 So welcome to our webinar on the Golden States. Today I'm happy to introduce two of our California documents librarians, Lucia Orlando and Jesse Silva. Lucia is the government documents coordinator and research support librarian for arts, humanities, and social sciences at the University of California, Santa Cruz. She's a NorCal native with a keen interest in local history and politics. And Jesse is the librarian for federal and state government information, political science, public policy, and legal studies at the University of California, Berkeley. And he is a native Californian as well. So thank you very much. Thanks Linda and thanks Jesse. Welcome everyone. We're so glad that you could join us today to talk about some California issues that are reflected at the national level. We hope by the end of our talk you'll have a better understanding of issues being championed by California and where to go to find more information about these topics. We have a lot to cover, but don't worry. We'll provide a list of links to all the resources we mentioned on our slides and with a few more at the end. Now Jesse is sharing the webinar so you'll hear me let him know to advance our slides whenever I'm speaking. Here are the topics we're going to be covering. Politics, a little bit about agriculture, the environment, mainly about our changing climate, information about energy, immigration, and open data. So the title of our talk is California issues reflected at the state level. Most of you probably know California has challenged federal policy in the past. So the current opposition to federal policies is not a new phenomenon. For example, California filed suit to defend the constitutionality of federal health care reform in 2013. And so the EPA in 2008 over California's right to set stricter air pollution standards. And then going way back, California also challenged the federal government over the right to institute the use of medical marijuana starting in 1997. With this in mind, we'll hope you'll come away with an understanding of these outcomes, basically an understanding of the forces shaping pressing issues in California, and give you a sense of the rich variety of resources that are available from both state and non-government policy experts. So the image on this slide is of the California.gov website. If you haven't had a chance to use it, I strongly encourage you to take a look. Like the North Carolina website, it's designed to address a variety of audiences and needs, like living in California, working, living, and doing business in California. It's powered by a really good search engine, so you can find resources we show by typing in the name. We do always have to have the URL. It's true. California is big. Before we launch into things, a little context is in order. It's important to bear in mind that California is a really large state, as you can see from this slide. This map shows a reverse image of California, with San Francisco overlaid on New York City, to give you a sense of how big the distances between coastal cities and the Central Valley farmlands are. Basically, California is a big state with a variety of people, viewpoints, and economic conditions that make for very interesting politics and policies. We wanted to have some fun and kick things off with a quick trivial quiz called How Much Do You Know About California? We'll be interspersing these little quizzes throughout our talk. Most of these are true or false questions, so please add your answers to the chat. Here's the first one. Put your answer in the chat box. The question is, the nine counties that compose the San Francisco Bay Area consistently vote to support both socially and physically liberal positions? Actually, the answer is true. Well done, everybody. I know it's surprising even for people who live here, but let's get into the political picture a little bit more. So when you see a map of California counties color-coded with their political leanings, it's easy to think that the state is split pretty evenly between Democrats and Republicans. And depending on your color preference, you might even think that the state means a little bit more Republican. And this is because the state population is unevenly distributed with conservative voters more likely to be dispersed throughout rural or less populated areas. So this next slide actually changes the size of geographic areas based on population density, which makes the rural population place and touching the political makeup of California much more apparent. You might need to enlarge your screens a little bit more to really see this, but this slide really helps conceptualize how much influence the heavily populated San Francisco Bay Area and Los Angeles area have when it comes to statewide elections. This particular slide came from a report issued by the Nonprofit Public Policy Institute of California, or if we just call it PPIC. They're an excellent source of nonpartisan objective information about California politics and provide background of pressing issues. PPIC regularly surveys Californians to solicit their views on issues like politics, education, crime, and the environment. The most recent addition to those theories titled California's Future, Political Landscape, presented findings that provide good insight into the makeup of the California electorate. So now that you've seen the role demographics plays in state political makeup, it's important to note a few other things about political leanings in California. So California has become a part of the Democratic state over time. Starting in the 1980s, California started to move away from voting Republican and national and statewide elections. This trend accelerated in the late 90s, which Jesse will provide some insights on in a little while. Today, the California legislature and officials in other elected offices are primarily affiliated with the Democratic Party, which makes California one of the most predominantly Democratic states in the U.S. And it's important to note that there are varying shades of liberal in the state. So the San Francisco Bay Area, according to the public policy, to PPIC, is most strongly liberal on both social and fiscal issues, whereas other areas of the state tend to lean more moderate to conservative. So independent or declined state voters are also a fast-growing group who make up a little over 23 percent of voters. While they vote independent, about 60 percent of them tend to lean Democratic. PPIC surveyed Californians and found that in California, 14 percent are very liberal, 21 percent are somewhat liberal, and 30 percent consider themselves middle of the road. 20 percent are somewhat conservative, and 13 percent are very conservative. So that just gives you a little bit of a picture of California, even though we tend to be much more liberal and vote Democratic. It's not a one-size-for-all. Now I'll turn it over to Jesse to talk a little bit more about some things to keep in mind when trying to understand California politics. Probably the most well-known aspect of California politics are the ballot and propositions. These get a lot of press during election times with some weird or crazy proposition on the ballot in California. These propositions are the result of government reforms in the early part of the 20th century to allow direct democracy participation. Anyone or any organization can have an initiative qualify for inclusion on the ballot. There is a process they must follow which includes fees gathering a set number of signatures by a deadline and having the state verify a sample of the signatures. The legislature can also place propositions for constitutional amendments and other issues on the ballot. The initiative process is not unique to California. 26 states also allow initiatives and referendums, but few use it to the extent that it is used in California. Counties in California also allow propositions to be placed on the ballot, and a number of measures placed on the ballot can vary from county to county. Over the last several years, the number of propositions to skyrocket in California, which can lead to a book-length election quote-unquote pamphlet. When I was living in San Francisco, I usually devoted a weekend afternoon to reading the pamphlet. These pamphlets have gotten so large that the NPR ran a story on the 2016 election about California's 17 propositions and San Francisco's 25 county propositions. The propositions also make for hundreds of millions of dollars to be spent on California elections, such as 83 million being spent on during Proposition 8 in 2008. Some of these propositions are not always moving straightforward in a liberal way. Some of these more infamous propositions that have passed include Prop 13, which was property tax limitation, which we'll talk more just a bit, same-sex marriage discrimination, which is Prop 22 in 2008, illegal aliens, ineligible for service, or what it was also called the Save Our State initiative, which is Prop 187 in 1994, which we'll talk more a bit later, and affirmative action being removed from the state in Prop 209 in 1996. A couple additional infamous propositions that didn't pass during the early days of the AIDS crisis, California voted on setting up quarantine camps for people who are HIV positive. This was Proposition 64 in 1986 and Proposition 69 in 1988. Both failed. I guess the point we're trying to get across is California has not always been the progressive state that it's known for now. Another point to keep in mind about the proposition process is that even though a proposition qualifies for an election and is voted in, there is no guarantee that it will be implemented into law. A number of propositions end up in court for various reasons or where they are overturned. This happened with Proposition 187 and eventually Proposition 8. If you want to research propositions in California, there's a database that's provided by UCH beings that has all the propositions going back to 1911 when the proposition started. Now let's talk about Proposition 13. Proposition 13, there are very few political events that have affected California and the California budget, like 1978's Proposition 13. I won't get into all the specifics of what the law does, but the big thing is that it limits property tax, except in a few cases it limits increases in property tax to 1%. I will also say that Proposition 13 cut the revenue generation for the state, resulting in major budget swings over the last 40 years since its passage. One of the reasons for this is it also set a threshold for passing a budget to two thirds of each house in the legislature. It also requires any bill enacted for the purpose of increasing state revenues to also pass by two thirds margin in each house of the legislature. California is the only state where supermajorities are required for legislation that will generate revenue and to pass a budget. Since Prop 13's passage, the state has used the ballot proposition process to enact a number of other propositions with implications on the California budget and its process, such as 1988's Proposition 98, which specified that approximately 39% of California's budget goes to KB Call of Education. Over time, this has preallocated much of the California budget, and according to one legislative member I spoke with a few years ago, the legislature only has power to change approximately 25% of the budget. This can create some strange bedfellows to get the budget passed, with a number of concessions made on both sides of the aisle. In recent years, California has had supermajorities of Democrats in the legislature, but this hasn't always been the case. Now we'll switch gears to a bit and talk about one of the big key drivers of California, California's economy, agriculture. But first, another quiz. Which state produces more dairy and cream, California or Wisconsin? While everybody's answering, I wanted to point out, we felt that with so much attention devoted to the industry in California, like Hollywood and the technology sector, we needed to make sure that California's agricultural sector didn't get overlooked. And if you said California, you win the prize. You win bragging rights. So, yes, California produces more dairy and milk products than Wisconsin. I know, I was surprised, too. I always hear about Wisconsin cheese, even here in California. So, as you can see here, California supplies a lot of the food consumed in the U.S. and abroad. California agriculture needs summation in many crops and livestock commodities. This is especially true for nuts like almonds and pistachios. And a lot of that surplus is also exported. So you can see the top five export markets. And again, our top exports are almonds, wine, which is not too surprising now. And I was a little more surprised to see rice and hay make the top of that list, too. So agriculture is a big business that needs lots of workers, land, and water. And agriculture is very vulnerable to the effects of climate change, which brings me to our next topic on the environment. But first, a quiz. So, how many inches of sea level rice have been measured along the California coast in the last 100 years? I'm impressed. That's right. Seven inches it is. Go ahead to the next slide. Really, the conversations about the California environment and energy use always come down to a discussion of climate change. That is the driving force when it comes to talking about the environment in California, as well as energy usage and energy production. Reducing greenhouse gases is crucial. And greenhouse gases are short little tighter fluorocarbons, usually see it abbreviated as HFCs, such as methane, black carbon, and most fluorinated gases. So together, they're powerful climate warming gases and harmful air pollutants. Methane represents one type of greenhouse gas that would definitely spark some pushback in the state's course to reduce them. This is because the California Air Resources Board has put forth a reduction proposal that could significantly affect California's dairy industry, which is responsible for more than half of the state's coal and methane emissions. So I'd say keep an eye on this. We're keeping an eye on this, too. So really, the changes that we're seeing in the climate are already happening. California has embraced a leadership role in combating climate change. And this makes sense because we have a lot at stake with a huge population concentrated along the coast line, hundreds of acres of forested mountains, and a thriving agricultural economy. All of these things require, excuse me, a plentiful amount of water and the ability to mitigate changes such as as much as possible and adapt to things that we can't change. So what is California doing? The governor's office developed a climate change portal that outlines the multi-pronged approach needed to reduce greenhouse gas emissions. Reducing transportation emissions is key. Although transportation emissions have been reduced by 10% since the early 2000s, this sector is still California's largest greenhouse gas source. It was 39% in 2015. So policies that are being shaped up to reduce greenhouse gas emissions include low carbon fuel standards that aim to lower the carbon intensity of fuels by 10% by 2020. There's also a push to add one and a half million zero emission vehicles or electric vehicles to roadways by 2025. And the state is also working to reduce vehicle miles traveled by integrating land use and transportation investments. There's a plan of foot to add a high-speed rail line between Los Angeles and Coventry Stone, but it's presently mired in fights over the spiraling costs, efforts to secure land along the route, and environmental concerns about some of the proposed areas that rail lines will cross. Water is also a huge area when it comes to mitigation, adaptation, and conserving. So California is working with agriculture and regular citizens to conserve water and employ water-saving technologies. The state is increasing its reliance on cleaner energy sources. California's Renewables Portfolio Standard requires power utilities to provide 33% of total electricity from renewable energy sources by 2020. In 2015, the latest figures available, this target was raised to 50% by 2030. So the states on track to meet the 2020 goal since more than 25% of electricity came from renewable sources in 2016, 2016's the latest year we have available. However, achieving the goal for 2030 will require substantially increasing to move away from natural gas as a power source. Another mitigation strategy is a program called cap-and-trade. Cap-and-trade is an approach that gives businesses and industry more flexibility with reducing greenhouse gases. However, it's expensive and controversial. California was the first state to enact a cap-and-trade program, which was started in 2012, and last year was extended to 2030. By allowing businesses to trade emissions permits, cap-and-trade allows market forces to help determine the cost of reducing emissions. Permit auctions now cover 85% of the state's greenhouse gas emissions. The auctions began in 2012 with electric utilities and large industrial emitters, and then transportation and heating fuels were added in 2015. So the program is controversial due to the expense which gets passed on to consumers. It's also met with skepticism by environmentalists who view it as not doing enough to make polluters stop emitting greenhouse gases. So combating climate change is complex, so it requires a multi-pronged approach. Cap-and-trade is just one part of it. The state is developing a strategy to align traditional environmental and economic benefits of natural and working lands with potential carbon storage. Basically, this means taking advantage of forests, farms, and wetlands to capture and store carbon, since carbon dioxide can germinate from the atmosphere by plants, and store it in vegetation and soils. So moving on to international and national agreements, the saying goes, think locally and act globally. So in addition to uniting with 15 states to pursue climate policies despite federal inaction, Governor Jerry Brown has reached out internationally to involve California in climate agreements and action plans. So the U.S. Climate Alliance is a coalition that he started with the governors of Washington and New York state, and it includes U.S. states committed to upholding the Paris Climate Agreement and taking aggressive action on climate change. So our governor, Jerry Brown, has really gotten around, and I am thinking he also got a lot of press. He attended the United Nations' 2015 climate conference called COP21, and in the lead up to that conference, he started a coalition called Under Two Coalition with Baden-Württemberg, Germany. It's an ambitious international climate action pact among cities, states, and countries to limit the increase in global average temperatures to below 2 degrees Celsius, which is the level of potentially catastrophic consequences. So it's basically a global pact that he started. He also had basically just moved ahead fearlessly in the climate arena, and in 2018, September 2018, to be specific, the state of California is going to convene the world's climate leaders in San Francisco for the Global Climate Action Summit. So that was a little bit about California and climate and climate change and some of the work that's going on on the national and international stage. Now, Jesse is going to talk about the other elephant in the room, which is California stands on federal policies that affect some of the most marginalized people in California. I'm going to talk about California stands on immigration. California now welcomes immigrants. However, this wasn't always the case. I mentioned Proposition 187 earlier. This proposition would have restricted all state services to U.S. citizens, including public schools, public health, police, fire, etc. The proposition passed in 1994 but was quickly challenged in court and ultimately was never enforced. This racist proposition galvanized immigrant communities and over the last 20 years since the proposition was voted on, these communities have built strong political coalitions and networks, making California strongly supportive of immigrants and in 2014, Jerry Brown signed a bill to remove Prop 187 language from state law. Now that California is very supportive of immigrants, nearly one in four native-born Californians have at least one immigrant parent and many of my friends growing up fit this mold. Several of the large tech companies were started by immigrants or children of recent immigrants and according to the American Immigration Council, nearly 800,000 immigrant business owners accounted for 38.2% of all self-employed California residents in California in 2015. These businesses also generated $21.8 billion in income that year. Since Brown was elected in 2011, he and the legislature have made California a more welcoming environment for immigrants, creating a number of websites detailing state services for immigrants, including a page from the Attorney General on immigrant rights, which has linked to a number of resource guides. And California just announced in the last couple of days a lawsuit against the federal government over the inclusion of a suicide question on the 2020 Census. California also created a special driver's license for undocumented residents. Under AB 60, which was passed in 2014 and went into effect January 2015, California allows undocumented residents to qualify for a driver's license, which enables them to obtain auto insurance. This license is only valid in California and has a noticeable stamp on it, making it known that it's only for driving and to obtain insurance in the state. It cannot be used for federal identification purposes, such as going through airport security or going through customs of border crossing. And it doesn't qualify as a driver's license outside of California. Since implementation, California has issued over one million AB 60 licenses. And I love the little note at the bottom of this DMV graphic. This design may change because Department of Homeland Security wants California to have the AB 60 licenses a different color, but the DMV has no plans to change. California is also very supportive of DACA, the Deferred Action on Childhood Arrivals. This is a program that's in the news a lot. It started under the Obama Administration for undocumented immigrants who came to the U.S. as young children and have lived in the U.S. entire lives. After meeting several requirements, they register with the program and cannot be deported. California has the largest number of DACA registrants with over 424,000 as of March 2017. And many of these registrants are college students for which the state has been very supportive since around 2001. A key point in this is that most Californians recognize that a child cannot be held accountable for the actions of their parents. Assembly Bill 540, passed in 2001, allows for undocumented immigrants who meet certain criteria, including graduating from California high schools, can qualify for in-state tuition at California Community Colleges, California State Universities, and the University of California campuses. They can also qualify for some state-sponsored student financial aid via the California Student Aid Commission. In California, it will be the only state that has programs like this for students. Several states have passed similar legislation, including some red states you might not expect, like Oklahoma, which passed similar legislation in 2004, and Nebraska, which passed legislation in 2006. Having worked with a number of dreamers over the last few years, I see them as extremely hard working, sometimes holding down two jobs to go to school, and they really do dream for a better society and are willing to work to put the work in to get us there, even if it risks then being sent to a country they've never lived in. DACA recipients also pay California income tax and can qualify for state-sponsored Medi-Cal and several other state programs. The state maintains a guide for DACA recipients that is updated regularly on this rapidly changing situation. And now, we're going to talk a little bit about California's sanctuary state law. But first, another quiz. Which state was the first sanctuary state in the U.S.? Little hint, it was not California. So the answer is it was Oregon. In 1987, Oregon passed a sanctuary state law preventing local and state law enforcement from working with federal immigration officials. And this law is actually going to be on the is up for referendum this coming fall. So immigration has gotten a lot of media attention over the last several years, and especially since Trump has come into office, and Trump has been targeting, the Trump administration has been targeting undocumented people living in the U.S. Prior to Trump, several cities in California and across the U.S. enacted sanctuary status, where the local law enforcement is directed to not cooperate with federal immigration officials except under specific limited instances. This has gotten much stronger under Governor Brown. In 2017, California passed SB54, the Law Enforcement Sharing Data Act, also known as California's sanctuary state law. California's sanctuary law forbids state agencies from asking about an individual's immigration status, unless it's specifically required like for the BNB licenses. It also forbids law enforcement agencies in California from sharing data and working with immigration and customs agents, except in cases where the person has the history of being previously charged with one of more than 40 misdemeanor or felony charges. During the passage of this legislation, the Senate and Governor Brown did a lot of negotiating, and one of the concessions made by the legislature was that Brown wanted to expand the list from less than a dozen of these misdemeanors and felony charges to what we have now is over 40. The law also does not prevent ICE immigration and customs enforcement from intervening people in prison or in jail. A little bit about open data in California. Over the last several years, California has become a number of open data initiatives, and the main portal is data.ga.gov. This website provides access to data from 14 different agencies, including the California Department of Transportation, Caltrans, and the Department of Water Resources, and the Department of Justice. You can find data by topic, search for specific data set, or browse by agency. This site also publishes events like hackathons using their data. You will need to register for a free account to access the data. Besides this, there are a number of agencies who have made data available on their websites but are not included in the open data portal. California's Department of Education provides a lot of data on their website, and there's a process where you can actually go in and request additional data if you're a researcher. There can be a charge, and their website provides instructions for making this request. The California EPA also has a number of data resources on their site as well. Great. Thanks, Kathy. I know this has been a whirlwind tour of the California issues and sources, so I felt obliged to point out one more. And this includes work that we're doing to preserve California government information. This is a project that the University of California, Stanford University, the California State Library, and the California State Archives are doing to archive and pursue preserve California government information. So please take a look at it and even use it to track down California government information. It's most robust and complete starting in 2015, but there are captured sites and data back to 2000, so keep that in mind. We're going to wrap up now, and I know this has been a whirlwind of sources and information. We hope it's been informative to you and given you a good sense of the rich sources of information on California.gov and other websites. Jesse, if you could show the next slide real quick. The next slide also lists some other sources and they'll give some policy and legislative information. So we encourage you to take a look at that. And with that in mind, we'd like to open it up for questions. If anyone has questions, they'd like that. I saw a cost of living slide there. Originally we were going to put something in here about housing and the cost of living, but there was just so much to say at the wrap-up, just a sort of amount of time, and it's a very complex subject in the state. It generates a lot of discussion on both sides. Can we see the slide? Sure. So this is from HUD, and this is showing the income, meeting income limits for qualified for HUD housing in the city and county of San Francisco. This got a lot of news a few, several months ago, where it was announced that a family of four can qualify for HUD housing if they are making $105,000 a year. Well, thank you so much. This was wonderful. Oh, yes. I'm going to ask you about the posture on climate change. Okay. Let's take a picture that you have. The ones that I have, I actually got from the Climate Change Portal at the California website. Well, thank you so much. This was really wonderful. It was very interesting and informative, and if everybody could join me in thanking you. If you have any questions for Lucia or Jesse, I'm sure we wouldn't be more than happy, either now or in the future when you have a student who is asking you about things in California. Here are some experts you can turn to. Thank you very much, and do try to join us on April 18th.