Judge rules in favor of former Huntington Beach mayor in air show cancellation case

• June 12, 2024

An Orange County judge on Tuesday ruled in favor of former Huntington Beach Mayor Kim Carr in a lawsuit that accused of her wrongly canceling the 2021 air show.

Operators of the Pacific Airshow sued Carr and the city for canceling the 2021 air show’s final day after an oil spill was discovered off the coast. The city agreed last year to settle with the Pacific Airshow and pay nearly $5 million, but Carr was still being sued. Attorneys for Carr and the Huntington Beach air show operator argued in court Monday over whether she should be liable for the cancellation of the 2021 air show.

Judge Jonathan Fish in a ruling released Tuesday afternoon agreed with a demurrer filed by Carr, which objected to the air show’s legal arguments. Mark Austin, Carr’s attorney, said in a text message that Fish’s ruling brings the case one step closer to dismissal.

The judge gave the Pacific Airshow a chance to amend its complaint following the ruling.

Carr in statement said she was pleased with the ruling, calling the lawsuit baseless and vindictive.

In an updated complaint filed last July, Pacific Airshow accused Carr of making a unilateral decision to cancel the event’s third day, allegedly because of personal animosity toward the operator. Carr has denied that claim and said she didn’t have that power.

“All of those allegations are what they added to save their complaint,” said Austin, the attorney representing Carr, at a hearing on Monday.

Suoo Lee, Pacific Airshow’s attorney, said Monday that there should have been a public hearing with notice to the operator to discuss canceling the air show.

“We recognize had the proper protocols been followed … we would not be here today,” Lee said.

Monday’s hearing did not focus on the facts behind the case. It concentrated on whether Pacific Airshow’s legal arguments were valid or not.

“Carr is immune from these claims even if her alleged decision to cancel the remainder of the airshow was based on personal animus,” Fish wrote in the ruling.

Carr said a combination of agencies and people, including the U.S. Coast Guard, the fire chief, the police chief and the city manager made the decision to cancel.

“I will repeat over and over again that I did not cancel the air show,” Carr said in an interview. “I did not have the power to unilaterally cancel the airshow as stated.”

Austin told the judge that Pacific Airshow’s arguments that Carr made the decision to cancel the air show alone, but also acted outside of her power as a member of the City Council, don’t hold up.

“They just can’t have it both ways,” Austin said.

Carr was a councilmember until 2022. She ran unsuccessfully for the state Senate, losing to Sen. Janet Nguyen. Carr, after the hearing, alleged the lawsuit was filed to hurt her ahead of her 2022 state senate race.

“I was excluded from the multimillion-dollar settlement,” Carr said in a statement. “If they had truly believed that the settlement was proper, they would have included me, instead of inexplicably leaving the city legally and financially exposed.”

Related Articles

​ Orange County Register 

City of Hope’s new blood test for lung cancer will mean more early detections

• May 31, 2024

To test for lung cancer, a person needs to get low-dose computed tomography screening, more commonly known as a CT scan. But that can be costly and time-consuming, just two reasons why less than 2% of those eligible in California ever get scanned.

The City of Hope and DELFI Diagnostics Inc. are trying out a new kind of screening for lung cancer that uses a simple blood test. They believe that this much more convenient and less costly testing will draw in more people for screening, and save lives through early detection and treatment.

“It is very frustrating to see such low adoption of lung cancer screening,” said Dr. Dan Raz, a thoracic surgeon at City of Hope in Duarte and director of the lung cancer screening program. “This test has a lot of potential, especially for people who have a lot of barriers to getting screened.”

Lung cancer kills more people than any other kind of cancer. About 150,000 deaths each year in the U.S. are from lung cancer alone. But about 98% of those eligible for the scan in California are not getting it. In the U.S., 94% are eligible but only about 6% are being scanned, according to City of Hope and its partner, DELFI.

Blood test will save lives

“It’s important because it will save lives through lung cancer early detection. Finding it early will reduce the chances people will die,” explained Dr. Peter Bach, a former pulmonary and intensive care physician at Memorial Sloan Cancer Center in New York and now the chief medical officer at DELFI.

“The challenge we have had, even though (a CT scan) is covered by insurance, it is not particularly convenient and has not been used at rates of other screening tests” for other types of cancer, Bach said.

The CT scans are often hit by delays, plus the lack of same-day or weekend testing. The scans take several hours or often half a day, and many people can’t or won’t take time off from work. Health insurance delays and transportation to a hospital or clinic also create barriers, Raz said.

Getting the right preventative care at the right time can mean the difference between life and death. Lung cancer is often found by accident, while a patient is getting treatment for unrelated conditions, Raz said.

“We know that if we successfully get to patients, our tests will help identify who should get a CT scan. It can prevent 10,000 deaths in the United States if fully implemented,” Bach said.

Testing in Antelope Valley and Pomona

So when City of Hope teamed up with DELFI, they began focusing on high-risk populations, such as those who smoked cigarettes for years, as well as low-income socio-economic populations with barriers to healthcare.

Starting in late April, a mobile testing unit was sent to the Antelope Valley. The team is also signing up people for the blood test at the ParkTree Community Health Center in Pomona. The test is offered free of charge to eligible trial participants.

The City of Hope’s mobile screening clinic truck. In April and May 2024, the cancer hospital and research center began its blood testing program for lung cancer through the mobile unit in the Antelope Valley. Another site is in Pomona. (photo courtesy of City of Hope)

Other areas are also beginning trials. In Baltimore, Johns Hopkins Hospital has begun a similar pilot program, said Dr. Panagis Galiatsatos, a pulmonary and critical care doctor who is a co-investigator of the DELFI blood test at Johns Hopkins and a spokesperson for the American Lung Association.

Galiatsatos said the blood test adds another tool for detecting lung cancer. “The intention is to make lung cancer diagnosis better,” he said on Wednesday, May 29. “So having a biomarker (from the blood test) can get at cancer in real time. It gives clinicians a bit more confidence when we talk to patients.”

Here’s how it works

First, doctors say it’s important to note that the blood test tells patients they may have lung cancer. It does not tell people they have cancer. Instead, for those found to have biomarkers, doctors direct them to get a CT scan, the gold standard of lung cancer screening.

The blood test can be done in conjunction with other doctor visits for blood screenings, for cholesterol or blood sugar levels, for example. Only one vial of blood is needed. And City of Hope can send a team to your home if you don’t have transportation, Raz said.

Clinicians look at genetic material specific to lung cancer, Raz said. “It looks for lung cancer cells and the patterns of fragments of DNA” floating in the blood, he explained.

“It’s like Where’s Waldo,” said Dr. Bach with DELFI. “We are looking at the way the DNA has been chewed up into fragments.”

Battling public resistance

But as with many new inventions, getting the general public to accept them can be a challenge.

People in Black communities may not trust doctors or government tests, said Rich Wallace, president and CEO of the Southern California Black Chamber of Commerce.

“These people don’t want to be tested. Black people don’t trust doctors. They also don’t want to be a guinea pig,” said Wallace on May 28.

Testing by the government in a 1932 study originally called the “Tuskegee Study of Untreated Syphilis in the Negro Male” of about 600 Black men, including 201 who did not have the disease, was done without the participants’ informed consent, according to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention. In 1972 the study was called “unethically justified.”

“We have a distrust especially when we hear the word ‘test,’ ” Wallace said.

Darryl Jackson, pastor of Love Chapel Life Changing Ministries in Ontario, said he and his congregants are not worried about being tested. They were part of a five-year Inland Empire Smoke Out program in which they learned about the dangers of smoking and the fact that it causes lung cancer. His congregation is 95% smoke-free.

“Yeah, I think that may be something my people would be interested in,” Jackson said. “Something where people can get a blood test and then, especially if they can catch it early.” He said he would tell his congregation to go to the clinic in nearby Pomona.

City of Hope and DELFI are aware of the reasons that prevent people from signing up, and that’s part of the program — providing ways to break down barriers.

Some who have smoked for many years see that as a stigma and don’t want to admit it, according to surveys done at the clinic sites, said Raz. “They say ‘I am afraid of being judged for having smoked,’ ” he said. Another barrier is that people just don’t want to know.

“In the Black community, for some reason, we have a concept that goes like this: ‘If I don’t go, I won’t know.’ There is a fear of doctors,” Jackson said. In the program, he heard from smokers and those who’ve quit who say they will just wait and see what happens. “It can be procrastination in taking care of our bodies.”

Raz said that often when symptoms arise, it is too late to save the patient’s life.

He said they will provide transportation to the blood test site and to the CT scan appointment. They will work with Medi-Cal patients for clearance, or with employers to provide a day off. If the participant doesn’t have insurance, they can help pay the cost of the CT scan.

Overcoming social resistance to tests, doctors and scans takes a constant effort, especially in low-income, minority communities, said Galiatsatos. But it can be done by talking first to influencers such as rabbis, priests, pastors and imams, who in turn inform their congregants.

“You do it with good advocacy,” he said. “We must help individuals overcome social factors in order to keep them achieving the health they are promised.”

Related Articles

Related links

Inland Empire Smoke Out preaches no-smoking to minority communities
E-cigarette use by teens linked to later tobacco smoking, study says | CBC News
Duarte’s City of Hope acquires nationwide cancer hospital network
City of Hope patient is 86 and still tooting his own horn
Lung cancer

​ Orange County Register 

HOA Homefront: 17 things I wish all HOA managers knew

• May 31, 2024

This is part three in a five-part series.

Managers are the HOA’s most important service providers. HOAs don’t work well without competent and trustworthy managers.

1. Managers are increasingly vital for the HOA housing model as it continues to grow. At least 30% of Americans now live in one of 365,000 HOAs, according to the Foundation For Community Association Research.

2. HOA Managers are professionals, not clerks or secretaries. Managers who view themselves as professionals will receive more satisfaction from their careers and will be better managers of their client communities.

3. Manager advice often satisfies a key element of the Business Judgment Rule (good faith, no conflict of interest, and reasonable diligence), protecting volunteers from personal liability. Managers are the main source of advice to the board on most decisions.

4. Homeowners need the manager to be their advisor. Managers should speak up in board meetings and build a culture in which the HOA board expects manager input on most decisions.

5. HOAs need their managers to tell them the truth, even truths the board would prefer not to hear.  However, once the manager provides the advice, it’s up to the board to follow it.

6. If a board doesn’t trust you, it doesn’t matter how good a job you do.

7. Just like your client boards, you are not on duty 24/7. Set boundaries and REASONABLE communication response expectations.

8. Don’t be too chummy with the HOA board. Avoid creating the impression of being allied with any group of homeowners- you manage the HOA for all members.

9. Always stay above the fray during board elections – keep to yourself your opinions about who is (or would be) good or bad directors.

10. Since California does not license or regulate HOA managers, industry credentials are the only way to demonstrate qualifications. The entry level credentials of CAI (the “CMCA”) and CACM (the “CCAM”) show prospective clients a commitment to the profession. CAI’s Professional Community Association Manager (“PCAM”) credential remains the gold standard for HOA managers and should be their goal.

11.Don’t strive to be the cheapest management resource or the flashiest. Demonstrate your company’s commitment to providing qualified professionals and providing a level of service befitting the needs of each client community.

12. It’s not your fault HOAs are contentious – the current American culture is intolerant of differing opinions. Sadly, that culture is reflected in most HOAs.

13. Managers should help their boards regularly and meaningfully communicate with the membership. More informed HOAs are better client HOAs.

14. Managers are an important engine of cultural change in American real estate. Americans traditionally devalue communal living, preferring independent property ownership instead. However, economic realities have pushed Americans toward shared ownership communities. Recognizing this helps to understand the frustration of members who chafe at submitting to the will of their community.

15. The average HOA member doesn’t look at the governing documents until it is too late, so be gracious with first-time violators. They may not have known that they needed to ask permission for anything, and so are often angry to discover that they must cooperate with their neighbors.

16. Under Fair Housing laws the manager is also considered the “owner” of the property (California Fair Housing Regulations Section 12005(t)(1)). Managers must be alert and avoid violations.

Kelly G. Richardson CCAL is a Fellow of the College of Community Association Lawyers and Partner of Richardson Ober LLP, a California law firm known for community association advice. Send column questions to [email protected].

Related Articles

​ Orange County Register 

Putting teeth in California housing goals

• May 31, 2024

You don’t necessarily always like to see various aspects of government in California seeking financial penalties against other aspects of government in California.

It’s unseemly, in that we’re not talking Monopoly money here. It’s not “theirs” — not government’s — it’s our money, that we gave them. It merely encourages highly paid government lawyers to go out and hire even more highly paid private attorneys to advise them in their fight to keep their version of our money.

But sometimes, absent being able to throw a government in jail when it is flaunting rules or even laws that matter to all Californians, financial penalties or at least the threat of them are appropriate bargaining chips.

Housing is the No. 1 priority for Californians right now. The lack of supply and the high price for what there is affects almost every aspect of life in our state. It is the true root of the homelessness crisis that plagues us; it affects our economy in not letting people live near where they work; it affects our society in not allowing younger generations into the real-estate market, prompting them to look elsewhere to live.

So the fines that are a part of Senate Bill 1037, authored by Sen. Scott Wiener, the Legislature’s toughest attack dog in the fight for more housing, are appropriate.

Wiener’s office says the bill would strengthen the state attorney general’s “ability to enforce state housing law with fines against cities that commit egregious violations of the law. This heightened enforcement will create stronger incentives for cities to comply with state housing laws. SB 1037 passed 23-9 and heads next to the Assembly, where it must pass by Aug. 31.”

Wiener says the bill applies only to cities “that have acted arbitrarily, not to cities that make good-faith errors.” And it’s not like the money gets purloined for the state’s General Fund: “The fines generated by the bill’s civil penalties will be deposited into an affordable housing fund for use in the offending city.”

The problem today is that if a judge decides a California city is in violation of state housing law, while fines can still be imposed, they can wait up to a year to comply.

“Local governments thus have no real incentive to follow the law since they can force the state to sue, lose, and then simply remedy the violation at that point and avoid penalties. This is a huge waste of taxpayer resources and undermines California’s housing goals,” Wiener says.

Even local politicians who acknowledge the obvious fact that California is underhoused often support only solutions that aren’t in their backyard. They know that creativity is needed, from more ADUs in formerly single-family neighborhoods to affordable housing in formerly commercial zones to reforming CEQA to streamlining ancient zoning codes.

But they too often want the reforms to occur in the next city over, insisting that the status quo is serving their city well.

The housing elements that every city and county in the state must update all go toward doing their part to meet their share of the 2022 California housing plan, which correctly says the state needs to plan for about 2.5 million new homes in the near future in order to put an affordable roof over the heads of all of its residents.

SB 1037 would allow the state to apply a minimum civil penalty of $10,000 per month, possibly going to $50,000 per month, for each violation by stick-in-the-mud cities. Nice to see that any such fines would go back into housing in the recalcitrant pols’ own communities.

The Assembly should join the Senate in passing the bill, and the governor should sign it.

​ Orange County Register 

Does presidential politics depress California consumer confidence?

• May 31, 2024

”Survey says” looks at various rankings and scorecards judging geographic locations, while noting these grades are best seen as a mix of artful interpretation and data.

Buzz: California’s consumer confidence about the future often falls into a funk in presidential election years.

Source: My trusty spreadsheet looked at the poll-powered results of the Conference Board’s index of statewide optimism, a benchmark that dates to 2007. To gauge political influences, the index average of the first five months of election years – 2008, 2012, 2016, 2020, and 2024 – was compared with the 13 years when control of the White House is not up for grabs.

Topline

Presidential politics often makes people grumpy – no matter your candidate or their chances of victory.

This California index confirms that thesis. Election year confidence, by this math, ran on average 7% lower than the non-election periods.

Details

This yardstick of shopper psyche comprises two factors – one eyeing today’s financial picture, the other tracking economic hopes. There’s a wide gap in the sub-index performance in these politically charged years.

The California view of current conditions was only 2% worse in election years than other times.

Conversely, their expectations for the future were 11% lower when the White House was up for a vote.

Economically speaking, nerve-wracking national politics chill the view of the future – and that anxiety can cut the urge to spend.

Caveat

Could 2024 be an outlier?

California started the year in the most optimistic mood of these five election years, despite what looks to be a bruising political rematch between President Joe Biden and former President Donald Trump.

The state’s overall confidence index was 8% above the non-election year average. But, again, we see a split now versus the future.

REAL ESTATE NEWSLETTER: Get our free ‘Home Stretch’ by email. SUBSCRIBE HERE!

California’s current conditions index in 2024’s first five months was the most upbeat about real-time finances of the five election years. It was also 33% above the average “now” scores in non-election years.

However, this year’s expectations ran 11% below the non-election “future” as California’s 2024 outlook was the second-most pessimistic of the five election years.

Bottom line

This pattern is no California quirk.

Nationally, overall confidence was 3% lower in election years since 2007. But US consumers saw 2% better current conditions – and an 8% worse future.

And look at this presidential confidence gap in seven other states tracked. When states are ranked by size of the election year divide, it’s hard to see much of a red state/blue state theme …

Illinois: 7% lower confidence overall – 1% worse for current conditions and 12% worse for expectations.

Florida: 7% lower overall – 4% worse currently, 10% worse expectations.

New York: 6% lower overall – 1% worse currently, 9% worse expectations.

Ohio: 3% lower overall – 5% better currently, 9% worse expectations.

ECONOMIC NEWS: What’s the big trend? Should I be worried? CLICK HERE!

Texas: 2% lower overall – 1% better currently, 5% worse expectations.

Michigan: 2% lower overall – 3% better currently, 5% worse expectations.

Pennsylvania: 1% lower overall – 3% better currently, 5% worse expectations.

Jonathan Lansner is the business columnist for the Southern California News Group. He can be reached at [email protected]

2024 economic forecasts

 
Chapman: ‘Very slow growth. No recession’

CS Fullerton: ‘Cracks’ will widen to a mild recession in late 2024

US Realtors: Housing rebound from 2023’s dismal sales

California Realtors: Rising prices, sales in 2024

USC: SoCal rents to rise 2-4% a year through 2025

Related Articles

​ Orange County Register 

Why is drowning on the rise in Orange County and nationally?

• May 31, 2024

Even though it happened about 30 feet from where she stood, Eloise Burke didn’t see or hear her little sister, Ginny, die.

It was 1958, a warm but not hot summer day in Miami, and the sisters were playing in a public pool. Ginny, 7, was with some kids Eloise, then 10, didn’t know. And when those kids took their game to a different part of the pool they left Ginny behind, just below the surface.

The little girl drowned the way a lot of people drown; without a visible struggle or a sound.

“I remember it for a lot of reasons, of course. But I really remember how surprised I was,” said Burke, now 75, and living in Costa Mesa.

“How could nobody not even notice?”

The particular type of horror is on the rise.

Since the start of the COVID-19 pandemic, drowning deaths have spiked, nationally and in Orange County.

Though a new report from the Centers for Disease Control doesn’t offer exact year-to-year national totals, it cites drowning rates that pencil out to more than 4,500 deaths each year from 2020 through 2022. That’s at least a 12.5% jump, or 500 more lives lost, from what was a fairly steady national average (about 4,000 drowning deaths per year) for much of the 2010s.

What’s more, because pre-pandemic drowning numbers were holding steady even as the population grew, the new death rates reflect a change in trajectory: A problem that seemed to be slowly improving might be rapidly getting worse.

Local health officials say the national trend also has played out in Orange County, where access to the ocean and public and private pools makes the community something of a hot spot for both swimming and drowning.

Last year, 54 people in Orange County drowned, up from 43 who perished that way in 2022, according to preliminary county data. State data shows that in 2019 there were just 31 drowning deaths in Orange County.

Most of the victims, nationally and locally, are little kids, ages 1 to 4. In fact, pre-pandemic, drowning was a leading cause of death in that age group, and federal data shows that from 2019 through 2022, there was a 28% spike in drowning deaths involving young children.

County health officials are only starting to sift through the national numbers and the preliminary local data, which tracks through 2023, a year that’s not yet available nationally. But, for the moment, the thinking is that people need to get – and heed – long-standing public health messages about water safety.

“There just needs to be a lot more education about this,” said Dr. Regina Chinsio-Kwong, Orange County’s chief medical officer.

“We offer a lot, in that, and (we) have for a long time. But maybe there’s a need for even more, particularly for communities that haven’t been getting any message about water safety.”

Other experts agree, though they suggest there might be a need to modernize at least some of what’s being fed to the public. Some long-standing public health messages about water safety – learn to swim, learn CPR, don’t let kids swim without a specific adult assigned to watch them, don’t drink or take drugs while swimming, don’t underestimate the danger of the ocean or even a bathtub – aren’t sinking in.

One example, they note, is the most basic of all water safety rules, the one about learning to swim. Public health agencies have been telling people to do that for decades but, according to new survey results from the CDC, a lot of people have ignored them.

In its report, issued May 23, the CDC found that about 15.4% of all American adults (roughly 40 million people) don’t know how to swim, and that only about 45% of all adults have ever had a formal swim lesson at some point in their lives. The swim instruction rates are lowest for people of color, particularly Hispanics (28%) and Black (37%) people, and only slightly better among Asians and Native Americans (47%), and only a slight majority of White people (52%) have had a swim lesson.

Some of that data might reflect long-standing racism that, for generations, prevented people of color from having full access to public swimming facilities. And the CDC notes that, indeed, people of color were more likely than White people to drown during the pandemic, particularly when surveys take into account any racial group’s estimated use of pools, the ocean and other swimming options.

The CDC said during the pandemic Hispanics suffered an unexpectedly big increase in drownings.

“Drowning death rates have not historically been disproportionately high among Hispanic persons; however, drowning deaths (among that group) were significantly higher in 2020, 2021 and 2022, compared with the rate in 2019,” the CDC wrote.

Orange County is seeing a similar trend involving a different community. Chinsio-Kwong noted that local people of Asian descent suffered a disproportionately big jump in drowning deaths over the past year, though she doesn’t yet have a specific explanation for why that’s happened.

“Maybe it’s about access,” she said, adding that the issue warrants more scrutiny.

That basic idea, more scrutiny, also applies to the question of why there’s been a drowning surge since the start of the pandemic. In theory, drownings should not have spiked during a period when so much of American life was pole-axed by the spread of COVID-19. Public pools and beaches were closed during the pandemic’s early months, and full access didn’t resume in much of the country until mid-2021.

Some experts argue that outdoor public pools and beaches were, like golf courses and a few other open-air sports, among the first places people returned to as public gathering rules lifted. So, maybe more drowning was a result of more people swimming.

Others note that the same rules that closed public facilities also meant fewer people were trained as lifeguards and fewer kids received swim lessons, factors that could easily lead to a rise in drowning deaths.

Tessa Clemens, a scientist with the CDC who was the lead author of the new report, told National Public Radio that the causes for the pandemic-era surge in drownings were “complex.”

“We know that many public pools closed during the COVID-19 pandemic, which limited the availability of swimming lessons,” Clemens said. “Once pools reopened, many facilities faced shortages of trained swimming instructors and lifeguards, which further reduced availability of swimming lessons and safe swimming areas.”

Related Articles

​ Orange County Register 

They’re coming for new bags after old bag-ban failed

• May 31, 2024

SACRAMENTO – You know those scenes from old Western movies (or Bugs Bunny) where an outlaw fires his gun near someone’s feet. The goal isn’t to harm the target, but to make him dance to miss the bullets in an effort to frighten, humiliate or exert dominance. Think about those scenes as you consider a set of new pointless plastic-bag-related laws that seem destined just to make Californians “dance.”

Remember all the hoopla in 2014 when Gov. Jerry Brown signed a “groundbreaking” law that would dramatically reduce solid waste by forbidding grocery stores from providing “single-use” plastic bags? It’s been a decade since that law turned the grocery-checkout process into a grinding routine as clerks ask consumers how many bags they want to buy and cheapskate shoppers drag out bacteria-laden reusable cotton ones.

That law’s backroom negotiations offer hilarious lessons in legislative sausage-making, as unions, stores and environmentalists jockeyed for special privileges. A key compromise allowed stores to sell thicker “reusable” plastic bags, which seemed bizarre to me. The “single-use” bags actually had multiple uses. They were so thin I’d keep them to pick up dog poo and line bathroom trash cans.

By contrast, the “reusable” bags are so space-consuming that I always just pitch them in the trash. The Mercury News’ Paul Rogers reportedrecently that this “loophole (was) inserted by some Democratic lawmakers in Sacramento who had plastic bag factories in their districts.” I didn’t remember that detail, but it seemed obvious that replacing thin bags with thick plastic or paper ones might not actually work out as planned.

Sure enough, the ban was a bust. Aside from adding a buck to the typical grocery bill, the plastic ban has failed to cut down on solid waste. In fact, it led to a massive increase in landfill-destined plastics. “Last year, Californians threw away more plastic bags, by weight, than when the law first passed,” according to a recent New York Times article, which called it “an environmental rule that backfired and inadvertently made the matter worse.”

Apparently, the California Legislature is unaware of the term, “unintended consequences.” But that’s not going to stop it from trying again. Two bills are now making their way through the Capitol. Senate Bill 1053 and Assembly Bill 2236 would also ban the thicker plastic bags that replaced the thinner previously-banned bags. It seems as if lawmakers want us to reuse those dirty old bags stashed in the trunk or under the seat.

But even that isn’t entirely clear. As Rogers explained, Gov. Gavin Newsom “banned people from bringing their own cloth bags to stores in 2020 when the COVID pandemic first began, over fears that the virus could be transmitted by the bags.” That turned out to be bunk – like everything else related to these bag-related predictions. But Californians did the dance and began using plastic bags again after that edict, as the administration required.

If a new law passes, the likely result is people like me – e.g., people who don’t want to live like vagabonds and will not drag gross old bags into the store – will have no choice but to buy thick, heavy, resource-depleting paper bags. The new bills up the recyclable content requirement and require stores to charge at least 10 cents each, but leave paper as the main option. Remember that in the olden days we all used paper bags. They were replaced, in part, by the thin now-banned bags because the plastic ones were more environmentally friendly and more likely to be reused. I have no use for heavy paper bags so I’ll just throw mine into the landfill.

Related Articles

“Manufacturing a paper bag takes about four times as much energy as it takes to produce a plastic bag, plus the chemicals and fertilizers … create additional harm to the environment,” explains National Geographic. “(F)or a paper bag to neutralize its environmental impact compared to plastic, it would have to be used anywhere from three to 43 times.” Given that paper bags aren’t very durable, “it is unlikely that a person would get enough use out of any one bag to even out the environmental impact.”

A decade from now a new set of lawmakers surely will propose a ban on paper bags after they start clogging up the landfills. Despite their grandiose rhetoric about saving the Earth, these lawmakers are smart enough to know such efforts aren’t going to measurably improve the environment or reverse climate change. At this point, it’s a safe guess the new ban will actually make matters worse.

My cynical take is environmentalist lawmakers try to make our everyday lives as annoying as possible by banning items that we rely upon (bags, natural-gas appliances, gas-powered yard equipment, internal-combustion-engine cars) as penance for our society’s affluent consumer lifestyle. It’s just for show, but they have the political power so there’s nothing we can do but dance.

Steven Greenhut is Western region director for the R Street Institute and a member of the Southern California News Group editorial board. Write to him at [email protected].

​ Orange County Register 

Foothill High Graduation 2024: Our best photos of the ceremony

• May 31, 2024

Tustin Unified School District’s FoothillHigh handed diplomas to the members of its graduating Class of 2024 on Thursday, May 30.

A commencement ceremony at the campus stadium drew families and friends who cheered as the graduates walked across the stage, marking the end of their high school careers and the beginning of their bright futures.

Related Articles

​ Orange County Register