As you know, we’ve been watching this one closely because of all the money corporate interests — particularly the insurance industry — dumped into the race on Vargas’s behalf, hoping to get a Democratic candidate more in line with their agenda.

And given the political makeup of the district, most experts think that whoever won the Democratic primary would effectively have won the seat in the November election.

Vargas now faces Republican educator and businessman Brian Hendry. Current seat holder Denise Ducheny, a Democrat, is termed out.

No related posts.

Well, they aren’t done spending yet. PG&E had estimated it would drop up to $35 million on the campaign. But it hit $44 million with a sudden infusion of cash — $9.5 million over the past few days — that the folks over at Capitol Weekly read as evidence that PG&E’s polling suggests voters aren’t buying the campaign (I haven’t seen any recent independent polls on the measure; if you know of one, add it to the comments section).

PG&E officials have said they went the initiative route because it would be cheaper than mounting local campaigns every time a municipality decides to try to set up a local utility, as Marin County is in the process of doing.

What does this mean for shareholders? Capitol Weekly dug into the annual report and found that PG&E warned the $35 million estimated campaign translates into 9 cents a share, a drop in the bucket for a company that posted a $1.22 billion profit last year.

But maybe a more significant measure is to match it against voter registration numbers. As of early April, there were just under 17 million registered voters in California. So PG&E has spent about $2.5o per registered voter.

That’s not exactly Meg Whitman-sized numbers — she’s dropped $68 million of her own cash in the governor’s race. But that’s still a boatload of money for a power company to spend to change the rule on basic majority-rules democracy.

No related posts.

So, where’s the outrage? Lost, I suspect, in the Congressional sleight of hand more than 20 years ago.

Image courtesy of the Image Science & Analysis Laboratory, NASA Johnson Space Center.

As the New York Times reports here, seemingly missing the key detail of who pays, the Oil Pollution Act of 1990 (it was hammered out in the 80s but signed into law in August 1990) set the $75 million cap in return for the oil companies paying eight cents a barrel to go into a special Oil Spill Liability Trust Fund, from which clean up costs would be paid. The Times piece notes that the tax added a tenth of a percent to the cost of a barrel of oil.

But it’s a tax that the consumers ultimately pay. Which means users of the oil are the ones who’ve been building the leaky-day fund, not the companies most likely to be responsible for any spills. The government can still go after BP for fines and clean-up reimbursements, but the deal that set up the system means individuals will be running up against that $75 million cap in whatever actions are filed against BP and others involved in the spill.

As the story points out, liabilities in spills have exceeded the cap at least 51 times.

No related posts.

So here they are, in alphabetical order, starting with Rocky Delgadillo then Tom Harman, Kamala Harris, Chris Kelly, Ted Lieu (great name for a lawyer, no?) and Alberto Torrico. And remember, you can zoom in on localities to see exactly who and where the donations are coming from.

Delgadillo map:

Harman map:

Harris map:

Kelly map:

Lieu map:

Torrico map:

No related posts.

The problem with these reports is there’s just too much data in them for easy parsing, beyond the key issues of how much money did the candidate raise, and how much did he or she spend? And where? In fact, the where can be the most rewarding question, if you like to snicker behind your hand. What were they thinking?

But it also can be instructive to get graphical, with apologies to that old Olivia Newton-John song. We’ll be doing this for other races, too, so be patient, and look at this matchup of the race for the republican nomination for attorney general as an appetite-whetter.

The first map lists contributors to Steve Cooley, the current Los Angeles district attorney ($395,000 raised in the reporting period). The second maps contributors to John Eastman, former dean of the Chapman University School of Law ($189,000 raised in the period) Disclaimer: I teach journalism at Chapman part-time, but don’t know Eastman. You can clock on the maps and zoom in for more details on the numbered bubbles.

The Cooley map:

And the Eastman map:

No related posts.

Civil Justice Research & Education Project

Senate Majority Leader Dean Florez started the year with high hopes that he could transform California’s system of ensuring food safety .

The issue had drawn national attention. “Omnivore’s Dilemma” was atop the best seller lists, while authorities announced they had detected salmonella in hundreds of tainted peanut butter, paste and other products produced by Peanut Corporation of America, prompting a massive recall and a bankruptcy.

Setton Pistachio of Terra Bella, Calif., voluntarily pulled from the shelves scores of its products after federal authorities discovered they too were fouled by salmonella. Beef producers had recalled hundreds of thousands of pounds of hamburger containing e-coli.

“The days of voluntary recalls must come to an end,” Florez, a Democrat from the Central Valley town of Shafter, declared in an opinion article that appeared in the Los Angeles Times in April. “To live with the status quo leaves our nation with an unacceptable paradox: the pistachio nut, lauded in marketing campaigns as a healthy snack for the heart, becoming a killer in the gut.”

Despite all that, Florez had the look of resignation as he presented what was to have been his signature food safety bill at a mid-summer hearing of the Assembly Health Committee.

The measure had been “very tamed down,” Florez acknowledged, appearing to have little enthusiasm for the bill’s remains after a round of severe slashing on the Senate floor.

In its original state, Florez’s SB 173 would have required food processors and growers to notify the state of a potentially tainted product. It would have given the state the power to force a recall, and set severe penalties for processors and growers who fail to do their own testing and are then subject to a mandatory recall.

In its amended form, the bill preserved none of those goals. Instead, the legislation merely sought to authorize the state Public Health Officer to adopt regulations for voluntary recalls, which are initiated by individual companies.

Even in its weakened state, the measure went too far, at least for Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger. He vetoed it, declaring:

The Department of Public Health already has broad statutory and administrative authority to ensure contaminated food product is removed from commerce. This bill does not provide any additional improvements to that authority.

In the nation’s biggest farm state, food safety bills stall

In any given year, the Centers for Disease Control estimates, food-borne illness sickens 76 million Americans, sends 300,000 people to hospitals and kills 5,000 individuals. Still, most food safety bills introduced in Sacramento have been swiftly killed or gutted, victims of a powerful agricultural lobby and legislators who generally have looked to Washington to decide how best to protect food.

“We thought this was a federal government function,” said Florez. “Food safety was a hole in the legislative policy agenda.”

Efforts of Florez and several other legislators to make food safety a key issue in California this year were eclipsed by action at the federal level. After years of foot-dragging, Washington was poised to make policy changes in the food safety arena, including increased inspections of food facilities and mandatory recall powers for the government.

Now, California – widely seen as a pioneer in environmental and public health policy – could present more problems than solutions in terms of food safety.

The state is the nation’s largest producer of fresh fruits and vegetables, and also the source of vast numbers of recent outbreaks of food-borne illness. Deadly bacteria have been found in spinach, peppers, almonds, pistachios, and beef, products that are among the state’s top agricultural income-earners.

Advocates of a food safety regulatory overhaul say farms and processing facilities are inspected too infrequently and the state has no power to force growers and processors to reveal the results of microbial tests, or to demand that they recall potentially tainted food.

“It has been left up to industry for far too long,” said Elanor Starmer, a legislative advocate with the non-profit Food and Water Watch.

Safety standards for growing and handling leafy greens were developed after e.coli-tainted, packaged spinach sickened more than 200 people and killed three in 2006.

Critics point out that signing onto the standards – called the Leafy Green Products Handlers Marketing Agreement – is voluntary, although nearly all California salad producers have done so. Also, the standards only apply to the salad market while contamination seems to pop up in an ever-wider circle of food products.

The fact that the salad industry set safety standards after the spinach outbreak, not before, is precisely the problem, Florez said.

“It takes, unfortunately, a crisis or a lot of bad press,” he said.

The farm lobby prevails, despite recalls

A second Florez food safety bill, SB 550, sought to require grocery stores to stop the sale of a product subject to a recall when the product is scanned at the checkout counter.  The bill failed, falling 10 votes short of a majority on the Assembly floor as the session drew to a close.

Assemblymember Mike Feuer (D-Los Angeles) also authored an ambitious food safety bill this year. The bill, AB 1372, would have required food processors to implement hazard analysis and control plans similar to those required of participants in the leafy green marketing agreement. (Such plans are already mandatory for meat processors.)

The bill sought to authorize the state to order testing of food products it suspects of being tainted, and, like Florez’s bill, require that food processors report test results showing contamination.

“I think most Californians would be astonished to find that their food is not tested on a regular basis,” Feuer said.

The bill was bottled up in the Assembly Appropriations Committee and did not reemerge this year. Though a proposed increase in public spending to fund the program surely abetted the measure’s hold-up, Feuer said the lobbying factor played an even greater role.

“There was serious opposition from many in the food industry,” Feuer said. “I thought that opposition was extremely short sighted.”

Food safety advocates say the big players in California’s $34 billion agricultural industry have had much to do with keeping food safety reform out of Sacramento.

“The issue is simply an agricultural industry that has a lot of sway,” Florez said.

Since the start of the decade, the agricultural lobby has spent at least $33.75 million on lobbying in Sacramento, according to records compiled by the California Secretary of State.

Two of the largest farm groups– the California Farm Bureau Federation and Western Growers Association–have spent a combined $3.3 million on lobby in Sacramento since 2007.

Farm groups long have been major campaign donors. The Farm Bureau and Western Growers have spent more than $4 million since the start of the decade, Secretary of State records show.

Political money from agricultural interests is difficult to count to because so much of it comes from individual farmers. But a review of campaign finance reports by ProtectConsumerJustice.org shows that major agricultural concerns (not counting major wineries and their trade groups) have doled out at least $17 million since the start of the decade to political campaigns.

Lobby groups support food safety but not state laws

Wendy Fink-Weber, communications director for Western Growers, said the group is not against food safety, but the legislative process might be too slow to keep up with the evolving science.

“In these days of improving technology, improving science, when you have to rely on government regulation, it is a cumbersome process to update that regulation,” Fink-Weber said. The industry came together to develop safety standards after the spinach outbreak “because government was so slow,” she added

Action at the federal level has also been offered as a reason to stall food safety efforts in California. A representative of the Grocery Manufacturer’s Association, itself a significant lobby force, told the Assembly Health Committee this summer that “the state may just want to fill in the gaps for whatever reforms [federal legislators] do.”

California has made several advances in food safety admired by advocates. A 2006 measure, SB 611 authored by Rep. Jackie Speier (D-Hillsborough) when she was in the state legislature, requires meat or poultry suppliers and processors to notify the Department of Health Services when products they sell are subject to a federal recall due to risk of illness. They also must provide a list of their retail customers. The state can then notify consumers of where tainted products are sold.

The federal government passed a similar rule in 2008.

Some say California may still pave the way in new areas of food safety concern, such as curbing the sale of meat and poultry raised on growth-promoting antibiotics, and labeling meat from cloned animals. However, attempts to pass such legislation have thus far failed.

Florez, who’s running for Lieutenant Governor next year, has little hope for his food safety plans under the current Sacramento administration.

“We’re excited but we have to wait for a new [state] government,” Florez said. “We’re going to hopefully strengthen and build upon the Obama changes in California.”

(Jill Replogle is attending UC Berkeley School of Communications, where she is seeking her masters degree in journalism. She was an intern at Civil Justice Research & Education Project. For Jill’s other stories, please see this one and this one. jillrep@gmail.com)

No related posts.

Billionaire Ed Roski Jr. is spending millions in his quest to bring a National Football League team to the City of Industry.

But so far, one of the more modest costs appears to be the price of getting a new law through the California Legislature that will permit him to build the 75,000-seat stadium without having to go through a full environmental review.

According to his real estate company’s lobbying disclosure, Roski’s Majestic Realty Co. spent about a fifth of the estimated $290,000 cost of a luxury box suite at the stadium he envisions. For a mere $53,740, his team of three lobby firms managed to get a bill introduced and through the Assembly in September, Majestic’s third quarter lobbying report shows.

The bill, SB 81XXX, exempts the developer from having to comply with the California Environmental Quality Act. It passed the Senate on a bare majority, over objections of several Democrats and environmentalists, as described in this story by Patrick McGreevy of the Los Angeles.

Majestic’s third quarter report does not cover any lobby expenses incurred in October, when the legislation stalled and then won final passage in the Senate, and when Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger visited the City of Industry to sign the bill.

Nor does the third quarter lobbying disclosure make clear how Roski spent the bulk of the $53,740, other than to state that Majestic paid $25,000 for a lobbying firm that represents organized labor. Counting on jobs for their members, several unions are supporting a National Football League stadium in the City of Industry. Majestic didn’t disclose the amounts he paid to his two other lobbying firms.

The City of Industry, a lightly populated and long controversial burgh in the San Gabriel Valley, supported the bill, though the city’s lobby disclosure does not list the bill as one that it worked on during the session.

City of Industry is a perennial lobbying force in the world of local government. The $427,000 it has spent on lobbying since 2007 far exceeds the sums spent by such cities as Beverly Hills, Irvine and Oakland. Other cities are less than thrilled by the prospect of a stadium in City of Industry, as as the Voice of San Diego wrote the other day.

The National Football League maintains a lobby presence in Sacramento. The  NFL stated in its lobby reports that it has worked on no legislation in the first nine months of the year.

No related posts.