The appetizers have been cleared and it looks like the table is being set for possible reform of the California Environmental Quality Act (CEQA). While there are a large number of issues that one can discuss when it comes to CEQA reform, I will limit my comments to how to stop abusive CEQA lawsuits.

The CEQA debate came to a head recently in the Senate Environmental Quality Committee. The debate featured a lot of legislators, a lot of bills and a lot of passion, but in the end it became clear that Senate Pro Tem Darrell Steinberg was going to control this debate with his bill, SB 731. CALA had been supporting legislation by State Senator Tom Berryhill as one possible vehicle for reform, but it was pretty clear that SB 787 was going to be grounded due to the makeup of the committee.

What was interesting to me is that every single State Senator that spoke about CEQA reform discussed lawsuits, litigation and the fact we need reduce abusive CEQA lawsuits. If I had a dollar for every time lawsuits were mentioned I could buy a season ticket to the Sacramento Kings.

It seems like everyone now acknowledges that CEQA lawsuits, whether or not they have merit, have become a path to slow down or stop development projects. In the bill analysis for SB 731, the consultant to the Senate Environmental Quality Committee specifically examined the issue of CEQA litigation, noting that just the simple threat of a lawsuit is an impetus for extra costs and delays of a project subject to environmental review. Indeed, when communities pursue major development projects, it seems they inevitably will encounter a problem with CEQA litigation and abuse.

If one abusive CEQA lawsuit holds up or stops a project that would bring jobs and economic development to our state, then we have a problem. There needs to be reform when it comes to the issue of CEQA and litigation. We hope that SB 731 by State Senator Steinberg will be that vehicle for reform. CEQA, just like the Americans with Disabilities Act (ADA) or Proposition 65, is complicated, and there is a delicate balancing act that must occur. Just as he did with California’s ADA laws last year, we are confident that Senator Steinberg can strike this balance with CEQA.

(Tom Scott is executive director for California Citizens Against Lawsuit Abuse. Originally published on Fox and Hounds.)

As I mentioned in my last CityWatch piece, it is now up to Councilmember Ed Reyes, as well as Councilmembers Jose Huizar and Mitchell Englander, to prove that there is such as a thing as rules and proper conduct in the City of Los Angeles.

To date Mayor Villaraigosa, the City Planning Commission and their “Planning Politburo” have shown there are virtually NO rules that need to be followed.  Without proper and reasonable notification to the general public, City Planning rubberstamped an oversized and probably illegal Casden Sepulveda development.

To its credit, the City Planning Commission did insist on a 500 foot distance of the residential project from the freeway, but to its discredit left a nebulous and certainly illegal project in the hands of Michael LoGrande (who is on his way to being empowered as a City Planning Czar in charge of several departments) to oversee and move forward to the City Planning/Land Use (PLUM) Committee.

This project IS illegal, and hence the City Attorney has just responded to the request of Councilmembers Paul Koretz and Bill Rosendahl to review the Casden Sepulveda Project, and has now steadfastly demanded to Ed Reyes and his PLUM Committee that the Casden Sepulveda Project be returned to Planning for appropriate environmental review.

Yet this project is on the PLUM Agenda for May 28th, and on the full City Council agenda for June 12th.  Pretty obvious money and power politics on the part of the Casden Sepulveda developers, but pretty obvious impropriety (and lawsuit-inviting behavior) on the part of the City Council of Los Angeles.

I realize that this election is tying up the time and attention of just about everyone right now, but May 28th is still a week or so away.  One can only hope that the PLUM Committee will either pull the item off the agenda right now, or will take time to address this issue later this week–after tomorrow’s elections are behind us.

I am both understanding and infuriated that politics often trump policy and position-taking, but it is hoped that behind the scenes Paul Koretz and Bill Rosendahl (and the City Attorney) are saying the right things to Councilmembers Reyes, Huizar and Englander.  It is also hoped that a more public appeal by Councilmembers Koretz and Rosendahl will occur later this week with respect to the Casden Sepulveda Project.

That this project is currently on the May 28th agenda for the PLUM Committee and the June 12th agenda for the full City Council suggests that this will be fast-tracked–and approved by the PLUM Committee–despite any input by the City Attorney.

I’m presuming that the same paid/influenced “testimonialists” will be present at the PLUM Committee as they were at the 2/28/2013 CPC meeting, and that they will lambaste Carmen Trutanich’s letter as a political stunt rather than as a proper legal advisory based on the advice of Deputy City Attorneys Jane Usher and William Carter from the City Attorney’s office.

It is hoped that Usher, Carter or Trutanich will be there on the 28th, should this travesty appear before the PLUM Committee at all, to explain to the Committee the sort of legal peril they will place the City in if it’s allowed to move forward to the City Council.

By the way, fellow Angelenos, did you know that the public has no idea of what this monstrously-oversized project will even look like, because LoGrande and Planning hasn’t publicized any Planning Commission-required changes to the project for anyone to review on the 28th?

And the questions should go out for the PLUM Committee:  To the Honorable Councilmembers Reyes, Huizar and Englander…do you or your staff even know what this project will look like, and do you feel comfortable even evaluating it, let alone approving it, against the advice of the entire City Attorney department?

(Ken Alpern is a director for Westside Village Zone and boardmember of the Mar Vista Community Council. He also co-chairs the grassroots Friends of the Green Line at www.fogl.us. Write to him at Alpern@MarVista.org. Originally published on CityWatch.)

What is going on with the California based Ivanpah solar plant?

In April 2011, Brightsource Energy received a loan guarantee of $1.6 billionfrom the Department of Energy for the California-based Ivanpah project. It’s located along I-15 at the California-Nevada border, 29 miles northeast of Barstow. The loan amount was three times that given by the DOE to the now bankrupt California solar company Solyndra.

At the time of the April 2011 loan, the man at the controls as board chairman of Brightsource was John Bryson. He served in that capacity from September 2010 to January  2012. The loan was approved by then-Energy Secretary Steven Chu, a fellow Californian and friend of Bryson.

An interesting turn of events occurred during his tenure. On May 31, 2011, Bryson was nominated by President Obama to serve as U.S. Commerce Secretary. Bryson held the post until seizures and car accidents forced his resignation on June 21, 2012.

Bryson also was the director of Southern California Edison from 1990 until he retired in 2008, guiding the firm during the politically treacherous 1996 reorganization of the California electricity system and the 2000-2001 California Electricity Crisis. Curiously, in 1970 Bryson co-founded, with John Adams, the Natural Resources Defense Council, an  environmental defense law firm.

The huge taxpayer capital risk investment for Brightsource Energy’s groundbreaking solar project has caused, of all things, complaints by environmentalists.  In addition, the massive 2.8 square-mile solar project has faced numerous construction delays and lawsuits.

Tortoises

Soon after construction began in the hot desert sands, the project was halted when desert tortoises were found to be threatened by the project.  Brightsource was forced to spend $56 million and hire a team of 100 biologists to appease environmental organizations, which claimed the company underestimated the tortoise population when it designed the project.

Fearing legal action, Brightsource moved 166 juvenile and adult tortoises to a pen 7 miles away from the solar project.  However, it has been reported the tortoises have been attempting to escape from the pens and return to their native habitat, causing ongoing debates of possible legal action by some environmental groups.

In addition, the local native-American tribes alleged the Ivanpah plant would cause harm to their sacred sites and joined environmentalists in filing a lawsuit that included Brightsource Energy’s Ivanpah plant.

Recently, another of Brightsource Energy’s solar development projects, a $2.7-billion power plant in Inyo County, hit an unexpected snag and has been put on hold indefinitely.  The Hidden Hills project was working its way through the complicated Sacramento application process and was about to receive its final stamp of approval from the California Energy Commission in April when the Brightsource application was suddenly suspended.

Brightsource’s problems don’t end with Ivanpah or Hidden Hills.  Last year the firm shelved another massive 3,200-acre solar plant project, the Rio Mesa solar field, located in the Mojave dessert near Blythe.  A company spokesman said that project hit unexpected design problems that required a series of new engineering and environmental analyses and that the project might be resuscitated at some future date.

Water towers

Speaking of design problems, both the technology being used at Ivanpah and now-on-hold Hidden Hills project remain problematical to many.   Called “tower power” technology, huge 450-foot water towers are built in the center of the solar-panel fields. There are hundreds of thousands of mirrors reflecting direct sunlight shining on a boiler atop the towers.  The water is then heated inside the towers, creating steam and thus driving the electric generating turbines.

Originally, Ivanpah was designed to include seven skyscraper towers.  However, when the desert tortoise showed up, but the number was reduced to three.  At Hidden Hills, only two towers were designed for the center of the proposed solar field.

With all of the delays, Brightsource now promises construction is almost complete and the Ivanpah project will come online by the end of the year. However, whether the taxpayers will see any benefit from their government investment and the “power tower” technology is still a topic of debate.

Will it work as designed? Or will this be like other taxpayer-funded alternative energy projects gone bust — Solyndra, A123 Systems and Fisker, to name a few?

And what happened to John Bryson? He’s now a Distinguished Public Policy Scholar at the Woodrow Wilson International Center for Scholars. The center is headed by Jane Harman, formerly a powerful California congresswoman and heir to the Harman/Kardon electronics fortune.

(Warren Duffy is a reporter for CalWatchdog.)

The single most important issue that drove the Los Angeles mayoral election was union spending on behalf of Wendy Greuel, especially money from the public union Department of Water and Power. In a heavily Democratic, labor-oriented city, labor’s candidate lost. What does that portend for the long-term reforms on pension costs, tax reform, re-thinking how government services are delivered and other labor related issues?

It’s true that Greuel had solid support from the business community as well. In fact, she seemed to have many advantages going into the race. She claimed she was the candidate that could bring business and labor together for the betterment of the city. She was more closely identified with the voter rich San Fernando Valley. Some polls indicated that her plea to become the first female mayor of the city struck a chord with voters.

Yet, the major difference between Greuel and the winning candidate, city councilman Eric Garcetti, was Greuel’s financial support from public unions, which Garcetti turned into his most effective jab that scored with the voters.

Let’s not be naïve to think that the unions will now take a seat in the back of the room. Garcetti did have some union support and he has been friendly to unions in the past. The unions will lick their wounds and then get back into the game making amends with the winner.

But, Garcetti also has an opportunity with his victory to set a new course for the city. He won without any of the usual interests in his corner. He has an independence right now that could help him shape the city government for the 21^st century.

(Joel Fox is the editor of Fox and Hounds and President of the Small Business Action Committee. Originally published on Fox and Hounds.)

After being threatened with contempt by a panel of federal judges for failing to sufficiently reduce the number of prisoners in California’s jails, Gov. Jerry Brown reluctantly unveiled a plan this month to further reduce the Golden State’s overcrowded prisons by another 9,000 inmates. Enthusiasm in Sacramento was in short supply.

Brown argued that court orders were forcing him to jeopardize public safety by transferring prisoners to county jails and offering some of them early release.

Prisons chief Jeffrey Beard was more direct, “The plan is ugly. We don’t like it.”

Two years ago, California’s prisons held twice the number of inmates they were designed to hold, and that led to serious problems. In 2011, the U.S. Supreme Court ruled in Brown v. Plata that California was violating prisoners’ Eighth Amendment right against cruel and unusual punishment. The Court estimated that an inmate in California’s prisons died every six to seven days due to inadequate medical care caused by overcrowding.

Suicidal inmates were forced to stand in metal cages for 24 hours without access to restrooms. California was ordered to reduce inmate populations over two years from 150,000 to 110,000. When Brown said this January that California had done enough to satisfy the court’s requirements, he was threatened with contempt unless he continued reducing prison rolls down to the mandated target.

Three strikes

How did California’s prisons get so crowded in the first place? Golden State voters contributed to this crisis by approving some of the most stringent sentencing measures in the nation, including the 1994 Three Strikes Initiative, Proposition 184. The law mandated 25-years-to-life in prison for three-time felons, even if the third “strike” was a nonviolent crime. Strict sentencing laws enjoy bipartisan support in Sacramento. Republican legislators exult in preaching a tough-on-crime mantra — especially to the older, white demographic that tends to vote for them. And Democrats are surprisingly among the loudest voices calling for tougher sentencing laws lest they be called-out for being soft on crime.

Enter the California Correction Peace Officer’s Association, CCPOA, better known as the prison guards union.

Thanks to the mandatory dues paid by its members, the union raises about $23 million a year, and spends about $8 million of it on lobbying. According to Joan Petersilia, a longtime observer of California’s correctional institutions, CCPOA’s lobbying goal is simple, “More prisoners lead to more prisons; more prisons require more guards; more guards means more dues-paying members and fund-raising capability; and fund-raising, of course, translates into political influence.”

And what does that influence lead to? Outrageous paychecks, for one thing. The average annual salary for prison guards nationally is about $45,000. California’s prison guards, however, pocket a cool $72,400 — 60 percent above the national average. But that doesn’t even take overtime pay into account. Once that’s factored in, California prison guards often make more than $100,000 per year. California’s governors routinely push these pay increases through an obliging Legislature.

The union has been one of the leading backers of tougher sentencing laws. It spent more than $100,000 to pass the original Three Strikes law. It dropped another $1 million in 2008 to defeat Proposition 5, which would have reduced sentences for nonviolent crimes and allocated more resources to treating drug addiction.

And it spent more than $1 million in 2004 to beat Proposition 66, which would have reduced the number of crimes that carry mandatory life sentences.

Politicians

Politicians are also on the menu. CCPOA spent nearly $2 million supporting Brown’s 2010 gubernatorial campaign. The Legislature is a special beneficiary. Operating on the principle that the surest way to win a race is to bet on all the horses,as of Dec. 2012 the union had contributed campaign funds to every current state senator in California.

With all its influence and off-the-charts pay levels, you might think that California’s prison guards are among the nation’s best at what they do.

A two-volume report was issued last month by the independent Office of Inspector General detailing more than 117 cases of prison guard abuse in painstaking detail. Examples include guards planning prisoner assaults and murder, buying prisoners drugs and alcohol, groping and grappling prisoners and soliciting sex from prisoners — including juvenile prisoners.

The investigators accused the corrections department of sweeping these offenses under the rug. But with so many contributions to politicians, what’s the likelihood that any real reform will happen? Is it any wonder that between the humanitarian crisis caused by overcrowding, reduced funding for rehabilitation programs, and rank abuse by the very people entrusted to manage prisons, California’s recidivism rate is the highest in the nation — nearly double the average of all other states?

Smuggling

To show just how much power the prison guards union has in Sacramento, consider one of the topics covered in the inspector general’s report: smuggled cellphones used by prisoners to run drugs and plan new crimes. According to a legislative analysis in 2010, the main source of smuggled cellphones is — you guessed it — prison guards.

In response to demands for employee searches, the union cited a work requirement that its members be paid for any increase in “walk time” — the minutes it takes for guards to get from the front gate to their posts behind prison walls. Going through airport-style metal detectors, which require the removal of shoes, belts, and other items, easily could double that walk time, which would allow prison guards to collect an additional several million dollars of pay per year.

That’s right: prison guards would financially benefit from the inconvenience of having their illegal activities halted. Last year, 20 prison guards were fired or allowed to resign over the cellphone scandal, but neither Jerry Brown nor the Legislature openly challenged the absurdity of “walk time.”

Some will see in all this a vindication of their preconceived notions about unions. But privatization offers no easy cure, either. Consider a proposal floated last September by Correctional Corporation of America. Cash-strapped states would receive upfront payments of $250 million from CCA, which would purchase and run their prisons. In return, the states would guarantee CCA a 90 percent minimum occupancy rate in these prisons for at least 20 years.

The proposal was rightly blasted by watchdog groups, which pointed out that such a deal would create perverse incentives for lawmakers to pass California-style sentencing laws across the nation not to protect public safety, but to keep the money flowing by throwing as many people behind bars as possible.

Whether the beneficiary is a public sector union like CCPOA, or a private company like CCA, the profit motive creates dangerous incentives when combined with prisons. America imprisons more people than any other country, and California imprisons more people than any other state. Instead of coming up with new ways to tie profits to prisoners, we should be looking for ways to reduce the number of people behind bars.

Rehab

A good place to start is allocating funds away from guard salaries and new prison construction and into drug rehab programs to reduce recidivism. We should modify laws like Three Strikes, and legalize relatively harmless drugs like marijuana.

A step in the right direction was Proposition 36, which voters approved last November. It changed the law to impose a life sentence only when the third strike was “serious or violent.”

The outrageous salary increases and job protections the union has obtained should be overturned — by ballot measure, if necessary. The sanctity of contracts is all good and well, but despite this year’s balanced budget, California is still in a fiscal crisis from the pension crisis and other problems. If the people deem the continuance of such contracts to be against the state’s interest, they have the right to cancel them.

The union has learned to keep quiet in the latest round of debates, possibly because it fears becoming the target of a Scott Walker-style movement. But that doesn’t mean it has suddenly decided to pack it in. It is simply biding its time, waiting for the furor to subside before it goes back to business as usual.

(Many thanks to Tim Kowal for helping me understand some of the issues surrounding California’s broken prison system. Check out his blog to learn more.)

(Sagar Jethani is a global marketing executive who studied political science and philosophy at Loyola University of Chicago and business at UCLA Anderson. He lives in Woodland Hills, California. This article was originally published on PolicyMic.)

Some California educators want to educate your children “cradle-to-career.”

In support of President Obama’s proposal to significantly increase federal spending on early childhood education and care, Assembly Concurrent Resolution 45 is by Assemblywoman Shirley Weber, D-San Diego. It would urge the Legislature to boost early childhood education funding in order to get children into day care and educational programs even before preschool.

Weber explained her bill Monday on the Assembly floor. A retired professor of African American Studies at San Diego State University, she touted the benefits of spending more money on parenting classes and on programs for babies and toddlers:

“A child who attends quality early care and education programs is less likely to be arrested and more likely to earn higher incomes than a child who does not, and the opportunity to participate in such programs prepares children to attain a higher standard of living as adults and to become members of the high-skilled workforce that is critical to our nation’s economic future.

“If we are only looking at preschool beginning at age 2-1/2 to three, we are missing a significant part of time when we should be stimulating the child.” 

Neglecting such development “could prove very harmful to the future of these children, especially African American males,” the Assembly Black Caucus noted.

Weber also explained of parenting classes, “Of all the things we are licensed to do, drive a car, own a business, we basically give birth to children with no training or background or assistance. That is why parenting classes are important.”

“I don’t want any of our five-year-olds to feel like a failure that first day of school,” added Assemblywoman Susan Bonilla, D-Concord, also a teacher.

Said Assemblyman V. Manuel Perez, D-Coachella, “Every dollar we invest in high-quality early childhood education can save more than $7 later on, in less youth violence, improved social skills and reducing violent crime.”

Results

Studies show failures

Georgia and Oklahoma have universal preschool programs. A Georgia State University study on the effectiveness of the program covering data from 2001-2004 found that, by the end of first grade, children who did not attend preschool had skills similar to those students who had attended Georgia’s state preschools.

A Heritage Foundation study from 2009 found, “More than a decade after offering students universal preschool, neither Georgia nor Oklahoma has shown impressive gains in students’ academic achievement, as measured by the National Assessment of Educational Progress.”

While President Obama’s massive federal preschool expansion further entangles Washington in the education and care of the youngest Americans, public demand for new, large-scale government spending on early childhood education and care is not evident. An estimated 74 percent of four-year-old children are already enrolled in public and private preschool throughout the country.

And low-income families already have access to taxpayer-funded preschool through state programs and Head Start. Proof that this is just an attempt to further expand government comes from President Obama’s proposal would subsidize middle-income and upper-income families.

Growing government preschool at any level does not address deeper social issues, such as the crisis of single motherhood, which lie at the heart of the type of poverty that affects Americans today.

But despite these findings, Weber and 62 members of the Assembly voted in support of the resolution to expand California’s role in the lives of children.

(Katy Grimes is a longtime political analyst, writer and journalist, and CalWatchdog’s news reporter. Originally posted on CalWatchdog.)

Last week we alerted California taxpayers as to the immediate threats to Proposition 13 being heard by a California legislative committee. As fully anticipated, the Senate Committee on Governance and Finance approved all six of the anti-Prop. 13 proposals.

All of the bills in question would gut one of the most important provisions of Proposition 13 — the two thirds vote requirement for additional “add on” parcel taxes. These “add on” parcel and bond taxes are on top of the property tax homeowners already pay under current law.

The six bills are designated as “SCAs” standing for “Senate Constitutional Amendments.” The Legislature itself cannot change the constitution without voter approval so the issue for each of these “SCAs” was whether they should proceed through the legislative process and appear on the ballot as partial repeals of Prop. 13 which itself is part of the constitution.

The bills are as follows:

• Senate Constitutional Amendment 3 (SCA 3), Mark Leno (D—San Francisco): Lowers the threshold for school district per-parcel property taxes from two-thirds to 55%. This is a direct assault on Proposition 13 because it makes it easier to increase property taxes above Proposition 13′s one percent cap.
• Senate Constitutional Amendment 4 (SCA 4), Carol Liu (D—La Canada) and Senate Constitutional Amendment 8 (SCA 8), Ellen Corbett (D—San Leandro): These two bills lower the threshold for the imposition, extension or increase of local transportation special taxes from the Proposition 13-mandated two-thirds vote to 55%. While most transportation special tax increases consist of very regressive sales tax hikes, the language of these bills could be used to impose new parcel taxes.
• Senate Constitutional Amendment 7 (SCA 7), Lois Wolk (D—Davis): Lowers the threshold from two-thirds to 55% in order to approve a bond to fund public library facilities. Lowering the threshold for school facilities to 55% has already resulted in billions of dollars of additional property tax payments that otherwise would not have been approved by voters and the lower threshold has done nothing to improve education in California. Bond “add on” taxes are like parcel taxes because only property owners have to pay.
• Senate Constitutional Amendment 9 (SCA 9), Ellen Corbett (D—San Leandro): Lowers the threshold from two-thirds to 55% to increase special taxes – including parcel taxes – to fund community and economic development projects.
• Senate Constitutional Amendment 11 (SCA 11), Loni Hancock (D—Berkeley): Lowers the threshold to 55% to allow for voters representing ANY local government entity to approve a special tax for ANY purpose. This is far and away the broadest application, and thus the most egregious, of these constitutional amendments.

We at HJTA have warned about the dangers of one party rule in Sacramento and our predictions are now coming true. Despite now having the highest state income tax rate in America, the highest state sales tax rate in America and, come June, the highest gas tax in America, the majority party is launching a full scale assault on Prop. 13 to grab even more tax dollars from property owners.

To stop them, we must employ all our resources. First, the battle in the Legislature is far from over. Last week’s hearing was before only one policy committee. In the Senate itself, these measures will go through at least one more committee and, should they pass, go to the floor of the full Senate for a vote of the entire house. Even if they pass there, the bills must then go to the Assembly and its committee process.

During the next several months, HJTA will take every opportunity to remind all California legislators that, before they cast their votes, they must understand that these bills attack the very core of Prop. 13. Some legislators from California’s most liberal areas don’t care. But most are fully aware of how popular Prop. 13 remains and many in the majority party come from districts where Prop. 13 is much more popular than in the districts of some of their left wing colleagues.

These legislators also know that the voters will have the final say and current polling strong suggests that Californians are very negative toward higher property taxes. They must therefore ask themselves if casting a vote against homeowners might not result in a shortened political career.

Thus, while homeowners may have lost round one, this is going to be a long fight. Victory will belong to those with the strength and resolve to prevail.

(Jon Coupal is president of the Howard Jarvis Taxpayers Association — California’s largest grass-roots taxpayer organization dedicated to the protection of Proposition 13 and the advancement of taxpayers’ rights. Originally posted on HJTA.)

The Caltrans Bay Bridge debacle is worse than just a case of embarrassment for government infrastructure projects. The bridge is unsafe, according to engineering experts across the country, after the discovery that a third of the of the 96 massive, high-strength steel rods, installed for seismic safety, cracked under pressure when the nuts affixed to the rods were tightened.

Under construction for more than a decade, the Bay Bridge project has not only taken much longer to build than planned, but cost overruns have escalated the total cost to build it to a whopping $6.4 billion. And that’s not the half of it.

According to CBS San Francisco, retired Bechtel metallurgist Yun Chung recently prepared an unsolicited 32-page report stating that Caltrans engineers “were ignorant to the threat of hydrogen embrittlement — a process in which high strength metals, such as steel, become brittle and fracture due to hydrogen exposure.” He said Caltrans “fell on its face.”

Chung, who specialized in high-strength steel analysis for the nuclear power industry, reported that Caltrans only focused on the hydrogen effects during the production process.

This is the result of the close alliances between government and public employee labor unions which make the purpose of the work appear secondary to union interests, even when public safety is involved.

1989 Loma Prieta earthquake

The Loma Prieta Earthquake, 7.1 on the Richter Scale, which caused the Oakland Bay Bridge to break, took place 24 years ago in 1989.  During the 15-second earthquake, the freeway buckled and twisted, causing the support columns to break. The upper freeway deck crashed onto the lower deck; 41 people were crushed to death in their cars.

Today, 24 years later, the Oakland Bay Bridge is still under construction.

In 1989, George H.W. Bush was President, Margaret Thatcher was Prime Minister of the United Kingdom, the Soviet Union finally left Afganastan, the Exxon Valdez spilled 11 million gallons of oil in Alaska’s Prince William Sound, and students from Beijing, Shanghai, Xian and Nanjing protested in Tiananmen Square.

Mortgage interest rates hit 15 percent, and California’s minimum wage was $4.25.

1989 seems like a lifetime ago. And Caltrans has been working on the Bay bridge the entire time.

Free market infrastructure successes

Immediately after the Loma Prieta earthquake in 1989, the civil construction bridge building contractor, C.C. Myers of Rancho Cordova, rebuilt two damaged bridges on Highway 1 near Watsonville under budget, and ahead of schedule.

Caltrans allowed only 100 days for completion of the project, and offered Meyers cash incentives to make the project happen under budget, and ahead of schedule. Meyers finished the job 45 days earlier than the Caltrans deadline, and earned $1 million in incentives.

That’s the free market at work.

Myers rebuilt the Santa Monica freeway the same way after the 1994 Northridge earthquake.

1994 Northridge earthquake

In 1994, the Northridge earthquake in Southern California, 6.7 on the Richter Scale, damaged four bridges on the Santa Monica Freeway in Los Angeles. Myers’ successes with the projects after the Loma Prieta earthquake made his company a natural for this project.

C.C. Myers, Inc. won the contract to replace and replace the freeways with one caveat: the work had to be completed in 140 days. But this was L.A., notorious for congested freeways. The State of California offered Meyers $200,000 per day as a bonus for every day ahead of schedule the project was completed. Meyers’ company finished the job in 66 days, 74 days ahead of schedule, and received a $14.8 million bonus for his outstanding work.

Experts said Myers managed to perform what would have taken Caltrans 18 months of work, in only 66 days.

C.C. Myers is a shining example of the free market. “Six years ago, C.C. Myers and his team proved dramatically that if bureaucracy will simply get out of the way, we can build highways cheaply, quickly and safely,” Rep. Tom McClintock said in year 2000 at a press conference, commenting about the rapid opening of the freeways.

Bay Bridge debacle

Compare these two fantastically successful projects with Caltrans’ handling of the Oakland Bay Bridge project —  years behind schedule and billions of dollars over budget, along with all of the other malfeasance, dishonesty, payola, and shadiness I wrote about recently in, “Despite Caltrans boondoggles, acting director to be confirmed.”

“In March, anchor bolts meant to secure seismic equipment on the new bridge broke — an event attributed partly to water-induced corrosion,” the Sacramento Bee reported. “Caltrans similarly failed to take basic precautions to protect many skyway tendons from water even after the agency completed its study. Those lapses and others, said nine leading experts in the corrosion of bridge tendons, introduced uncertainty about the durability of the skyway.”

“Experts said that while a total collapse seemed unlikely, if Caltrans miscalculated corrosion estimates a major quake could cripple sections of the skyway.”

The Bee continued: “Experts agreed that strong skyway foundations and piers, plus the factor of safety — ’10 percent extra tendons,’ according to Caltrans — make a disastrous collapse of the bridge improbable, even in a devastating quake.”

But if tendons are more corroded than Caltrans’ study indicates, said Hawkins of the University of Illinois, a massive temblor might render one or more sections of the skyway unusable.

Another looming question, experts said, is whether taxpayers have purchased the $6.4 billion bridge they were promised, or a structure that will require costly repairs relatively soon.

Caltrans Director Matthew Dougherty was just reconfirmed by the Senate. It’s under Dougherty’s watch and decades in management at Caltrans that many mishaps, corruption, mistakes and cover ups have taken place.

Caltrans officials know C.C. Myers would have had this project wrapped up years ago, delivered under budget and ahead of schedule.  It is not too late to bring them in to clean up this mess.

(Katy Grimes is a longtime political analyst, writer and journalist, and CalWatchdog’s news reporter. Originally posted on CalWatchdog.)

First exposed by the Los Angeles Times, the recent revelation, that the rules for awarding the first construction bid contract for the California High Speed Rail project were changed in the middle of the process, needs a full blown investigation.

The Authority CEO, Jeff Morales seems to be immersed in a world of his own imagination. His numerous in print statements that the rule changes were “thoughtful and transparent” is completely unbelievable.  How can he make these statements when the rules which were changed by him, were unannounced to the public or the media?  The rule changes are embedded in an Addendum of 150 pages, and involved deleting a couple of sentences.

At the Authority Board meeting on Thursday, May 2, 2013, CEO Morales said:

“There is no requirement for the board to approve specific provisions of this RFP, or of any construction RFPs.”

There is no truth in this statement. The whole bid contract evaluation process was governed by the formal Board approved resolution CHSR# 12-04, which was passed in the Board meeting on March 1, 2012.

The first paragraph of resolution 12-04 reads:

Whereas, the California High-Speed Rail Authority (Authority) may enter into design build contracts with private and public entities pursuant to the Public Utilities Code §185036;

Code 185036, vests the Public trust to deliver the project onto the Authority board, which in turn must clearly designate how these powers are to be executed.

The resolution further reads:

The Executive Director/Chief Executive Officer is hereby authorized and directed to make appropriate non-substantive changes to the Construction Package #1 RFP terms contained on the term sheet in consultation with the Board Chair as part of the RFP evaluation and contract negotiation process. 

The rule change is certainly not non-substantive (after all it results in a bidding group which would have been disqualified on technical merit, now being the apparent winner of the contract).  Also, any changes could only be applied to “terms contained on the term sheet.”  The change in the bidding evaluation rules are not on the term sheet.

Clearly CEO Morales did not have the power, without full Board approval, to change the rules regarding the evaluation criteria for who will win a $1 billion construction award, regardless of what ever statements he makes to the contrary.

There is clearly the need for a full blown investigation of what has happened here. Why were the rules changed?  Authority Staff in March 2012 made such a strong presentation that the two phase evaluation plan, was in keeping with best practices and would produce a competitive environment and result in an excellent result for the project. These are the rules which were approved by the Authority Board.

For whatever reason(s), CEO Morales in August 2012 decided to change the rules and did so without getting approval from the Board, which was clearly needed. The press and the public were not alerted to this change either. He should be fired.

The bidding process has been corrupted. It needs to be re-done.

(Morris Brown is a resident of Menlo Park and founder of DERAIL, a grassroots effort against the California high-speed rail project. Originally posted on Fox and Hounds.)

If not for the activism of the California Democratic Party’s most prominent special-interest group, the state party convention last month would have been a humdrum affair. The party’s top officials, including governor Jerry Brown and attorney general Kamala Harris, took to the podium to urge action on their pet issues, including gun control and property-tax “reform.” Not much news there—until, that is, the California Teachers Association went on the warpath, sponsoring an inflammatory resolution that ripped into two Democratic-run organizations.

The resolution denounced Students First, founded in 2010 by former Washington, D.C. schools chief Michelle Rhee, and Democrats for Education Reform (DFER), whose California chapter is directed by former California state senator Gloria Romero. Though it doesn’t mention Rhee or Romero by name, the resolution mocks their “so-called ‘reform’ initiatives,” suggesting that they “rely on destructive anti-educator policies that do nothing for students but blame educators and their unions for the ills of society.” It also claims that Rhee’s group makes “testing the goal of education, shatter[s] communities by closing their public schools, and see[s] public schools as potential profit centers and children as measureable commodities.” The resolution lambastes DFER, meanwhile, for its alleged associations with “corporations, Republican operatives and wealthy individuals dedicated to privatization and anti-educator initiatives.” And the union attacks both groups for being tools of “billionaires” whose goal is nothing less than replacing “a free public education for every student in California” with “company run charter schools, non-credentialed teachers and unproven untested so-called ‘reforms.’”

Employing class-warfare rhetoric to bash Republicans is nothing new, of course, but tarring fellow Democrats with the same brush is novel. Rhee is a self-described liberal Democrat who is married to Kevin Johnson, the Democratic mayor of Sacramento. Her transgression is leading an organization that prioritizes the needs of schoolchildren over those of adults. For her part, Romero regularly battled the teachers’ union as a state senator, authored the nation’s first parent-trigger law, and, as a DFER leader, has been an outspoken proponent of school choice.

Why are Democrats attacking their own? In recent years, education reform has blurred political boundaries. Conservative and libertarian think tanks have joined forces with liberal Democrats in pushing for more teacher accountability, charter schools, and opportunity scholarships—changes that old-line Democrats, dominated by the teachers’ unions, aggressively oppose. While the “new” Democrats have no particular ill will for organized labor—Romero, in fact, was a longtime union member in Los Angeles before she ran for political office—they put the interests of children first. It clearly irritates the unions that these renegade Democratic reformers have picked up friends and allies.

Union officials have tried to play a double game, taking a more measured stance with the public while peddling a hard line to the party faithful. In March, I participated, along with Romero and CTA president Dean Vogel, in an education-reform panel sponsored by the Conservative Forum of Silicon Valley. Aware that he was in enemy territory, Vogel acted like Mr. Congeniality and implored people of good will to “work together” to improve education. But he struck a morestrident tone at the party convention, where his attacks and threats were unsparing. The education-reform groups, Vogel told party delegates, were “hellbent on turning students into test-taking machines. I’ll tell you right now, [if] they want to do that, they have to come through us.” He went on: “Let’s be perfectly clear. These organizations are backed by moneyed interests, Republican operatives and out-of-state Wall Street billionaires dedicated to school privatization and trampling on teacher and worker rights.”

Responding later, Students First spokeswoman Jessica Ng took a moderate stance. “The heated rhetoric is especially disappointing because it reveals an abject refusal to tackle the most important issue, ensuring that every California student goes to a great school and has a great teacher,” she said. Romero, battle-scarred from years of fighting the CTA, was more direct. She called the resolution “stupid.“ Later, Romero described Vogel’s comments as “political theater” and claimed that the fight is now “blue vs. blue.” As she wrote in the Orange County Register: “More and more Democrats are getting tired of bowing down before the CTA, in homage. Their constituents, especially Latinos whose kids are stuck in subpar schools, are clamoring for reform. True reform . . . will come when moderate Democrats in the Legislature are willing to stand up and tell both the party and the CTA that they’ve gone too far.”

While it’s true that wealthy donors fund Students First and DFER, none stand to gain personally from the reforms they’re supporting. Besides, any conversation about powerful “moneyed interests” has to start with the CTA: the teachers’ union is a private corporation that rakes in about $185 million annually. The vast majority of public school teachers in California pay $647 a year for membership. With a huge war chest, the CTA controls the state assembly and manages to kill most child-friendly reform proposals. And CTA does it all without paying one penny in corporate tax. Not for nothing has it been called “The Worst Union in America.”

Reformers such as Romero and Rhee should be commended for veering from the traditional Democratic Party line and standing up to teachers’ union bosses and their bought-and-paid-for cronies in Sacramento. Fighting those moneyed interests is a battle that good people of all political persuasions should support.

(Larry Sand, a retired teacher, is president of the California Teachers Empowerment Network. Originally posted on City Journal.)