The California constitution doesn’t make it easy for local governments to issue IOUs. Not only are most types of municipal and county borrowing plans required to go before the electorate, once on the ballot they also have to win support from at least two-thirds of the voters to pass.
Now, as state lawmakers scramble to put a lid on ever-increasing housing costs, a persistent homelessness crisis and growing public ire over both, a coalition of housing developers, unions, local governments and pro-housing groups want to lower that electoral bar for bonds and taxes that fund affordable housing and a wide array of public infrastructure projects.
The new proposed threshold: 55%. Had that standard been in place in 2018, Berkeley, San Diego, San Jose, Santa Rosa and Santa Cruz County would have been granted the power to borrow a total of $2.26 billion.
Spearheading the effort to amend the state constitution is Assemblymember Cecilia Aguiar-Curry — and not for the first time. The Davis Democrat has introduced a version of the bill every session since joining the Legislature in 2017. It’s never made it out of the Assembly.
But proponents think this year could be different. The Assembly’s new speaker, Robert Rivas, has named housing a top priority and has shown an early willingness to push his preferred housing bills, even over the objections of powerful committee chairpersons. Rivas is a co-author of Aguiar-Curry’s bill, along with roughly half the Assembly.
Aguiar-Curry may also have a bit more negotiating weight to throw around this time, too. Rivas named her speaker pro tem, his second in command, upon assuming the leadership role this summer.
Meanwhile, public concern about housing has not gone away.
“If we’re gonna do these big statewide efforts, ensuring the locals also do their piece and have the tools they need to meet us halfway is really important.” Abram Diaz, policy director for the Non-Profit Housing Association of Northern California
If the proposed constitutional amendment makes it through the Legislature, where it would require (what else?) two-thirds of the vote to pass, it would then go before voters statewide on the November 2024 ballot.
It would be in good company. Alongside initiatives and referenda proposed by private citizens and interest groups, the Legislature is considering a handful of other proposed constitutional changes and as many as 10 statewide bonds, including a $10 billion affordable housing measure.
Aguiar-Curry, who used to be the mayor of semi-rural town of Winters, said her measure may help cure some of the defects she sees with those colossal statewide bonds that often most benefit bigger cities.
“When you pass some of these big time bonds, we don’t see the money,” she said in an interview. “Every community has different needs, but for a lot of us in rural communities, it’s hard to get bonds passed.”
Making it easier for local governments to raise funds for affordable housing will also make it easier for those governments to compete for matching state and federal cash, said Abram Diaz, policy director for the Non-Profit Housing Association of Northern California, which supports the amendment.
“If we’re gonna do these big statewide efforts, ensuring the locals also do their piece and have the tools they need to meet us halfway is really important,” he said.
Many of the state’s business groups and the California Association of Realtors oppose the measure, reluctant to take any steps that would make it easier for local governments to hike taxes or run up their debts. Most bonds issued by local governments are paid out of increased property taxes.
For many defenders of California’s long-time restrictions on local taxation — namely, Proposition 13 from 1978 — Aguiar-Curry’s measure represents a fiscal Pandora’s box.
“It’s a slippery slope,” said Newport Beach Assemblymember Diane Dixon, a Republican, at a recent Assembly hearing. “There are always attempts to undo Prop. 13 and the two-thirds vote, and it’s just a pincer attack.”
Learning from schools
The space between 55% and two-thirds of the vote is where many ballot measures go to die.
In 2022, cities, counties, schools and special districts put a total of 59 revenue-raisers requiring two-thirds of the vote to pass on local ballots across California, according to data compiled by local government fiscal analyst Michael Coleman. Only 29 of those measures cleared that threshold. Of the 30 that failed, 16 received more than 55% of the vote.
“Why should one-third of the local voters have the power to overrule fiscal decisions in your community?” Aguiar-Curry said.
That’s been a major source of fiscal frustration for cities and counties. But for the last two decades, school districts have been the exception. Thanks to Proposition 39, a constitutional amendment passed by voters in 2000, local school bond measures only need to hit a 55% cut off to pass, so long as they’re used to fund facility construction and upgrades and don’t exceed a certain amount.
That’s been “a real game changer for schools,” said Coleman.
You can see that in the election results. Over the last two decades, local governments have turned to the voters more than 5,000 times, begging permission to raise taxes or borrow money, according to Coleman’s database.
Since 2001, city and county bond and tax measures that have been required to get two-thirds of the vote have succeeded just more than half the time. School bonds with a 55% threshold have cleared that requirement 80% of the time.
No surprise, then, that affordable housing developers want in on some of that special treatment.
So, too, do organizations representing firefighters, librarians and school employees, public sector workers and construction unions. Alongside affordable housing projects, Aguiar-Curry’s proposal would lower the voter requirement for bonds and taxes that fund all manner of “public infrastructure” projects, including road, highway and transit improvements; water and flood control upgrades; hospital, police station and library construction; and the purchase of firefighting equipment.
And going further than Prop. 39, Aguiar-Curry’s measure sets no limits on the amount of borrowing. Nor is it just restricted to bonds, which are frequently paid back through property tax increases, but would free local governments to propose new parcel tax increases and sales tax hikes.
Assemblywoman Cecilia Aguiar-Curry at a press conference during a visit to Las Casitas mobile home park in American Canyon on Oct. 30, 2019. Photo by Anne Wernikoff for CalMatters
Opponents of the measure, led by the nonprofit California Taxpayers Association, have seized on that final detail.
“The taxes this measure would make it easier to pass are regressive,” said Peter Blocker, the organization’s lobbyist, at the recent hearing. “And while one of the goals of the measure is to make it easier to raise revenue for housing, the two taxes this measure applies to — sales taxes and parcel taxes — are both taxes that make housing less affordable.”
Tacking on these other areas of infrastructure spending and giving local governments more financial flexibility to use the measure has helped Aguiar-Curry build a coalition. Proponents insist it’s also sensible policy.
“This thought that we can do this for housing and not infrastructure doesn’t work,” said Assemblymember Lori Wilson, a Suisun City Democrat, at the hearing. “You can’t build housing without infrastructure.”
Proponents also insist, over the objections of anti-tax advocates, that the measure would do nothing to directly increase debt or raise taxes. If voters pass the measure in 2024, it would simply provide local governments with new tools to combat the housing crisis.
But voters could put those tools to work immediately in some parts of the state.
As currently written, the Aguiar-Curry amendment would apply to any local revenue-raiser passed “on or after” the amendment itself is passed — meaning, to any other measure also on the November 2024 ballot.
That’s a pertinent detail for voters across the Bay Area, who are likely to be presented with a regional affordable housing bond as large as $20 billion next November. If Aguiar-Curry’s measure makes the ballot, too, that would give millions of Northern California voters the opportunity not only to vote on the largest housing-related IOU in recent California memory, but also on a provision to ease its passage.
“If this passes in November, the lower threshold applicability will apply to other housing bonds that are also on the ballot so that they can really harness this new tool,” said Diaz with the Non-Profit Housing Association. “We don’t have a day to waste as we try to address the homeless crisis.”
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CalMatters.org is a nonprofit, nonpartisan media venture explaining California policies and politics.
Screenshot of Tuesday’s Humboldt County Board of Supervisors meeting.
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There are several big improvements slated for the California Redwood Coast-Humboldt County Airport. In just a few days, the county is going to shut down ACV for two weeks to accommodate much-needed improvements to the airport’s main runway, which was last rehabilitated nearly 30 years ago. Along with that, aviation staff are looking at some big-picture improvements to curtail flight delays.
During today’s regular meeting, the Humboldt County Board of Supervisors took its first look at the preliminary findings of a study looking at the feasibility of implementing an enhanced Instrument Landing System that would significantly reduce aircraft diversions, delays and cancellations at the airport.
Cody Roggatz, Humboldt County’s Director of Aviation, acknowledged the airport’s history of delayed departures and cancellations but maintained that it is “on par with the national average.”
Roggatz
“We often hear from the public about people not flying from ACV because the fog cancels all of the flights or delays all of the flights. That isn’t the case,” Roggatz said. “We are actually right on par with the national average for cancellation rates and delays, but we understand that the fog can be a challenge at times. We’ve started exploring what we can do to improve our performance and be better with the on-time and cancellation rates, be better than that national average, and that led us, of course, to the Instrument Landing System.”
The Humboldt County Airport’s existing Instrument Landing System uses a Category I approach, meaning it can only accommodate incoming aircraft when the visibility is more than half a mile or when the cloud ceiling is 200 feet above the runway. A Category II system, on the other hand, can accommodate a minimum visibility of 1,200 feet (just under a quarter-mile) and a 100-foot cloud ceiling.
Paul Hannah, Chief Flight Operations Engineer for Lean Technology Corporation, one of the entities the county hired to perform the feasibility study, said visibility is generally at its worst between July and December, causing more delayed departures and cancellations at the airport. He gestured to the graph below, which depicts the average weather conditions at the airport for every hour of each month.
Category I approach: Cloud ceiling/visibility create prolonged periods between July and December where on-time operations are difficult to achieve. | Screenshot
“These percentages break down to the way that airlines, in particular, think about the airport and how they make their scheduling decisions on when they want to come into the airport,” Hannah said. “Here we are in August, and this morning the visibility was less than a half mile. If there was an airline that wanted to come into the airport in the morning [and] they look at the current situation, they know that there’s basically a 60 percent chance. To put that in perspective, for a hub airport like San Francisco, that number would be 99 [percent].”
A Category II approach Instrument Landing System would bring ACV up to par with most other airports, he said, bringing the likelihood of landing on a foggy August morning up to 90 percent.
The Category II approach would “significantly” improve the airport’s ability to retain on-time arrivals year round. | Screenshot
Once the feasibility study is complete, staff will have a better idea of the improvements needed to implement a Category II approach system, Hannah said.
“There are some interesting challenges [that are] very unique to the airport that we’ll be discussing how we can overcome, especially in the absence of an air traffic control tower,” he said. “One of the outcomes of this feasibility study may be that the airport achieves an air traffic control tower at some point in the future.”
First District Supervisor Rex Bohn asked who would foot the bill for the improvements and whether the county could receive funding from the Federal Aviation Administration (FAA).
“That’s going to be our goal,” Roggatz said. “There are multiple components that make [the Category 1] system up on our airfield and it’s all owned by the FAA. Ultimately, we would try to keep it that way. … It’ll be a little bit more elaborate when we start the in-depth conversations with the FAA, but our plan is to start the conversation by laying those two datasets side by side and essentially [asking], ‘Tell us why we can’t do this.’ It shows and highlights … how important this [upgrade] really is to our community.”
Bohn asked if staff had any idea how much the entire improvement project would cost. Hannah said the project would “definitely be in the multiple millions of dollars,” reiterating that the goal is to have the FAA “provide as much funding as possible.” Additional enhancements, including the construction of an air traffic control tower, would cost even more.
Bohn asked if it was true that the majority of flight delays to the Bay Area are caused by SFO rather than ACV. Roggatz confirmed, adding that SFO has capacity constraints that “often impact smaller markets like us.”
“As we brought on Los Angeles and Denver … with their direct flights, our on-time performance and our cancellation rates have improved because not everything is going to and from SFO,” Roggatz continued. “The majority of the struggles that we’ve had have been related to SFO. We’re trying to take that next step as we explore this option to make sure that it’s always an SFO issue and never an ACV issue.”
Before closing out the discussion, Roggatz reiterated that there will be no commercial air service at ACV between Aug. 14 and Aug. 25 to accommodate a big repaving project on the airport’s main runway. You can read more about the Runway and Electrical Rehabilitation Project here.
The board unanimously agreed to file the report but did not take any further action on the item.
SB 252: Fossil Fuels Divestment
The board also narrowly approved a letter of support of a Senate bill that would prohibit the boards of the California Public Employee Retirement System (CalPERS) and the California State Teachers’ Retirement System (CalSTRS) from making new investments – or renewing existing investments – in fossil fuel companies and would require that the two boards liquidate all such investments by July 1, 2031, according to the text of SB 252.
The letter, initiated by Third District Supervisor Mike Wilson and Fifth District Supervisor and Board Chair Steve Madrone, offers its “wholehearted” support of the bill, noting that the requirement “is one part of the state’s broader efforts to decarbonize the California economy and to transition to clean, pollution-free energy resources.”
“There [are] a lot of retirement funds across the United States – both public and private – that are moving in this direction,” Wilson said. “Divestiture from these types of things is common but also something that deserves discussion.”
Speaking during the public comment portion of the discussion, retired public school teacher Debroah Dukes lamented the fact that she has to spend her retirement fighting against the fossil fuel industry rather than “having fun and doing useless things.”
“I spent my career devoted to the next generation and, by extension, the generations after that,” she said. “I divested from fossil fuels against the advice of my financial advisor … and it bothers me tremendously that my pension … is benefiting from fossil fuel money. … I would urge you to write this letter of support.”
Second District Supervisor Michelle Bushnell, who pulled the item from the consent calendar for further discussion, said she wanted more time to investigate the item before signing a letter of support.
“My community is a very rural area that is very dependent on different sources,” she said. “While I support the … values [of this bill], I am not supportive of not investigating a little farther and deeper before I put my name to something.”
Bohn agreed and said he’d like some more information as well. “There’s just too shallow of a pool of information here for me,” he said. “There’s too many questions without answers.”
Fourth District Supervisor Natalie Arroyo said she understood the importance “of wanting to ensure that our retired employees have good returns on their investments” but emphasized the importance of pushing the state toward its climate goals.
“I think every element in every way of approaching this helps and gets us closer to our goals,” she said. “It’s one thing to say individuals should be responsible for their own actions with a wide variety of financial capacities and abilities to make those types of changes in their lives. It’s quite another to say that, you know, the state should look at higher-level policies around investments. I support this fully and I appreciate the urging to do all we can around this.”
Arroyo made a motion to approve the letter of support, which was seconded by Wilson. The motion passed in a 3-2 vote, with Bohn and Bushnell dissenting.
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Other odds and ends from the meeting:
The board also received an update on the county’s pilot program with Hambro Recycling and CalRecycle to accommodate California Refund Value (CRV) services in the county. The board reviewed existing Recycling Convenience Zones throughout the county and whether or not the zones should be expanded. In a somewhat complex motion, the board voted to continue the pilot program, to extend the Recycling Convenience Zones “as broad as possible,” and to connect with other rural counties through the California State Association of Counties (CSAC) and the Rural County Representatives of California (RCRC) to “get a team together” and initiate legislation to ensure “that these remote areas can be serviced.”
Several members of SEIU Local 2015 spoke during the public comment portion of the meeting to urge the board to support in-home supportive care workers and ensure seniors and people with disabilities can access the life-saving care they need. The group began chanting in board chambers. Madrone asked the group to stop chanting but said, “Thank you. We hear you.”
At the end of the meeting, Bohn noted that improvements to the Ferndale Fairgrounds will wrap up at the end of this week, about a week ahead of opening day at the Humboldt County Fair.
Press release from the “Housing For All” campaign:
The Housing for All and Downtown Vitality campaign has started. The City of Eureka has provided the final paperwork that allows the campaign to begin collecting signatures for the ballot initiative. Approximately 1,600 valid voter signatures are needed to place the measure on the ballot.
The Housing for All ballot initiative is a comprehensive update to the Housing Element of the City’s General Plan. It includes rezoning 8.5 acres of the former Jacobs Middle School property for housing and provisions to preserve parking on public lots downtown where housing has been proposed. If passed by the voters, the Housing for All Initiative will enable Eureka to provide several hundred badly needed affordable housing units for all income levels.
“The initiative has changed slightly from the original one we submitted to the City on July 14,” explained Mike Munson, initiative co-signer. “The City recently awarded the contract for developing the 5th and D parking lots and the 6th and L lot to the Wiyot Tribe. Our revised initiative provides that those two lots will be exempt from the ballot measure as long as the Wiyot Tribe owns them. We support their efforts in building affordable housing in an environmentally friendly manner while protecting their heritage and keeping the work local.”
According to Munson, the Housing for All and Downtown Vitality campaign focuses on housing. He said that while the downtown parking lots are part of the initiative, the goal is to make a bad housing element plan better and bring that plan to the voters.
“There is much misinformation about the initiative we would like to correct,” said Michelle Costantine, initiative co-signer. “This is genuinely about housing for all and does not prevent the development of the downtown parking lots.” The downtown lots would remain sites for affordable housing to attract families downtown. Still, the initiative requires parking to be provided to the residents and preserve the 640 spaces that will be lost.
According to Costantine and Munson, the use of the former Jacobs Middle School site will provide the following:
· Stable family housing,
· Increase property values in the area,
· Badly needed funds for the City Schools, and
· Make the neighborhood safer.
“The City Schools are under capacity, and plenty of classrooms are available for the growth this housing will bring,” added Munson. “More housing means more students, and that’s a good thing.”
Below you will find a lengthy press release about the opening of a new Mountain Mike’s Pizza in McKinleyville. LoCO has had Mountain Mike’s Pizza. It’s fine. Fast, in our experience. And now, if you live in McKinleyville, you, too, can also conveniently acquire it.
If you’d like to read more words about the Mountain Mike’s and its various features — like, say, its “whopping 15 big-screen televisions” — read on:
Mountain Mike’s Pizza, a leading family-style pizza chain for over 45 years, known for its legendary crispy, curly pepperonis, Mountain-sized pizzas, and dough made fresh daily, is excited to announce that its new McKinleyville restaurant is now open for business. The new restaurant is owned and operated by brothers and multi-unit franchisees Aamir and Bashir Khan of Khan Venture Group, whose Mountain Mike’s franchise portfolio now expands to four restaurants, complementing existing Northern California locations in Eureka, Rohnert Park and Fortuna, which opened earlier this year. Whether dining in the restaurant, carrying out or having it delivered directly to their door, the new Mountain Mike’s Pizza is the ideal destination for McKinleyville locals and visitors alike to enjoy the brand’s signature experience of “Pizza the Way it Oughta Be!®
“We’re extremely eager to welcome the McKinleyville community to our new Mountain Mike’s Pizza restaurant as we strive to make this location a destination for the community to gather for all of life’s joyous moments, memorable celebrations and other meaningful occasions for many years to come,” said Aamir Khan. “Mountain Mike’s Pizza serves menu items that are second-to-none when it comes to quality and taste, and we have watched as more communities continue to fall in love with Mountain Mike’s, which is why we are delighted to help grow the brand along the Northern California Coast.”
The spacious 4,600 square-foot Mountain Mike’s Pizza in McKinleyville features the same welcoming, family-friendly atmosphere the brand is known for, and it’s bound to be a go-to destination for sports fans. Featuring a whopping 15 big-screen televisions, the McKinleyville restaurant is the perfect venue no matter which team guests want to root for. The new location also includes an all-you-can-eat pizza and salad lunch buffet, wine, domestic beer and local craft beer on tap, a 1,000-square-foot kids’ arcade, complimentary Wi-Fi and a private party room. Clearly, there’s something for everyone at Mountain Mike’s in McKinleyville, making it an ideal spot for guests of all ages, team parties, family get-togethers, office gatherings and group fundraising events alike.
One bite into a cheesy slice of pizza from Mountain Mike’s takes you back to your childhood, when pizzas were hand-made and with the freshest and finest ingredients. From its legendary crispy, curly pepperoni, 100% whole milk mozzarella cheese and a variety of fan-favorite specialty pizzas, Mountain Mike’s has something to satisfy every taste. Whether it’s dine-in, catering, carryout or its own in-house delivery, guests can always count on Mountain Mike’s to ensure quality, freshness, flavor and value. Orders may be placed online, through the Mountain Mike’s Pizza App, or through any of the brand’s third-party delivery partners.
The new McKinleyville Mountain Mike’s is located at 1500 Anna Sparks Way and can be reached by telephone at (707) 203-8500. The restaurant is open daily from 11:00 a.m. to 10:00 p.m. For additional information about Mountain Mike’s Pizza, visit www.mountainmikespizza.com. For additional information about the new McKinleyville location, go here or find them on Google and Yelp.
Guard towers outside of Kern Valley State Prison on Nov. 15, 2022. Photo by Larry Valenzuela, CalMatters/CatchLight Local
Renee Espinoza thought her first strip search at the hands of a California correctional officer guard would be her last. It happened during a visit to Centinela State Prison to see her incarcerated husband.
A few months later it happened again. And then again.
“It was the same process each time. I sign a paper saying it’s ok to search me, they escort me to the same locker room,” Renee said.
Before each search, she filled out the so-called Form 888, a requirement for each visitor who consents to an unclothed search. The first search felt procedural and normal, she recalled. On the second search, she noticed the female officers in the room had mirrors and used a flashlight.
On the third search, the correctional officer was more aggressive. “She was asking me to spread my genitals wider. And I’m just like, ‘there’s nothing in there!’ How much wider do you need me to open? How much lower do you need me to bend? What else do you need me to do?”
Espinoza shared her story last week with other families of state prisoners who are trying to make sense of a proposed change in search policy at the California Department of Corrections and Rehabilitation.
The department, which is facing pressure to stem the flow of drugs and cell phones into prisons, plans to make procedural changes that officials said would be minimal and meant to provide more clarity and consistency about the rights for those being searched.
“The only change these regulations implement is in regard to proposed changes to (the state prison system’s) Form 888, which works to include clarity and consistency with existing language describing the search process and the rights of those being searched. The search process itself will remain unchanged,” wrote Alia Cruz, a spokesperson for the corrections agency, in an email.
But one of the proposed changes in the regulation includes language that suggests correctional officers could have more discretion to perform a strip search. That change would lower the threshold for an officer to request a search from “probable cause” to “reasonable suspicion.”
“All this does is expand the scope of discretion to make it easier to justify … I suspect they are already strip searching anyone they want.” — Sharon Dolovich, law professor and director of the UCLA Prison Law and Policy Program
Advocates are worried it could lead to unnecessarily invasive interactions between prisoners’ loved ones and correctional officers.
“People who run the visits already have a lot of discretion,” said Sharon Dolovich, a law professor who directs the UCLA Prison Law and Policy Program. “All this does is expand the scope of discretion to make it easier to justify … I suspect they are already strip searching anyone they want.”
Attorney Eric Sapp of Legal Services for Prisoners with Children, an Oakland-based organization, met with families last week ahead of a scheduled public comment hearing on the regulation. He called the proposed change unlawful, inconsistent with other regulations, and said it was “concerning” that the department doesn’t explicitly say whether touching is allowed during unclothed searches.
“We do think it’s unreasonable that they want to change and harmonize those regulations by lowering ‘probable cause’ to ‘reasonable suspicion’ rather than doing the exact opposite,” he said, suggesting that the standard should remain at probable cause.
Cruz, the department’s spokesperson, said the proposed regulation is not intended to change the threshold for searches. She said the standards for strip and cavity searches would remain “unchanged” and would continue to be used only after less invasive means.
“Unclothed searches are completely voluntary unless a search warrant is presented. Unclothed searches are used very sparingly, and only when all other contraband interdiction efforts have been exhausted,” said Cruz. “Contraband interdiction efforts to be used before an unclothed search is proposed includes walk-through metal detectors and hand-held metal detectors.”
Declining a search has a consequence for prison visitors. It means they would not get to meet their incarcerated loved ones, which in some cases could waste an hours-long drive to an institution.
Why is the prison search policy coming up now?
California’s corrections agency put forward the proposed policy six months after an Office of Inspector General audit called attention to the flow of contraband into prisons, including during the pandemic when visitor restrictions were in place.
The report found the Department of Corrections had weak contraband prevention efforts in place and ultimately “allowed” the problem to continue. The inspector general urged the department to strengthen oversight of who and what comes into prisons to keep out drugs, including by searching staff more frequently and making more use of narcotic-detecting canines.
California state prisons recorded 1,274 overdoses between March 2019 and February 2020. In the following 12 months — after pandemic restrictions took effect — overdoses declined to 796, according to California Correctional Health Care Services.
Although the number of overdoses went down, the cases revealed that drugs found their way into prisons even when families couldn’t visit. Some avenues included staff, contractors, official visitors and mail.
Between 2021 and 2022, 64 visitors were arrested across all state prisons for attempting to bring in contraband. In the same year, six prison employees and 46 non-visitors were also arrested, according to the department’s Office of Research. The number of visitors arrested are down from 286 in 2018 and 186 in 2019.
Asked to comment on the proposed search changes, Shaun Spillane, a spokesperson for the Inspector General’s office, said there is value in the decision to update policies.
“Although drugs still made it into prisons while visitation was suspended during the COVID-19 pandemic, it is important that the department have an effective search process for people who visit prisons,” Spillane said.
California prison visits as a civil right
The request to update search policies comes in the midst of the Newsom administration’s campaign to make prisons friendlier to families. He signed a law last month that allows prisoners to be housed in facilities closer to where their children under 18 live.
The Newsom administration in 2021 added a third day of weekly visitation at all institutions to make family visits more accessible.
But families say that with intimidating visitor policies in place, they will feel less inclined to visit. Others say they would refuse a search in protest, even if it means losing their visit.
“Close connections to loved ones on the outside is the single biggest predictor of success for re-entry, so why wouldn’t the CDCR try to enhance the experience and enhance the ability for people to visit rather than increasingly burden it?” Dolovich, the professor from UCLA, said.
Angel Rice, the wife of a prisoner and advocate at Empowering Women Impacted by Incarceration, said that after COVID-19, the department started giving families more freedom during the holidays.
Now, children and mothers are allowed to make Christmas ornaments and picture frames and decorate gingerbread houses.
“That is a small part of them doing something in a positive manner to make us feel like it’s family,” Rice said. “This is the Department of Rehabilitation. And these little events matter. They make a difference as far as preparing them to come home.”
“Close connections to loved ones on the outside is the biggest predictor of success for re-entry, so why wouldn’t the CDCR try to enhance the experience rather than increasingly burden it?” — Sharon Dolovich, law professor and director of the UCLA Prison Law and Policy Program
The Legislature also has advanced a few bills this year to make family ties with prisoners more accessible.
One, sponsored by Assemblymember Miguel Santiago of Los Angeles, would make visitation a civil right for prisoners and restrict the Department of Corrections’ power to deny a person from visiting. Newsom vetoed a version of this bill in 2021, on the basis that he thought the legislation could lead to costly litigation from individuals denied visitation for what may be valid security concerns.
On Wednesday, the department is scheduled to hold a public comment hearing about the new search regulations. Advocates have already proposed alternatives to the visitor policy, including raising the standard for an officer to request strip search, or using non-intrusive technologies instead.
“These proposed changes in particular are unnecessary and dangerous, creating grave potential for abuse and causing undue burdens on visitors,” Sapp wrote in a letter to the department days before the public comment period ends. “We urge that significant changes be made before any regulations in this area are adopted.”
If approved, the department will put in a request for good cause, which would enact the policy immediately.
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CalMatters.org is a nonprofit, nonpartisan media venture explaining California policies and politics.
This is a Pacific razor clam. His cousins are waiting for you to eat them. James St. John, CC BY 2.0, via Wikimedia Commons.
From the California Department of Fish and Wildlife:
The Director of the California Department of Fish and Wildlife (CDFW) has re-opened the recreational razor clam fishery in Humboldt County following a recommendation from state health agencies that consumption of razor clams in the area no longer poses a significant threat for domoic acid exposure.
In April 2023, the razor clam fishery was closed in Humboldt County due to risk of domoic acid exposure. During the closure, state health agencies continued to assess domoic acid levels which consistently exceeded the federal action level for domoic acid of ≥ 20 parts per million (ppm). However, clams collected from Clam Beach, Humboldt County in July 2023 all had domoic acid concentrations lower than this action level.
Domoic acid is a naturally occurring toxin produced by certain types of plankton that can be harmful or even fatal to humans. Domoic acid poisoning in humans may occur within minutes to hours after consumption of affected seafood and can result in signs and symptoms ranging from vomiting and diarrhea to permanent loss of short-term memory (Amnesic Shellfish Poisoning), coma, or death. There is no way to prepare clams that will remove the toxin. Cooking and freezing have no effect.
CDFW reminds clammers that the daily bag limit for razor clams is 20 and the first 20 clams dug must be retained regardless of size or condition. Each person is required to keep a separate container and is not allowed to commingle their clams with another person’s when digging and transporting clams to shore.
For more information, please refer to Section 29.20 Clams General and Section 29.45 for specific razor clam regulations.
For more information on any fishery closure information or health advisories, please visit CDFW’s Ocean Health Advisories website.
To get the latest information on current fishing season closures related to domoic acid, call CDFW’s Domoic Acid Fishery Closure Information Line at (831) 649-2883.
For the latest consumption warnings, call the California Department of Public Health’s Biotoxin information Line at (510) 412-4643 or toll-free at (800) 553-4133.
A couple of weeks ago, CBS’s venerable news magazine “60 Minutes” paid a visit to the northern English port town of Grimsby, which services the largest offshore wind farm in the world. This morning the segment was posted to YouTube.
The report, by correspondent Sharyn Alfonsi, features lots of locals in the town, which has fallen on hard times since the decline of its fishing industry, as well as a representative of Ørsted, the Danish company that runs the wind farm operation. Some of the locals grumble that their power bills have not gone down as promised — this is due, at least in part, to the global energy shock that followed the war in Ukraine — but others, including a young woman who has found her career servicing the gigantic offshore devices, revel in the new industry.
It’s pretty easy to see the parallels between the situation in Grimsby and our own, here in the first phases of our own offshore wind development, and especially so in the early flyover shots of the town. Squint a little bit and damned if the town Grimsby doesn’t bear a familiar resemblance to Eureka.
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