Proposition C would change San Francisco’s tax policy to allow a one-time transfer tax exemption for owners of properties converted from commercial to residential use the first time they are sold following conversion, as long as the change of use is approved before Jan. 1, 2030.

San Francisco currently requires a transfer tax of 6% on properties that sell for more than $25 million. The proposed exemption could be applied to up to 5 million square feet of converted properties. The measure would allow the Board of Supervisors to amend, reduce, suspend or repeal the transfer tax without voter approval, although voters would have to approve increases. It would also let the city increase the amount of commercial development allowed in a given year by adding to that tally the square footage of property that has been converted or demolished.

Under this measure, the transfer tax exemption could be applied to portions of buildings converted from commercial to residential if other parts of the properties continue to host business operations.

The opportunity to use Proposition C transfer tax exemptions would expire at the end of 2054.

The controller’s office estimates that the city could lose between $34 million and $150 million over 30 years if it allows transfer tax exemptions on 5 million square feet converted from commercial to residential use. By removing space occupied by businesses, the city could lose additional revenue currently provided by commercial operations, including gross receipt and other taxes that would not apply to residential properties. However, the city could see an increase in property taxes because the assessed value of residential property is often higher than it is for commercial property of the same size.

The calculations are complicated and are based on guessing what will happen: “If the transfer tax exemption makes residential conversion of an office building financially feasible, but that building would have been eventually occupied by future office tenants, the exemption would most likely lead to a net negative revenue impact for the City,” wrote Controller Ben Rosenfield in his analysis of Proposition C.

Mayor London Breed submitted this measure for inclusion on the ballot. It is also supported by Supervisors Matt Dorsey, Joel Engardio, Rafael Mandelman and Catherine Stefani, who together signed the official rebuttal to the opposition statement.

“San Francisco’s Downtown is undergoing a period of change — and there is a tremendous opportunity to attract investment and excitement in the future of what Downtown can be: a thriving, 24-hour neighborhood filled with residents, workers, arts and culture, and successful small businesses,” Breed wrote in her official statement supporting Proposition C.

More than a dozen business associations and organizations and nearly 50 individuals signed onto paid arguments submitted in support of the measure, including state Sen. Scott Wiener, along with groups including Housing Action Coalition, GrowSF, San Francisco Bay Area Planning and Urban Research, and SF Yimby.

Proposition C is opposed by organizations including the Council of Community Housing Organizations, the San Francisco Democratic County Central Committee, Affordable Housing Alliance, the San Francisco Tenants Union, Senior and Disability Action, the Harvey Milk LGBTQ Democratic Club and Small Business Forward. In their statement against Proposition C, they called it “a deceptive ballot measure that takes power away from voters and allows City Hall politicians to hand out corporate tax breaks to billionaires and huge property owners.”

They noted in their rebuttal that current law allows tax exemptions for converting office buildings to affordable housing, and that the measure would extend that benefit to developers of luxury housing.

This measure requires more than 50% affirmative votes to pass.

A “yes” vote means you support changing San Francisco’s transfer tax policy to allow a one-time transfer tax exemption for the owners of properties converted from commercial to residential use the first time they are sold following conversion.

A “no” vote means you do not want the proposed changes to the city’s transfer tax policies.

The post Proposition C — Real Estate Transfer Tax Exemption and Office Space Allocation appeared first on San Francisco Public Press.

The court has not ruled on the appeal. Meanwhile, the city is pursuing other strategies to reduce visible homelessness and drug use in several locations ahead of a fall filled with high-profile events, including the 30th Asia-Pacific Economic Cooperation Leaders’ Meeting, which will put San Francisco in a global spotlight.

The city will also host Salesforce’s Dreamforce in and around the Moscone Center Sept. 11-13 and Fleet Week, with official events along the Embarcadero and at Fisherman’s Wharf, Oct. 2-10.

In the Civic Center neighborhood, San Francisco is employing a variety of strategies — moving a farmers market, adding a city-sponsored carnival and accelerating construction in a prominent public plaza — to allow it to clean up and hold a perimeter on areas that could be in many camera shots this fall.

The APEC summit, a Nov. 12-18 gathering for the heads of 21 Pacific Rim economies, could offer city leaders a chance to counter the prevalent “doom loop” media narrative. But depending on where attention is drawn during the event, news coverage could also reinforce the idea that the city is failing on an epic world stage.   

Early this year, Mayor London Breed declared her intentions for cleaning up the city’s image in “Roadmap to San Francisco’s Future.” Her office posted a status update this month that called out areas near City Hall where the city has “launched efforts to enliven public spaces and plazas, including the family-friendly Civic Center Carnival, a new skate park to be installed in UN Plaza” — all part of a strategy to “enhance public spaces to showcase Downtown.”

The update noted the APEC gathering as a progress point in the city’s strategy to “tell our story through proactive marketing to emphasize our strengths and reclaim our brand.”

Representatives of countries representing 40% of the global population and 50% of world trade will converge in San Francisco for the meetings, according to the conference website.  Heads of state as well as 30,000 governmental and business delegates, are expected to attend sessions at the Moscone Center and other locations across the city.  

Some of the most visible signs of the city’s failure to address extreme poverty and addiction persist in UN Plaza, the Civic Center and the Tenderloin neighborhood. The plaza holds the city’s largest open air drug market, with numerous tent encampments scattered nearby. 

Politico reported earlier this month that Gov. Gavin Newsom put pressure on city leaders “to get their collective house in order” for APEC.  

Super Bowl Set a Precedent 

San Francisco faced a similar dilemma when the city hosted Super Bowl 50 festivities in February 2016. (The Bay Area is slated to host again in 2026.) 

Then-Mayor Ed Lee was hoping to polish the city’s reputation with Super Bowl logos against the backdrop of iconic San Francisco imagery — all part of his effort to attract jobs and investment in the city. His administration was accused by advocates for the homeless of trying to remove unhoused people from anywhere near the Super Bowl events.

No Bay Area teams were in the showdown and the game itself was played in the new 49ers stadium in Santa Clara. 

Activists angry over Lee’s tactics held a large protest and tried to set-up a tent city within the Super Bowl “fan village” on the Embarcadero. It was met by a cordon of police, providing exactly the kind of news coverage city leaders were hoping to avoid. 

In 2016, San Francisco used policing and anti-camping laws to sweep the streets leading up to football’s annual showcase event. 

The current federal court order prohibits the city from clearing encampments — unless it is moving tents for street cleaning, construction or events. 

Those exceptions are central to the city’s new strategy — sweeping the streets through “street activation.” Some of the most ambitious and quickest projects will be in the UN Plaza area. 

The first change was a four-day Civic Center Carnival on Fulton Plaza between the Asian Art Museum and the Main Library that ran Aug. 24-27. The event is not a yearly occurrence and was only announced by city hall on July 31. 

Fair-like events have happened before at Civic Center, including the two-day Pride celebration in June, but other longer fairs are not typically situated next to City Hall.  

The Civic Center Carnival will be followed beginning Sept. 1 by a much larger and longer construction closure east of Fulton on UN Plaza. Daniel Montes, communications manager for San Francisco’s Department of Recreation and Parks, said the plaza will undergo a significant makeover as it is turned into a skate park and multipurpose entertainment zone.  

“The skating elements and other activities including pickleball, ping pong, tables for chess, exercise equipment will take about six weeks to prep and install,” he wrote in an email responding to questions about the project.

The street activation plan will displace the Heart of the City Farmers Market, which has been operating at UN Plaza since 1981. It will be moved to a much smaller space at Fulton Plaza on Sept. 3. 

The farmers market operates on Wednesdays and Sundays, and the city has noted that market days bring a dramatic drop in the size and intensity of the illicit drug market in and around UN Plaza. 

Heart of the City Farmers Market Executive Director Steve Pulliam said the city asked the market if it wanted to take over the plaza seven days a week, but Pulliam said there is not enough business to operate full-time. 

The city told the market that because it couldn’t occupy UN Plaza every day, the city would proceed with an experimental skatepark pilot project to try to improve conditions in the area.

Pulliam said that “metrics for success have not been defined” but added that the city assured him that it would restore the plaza and invite the farmers market to move back to UN Plaza if the plan fails to improve conditions at that site.  

Civic Virtue or Desperation Move?

Montes told the San Francisco Public Press that this was the best plan state, local and federal officials could come up with to change conditions in UN Plaza and adjacent areas in the Tenderloin and South of Market neighborhoods. 

“Rec and Park rangers have been closely monitoring the plaza since earlier this year in partnership with local law enforcement and community outreach workers with the ultimate objective to make these San Francisco public spaces safer for all,” he wrote.

Pulliam said he has been told that more Recreation and Parks rangers and ambassadors from Urban Alchemy — a nonprofit that hires people who were formerly incarcerated to help keep streets clean and engage with community members who might need help — will be assigned to UN Plaza when it reopens. 

Urban Alchemy ambassadors are already stationed in the area. Last Wednesday, a person wearing the Urban Alchemy logo told a group of people crowded into a corner of the plaza to “clear out — you need to move your stuff or it will be taken!” 

Additional reporting by Madison Alvarado and Yesica Prado.

The post SF Uses Events, Construction Projects to Clear Streets Ahead of Pacific Rim Economic Summit, Other Gatherings appeared first on San Francisco Public Press.

Sea level rise is forcing cities around San Francisco Bay to weigh demand for new housing against the need to protect communities from flooding. Builders say they can solve this dilemma with cutting-edge civil engineering. But no one knows whether their ambitious efforts will be enough to keep newly built waterfront real estate safe in coming decades.

Meanwhile, developers are busy building — and telling the public that they can mitigate this one effect of climate change, despite mounting evidence that it could be a bigger problem than previously believed.

On Treasure Island, a flat tract of 20th-century landfill with epic bay vistas, workers have poured the foundation for a 22-story tower, the first of six planned high-rise buildings, and broken ground on an affordable housing complex. Another, for families and unhoused veterans, is nearly complete. Townhomes, retail space and a waterfront transit hub are also in the pipeline. All told, the $6 billion development would be home to 20,000 people or more.

Engineers for the public-private consortium transforming the island, Treasure Island Community Development, say they are pursuing aggressive sea rise adaptation strategies. Improvements include raising some of the land by several feet, preparing a buffer zone for future levees and pumps, and setting aside low-lying open space that could convert to floodable marshland as higher bay waters spill onshore.

This is not a cheap endeavor. The development group’s director, Bob Beck, did not return multiple emails and phone calls regarding costs for this work. A 2011 report by the city of San Francisco, which includes Treasure Island, estimated that “geotechnical stabilization” measures would cost $137 million. Storm drains, soil grading and landscape and open-space improvements would add about $120 million.

Dilip Trivedi, the site’s project manager with international engineering firm Moffatt and Nichol, has been touting the consortium’s efforts for more than a decade. He said in a recent interview that the most built-up parts of the island should be safe from sea rise through at least 2070. Fifty years or so is a reasonable planning horizon for new developments, he added, and additional phased seawall construction can help future generations stay a step ahead of ever-higher tides.

“When you put together significant infrastructure, you don’t want to have to maintain it for about that time,” Trivedi said. “It is what we call project life.”

Climate scientists, however, commonly try to predict sea rise out at least to the year 2100, a time when some current schoolchildren could be octogenarian residents of the island.

Every contemporary climate model predicts that, even with deep carbon reductions starting this decade, several feet of sea rise are locked in. The debates for climate adaptation strategy are how many feet and how far down the road we should consider.

With ever more sophisticated climate predictions, the outlook for sea level rise has continued to darken, indicating that current trends will likely accelerate through the end of the century. In one pessimistic scenario — which researchers say is among the possibilities in a “business as usual” global greenhouse gas emissions future — much of the island could find itself underwater frequently, and some of the most developed areas could occasionally be threatened with flooding.

To home in on Treasure Island’s future, the San Francisco Public Press asked researchers at the United States Geological Survey’s Pacific Coastal and Marine Science Center, based in Santa Cruz, to provide an analysis of storm conditions under various climate scenarios using sea rise projections by the Ocean Protection Council. They found that bay waters could surge higher than the developers have long been saying publicly.

In that analysis, by 2100 there is a small but not insignificant chance of 4 feet, 11 inches of sea level rise — slightly more than what the island’s engineers have accounted for. Adding in the effects of tides, weather and other transient events, such as in the kind of extreme storm seen once in a century, that total could be 2 feet, 11 inches higher.

The resulting surge would, at least temporarily, send waves 1 foot, 2 inches higher than the lowest ground floors of some planned housing complexes.

While the project’s engineers never address this possibility in their public narratives, documents they have prepared show they have known about similar scenarios for years.

Their own maps, which superimpose flood conditions on existing land elevations, line up fairly closely to the Geological Survey’s map data. Yet the engineers have chosen to downplay the likelihood of these outcomes as they pursued permits to build, arguing that novel construction technologies could make the development invulnerable to flooding under any reasonable course of events.

In a 2016 sea rise adaptation filing with a regional watershed agency, Moffatt and Nichol included six maps showing potential flood conditions in each construction phase, side by side with maps showing how the planned short- and long-term sea level rise protections would prevent inundation. 

One map shows 4 feet of sea rise. Before any land improvements, nearly the entire island would have been inundated — up to 8 feet in places — during flooding calculated by FEMA to have a 1% chance of occurring per year. Another part of that document showed a graph that indicated a 4-foot rise was possible by around 2093. The Geological Survey’s analysis of the Ocean Protection Council extreme scenario for 2100 puts sea rise closer to 5 feet.

But Trivedi said that the raising of the land under many of the buildings, plus additional shoreline improvements, would protect key infrastructure. Beside that map, the engineers showed how the existing 3.5-mile perimeter wall could be raised by 1 to 3 feet, depending on location, which they said would keep much of the island dry, although a note appended to the diagram said: “Does not show intentional flooding from managed retreat on northern and eastern shorelines — TBD.”

Within the last year, regulators have started questioning whether the steps developers are taking are sufficient to guarantee that the island remains dry in the long term.

“This is a community that will be around a while,” said Ethan Lavine, chief of permits for shoreline development for the Bay Conservation and Development Commission. “At a certain point in time, they will need levee protection.” Lavine’s office is pressing Trivedi and his colleagues to use a more cautious view of climate change when assessing whether Treasure Island’s flood prevention techniques can handle what nature might throw at them. 

When evaluating permit applications, government agencies require developers to reference the “best available science” to assess threats from climate change. In October 2021, the engineers issued an update to the 2016 filing. In it, Trivedi compared his firm’s sea level rise expectations against studies by several scientific bodies, including California’s Ocean Protection Council and the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers. His preferred predictions minimized the effect of the worst-case scenarios. The only needed change, he argued, would be to move up the time frame for planning adaptations by as much as five years. 

Yet climate policy experts point out that with significant scientific papers being released each year, guidance for builders has become a moving target. Because they admit a great deal of uncertainty in their predictions, scientists always publish their results in charts that consider an array of environmental assumptions.

That gives developers leeway to choose which predictions to focus on when describing the risks to their capital investments. Treasure Island could be the most expensive local project in the region’s history to take advantage of this ambiguity.

Projecting Optimism

All of Trivedi’s recent public statements conclude that the likelihood of the gloomiest climate scenarios is remote, and that the level of risk to property and lives is insignificant given the proposed engineering fixes. But a close examination of the 2021 adaptation plan offers a few reasons for concern:

• It dismisses high-end forecasts, in which global warming accelerates due to uncontrolled carbon emissions.
• It selectively cites climate models that make planned infrastructure appear sufficient to virtually eliminate future flood risk.
• It focuses on relatively short time frames, such as 20 or 50 years, while offering little specificity about expected conditions at the end of the century, which falls within the lifetimes of some children alive today.

Trivedi said in an interview that for planning purposes, he is focused on one recent predicted milestone: 3 feet of sea rise by 2080. In that circumstance, the ground floors of most buildings, to be built upon a now-elevated development pad, would still have a buffer of nearly 4 feet above the average highest tide of today.

He also asserted that the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change, a scientific committee organized by the United Nations, recently reported sea rise could be less severe than previously forecasted, based on the track record of recent years. “What has been observed is that sea level rise is not tracking” to the most pessimistic scenarios, he said. But there are reasons to question his conclusion.

The localized scenario for 2100 examined by the Geological Survey — the one resulting in water levels 1 foot, 2 inches above some developed areas — relies on a climate change prediction assessed to have a probability of 5%, that is, a 1-in-20 statistical chance of occurring. That prediction was published by the California Ocean Protection Council, a body of experts organized by the state government, in recent guidelines for community planning.

Trivedi said the international group’s current report indicates there’s “low confidence in that scenario happening.” When asked for a citation to back up this claim, Trivedi referenced a “localized model” of the findings from NASA, the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration and five other federal agencies.

A report these agencies jointly issued in February 2022 in fact gave a more nuanced view. In a section titled “Future Mean Sea Level,” the authors did exclude one scenario used by the Ocean Protection Council that had been labeled “extreme” and not given a numerical probability. But that is not the scenario Trivedi said the group ruled out. This same report indicates that the West Coast is likely to see 4 to 8 inches of rise over 30 years, accelerating later in the century.

Regardless of the pace of the increase, Treasure Island developers say they have contingency plans relying on future residents or taxpayers to fund the construction of progressively higher walls around the urban zone — several feet every few decades. In its latest update, Moffatt and Nichol said sea level rise of 1 foot by 2043 would trigger the plan to elevate the perimeter.

A strategy reliant on levees might seem risky in light of Hurricane Katrina in 2005, when faulty engineering of levees led to catastrophic flooding of parts of New Orleans that sit below the level of the Mississippi River and the Gulf of Mexico. In light of this recent history, Bay Area regulators are starting to ask whether the Treasure Island plan is entirely watertight.

A March 2022 letter from the Bay Conservation and Development Commission, the agency that issued the island’s 2016 permit for waterfront areas, called the update too optimistic and tolerant of long-term flooding potential.

“Public access along a shoreline and a big mixed-use development require using a medium-to-high-risk projection for sea level rise,” said the commission’s planning manager, Erik Buehmann.

Re-engineering Shaky Ground

On an island built by the government generations ago out of rocks, soil and dredged sand, preparing high-and-dry land would be difficult even if it were not in an earthquake and tsunami zone.

In numerous reports and public presentations, Trivedi has said construction workers have elevated land on the 100-acre development pad to 3 feet, 6 inches above the “base flood elevation” — a height calculated by Federal Emergency Management Agency representing a 1% chance of flooding each year. The homes, hotels and businesses there will be set back from the shoreline by 200 to 300 feet on most sides and as much as 1,000 feet from the northern shore because that area is more prone to flooding. Building is planned to roll out in phases through 2035.

Workers have spent years using cranes to repeatedly drop heavy weights to compact the soil. They have driven vibrating probes into the earth, filling the holes with concrete for stabilization. They then piled 1 million cubic yards of soil atop the compacted layer. These measures are intended to prevent the kind of ground liquefaction seen in the Marina District and elsewhere during the devastating 1989 Loma Prieta earthquake. Other geological improvements include inserting vertical wick drains, akin to long drinking straws, to help remove water from the soil as it compresses. These techniques have been used by civil engineers around the world for more than 30 years to develop areas without easy access to bedrock.

Trivedi said these measures, together with a jagged, rocky seawall raised to allow for just over 1 foot of sea rise, would help take energy out of large waves, and the setback would use the landscape to dissipate any possible overtopping before it reaches valuable structures.

At the same time, the engineers have recognized that much of the island — particularly the low-lying northern end — are indefensible. Areas that have flooded in the past will eventually be sacrificed to rising waters. That strategy has immediate, concrete consequences: Dozens of existing structures, including homes of about 3,000 people currently living there, are set to be demolished to create open space. Over time these areas could be turned into tidal marshland to protect the newly developed areas from storms.

Regulators Balk at a Sunny Assessment

The Bay Conservation and Development Commission, the agency most empowered to weigh in on new waterfront building, is hamstrung by a legal mandate to regulate only what happens 100 feet inland, regardless of elevation — an artifact of legislation dating from before climate change was a dominant concern.

The 2016 permit the agency issued for improvements on Treasure Island’s margins, including a ferry terminal, required adaptation updates every five years. Moffatt and Nichol’s 2021 update concluded that the original adaptation plans needed few changes, except for possibly needing to accelerate, by five years, the planning process for building higher perimeter levees.

Regulators balked at the assessment. In a March 2022 letter, the commission advised Moffatt and Nichol to plan more conservatively. The agency demanded consideration of a 1-in-200 chance sea rise scenario, in which seas rise 6 feet, 11 inches by 2100. Adding in a 100-year storm surge, waves could plausibly overtop portions of the sea wall along the southeastern side by about 1 to 2 feet, and along the northern end by about 1 foot. That is an even worse outcome than that predicted by Geological Survey’s localized flooding model.

The commission said Moffatt and Nichol seemed too dismissive of chances that things could go wrong.

“The permittees decided to design the project considering very low risk of sea level rise related impacts” the letter said, noting also that engineers seemed too focused on the short time horizon of 2080.

Trivedi counters that the Treasure Island development was never built upon projections of a certain sea level happening by a certain date, because seawalls can, for all practical purposes, be built arbitrarily high, on whatever schedule is needed.

“We adopted an approach where we decided on an allowance we are building into the project,” he said in the interview. “As future projections come out, we will adjust the date of the adaptation.”

Commission staff met with planners from Moffatt and Nichol last summer to work out the requested additions to the 2021 adaptation strategy. Buehmann, who worked on the original permit, said follow-up discussions were to be expected because the Treasure Island permit was the first since the commission began requiring builders to submit sea rise assessments. “We didn’t expect it to be perfect the first time,” he said.

Whatever comes of this process  which Trivedi referred to as merely “an internal thing” that was required for the filing — the adaptation plan is unlikely to change significantly, because the development pad is already in place and huge construction cranes are sprouting up on Treasure Island’s skyline. What is left in the playbook is raising future seawalls, ceding the northern open space and the installation of pumps.

Government officials have long acknowledged the inevitability of Treasure Island’s relying on artificial barriers. In 2015, Brad McCrea, regulatory program director at the commission, told the Public Press: “At the end of the day, this will be a levee-protected community — there’s no getting around that.” Since then, agency staff have not changed their view.

Rapidly Outdated Climate Science

To determine how high to raise the building pad, Treasure Island builders consulted several climate studies published as early as 1987 and as recently as 2007. At that point, scientists were predicting that by 2100, oceans could rise as much as 4 feet, 7 inches.

This forecast was echoed by a state panel of scientists and policy experts in 2009, when then-Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger visited Treasure Island to announce its findings and call for better sea level rise mitigation.

Moffatt and Nichol then relied on these studies to anticipate that the oceans would rise 3 feet by 2075. So the company proposed raising the development pad to 3 feet, 6 inches above the predicted levels for a once-in-a-hundred-year flood.

Moffatt and Nichol did not spell out a rationale for setting the height of the development pad, as the Public Press reported in 2010. The firm did argue that raising it higher could create other problems, such as jeopardizing the island’s stability under the weight of packed soil and adding expense. “At some point it doesn’t become cost-effective — it’s a matter of acceptable levels of risk over your planning horizon,” Trivedi said in an interview then.

To be sure, when Treasure Island plans were drawn up, scientific modeling showed wide uncertainty about how much global temperatures could increase. In 2009, scientists around the world were saying that oceans could rise anywhere from a minimum of 3 feet, 3 inches to a maximum of 4 feet, 11 inches by 2100. At that time, the effects of ice melt from land via glaciers, snowpacks and ice caps were little understood.

Today, European and U.S. scientists using satellite imagery to measure the shape of Greenland’s ice sheets say melting is outstripping gains from snowfall. In a paper published last August, they found that no matter how much countries curb emissions, seas will rise by a minimum of 11 inches from this effect alone.  

Focusing Locally

The U.S. Geological Survey developed the Coastal Storm Modeling System to help protect waterfront communities. It simulates the forces behind wave and wind data and translates them into local flood projections that include tides, storm surges, waves and seasonal events such as El Niño.

The Public Press requested that the agency simulate a small section of San Francisco Bay, in the vicinity of Treasure Island, relying on probability scenarios for global sea levels in 2100 developed by the California Ocean Protection Council in a 2018 guidance paper. This report offered up sea rise projections of likelihoods as high as 50% and as low as 0.5%. 

The Ocean Protection Council’s examination of a wide array of probabilities heavily influenced the Bay Conservation and Development Commission’s critique of the Treasure Island adaptation update. The commission’s biggest concern was that change might happen faster than the engineers were anticipating.

[Explore sea level rise scenarios using Climate Central’s interactive tool. Here we show floodwaters at 7.8 feet above the present-day high tide line. ]

But Trivedi said the Ocean Protection Council’s past predictions had already failed. “If you look at the year 2022 projections, follow the OPC formulas,” Trivedi said. “We should have seen about 8 inches of sea level rise since 2000. In reality, it has been about 2 inches or less.”

Most forecasts predict increased global temperatures due to persistent carbon pollution. But the emissions projections are still hotly contested.

The Ocean Protection Council examined two emissions scenarios. One assumed that carbon dioxide output doubles through 2050. The other imagined more aggressive greenhouse gas reductions — 70% by 2050 and “net zero” emissions by 2080.

For the purposes of seeing how bad things could plausibly get, the U.S. Geological Survey used a midlevel emissions scenario. This decision was based on detailed simulations into the next century of swell and waves along the Pacific Ocean. What the researchers found was that paradoxically, milder greenhouse gas levels generated worse storms for California’s coast than do extreme ones. 

“What’s really changed in the research community is that worst-case scenarios have become more common,” said Patrick Barnard, a research geologist with the agency. “The state is asking communities to prepare for these.”

This approach helps waterfront areas learn to be more risk-averse to protect property and lives.

Avoiding Mistakes of the Past

Foster City is paying a high price for waterfront sprawl. Like Treasure Island, the mid-Peninsula community 25 miles to the south was built entirely on landfill, not unusual in the Bay Area, where efforts to accommodate population growth stretching back to the Gold Rush consumed most of the wetlands and tidal marshes.

Foster City did have worries about flooding decades ago. It is shot through with artificial waterways, including two sloughs, several small canals and an artificial lagoon. Barely above sea level before being developed, it would not exist if not for its levees and seawalls. 

Yet, in 2014 FEMA informed Foster City officials that new studies showed the levee system was neither strong nor tall enough to withstand a major storm and the large waves that would result. Update the seawalls and levees, or the entire city would be designated a floodplain, the agency said. 

Sixty years ago, developers there hauled in tons of sand to raise the land several feet to construct thousands of homes in what became a 33,000-resident community. That was a time when climate change was not a part of city planning vernacular. Today workers are busy widening and raising levees and adding interlocking steel plates as a bulwark against the storms federal regulators warned of, as well as rising seas.

But Treasure Island, which is slated to add 8,000 units of housing to accommodate more than 20,000 residents, is still more than a decade away from build-out. What the engineers put in place there in the next few years could avoid Foster City’s mistakes — or compound them.

To be sure, some cities are starting to alter blueprints on pace with the evolving science. In October, the Port of San Francisco announced it was collaborating with the Army Corps of Engineers to study how to shore up the city’s seawall along its eastern waterfront, from Fisherman’s Wharf to the Hunters Point Shipyard, to combat both sea rise and earthquake risk. This area includes attractions like the Chase Center sports arena, a project green-lighted before a city-commissioned study surfaced that predicted flooding from sea level rise in the new Mission Bay neighborhood, as the Public Press reported in 2017.

Port officials now say they anticipate 7 feet of sea level rise by the end of the century. That is 2 feet, 5 inches higher than the level Treasure Island’s developers are planning for in their adaptation strategy.

The Port’s yearlong effort will consider elevating barriers along the Embarcadero, installing a system of locks at Mission Creek and buying back and cleaning up privately owned landfill areas around Islais Creek to return them to the tidal zone.

Not Easy to Abandon a Home

In the grips of a housing affordability crisis, San Francisco needs new construction. But is a flood zone the wisest place to build? That could depend on how long we expect buildings to last.

Barnard, of the U.S. Geological Survey, has traveled to many communities, including Okracoke Island, part of North Carolina’s Outer Banks, to assess how to protect people from storms. In September 2019, Hurricane Dorian shut the island down to visitors. For residents, it was hard to consider leaving a place they have inhabited for seven or eight generations. “You can’t detach people from their place, or their heart,” Barnard said. “They’ll stay until water is up to their nose.” 

Before the developers moved in, Treasure Island had roughly 3,000 residents, according to the 2020 Census, many living in homes built for the U.S. Navy in the mid-20th century when it was a military base. Nearly half have a household income less than $50,000, and many do not speak English. 

Now these residents are on tenterhooks. Under an agreement with the developer, people who lived on Treasure Island before 2011 are guaranteed new affordable and rent-controlled units. But the wait times and other inconveniences have been tough. Everyone is living in a construction site with an unreliable electrical grid that browns and blacks out frequently. 

The new units are supposed to be comparable to what they had, but longtime islander Christoph Opperman said they have been offered “interim” units that, for example, might not have enough space for a family, or lack laundry facilities.

“They’re picking us off one neighborhood at a time by making us do two moves,” Opperman said. “We’re not entitled to just anything on the island, but we are entitled to fair treatment.”

Treasure Island’s planners are essentially acknowledging that they must sacrifice part of the island to the bay, even while pursuing a more built-up urban environment just several hundred feet away. This combination of advance and retreat is all part of the plan, the engineers say.

Asked whether he would move to Treasure Island, Trivedi did not hesitate to say yes, observing that no part of the Bay Area was completely free of danger.

“I don’t see why not,” he said. “I mean, should people be moving to San Francisco, because of the seismic risk? Buildings are being designed to codes. And flooding is the same way.”

A version of this story was republished in partnership with Inside Climate News.

This reporting is supported by grants from the Solutions Journalism Network’s Business and Sustainability Initiative and by the Fund for Investigative Journalism.

Correction 5/4/2023: An earlier version of this story misstated the process the U.S. Geological Survey used to report an extreme flood projection for Treasure Island. The model upon which it was based was produced not by the agency, but by the Ocean Protection Council. Also, the likelihood of that scenario is higher than originally given — 5%, not 0.5 %.

The post Promising to Prevent Floods at Treasure Island, Builders Downplay Risk of Sea Rise appeared first on San Francisco Public Press.

Proposition L is a proposed extension of the city’s current 0.5% sales tax until 2053 to help fund public transportation projects. The measure also allows the city to issue up to $1.91 billion in bonds to be repaid with proceeds from the tax, which the city controller estimated will generate $100 million per year in its early years, increasing to about $236 million by 2052. Revenue from the tax would be used to fund the 2022 Transportation Expenditure Plan, which includes a variety of programs focused on basic transit maintenance, major transportation improvements, paratransit services, congestion reduction, pedestrian and bike safety, and community-based equity planning. This measure requires a two-thirds majority vote to pass.

San Franciscans first voted to approve this tax in 1989 and elected to extend it once again in 2003. The current tax isn’t set to expire until 2034. However, advocates say that passing the tax now will unlock the potential to qualify for billions in matching funds in state and federal grants, and note that all but one of the major capital projects under the current plan have been completed.

Local transportation agencies like San Francisco’s Municipal Transportation Agency and Bay Area Rapid Transit have struggled since the start of the pandemic with decreased ridership and thus funding. A $400 million Muni bond measure narrowly failed in June. Supporters of Proposition L say the proposed improvements funded by the measure will be a key part of luring back riders, especially in the absence of other investments.

Supporters include Mayor London Breed, District 8 Supervisor and Chair of the San Francisco County Transportation Authority Rafael Mandelman, the San Francisco Democratic Party, San Francisco Transit Riders, the San Francisco Bicycle Coalition, Walk San Francisco, Senior and Disability Action, the Sierra Club, the San Francisco Labor Council and others.

Opponents of the measure include Larry Marso, who also opposed the failed June Muni bond, and the Coalition for San Francisco Neighborhoods. They argue that the current tax will not expire for another 10 years and that San Francisco County Transportation Authority’s spending is out of control. Opponents also say that the amount of federal funding available is “false marketing” because it does not adjust for inflation. Instead, they are pushing to “retool” the transit system for reduced commutes in the current climate with increased work-from-home.

The process for creating the new transit plan included six months of public advisory committee meetings composed of neighborhood, business, advocacy and community representatives, in addition to partnerships with community-based organizations to conduct outreach with communities of color, low-income households and monolingual communities. More detailed aspects of the 2022 Expenditure Plan include:

• Muni reliability and efficiency improvements through transit-only lanes and other street design changes
• Improving Muni and BART core capacity through more frequent and longer trains, upgrades to control systems
• Extending Caltrain downtown and other Caltrain system capacity investments, which may be used in future light-speed rail services
• Routine maintenance and rehabilitation on Muni, BART, Caltrain and ferry transit
• Addition of zero-emission vehicles and other measures to reduce the impacts of climate change
• Creation of a Bayview Caltrain station and Mission Bay Ferry landing
• Investments in paratransit for seniors and people with disabilities
• Street resurfacing and maintenance
• Pedestrian and bicycle facilities maintenance
• Improvements to traffic signs and signals
• Investments in safe streets, such as curb ramps and tree planting
• Creation of express bus lanes on freeways and other changes to encourage carpooling
• Other measures to increase freeway safety and to repair the harm caused by former freeway and street projects
• Creating and implementing neighborhood and equity priority transportation plans

The post Proposition L — Sales Tax for Transportation Projects appeared first on San Francisco Public Press.

In a previously unreported vote last month, the commission issued a decision requiring that all ride-hailing firms train drivers to avoid sexual assault and harassment, adopt procedures for investigating complaints and use uniform terminology in their annual reports to the agency so it can accurately monitor them.

But the commission softened its initial proposal by dropping a requirement that the companies inform victims they could “opt in” to speak with its investigators. Although the agency had said the measure would help it ensure firms properly respond to assault claims, it instead decided the cases would be better handled by company investigators once they receive appropriate training.

The commission hailed the new rules as “a necessary milestone” in its “ongoing commitment to ensuring the safety” of transportation network companies, as the firms are known, and a signal to assault victims that their claims will receive “the necessary consideration and sensitivity that respects their rights.”

In comments before the vote on June 23, 2022, commissioners said they sought to balance holding the industry accountable and protecting victim privacy.

“It’s important that we have sufficient information to understand what’s happening and how best to explore ways to prevent these incidents, protect victims, and also ensure their confidentiality,” Commissioner Darcie Houck said.

Commissioner Clifford Rechtschaffen said the decision addressed “an extraordinarily serious and sensitive set of issues involving assault. We really need to tread very, very carefully, and I think this decision does that.” 

Local officials said the move was a welcome improvement in how the agency addresses a longstanding risk on rides.

“The CPUC’s action to standardize how Uber and Lyft are supposed to protect passengers from sexual assault and harassment is way overdue,” Rafael Mandelman, a San Francisco supervisor and chair of the San Francisco County Transportation Authority, said in an email. “I hope this is a sign that the state is prepared to take these issues more seriously, sooner rather than later.”

Los Angeles County District Attorney George Gascón, who sued Uber over what he alleged were its false safety claims in 2014 when he was San Francisco’s district attorney, said in an email: “This is a positive step. I hope that both the Commission and rideshare companies work collaboratively to improve public safety.”

Terrie Prosper, the commission’s director of news and outreach, did not respond to questions about the decision. 

The commission is California’s primary regulator of ride-hailing firms and the state’s only agency that collects comprehensive safety data on the industry. Uber and Lyft represent 99.9 percent of the state’s ride-hailing business.

The agency legalized ride-hailing in California in 2013 and other states followed suit. Within months, there were media reports of alleged assaults around the country.

But the commission did not specifically require that firms include sexual assaults and harassment complaints in their mandatory annual reports to the agency before 2017, according to documents released to the San Francisco Public Press under the state public records act.

Moreover, it failed to require that they use consistent definitions of assaults and harassment, which resulted in unreliable data. The problem was revealed only in October 2021, after the Public Press obtained a partially redacted 2020 annual report. The agency has not released other annual reports.

Company representatives have said they submitted all required information and that safety is a top priority. They say less than 1% of their rides have any safety issues.

Numerous passengers have sued Uber and Lyft alleging the companies failed to prevent and investigate assaults. The firms routinely deny the claims, and settlements are usually confidential. Last week, eight women and two men sued Uber in San Francisco Superior Court, alleging they were attacked by Uber drivers within the last three years. Navideh Forghani, an Uber spokesperson, declined by email to comment on the two lawsuits.  

Meanwhile, the companies have released their own studies using definitions they developed with experts. Uber’s 2019 “U.S. Safety Report” listed 5,981 alleged incidents of sexual assault in 2017 and 2018 nationally. It did not break out incidents by state, but Uber later said 1,243 occurred in California.

Last month, Uber published a second study, reporting 3,824 alleged incidents in 2019 and 2020 nationally.

In its “Community Safety Report,” published in 2021, Lyft acknowledged 4,158 alleged sexual assaults nationally, in 2017, 2018 and 2019. It also did not include state tallies.

Both companies said in emails that they supported the commission’s requirement that they use a uniform system of definitions, or “taxonomy,” in reporting assaults to the agency.

Under the new rules, sexual assault is defined as the touching, or attempted touching, of sexual body parts of a driver or passenger against their will. This includes victims who are unconscious at the time. Several passengers have claimed in lawsuits that they were assaulted after passing out in the back seat.

Sexual harassment is defined as the “unwelcome visual, verbal, nonverbal, or physical conduct” based on sex, directed at a passenger or driver, such as inappropriate personal questions, remarks about appearance and “flirting.”

The agency said it based the definitions on state criminal and civil law and the 1964 Civil Rights Act.

The commission rejected definitions that Uber and Lyft developed after consulting with experts. The agency also rejected Uber’s suggestion that it only report incidents in which it had deactivated the driver, saying this would obscure a true tally of assault claims.

Uber and Lyft told the commission that as of at least 2019 they had begun training drivers on avoiding sexual assault with assistance from the Rape, Abuse & Incest National Network (RAINN), which describes itself as “the nation’s largest anti-sexual violence organization.”

But now the commission is mandating that all ride-hailing firms develop a program in consultation with a recognized expert to annually train drivers using examples of proscribed acts. It must cover harassment based on gender identity and expression, as required under California law.

Firms are required to provide a copy of their policies for preventing sexual assaults and harassment to drivers and passengers. They must develop an investigation manual that requires a timely response to assault claims and documentation. And they must consult experts to establish investigator qualifications, training and procedures for “trauma informed” investigations.

The companies said they had added many safety features over the years, as well as sexual misconduct education for drivers. But neither responded to emailed questions about whether they should have acted earlier in requiring more rigorous training for drivers and investigators.

The agency emphasized that the new rules are “interim” and that firms must update their programs “as necessary” after an industry-wide evaluation by experts.

Genevieve Shiroma, the commissioner who wrote the decision, said before the vote, “This is crucial work and we will continue our work in this area.”

This article was produced in partnership with the McGraw Center for Business Journalism at the Craig Newmark Graduate School of Journalism at the City University of New York. Support was also provided by the Fund for Investigative Journalism. See previous stories at sfpublicpress.org/series/ride-hailings-dark-data. Contact Seth Rosenfeld at srosenfeld@sfpublicpress.org.

The post Uber, Lyft Must Adopt Measures to Prevent Sexual Assaults, California Regulator Rules appeared first on San Francisco Public Press.

More than one month after statewide eviction protections expired on June 30, less than 4% of rent relief funds requested by San Francisco households remain unprocessed, with 55% of funds paid out. 

Over 20,600 San Francisco households had asked for almost $340 million in rent and utility assistance from both state and local COVID-19 rent relief programs as of the week of July 11, government figures show. The amount requested declined 9% between April 11 and July 11 as the state continued to weed out ineligible applications. The state stopped accepting applications on March 31, more than a year after it opened a financial aid program to cover housing debt incurred by tenants due to pandemic hardship. 

Households whose applications have been approved can stay an eviction even if they have not received payment yet; however, those with applications under review or pending applicant information — a category that applies to 1,154 applicants in San Francisco — are vulnerable to eviction.  

California passed legislation to ensure all eligible households who applied by the March 31 deadline will receive funding. Recent budget proposals would earmark additional money for rent relief. 

The following figures include San Francisco residents’ requests from California’s COVID-19 Rent Relief Program and San Francisco’s original Emergency Rental Assistance Program, which stopped taking applications in September 2021. It does not include requests from the city’s newest rent relief program, which began accepting applications April 1. 

Over $140 million in rent and utilities requested from the state program by San Franciscans had been denied as of the week of July 11. Almost 1,000 San Francisco applicants appealed their denials. 

On July 7, an Alameda County Superior Court judge barred the state from denying any more pending applications or any appeals of denials that occurred in the previous 30 days until a hearing is held to determine if applicants’ rights to due process were violated in the application review process. 

In 2021, California received $5.2 billion for emergency rental assistance funds from the federal government. The state has since acquired nearly one out of every three dollars of federal reallocations of unused funds from other states, for a total of $198 million.  

Tenants who had previously applied to the program and were awaiting rent relief were protected from eviction through June 30 for rent due between April 2020 and April 2022 under AB 2179. Under the same bill, local eviction protections passed unanimously by the Board of Supervisors in March were voided until July 1, but have since taken effect.  

In response to the state’s move to cease accepting applications, the city reopened its own rent relief program for tenants who are seeking funds for rent debt accumulated in April and beyond. So far, it has distributed close to $4.3 million in funds to 713 of the 4,415 households that have applied, and residents who need help are encouraged to apply. 

In its previous rent relief program, San Francisco assisted over 3,200 applicants with $22.8 million in relief. An additional $243,878 in requests from 53 households are yet to be processed. 

The statewide eviction moratorium, protecting tenants who could not pay rent because of COVID-19 hardship, was originally scheduled to end Jan. 31, 2021, but lawmakers extended it twice. Following the moratorium’s final end date, Sept. 30, San Francisco tenants became vulnerable to eviction for nonpayment of rent if they had not paid at least 25% of the rents due in the preceding 13 months, as well as October’s rent. 

However, California lawmakers did create some protections for renters who were unable to pay back rent after the moratorium expired. Tenants who applied to the state’s rent relief program before the deadline and were waiting on relief were protected from eviction through March 2022. State lawmakers in late March extended those protections through June 30. 

Even though they may have been barred from evicting some tenants, starting in November 2021, landlords could sue tenants to obtain unpaid rent that was due from March 2020 through September 2021. If a landlord pursues the debt in small claims court, they and the tenant must represent themselves in the courtroom. 

Are you facing eviction? Call the Eviction Defense Collaborative at (415) 659-9184 or send an email to legal@evictiondefense.org as soon as possible. The organization advises that tenants respond within five days of being served with court papers to avoid the risk of a default judgment against them.

Is your landlord suing you to recover pandemic rent debt? Go here to read our guide on how small claims court works, and how to argue your side of the case.

The post San Francisco Rent Relief Tracker appeared first on San Francisco Public Press.

Barring an eleventh-hour postponement by lawmakers (not out of the question, given three previous last-minute extensions), California’s eviction protections expire June 30. Among those vulnerable to being forced from their homes are more than 135,000 tenants whose applications for rent relief have been denied, and thousands more whose applications may be denied in the future or not processed by the time protections are lifted.

On top of that, tenants who didn’t submit requests for relief before the deadline and those struggling to pay rent due after March 31, the date the state stopped accepting applications, have been vulnerable to eviction since then because of the limited scope of Assembly Bill 2179. The bill, passed on March 31, extended eviction protections, but only for some tenants.

San Francisco is now seeing the beginning of an eviction wave of tenants who lost protections after the program was closed or are otherwise behind on rent, warns a tenants’ rights lawyer.

“We’re starting to see numbers escalate in the courts, getting closer to pre-COVID levels,” said Ora Prochovnik, director of litigation and policy at the Eviction Defense Collaborative. “And we’re struggling to keep up with it.”

The organization is one of the primary groups in San Francisco representing tenants in eviction lawsuits and tracks the requests it receives from tenants seeking legal aid.

“We’re just in some uncharted waters right now,” said Tim Thomas, research director at University of California at Berkeley’s Urban Displacement Project, regarding how the expiration of California eviction protections will play out.

Evictions are likely to rise after July 1, as landlords who have been waiting for protections to end begin to file the legal paperwork to eject renters, Thomas said, referencing trends he’s observed across the country. He added that lawyers who represent tenants will likely be overburdened with cases.

Rent relief from the California program was intended to aid thousands of tenants at risk of losing their homes for non-payment of rent. More than 15,000 households in San Francisco have received $177.3 million in assistance, according to data from state and local programs. However, those whose state applications were rejected or remain unprocessed as of July 1 will be vulnerable to eviction.

Although the state is scrambling to process all its applications by July 1, as many as 33,000 applicants may still be waiting for help when the last protections expire, according to a report by three nonprofit housing research groups. The California Department of Housing and Community Development disagreed with these projections, citing week-to-week progress updates that show the number of applications moving through the eligibility and approval process. The program will have made a determination for all first-time payment applicants by June 30, said Alicia Murillo, a communications specialist with the department.

Despite disagreements around specific projections, housing and equity advocates expressed concerns regarding an eviction wave.

“We should be worrying about it,” said Thomas. “On a national scale a lot of areas that have seen moratoriums ending have been seeing very large increases in eviction.”

Nearly 100,000 households that are behind on rent or mortgage payments in the Bay Area said that they are likely to be evicted or foreclosed upon in the next 60 days, according to the US Census Bureau’s most recent Household Pulse Survey.

Thomas predicts that once protections expire, California will see a slow rise in evictions that gains steam over the next few months. He noted that evictions tend to be seasonal, and that rates often pick up in July.

“There’s something about around that period of time that it just really picks up a lot,” he said.

Nailing down evictions data is “incredibly complex and tricky,” Thomas noted. Although some data is accessible, it’s often incomplete and may not fully reflect the reality of how many people are being forced out of their homes. Landlords are not required to report three-day notices for non-payment of rent, so the number of notices recorded likely represent only a fraction of the total, according to the San Francisco Rent Board. Scheduled evictions by the Sheriff’s Department do not capture the large number of tenants who may be intimidated into leaving by their landlord at various stages of this process, Thomas said.

Though California’s eviction moratorium ended last September and the state’s rent relief program stopped accepting applications in March, tenants who applied to the program and are awaiting a decision or payment are protected from eviction for pre-April rent debt until June 30. And even if they haven’t received the funds by that date, tenants approved by the program can block evictions by providing documentation of their approval from the program.

For many, the only thing legally staving off an eviction is their pending application. But once an application is denied, a tenant can be evicted — and the number of denials is on the rise.

Denials and shadow debt

As the state has stepped up its pace in processing requests in recent weeks, denials have jumped, further increasing the number of tenants vulnerable to eviction.

The share of San Francisco applicants whose applications were denied nearly doubled from April 13 to June 16, accounting for 29% of requests, up from about 15% seven weeks earlier. That put the number of applications denied at over 6,300 out of over 21,400 total applications. A tenant can appeal a denial up to 30 days after it has been issued. If a tenant loses their appeal, or does not appeal within the time frame, they can be evicted — even before June 30.

An applicant can be denied for not meeting qualifications, such as exceeding 80 percent of the area’s median income, or for being non-responsive when the state program attempts to communicate with them regarding their application. But a quirk of modern technology has put some applicants in the non-responsive category without them even realizing it, said Antonina Real, a tenant counselor at the South of Market Community Action Network.

Calls from the state program showed up as “Scam Likely” on the phones of some tenants she works with, she said, so tenants don’t pick up or may not call back. This delays the process and can result in denial if the applicant doesn’t eventually respond to the program. When asked about this issue by the Public Press, Murillo said it was the first time the “Scam Likely” calls had been mentioned to the Office of Housing and Community Development.

On top of technological hurdles, tenants with so-called shadow debt, acquired by borrowing from credit card companies, friends, family or even loan sharks to cover overdue rent, can no longer get help from the program, she said. Though the program never officially covered shadow debt, applicants used to be able to apply for up to three months of future rent and use other income to pay off their debt, a spokesperson for the program, Russ Heimerich previously told the Public Press.  

In one case, when the tenant’s application was marked by the state as “withdrawn,” Real thought it was an error because the tenant — who had borrowed from a loan shark and credit cards to pay rent — had not withdrawn the application. Real called a case manager at the state program, who said that the program does not reimburse individuals who took on shadow debt to pay rent.

A July report by the University of Pennsylvania found that Asian American and Pacific Islander households have the highest average shadow debt in California, borrowing almost a third more than white households, and double what Black households borrowed. Previous Public Press reporting highlighted potential cultural reasons why certain demographic groups, such as Chinese tenants, may take on shadow debt at higher rates.

“The whole Chinese community shares the same value: They don’t like to owe anything” to the landlord, Rita Lui, a housing counselor at the Chinatown Community Development Center, told the Public Press in October.

Another reason these communities may take on higher shadow debt is because they didn’t know about the existence of the state’s rent relief program in the first place or were unable to apply due to language barriers. Rent-burdened households where English is not the primary language spoken are underrepresented in the state’s rent relief application pool by about 32 percent, according to the National Equity Atlas rental assistance dashboard.

This is one reason why the state program is facing a lawsuit for discrimination against people with disabilities and non-English speakers due to accessibility issues with the application portal. Murillo from the California Office of Housing and Community Development declined to comment on the lawsuit, saying the litigation is still pending, but noted that the state’s program has assisted more than 300,000 low-income households with $3.6 billion in payments to prevent eviction.

“This program was designed to be a temporary support and we stand by the work to date that kept Californians housed during the COVID-19 pandemic,” Murillo said.

San Francisco tries to fill the gap

To provide relief for households who were unable to get assistance from the state program for various reasons, the city is stepping in with its own program.

In response to the state rental assistance program’s closure, the Mayor’s Office of Housing and Community Development reopened San Francisco’s rent relief program on April 1 and has since made $2.6 million in relief payments to 480 of the 3,200 households that have applied. Close to one in three applicants reported taking on shadow debt to pay rent or utility bills, and 27% said they had already received an eviction notice when they submitted their application. While the relief is critical, it is missing legal protections to go along with it, and processing aid requests takes time.

“There’s a whole group of folks who have post-April 1 debt that will never be protected by these laws because they didn’t apply pre-April 1,” Prochovnik said.

The absence of local protections isn’t for lack of trying. State lawmakers on March 31 voided protections unanimously passed by the Board of Supervisors earlier that month. The preemption on local moratoria will remain in effect until next month. So far, no new legislation has been introduced to reinstate a local moratorium.

The city’s eviction defense system, rent relief program and Tenant Right to Counsel program are closely coordinating their services, said Audrey Abadilla, a spokesperson for the Mayor’s Office of Housing and Community Development. During the eviction process, the programs cross-reference pending assistance from the state program and will intervene with rental assistance not covered by the state program.

The difficulty of trying to avoid eviction

Lara Moon Mertens, 42, faced several complications getting much-needed relief and preventing eviction during the pandemic.

A tattoo artist who lost most of her income during the pandemic as tattoo shops closed down, Moon Mertens was able to make ends meet for some time using unemployment insurance. But when the checks ran out in October, she became unable to pay her rent.

Though her landlord initially cooperated as she submitted the required documents for her application, eventually he grew impatient, she said.

“He kept saying ‘It’s over,’” Moon Mertens said, referencing text messages from her landlord regarding her tenancy. He attempted to evict her in March, but she was able to stop the eviction with the help of Open Door Legal and the legal protections provided by her pending application.

Because the state program does not offer rental assistance for rent due after March, Moon Mertens turned to the Eviction Defense Collaborative for April and May rent. But eventually her state application was denied, and though she is appealing that decision, she is now facing eviction for unpaid rent due in June.

“I had to investigate pretty shrewdly to find out that I was denied in the first place, but also why I was denied,” she said, noting that in previous phone calls with the state program she had been told that her application was in good standing.

Though she said the state program cited inaccuracy in paperwork as the reason for her denial, Moon Mertens suspects that the true reason may be that her unit is zoned as a single residence unit but is being rented out to six different people who all applied for relief.

While she awaits the decision on her appeal and works to fight off the newest eviction case against her, she has signed up for more legal assistance and relief.

“I haven’t been in the best of states,” Moon Mertens said through tears. “But overall, I’m really, really happy to have the resources that San Francisco does, because I know other cities just don’t.”

Eviction, homelessness and equitable recovery

One of the key resources San Francisco tenants do have, according to Melissa Jones, executive director of Bay Area Regional Health Inequities Initiative, is the right to counsel in eviction cases. This is one of the important steps that Bay Area counties can take in the wake of the pandemic to stem the tide of evictions.

On the precipice of a wave of displacement, researchers and advocates emphasized the connection between eviction, housing affordability and homelessness, as well as the importance of rethinking approaches to poverty and equity.

“My concern is that we’re going to see out of all this, like pre to the pandemic, we’re going to see much higher rate of homelessness than we ever saw before,” said Thomas of UC Berkeley. “To fix all this, we really need to reshape and rethink how we think about poverty in America, how we think about housing in America and basic necessities in America.” He emphasized what many Bay Area advocates focused on the housing affordability crisis call the three P’s of housing: preservation of existing affordable housing, affordable housing production and tenant protections.

“It’s so much less expensive for the community and so much less damaging for the individual to prevent an eviction and move into homelessness than to try to move people out of homelessness later,” Jones said.

She highlighted the importance of thinking of this moment as a “global recovery moment” wherein we focus on communities that have borne the brunt of the pandemic’s hardships, especially Black residents of the Bay Area.

Data on evictions and rent relief show the pandemic has had disparate impacts on Black tenants. In California, 20% of applicants to the state rental assistance program facing eviction are Black, despite making up only 6.5% of the population.

Prochovnik said that the Eviction Defense Collaborative has historically observed a disproportionate share of requests for assistance regarding evictions from communities of color, tenants with disabilities and elderly tenants compared to city demographics.

For these reasons, Jones encouraged action to support a more strategic, equitable recovery for communities of color than we saw after the 2008 crash and recession.

“There is real opportunity and the resources that are out there,” she said, citing California’s $97 billion budget surplus, the bipartisan infrastructure package and the American Rescue Plan. “It’s up to us to focus, design and plan for an equitable recovery and to learn the lessons from that to start to make standard practices that require it.”

The post Tens of Thousands Vulnerable to Eviction as California Protections Poised to End appeared first on San Francisco Public Press.

In a unanimous decision issued Friday, a three-judge panel of the 1st District Court of Appeal in San Francisco said the commission’s lengthy and open-ended administrative procedures violate the strict timelines of the California Public Records Act.

The ruling could bring more accountability to the commission, which has faced criticism of excessive secrecy and ineffectiveness, advocates said. It regulates corporations ranging from utilities to ride-hailing services.

The commission had claimed that a century-old law — intended to prevent abusive litigation by railroad barons fighting regulations — required people requesting records to undergo a convoluted administrative process before they could sue the agency to compel the release of public records.

Citing that section of the Public Utilities Code, the agency over the years has blocked requests for records on its handling of disasters such as Pacific Gas & Electric Co.’s Camp fire, the failed San Onofre nuclear power plant and thousands of collisions and assaults on Uber and Lyft rides.

But the court roundly rejected the agency’s argument, holding that the procedures set forth in the utilities code “do not apply to the PRA,” or Public Records Act.

“[T]he procedural scheme, and specifically the rehearing process, set forth in the Public Utilities Code is not only entirely different than, it is at odds with, the procedural provisions of the PRA and the Legislature’s intent in enacting them,” the court said.

More widely, the court said “any” administrative process that state and local agencies adopt to handle records requests “must comply with the language and purpose of the PRA.” If agencies fail to complete their internal reviews within the deadlines of the records act, it said, requesters may seek court review without further delay.

But the court also held that the specific records requested in this case — correspondence between the commission and the governor’s office concerning the devastating 2018 Camp fire — were confidential and need not be released.

Citing prior holdings on similar records, the court said releasing the governor’s correspondence with the commission would interfere with the ability of government officials to speak frankly.

How the Public Utilities Commission circumvents the California Public Records Act

David Snyder, executive director of the First Amendment Coalition, a nonpartisan organization that advocates for government transparency, said that although the court found the governor’s correspondence to be confidential, the ruling was an important advance.

“The decision is a real win for transparency,” said Snyder, whose organization joined with the Associated Press and the Center for Investigative Reporting in supporting the lawsuit. They had filed a brief in the case that said the commission has a history of “unlawful delays” in responding to requests.

“The court has made clear that an agency’s administrative procedures can’t trump the Public Records Act, and that an agency like the PUC cannot indefinitely delay processing a public records request,” Snyder said.

Terrie Prosper, the commission’s director of news and outreach, and Christofer Nolan, a lawyer representing the agency in the case, did not respond to emails seeking comment.

Steve Zansberg, the Denver attorney who filed the lawsuit on behalf of television station ABC-10 in Sacramento and its reporter Brandon Rittiman, said his clients were gratified that the decision will make it easier for people to seek judicial review in cases where the agency delays or denies their requests.

“No one should have to wait, as did my clients, for months and months to be able to ask a court to review that agency’s decision to deny records access,” he said in a statement.

As the court put it, “The delay that occurred here was egregious by any measure.”

On Nov. 19, 2020, Rittiman requested copies of communications between Marybel Batjer, president of the commission at the time, and Gov. Gavin Newsom’s office concerning the Camp fire. The Butte County blaze destroyed 18,000 structures and killed at least 85 people. PG&E pleaded guilty to 84 counts of involuntary manslaughter and one of causing the fire.

Rittiman was investigating why the agency waived a $200-million fine against PG&E and whether the governor’s office influenced that decision.

The agency said the records were confidential; Rittiman filed an administrative appeal. When seven months had passed and the agency had made no decision, Rittiman sued, the court noted.

The agency then sought to get his case dismissed because he had not completed its administrative process, but the state Supreme Court ordered a review.

The commission has long maintained that those requesting records could not sue it for failing to comply with the Public Records Act until they underwent two internal administrative appeals of their claim. As its legal basis, the agency cited the 100-year-old law intended to prevent abusive litigation by railroad interests.

But as the lawsuit noted, the agency’s appeals system provided no deadline, allowing it to indefinitely delay its decisions on whether to release records, despite the Act’s requirement that agencies decide within 24 days. In this way, the agency prevented people from having a court independently review their cases, even as their requests languished at the agency.

Enacted in 1968, the California Public Records Act is modeled on the federal Freedom of Information Act. The state law declares that “access to information concerning the conduct of the people’s business is a fundamental and necessary right.”

It says all state agencies “shall” determine whether the requested records are releasable within 24 days, immediately notify the requester and “promptly” release them. If an agency withholds records, it says, the requester may seek court review “at the earliest possible time.”

Voters reinforced the law in 2004 when they overwhelmingly passed Proposition 59, which embedded similar words in the state Constitution.

The commission, too, has roots in a voter-backed constitutional amendment. The agency was created in 1879 as the Railroad Commission but was corrupted by the Southern Pacific Railroad, says a history written by commission staff. In 1911, voters following Gov. Hiram Johnson’s reform platform granted the agency greater autonomy with the intent of insulating it from undue influences. Its authority was extended to other utilities, and in 1946 it was renamed.

The agency is led by five commissioners appointed by the governor to six-year terms. They oversee 1,402 employees and a $1.1-billion budget.

The commission’s policy on records requests — known as General Order 66-D — says requesters must complete the internal administrative reviews before they can seek judicial review of the agency’s withholding of records.

But the court concluded that just as the Legislature had used its “plenary” power to pass the public utilities code of the early 20th century, it used the same sweeping authority in 1968 to pass the records act, which it clearly intended to apply to the commission.

The court declared that “the PRA fixes the bounds” of the commission’s authority to adopt internal procedures for records requests. The agency’s open-ended process, it said, “cannot be squared” with the records act’s much tighter timeframe.

“In short, the PRA calls for the handling of record requests and the resolution of disputes over such requests with alacrity,” the panel said, and permits requesters to sue to enforce the act.

“The PUC has for so many years operated in a black box,” said the First Amendment Coalition’s Snyder. “The public has not had as much access to its inner workings. Hopefully this will open the door, at least a bit, to greater transparency and, thus, greater accountability for the Public Utilities Commission.”

For more coverage on this topic, see Ride Hailing’s Dark Data. This story was produced in partnership with the McGraw Center for Business Journalism at the Craig Newmark Graduate School of Journalism at the City University of New York. Support also came from the Fund for Investigative Journalism.

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When we examine the massive wealth gap between the rich and poor in this country, what stands out most is how differently it affects the country’s white and Black populations. According to data from the Federal Reserve Board’s Survey of Consumer Finances, the typical Black family has $24,000 in wealth. That is less than 13% of the $190,000 in wealth held by the typical white family. 

This racial wealth gap is rooted in a long history of racist policies, including the progressive programs meant to mitigate inequality during the Great Depression. New Deal programs like the GI Bill helped millions of World War II veterans secure housing by promoting homeownership through federally backed loans and guaranteed mortgages. But it was real estate moguls who laid the groundwork for the subsequent National Housing Act of 1934.

From this act, a new federal agency was formed called the Homeowners Loan Corporation. The corporation decided who qualified for a loan with residential security maps that became the standard to determine the best places for housing investments. Black communities, regardless of their economic status, were given a grade D rating and branded as hazardous and high risk — no federally backed loans would be made there. And so, the vast majority of Black Americans did not qualify, according to Venise Wagner, a journalism professor at San Francisco State University who wrote the award-winning article, “Living Red: Black Steel Workers and The Wealth Gap.”

“They created maps,” Wagner said, describing the Homeowners Loan Corporation’s practices. “And then these maps, they designate the homes that would be viable for this mortgage program. And if the area was Black, then it was considered blighted.” 

Racist covenants on residential properties barred people of color from renting or owning a home in certain neighborhoods. 

“If a white person dared rent to a Black person, or if a white person dared to sell a home — then they basically were subject to a white mob violence,” Wagner said. “People would be so upset they would literally throw firebombs into the home. To scare them, they would write threatening notes saying, ‘You better get out of here, or we’re going to kill you.’”

These covenants were codified into law in a practice that’s now referred to as redlining. Redlining locked out millions of Black families from accessing mortgages and opportunities to build wealth to pass down to future generations. Although the practice was outlawed with the signing of the 1968 Fair Housing Act, much damage was already done.

“There are areas here in the Bay Area, if you look at the old redlining maps, you can juxtapose them and see the areas of distress that remain today,” Wagner said.

Living in segregated communities has modern day consequences, including sharp disparities and family wealth, education and life expectancy. These maps were made more than 80 years ago, and yet they still impact families today, including Wagner’s family.

 “I’m probably the only person who owns a condo in my family — who has a mortgage,” Wagner said. “My mother and father don’t. My brother doesn’t. My other brother doesn’t. My sister doesn’t. My grandfather’s other daughter, she had a mortgage for a short while with the help of her brother. That ended up in smoke. But through predatory lending.” 

That predatory lending — in which people were approved for mortgages that by traditional lending standards would be considered large relative to their monthly incomes — led up to the subprime mortgage crisis of 2007 to 2009. That’s when the bottom 90% of Americans saw one-third of their wealth wiped out. And there’s a direct correlation between the people who were targeted with predatory lending schemes and redlining practices.

“If you were to look at the redlining maps and look at the area where subprime loans were primarily targeted, you would see they were targeted at formerly redlined communities,” Wagner said. “So, all I can say is that history keeps repeating itself.”

Derrick Soo is among the vast number of Americans wiped out by the subprime mortgage crisis. He lives in a city-sanctioned homeless encampment in Oakland. His family also suffered from racist covenants that excluded nonwhites from certain neighborhoods. He vividly remembers what happened to his family in 1964 when his mother’s boss invited them to a Christmas party. He was just four years old. 

“That was an area that was still off limits to Chinese people, or people of color. It was a white only city,” Soo said. “Within four blocks, a Piedmont police officer had his lights on us and pulling us over. The officer was very rude, making a lot of racial comments about our race not being allowed in that city. And were we too stupid or didn’t read and understand English.

“I was terrified. I’m scared because you have a Caucasian cop with a gun, a badge, and the authority to do whatever he wanted, pretty much, and say we were trespassing in an all-white city.”

Today wealth inequality is most acute among people of color. Since 2005, African Americans and Latinos have made up about 60% of the lowest income families in each state, but they make up just 40% of the total population.

Research by New York University sociology professor Patrick Sharkey, who studies multigenerational disadvantage, shows that about half of African American families have lived in the poorest quarter of neighborhoods not just in a single generation, but over consecutive generations. Only about 7% of white families live in poor neighborhoods over multiple generations.

“Once we begin to think about inequality over generations, as opposed to snapshots of an individual’s life, we start to get a very different picture about the consequences of living in a poor neighborhood where we go to school, the quality of the air we breathe, the social networks that we form, types of economic opportunities available to us,” Sharkey said in an online lecture for the Stanford Center on Poverty and Inequality. “All of these things come bundled in space and affect the life chances of everyone that lives within a particular neighborhood.”

Income gains were widely shared for about a quarter-century after World War II, thanks in large part to income taxes. By 1944, the top marginal tax rate was 94% on all income over $200,000 — $3.2 million today. Diane Frey, a labor studies professor at San Francisco State University and co-editor of the textbook “Human Rights and Economic Inequalities,” said it was during that time that the labor class rose up.

“People had sacrificed for so long during the war, people hadn’t been able to buy things,” she said. “There was a lot of pent-up demand of people coming back and saying, ‘okay, we’ve worked this hard, we want a piece of the American dream, we want to have a nice house, we want to be able to buy a car.’ And so, there was kind of enhanced labor militancy following World War II. And part of that was massive strikes.”

From 1945 to 1946, the country experienced a series of massive strikes spanning numerous industries and public utilities. In the year after Japan surrendered on Aug. 15, 1945, more than five million workers were involved in labor actions. They were the largest strikes in American labor history. Then came the backlash.

“It became, began to be perceived, particularly by the right wing, all labor unions have too much power, we need to kind of clip their wings. They’re holding us hostage,” Frey said.

“We need to try to really carve take back some of the rights that were given in the original National Labor Relations Act. And that was the whole battle over Taft-Hartley, which basically kind of rolls back protections in the original National Labor Relations Act.” 

The Taft-Hartley Act of 1947 prohibited all kinds of strike actions, as well as secondary boycotts, closed shops and monetary donations by unions to federal political campaigns. President Harry Truman called the bill “a shocking piece of legislation” that undermined democracy.

“Unions exist so that laboring men can bargain with their employers on the basis of equality. Because of unions, our living standards of our working people have increased steadily, until they are today the highest in the world. A bill which would weaken unions would undermine our national policy of collective bargaining. A Taft-Hartley bill would do just that. It would take us back in the direction of the old evils of individual bargaining.”

Truman vetoed the bill, but was overridden. 

“And so, we see the whole rise of union busting law firms and social psychology of union busting,” Frey said. 

Sponsors of the bill claimed that by weakening unions, they were giving rights back to individual working men. That ideology took hold in the 1970s during rampant inflation and an oil shock, Frey said. It continued into the 1980s, when President Ronald Reagan gave numerous speeches extolling the “faith in the individual.” He also likened individual freedoms to a free market.

“We protect the freedom of expression of the author as we should,” he said. “But what about the freedom of expression of the entrepreneur whose pen and paper are capital and profits? Whose book may be a new invention or small business?”

This was from a 1984 speech that he gave before signing into law a bill that would give wealthy Americans the lowest tax rate in the industrialized world. 

Reagan cut income tax for millionaires and multimillionaires from 74% to 25%. There were no billionaires in America then, in large part because of previous tax policies. But after Reagan’s massive tax cuts, followed later by cuts by then-presidents George W. Bush and Donald Trump, the country began seeing an explosion of billionaires. Meanwhile, median and minimum wages plunged faster than they had since the Great Depression. 

Reagan also took further measures to weaken labor unions. He started by famously firing 11,000 striking air traffic controllers in 1981, crushing that union in less than two weeks. Over the next decade, union membership went from about one-third of the American workforce to around 10% at the end of the Reagan and George H. W. Bush presidencies. 

Disempowering unions had a huge impact on widening the wealth gap.

“We found that de-unionization explains about a third of the growth in inequality for men and about a fifth of the growth in inequality for women,” said Bruce Western, professor of sociology and social justice at Columbia University, during an online lecture for the Stanford Center on Poverty and Inequality. 

That’s because nonunion employers often looked to unionized firms to determine competitive wages. This also exerted influence in politics, keeping alive the conversation about equity among workers.

“So, there were norms in the labor market, in which people had beliefs about what a fair level of wages should be, and what a fair distribution of wages should look like,” Western said.

Reagan was so successful in shaping the narrative that we still use similar language today. Blaming poverty on the poor and claiming government was the problem, not the solution, became such a popular talking point by the 1990s that even Democrat Bill Clinton used similar words to overhaul the country’s welfare system.

“For so long, government has failed us, and one of its worst failures has been welfare,” Clinton said in a 1992 ad. “I have a plan to end welfare as we know it to break the cycle of welfare dependency. We’ll provide education, job training and childcare. But then those who are able must go to work, either in the private sector or in public service. It’s time to make welfare what it should be: a second chance, not a way of life.”

Opponents argued that punitive and unnecessary rules blocked beneficiaries from improving their circumstances. For example, adults without a high school diploma couldn’t get an advanced education because they had to spend much time working or volunteering to continue receiving benefits.

Top Democratic Party leaders continued to promote the notion of limited government for the next two decades. President Barack Obama evoked similar themes during his 2012 State of the Union Address.

“I’m a Democrat, but I believe what Republican Abraham Lincoln believes — that government should do for people only what they cannot do better by themselves and no more,” he said to thunderous applause.

This was an era when the pro-free-market drumbeat caught hold, thanks to right wing radio hosts. As Politico reported in 2014, conservatives backing the Tea Party spent nearly $22 million between 2008 and 2012 on influential talkers like Glenn Beck, Sean Hannity, Laura Ingraham and Rush Limbaugh. By 2016, Trump was emboldened to take on the labor unions. He marked Labor Day that year by attacking the head of America’s biggest labor union.

Policies have shifted with the election of President Joe Biden. He has endorsed a major tax increase on accumulated wealth that would target the top .01% of households. In March, he proposed a “Billionaire Minimum Income Tax” — a 20% minimum tax on households worth more than $100 million.

“When people see that we can’t really grow our way out of this,” Frey said, “the only thing that’s left is redistribution. That is the only solution that we can’t have everybody having nothing and a few folks having everything.”

But the ultra-wealthy always have a way to pass immense fortunes to their heirs without paying any estate tax. Currently, some are exploiting a loophole that lets them quickly churn assets in and out of trusts to make inheritances look smaller than they really are. As ProPublica revealed, the grantor retained annuity trust is estimated to have cost the U.S. Treasury about $100 billion over the prior 13 years.

This also serves to fuel inequality. 

“It goes back to power,” Frey said. “Because if you have all the wealth, you don’t want to give it up. And so, you’re going to use all of your resources. And if you’re Jeff Bezos, you have more resources than anybody, and your chances of winning are pretty good. So, I think that it’s really a battle.”

CORRECTION 5/12/22: The text in the section about strikes was modified to consolidate descriptions of events that were previously mentioned out of chronological order, to clarify their relation to each other.

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Despite vows to become more transparent, the California Public Utilities Commission has systematically violated the public’s right to know about its handling of deadly disasters and corporate scandals, according to court records and First Amendment attorneys.

Applying century-old laws meant to fight corruption, the commission has effectively limited court enforcement of the state’s public records act. But a state appeals court on May 3 is hearing a lawsuit challenging that practice and could bring more transparency to the commission. 

David Snyder, executive director of the First Amendment Coalition, a nonpartisan organization dedicated to advancing government transparency that is supporting the lawsuit, said it’s “absolutely crucial” that people have timely court review of agency denials of their requests for information.

“Administrative agencies should not and cannot have the final say on whether the Public Records Act has been followed,” said Snyder, a lawyer and former journalist. “That’s the proverbial fox guarding the henhouse.”

Citing special powers granted no other state agency, the commission has obstructed requests for records on its handling of catastrophes such as Pacific Gas & Electric Co.’s Camp Fire, the failed San Onofre nuclear power plant and thousands of collisions and assaults on Uber and Lyft rides, a San Francisco Public Press review of court cases and state documents found.

Those powers were intended to fight the corrupting influence of the railroad barons, but the commission has deployed them to undercut the California Public Records Act, meant to promote government transparency and accountability, court records show.

The Legislature and the governor’s office have not resolved the conflict between these historic reforms, legislative records show, despite incidents revealing that secrecy at the agency has contributed to inefficiency and corruption.

Terrie Prosper, the commission’s director of news and outreach, did not respond to several requests for comment for this story. 

The agency has denied that its procedures violate the public records act’s requirements that it release records promptly. In adopting its current policy in 2018, it called such allegations “simply speculative” and cited “our longstanding practices supporting disclosure and our progressive development of rules that will promote public access to records in our possession.”

But over the objections of the agency’s lawyers, the state Supreme Court in November reinstated a lawsuit challenging its refusal to release records concerning communications between Gov. Gavin Newsom’s office and the commission about the 2018 Camp Fire — the deadliest wildfire in state history — and the agency’s decision to waive a $200 million penalty against PG&E.

That case, to be heard in the state’s First District Court of Appeal, highlights the hurdles facing anyone seeking records from the powerful agency, which regulates power, water, telephone, transportation and other utilities that affect the lives of all Californians. It is responsible for ensuring that utility services are fair and safe.

The lawsuit was brought by television station ABC-10 in Sacramento and its reporter Brandon Rittiman, whose award-winning coverage of the Camp Fire has garnered national attention.

Steve Zansberg, the station’s Denver-based attorney, said in court records that the commission has a “practice of imposing unreasonable and unlawful roadblocks” to public records.

According to Zansberg, the case poses a fundamental question: Is the commission above the state law that requires all agencies to promptly release records about how they conduct public business?

“We’re trying to hold the PUC accountable,” he said in an interview. “You can’t do that if you don’t have access to the records that show what’s going on behind the scenes.”

Christofer Nolan, one of the lawyers representing the agency in the case, did not respond to an email seeking comment. 

The lawsuit has drawn support from the First Amendment Coalition, based in San Rafael; the Associated Press; and the Center for Investigative Reporting, the nation’s oldest nonprofit investigative newsroom.

Matthew Cate, the Washington, D.C., attorney who filed a brief on behalf of the organizations, wrote that the commission has a history of “unlawful delays” in responding to requests and that its practices could encourage other agencies to erect similar obstacles to public information.

“The PUC has created a set of procedures completely contrary to the letter and spirit of the CPRA and the constitutional right of access to public records,” Cate wrote, referring to the state public records act.

A gauntlet of obstacles

A review of court cases, commission filings, legislative history and interviews with attorneys, in addition to this reporter’s experience as a requester, found a gauntlet of obstacles that disadvantage requesters and favor agency denials:

• The agency can take months or years to release records. Between Jan. 1, 2017 and April 4, 2022, the agency received 3,115 requests and took an average of 58 days to close them, statistics it released under the public records act show. Five requests submitted by the Public Press for records concerning thousands of ride-hailing safety incidents have taken between six and 27 months.
• The commission tends to interpret the scope of requested records narrowly, while applying exemptions from disclosure broadly, effectively reducing public access to information.
• With other state agencies, a person may directly seek independent court review of a denied request. But under commission rules, they must first file an administrative appeal and then apply for a rehearing, a far more cumbersome and lengthy process.
• The commission requires requesters to appeal within 10 days or lose their right to challenge its denial, compared with 90 days allowed under the federal Freedom of Information Act.
• Agency rules provide no deadline for the commission to resolve appeals or rehearings, and the agency asserts that requesters may not seek court review until it has, effectively holding their requests in limbo. Federal law, by contrast, allows requesters to sue as early as 20 working days after appealing.
• With all other California agencies, requesters may seek review in local superior court. But for the commission they may seek review only in state appeals courts or the California Supreme Court, forums that are more complicated and costly, effectively deterring independent review of denials.

And though the public records act requires agencies to adopt written guidelines that “reflect the intention of the Legislature to make the records accessible” and post them in “a conspicuous public place,” the commission’s rules are spread piecemeal across four parts of its website and are so labyrinthine that they even confound experienced attorneys.

Clicking on the FAQ link at the bottom of the agency’s request form returns a page that says “Nothing here yet! Check back soon.” A separate search of the website does return a functional FAQ page, but neither it nor the “Requester Resources” page mentions appeals or rehearings.

A unique agency

The commission has said in official filings that it is dedicated to transparency but must balance that goal with its legal duty to maintain confidentiality of trade secrets and personal data contained in filings it receives from companies.

The commission has noted that no other agency in the state is required to follow both the public records act and the Public Utilities Code, which says any employee who releases confidential information submitted by a utility, unless ordered to by the commission, is subject to a misdemeanor charge. This legal requirement “is unique to the Commission and thus analogy to other state agencies or local governments’ processes,” it said, are “inapplicable.”

The agency says it adopted its system of administrative appeal and rehearing to give requesters a chance to show records should be released while allowing utilities a chance to show the information is truly confidential before the commissioners make a final decision.

However, attorneys for requesters noted that employees of other agencies also face criminal penalties for improperly releasing information, such as criminal histories or medical records.

And whatever internal process an agency creates, they say, it may not violate the public records act’s clear deadlines. 

Enacted in 1968, the California Public Records Act is modeled on the federal Freedom of Information Act. The state law declares that “access to information concerning the conduct of the people’s business is a fundamental and necessary right of every person in this state.”

It says all state agencies “shall” determine whether a request seeks copies of releasable records within 24 days of receipt, immediately notify the requester of that determination and “promptly” release public records. If an agency withholds records, requesters may seek court review “at the earliest possible time.”

Voters bolstered the law in 2004 when they overwhelmingly passed Proposition 59, which embedded these words in the state Constitution: “The people have the right of access to information concerning the conduct of the people’s business, and, therefore, the meetings of public bodies and the writings of public officials and agencies shall be open to public scrutiny.”

Like the public records act, the commission has roots in a voter-backed constitutional amendment. The agency was created as the Railroad Commission in 1879 but was corrupted by the Southern Pacific Railroad, which dominated state politics, according to a history written by commission staff.

In 1911, voters propelled by Gov. Hiram Johnson’s reform platform granted the agency greater autonomy with the intent of preventing corruption. Its authority was extended to other utilities and in 1946 it received its current name. It is led by five commissioners appointed by the governor for six-year terms. They oversee 1,402 employees and a $1.1 billion budget.

San Bruno fights secrecy

The 2010 explosion of a PG&E gas pipeline in San Bruno killed eight residents, injured dozens more and destroyed or damaged scores of homes. It also revealed what San Bruno City Attorney Marc Zafferano described in an interview as a “roadblock at every turn” as he sought information from the commission.

San Bruno officials had grown concerned that PG&E and agency staff were holding secret meetings that would result in an unfairly light penalty against the utility. To find out, the city requested communications with PG&E executives, but the agency largely failed to respond, Zafferano said.

So the city filed an administrative appeal — only to discover agency rules specified no deadline for its decision.

After more delays, the city sued in San Francisco Superior Court only to hit another hurdle: the public utilities code barred lawsuits against the commission in superior court.

Originally intended to stop industrial titans from using diverse courts to undermine commission rulings, the utilities code allowed lawsuits against agency regulatory decisions only in state Supreme Court.

Efforts to expand judicial review of the commission’s decisions over the years have variously met with opposition from its leadership and several governors, who saw those efforts as an impediment to both regulation and business.

In 1991 Gov. Pete Wilson vetoed a bill that would have allowed such lawsuits in the state Court of Appeal.

“At this critical state in its economic and social evolution, California can ill afford the delay, expense and uncertainty invited by enlarged predicates for judicial review contained in this bill,” he said.

Only in 1996 was the law changed to allow lawsuits challenging limited kinds of commission decisions in the appeals court — a measure the commission opposed until it was narrowed.

In 2015, the Legislature passed a bill to let superior courts hear public records lawsuits against the agency, but Gov. Jerry Brown vetoed it, saying he supported more transparency but was concerned such a change “will only result in increased litigation and likely delay commission decision-making.”

In 2017, an early version of a reform bill would have allowed public records lawsuits against the agency to proceed in Superior Court. The provision had backing from the California Newspaper Publishers Association, but it was dropped from the final bill.

The commission thus moved to dismiss San Bruno’s lawsuit from superior court for lack of jurisdiction. But the city negotiated a settlement in which the agency released records, spurring PG&E to release many more.

The records confirmed there were improper private communications between the agency and utility, for which PG&E agreed to pay $97.5 million in penalties. It also was fined $1.6 billion for violating safety standards.

As part of the settlement, the commission reviewed its public records procedures. San Bruno urged the agency to adopt deadlines to end the “potentially endless appeals process that it completely controls.” The city also recommended letting requesters challenge agency delays and denials of requests in superior courts.

These obstacles, Zafferano told the commission, “will likely continue to deter all but the most determined and well-funded participants from obtaining the prompt access to public records that all public agencies are required to provide.”

But in a 2018 order the agency dismissed such concerns as “speculative” and adopted its current policy, known as General Order 66-D.

Blocked records on reactor leak

Michael Aguirre, a former federal prosecutor in San Diego, ran into similar barriers when he sought records on the 2012 shutdown of the San Onofre nuclear station, at which engineers had discovered a radioactive leak.

Aguirre represented utility customers challenging the commission’s decision that customers should pay $3.3 billion of the $4.7 billion cost of the failed reactor.

In January 2015, he requested written communications between the commission and Gov. Brown’s office regarding the reactor. The agency released about 900 pages but withheld more than 100 records.

Aguirre sued the commission in San Francisco Superior Court for violating the records act. The agency asked the court to dismiss the case on the ground that it lacked jurisdiction — but Superior Court Judge Ernest Goldsmith disagreed. 

Goldsmith found “there is a violation of the Public Records Act by withholding public records.” And since the agency had made clear it would not release the records, he ruled in 2016, requiring Aguirre to exhaust his administrative remedies by appealing would be “futile.”

But the state appeals court overruled Goldsmith, saying the lower court lacked jurisdiction.

This forced Aguirre to start over. Later that year, he requested copies of communications between the commission and Brown’s office about San Onofre.

The agency denied his request 11 days later, claiming the records were exempt because they concerned the governor’s communications or the commission’s deliberative process.

Seven days later, Aguirre filed an administrative appeal. Four months after that, the commissioners affirmed the denial. 

This time, Aguirre sued the agency in state appeals court. He contended that the governor’s office might have secretly influenced the agency’s decision to let the utility pass costs to customers, and the public had a right to know.

The agency, he said, had “engaged in extreme delay tactics in violation of the prompt determination requirements of the Public Records Act.”

The commission denied Aguirre’s claims and asked the court to dismiss his lawsuit because he had not applied for a rehearing until after he sued. Since that application was pending, it said, the court had no jurisdiction.

The appeals court did not address whether the commission’s appeals procedures violated the public records act. But in June 2018, it ruled that the agency had improperly withheld records and ordered their release.

In a separate federal lawsuit, Aguirre and his law partner, Maria Severson, won commission approval later that year of a revised decision that saved ratepayers $775 million on the plant closure.

“While the PUC has feigned interest in greater transparency, it actually has historically worked to thwart disclosure of public records,” Severson said in an interview. “You are on the slowest possible track if you are trying to get information to the public in a timely way.”

Fighting release of fire records

In recent years, the commission has revised some policies to make more information public. It has posted more documents online. And it no longer lets companies simply stamp their filings “confidential,” now requiring specific justifications for secrecy claims.

But as Sacramento TV reporter Rittiman found, the agency still poses obstacles to records requests.

The Camp Fire in Butte County burned 153,336 acres, destroyed 18,000 structures and killed at least 85 people. PG&E eventually pleaded guilty to 84 counts of involuntary manslaughter and one of illegally setting the fire, caused by its faulty power line.

Rittiman believed there was a public interest in knowing why the agency waived a $200 million fine against PG&E and whether the governor’s office influenced that decision.

On Nov. 19, 2020, the ABC-10 special projects reporter filed four requests seeking records of communications between then-commission president Marybel Batjer and Gov. Newsom’s office.

Eleven days later, the agency told Rittiman that governor’s communications are confidential and closed his requests.

Rittiman appealed. Under agency rules, its legal division is supposed to prepare a draft resolution deciding the appeal, then send it to the commissioners for public review and comment. The resolution is scheduled for a hearing and vote. If requesters disagree with that decision, they may apply for a rehearing.

Requesters may not seek court review of the agency’s decision, it claims, until the commission decides the rehearing and requesters have “exhausted their administrative remedies.”

In Rittiman’s case, the agency did not schedule a hearing on his appeal, leaving his request hanging.

Four months later, on April 14, 2021, Zansberg wrote the commission saying that unless it held a hearing at its next meeting, Rittiman would consider its inaction to be a “constructive denial” of his appeal and seek court review.

Zansberg also challenged the agency’s claim that the records were exempt from release because they were governor’s communications. He noted that the state appeals court had said in two other rulings that the exemption applied only to communications sent by correspondents outside of government, not intra-governmental ones like those Rittiman sought.

Still, no hearing was set. On June 14, Zansberg filed Rittiman’s lawsuit against the commission in state appeals court. He posed two key questions: Is the agency subject to the time limits in the public records act? Or can it simply ignore requests, indefinitely, and thereby permanently avoid judicial review?

But the agency tried repeatedly to get the case thrown out of court before any judge could answer those questions.

It argued that the court had no jurisdiction because Rittiman’s administrative appeal was pending. The appeals court agreed, citing the public utilities code that says requesters must exhaust administrative remedies before suing.

Zansberg asked the state Supreme Court to review the case. The court ordered the commission to submit an update on his appeal.

On Sept. 27, the agency said it expected to vote on his administrative appeal in November.

Moreover, the agency’s lawyers declared, the high court itself had no jurisdiction in the case because Rittiman had “not waited for the Commission to prepare a resolution of the matter.”

Nevertheless, the court on Oct. 20 granted Rittiman’s motion for review and directed the appeals court to order the agency to show why it should not promptly release the Camp Fire records.

The commission once again told the appeals justices they had no jurisdiction. Only now it said that was because Rittiman had failed to apply for a rehearing. (On Nov. 19, 2021, exactly a year after the original records request was filed, the commission had finally denied his initial appeal.)

Zansberg replied that the Supreme Court already rejected the jurisdiction claim by ordering the appeals court to review the case. And besides, he had applied for a rehearing, emailing it to three agency attorneys a month earlier.

Commission attorney Nolan admitted to the court that Zansberg had emailed the application— but now asserted it was invalid because he had not followed agency rules for electronically filing documents.

As a result, Nolan said, the court still had no jurisdiction to hear the case.

To Zansberg, it seemed that the commission was turning the legal machinery voters had given it to fight corruption against a reporter who was trying to expose it.

“If this type of games-playing and procedural rigamarole was what the legislature contemplated as fulfilling an agency’s duties,” he said in an email, “then the public records act might as well be stricken from California’s Government Code.”

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