OCTA warded $45 million to invest in transit projects

• April 29, 2023

The Orange County Transportation Authority has been awarded nearly $45 million by the California State Transportation Agency for two projects that officials say will help improve the bus and rail systems while addressing air quality.

One project is focused on increasing public transit options in central Orange County, and another is looking at the future of rail service along a key route in Southern California that is threatened by sea level rise and erosion issues.

“We are very thankful to the state for continuing to recognize the value of our projects in Orange County, which will continue to enhance the ability of our residents, workers and visitors to more efficiently travel to their destinations by using public transit,” Gene Hernandez, OCTA chairman and mayor of Yorba Linda, said in a statement.

The OCTA announced about $39.4 million was received for the Central Mobility Loop project, which includes purchasing 33 zero-emission buses and replacing another 10 gas-powered vehicles with zero-emission versions. The new buses are expected to hit the road in early 2026.

The money will also fund an effort to synchronize traffic signals that will allow buses to move through intersections at more consistent speeds and the installation of a new bike storage space at the Santa Ana Regional Transportation Center and fast-charging stations at the center and the Fullerton Transportation Center.

The state agency also earmarked $5 million to help the OCTA fund a study of longer-term solutions to the threats facing the Los Angeles – San Diego – San Luis Obispo, or LOSSSAN, rail corridor through south Orange County from climate change and coastal erosion.

Train traffic through San Clemente is currently halted because of a landslide this week and daily passenger service had recently been impacted for several months because the tracks had been shifted in another nearby section by crashing waves and a sliding hillside.

These funds are in addition to a previous Transit and Intercity Rail Capital Program award of $150 million to help fund the completion of the OC Streetcar.

“Our successful funding applications were possible through the strong support of Orange County’s state and federal elected officials, our city partners and neighboring transportation agencies,” Darrell E. Johnson, OTCA CEO, said in a statement. “We very much appreciate their collaboration and look forward to continued partnership as we work to advance these important transportation projects.”

Related Articles

​ Orange County Register 

Orange County Classical Academy eyes traditional school campuses for its expansion

• April 28, 2023

The Orange County Classical Academy, a charter school with a curriculum affiliated with a small Christian college in Michigan, wants to open a high school, possibly using classrooms and other spaces at an existing traditional campus.

The Orange school’s leaders are looking at facilities in the Placentia-Yorba Linda Unified School District as well as places in Orange and Huntington Beach as potential sites to house charter school students.

The school is considering those different options, among others, said Jeff Barke, Classical Academy’s co-founder and board chairman, to accommodate a growing number of families interested in its “classical” approach to education. But Barke offered few details on where exactly his school could go.

“We’ve got a lot of irons in the fire and we’re working on a number of different options,” Barke said.

The lack of publicly available information has left some parents, particularly in Placentia-Yorba Linda and Orange Unified districts, speculating about where the charter school known as OCCA wants to expand and whether it will affect their children’s schooling. They have also raised concerns about the process and whether the conservative board majorities have the predisposition to approve requests from the conservative-leaning charter school.

PYLUSD

In the Placentia-Yorba Linda district, or the PYLUSD, charter officials have identified four schools they believe would “be the best fit” for their program, according to documents obtained through a public records request.

In a March letter to PYLUSD board members, OCCA officials sought 12-24 classrooms and other spaces, including fields, parking, eating and office areas, in one of four schools they identified. Those schools are Rio Vista Elementary in Anaheim, Esperanza High in Anaheim, Bernardo Yorba Middle School in Yorba Linda and El Dorado High in Placentia.

The proposal outlined an annual base rental the charter would pay the district, starting at $189,120 beginning May 1, for 12 classrooms and other spaces, and going up to $249,120 in the fourth year, for 24 classrooms. The school would start with ninth-grade students and add a grade level every academic year until it reaches grade 12.

When PYLUSD Superintendent Michael Matthews sought additional information, OCCA attorney David Huff offered more specifics: The proposal requests to share library space three days a week for up to four hours a day and an auditorium or multi-purpose room of approximately 4,000 square feet for the same durations plus some evening and weekend times.

Other requested spaces included shared use of locker rooms, the gymnasium, bathrooms and a health or nurse’s room.

Huff cited higher “rental rates” as well: $225,835 for the 2023-24 school year, going up every year OCCA adds a grade, until 2026-27 when the high school is fully formed and OCCA would pay the district $315,835 annually.

That proposal recently circulated on social media, raising questions and concerns from some community members.

Here comes the OCCA… pic.twitter.com/NqJAvgb8MQ

— VoicesforPYLUSD (@NPylusd) April 23, 2023

“The district is not going through a transparent process,” said Placentia resident Julie Suchard, who worries that earlier endorsements and connections between some members of PYLUSD, OCCA Superintendent Stefan Bean and the conservative Orange County Board of Education will lead to a slam-dunk approval without proper vetting.

While information has been released to those who have filed public records requests, OCCA parents appear to have been kept abreast of the school’s planned expansion and were asked to attend PYLUSD school board meetings in support.

Ahead of an April 18 PYLUSD board meeting, Mike Davis, OCCA’s director of school development, gave parents instructions on how to “speak on our behalf during public comments” and asked them to arrive early to ensure they got a seat.

“While we do anticipate having the support necessary for approval, we want to make as compelling a case as possible by our turnout, our example, and by what we say and how we say it,” Davis said in the note to parents.

Asked how and why OCCA anticipated such support, Barke said: “I don’t know, except they are a charter-friendly board so the assumption is they would support us considering we are a ‘California distinguished school’ with a proven track record of excellence.”

“That’s what school board meetings are for: to advocate, to speak during public comments and to support your school,” Barke said.

Teacher unions, he argues, do the same.

“We advocate for our perspective, and the left advocates for theirs,” he said.

But the subject was never raised before the school board on April 18, and Barke did not say when OCCA plans to pitch its proposal publicly.

According to Leandra Blades, one of the district’s conservative board members, she and other trustees learned of the OCCA plan in early March, and it is being reviewed by the school district’s attorney.

“I don’t think anybody is hiding anything,” Blades said. “There have been no discussions about this.”

“I think people are probably overreacting a little bit,” she said.

Blades said she doesn’t have an opinion on OCCA’s proposal to use one of four campuses in the district, but if it comes to pass, she views it as “a landlord-tenant relationship.”

“I don’t see any harm if we have classrooms available,” Barke said.

Like other school districts across Orange County and the state, PYLUSD has seen a steady drop in enrollment, which affects how much funding it receives from the state. The district’s enrollment this school year is 23,138 compared to 25,741 in the 2017-18 school year, according to the California Department of Education.

OCCA

The Orange County Classical Academy opened at 4100 E. Walnut Ave. in Orange in August 2020 after the Orange Unified School Board narrowly approved its creation.

The school offers a curriculum based on the Barney Charter School Initiative, a project of Hillsdale College in southern Michigan, which focuses on “a content-rich classical education in the liberal arts and sciences, with instruction in the principles of moral character and civic virtue,” according to the school’s online family handbook.

Critics have expressed concern that the curriculum, which focuses on Western civilization and classic texts, may have a cultural and religious bias. Hillsdale’s history program, the “1776 Curriculum,” appears to be partly based on former President Donald Trump’s “1776 Commission,” the New York Times reported. Hillsdale’s president, Larry Arnn, chaired that commission.

Barke describes the curriculum this way: “It’s the education our founders received, the way education used to be, and was dramatically changed over the last generation.”

A leader in the Republican Party of Orange County, Barke has at times been a controversial figure. He’s a doctor who has advocated against vaccines and masking, once pulling out a gun during a video to say that a concealed weapon offered more protection against COVID-19 than a face mask.

Barke said he wanted to open OCCA — co-founded with Mark Bucher of the libertarian California Policy Center — after he lost a reelection bid to the Los Alamitos Unified School Board.

Less than two years after it opened, OCCA sought to leave Orange Unified for a new charter, this time under the umbrella of the Orange County Department of Education where the Orange County Board of Education trustees are considered “charter-friendly” and regularly approve charter requests.

In February 2022, the Orange County Board of Education approved OCCA’s petition to expand from a TK-8th grade school to a TK-to-12th grade school. Mari Barke, Jeff Barke’s wife and a county Board of Education trustee, abstained from the vote.

Trustees also consented to OCCA’s request to open new campuses. The 173-page petition to the county at the time stated that OCCA had identified four prospective school facilities within the following school districts for expansion: Capistrano Unified, Huntington Beach City School District, Huntington Beach Union High School District and Placentia-Yorba Linda Unified.

But first, the school wants to create a high school.

Its Orange campus enrolls 529 students and has a waiting list of some 900 families, according to Jeff Barke, and it cannot accommodate more students.

While the school got the thumbs up from the county to expand over a year ago, finding land has proven difficult, Jeff Barke said. Other areas the school may consider, he said, include the Ocean View School District in Huntington Beach where trustees are considering closing down campuses due to a drop in enrollment as well as private properties where the school can either rent or build upon.

Orange Unified

Orange Unified is another district where OCCA has considered expansion.

Earlier this month, some parents at Esplanade Elementary, which is adjacent to OCCA, expressed concerns about rumors that their campus could either close or be forced to share facilities with a charter school.

“Esplanade has been a second home for my family for over 29 years,” parent Veronica Cisneros said in Spanish to the Orange Unified board. Is it true that the school could close, she asked the board. “I want an answer from you.”

Cisneros and other Esplanade parents waited until almost 2:30 a.m. during a mid-April meeting to address the board during a public comment period held at the end of a meeting lasting more than seven hours. But as is typical, board members did not respond.

Barke referred questions about Esplanade to the district.

In February, OCCA proposed leasing a vacant portion of Esplanade for up to three grades, but it has since rescinded that “letter of intent to lease,” Orange Unified officials said.

In May 2022, Orange Unified entered into an agreement with OCCA to pay out $200,000, spread out over four academic years, in lieu of the district providing the charter school with facilities, as required under state law.

California’s Proposition 39, passed by voters in 2000, mandates that school districts must provide charter school students with facilities that are “reasonably equivalent” to those used by students in traditional schools, as long as the charter has at least 80 students who live in that district.

Some residents say they worry OCCA is attempting to bypass the Prop 39 process to avoid more scrutiny for the facilities the charter is requesting and in communities where they will get less pushback.

It has yet to be determined whether OCCA will eventually share a campus with a traditional school or if a school might consolidate two half-empty campuses and provide the other to OCCA, Barke said.

There are 1,285 charter schools in California. They are tuition-free public schools, funded by taxpayers, that are exempt from many laws governing school districts.

The California Charter Schools Association does not track how many share campuses, but it is not uncommon, officials said. In the Los Angeles Unified School District, there are 297 charters. About 75 of those share campuses with a traditional school, said Ricardo Soto, an attorney for the association.

Charters

Some parents fear that if a charter school utilizes some classrooms, it could eventually take over the whole campus. That happened in Mission Viejo in 2012, one year after Oxford Preparatory Academy began sharing a campus with Barcelona Hills Elementary.

In Orange County, four charter schools authorized under the Orange County Department of Education share facilities with district schools or centers, according to that county agency. They include Sycamore Creek Community Charter which sits on the Oak View Elementary campus in Huntington Beach.

Educators and school district leaders have traditionally been leery of most charter schools.

A few years back, for example, Capistrano Unified officials asked the College and Career Advantage Regional Occupational Program, or ROP,  to move locations so that the district could move a charter to ROP’s old spot and avoid placing it at a high school campus, said Kim Thomas, the director of instructional services.

“The fear when a charter comes in is that they’re taking money out of the district’s pocket, and if they’re sharing space, (the traditional public school) could lose even more students,” said Thomas, a PYLUSD parent.

“I’m in public education so I believe in public education. And I don’t want to see anything pulled away from that,” Thomas said. “But I understand why some parents are looking for an alternative if they’re not happy with services provided.”

Sharing campuses has become more common in some spots, especially at L.A. Unified, but how well the sharing goes depends in part on the administrators running the show, said Brianna Garcia, vice president of School Services of California, Inc., a Sacramento-based school consulting company.

“Sometimes they get along great and they do things jointly and it’s a beautiful relationship,” Garcia said, “and sometimes it’s a complete nightmare.”

Related Articles

​ Orange County Register 

Sega of America workers in Irvine file for union election

• April 28, 2023

Workers with Sega of America in Irvine have voted to unionize and have filed a petition with the National Labor Relations Board to hold a union election as they lobby for higher wages, improved benefits and increased staffing.

If approved, the union — comprised of 144 employees across the video game and entertainment company’s various departments — will be called  Allied Employees Guild Improving Sega (AEGIS) and would be aligned with the Communications Workers of America (AEGIS-CWA) as they seek improved workplace conditions.

In a statement, the newly created union noted that “nearly a third” of Sega’s long-time workers are still not working full-time and lack paid time off, proper training and bereavement leave.

The Sega employees are calling for:

Higher base pay with raises tied to the cost of living and inflation
Improved healthcare benefits
Increased opportunities for advancement
Balanced workloads and scheduling
Clearly defined responsibilities for all positions
Adequate staffing to avoid “patterns of overwork”

“We have built bridges with fellow workers from across our company in an effort to understand our shared issues, and those that are unique to each department,” the fledgling union said.

In a letter sent to employees on Wednesday, April 26, Sega of America President and Chief Operating Officer Ian Curran said Sega is investigating and considering the options available to the company.

“Some of you may support unionization and some not,” Curran said. “That is your legal right. No SOA employee will be treated any differently whether they support or do not support unionization.”

Curran touted the company’s culture and said Sega has a “strong commitment to working together as a team.”

Two workers who spoke to The Verge said they haven’t experienced any anti-union sentiments from Sega management.

Sega is known among gamers for popular offerings such as “Streets of Rage 2,” “Sonic the Hedgehog 2,” “Phantasy Star IV” and “Castlevania: Bloodlines,” among others.

In an interview posted on CultureSlate.com, AEGIS-CWA member Mohammad Saman said a unionized workforce would give the Irvine staff a say in decisions that shape employee working conditions, while also ensuring job security.

“It’s been so exciting to see that through organizing, we can make this work a sustainable long-term career,” he said. “We’re excited to protect what already makes Sega great, and help build an even stronger company, together.”

CWA has participated in similar unionizing efforts at Blizzard Albany, a division of Irvine-based video game developer and publisher Blizzard Entertainment, and ZeniMax, another video game maker based in Rockville, Maryland.

Many workers in the video game industry have pushed for unionization in recent years, including Raven Software quality assurance employees. And Microsoft signed a neutrality agreement with CWA, saying it will take a neutral approach to any employee unionization efforts at Activision Blizzard studios, should deals go through.

​ Orange County Register 

Analysis: NFL QBs drafted 1-2 often don’t both have success

• April 28, 2023

By ROB MAADDI AP Pro Football Writer

KANSAS CITY, Mo. — Bryce Young was walking to an interview after being picked first in the NFL draft when he heard C.J. Stroud was selected second.

Young celebrated with a loud scream and a big smile.

The two childhood friends from Southern California became the ninth pair of quarterbacks picked 1-2 overall since the AFL-NFL merger in 1970 and the first Black signal-callers. They shared a hug after the Carolina Panthers took Young first and rejoiced when Stroud went next to the Houston Texans.

“C.J. is like a brother to me and hearing him selected was amazing,” said Young, who starred at Mater Dei High before a spectacular career at Alabama. “He is a great player and person and to be going through this process together is surreal.”

History says it’s a longshot that both QBs will have successful careers.

Young and Stroud, who starred at Rancho Cucamonga High, already have defied the odds getting here so they’re up for the challenge. So is Anthony Richardson, who was chosen at No. 4 by the Indianapolis Colts.

“The city of Houston hasn’t seen a franchise quarterback in a long time,” Stroud said. “I definitely think I can become a franchise quarterback. I got to put in a lot of work.”

Of the previous 16 quarterbacks selected 1-2, only Peyton Manning won a Super Bowl for the team that drafted him. Jim Plunkett was picked No. 1 by the New England Patriots in 1971, but he won two Super Bowls for the Raiders years later. Carson Wentz was 11-2 as a starter for the 2017 Philadelphia Eagles, but a knee injury forced him to miss that team’s Super Bowl run.

Other QBs in that group have produced wide-ranging results.

Archie Manning was the second pick behind Plunkett. He had a lengthy career mostly with the New Orleans Saints, but was 35-101-3 and never had a winning season.

Drew Bledsoe, the No. 1 pick in 1993 by New England, was a four-time Pro Bowl pick in 14 seasons. He also won a Super Bowl backing up Tom Brady in 2001. Rick Mirer, chosen second in that draft by Seattle, played a decade in the league but was 24-44 as a starter.

The greatest contrast between two players picked 1-2 was Manning and Ryan Leaf in 1998. Manning is a Hall of Famer and Leaf is one of the draft’s all-time biggest busts.

In 1999, the Cleveland Browns took Tim Couch at No. 1 and the Philadelphia Eagles selected Donovan McNabb second. Couch lasted five seasons, going 22-37. McNabb was a six-time Pro Bowl pick who helped the Eagles reach the NFC championship game five times with one Super Bowl appearance.

Thirteen years later, Andrew Luck and Robert Griffin III went 1-2. Luck was on a Hall of Fame path with the Colts until he abruptly retired before the start of the 2019 season. Griffin was the AP’s Offensive Rookie of the Year, but a serious knee injury hindered his career.

Jameis Winston and Marcus Mariota were the first two picks in 2015. They’ve had moderate success and now are backups. Winston is on his second team and Mariota is with his fourth.

Jared Goff was picked ahead of Wentz in 2016. He led the Rams to a Super Bowl appearance before he was traded to Detroit for Matthew Stafford. Goff revived his career with the Lions last season and made his third Pro Bowl. Wentz is a free agent seeking his fourth team in four years.

Trevor Lawrence and Zach Wilson were the first two picks in 2021. Lawrence led the Jacksonville Jaguars to a playoff win in his second season. Wilson has lost his starting job with the New York Jets to future Hall of Famer Aaron Rodgers.

Young and Stroud have tremendous potential but there are plenty of question marks.

Young wasn’t a sure-fire No. 1 pick like Lawrence, Joe Burrow and Luck. His slender size is a legitimate concern. Though he dominated at Alabama where he won the 2021 Heisman Trophy, it’s fair to wonder whether he could handle the rigors of the NFL.

“There’s a lot said about the size,” Panthers coach Frank Reich said. “At the end of the day, there’s a lot of factors that go into it but we’re coaches, we’re scouts, we watch the tape and when you watch the tape, Bryce Young is the best player.”

Stroud wasn’t even sure he’d be picked in the top 20 because of reports that he scored poorly in the S2 Cognition test came out recently. He spoke candidly in a media tour for Tidal and Lockerverse hours before the draft and cried after he got the call from the Texans.

“I think I’m battle-tested,” Stroud said. “I think God has put a lot of trials and tribulations in my life. It’s not for no reason. It’s to lead people to him and get me ready for what I have to go through. I wear the armor of God and I’m scarred up. But that’s what you want. You want somebody who has been through adversity and somebody who will persevere through issues. I’m not really worried about the talk. People are going to talk good, bad, ugly, sad. I’m just going to continue to be myself and be a man of God.”

The dynamic, dual-threat Richardson has the biggest upside of the three QBs but also the most bust potential. He threw only 393 passes in his career at Florida so he’s raw and needs time to develop.

“I’m willing to work harder than anybody,” Richardson said. “God blessed me with physical abilities that not every quarterback has. People see me, they don’t think I’m a quarterback. I’m not an average quarterback, and I can do things other QBs can’t do. So I definitely take pride in that. And then I’m also willing to learn. I’m willing to be just as good or, if not, better than all these quarterbacks in the draft or all the quarterbacks in the league.”

Time will tell how the 2023 QB draft class will be judged.

Related Articles

Former Ohio State quarterback C.J. Stroud celebrates after being selected second overall by the Houston Texans during the NFL draft on Thursday night in Kansas City, Mo. The former Rancho Cucamonga High star is expected to compete for the starting job right away. (Photo by David Eulitt/Getty Images)

​ Orange County Register 

‘Peter Pan & Wendy’ review: A real-live adventure this time from Disney’s recycling bin

• April 28, 2023

You could say “Peter Pan & Wendy,” the latest voyage to the Disney+ recycling bin, is an unexpectedly strong movie. But it’s not unexpected, so really, you shouldn’t call it that.

The director and co-writer David Lowery has made nothing but interesting features, six so far, and while his latest (co-written by Toby Halbrooks) turns into a bit of a Lost Boy here and there in its brooding investigation of why Captain Hook, played by a happily camp-averse Jude Law, got that way, it’s a stirring adaptation of J.M. Barrie’s fantasy, now streaming.

“Peter Pan & Wendy” starts where it ought to, in London at night. In Lowery’s film, the Darling family (Molly Parker and Alan Tudyk appear as Ma and Pa in the bookend sequences) is about to send a trepidatious Wendy off to boarding school. Like the eternal boy she’s been hearing about in stories most of her young life, she prefers not to grow up too quickly.

The magical arrival of Peter Pan and Tinker Bell, and the whisking of the eager Darling children off to Neverland, changes the itinerary. Director Lowery and his digital-effects army deliver a quite-good initial flight (straight through Big Ben, into a kind of time-warp thingie up in the stars) and Neverland is played by the Faroe Islands between Iceland and Norway, plus Newfoundland and Labrador and bits of British Columbia. It looks like a place you’d actually love to visit, as opposed to, say, Steven Spielberg’s soundstage-bound “Hook,” which I still wake up screaming about sometimes.

“Peter Pan & Wendy” relates directly in visual terms to Lowery’s knack for real-world landscape amid fantastical wonders in films such as “Pete’s Dragon” and, more recently, “The Green Knight.” All the Barrie basics, and ideas cooked up in the 1953 Disney animated feature, remain in this version. Peter vs. Hook. Tiger Lily and the Lost Boys. The crocodile. The reluctance to grow up. Sword fights, pirates, flying, you know the drill. But “Peter Pan & Wendy” goes its own ways. Peter, played by Alexander Molony with a determinedly low-key touch, isn’t sidelined, exactly, but Wendy’s in the forefront. As Ever Anderson plays her, she’s a vibrant protagonist on her own quest. The Lost Boys and Hook’s pirates give us a multiethnic array of actors, which is the sort of thing we don’t really even have to note these days.

The narrative stalls periodically in its devotion to Hook’s vicious obsession with Peter, and the story behind that (no spoilers here). “Show me a child who truly knows the difference between right and wrong,” Hook says at one tense point, “and I’ll show you a man who can’t remember why it mattered in the first place.” Some of this psychodrama works; some of it works too hard. But Lowery invests the whole of it with a mood both grave and warm, with serious dramatic stakes.

A scene still from Disney’s live-action “Peter Pan & Wendy,” exclusively on Disney+. (Disney Enterprises, Inc/TNS)

The crocodile has grown: It’s more of a Kraken-dile in size, though Lowery wisely keeps the scares largely in check. It’s a delicate balance, maintaining Barrie’s childhood fantasies and fears while going for the right kind of humor and action. Notably, there’s very, very little in the way of wearying sarcasm or self-referential clutter here. And that, among other reasons, is why the film works.

Show of hands: How many of you like Disney’s business plan, based on the recent animation-to-live-action evidence and the remakes perpetually coming soon? It’s a simple plan, posing a simple rhetorical corporate question: Why chart a course for destinations unknown when there are so many known destinations to revisit?

Don’t love it myself. But hiring creatives who are truly creative doesn’t hurt.

———

‘PETER PAN & WENDY’

3 stars (out of 4)

Rated: PG (for violence, peril and thematic elements)

Running time: 1:46

How to watch: Disney+

Ever Anderson as Wendy in Disney’s live-action “Peter Pan & Wendy,” on Disney+. (Disney Enterprises, Inc/TNS)

©2023 Chicago Tribune. Visit chicagotribune.com. Distributed by Tribune Content Agency, LLC.

​ Orange County Register 

‘Culture war’ erupts over mortgage fee hikes for borrowers

• April 28, 2023

The news landed like red meat at a conservative political rally.

Acting “in the dark of night,” the narrative goes, the Biden administration is raising mortgage fees for low-risk borrowers to pay for discounts on riskier borrowers with lower credit scores.

Critics say the change, effective Monday, May 1, penalizes sensible, middle-income borrowers to help low-income and minority households buy homes.

“This is left-wing, socialist ideology,” said Fox News business commentator Larry Kudlow, a Trump Administration economic advisor. “This is an outrage. This is an attack on the American dream.”

On Wednesday, 18 GOP senators sent a letter to the Federal Housing Finance Agency, which oversees government-sponsored mortgage giants Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac, calling the fee revision a shortsighted policy that “punishes hardworking Americans for their fiscal prudence.”

The FHFA pushed back, adamantly denying that low-risk borrowers are subsidizing fee cuts for higher-risk borrowers.

“Higher-credit-score borrowers are not being charged more so that lower-credit-score borrowers can pay less,” FHFA Director Sandra Thompson said in a statement Tuesday. “The updated fees, as was true of the prior fees, generally increase as credit scores decrease.”

Meanwhile, real estate industry groups weighed in, complaining that fee hikes are bad because they put homeownership — already unaffordable due to high prices and high interest rates — even further out of reach.

“I think, unfortunately, a debate about a housing policy issue became very politicized and is clearly being used … as an opportunity to beat up on the FHFA and Freddie and Fannie,” said Dave Stevens, a former Mortgage Bankers Association CEO who served as Federal Housing Administration commissioner during the Obama Administration. “A simple debate over a housing policy issue has now clearly become wrapped up into a kind of culture war.”

Upfront fees

For more than half a century, Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac ensured there was adequate cash in the housing market by buying “conforming” mortgages from banks and other lenders, freeing them up to lend more money to additional buyers. It’s also part of their “statutory mission” to make homeownership affordable, Thompson said.

The two enterprises accounted for 52% of U.S. mortgage volume since 2019, according to figures from Black Knight. The combined value of those new loans totaled nearly $7.3 trillion over the past 4 ¼ years.

As compensation for guaranteeing their loans, the two lending agencies charge upfront fees that vary based on the borrower’s down payment and credit score.

Lenders pay Fannie and Freddie the upfront fees when selling the loans, then pass them on to the consumer, typically as a bump in their mortgage interest rate.

Starting in January 2022, the FHFA began announcing a series of changes to those upfront fees, known at Fannie Mae as “loan-level price adjustments,” or LLPAs, and as credit fees at Freddie Mac.

The FHFA said the changes were part of a long-overdue recalibration designed to strengthen Fannie and Freddie’s “safety and soundness.”

Some of the changes, FHFA added, seek to help first-time homebuyers and low- and moderate-income borrowers. Among those changes:

— Elimination of upfront fees for moderate- to low-income first-time homebuyers as well as the elimination of fees for borrowers participating in affordable mortgage programs like HomeReady, Home Possible and HFA Advantage loans.

— Higher upfront fees for second-home loans, high-balance loans (ranging from $726,201 to $1.089 million) and cash-out refinances — loans that aren’t part of Fannie’s and Freddie’s “core mission.” Customers for these types of loans have other alternatives in the marketplace, The FHFA said.

— A new upfront fee for borrowers with debts exceeding 40% of their income. (An outcry over the so-called debt-to-income or DTI fee prompted FHFA to postpone implementation until Aug. 1.)

— A new fee structure that raises fees for some borrowers and lowers it for others. FHFA said it’s designed to improve Fannie’s and Freddie’s capital position while also helping households “limited by wealth or income” to buy homes.

“These actions … create a more resilient housing finance system,” Thompson said.

‘Misperceptions’

Among the misperceptions, the FHFA says, is a claim that those with lower credit scores will pay smaller fees than better-performing borrowers under the new plan.

Not true, the agency said.

While fees will go up for some good-scoring borrowers and down for others with lower scores, those with poorer credit still will pay more overall. However, the gap between the two will be smaller.

For example, a borrower with a score of 640 putting 20% down on a $500,000 mortgage will see his or her fee drop to $11,250 under the new plan, down from $12,500.

For a borrower with a score of 740 making that same down payment on that same loan, the new fee will rise to $4,375, up from $2,500 before the change. Despite the increase, this borrower’s fees still are lower than the borrower with lower credit scores.

According to the FHFA, the new fees typically translate into a 0.05% percentage point increase in a borrower’s mortgage rate.

For someone buying a Southern California home with a median price of $705,000, that’s equivalent to an $18 increase in his or her monthly mortgage payment, or $6,480 over the life of a 30-year loan.

Credit risk

While the FHFA maintains it merely is updating its pricing framework to protect Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac against credit risk, critics argue it’s doing just the opposite.

“FHFA … willfully ignores the realities of creditworthiness in an effort to push Americans into homes they may be ill-suited to afford,” said the GOP letter, spearheaded by Sen. Roger “Doc” Marshall, R-Kan., and Sen. Thom Tillis, R-N.C. “The fact that a proposal flaunting credit risk is being openly pushed by FHFA just a decade-and-a-half after the housing-led 2008 financial crisis is staggering.”

The FHFA denies there’s an increased risk of a 2007-style mortgage meltdown because underwriting standards remain unchanged.

And it disputes claims the new fee structure subsidizes bad credit scores at the cost of good credit scores.

There is a subsidy in the new framework, but it’s coming from fee hikes on second-home loans, high-balance loans and cash-out refinances, not from borrowers with higher credit scores, the FHFA said.

Nevertheless, some industry leaders dispute FHFA claims there’s no subsidy coming from higher-scoring borrowers.

“It’s quite the opposite of risk-based pricing,” said Jerry Howard, CEO of the National Association of Home Builders, calling the new matrix “income distribution.”

Stevens, the former FHA commissioner, said he knows better after four decades in the mortgage industry, including almost a decade running the single-family business for Freddie Mac.

“I know LLPAs and their history,” Stevens said. “These are significant adjustments. And it wasn’t just a pure risk-based price adjustment based on some new view of risk.”

In a statement issued Wednesday, National Association of Realtors President Kenny Parcell praised the fee cuts contained in the new matrix. But he criticized fee hikes, calling them unnecessary and saying they impact both trade-up borrowers and middle-wealth Americans affected by rising home prices and higher mortgage rates.

“These borrowers face the same surge in financing costs as entry-level homebuyers experienced over the last year,” Purcell said.

Taken together, the fee reforms are “a mixed bag,” said the NAHB’s Howard.

“It potentially will provide people with homeownership opportunities they wouldn’t have had. And that’s important,” Howard said in a phone interview. “(But) unless there is some really strict monitoring and underwriting, you are allowing a more risky borrowing pool into the market. … Robbing Peter to pay Paul is a nice political maneuver to appeal to the base that the administration wants to appeal to, but it is not a fix for the problem.”

Related Articles

​ Orange County Register 

Wendy’s ‘beloved’ chili to be sold in grocery store cans this spring

• April 28, 2023

Karu F. Daniels | New York Daily News

Wendy’s famous homestyle chili will be coming to grocery store aisles later this spring.

The fast food chain announced a partnership this week to package its signature comfort food in a can that will hit shelves across the country.

According to the company, each can will contain 29 grams of protein, and be made with “savory all-natural beef, and the perfect mix of peppers, beans and a rich tomato-based sauce.”

“Wendy’s Chili has been a beloved menu item since our beginnings in 1969,” marketing chief Carl Loredo said in the announcement. “We’re thrilled about the partnership with Conagra Brands and to have the opportunity to bring our brand’s iconic chili flavor to even more fans. When the Wendy’s chili craving hits, you now have two delicious ways to get your fix — at retail stores or in our restaurants.”

Conagra Brands’ portfolio of grocery store brands include Birds Eye, Duncan Hines, Healthy Choice and Marie Callender’s.

Juliette van de Walle, an executive at the Chicago-based company, said: “We worked closely with Wendy’s culinary team to ensure we brought through the indulgent flavors and delicious ingredients of the chili that has been a long-time staple on the Wendy’s menu.”

Wendy’s — known for its freshly prepared square-shaped burgers and chocolate Frosty shakes — was founded in 1969 by Dave Thomas in Columbus, Ohio. Their moderately priced chili has been on the menu since the early days when its enterprising owner reportedly came up with the idea to cut down on waste from leftover hamburger meat.

The chili will have a suggested retail price of $4.99 per can.

©2023 New York Daily News. Visit nydailynews.com. Distributed by Tribune Content Agency, LLC.

​ Orange County Register 

Abortion bans fail in conservative S. Carolina, Nebraska

• April 28, 2023

By Margery A. Beck and James Pollard | Associated Press

LINCOLN, Neb. — Abortion bans in Nebraska and South Carolina fell short of advancing in close votes amid heated debates among Republicans, confounding conservatives who have dominated both legislatures and further exposing the chasm on the issue of abortion within the GOP.

In Nebraska, where abortion is banned after 20 weeks of pregnancy, an effort to ban abortion at about the sixth week of pregnancy fell one vote short of breaking a filibuster. Cheers erupted outside the legislative chamber as the last vote was cast, with opponents of the bill waving signs and chanting, “Whose house? Our house!”

In South Carolina, lawmakers voted 22-21 to shelve a near-total abortion ban for the rest of the year. Republican Sen. Sandy Senn criticized Majority Leader Shane Massey for repeatedly “taking us off a cliff on abortion.”

“The only thing that we can do when you all, you men in the chamber, metaphorically keep slapping women by raising abortion again and again and again, is for us to slap you back with our words,” she said.

The Nebraska proposal, backed by Republican Gov. Jim Pillen, is unlikely to move forward this year. And in South Carolina, where abortion remains legal through 22 weeks of pregnancy, the vote marked the third time a near-total abortion ban has failed in the Republican-led Senate chamber since the U.S. Supreme Court reversed Roe v. Wade last summer.

Katie Glenn, the state policy director for Susan B. Anthony Pro-Life America, characterized the failure of both proposed abortion bans as disappointing.

“It’s a sign that legislating is hard, and there’s a lot of pieces and parts that all have to come together,” Glenn said.

The bans’ staunchest supporters have promised political retribution.

Since the fall of Roe, both states have become regional havens of sorts as they’ve watched neighboring states enact stricter abortion bans. Conservative lawmakers have bitterly made that observation in Nebraska, which has a long history as a leader in abortion restrictions. In 2010, it was the first state in the nation to ban abortion after 20 weeks of pregnancy.

Most aggravating to some Republicans is that the pushback is coming from inside the house. The Nebraska bill on Thursday failed when Republican Sen. Merv Riepe, an 80-year-old former hospital administrator, refused to give it the crucial 33rd vote needed to advance. Riepe was an original co-signer of the bill but later expressed concern that a six-week ban might not give women enough time to know they were pregnant.

When his fellow Republicans rejected an amendment he offered to extend the proposed ban to 12 weeks and add an exception for fatal fetal anomalies, Riepe pointed to his own election last year against a Democrat who made abortion rights central to her campaign. His margin of victory dropped from 27 percentage points in the May primary election, which occurred before the fall of Roe, to under 5 percentage points in the general election.

“Had my opponent had more time, more money, and more name recognition, she could have won. This made the message clear to me how critical abortion will be in 2024,” he said. “We must embrace the future of reproductive rights.”

Riepe and some Republicans across the country have noted evidence pointing to abortion bans as unpopular with a majority of Americans. An AP VoteCast nationwide survey of the 2022 electorate showed only about 1 in 10 midterm voters — including Republicans — believe abortion should be “illegal in all cases.” Overall, a majority of voters said abortion should be legal in all or most cases. That includes nearly 9 in 10 Democrats and about 4 in 10 Republicans.

An Associated Press-NORC Center for Public Affairs Research poll in July showed Republicans are largely opposed to abortion “for any reason” and at 15 weeks into a pregnancy. But only 16% of Republicans say abortion generally should be “illegal in all cases.”

Even so, Republican politicians who buck party leadership on abortion can find themselves targets of political retaliation. The backlash against Riepe was swift, with public reprimands from the governor and fellow Republican lawmakers. Anti-abortion groups demanded his immediate resignation. And the Nebraska Republican Party issued a statement warning that Riepe would be censured.

“The entities and individuals who aided in the defeat of a Core Republican Value have been duly noted by the leadership of this party. ‘The Watchfulness in the Citizen’ applies now more than ever,” the statement reads.

Riepe did not return a message Friday seeking comment on the backlash.

Likewise, some of the South Carolina Republican holdouts shared last week that they received anatomical backbone figurines from an anti-abortion group urging them to “grow a spine” and pass a ban starting at conception.

The South Carolina vote came with days left in a session that began shortly after the state’s highest court struck down a 2021 law banning abortion when cardiac activity is detected, about six weeks into pregnancy. Since then, both chambers have advanced abortion bans at differing stages — a disagreement that Massey, the Senate majority leader, hoped to resolve by considering the stricter House bill.

Frustrated after his last-ditch effort to break the impasse, Massey issued a warning for the ban’s fiercest Republican opponent.

“The response to Sen. Senn will be in 2024,” Massey told reporters after the vote, referring to elections next year.

Fourteen states have bans in place on abortion at all stages of pregnancy. Four other states have bans throughout pregnancy where enforcement is blocked by courts. The majority of those bans were adopted in anticipation of Roe being overturned, and most do not have exceptions for rape or incest.

In Utah, a judge on Friday heard a request from Planned Parenthood to delay implementing a statewide ban on abortion clinics set to take effect next week. Planned Parenthood argues a state law passed this year will effectively end access to abortion throughout the state when clinics stop being able to apply for the licenses they’ve historically relied on to operate.

In North Dakota, Gov. Doug Burgum signed a ban Monday that has narrow exceptions: Abortion is legal in pregnancies caused by rape or incest, but only in the first six weeks of pregnancy. Abortion is allowed later in pregnancy only in specific medical emergencies. The North Dakota law is intended to replace a previous ban that is not being enforced while a state court weighs its constitutionality.

And on Friday, Tennessee Republican Gov. Bill Lee reversed course and signed off on softening the state’s strict abortion ban. That change came after several high-profile Republican lawmakers warned early in the session that doctors and patients were facing steep risks under Tennessee’s so-called trigger law, arguing that the statute did not include clear exemptions when a physician may provide abortion services.

Pollard reported from Columbia, South Carolina. Associated Press writer Freida Frisaro contributed from Fort Lauderdale, Florida. James Pollard is a corps member for the Associated Press/Report for America Statehouse News Initiative. Report for America is a nonprofit national service program that places journalists in local newsrooms to report on undercovered issues.

​ Orange County Register