SUNDAY • SEPTEMBER 2, 2018
POLITICS
LEGISLATURE OKS MAJOR POLICE MEASURES
Brown to weigh body
camera, internal
investigations bills
BY LIAM DILLON
SACRAMENTO
Endorsing a dramatic de-
parture from decades of se-
crecy surrounding policing in
the state, California lawmak-
ers have moved to undo some
of the nation’s strictest rules
keeping law enforcement re-
cords confidential, particu-
larly involving officer killings
of civilians.
Legislators approved two
landmark measures late Fri-
day, one that would give the
public access to internal in-
vestigations of police shoot-
ings statewide, and another
that would allow the release of
body camera footage of those
incidents.
Supporters of the legisla-
tion, which must be signed by
the governor to become law,
said it would boost confi-
dence in law enforcement at a
Assembly Republican Leader Brian Dahle displays a map Friday showing the fire threat to California.
MEASURE TO PASS ON WILDFIRE
COSTS CLEARS LEGISLATURE
Legislation to push back school start times and limit animal testing also sent to governor
BY JONATHAN J.
COOPER & SOPHIA
BOLLAG
SACRAMENTO
Lawmakers voted to give
a reprieve to Pacific Gas &
Electric Co. and push back
school start times in the fren-
zied final hours of the two-
year legislative session.
The Assembly and Sen-
ate adjourned for the year
Friday shortly before mid-
night after passing one of the
most contentious bills law-
makers confronted.
They sent Gov. Jerry
Brown a measure allowing
power companies to raise
electric bills to cover the cost
of lawsuits from last year’s
deadly wildfires, even if the
utility is found to have be-
haved negligently.
Even many of the law-
makers who voted for it said
they had misgivings but be-
lieved it was necessary to pre-
vent financial ruin for PG&E.
The company is poten-
tially on the hook for billions
of dollars if its equipment is
ultimately blamed for wild-
fires that destroyed thou-
sands of homes in Northern
California wine country last
TRUMP TO WITHHOLD 100K PAGES OF KAVANAUGH PAPERS
White House claims
executive privilege in
keeping them private
THE WASHINGTON POST
WASHINGTON
President Donald
Trump will not release more
than 100,000 pages of re-
cords from Supreme Court
nominee Brett Kavanaugh’s
tenure in the George W.
Bush White House, claiming
executive privilege.
The White House’s deci-
sion was disclosed in a letter
sent to the Senate Judiciary
time when multiple disputed
police incidents have led to
protests in California and
nationwide.
The bills “open up some
transparency to help rebuild
that trust between law en-
forcement and communi-
ties,” said Sen. Nancy Skin-
ner, D-Berkeley, author of the
open-records bill. “Public
safety requires the co-
operation and trust of a com-
munity.”
Skinner’s measure, Sen-
ate Bill 1421, would begin to
unwind a confidentiality law
passed four decades ago by
opening records from investi-
gations of officer shootings
and other major force inci-
dents, along with confirmed
cases of sexual assault and ly-
ing while on duty.
California’s existing rules
protecting the confidentiality
of misconduct records not
only prohibit the public from
seeing them, but also deny
prosecutors direct access — a
standard that exists in no
other state.
A recent Times investiga-
October, the most expensive
fire storm in state history.
“This is about protecting
ratepayers, not helping util-
ities,” said Sen. Bill Dodd, a
Napa Democrat who helped
craft the legislation. “The
fact of the matter is ratepay-
ers would be hurt in a utility
bankruptcy.”
The move has infuriated
ratepayer advocates, who
warned that the measure
puts the utility on the hook
for damages that haven’t
even been gauged yet.
“Without a doubt the cost
of our changing climate will
be a shared one,” said As-
semblyman Marc Levine, D-
San Rafael. “But the costs
we’re talking about here —
the costs of negligence —
should not fall primarily on
ratepayers.”
The measure is part of a
wide-ranging plan to reduce
the threat of wildfires, which
have caused unprecedented
levels of death and property
damage in the past three
years. The bill also would re-
quire investor-owned util-
ities — including PG&E,
Southern California Edison
and San Diego Gas & Elec-
tric — to harden their equip-
Committee on Friday ahead
of Kavanaugh’s confirma-
tion hearings. A Bush repre-
sentative who has led a
team of attorneys reviewing
Kavanaugh’s papers con-
firmed that lawyers have fin-
ished going through the re-
cords and have turned over
about 415,000 pages to the
committee, although about
147,000 of those pages are
being withheld from public
view.
“President Bush directed
us to proceed expeditiously
and to err as much as appro-
priate on the side of trans-
parency and disclosure, and
we believe we have done so,”
SUN
tion found that past miscon-
duct by law enforcement offi-
cers who testify in court is
routinely kept hidden by Cali-
fornia’s privacy laws.
Supporters of SB 1421 hai-
led the decision as a move
toward increased trust be-
tween law enforcement and
the public. The backdrop of
Black Lives Matter and other
movements pushing for
changes in the criminal jus-
tice system helped move the
transparency measure for-
ward, they said.
A separate bill that would
require police departments
to make some body camera
footage public also advanced
on Friday, the final day for
lawmakers to consider bills
for the year. The body camera
measure would require de-
partments to release footage
of most officer shootings and
other serious uses of force
within 45 days unless doing so
would interfere with an on-
going investigation.
Supporters said the legis-
lation, Assembly Bill 748, was
modeled on the Los Angeles
ment so it’s less likely to
cause fires.
It would make it easier, in
some circumstances, to do
prescribed burns, clear dead
trees and brush, log trees and
build firebreaks. It includes
$200 million a year for those
purposes.
The governor will also get
the final say on a bill that
would bar middle and high
schools from starting before
8:30 a.m., a response to re-
search showing later start
times make children healthi-
er by letting them get more
sleep. More than 80 percent
of California middle and high
schools start before 8:30 a.m.
Rural schools would be
exempt from the mandate.
The measure passed nar-
rowly in both chambers fol-
lowing a debate that did not
adhere to party lines.
Another proposal that
passed Friday would impose
the nation’s strictest laws on
animal testing for cosmetics.
The bill would make Cali-
fornia the first state to outlaw
the sale of cosmetics tested
on animals. The ban applies
to animal testing of a cos-
metic or its ingredients con-
ducted after 2019, but would
attorney Bill Burck, who
serves as Bush’s presi-
dential records representa-
tive, wrote to the committee.
Burck said in the letter
that 101,921 pages are not
being given to the commit-
tee because the White
House believes they are pro-
tected by presidential privi-
lege and, after discussions
with the Justice Depart-
ment, “has directed that we
not provide these docu-
ments for this reason.”
The Presidential Re-
cords Act allows both the
former administration and
the current White House to
claim privilege on presi-
State Sen. Nancy Skinner, D-Berkeley, talks with
Sen. Joel Anderson, R-Alpine, Tuesday. Skinner’s
transparency bill was sent to Gov. Jerry Brown.
Police Department’s recently
implemented policy to re-
lease videos within a similar
timeframe, adding that the
increased public access also
would improve relations be-
tween law enforcement and
communities.
“We have spent millions of
dollars up and down the state
in all our local jurisdictions to
RICH PEDRONCELLI AP
allow exceptions to comply
with Food and Drug Admin-
istration or foreign agency
requirements.
“We don’t have to test on
animals to make sure my
mascara stays on all day,”
said Democratic Assembly-
woman Lorena Gonzalez
Fletcher of San Diego.
Afew things failed, includ-
ing a proposal to link over-
sight of California’s electric
grid with other Western
states.
A last-minute effort to
create more state oversight
of a project by Cadiz Inc. to
pump water from under the
Mojave Desert died in a Sen-
ate committee.
A plan to raise taxes to
pay for modernizing the 911
emergency dispatch system
also fell one vote short in the
Senate when Republicans
refused to sign on to a tax in-
crease. It would have
charged between 20 cents
and 80 cents per phone line,
replacing an existing fee that
generally charges more for
landlines than cellphones.
Cooper and Bollag write for The
Associated Press. The Los Angeles
Times contributed to this report.
dential documents. A White
House spokesman, Raj
Shah, said Saturday that he
will let the letter, first re-
ported by The Associated
Press, speak for itself.
“Judge Kavanaugh, an
associate and senior associ-
ate White House counsel,
dealt with some of the most
sensitive communications
of any White House official,”
Burck wrote. The major
portion of the documents
withheld for privilege “re-
flect deliberations and can-
did advice concerning the
selection and nomination of
judicial candidates, the con-
fidentiality of which is criti-
DAY
RICH PEDRONCELLI AP
deploy body cameras and
record the footage,” said As-
semblyman Phil Ting, D-San
Francisco. “This would pro-
vide greater transparency.”
Police groups argued that
the plan would override the
ability of departments to set
their own rules for disclosure.
Lawmakers also worried
that the measure didn’t give
GOVERNOR’S BILL TO
EXPAND STATE POWER
GRID MEETS DEMISE
BY JEFF MCDONALD
For the third time in as
many years, California
lawmakers have rejected a
plan pushed by Gov. Jerry
Brown that would have
expanded the state power
grid to as many as 14 west-
ern states.
The bill, authored by
Democratic Assembly-
man Chris Holden of
Pasadena, was denied a
vote on the Senate floor
before the gavel was
brought down on the leg-
islative session for the
year late Friday night.
The demise of the leg-
islation was a rare defeat
for Brown, who leaves of-
fice late this year after
serving 16 years over two
terms as California gover-
nor.
“Lawmakers missed an
opportunity to further
open the market for solar,
wind and other forms of
renewable power, and to
accelerate our movement
away from coal and other
dirty fossil fuels, in a way
that is affordable and reli-
able for consumers,” said
Donald Furman, leader of
a group called Fix the
Grid pushing for the mea-
sure.
“Despite today’s set-
back, California must
continue to lead on cli-
mate and clean energy
policy, particularly in the
face of a hostile federal
administration.”
The death of the legis-
lation signaled that legis-
lative leadership was un-
willing to cross potent po-
litical forces that opposed
the bill, like organized la-
bor and public utilities, or
do bidding for a governor
not long for office.
“AB 813 will not be
moved to the Senate floor
for a vote this year,” said
Senate President Pro Tem
Toni Atkins, D-San Diego.
“We will continue this im-
portant discussion next
year.”
Among other things,
Assembly Bill 813 would
have eliminated much of
California’s authority
over the transmission net-
work by doing away with
the governor’s ability to
appoint the board run-
ning the California Inde-
pendent System Op-
erator, or CAISO.
Thousands of miles of
transmission poles and
wires would have been
cal to any president’s ability
to carry out this core consti-
tutional executive function.”
The battle over Ka-
vanaugh’s documents has
been a dominant storyline
in the fight to replace the re-
tired Justice Anthony Ken-
nedy. Kavanaugh was nomi-
nated July 9, and his confir-
mation could tilt the bal-
ance of the Supreme Court
for a generation.
Senate Democrats have
been infuriated that Repub-
licans have requested docu-
ments just from Ka-
vanaugh’s two years as asso-
ciate White House counsel
as the Senate reviews the
A5
enough weight to the privacy
interests of officers and the
public.
“We need to be more delib-
erative about this and get it
right,” Assemblyman Jay
Obernolte, R-Big Bear Lake,
said during debate on the As-
sembly floor.
The passage of the body
camera bill breaks a deadlock
over the issue in the Legisla-
ture in the last four years.
Multiple attempts to pass
measures to make the footage
public or restrict access state-
wide had failed before Friday.
AB 748 makes a forceful
move toward open access to
body cameras, said Adam
Marshall, an attorney track-
ing state legislation with Re-
porters Committee for Free-
dom of the Press.
“The bill represents one of
the strongest commitments
to transparency for body
cameras among the legisla-
tion that’s been passed in the
country,” Marshall said.
Dillon writes for the Los Angeles
Times.
managed by a panel of en-
ergy-industry insiders
and regulated by the U.S.
Federal Energy Regula-
tory Commission, which
has been accused of being
more friendly to utilities
than its California coun-
terpart.
The Holden bill drew
support from CAISO and
some environmental
groups, who said it would
streamline grid opera-
tions and allow California
to market its excess solar
and wind power to nearby
states.
Ralph Cavanagh, co-
director of the energy pro-
gram at the Natural Re-
sources Defense Council,
was a supporter of the bill.
“The Legislature just
couldn’t get to ‘yes’ but
the need for western grid
integration grows more
obvious each day,” he
said. “And if California
doesn’t lead the inevitable
transition, others will.
California’s wind and so-
lar generation are grow-
ing faster than our ineffi-
ciently managed electric
grid can put them to use.
We’re literally throwing
away pollution-free elec-
tricity during certain peri-
ods, and the problem will
only get worse.”
CAISO projected sav-
ings to consumers of up to
$1.5 billion a year. A study
from 2016 acknowledged
the change would likely
lead to the loss of thou-
sands of construction
jobs.
Consumer advocates
and some environmental
groups, meanwhile, wor-
ried that California was
wrongly ceding oversight
of the grid to the coal-
friendly Trump adminis-
tration. They also said it
would undermine plans to
generate most or all of the
electricity consumed in
California from renewable
sources.
“California dodged a
dangerous bullet that
would have subjected our
electricity market and
grid to big-money, fossil-
fuel interests who wanted
to break down the clean
energy protections Cali-
fornia has enacted over
the past decade,” said Lo-
retta Lynch, a former util-
ities commissioner and
opponent of the bill.
jeff.mcdonald
@sduniontribune.com
nominee’s record. Demo-
crats have also pushed for
records from Kavanaugh’s
three years as Bush’s staff
secretary, but Republicans
say that demand is exces-
sive and that those papers
are irrelevant to Ka-
vanaugh’s nomination.
President Barack
Obama did not claim privi-
lege on any of the docu-
ments involving now-Jus-
tice Elena Kagan, the last
Supreme Court nominee to
have served in a White
House, according to Chris-
topher Kang, who was a
deputy counsel under
Obama.