This just in: The EPA ain't fallin' for California's
banana in the tailpipe. Or something like that.
"The Bush administration
blocked efforts by California and 16 other states Wednesday to limit greenhouse gas emissions from cars and trucks, setting up a political and legal fight over whether states can take a lead role in combatting global warming," report Zachary Coile, Bob Egelko, and Matthew Yi in the Chron.
"Environmental Protection Agency Administrator
Stephen Johnson rejected California's request for a waiver from the federal government to impose its tough tailpipe emissions standards. The other states were poised to adopt similar rules if California's request was granted.
"The states represent nearly half the U.S. population, and their laws would effectively require automakers to cut greenhouse gas emissions nationwide, despite President Bush's rejection of mandatory national standards.
"Johnson said Congress' passage of an energy bill this week that raises fuel economy standards for all cars and trucks to 35 miles per gallon by 2020 made the state laws unnecessary. Bush signed the law Wednesday morning."
Gov. Schwarzenegger was unimpressed.
"While the federal energy bill is a good step toward reducing dependence on foreign oil, the President's approval of it does not constitute grounds for denying our waiver. The energy bill does not reflect a vision, beyond 2020, to address climate change, while California's vehicle greenhouse gas standards are part of a carefully designed, comprehensive program to fight climate change through 2050," said Governor Schwarzenegger.
Sen.
Dianne Feinstein also chimed in. 'Candidly I find this disgraceful. The passage of the Energy Bill does not give the EPA a green light to shirk its responsibility to protect the health and safety of the American people from air pollution.'
Meanwhile, there's a health care plan to sell!
Capitol Weekly looks at
the impact of this week's vote. "In reality, with all of the bill’s financing and, indeed, the bill’s very implementation, contingent upon passage of an initiative in November, the real-world impact of this week’s vote is minimal.
In fact, the passage of the bill may have as much to do with term limits as it does with health care."
"But in the meta-language of California politics, the vote was a loud affirmation of just who’s in charge of the Assembly, and hinted strongly to others that the governor and the speaker may forge a political alliance that could lead to the continuation of Núñez’s speakership for six more years. It also is a sign of the tensions between Núñez and his Senate counterpart, and the coming weeks promise to be used in part to pressure the Senate to act quickly.
But there is evidence for those who want to make the health care–term limits connection.
Some of the health care proposal’s strongest supporters, namely the Service Employees International Union and the American Federation of State, County and Municipal Employees, are also among the top donors to Proposition 93, a point not lost on No on 93 spokesman Kevin Spillane.“Obviously, huge sums of money have been pouring in from these unions in recent days,” he says. “The link seems pretty clear. It’s basically pay-for-play politics with proposition 93. Health care legislation has become a fund-raising vehicle for Fabian Núñez to cling to power.”
"
SEIU unions have contributed $1.1 million to the Yes on 93 effort. AFSCME unions have given another $610,000. (Not all donors to Proposition 93 are supporters of the speaker. The chief opponent of the health care pan, Blue Cross, has given the Yes on 93 campaign $50,000.)Still, the governor and the speaker have started their roadshow to sell the plan, and push Perata to get it through the Senate. (A hearing for the bill has been set for Jan. 16 in Senate Health.)
"Hoping to build public support for a health insurance reform package, Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger
visited a local Kaiser Permanente hospital yesterday to implore Californians to rally behind his efforts," reports Keith Darcé in the Union-Tribune.
"'It has been very, very difficult,' Schwarzenegger said of his nearly yearlong campaign to create a program for providing health coverage for most of California's uninsured. '
There are so many entities out there fighting this process.'"
...including every Republican in the State Assembly.
"His visit to Kaiser's medical center on Zion Avenue in San Diego came two days after the Assembly passed legislation that would provide health insurance for 3.6 million of the 5.1 million Californians who are uninsured. Kaiser, a large health maintenance organization, is among the bill's supporters."
Meanwhile, another Senate Democrat raised concerns about the bill.
"Sen.
Denise Ducheny, D-San Diego, raised similar worries in an interview yesterday afternoon.
"'
The biggest concerns overall have been the questions of financing the package,' she said. 'It's not clear where all the new monies will come from.'
"Ducheny also has reservations about the bill's mandate for most Californians to buy health insurance.
"'
How do you tell somebody that you're required by law to buy health insurance but you could be homeless if it's the difference between paying your rent and paying your insurance?' she said."
Dan Weintraub
looks at the divide among Republicans--well, between Arnold Schwarzenegger and Fresno Mayor
Alan Autry and every other Republican.
"It may not fit with recent Republican dogma, which holds that health care needs less regulation, not more. But Republicans from Teddy Roosevelt to Earl Warren and Richard Nixon toyed with the idea of universal health insurance. And Schwarzenegger and allies like Autry clearly hope that their vision – a robust private insurance market with a universal mandate and a government safety net – becomes the new standard for Republican policy on this issue."
Continuing the look at a connection, the LAT's Michael Rothfeld and Jordan Rau point to amendments sweetening the bill for unions added shortly after large contributions to the Yes on 93 campaign.
"As Assembly Speaker
Fabian Nuñez sought the endorsement of two major labor unions for his plan to overhaul healthcare in the state,
he added several provisions to the legislation sweetening the deal for union members, including millions of dollars for better benefits and worker training."
"The changes
came soon after the unions donated more than $1 million combined to an initiative sponsored by Nuñez that would extend numerous lawmakers' terms, including his own.
"In the final version, unveiled only days before Monday's vote, the unions received three years of increases in state funding of health insurance for tens of thousands of workers who provide in-home care for the elderly, blind and disabled.
"The legislation as approved gives unions unilateral authority to create and operate trust funds to provide employee healthcare, taking the power to negotiate away from the county agencies that employ the workers. The amendment was sought by the Service Employees International Union."
George Skelton writes that, when it comes down to it, the health plan is really in the hands of Legislative Analyst Liz Hill, the "Budget Nun."
"[T]he most influential person in the Capitol on healthcare right now is the Budget Nun. Her word will be gospel. Not only Perata, but Nuñez and Schwarzenegger would be wise to heed her admonitions. She can help elevate them to the true status of respected visionaries."
"Riding political gains elsewhere in the country,
Mike Huckabee now ranks second among Republican presidential candidates in California, trailing only
Rudy Giuliani, according to a Field Poll released Wednesday," writes the Bee's Kevin Yamamura.
"Giuliani, the former New York City mayor, has an eight-point advantage over former Arkansas Gov. Huckabee, the smallest lead the front-runner has had all year among likely Republican voters in California's Feb. 5 primary. Huckabee's support – 17 percent – quadrupled since October, while Giuliani's remained at 25 percent.
"The California race remains competitive. Former Massachusetts Gov.
Mitt Romney is close behind Huckabee at 15 percent. Arizona Sen.
John McCain has held steady at 12 percent
Meanwhile, San Diego County
is suing Deborah Bowen over a requirement that they conduct manual audits of voting machine results in tight races.
"The suit targets a directive by Bowen that counties using any of four electronic voting systems conduct a manual tally of 10 percent of randomly selected precincts if a contest's margin of victory is less than one-half of 1 percent.
"Nearly every California county is subject to the post-election tally, because it applies to local governments that use Premier, Sequoia, Hart or ES&S electronic voting systems.
"The expanded auditing requirement is meant to guard against the possibility of machine error, but San Diego's suit claims that Bowen exceeded her authority and infringed upon legislative policymaking by issuing the order."
Steve Weigand
checks in on the high speed rail project.
Really?
"After two postponements since 2004, voters next November are scheduled to consider a $10 billion bond issue that would act as seed money for what will likely be a $30-billion-plus project. The theory is that the feds and private investors will also kick into the project.
"To delay the vote again would take legislative approval, but that's not an entirely improbable scenario. The November ballot could be jammed with issues, such as funding for health insurance reform and water delivery systems, in which legislative leaders and Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger are more heavily invested politically.
"To avoid overloading voters and facing a backlash on those issues, legislators and the guv may decide to once again postpone the rail vote. And that could end the project.
"'If it is postponed,' authority Chairman
Quentin Kopp said Wednesday, 'it is finished."
"Days after port authorities approved a $35 environmental fee on containers shipped through Southern California's harbors, Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger
said Wednesday that he would support a similar fee at the state level," reports Kristopher Hanson in the Daily News.
"Schwarzenegger, who previously said container fees would hurt the economy, now considers them an option to help fund trade-related infrastructure and environmental programs.
"'
I think fees are good; we just have to work it out with the various stakeholders,' Schwarzenegger said during a visit with U.S. Treasury Secretary Henry Paulson Jr.
"'It's extremely important that we find a way to create economic development and increase trade, but at the same time take care of our environment.'
"The governor's policy shift comes as California grapples with an ailing goods-movement infrastructure and growing health problems linked to diesel pollution."
Meanwhile, CW's John Howard reports "[t]he new president of the State Compensation Insurance Fund
has urged Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger and key lawmakers to create a top-level, professionally paid staff at SCIF exempt from Civil Service rules and to at least double the size of the fund’s governing board.
"
Janet Frank, a veteran insurance executive who assumed the presidency of the State Fund in July amid an array of investigations into SCIF’s governance and alleged conflicts of interest, submitted the package of proposals last week. The submission occurred about the time that the Department of Insurance released the results of a long-awaited audit it commissioned that said the fund spent hundreds of millions of dollars in return for minimal services and exercised lax oversight over its activities. During the past year, two board members resigned under fire for alleged conflicts, and the former president and a top aide departed as well. Currently, the California Highway Patrol is conducting a criminal investigation into the fund.
Details of Frank’s proposals were not available, but they include setting up a competitively paid staff recruited from key areas of the insurance industry, the addition of employees not subject to Civil Service rules who would form an executive-level staff with direct responsibility to the president and board and the expansion of the five voting members of the SCIF governing board to at least a dozen members, perhaps more."
Finally, if you like The Roundup, you'll love Capitol Weekly's
year in review. Really, there's enough in there that, uh, it should kill at least an hour today. You can do your online shopping tomorrow.