Governor signs budget-balancing bills

Published in Sacramento Bee, http://www.sacbee.com/1095/story/2062713.html
by By Steve Wiegand, Tuesday, Jul. 28, 2009

Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger signed a 27-bill "good, bad and ugly" budget-balancing package today that imposes deeper cuts in programs that range from operating state parks to preventing AIDS and puts aside a relatively paltry $500 million reserve.

"This has been a very tough budget, probably the toughest since I have been here in Sacramento," the governor said as he signed the bills before a horde of reporters and aides packed into a Capitol conference room. "I'm the only one responsible for these cuts ... but we dealt with it because I think it's important to have a reserve."

Schwarzenegger characterized what amounted to re-balancing the budget adopted last February for the fiscal year that started July 1 as "good, bad and ugly:"

• Good because it contains no tax increases, "lives within our means" and includes reforms of some programs.
• Bad because of severe cuts in virtually every state program that serves California's most needy populations. "That's why you don't see us celebrating."
• Ugly because the package legislators sent Schwarzenegger on Friday lacked a reserve and was $156 million short of balanced, forcing the governor to make even deeper cuts. "That's ugly, when already we've cut so much," he said.

The governor also warned that more cuts might be in the offing if the state's economy continues to deteriorate.

"We are not out of the troubled waters yet," he said. "We are ready if our revenues drop further to make the necessary cuts to again live within our means."

At least one legislative leader took immediate umbrage to the cuts, challenging whether the governor had the legal authority to make further reductions in a budget adopted in February.

"We will fight to restore every dollar of additional cuts to health and human services," Senate President Darrell Steinberg said in a prepared statement. "We question whether the majority of these vetoes are legal.

"The Governor has the right to blue pencil an appropriation. The funding levels identified in the budget revision in many cases are not new appropriations. This is not the last word."

To eliminate the $156 million deficit and create the $500 million reserve, Schwarzenegger made $489 million in additional cuts, borrowed $50 million from one of the state's special funds and found about $117 million in savings from money not spent in the last fiscal year.

The biggest single cut was $80 million in funds allocated to counties to finance programs that investigate and remediate cases of child abuse and neglect. Administration officials said the program had been spared in earlier rounds of budget cuts.

"The situation has just gotten to the point we can't exempt them anymore," said Mike Genest, Schwarzenegger's finance director.

Other cuts include:
• $60.6 million from funds used to pay for Medi-Cal eligibility workers at the county level. Aid to recipients was not cut, but they will likely have to wait longer for service.
• $50 million from the Healthy Families Program, a 12-year-old program that provides low-cost medical insurance to low-income families that don't qualify for Medi-Cal. New enrollments were frozen two weeks ago due to budget cuts; officials say that unless other funding is found, some families now on the program will be disenrolled.
• $52.1 million from the Office of AIDS Prevention and Treatment. Officials said the cut means the elimination of all services except providing drug assistance and monitoring the number of cases.
• $27.8 million from the Williamson Act program, which provides money to counties that give tax breaks to landowners who keep their land as open space. Because the governor couldn't unilaterally abolish the program, he cut the budget to a token $1,000.
• $6.2 million from state parks. Coupled with earlier cuts, the added reduction could mean as many as 100 of the state's 279 parks could close in October. But officials cautioned that local governments with nearby parks, or public-private partnerships, might save some parks.

Officials are banking on the package being enough to convince Wall Street lenders to provide the state with $8 billion to $10 billion in loans to help with California's cash-flow needs, and allow state Controller John Chiang to stop paying many of the state's bills with IOUs.

"It's not going to be as easy as it has in the past," Genest said of the prospects of securing the loans.

Genest said administration officials would be huddling with Chiang and state Treasurer Bill Lockyer to figure out exactly how much in loans the state should seek, and when Chiang can turn off the IOUs.

But he acknowledged that even if all of the lawmakers' and governor's machinations work, the state has no unforeseen emergencies and no one successfully sues the state to thwart some budget-balancing effort, California's books might still be from $7 billion to $8 billion out of whack by the end of this fiscal year.
"No one can predict with certainty what's going to happen," he said.

ACTION this Tuesday - Sustainability and Arts and Cultural Commission Ordinance‏

Your participation in civic affairs is important and vital to ensuring our quality of life in Benicia. This Tuesday's Council meeting agenda includes two ordinances that will establish major commissions: Benicia Arts and Cultural Commission and Benicia Community Sustainability Commission. Your interest, support and future membership are welcomed.

The ordinances will be discussed and a few minor suggestions are anticipated. For instance the ordinance for the BACC should include the power and the duty to review projects for consistency with the Public Arts Ordinance. The ordinance should also clarify that membership is art and cultural demonstrated interest-based and not organization-centric (in other words, not a club for the community organizations, but a commission of broad public membership).

Please read the staff reports here:
Benicia Community Sustainability Commission
Benicia Arts and Cultural Commission

CalWORKS: Is it costing too much?

This story is taken from Sacbee / Capitol and California

swiegand@sacbee.com

Published Sunday, Jul. 19, 2009

It's the kind of statistic that makes radio talk show hosts drool:

California is home to about 12 percent of all Americans – and more than 30 percent of all Americans on welfare.

Critics of the state's welfare program, called CalWORKs, say it's clear proof that the system is flabby and overly beneficent, particularly as compared to other states.

"We are more lenient here; we are more generous in the state of California," Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger said last week, "and also we are giving greater benefits for longer periods of time, and there are really no consequences if someone doesn't fulfill the work requirements."

But program officials and advocates for welfare recipients say the statistic masks the fact that California's welfare system is one of those government rarities: a program that actually works.

"That (statistic) is an apples-and-oranges thing," said Frank Mecca, executive director of the County Welfare Directors of California. CalWORKs has been "one of the most successful programs the state has had in the past decade."

There's little argument over the numbers themselves. According to the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services, about 1.2 million Californians (950,000 of them children) participated during the 2008 fiscal year in the Temporary Assistance to Needy Families program.

In California, TANF is called CalWORKs and is fueled by about $5.5 billion in federal and state funds.

The 1.2 million Californians receiving cash assistance represent 31.3 percent of all TANF recipients – or more welfare patrons than the next nine most populous states combined.

According to the Center on Budget and Policy Priorities, a Washington, D.C.-based think tank, California's $694-a-month grant for a single-parent family of three was surpassed only by those in Alaska and New York.

But a commonly held theory that California's relatively high benefit level attracts large numbers of welfare recipients from other states is disputed by system officials and program analysts.

"We've never seen any evidence of that," said Mecca, whose experience dates back over two decades. "The fact is, low-income people just can't pack up and move that easily."

Instead, officials and analysts point to a covey of other factors that have helped swell the ranks of welfare recipients in California, including:

The Safety Net. The federal TANF program, a product of compromise in the mid-1990s between Democratic President Bill Clinton and a Republican-controlled Congress, required that recipients be weaned off the program within five years.

California, however, is one of 11 states that have a "safety net" under its welfare program. The net allows children under the age of 18 to continue to receive cash assistance even after the five-year clock has run out on their parents.

Lack of "Full Family" Sanctions. Under the TANF program, adult recipients who fail to comply with rules on working, seeking work or undergoing job training (130 hours a month is required in California) can be sanctioned by a state, and their benefits withheld.

But California is one of six states that penalize only the adult portion of the benefit – which is currently $139.

Moreover, the five-year clock is suspended while a sanction is in place. That means children can continue to receive benefits until they turn 18, even if their parent or parents have been sanctioned for years.

"Technically, you could be on (welfare) aid for 18 years," said John Wagner, director of the state's Department of Social Services. "With our current system, an adult could either work 130 hours or face $139 in sanctions. That's very little incentive to participate in activities, including work, that lead to a family's self-sufficiency."

Undocumented Immigrants. About 48,000 of the state's 526,000 CalWORKs households are headed by illegal immigrants.

While the adults are not eligible for welfare, any of their children born on U.S. soil – about 95,000 – are American citizens, and thus entitled to all government services.

"We're trying to get numbers of similar cases in other states, but my sense is this is higher in California than in other states," Wagner said, increasing the state's welfare workload.

"Umbrella Benefits." California includes some programs under its welfare system, such as some foster care services, that other states do not, thus increasing the overall TANF-related numbers.

Eligibility Rules. Because of its higher cost of living, California allows CalWORKs participants to hold more resources than other states' welfare programs. That broadens the eligibility pool here.

But while most of those involved agree the state's large number of welfare recipients is due to a multiplicity of factors, there is sharp disagreement as to what kind of a problem it poses – and how to fix it.

The governor, has proposed a sheaf of changes to CalWORKs, including:

• Reducing total eligibility from five years to two.

• Limiting support services such as job training and child care to the 22 percent of CalWORKs families that currently meet strict federal work guidelines.

• Imposing "full family" sanctions that would end aid to children as well as adults for repeated violations of program rules.

• Requiring recipients to meet with caseworkers every six months.

"We will give you the bootstrap," Schwarzenegger said, "but you have to pull yourself up."

The administration has estimated the proposed changes could save the state $753 million in the current fiscal year and $1.5 billion by 2012.

But critics of the governor's proposals contend they are based on false assumptions and faulty logic – and would demolish a program that directly aids those who need it most.

They point out that 65 percent of CalWORKs adults who can work already participate in work or education activities; that about 500,000 people have moved from the program to jobs since 1998; that the governor's cost-cutting estimates are wildly speculative; and that slicing services such as child care during tough economic times will only exacerbate the program's problems, not solve them.

"We want to look at sensible policies," said Mecca, "but the governor hasn't increased funding for (the program) since he's been in office, and now he wants to make $800 million in cuts ... and expects that to result in a more efficient system?

"That's not sensible; it's nonsensical."

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Call Steve Wiegand, Bee Capitol Bureau, (916) 321-1076.

WHAT IS FAMILY ECONOMIC SUCCESS?

Simply put, family economic success (FES) seeks to help families overcome the economic, social, and policy barriers to achieving financial stability. Women In Government’s Family Economic Success Policy Resource Center is dedicated to connecting state legislators to
policy resources that support financial stability for lowincome, working families.

Our current Family Economic Success portfolio includes:

· Asset Building and Financial Literacy
· Earned Income Tax Credit
· Home Mortgages and Foreclosures
· Pay Disparity
· Predatory and Payday Lending
· Workforce Development

WHY FOCUS ON FAMILIES?

Families with children that are below the poverty level are at the heart of Women In Government’s FES efforts. The FES Policy Resource Center shares in the Annie E. Casey Foundation’s approach to strengthening lowincome families and isolated communities through assetbuilding, family economic support programs, and workforce development. As noted by the Casey Foundation, children in the greatest trouble in America are those growing up in poor households and in economically disconnected communities. By linking state legislators with resources on FES issues, we hope to stimulate legislative interest in family economic
success issues and encourage policymakers to sponsor and cosponsor FES legislation in their own states.

For more information on Women In Government’s
Family Economic Success Policy Resource Center, visit:

http://www.womeningovernment.org/familysuccess
Telephone (202) 333-0825 Fax (202) 333-0875
1319 F Street NW, Suite 710 Washington, DC 20004
www.womeningovernment.org

QUICK FACTS

· The 2009 federal poverty
level for a family of four is a
gross yearly income of
$22,050 or a gross monthly
income of $1,838. (U.S.
Department of Health &
Human Services)

· In 2007, the family poverty
rate and the number of
families in poverty were 9.8%
and 7.6 million, respectively,
both statistically unchanged
from 2006. (U.S. Census
Bureau)

· In 2007, marriedcouple
families had a poverty rate of
4.9% (2.8 million), compared
with 28.3 % (4.1 million) for
femalehouseholder,
nohusbandpresent
families and
13.6 % (696,000) for those
with a male householder and
no wife present. (U.S. Census
Bureau)

· In 2007, more than 37 million
people lived below the
official poverty level, which
was just over $20,000 for a
family of four. (U.S. Census
Bureau)

· In 2006, the median
household income for white,
nonHispanic
families was
$50,673, over 1.5 times the
amount for black families
$31,969. (U.S. Census
Bureau)

FAMILY ECONOMIC SUCCESS
POLICY RESOURCE CENTER

Sacramento area is Delta's top pesticide source, study finds

Urban Sacramento is the leading source of pesticide contamination disrupting the Delta aquatic environment, according to new research on pollution in the estuary.

The study, led by UC Berkeley toxicologist Donald Weston, found enough pyrethroid pesticides in the American River to kill tiny shrimp – among the first links in the aquatic food chain.

Those pesticides likely reached the river from urban storm drains, which collect runoff from the Sacramento area's 1.4 million residents.

For five years, biologists have hunted for the cause of a collapse in the Sacramento-San Joaquin Delta ecosystem, a water supply for 23 million Californians. Nine fish species are declining, from tiny Delta smelt to giant green sturgeon.

Weston's research supports the theory that no single villain is to blame. The problem probably lies at the complex interface between people and water.

"We were just amazed by this data," said Weston. "The American River is not supposed to be toxic. I think it reflects the fact that the river's going through 30 miles of heavy urbanization."

The study also found that among the water sources tested, Sacramento's regional wastewater treatment plant is the single largest source of pyrethroid pollution in the Delta. The plant discharges treated sewage into the Sacramento River near Freeport.

The reason for this contamination is less clear. It may be caused by people dumping unused pesticides into sink drains. It could also come from consumer products, such as shampoos made to kill lice and fleas.

There is no evidence pyrethroids are harmful to people at typical consumer exposure levels. But they are proving harmful to aquatic life at very low concentrations.

"It might be that a public education program could go a long way," said Stan Dean, chief of policy and planning at the Sacramento Regional County Sanitation District, which operates the regional wastewater treatment system. "Ultimately, you might need to have more controls on consumer products that have pyrethroids in them."

Pyrethroids are manufactured versions of pyrethrins, natural insecticides produced by certain species of chrysanthemum. These stronger synthetic versions began to dominate the retail market in 2000.

That followed the phasing out of pesticides known to be more dangerous to humans and other mammals – mainly the organophosphates diazinon and chlorpyrifos.

Pyrethroids were considered safer, partly because they don't easily dissolve in water. But biologists learned later that pyrethroids are actually more harmful to aquatic life.

The chemicals attach easily to soil. They can remain toxic in creek beds or landscaping for months, then hitch a ride downstream when overwatering or a storm washes topsoil into storm drains.

Pyrethroid-based pesticides dominate the shelves at grocery and hardware stores. They are common in powders and sprays used by homeowners and pest control companies to kill a variety of insects, from flies to cockroaches.

Weston presented his findings last week to the Central Valley Regional Water Quality Control Board in Rancho Cordova.

The board funded the study and plans to list several area waterways as "impaired" because of pyrethroids, including Strong Ranch and Chicken Ranch sloughs, and Arcade, Morrison and Elder creeks.

In 2006, the state Department of Pesticide Regulation began a process to regulate pyrethroids. This could bring new usage rules and even a ban on some products. It has found pyrethroids in waterways throughout the state.

Pyrethroids found most often in Weston's sampling were bifenthrin and cyfluthrin, common on ingredient labels of many consumer pesticides.

He and a team of researchers sampled water in the American, Sacramento and San Joaquin rivers, as well as creeks in Vacaville, on several occasions in 2008 and 2009. They also sampled agricultural runoff on several Delta islands, and sewage treatment outfalls in Sacramento, Vacaville and Stockton.

They found the Delta islands are a small source of pyrethroids. Urban areas appear to be a much bigger source, with Sacramento by far the largest among the areas sampled.

Researchers used a species of shrimp as a test subject. Toxic effects were revealed by exposing the quarter-inch shrimp to water samples for four days and counting how many were killed or paralyzed.

Almost no pyrethroids were found in Stockton's treated wastewater. Unlike Sacramento, Stockton holds wastewater in giant ponds as long as 30 days before discharging to the Delta. The ponds may allow pyrethroids to settle out or degrade before discharge.

Paul Towers, state director of Sacramento-based Pesticide Watch, noted many other areas also likely are adding pyrethroids to the Delta, such as Redding, Chico and Contra Costa County.

"Ultimately, if we took better steps to keep pests from entering our homes, or redefined what our landscapes should look like, we wouldn't have to use these chemicals," he said.

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Call The Bee's Matt Weiser, (916) 321-1264. To read more about Delta issues, visit www.sacbee.com/delta.

Benicia debates smog, noise from motorcycles

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Here is a link to an interesting LA Times article about the pollution from motorcycles.

Motorcycles and emissions: The surprising facts

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By Tony Burchyns/Times-Herald staff writer

Posted: 07/09/2009 01:00:48 AM PDT

BENICIA -- A discussion about loud motorcycles dominated Tuesday's Benica City Council meeting, with a downtown resident and a merchant complaining about "rolling thunder" on weekends.

"We know it is a beautiful day ... because before our alarm goes off we are jarred (out of bed) by the sound of motorcycles" rolling past her East Second Street home, resident Robin Stanton told the council members. "Sometimes it shakes the house."

The discussion arose while the council considered its position on a pending state law requiring smog checks for motorcycles. The council ultimately voted to support the legislation if it is amended to focus only on smog rather than after-market systems that make bikes louder.

The legislation, which addresses air pollution, also would require checks for after-market exhaust systems that may make bikes louder than regulated factory standards.

Benicia Mayor Elizabeth Patterson said she raised the issue because the bill would address smog. But later Patterson said she wanted to give residents a chance to speak out about "noise pollution" on quiet Benicia streets.

Tony Shannon, a First Street business owner, told council members that packs of loud motorcycles disrupt his Web design business -- even when his doors and windows are shut to block out the noise and exhaust.

Shannon questioned the argument raised in the motorcycle community that louder bikes save lives by alerting motorists of their presence.

"It is not OK to annoy everyone just to be a little safer," Shannon said.

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A representative of the American Motorcycle Association, Wayne Phillips, testified that his group supports making motorcycles cleaner and quieter. But Phillips, an Orinda resident, said that the proposed state law would create an "uneven playing field" because it would require muffler checks for motorcycles but not for cars.

"The (association) is against the bill because it should go after (engine) performance, not mufflers," Phillips said.

Patterson suggested that the Benicia Police Department could crack down on excessively loud bikes by enforcing noise laws. The noise limit for most motorcycles in California is 80 decibels.

Police Chief Sandra Spagnoli, however, said that the state's law is vaguely written and lacks specific direction on how to measure noise. Noise citations that officers hand out could therefore be overturned in court, Spagnoli said.

About two noise citations a month are issued, police said.

Police identified the Military corridor and E. Second Street as especially prone to loud traffic because both roads are connected to freeway entrances.

Patterson said that some California cities have outlawed motorcycle traffic on certain roads -- a measure that Phillips said his group strongly opposes.

The legislation -- SB 435 by state Sen. Fran Pavely, D-Agoura Hills, narrowly passed the Senate last month. It is now in the Assembly.

Contact staff writer Tony Burchyns at tburchyns@thnewsnet.com or call 553-6831.