Bills that passed out of the policy committees, appropriations committees, and floor actions in their respective houses of origin last Friday now move to the other house – successful Assembly bills to the Senate and vice versa. In those houses they will traverse the same gauntlet of policy/appropriations committees and floor actions before they can be sent to the governor for signature or veto.
As always, there is much to unpack at halftime – much to which we pay close heed in order to get a grip on the broad context in which those matters of direct interest to the California golf community may be headed. However, in terms of those matters of direct interest, here is where things stand at the half.
The bill golf has worked most assiduously in the 2024 session is AB 3192 (Muratsuchi; D-Torrance), a bill that would have banned the use of all nonorganic fertilizers and pesticides on golf resorts in California’s Coastal Zone and created a private right of action with respect to violations. As reported extensively in these “Updates,” golf took an “oppose unless amended” position on the bill – unless amended with respect to both these features, much more so the blanket ban than the private right of action. As also extensively reported, golf succeeded in securing its desired amendments. Specifically, in addition to the substitution of an administrative right of action for the original private right of action, the fertilizer/pesticide provision was amended as follows when re-presented to the Assembly Committee on Natural Resource:
The use of any nonorganic pesticide or fertilizing material at, or on any part of, any major coastal resort is authorized on areas of a course only when applied in a manner consistent with established integrated pest management principles and where no alternative fit for intended use and proven effectiveness is available. Where nonorganic pesticide or fertilizing material is used, the major coastal resort shall use the least toxic alternative possible in the smallest quantity possible.
Golf withdrew its opposition, and the bill then passed out of the Natural Resources Committee; however, still with two Democratic members staying off the bill. The state’s Hospitality Association and the California Chamber of Commerce remained opposed, leading us to conclude that the bill might fail in Appropriations, which indeed it did. This session was the 2nd running of this bill and given that it may well not be the last, the important detail for the California golf community is that is almost certain that if the bill is run a 3rd time in 2025, it will be run with golf’s amendments securely tucked therein.
A bill that also failed in Appropriations was AB 2947 (Lackey; R-Palmdale), a bill that would have created monies specifically for turf conversions as opposed to turf replacements. For obvious reasons golf supported this bill. However, we fully expected it to die in Appropriations due to the fact that its sponsor was intent on making it a universal and thus potentially expensive program, as opposed to a program targeted at the “Large Landscapes” for which turf conversions make considerably more economic and practical sense, not to mention a much more focused/limited expense that might have allowed it to escape the Appropriations Suspense File and move to the floor. After conferring with the sponsor and the coalition with whom we worked this session, CAG may want to consider sponsoring a bill in 2025 that would be restricted to “Large Landscapes” with priorities established therein for the parks in “underserved communities.” Water providers, which in Southern California are already creating conversion rebate/incentive programs under the auspices of other extant programs (e.g., MWD’s and LADWP’s “performance based” programs), as well as urban park departments would be supportive of such a targeted/focused bill in ways that AB 2947 was not. With a focused emphasis upon urban parks, such a bill might garner Democratic co-sponsors. It will help if 2025’s budget deficit is not as great as the one the legislature and Governor are grappling with right now; however, that doesn’t look likely.
AB 2285 (Rendon; D-Lakewood), one of many bills in the session aiming to effectuate the Governor’s October 2023 “Outdoors for All” executive order but the one that CAG supported because it was the only one among them directly aimed at redressing a longstanding imbalance between state largesse targeted at coastal environmental constituencies and largesse targeted at the underserved urban park communities where so much of municipal golf is located, is moving to the Senate. Los Angeles County lobbied for this bill and directly sought golf’s support.
SB 1413 (Niello; R-Roseville) is moving to the Assembly but only after having been amended at the last minute to go from a bill that would have mandated year-round Standard Time to one that mandates only a study of the impacts of such a change by 2027, a radical watering down likely made necessary by the fact that the Assembly Committee to which the bill will be referred in the 2nd half of the 2024 session is known to be less than warm to the notion – some might say downright cold. For obvious reasons, golf opposed this bill. Golf may not be alone among certain recreational sectors that would be financially harmed by year-round Standard Time, but it is likely the one most harmed. It’s hard to oppose mere studies at the policy committee level, although to the degree to which this study might come with a high price tag, it could easily pass through its policy committee only to be scrapped later. The challenge for golf is to figure out whether it makes sense to perhaps oppose unless amended to include in the proposed “study” financial as well as health, safety, and the other impacts that the bill raises at its predicates for passage.
SB 366 (Caballero; D-Merced / Bipartisan bill / Co-authors in Assembly Essalyi and Rubio) – California Water Plan: Long Term Supply Targets – is a bill that would revise and recast certain provisions regarding The California Water Plan to, among other things, require the department to instead establish a stakeholder advisory committee and to expand the membership of the committee to include tribes, labor, and environmental justice interests. The bill would require the department to coordinate with the California Water Commission, the State Water Resources Control Board, other state, and federal agencies as appropriate, and the stakeholder advisory committee to develop a comprehensive plan for addressing the state’s water needs and meeting specified long-term water supply targets established by the bill for purposes of The California Water Plan. The bill goes beyond the current approach to water supply planning by establishing specific targets to be met by certain dates and requires a financing plan for achieving these targets.
SB 366 cleared the Senate floor in 2023 by a unanimous 40 – 0 vote but was pulled and made a two-year bill by its author due to the Water, Parks, and Wildlife Committee Chair’s opposition to the setting of specific supply targets, a heartburn over targets very much shared by the Governor’s Office. Both were worried, and rightfully so, that a set of targets cum dates supported by a financing plan for the achievement thereof would commit the state to spending mandates it might find difficult if not impossible to fund, let alone complete.
The California Municipal Utilities Association (CMUA) is the lead agency of the “coalition” lobbying this bill. Between now and June CMUA is planning to seek the support of those California sectors (e.g., business, agriculture, recreation) whose interests are very much on the supply side of the “divide,” those that while they may very much consider conservation to be one of the components of an effective supply portfolio, don’t share with those of a more puritanical bent the notion that California can conserve its way out of what many have come to refer to as our current state of weather “whiplash” – long dry spells punctuated by wet years driven almost entirely by atmospheric rivers whose waters are not now capturable.
Those that are set to oppose SB 366 are some of the powerful environmental organizations concerned that we have not yet done enough to add to supply through conservation and worried that much of the supply created by means other than conservation will come at the expense of the environmental integrity of the Sacramento Delta. To them we would add those elected leaders concerned that any set of targets set by the long-term demands of the world’s 5th largest economy can only create funding demands that can be met by gutting current funding priorities. Depending on how one counts, California is facing a $43 or $73 billion deficit in 2024 that shows signs of only going up in the next couple of years – hardly a propitious moment for ambitious funding mandates.
Stuck squarely in the middle is the Governor. Chief executives don’t have the luxury of single-minded advocacy on the theory that someone or something else will balance their advocacy against the advocacy of those on the other side of various divides. They have to make things work, or if you prefer a phrase that was once considered beyond the realm of American respectability – making the trains run on time. Or as Gavin Newsom’s predecessor Jerry Brown defined the role – paddling down the middle of a great river, sometimes paddling left, sometimes right, in an effort to keep the ship of state from running aground.
On water matters Governor Newsom has been paddling “right” recently if one considers focusing on supply a rightward political drift. He is pressing for the construction of the Delta Tunnel and the completion of the Sites Reservoir. His State Water Resources Control Board (SWRCB) has reversed course in favor of urban water use and supply with respect to the Rule effectuating his “Making Conservation a California Way of Life” executive order to the delight of the Association of California Water Agencies (ACWA) and the chagrin of most of the state’s normative environmental organizations.
Support of SB 366 in its current form would amount to not just another “rightward” shift, but one of considerably more consequence than the three cited here. And it would be a shift requiring the assumption of massive funding commitments. But there are reasons why every governor since the 1970’s, both Democrats and Republicans, have pressed for some form of Delta conveyance, whether one tunnel or two, and every governor has tried to rise above the parochial concerns of those on both sides of the “divide” through various balancing schemes that often seem like walks on a circus tightrope. And so, while we would be foolish to suggest that we have a clue as to how this will play out when SB 366 is joined in the Assembly next month, we would suggest that while the Governor cannot just say no to the coalition of water agencies bent on pressing the supply issue with specific targets cum funding mandates, he is not likely to say yes to everything contained in the bill, but rather use the power given him by the California Constitution to soften it into something that makes a powerful statement about the compelling need to develop a more robust supply strategy while deferring the attachment of specific targets to a dilatory process described but not necessarily prescribed in the language.
The California golf community’s interests clearly reside on the supply side of the equation and not just in Southern California. CAG is in the process of determining whether those “interests” are sufficiently compelling to merit acceding to CMUA’s request to join the coalition in support of SB 366 when it is considered by the Assembly in June. The lean is in favor, but it is also a “lean” that seems to prefer focus much more on the bill’s overall statement about the need to develop a long-term strategy to develop supply beyond disproportionate reliance upon conservation than a passion for specific targets – general aspirations/targets to be sure, but not necessarily the specific ones that some of the state’s municipal utilities that came close to severe water rationing in 2022 seek.