye view of the state’s many-tentacled efforts.

But it also shows just how intractable the problem is.

“One of the largest challenges facing the state is the inflow of new people into homelessness, even as efforts to help people experiencing homelessness expand,” the report reads.

What the report did not address is how the state can spend its money more effectively. Nor was it asked to. The report comes at the request of the Legislature, which included an ask in its 2021 budget for a “comprehensive view of the homelessness response system,” not an audit nor a list of recommendations.

But it may provide lawmakers, service providers and advocates with some helpful hints about what’s working, what isn’t and for whom.

“We’ve sent people to the moon,” said Oakland Assemblymember Buffy Wicks, a Democrat who chairs the Assembly’s housing committee. “We can solve homelessness in California.”

Here are four takeaways from the homelessness assessment:

1. California has been spending a lot to remedy homelessness — mostly on housing

Between 2018 and 2021, the state spent $9.6 billion trying to move the needle on homelessness.

Many Californians will be able to relate: The bulk of the spending, $5.5 billion in this case, went to the cost of housing.

That includes everything from building new units to preserving old ones, converting unused hotel rooms during the pandemic into temporary housing, building shelters, and setting up permanent supportive housing facilities that provide a long-term subsidized place to stay along with other on-site social services.

According to the report, the state produced or kept online 58,714 affordable housing units in the three year period, and added 17,000 new shelter beds.

Some of that spending has been more likely to lead people out of homelessness than others. Of the more than 75,000 people placed into permanent supportive housing of some kind, for example, only 8% wound up back on the street within six months.

Conversely, for those who left a state funded program to live with a family member or a friend, the rate of those who were homeless again within six months doubled. And for those who left for a rental with only a temporary subsidy, that rate of return to homelessness was 23%.

For some legislators and advocates, the figures underscored the importance of building more housing above all other interventions.

“Shelters are very expensive to build; they’re very expensive to operate,” said Emily Halcon, the director of Sacramento County’s Department of Homeless Services and Housing. “What we know is a real solution is housing.”

But building more housing — particularly with subsidized rents or other wrap-around services — is expensive. That’s in part why some homelessness and housing advocates say the 10-figure sum that the state has spread across the three years of the assessment isn’t even close to enough. A report from the Corporation for Supportive Housing and the California Housing Partnership at the end of last year put the price tag of “solving” homelessness in California at $8.1 billion every year for more than a decade.

2. A lot of people have been housed — but most have not

The report tracked more than half a million Californians who, over the three year period, made use of at least one of the services that the state funds, as recorded in a new state database.

The good news: More than 40% ended up in housing — supportive, subsidized or otherwise.

The bad news: The majority didn’t, or the state lost track of their whereabouts.

Nearly 17% were, at the end of the period, still in a shelter or temporary housing of some other kind or had exited whatever program they were enrolled in “into homelessness.” Another quarter fell out of the system entirely, their “destination” unknown.

Assemblymember Corey Jackson, a Democrat from Perris who chairs the Assembly Human Services committee, asked about the 17% who return to homelessness, which he called a “red flag” in the data.

“We need to remember that this is the emergency response system, if you will,” responded Dhakshike Wickrema, the deputy secretary of California’s Business, Consumer Services and Housing Agency. “What more can we be doing which is outside the homeless system? It’s like when you go to the emergency room — what could the primary care physician have done to prevent the acute diabetes?”

3. The burden of homelessness is not equally distributed

Drawing on the most recent “point-in-time” survey, which provides a blurry snapshot of how many people are living outside on a given night, the report emphasizes the stark racial and ethnic disparities that exist across the state’s unsheltered population. Black people made up roughly 30% of the people counted on the street, more than five times their share of the state population. Indigenous Californians likewise were overrepresented five-fold.

And though Latino Californians were underrepresented, between 2015 and 2020, their numbers in surveys of the unsheltered increased by 65%, the fastest growing ethnic or racial group.

4. Not all homelessness looks the same

When politicians or talking heads use the word “homelessness,” it’s often meant to evoke a particular person experiencing a particular set of problems: someone asleep on the sidewalk, unbathed, suffering from acute mental illness, addiction, physical disability or some combination of the three.

That’s the most visible version of the state’s homelessness crisis, but as the new figures show, it isn’t the most common one.

According to the report, 1 in 5 people who enrolled in state-funded homelessness programs were considered “chronically homeless” — unsheltered for at least a year while living with a complicating health issue.

But more than three times as many – two-thirds of all who sought state-funded services for homelessness — were people who hadn’t popped up in the system for at least two years, if ever.

These might be families evicted and temporarily residing in a car, someone couch surfing while gathering the money for a rental deposit, or people who got their own apartment only to get slammed with an unexpected car payment and find themselves back in a shelter.

Acknowledging that continuum matters — not just for the sake of accuracy, said Assemblymember Wendy Carillo, a Los Angeles Democrat, but because different paths into homelessness might be best met with different pathways out.

“Whether it’s someone living in their vehicle, being evicted from their home, someone experiencing chronic homelessness for decades, living on the streets of Skid Row for many, many years, all of these things are different,” she said. “They need to have different solutions.“

###

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

In damning audio leaked last fall, three Los Angeles City Councilmembers made a bevy of racist comments about Black, Jewish, Armenian and Oaxacan people. Then the conversation turned to how they could get the city’s redistricting commission, which they appointed, to draw council maps that would allow them to stay in office.

“If we can slice and dice this baby up to cut you off where you think that favorable people are in … I’m all for that,” Nury Martinez, who resigned after the leak, said at one point. “I just need to know what I’m working with, with this map.”

The council adopted a map that disregarded suggestions from the advisory commission and that kept resource-rich Exposition Park out of the one Black-majority district.

Across California, new districts were drawn after the 2020 Census, as they are every 10 years, to make sure that every congressional, legislative and local district has about the same number of people. But who is grouped together in a district can empower or disenfranchise a community. And until 2010, on both the state and local levels, the mapping was done by elected officials themselves, often behind closed doors.

Backed by good government groups, voters created an independent state commission and new requirements for local jurisdictions. But fresh off redistricting in which not just officials in Los Angeles, but in cities and counties around the state, failed to solicit community feedback or incorporate it into the actual maps, those groups and lawmakers are trying again to expand local independent redistricting.

Today, Assemblymember Isaac Bryan, a Democrat from Culver City, is introducing a bill to require jurisdictions with populations of 300,000 or more to form fully independent redistricting commissions. That’s in addition to a bushel of bills calling for independent redistricting in specific jurisdictions, including Los Angeles and Orange and Sacramento counties.

“We’ve seen the fallout from the crisis around the redistricting process in the city of Los Angeles, and the concerns that have emerged across the state,” Bryan said. “The people of California have the right to a fair, independent redistricting process that recognizes community concerns and uplifts community voices.”

Some cities and counties have already set up such commissions, including Long Beach, San Francisco and Los Angeles County. Last year, a bill to require independent commissions for all counties with more than 400,000 residents passed the Legislature, but was vetoed by Gov. Gavin Newsom, who said that while the commissions were “an important tool in preventing gerrymandering,” local jurisdictions were already authorized to create them. He added that the measure would require counties to be reimbursed, and therefore should go through the budget process instead.

Sen. Ben Allen, a Democrat from Redondo Beach who authored last year’s bill and has worked closely with Bryan on the new one, said the proposed legislation works in flexibility for local governments, unlike past efforts.

“It’s part of why I prefer this approach, which is ultimately about trying to give (local jurisdictions) more discretion,” Allen told CalMatters. “I think there’s real merit to providing parameters for how this ought to be done and then allowing local communities to do what’s best for them.”

Incorporating local flexibility may help ward off challenges that have come to past efforts. California’s Constitution allows charter cities including Los Angeles to control their own affairs.

The bill follows a report commissioned by California Common Cause, the Southern and Northern California chapters of the ACLU, the League of Women Voters of California and Asian Americans Advancing Justice-Asian Law Caucus. The report studied redistricting in about 100 cities and counties and found “widespread gerrymandering” — but not as much in places with independent commissions.

“We found across the board, no matter how a jurisdiction had set up their independent redistricting commission, it resulted in a more participatory process — respecting communities and neighborhoods,” said Laurel Brodzinsky, legislative director with California Common Cause.

The report identified some of the biggest issues across the state: Advisory commissions in which members acted as proxies for elected officials who appointed them; boards that held only the bare minimum of public meetings; and others that did not incorporate any community feedback into the maps.

Bryan’s bill would require counties, cities, school districts and community college districts to set up their own independent commissions by March 1, 2030 — in time to draw maps after the next Census. The structure would be modeled after some parts of the statewide commission: members selected from qualified applicants who then select the rest, and minimum requirements for public input and outreach. But unlike the state commission, there wouldn’t be requirements on party representation or citizenship for commission membership.

If a city, county, school or community college district is unable to set up an independent commission, the bill lists back-up options, including a panel of retired judges, or an ethics commission.

“The redistricting process is such an important part of our democracy. It really does play such an important role in determining who gets elected,” Allen said. “We feel good that we’ll get it to a place where the governor feels comfortable.”

Local control on maps

The statewide and local bills this session follow three laws passed last year that created independent commissions in Riverside, Kern and Fresno counties.

SB 52, introduced by Democratic Sen. María Elena Durazo of Los Angeles, seeks to create an independent commission for the city of Los Angeles. It’s not the first time independent redistricting has been debated in Los Angeles — but the promise is never kept, Durazo said. The audio leak motivated her to introduce it as her first bill this session, but she also noted that redistricting impacts how state money is distributed.

“That’s what elevates it from being a local city concern to a statewide concern — when billions and billions of dollars are distributed to the city of Los Angeles with the hopes that it’s going to be fairly used in the city,” she said. “And then you get districts that are made not on the basis of what’s a community of interest. They’re made on the basis of ‘Can I get reelected?’”

Durazo said she’s willing to work with other legislators on a statewide effort. “I just want to make sure that we fix the problem,” she said.

The bill for Sacramento County, introduced by new Democratic state Sen. Angelique Ashby, would apply to the Board of Supervisors, which oversees tax collection, land management and distributes state and federal funds.

“The county did hold hearings, but elected officials drew the lines themselves, which just really isn’t a best practices model and left certain communities feeling unheard,” said Ashby, a former member of the Sacramento City Council, which has an independent commission that helped diversify geographic representation by creating a second seat in the fast-growing Natomas area.

Ashby’s bill includes some parameters such as barring commissioners who have run for office in the previouis decade, or who have other conflicts of interest. Like Durazo, Ashby said she’d be willing to fold her bill into a larger statewide effort, but wanted to introduce SB 314 to get the conversation started.

“I’ve been at the local level and have lived through both not having a commission and having a commission, so I think I’m a pretty decent spokesperson for that effort,” she said, “Sacramento can just be a good leader in this discussion across the state of California.”

There’s also AB 34, introduced by Democratic Assemblymember Avelino Valencia of Anaheim, which would require an independent commission to draw districts for the Orange County Board of Supervisors.

Valencia said his bill’s intent is to help avoid partisan conflicts or favoritism in district maps.

“I don’t believe politicians should be in charge of drawing their own districts,” Valencia said. “Having a degree of separation between the redistricting process and elected officials is a good thing for democracy.”

If the statewide bill passes, it would grandfather in existing local redistricting commissions so that they don’t have to start over.

Allen, a principal co-author, said other legislators could move ahead with their bills if there are specific issues in a county.

Brodiznsky, of California Common Cause, said the multiple bills show that the Legislature understands the value of independent redistricting. “It’s really showing this movement that a more comprehensive approach is needed versus this piecemeal approach.”

A back-up plan

If the statewide bill fails, Bryan has another that would at least address some gaps in the current system.

Bryan, chairperson of the Assembly’s elections committee, has introduced AB 764, which would reform the 2019 FAIR Maps Act that outlines some redistricting requirements for cities and counties, regardless of who draws the maps.

Advocates have said that the FAIR Maps Act is unclear on whether incumbency is allowed to be considered after all other criteria are met, or not at all.

The law did give citizens one tool for accountability: After the 2020 map-drawing: residents of Riverside and San Luis Obispo counties sued over alleged violations, such as lack of transparency and not providing Spanish translation services.

Language for AB 764 is still in the works, but it would prohibit considering incumbency, clarify the priority order for mapping criteria and standardize public engagement requirements.

The two bills, Brodzinsky said, “are really two parts to the same puzzle of improving redistricting.”

###

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