The information in this newsletter is being distributed among allied associations that form the California Alliance for Golf (CAG), the organization that speaks with one voice in the Capitol regarding legislative and regulatory issues of statewide scope.
The legislature has reconvened for the final drive of the 2025 regular session. In a few weeks we’ll know what moves forward for Governor Newsom’s signature or veto. Golf is in the enviable position of tracking to see which of the bills that it supported passes muster. The one bill CAG vigorously opposed died long ago in its Senate House of Origin. As always, we’ll track any “gut-and-amend” mischief that might be detrimental to golf, and we will watch very much from afar the heat certain to rise from the Governor’s effort to call a special election in November to seek approval of a temporary electoral map to counter similar moves in other states.
But for now, we’ll cover issues of concern that are not subjects of current legislation, albeit in the lead story, we will cover a matter we expect will be the subject of future legislation.
PERMANENT STANDARD TIME
IT’S NOT GOING TO GO AWAY
When all was said and done about this year’s standard versus daylight time battles, one might have concluded that the whole thing was “much ado about nothing.” No state legislature made a move in the direction of permanent standard time, albeit two state legislatures (Texas and Maine) did join California and many others in indicating a preference for permanent Daylight Saving Time if and/or when enabled by Congress. And as expected, Congress did nothing; however, when the Senate heard the matter, among the handful of experts asked to testify before Senator Cruz’ Committee was NGCOA CEO Jay Karen. That alone was much ado about something – an indicator that golf’s profile in the halls of Congress is on the rise. Maybe all of those who have been dutifully traveling to Washington D.C. every spring for National Golf Day festivities have something to show for their efforts. And maybe more will heed the call by their national leadership organizations to follow suit and join them in 2026 and beyond.
The California Alliance for Golf (CAG) expended effort and political capital opposing California’s version of a permanent standard time bill (SB 51), and it too found the same fate as parallel bills in other states – barely escaping its State Senate policy committee of reference before disappearing in the great void known as Appropriations. Bills that permanent standard time supporters told us were “moving” in California’s neighboring Pacific Time Zone states of Nevada, Oregon, and Washington didn’t move at all in Oregon and Washington but did move in Nevada through that state’s lower house before stalling out in the upper house for reasons that may have had much to do with these failures in the neighboring Pacific Time Zone states.
As for Arizona’s continued support for permanent Standard Time, it’s time someone point out the obvious. Arizona is not in the Pacific Time Zone. It is the westernmost state in the Mountain Time Zone. By hewing to year-round Standard Time, it is in sync 8 months of the year with Las Vegas and Southern California, the two population centers to which it is closest and with which it has the most contact. Dare we suggest that Denver and Salt Lake City are not exactly in Arizona’s geographical wheelhouse. Were Arizonans to “flip their clocks” as 48 states now do, they would be out of sync with Nevada and California 12 months of the year. That more than anything animated Arizonans to avail themselves of the permitted permanent Standard Time option in 1968, and it more than anything sustains their interest in sticking with it.
Not to worry? Hardly! As these pages have made clear since SB 51 was dropped last December, the proponents of permanent Standard Time are organized, funded, passionate, and true believers in their cause. They are doctors and scientists whose laser focus on what they discern as a health advantage based on Standard Time’s better attunement to our diurnal clocks motivates them to just keep trying until they eventually convince the rest of us that any decision about permanent Standard versus permanent Daylight Saving Time, or for that matter “flipping the clocks,” ought to be made solely on their “discernment,” and not their “discernment” as part of a multiplicity of other factors relevant to what we would suggest are indispensable to a fully formed public policy decision – e.g., other health factors, outdoor recreation, public safety, economy.
A peek at the websites of “The Coalition for Permanent Standard Time” and “Save Standard Time” would give you a better understanding of why we do indeed need to worry.
CAG stipulated to the permanent Standard Time supporters’ claim about permanent Standard Time’s marginal health benefits, because CAG has neither the expertise nor the credibility to issue any claims or conclusions about such stuff. But there is one question we have long burned to ask them. How does the fact that the sun sets 2 ¼ hours later in the summer in Seattle than it does in San Diego, both Pacific Time Zone cities, fit into their conclusions? The same goes for Maine and Miami in the Eastern Time Zone. Not to mention those places in the middle of the country like Indiana where one can drive 2 miles and gain an hour.
We fully anticipate another version of SB 51 in 2026 and suggest that those reading this in other states ought to do the same. We might also be so bold as to suggest that this time, the affected golf communities in the Pacific Time Zone might be better served by coordinating their efforts and communicating with each other just as the proponents of permanent Standard Time routinely do.
WATER
THE NEWS CONTINUES FAST, FURIOUS, AND MIXED
On Tuesday (8/19) Governor Newsom issued the following statement about the “State Water Project Adaptation Strategy” issued the same day by the California Department of Water Resources:
“The science is clear: California must quickly complete the Delta Conveyance Project in order to meet our water needs in the future. It’s time to stop with the delays and fear tactics. We need Legislative approval to fast-track the benefits this project will secure.” -- Governor Gavin Newsom (8/19 press release)
The “report” Newsom referenced (State Water Project Adaptation Strategy”) examined how a combination of strategies, most importantly the Delta Conveyance Project, could help the State Water Project (SWP) maintain reliable water deliveries to 27 million Californians despite hotter temperatures, more extreme storms, more severe droughts, and higher sea levels.
Specifically, the DWR report referenced five (5) specific actions and identified the completion of the Delta Conveyance Project as the most important of them, the sine qua non of long-term water reliability in California. DWR cited the following reasons for drawing that conclusion:
The release that accompanied DWR’s “State Water Project Adaptation Strategy” quoted DWR Director Karla Nemeth as follows:
“Anything that compromises the State Water Project poses a threat to public health and economic success. This analysis helps us understand the best science-based strategies to ensure continued SWP deliveries in the face of both greater aridity and more powerful storms. We need that not just for the public water agencies that pay for the State Water Project, but to continue the role the State Water Project plays in protecting Delta water quality during drought and upstream communities during floods.” -- DWR Director Karla Nemeth (8/19 press release)
Whether the Governor, who appeared to trade the fast-tracking of the Delta Conveyance Project for the fast-tracking of a number of substantive changes to California’s Environmental Quality Act (CEQA), is able to secure the fast-tracking of both before the 2025 legislative ends in early September remains a stretch. The same combination of environmental organizations and Sacramento Delta legislators that nixed the fast tracking of the Delta Conveyance Project as part of the adoption of the state’s budget back in June remain opposed. And the legislature’s first week back from summer vacation has been dominated by the fast tracking of a November 4 ballot initiative to redraw the state’s Congressional Districts to counter certain mid census redistricting in Texas.
But it would appear that those who have been pressing for a second Delta conveyance ever since Jerry Brown pushed his “peripheral canal” back in his first stint as California governor have more cause for optimism than at any time in more than 40 years. And those who are supportive of Governor Newsom’s signing SB 72’s call for the creation of specific water supply targets have cause for enthusiasm as well.
Bottom line: All this is just more evidence that with respect to long-term water supply, resiliency, and sustainability, California’s politics continue to shift away from an environmental ethos that preaches austerity as the best strategy to an "abundance" ethos that preaches a combination of austerity (conservation) and increased supply as the wiser course.
It doesn’t take great insight to understand that this “shift” is being driven by what we are fast coming to understand about the Colorado Basin’s capacity to deliver nearly as much water as it used to for the 40 million South Westerners, including 20 million plus in Southern California, that have long depended upon it to augment their local and other imported supplies.
The U.S. Bureau of Reclamation just released its 24-month update of the Colorado Basin’s status with the following headline: “Latest projections stress the need for robust operational agreements for the Colorado River after 2026.” And verbatim from the presser announcing the release of that update are the reasons the Bureau gave for announcing the need for the seven (7) states in the Colorado Compact to execute “robust operational agreements” between now and the end of 2026:
“Lake Powell’s elevation on Jan. 1, 2026, is projected to be 3,538.47 feet—approximately 162 feet below full pool and 48 feet above minimum power pool. This places the reservoir in the Mid-Elevation Release Tier, with a planned release of 7.48 million acre-feet of water for water year 2026, October 1, 2025, through September 30, 2026. If hydrologic conditions worsen, the water year release volume may be reduced . . . Lake Mead is projected to stay in a Level 1 Shortage Condition, with an expected elevation of 1,055.88 feet—20 feet below the Lower Basin shortage determination trigger. This condition necessitates significant water reductions as indicated by the 2007 Interim Guidelines and the Lower Basin Drought Contingency Plan in the United States and Minute 323 and the Binational Water Scarcity Contingency Plan in Mexico. This calls for Arizona to contribute 12,000 acre-feet, about 18% of its annual apportionment, Nevada to contribute 21,000 acre-feet or 7%of its annual apportionment, and Mexico to contribute 80,000 acre-feet or 5% of its annual allotment.”
California is spared – for now, that is. It’s clear that California will be called upon to make sacrifices that although perhaps not as great as Arizona or Nevada, will be significant, nonetheless. Or as Bill Hasencamp, Metropolitan Water District’s manager of Colorado River resources, put it recently in a Cal Matters story -- “Even with all of our efforts to do record amounts of conservation, it’s still not enough; we have to do even more than we’ve been doing in dry years.” No surprise there. More than half of the power generated at Lake Mead’s Hoover Dam goes to California, not to mention a whole lot of water to MWD’s 19 million customers.
PUBLIC GOLF
THERE’S GOOD NEWS TO REPORT
OAK CREEK GOLF CLUB
Known throughout Southern California as one very successful daily fee golf course, Oak Creek plays host to 70,000 rounds of golf per year and offers separate practice-only memberships for its large state-of-the-art practice facility at a guest fee schedule of $180-$230 for 14-day advance reservations, $210-$260 for 6-week advance reservations, $110-$140 for advance “twilight” time reservations, and $130 for senior citizen reservations (55+). Small buckets of range balls go for $18; large buckets for $24. There are two “membership” programs that reduce these fees – a “Gold” program for $15,000.00 per year that offers much in the way of access notwithstanding the facility’s high usage rate and a lesser one that for roughly $570 per year offers discounted rates that shave roughly 25-40% off the “guest fee” schedule.
Bottom line: Oak Creek is the kind of financially successful daily fee golf operation that many in the golf community thought made it immune from any proposal to repurpose it. They thought wrong. In late May the Irvine City Council authorized the City Manager to work with the Irvine Company to come up with a plan to turn the golf complex and some contiguous open space into 3,100 housing units.
Based on challenges issued by former Irvine Mayors, Council Members, and Irvine Company employees to the effect that a1988 ballot initiative had designated the land atop which Oak Creek sits open/recreational space, the current Irvine City Council subsequently directed its City Attorney to develop language for a ballot initiative that would put the issue to the voters a second time or in the opinion of those who have argued that the 1988 initiative did not create such a designation, a first time.
On August 13, the Irvine City Attorney brought back four (4) versions of such a ballot initiative and asked the City Council to approve one of them for placement on a special election ballot.
Instead of approving one of the four (4) ballot options, Mayor Agran moved and the Council unanimously approved a motion to continue the whole matter until the 1st quarter of 2026 to coincide with placement of a possible ballot initiative on the June ballot as part of the scheduled statewide election. This gives the "Save Open Space" group plenty of time to qualify their own ballot initiative in competition with whatever the City Council might decide in terms of ballot language and gives those communities opposed to the conversion, including the golf community, ample time to both express opposition and perhaps work with the Council on ballot language offering much greater flexibility in terms of preserving some measure of golf on those 315 acres than the ballot language that was put in front of them by the City Attorney.
Roughly 50 persons testified on the 13th, all but two of them in opposition to the proposed project, some simply expressing opposition, others preferring to focus on some of the legal and technical problems with the ballot language as proposed by the City Attorney. One of the things that was strikingly different from the meeting back in May when the Council authorized the City Manager to work with the Irvine Company to find common ground on a proposal to repurpose the golf property as a housing project was the opposition that came from some of Irvine's business groups, a labor union, and some community organizations, all of which counterbalanced some of the business and community organizations that testified in favor of the proposal back in May.
Only a clairvoyant or a fool would deign to predict where this episode will end, but unlike when we first reported on this matter, events subsequent to late May promise the strong possibility of a better end – better that is in terms of saving some semblance of public golf in the heart of Irvine. Stay tuned.
BUENAVENTURA MUNICIPAL GOLF COURSE
Inundated by winter 2023 floods that closed the 90-year old municipal mainstay for close to two years, many thought that the course would never reopen. Many thought the course should not re-open. But an active, engaged golf community thought differently. When combined with the serendipitous circumstance of Ventura’s employment of a Deputy City Manager with long experience in military contract management, the city was able to combine his skills with FEMA savvy consultants in charting a path toward securing the federal dollars required to flood-proof a redesigned Buenaventura Golf Course – “flood proof” in the sense of allowing flood waters to recede while protecting the greens and tees from encroachment. In the meantime, the city worked with its management tenant (Kemper Sports) to restore 14 holes on a temporary basis. That 14-hole layout opened earlier this year, and as of Monday (August 18) that layout has been extended to 18 holes.
Oak Creek and Buenaventura are just the latest in a long list of examples of public golf courses that once looked lost that in one case is on its way to complete restoration and in the other on its way to something more than the dust bin of history, how much “more” remains to be seen. But it would hardly be the first example of a public golf course thought completely lost that turned out to be 100% saved. Time will tell. It always does. And it always says better things for those who persist.