Latest news with #Proposition4
Yahoo
02-04-2025
- Politics
- Yahoo
Judge over gerrymandering case against Utah legislature asks for clarification over tossing maps
NOTE: A lawsuit represents one side of a story. SALT LAKE CITY () — The lower court judge presiding over a is asking for the parties to provide more arguments over tossing out Utah's current congressional maps — signaling that a resolution to the suit could be nearing. According to an order issued March 31, Third District Judge Dianna Gibson is asking for additional information from the lawyers representing the plaintiffs — who are the , , and seven Salt Lake residents. The group is suing the legislature, arguing that Utah's current congressional boundaries should be thrown out. The plaintiffs argue the legislature violated Utahns' rights when lawmakers overturned a citizen-backed independent commission and its anti-gerrymandering criteria, created by Proposition 4, to draw those lines. Utah House polls members about overrides on the six 2025 vetoes Specifically, Judge Gibson is asking for more arguments on whether she can just toss the maps because the legislature didn't comply with Prop 4's criteria, or if an evidentiary hearing would be needed to determine if the maps are indeed unlawful. 'Is that alone sufficient legal basis to grant a permanent injunction of SB 200?' Judge Gibson asked. Furthermore, the judge wants more arguments on why she should permanently toss the legislature's maps. 'The (plaintiffs) did not cite any legal or factual authority, but an injunction of SB200 was not before the court,' the order says. The groups argued that because said lawmakers do not have unlimited power to repeal ballot initiatives; rather, when an initiative 'alters or reforms' government, any changes must be 'narrowly tailored to advance a compelling government interest,' the same standard should apply to the permanant injunction. 'Please clarify the legal basis for Plaintiffs' position that a permanent injunction of SB 2004 is an appropriate remedy if the court grants Plaintiffs' Motion…' Judge Gibson writes. The order asks for the additional arguments by the end of the day on April 8, at which point the legislature would have about a week to file its response. The plaintiffs would be given another opportunity to reply if they choose to do so. It's unclear when a ruling in the case might be coming, and the order does not mean the ruling will toss out the maps. However, it does signal that the judge has gotten to the point where she's asking about what the remedy might be. This complex case started back in 2018, when a , was passed by voters, creating an independent redistricting commission to draw the new boundaries Utah uses today. In 2020, the Utah Legislature watered down Prop 4, — and the plaintiffs argue those maps are gerrymandered. In 2022, the plaintiffs sued, arguing the lines 'crack' Salt Lake into four districts to dilute minority votes in the Republican stronghold and that Utahns have a constitutionally protected right to 'alter and reform' their government — which they attempted to do via Prop 4. In 2024, the that top lawmakers called the worst decision they've ever seen. That ruling kicked the case back to the lower courts to determine its fate. In January of 2025, the parties argued the merits of the case before Gibson. Lt. Governor Deidre Henderson has asked that the case be finalized before November 1 so that if new lines need to be drawn, they can be drawn before the 2026 midterm elections. Copyright 2025 Nexstar Media, Inc. All rights reserved. This material may not be published, broadcast, rewritten, or redistributed.
Los Angeles Times
10-03-2025
- Business
- Los Angeles Times
Newsom's money grab targets bond funds for climate projects
SACRAMENTO — Governors are like card sharks when dealing out budgets. They've usually got gimmicks tucked up their sleeves. Legislatures tend to follow suit — at least when there's lopsided one-party rule, as there has been in Sacramento for the last 14 years. Budget season has just opened in California's Capitol. Gov. Gavin Newsom proposed a $322-billion state budget in January for the fiscal year beginning July 1. After an inexcusably long pause required by outdated legislative rules, budget committees now have begun plowing through the weeds of the governor's spending plan. One Newsom gimmick has drawn little attention amid Los Angeles-area wildfires and all the focus on chaos generated by President Trump. To help balance his budget, the governor wants to grab roughly $300 million from the $10-billion climate bond approved overwhelmingly by voters in November. OK, that's only a fraction — 3% — of the bond total. But it's the principle of the money grab. It could set a pattern for this governor and his successors to continue dipping into the climate bond pot to balance budgets. 'We could probably expect to see more of that in the out-years,' says Republican Sen. Roger Niello of Fair Oaks, a Sacramento suburb, who is vice chairman of the Senate Budget Committee. 'The governor certainly uses whatever funds he can find to balance the budget, and the Legislature does pretty much whatever he asks.' The climate bond, Proposition 4, passed with 60% of the vote — a landslide. The ballot measure's official title read that it authorized bonds 'for safe drinking water, wildfire prevention and protecting communities and natural lands from climate risks.' So here's the problem: Voters weren't told that some of the money would be used for sopping up budget red ink. They were led to believe — among its most saleable pitches — that it would accelerate preparation for facing the perils of climate change. There was $1.2 billion to reduce the risks of sea-level rise and $850 million to support the shift to more renewable energy, such as offshore wind. The biggest item, however, was $3.8 billion to increase the amount and quality of water available for people, and to reduce flooding risks. Also, there was $1.5 billion for wildfire prevention and $1.2 billion for land conservation and habitat restoration. 'I didn't support it,' Niello says. 'It was a real hodgepodge of stuff. My interest was flood control, and it became almost de minimis.' Newsom, a Democrat, didn't support it either. He was publicly neutral. Privately, he repeatedly told legislative leaders he didn't want the bill. When it landed on his desk, he was conveniently out of state, and Senate leader Mike McGuire (D-Healdsburg), the acting governor, signed the measure, placing it on the ballot. Here's how Newsom proposes to use Proposition 4 to help balance the budget: He wants to shift into bond financing $273 million worth of natural resource and climate projects previously authorized to be paid for by the general fund. That's the state's major cash checking account, currently pegged at $232 billion. The governor also proposes to shift $32 million in Proposition 4 bond money to pay for clean energy projects previously authorized for financing under the state's cap-and-trade program. It's funded by businesses buying permits to emit greenhouse gases and is horrendously complex. Just know that the most uneconomical way for the government to spend money is through bond financing because that means borrowing and paying interest. It can practically double the cost of a project. It's like driving up long-term credit card debt rather than paying cash. The $10-billion climate bond is designed to be paid off over 40 years at $400 million annually. Newsom's budget officials point out that shifting the cost of some general fund projects to bond financing won't increase the total tab for interest because $10 billion will be borrowed regardless. But the $10 billion won't buy as much as originally anticipated. Newsom's plan will reduce the number of new projects envisioned under Proposition 4. That's because the bonds will be paying for some old projects previously approved for the general fund. In budgeting lingo, this scheme is called 'backfilling.' When general fund money for a project is withdrawn, it's often backfilled from another source — like robbing Peter to pay Paul. 'Voters passed this climate bond as a supplement, not as a replacement for general fund spending,' protests Gabriela Facio, senior policy analyst for the Sierra Club. 'The status quo is not enough. The need to invest more on environmental resilience is critical.' 'Voters don't pay any attention' to such weedy ballot measures, asserts Jon Coupal, president of the Howard Jarvis Taxpayers Assn., which opposed Proposition 4. 'They saw 'climate change.' They were like Pavlov's dog and voted for it.' The proposition's author, Sen. Ben Allen (D-Santa Monica), hopes for a compromise. He chairs the Senate budget Subcommittee on Resources, Environmental Protection and Energy. Proposition 4 'was crafted to provide additional investments' in the fight against climate change, he says. 'It wasn't meant to amount to a clawback … to be raided and utilized as a backfill.' His subcommittee believes that Newsom 'is raiding into Proposition 4 far too much,' Allen says. 'We're happy to work with him and come up with a reasonable set of compromises if he doesn't cannibalize too much of it. We're not interested in it becoming a grab bag to cover budget problems.' H.D. Palmer, spokesman for Newsom's finance department, says the governor is being 'fiscally prudent' because of economic uncertainty and threatened federal funding cutoffs. But the news media and public should keep their eyes on the card shark. The must-read: Newsom says trans athletes' participation in women's sports is 'deeply unfair' The TK: San José mayor proposes jailing homeless people who repeatedly refuse shelter The L.A. Times Special: Trump's 1% policy wars: Transgender people, USAID funding and now Canadian fentanyl? Until next week,George Skelton —Was this newsletter forwarded to you? Sign up here to get it in your inbox.
Politico
07-03-2025
- Business
- Politico
Little fires everywhere
Presented by With help from Alex Nieves, Mike Lee and Marie J. French FIRE HOSED: California wants to do more on wildfires, but paying for it is already getting messy. There's, of course, the request for $40 billion in federal funds to help Los Angeles recover after the fires, which Gov. Gavin Newsom and other Democrats are negotiating with President Donald Trump and Congress. But there's also a lot of new promises to fire-proof California, including new building and landscaping requirements on millions of property owners, that don't come with any additional money. Already, politicians are getting into tiffs over how to spend the money they have. Take Proposition 4, the bond voters approved last November to raise $10 billion for climate, water and fire projects. Though they agreed on an overall spending plan for the money last year, the Newsom administration and the Legislature are now negotiating the details. One of the Newsom administration's proposals is to use $305 million of the Prop. 4 money on programs that it previously planned to use the general fund on, including a $13 million project to fund fire-resistant home upgrades, so it can use general fund money elsewhere. State senators in a budget subcommittee hearing last week said they didn't like that strategy, arguing the bond promised to add new programs rather than backfill cuts. 'This is not what Prop. 4 promised the voters,' said state Sen. Jerry McNerney. 'Do we really want to break trust with California voters?' Stephen Benson, Finance Department assistant program budget manager, said the shifts still meet the intent of the bond but acknowledged they wouldn't create new programs. The state Board of Forestry is hearing from local officials worried about the cost of new fire-resistant landscaping requirements within five feet of homes. 'You have to do it with the carrot,' said Greg Murphy, the chair of Berkeley's Disaster and Fire Safety Commission, during a board workshop Tuesday, its first since Newsom's directive last month to finish up the long-stalled rules. 'How can homeowners access those kinds of financial resources?' Retrofitting a home to fire-prepared standards could cost $2,000 to $12,000, according to a Headwaters Economics report last year. The board will have to come up with a more detailed cost of its new landscaping requirement as part of its rulemaking, which it will formally kick off in June. There's a couple ideas for how to pay for it. In California, Insurance Commissioner Ricardo Lara and Assemblymember Lisa Calderon have proposed to channel 40 percent of the growth in state revenue from an existing tax on insurance premiums into a new grants program for retrofits. The bill, AB 888, does not yet have a hearing date. Meanwhile, congressional Democrats and Republicans are rallying around the cause of thinning out fire-prone forests — if Trump's Forest Service cuts don't get in the way. Sen. Adam Schiff, who led a bipartisan letter to FEMA on Wednesday asking for more time for LA fire victims to apply for disaster relief, sounded distinctly more open today to waiving environmental rules around forest thinning than he did last year, when he voted against the Fix Our Forests Act in the House. 'I have concerns ... that parts of the bill seem more focused on timber harvesting than they do on wildfire mitigation,' he said today during a hearing. 'They're not concerns that can't be overcome.' But the staffing cuts — which could reach 7,000 in the coming months, as Marc Heller reports for POLITICO's E&E News — overshadowed the bipartisan enthusiasm for the bill. 'If the true goal is to fix our forests, please start by fighting for the restoration of the most basic staffing levels, both full-time and seasonal, to do the good work already underway,' said Jonathan Houck, a Colorado county commissioner. 'None of this should be controversial or partisan. It's certainly not in Gunnison County.' — CvK, DK NEW NEWSLETTER JUST DROPPED: Are you a transportation nerd curious about the future of autonomous vehicles? A fire techie monitoring Silicon Valley's influence in Washington, D.C.? Or just a friendly POLITICO fan? You'll love our new sister newsletter, POLITICO Pro Technology: California Decoded. You can subscribe here. Did someone forward you this newsletter? Sign up here! THAT'S JUST YOUR OPINION, MAN: Republican lawmakers don't have the power to overturn California's vehicle emissions standards, the federal Government Accountability Office said today. But that's not going to stop the Trump administration and Congress from trying. The opinion, issued in response to a request from Sens. Sheldon Whitehouse (D-R.I.), Alex Padilla (D-Calif.) and Schiff, says the same thing as an opinion from 2023: that Congress can't use the Congressional Review Act to overturn California's permission from EPA to go further than the federal government. That goes for EPA Administrator Lee Zeldin's request to Congress last month to use the CRA on three California rules, it says. 'EPA's recent submission is inconsistent with this caselaw,' it says. Representatives for EPA and Sen. Shelley Moore Capito ( who as Senate Environment and Public Works Committee chair is expected to introduce a resolution launching the review process as early as next week, dismissed the opinion. 'Chairman Capito continues to agree with the EPA that these waivers are rules, and subject to a resolution of disapproval under the Congressional Review Act,' spokesperson Brent Scott said in an email. Attorney General Rob Bonta said Monday that the state is ready for the court fight. — AN, ML SPEAKING OF WAIVERS: Democratic lawmakers in New York are getting cold feet over one of the truck emission standards Congress is threatening to revoke. Two upstate Democrats introduced a bill this week to pause enforcement of the state's Advanced Clean Trucks rule until 2027. New York is one of five states signed onto California's rule requiring manufacturers to sell increasing percentage of electric trucks starting this year. New York's trucking industry says the state lacks necessary charging infrastructure and that electric heavy-duty models are still too expensive and lacking in range for many uses. Those arguments mirror complaints in California, where truck fleets and dealers say manufacturers have sent fewer diesel models to the state to stay in compliance with ratios that mandate a percentage of their total sales be zero-emission. The California Air Resources Board has pushed back, arguing manufacturers aren't trading available credits used to make up EV sales deficits. A similar proposal by New Jersey Democrats to delay clean truck regulations has stalled there. Other states have adopted a 2027 start date for the regulations, including Colorado, Maryland and Rhode Island. The concerns could all be moot, if Congress revokes the waiver. Enforcement of the rule would be paused while the legal case plays out. — AN, MF THE VIEW FROM BAKERSFIELD: California's top water official, Karla Nemeth, told farmers and water managers in Bakersfield today the state is open to working with the Trump administration to revise environmental rules that limit pumping water to cities and farms. She said she expects updating one particular rule governing pumping in the state's main water hub, called the Old and Middle River flow limit, to be part of ongoing negotiations with federal counterparts this spring and throughout the year, she told the audience at the Kern County Water Summit. 'My spidey sense is that's probably going to be part of what plan comes out of the federal administration to implement the president's executive order,' Nemeth said. 'The state is open to that. We're looking for a federal partner to help us work through that information together.' She called the January executive orders issued by both Trump and Newsom to 'maximize' water supplies in California 'ample direction.' — CvK LIKE A BAD NEIGHBOR: A State Farm spokesperson confirmed that an executive recorded by the O'Keefe Media Group making candid remarks about the Los Angeles fires was no longer with the company. In the recording, the executive says there shouldn't be homes in the Palisades and that people like to live in natural areas because of their ego but drought turns them into tinderboxes. He also talks about State Farm's hiring practices and decisions not to write more policies in California. 'These assertions are inaccurate and in no way represent the views of State Farm,' the company said in an email. 'They do not reflect our position regarding the victims of this tragedy, the commitment we have demonstrated to the people of California, or our hiring practices across the company. The individual in the video is no longer affiliated with State Farm.' — CvK — Los Angeles County is suing Southern California Edison over the Eaton Fire. — Lara released a list of insurers who agreed to pay out fire damages without an itemized list of losses — and those who didn't. — California utility regulators are setting up another fight with solar advocates two years after the state slashed incentives.
Yahoo
30-01-2025
- Politics
- Yahoo
California took ‘big steps back' in climate actions in 2024, environmental group says
Good morning and welcome to the A.M. Alert! CALIFORNIA TOOK 'BIG STEPS BACK' IN CLIMATE ACTIONS IN 2024, GROUP SAYS Via Stephen Hobbs... California lawmakers notched key environmental victories in 2024, but the state's overall standing on climate leadership dropped, according to the advocacy organization California Environmental Voters annual scorecard. The group gave the state an 84% grade, a drop in two percentage points from the year before and from a 91% score in 2022. During a press conference Wednesday, Mary Creasman, the organization's executive director, celebrated that voters in November passed Proposition 4, which allowed the state to sell a $10 billion bond for natural resources and climate activities. It was placed on the ballot by the Legislature. But, she added, lawmakers did not end subsidies to the oil and gas industry and cut back on climate-related funding in the state budget. 'We made some big progress moving forward, but we also had some big steps back in terms of undercutting our own progress through anti-environmental actions,' Creasman said. The organization gave Gov. Gavin Newsom a B-, the same score he earned the year before. One of the knocks on his records, according to the group, was his veto of a bill that would have placed a warning label about air pollution on gas stoves. Senate Pro Tem Mike McGuire, D-Healdsburg, and Assembly Speaker Robert Rivas, D-Salinas, earned As. PADILLA VOTES NO ON TRUMP'S AG PICK, SHE ADVANCES ANYWAY The Senate Judiciary Committee on Wednesday voted 12-10 to advance President Donald Trump's attorney general nominee — former Florida Attorney General Pamela Bondi — but it did so without the vote of Sen. Alex Padilla, D-California. It was Bondi's waffling on whether the Fourteenth Amendment of the U.S. Constitution protects birthright citizenship (it does, according to multiple U.S. Supreme Court decisions) that led Padilla to vote no. In remarks to the committee, Padilla slammed Bondi, a two-term AG with decades of legal experience, saying she was unfamiliar with the citizenship clause. 'She and I discussed the very issue when we met one-on-one, it's clearly been in the news, and when given the opportunity to discuss it during the hearing, here in public, she refused to answer,' Padilla said. 'Even worse, offensively, either claimed that she needed to study or telling me that she was not going to be doing my homework. Colleagues, in that moment, I wasn't asking her to do my homework. I was asking her if she did hers.' Padilla insisted that the law is clear: the Fourteenth Amendment does protect birthright citizenship, despite Trump's attempts to repeal it. Padilla also voiced concern about Bondi's vocal support for Trump's failed attempt to overturn the results of the 2020 presidential election that Joe Biden won. 'I remain deeply concerned about Ms. Bondi's willingness to go on national television and propagate lies about the results of a free and fair election despite a total lack of evidence,' Padilla said. With the party line vote recommending Bondi's confirmation, the matter now goes to the Senate floor for a final vote. Sen. Adam Schiff, D-Calif., a judiciary committee member, also opposed Bondi. QUOTE OF THE DAY 'Lawyers' Committee and our partners vow to challenge this unconstitutional law in court. We will not stand by while the rights of immigrants and communities of color are trampled for political gain.' - Bianca Sierra Wolff, executive director at Lawyers' Committee for Civil Rights of the San Francisco Bay Area, in a statement. Best of The Bee: Donald Trump pulls federal funding for transgender minors' gender-affirming health care, via Jenavieve Hatch. Trump said he was 'unleashing American energy.' Now, several highway projects are stalled, via Andrew Sheeler. Sacramento has contracts of over $1 million with leader accused of bribery in mayor's race, via Joe Rubin. California pension beneficiaries send billions in economic ripples across the state, via William Melhado.
