The following links are just news items and opinions that pass my desk throughout the week. I don’t necessarily support or advocate any of the items, they are just interesting reads.
California approves big, controversial change to electricity bills. Here are the details – Millions of Californians will see changes in their utility bills in the coming years after state regulators voted Thursday to lower energy costs for some households and increase bills for others at a time of soaring utility costs.
The California Public Utilities Commission approved a two-part strategy to restructure utility bills by adding $24.15 fixed charge to residential bills while lowering per-unit rates for electricity. Low-income households will pay lower fixed charges of either $12 or $6.
The changes will go into effect in early 2026 for Pacific Gas and Electric Co. customers and late 2025 for customers of Southern California Edison and San Diego Gas and Electric.
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But Severin Borenstein, an economist with UC Berkeley who published the initial research in support of fixed charges, said increases will be smaller for those impacted and be closer to 15 cents a day. He said 95% of households enrolled in low-income programs will see their bills go down.
The plan won’t change how much utilities collect from customers through bills, but does adjust the formula for how those charges are distributed.
“These changes would help low income customers and have a very small impact on others,” Borenstein said. Read More > in the San Francisco Chronicle
Concord is nearly $40 million in the hole for Naval Weapons Station project. Here’s how they plan to get it back. – Transforming an abandoned military base into a massive $6 billion, mixed-use community is no simple task — and Concord has the $40 million bill to prove it.
For nearly two decades, the city has attempted to revitalize the former Concord Naval Weapons Station into tens of thousands of homes and millions of square-feet of schools, offices, shops and restaurants.
But that vision had only racked up nearly $40 million in expenses by the end of 2023 — with almost nothing to show for it. The project is on its third developer, specific plans have not been finalized, construction timelines remain unclear and the U.S. Navy still technically owns the 2,300-acre site.
The project has been a boon for consultants who help in-house staff draft a slew of environmental studies, conceptual renderings, legal contracts and other permitting admin required before any shovels can break ground. While compensation for that work started in October of 2005, delays tied to the pandemic and the city’s decision to abandon problematic agreements with previous developers have since exacerbated those debts.
Despite the long list of expenditures, Concord officials are confident that the city’s coffers will be spared from those past (and future) debts.
That’s because Brookfield Properties — the third and current developer of the Naval Weapons Station — has committed to fully reimbursing the city for all project costs. Read More > in The Mercury News
Will California voters decide tax limits in November? It’s up to the Supreme Court – The California Supreme Court will decide in the coming weeks whether to remove a sweeping anti-tax measure from the November ballot, blocking an effort to increase the requirements for implementing taxes, fees and other government charges in the state before voters have a chance to weigh in.
Gov. Gavin Newsom, the Legislature and others sued last fall to stop the business community-sponsored initiative, arguing that it amounts to an illegal attempt to revise the California Constitution and would impair essential government functions.
With a June 27 deadline to set the ballot for the November election, the court must rule soon about whether to allow the proposed measure, formally known as the Taxpayer Protection and Government Accountability Act, to proceed.
The proposed initiative would broadly make it more challenging to raise taxes in California, including by also increasing the margin to pass a voter-initiated special tax at the local level, to two-thirds from a simple majority.
Other consequential provisions — which could upend the operation of California government at every level — would restrict how officials can calculate the cost of fees that fund public services and programs and reclassify some of those charges as taxes. That would prohibit administrative agencies from setting these levies, requiring the Legislature or local governments to turn to the voters to adjust them.
Proponents say their initiative is a necessary crackdown on loopholes created by legislators and court rulings that weakened previous voter-approved tax accountability measures and allowed an unelected administrative bureaucracy to flourish. It has been heavily supported by the real estate industry and a private ambulance company, which frequently battle local governments over taxes, fees and assessments to fund public services.
But since it secured its eligibility more than a year ago, Democratic politicians, organized labor and other opponents have worked feverishly to undermine the initiative and toss it from the ballot.
In addition to the lawsuit, legislators voted in the final weeks of session last summer to put a competing measure on the ballot that would flip the California Business Roundtable initiative’s own higher standards against it, requiring that changes to the threshold for approving state and local taxes pass by that same margin. That would mean it needed to secure two-thirds support from the electorate, rather than a simple majority, a high hurdle for a statewide measure. Read More > at CalMatters
California wine is in serious trouble – The entire $55 billion California wine industry is, like the wine industry worldwide, experiencing an unprecedented downturn right now. No sector is immune — not the luxury tier, not the big conglomerates, not the upstart natural wines. Wine consumption fell 8.7% in 2023, according to leading industry analyst the Gomberg Fredrikson Report, a sobering reversal for an industry that had, for a quarter-century, taken annual growth for granted.
This year could be the breaking point, with many industry figures predicting “a good-sized house cleaning,” as put by Ian Brand, owner of I. Brand & Family Winery in Monterey County.
“A lot of brands are dead but they don’t even know it right now,” echoed Michael Honig, president of Honig Vineyard & Winery in Napa Valley.
An extinction-level event has not come to pass — yet. But regardless of the winery survival rate, it’s become clear in 2024 that the nature of the California wine industry has fundamentally changed. After decades of unfettered growth beginning in the 1990s, wine consumption started to flatten around 2018. Now, following what appeared to be a spike during the pandemic, it’s in dramatic decline.
No single factor is responsible for California wine’s present predicament. Millennials and Gen Zers aren’t drinking as much alcohol as older generations. Hard seltzer and canned cocktails have stolen market share. The current medical consensus suggests that alcohol is unequivocally bad for human health. (Beer and spirits sales are struggling, too.) Read More > in the San Francisco Chronicle
Rattlesnake advisory issued for Bay Area parks as the reptiles become ‘more active’ – The East Bay Regional Park District has issued a rattlesnake advisory for inland parts of the Bay Area, and with temperatures expected to increase as much as 40 degrees throughout the region in the coming days, sightings are even more likely as the slithering reptiles emerge from their winter hibernation and bask in the heat.
“Rattlesnakes are more active in warm weather, which can lead to more encounters with humans and dogs, especially along trails and roads,” the news release read. “Visitors are encouraged to keep snake safety precautions in mind.”
The venomous snakes are native to California and can be found in tall grasses, under rocks and near logs, and even swimming in the water as they hunt for prey and engage in courtship throughout the wildlands. The warning comes in the wake of rattlesnake mating season, and as their population booms, experts with Central Coast Snake Services are offering to safely relocate the animals from backyards in Santa Barbara and San Luis Obispo counties, free of charge.
People who come face to face with rattlesnakes on Bay Area trails are advised to leave them alone, first and foremost. “Collecting, killing, or removing any plants or animals from the Park District is illegal,” the news release read. A rattlesnake, while typically introverted, won’t be shy about letting you know it’s there and that you’re too close — listen for the namesake buzz of their rattle. Read More > at SFGATE
Sierra Nevada site records snowiest day of the season. Yes, in May. – A weekend spring storm that drenched the San Francisco Bay Area and closed Northern California mountain highways also set a single-day snowfall record for the season on Sunday in the Sierra Nevada.
The wet weather system had mostly moved out of the state by Sunday morning, but officials warned that roads would remain slick after around two feet of snow fell in some areas of the Sierra.
“Did anyone have the snowiest day of the 2023/2024 season being in May on their winter bingo card?” the University of California’s Central Sierra Snow Lab asked on the social platform X.
The 26.4 inches of snowfall Sunday at the lab, near Donner Summit, beat the second snowiest day of the season — March 3rd — by 2.6 inches. Read More > at the Associated Press
EPA suit alleges San Francisco discharges sewage into bay and onto beaches – The federal government and the state of California sued the city of San Francisco on Wednesday over the city’s aging combined stormwater-sewer systems, which they allege can release raw sewage into the bay and onto beaches when overwhelmed during heavy rain, as first reported by the San Francisco Chronicle. (SFGATE and the San Francisco Chronicle are both owned by Hearst but have separate newsrooms.)
Federal officials said the sewage threatens aquatic life and also puts swimmers, surfers and anyone in the waters at local beaches at risk of coming into contact with pathogens and high levels of enterococci and E. coli bacteria that can cause illness if ingested.
The suit was filed Wednesday in federal court by the Department of Justice and the California attorney general, on behalf of federal and state water quality regulators. The requesting agencies are the Environmental Protection Agency, which is tasked with enforcing environmental regulation at the federal level, and the San Francisco Bay Regional Water Quality Control Board, which manages water quality for the region at the state level.
The lawsuit alleges the city is violating federal standards established in 1972 by the Clean Water Act, specifically in the way it releases excess water into waterways. It’s calling for the San Francisco Public Utilities Commission to operate its two combined sewer systems and three water treatment plants under the terms of its permits.
The city of San Francisco uses what’s called a combined stormwater-sewer system, which transports wastewater from homes and businesses in the same pipe as stormwater that runs off streets and roofs. Most of the time, when it rains, both the stormwater and sewage get treated before being released into waterways so that the level of toxins in the water is minimal. During severe storms, however, the flow through the pipes can exceed what the system was designed to handle. The excess — which includes both stormwater and sewage — can be released into local creeks, San Francisco Bay and the Pacific Ocean. Read More > at SFGATE
California lawmakers face a ballooning budget deficit – The biggest challenge facing lawmakers and Gov. Gavin Newsom is the state budget deficit — and it just got bigger.
Today, the Legislative Analyst’s Office projected the shortfall as $15 billion higher, or $73 billion.
The analyst’s office had pegged the 2024-25 deficit at $58 billion in January, using Newsom’s revenue estimates when he presented his initial budget proposal of $292 billion.
On Friday, Newsom’s Department of Finance reported that preliminary General Fund cash receipts in January were $5 billion below (or nearly 20%) the governor’s budget forecast. Unless state tax revenues pick up significantly, the bigger number will make it more difficult to balance the state budget just through dipping into reserves and targeted spending cuts.
But exactly how the state can dig its way out — at least in the Assembly — remains to be seen. Speaker Robert Rivas told reporters today that the budget has been at the forefront of conversations among Assembly Democrats and that he is very concerned with the growing deficit.
But, as legislative leaders and the governor have noted, the budget deficit won’t be addressed just through oversight and cuts. It’ll also mean tougher paths for bills lawmakers introduce this year — including the return of the single-payer healthcare effort by Democratic Assemblymember Ash Kalra.
And while the governor has shot down any attempt to raise taxes or create new ones to increase state revenues, Rivas did not take a position. Read More > at CalMatters
BART has ‘no backup plan’ if Bay Area voters reject tax measure – BART could enter a transit death spiral in less than 24 months, once the Bay Area transit agency runs out of emergency pandemic aid, and officials are pinning all their hopes for survival on voters’ approval of a 2026 tax measure.
BART officials say the tax measure is their only way forward — there is no plan B.
The regional rail agency expects to run out of the $1.9 billion in federal and state assistance by around April 2026, at which point BART projects a $35 million deficit for the 2026 fiscal year.
By fiscal 2027, the agency expects to face a $385 million deficit — about one-third of BART’s operating costs — with projected shortfalls of $377 million following in fiscal 2028 and $355 million in fiscal 2029.
Those latest budget projections, which BART’s Board of Directors planned to discuss Thursday, represent a noticeable increase from figures the agency released in late March. The rising deficits are partly due to expected declining sales tax revenues and a slower-than-anticipated ridership recovery.
BART plans to use $328 million in federal and state subsidies to balance its budget for fiscal 2025, which starts in July. The agency expects to exhaust its remaining $294 million in subsidies that state lawmakers approved last year to shrink a $329 million shortfall to $35 million in fiscal 2026, which begins July 2025. Read More > in the San Francisco Chronicle
Billions of cicadas are invading the U.S. Should Californians be worried? – It is being called the Cicada-pocalypse and the Cicada-geddon.
Over the next few weeks, hundreds of billions, maybe even trillions of cicadas — grasshopper-like insects — will emerge from underground burrows all across the Midwest and the South where they have been living for as long as the past 17 years.
From Wisconsin to Mississippi, Virginia to Oklahoma, immense swarms of the somewhat creepy, red-eyed bugs will carpet trees like little 1-inch extras in a horror movie and generate ear-splitting mating sounds that have been compared to jackhammers and chainsaws. Some have already begun to come out in Georgia and other parts of the South, prompting one North Carolina county to urge the public this week to stop calling 911 asking about the racket.
Should Californians batten down the hatches? Are we in for a cicada onslaught?
Relax, scientists say. In a state marked by earthquakes, bomb cyclones, mega-droughts, fire tornadoes and atmospheric river storms, it turns out that despite having dozens of species of cicadas in the Golden State, their emergence is usually underwhelming.
“We do have cicadas in California. But they are kind of boring,” said Lynn Kimsey, a professor emeritus of entomology at UC Davis. “Our cicadas come out, but they only come out in little dribbles. So we don’t really pay much attention to them.” Read More > in The Mercury News
Romick in Oakley 