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Monday, June 21, 2010
Lois Kazakoff: Stripping the stripers from the delta
Diana Canevaro holds a striper caught in the delta.
Kern County water interests have found a way to undermine a vocal opponent of increased pumping from the Sacramento-San Joaquin Delta -- sue the state to raise the fishing limit on striped bass and eradicate the species by overfishing.
Stripers are popular sport fish and those who fish for them are proponents of measures to restore the health of the delta -- including reducing pumping water south. The fish themselves are not native but thrived in the delta estuaries. Or at least they did until increased pumping changed the estuary to a fresh water delivery system.
The suit claims the state is violating the endangered species act by fostering a species that eat endangered salmon and delta smelt, and that efforts to preserve the delta as an estuary environment for the striped bass are cutting into Kern County farmers' water supplies. What's more is that federal regulators, working to protect the endangered California salmon, agree that protecting the striped bass is detrimental to the salmon.
The California Fish and Game Commission will review the pending legislation at its June 23 meeting in Folsom.It's hoped that the commissioners will recognize that eliminating the stripers might keep the salmon from being eaten, but won't address the water quality issues that affect the salmon and the bass.
| Jun 21 at 04:38 PM
Saturday, June 19, 2010
Twenty questions for the gubernatorial candidates
Questions for Jerry Brown and Meg Whitman, posed by former California legislators John Vasconcellos and Bill Bagley:
CALIFORNIA'S DEMOGRAPHY
1)What is California's current demography? What are the percentages of whites, Latinos, Asian-Pacific Islanders, African Americans, now and projected to be in 2020?
2)What is the percentage of Californians over 60 now and projected to be in 2020? What public policies will you pursue to address the expansion of older adults?
CALIFORNIA'S FISCAL CRISIS
3)What are the three to five root causes of California's current fiscal crisis? What is the projected size of the budget shortfall on June 30, 2011, absent corrective action? What actions to balance the budget do you propose that would receive bipartisan support?
4)Would you support Proposition 13's repeal? Are there modifications regarding either residential or commercial property you support? Do you support Proposition 13's two-thirds vote requirement to enact a budget or any tax increases?
5)What are the core responsibilities of government? List five ways to improve the ability of local governments to be more independent of the state in both decision-making and revenue-raising?
6)How many General Fund employees does the State of California have? What percentage of them are employed at universities and in the state prison system?
7)What, if any, changes would you propose for the state's public system?
CALIFORNIA'S ECONOMY
8)Identify the three most effective proposals to improve California's economic development and three specific proposals to generate more in-state jobs?
CALIFORNIANS’ PUBLIC SAFETY
9) What is your blend of incarceration, prevention and rehabilitation to maximize public safety and reduce prison costs? Would you support amending California's current "Three Strikes" law so that its lifetime sentence provision is incurred only if the third strike is violent or serious? How would you propose California comply with the standing federal court order regarding prison overcrowding?
10)Is the "War on Drugs" a cost-effective strategy, especially with regard to the personal possession of currently illegal drugs? Do you have an incarceration or a public health approach? Do you support the therapeutic use of marijuana? What is your stand on the November ballot initiative to legalize and regulate and tax marijuana?
CALIFORNIA'S ENVIRONMENT AND CLIMATE CHANGE
11) What are the most important provisions in our current environmental protection laws and regulation? Are these provisions too much, too little or about right? Is climate change caused by human activities, or just part of natural cycles?
12) Do you support implementation, repeal or modification of AB 32, the state's landmark greenhouse gas emissions reductions act? If in favor of modification, how?
13) Do you support the mission and work of the California Coastal Commission? Do you support the $11.4 billion water bond placed on the November 2010 ballot by the governor and the Legislature?
CALIFORNIA'S EDUCATIONAL SYSTEMS
14) With regard to California's k-12 public school system: Describe your philosophy of education: How do children best learn? What should be the goals of our public schools? Should California pay for a K-12 public education system for all of its students, including immigrant children? What is your position regarding class size reduction? Teacher tenure? Charter schools? Vouchers to be given to parents for use at the schools of their choice?
15) With regard to California's Higher Education System: What capacities and skills should California students shave developed to prepare for living and working constructively? Is California's 50-year-old Master Plan for Higher Education, and its pledges for universal access, affordability and quality still working? If not, what changes would you make? Is funding for Cal-Grant awards adequate? What of the role of California's independent universities and colleges?
CALIFORNIA'S SAFETY NET
16) Are current expenditures adequate to maintain a safety net for our least advantaged Californians? What changes would you make to California's Welfare-to-Work Program? How do its levels of support compare to the federal poverty index and those of foster care?
17)How can California's In-Home Supportive Services program operate cost-effectively while ensuring that the state's elderly frail have a care alternative other than nursing homes?
ASSUMPTIONS ABOUT OURSELVES, HUMAN NATURE AND POTENTIAL
18) Do you believe that humans arrive in life tending toward the bad and requiring "taming" or tending toward the good?
19)Are you familiar with -- and do you support -- the findings of the 1987-1990 California Task Force to Promote Self-Esteem and Personal and Social Responsibility?
20)Do you agree California's primary challenge is to realize the promise of our multicultural democracy in the global economy? How would you bring Californians together into a diverse community committed to fulfilling this challenge?
| Jun 19 at 07:30 AM
Friday, June 18, 2010
Lois Kazakoff: On oil emergencies
Like the oil industry plans for responding to offshore oil spills that gave contact information for a long-dead expert, the City of Benicia's emergency plans need some updating.
Thursday at 8:50 p.m., the Valero refinery reported an "operational upset" that sent a dark plume into the sky. The plume, which followed an accident earlier that day that slightly injured four refinery workers, convinced the Benicia fire marshall to activate the Community Alert and Notification system about 9:30 p.m.
I heard the sirens and looked at the refrigerator magnet the city and the refinery had handed out a number of years ago to remind Benicia residents where to get information in emergencies. We tuned the TV to cable Channel 27.
A long message about closing windows and doors and staying inside came up -- what City Manager Jim Erickson told me today was emergency plan "template 9." The message scrolled across the TV screen and ended with "updated 09/16/2003."
Confusion reigned. Was this a message for this emergency or some 7-year-old emergency?
I'm a creature of the Internet. I see a time stamp and think that is when the information, not the template, was updated.
My husband called the city emergency number and was told the sirens were "informational." Uh, well, yes. Sirens inform of an emergency -- but not what to do.Erickson maintained Friday that the message was clear. Valero spokeswoman Sue Fisher Jones said there was no need for "shelter-in-place" warning, and the city had over-reacted.
As a resident, I want the city to err on the side of caution. If there was a plume of toxic material, the city was right to warn. Just give us timely information and a clear action plan.
| Jun 18 at 06:00 PM
Wednesday, June 16, 2010
Open Forum: PG&E; almost bought a piece of the Constitution
By Jack Twomey
Proposition 16 narrowly failed. But for $46 million, PG&E; almost bought itself a piece of the California Constitution.
We ought to fix this. Let us put on the ballot an initiative to amend the state Constitution that does two things:
1) Force both legislative and initiative constitutional amendments to be restricted to general elections (November of even years) only, and
2) Require that any proposed constitutional amendment that would require a supermajority for future elections must itself be passed by the same supermajority.
The first point restricts these amendments to elections where (it is hoped) the will of the people can be expressed, not just that of a rabid minority. PG&E; chose a primary election, which increased the odds of winning -- just as Howard Jarvis and others did in 1978 with Proposition 13. There is usually a very low turnout in primary elections; so it makes sense to put forth a conservative measure in a primary election rather than the general election.
The second point is just a matter of fairness. Proposition 13 passed in June of 1978 with 64.8 percent of the vote, shy of the two-thirds supermajority that it imposed on all tax-related future elections. This was surely a minority group using flaws in the process to impose its will on a majority that was not as politically active as they should have been.
If Proposition 16 had passed on June 8, it would have been a worse travesty -- a big, fat monopoly doing what it damn well feels like doing.
Jack Twomey, a San Francisco native, is a retired computer programmer.
| Jun 16 at 04:41 PM
Tuesday, June 15, 2010
Lois Kazakoff: Raves on the public dime?
Should raves -- commercial electronic music events attractive to young people -- be held in public facilities? That's the question we explore on The Chronicle's opinion page Wednesday.
It's pertinent in an era of shrinking public budgets and growing cutbacks in public services. Emergency services for preventable drug overdoses use up public resources that might go for other emergencies.
Two people died after attending a May 29 rave at the Cow Palace in San Francisco. Earlier this year, 18 people were treated in emergency rooms (one later died) after attending a New Year's Eve rave in Los Angeles County. Public health officials there determined that drug overdoses, not contaminated drugs, sickened those who ended up in local emergency rooms. This was reported in the first public health investigation of emergency room visits related to ecstasy use at raves.
The Centers for Disease Control and Prevention says the use of ecstasy, an illegal drug favored by rave attendees, has increased since 2005. Also, the number of Los Angeles County residents citing MDMA (the chemical name for ecstasy) as their primary drug of choice at the time they entered into drug treatment programs has increased by 650 percent in the same period.
The CDC sums up its latest weekly morbidity and mortality report with this:
city and county managers and elected officials should be aware of the potential health risks and costs associated with making publicly owned facilities available for large commercial events such as raves.Some 16,000 people attended the rave at The Cow Palace, which is owned by the California Department of Agriculture. Is it time to ban raves from the Cow Palace?
| Jun 15 at 04:20 PM
Monday, June 14, 2010
Lois Kazakoff: Taking the 'dys' out of Sacramento's dysfunction
Voters' decision June 8 to open primaries in California by passing Prop. 14 is a step toward taking the "dys" out of Sacramento dysfunction.
Washington State took the same step in 2008 to create a "top two" primary. Political experts recognized it then as a game-changer, and the effects are beginning to be felt. The growing pool of "decline-to-state voters -- now 20 percent of California's electorate -- illustrates the growing band of moderates who lack representation in Sacramento. It is hoped that opening the primaries in California and Washington will put governance back in the hands of the voters.
Here's what Washington State Rep. Reuven Carlyle, a Democrat from Seattle, wrote when he ran for office in 2009 after Washington switched to the open primary.
Somehow, as the general election approached, I felt on the doorstep (of potential voters) that the official Democratic (Party) nominee issue was over and that I was not losing votes because of the intra-party scuffle. Simply, the voter's didn't care and I could tell I was actually winning more votes by losing the (party) endorsement than one would have thought. Moreover, the Republicans in the district loved the entire episode and felt a sense of engagement in the race for the first time. Yes, I courted Republican votes -- and hard -- and they flocked to me in large part because I wasn't the party's blessed one. It's something that never, ever, would have happened under the old system. That was probably the best part of it all; seeing previously disengaged voters step up and care about their role in an election and in government.
| Jun 14 at 04:14 PM
Friday, June 11, 2010
OPEN FORUM: Let's make Laura's Law more user-friendly
By Judi Iranyi
The Chronicle's June 8 editorial, "Try Laura's Law," indicated that the law has not been implemented in San Francisco because "compliance would be too costly." Why not make Laura's Law more user friendly and less costly?
Two years ago, state Sen. Leland Yee sponsored Senate Bill 1606, which if it had passed, would have removed a number of costly and burdensome requirements in Laura's Law, an assisted outpatient treatment program for the most severely mentally ill, passed by the California Legislature in 2002. SB1606 died in the Assembly Appropriations Committee.
Laura's Law provides for a court-ordered 180-day period of intensive treatment for people with severe mental illnesses who refuse medication because their illness impairs their ability to make rational decisions. While we as a society must safeguard the civil rights of the mentally ill, we also have an obligation to care for those who are unable to care for themselves. Laura's Law provides safeguards to protect the civil rights of those being considered for the program.
Currently, Laura's Law requires that a county's Board of Supervisors vote to implement and fund Laura's Law program. SB1606 would have lowered the service threshold that counties had to provide if they implemented the law. Counties would no longer have to set up new mental health care agencies with extremely high staff-to-patient ratios. Instead, counties would be given more flexibility to use existing mental health services. In addition, a county would no longer have to make a finding that no voluntary mental health services would be reduced before it could compel treatment; and it would provide a means to keep people stable in the community.
I urge Sen. Leland Yee, D-San Francisco, to reintroduce the bill. With so many reductions in social services, a more user-friendly Laura's Law would provide a useful tool for the courts and health care providers.
Judi Iranyi, a California licensed clinical social worker, is a former social services advocate for the Homeless Advocacy Project and a former member of San Francisco’s Shelter Monitoring Committee.
| Jun 11 at 01:15 PM
Thursday, June 10, 2010
Saunders: Those angry screaming progressives
As the Washington Post reported Tuesday, House Speaker Nancy Pelosi went to deliver a speech to a group of progressives, only to be heckled.
To Pelosi's credit, she finished her speech despite a reported 28 minutes of abuse. "I am going to make my speech over your voices," she countered.
Who were these rude people? Disability activists, a couple of pro-Palestinian protesters to go by their banner, and the like.
Which must be why Pelosi talked about their free-speech rights, instead of accusing the lefties of peddling fear.
Probably the worst part: When the left acts up, she can't say as she did last year in an event caught by Comrade Marinucci, "Actually, I should be thanking them. It really helps me with my fundraising."
No wonder there's a double standard.| Jun 10 at 03:33 PM
Wednesday, June 09, 2010
Open Forum: Oil spill health effects need monitoring
By Jordan Karlitz
As a physician, New Orleans resident and new father, I am concerned about the long-term health risks associated with the oil spill in New Orleans and surrounding regions. I do not think we have a good understanding about the potential health problems that might ultimately arise from both direct and indirect exposure to the oil and dispersants that BP has been utilizing liberally.
There have been reports of workers on the beaches and in the marshes experiencing acute illnesses that seem to be related to close contact to the spill, but there has been little mention of the potential long-term effects on other surrounding regions, including high population centers such as New Orleans, Biloxi and Mobile.
In our New Orleans neighborhood, I frequently detect an odor when the wind blows from the south that is associated with the events in the Gulf of Mexico. I have concern that some of the breakdown products of the oil and dispersants could be released into the atmosphere during the process of evaporation and have long-term health implications for people in the entire region, not just in the areas that are directly adjacent to the spill.
The oil spill currently occupies a very large surface area of the Gulf of Mexico and is growing larger by the minute. The news of the "top kill" failure, uncertainty of the success of the lower marine riser package cap and the need to use even more dispersant indicates that the toxic sludge will involve an even greater portion of the gulf, both at the surface and extending down to the sea floor. The large volume of water that is involved with this spill is unprecedented.
It is not hard to imagine that contaminated air could flow north to high population centers including New Orleans and that even rainwater could become tainted with toxic material. If the oil continues to flow and the clean-up process takes months or even years, then the entire population of the Gulf Coast and further inland could experience a constant exposure to a slew of chemicals, the effects of which are poorly understood.
Even if such an exposure were low grade, the time of exposure could be prolonged, which certainly raises concern.
Given this lack of understanding, it is imperative that government agencies, including the EPA and Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, begin studying this issue as soon as possible. We may need new types of monitoring systems, given the fact that the incredibly large expanse of water that the spill involves and the volume of dispersant utilized by BP (which has spread the oil to larger areas, greater depths and created untold noxious byproducts) have never been encountered in our history.
Although it is certainly possible that no long-term health threat exists, there is no guarantee. We do not want to discover months or years from now that we missed an opportunity to intervene at the early stages of this evolving disaster.
Dr. Jordan Karlitz, is an assistant professor in the department of medicine at the Tulane University School of Medicine in New Orleans, completed his undergraduate degree in molecular genetics at UC Berkeley. He moved to New Orleans in 2008 to help participate in the rebuilding of the health care system after Hurricane Katrina.
| Jun 09 at 03:50 PM
A true mystery: The Insurance Commissioner's race
What happened to Mike Villines?
Tuesday they California Republican Party put out this statement touting the victory of Assemblyman Mike Villines, R-Clovis, in the primary for Insurance Commissioner.
Problem: As of this moment, Department of Insurance staffer Brian Fitzgerald, who ran a seat-of-the-pants campaign, has more votes.
"Mike Villines has run through the political gauntlet many times and has always emerged with class and integrity. As Republican Assembly Leader, he’s been a tireless champion for consumer rights and responsible government and everyone in the CRP knows Mike will fight to stop job-killing regulations from destroying California’s economy.”
"We were very surprised," CRP spokesman Mark Standriff told me over the phone.
Villines spokesman Jennifer Gibbons told me that the counting isn't over, so the race isn't over. But what happened? "Everybody has a different opinion," she answered.
Could it be because Villines voted for the budget, incurring the wrath of Tom McClintock? If that were a killer, Lt. Gov. Abel Maldonado would not have won.
Gibbons tends to go with the belief that the ballot designation may have made a difference. Villines went by "businessman/state assemblyman." Fitzgerald listed himself as "department's enforcement attorney." Maybe GOP voters simply were looking for an enforcer.
| Jun 09 at 03:07 PM
Backstories, insights and unofficial musings from The Chronicle's opinion pages.
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