The Barbed Wire - November 21, 2014

November 21, 2014
CAFWA Debuts with Advocacy Trip to Washington, D.C.
White Paper Released on Integrating Storage into State Water System
DWR Issues Addendum to 2014 Water-Energy Grant Program Guidelines
California’s Fiscal Outlook
Three-Judge Panel Pressures State to Release Nonviolent Inmates
Appropriations Bills
Leadership Elections and Committee Chairs
Waters of the U.S. Public Comment Period Ends
Drought Bill Negotiations End; Feinstein Vows to Work on Legislation Next Year
National Skills Coalition Releases State Strategic Planning Report
EVENTS/NOTICES
REGULATORY UPDATE

CAFWA Debuts with Advocacy Trip to Washington, D.C.

This week, the California Forest Watershed Alliance (CAFWA), of which RCRC is a founding member, converged upon Washington, D.C. to meet with House and Senate leaders, U.S. Forest Service, and officials from the U.S. Departments of Agriculture and Interior to advocate for passage of the Wildfire Disaster Funding Act (WDFA).  Other members of CAFWA include the Association of California Water Agencies (ACWA), California Farm Bureau Federation, California Forestry Association (CalForests), and the Nature Conservancy in California.  This endeavor marked CAFWA’s debut advocacy trip.

The focus of the trip was to advocate for both the passage of WDFA in the lame duck session of Congress, and increased funding for a large landscape scale forest management project to improve science knowledge and innovative approaches to meet NEPA requirements.  

CAFWA is a bipartisian, urban-rural coalition created to promote the restoration and improvement of California’s forested watersheds.  CAFWA’s unique partnership of water interests, local governments, agriculture, and the forestry sector unites diverse constituencies to seek new solutions to promote proactive, science-based, and ecologically sound forest management practices that will reduce the risk of destructive mega fires.  A one pager on CAFWA can be accessed here.

White Paper Released on Integrating Storage into State Water System

This week, the U.C. Davis Center for Watershed Sciences released a white paper on integrating water storage into California’s changing water system.  The white paper reviews the benefits and challenges of water storage in the State’s evolving water system, and provides some quantitative insights from an integrated analysis of this system.  The pilot study described in the white paper focused on water storage, and concludes that the ability to utilize additional water storage varies greatly with location, the availability of water conveyance capacity, and operation of the system to integrate surface, groundwater, and conveyance facilities.  The white paper can be accessed here

DWR Issues Addendum to 2014 Water-Energy Grant Program Guidelines

The Department of Water Resources (DWR) has issued an addendum to its 2014 Water-Energy Grant Program Guidelines/Proposal Solicitation Package (PSP).  DWR states in the Addendum that on October 31, 2014, the California Environmental Protection Agency (CalEPA) designated census tracts in California as having a CalEnviroScreen 2.0 score of 76 percent or greater as disadvantaged communities (DACs) for the purpose of investing Cap-and-Trade proceeds.  This decision increases the number of census tracts considered as DACs from what was originally presented in the DWR Final Water-Energy Grant Program Guidelines/PSP (e.g. 81 percent or higher).  The Addendum can be accessed here.  

RCRC had previously identified 34 counties, many of them RCRC member counties, that did not have a single DAC census tract identified in the top 20 percent of CalEnviroScreen.  RCRC will be reviewing this recent change in percentage to determine which of the 34 counties previously identified may now quality to compete for the $9.5 million for projects located in or outside of a DAC and that provide direct, meaningful, and assured benefit to DACs.    

California’s Fiscal Outlook

The Legislative Analyst’s Office (LAO) has released the 20th annual edition of the LAO’s Fiscal Outlook – a look at possible State revenue and spending trends over the next five years.  The Fiscal Outlook reflects anticipated progress in building budget reserves under the recently approved Proposition 2.  Absent new Budget commitments, the LAO estimates the State would end 2015-16 with $4.2 billion in total reserves, $2 billion of which would result from Proposition 2’s new reserve rules.  The Fiscal Outlook also discusses choices facing the State in implementing Proposition 2, such as choices about which budgetary and retirement debts to repay with dedicated Proposition 2 funds over the next 15 years.  The LAO’s 2015-16 Budget Fiscal Outlook can be accessed here.  

Three-Judge Panel Pressures State to Release Nonviolent Inmates

Last Friday, a Federal Three-Judge Panel (TJP) issued a new ruling requiring California to speed up its processing time to release specified nonviolent inmates to be in compliance with a previous federal court order, which mandated the State to reduce the state prison population to 137.5 percent of design capacity, or roughly 37,000 inmates.  According to recent media reports, California has released approximately 25,000 inmates since the initial federal court order.  In a follow-up to the February 2014 ruling, the TJP gave the State until January 1, 2015 to begin recommending eligible inmates for parole.  Last week’s ruling was largely in response to attorneys’ representing eligible inmates’ claims that the State was slow to develop a parole process as mandated by the federal court order.

Appropriations Bills

Congress will be out of session next week for Thanksgiving, and will return on Monday, December 8, 2014.  The House and Senate will need to agree on appropriations legislation by December 11, 2014 in order to avoid a government shutdown.  It is unclear at this point whether this legislation will take the form of full-year appropriations legislation, a short-term continuing resolution (CR), or a combination of the two.  The approach of Congressional Republicans is likely to be influenced by President Obama’s Executive Order on immigration that was announced yesterday.  Republicans may use these bills to retaliate for the President’s actions, either by cutting spending, refusing to pass any funding legislation at all, or only passing short-term bills.

Leadership Elections and Committee Chairs

House Democrats held leadership elections on Tuesday, November 18, 2014, returning Nancy Pelosi (D-CA) to the position of Minority Leader for the 114th Congress, which starts in January.  Pelosi’s re-election means that all four congressional parties have retained their leaders from the 113th Congress.  Last week, Senate Republicans elected Mitch McConnell (R-KY) as Majority Leader, and John Cornyn (R-TX) as the Majority Whip, with Senate Democrats choosing Harry Reid (D-NV) as Minority Leader.  In the House, Speaker John Boehner (R-OH) will also continue in his position, as will Majority leader Kevin McCarthy (R-CA), and Steve Scalise (R-LA), as the Republican Whip.  

This week, House Republicans also announced their Committee Chairs for the 114th Congress.  Congressman Rob Bishop (R-UT) will be the new Chairman of the House Natural Resources Committee, taking over for the retiring Doc Hastings (R-WA).  Bishop is expected to make public lands bills a priority of his chairmanship.  It is also anticipated that he will take a less combative approach than his predecessor.

Congressman Paul Ryan (R-WI), the 2012 GOP Vice Presidential nominee, will be the new Chairman of the House Ways and Means Committee, which is responsible for tax, trade, and health care financing issues.  Ryan previously chaired the House Budget Committee.  Ryan will likely use his position to advance issues important to Republicans, such as entitlement reform, tax reform, and greater oversight of the IRS.  Congressman Hal Rogers (R-KY) will continue as Chairman of the House Appropriations Committee.  

Waters of the U.S. Public Comment Period Ends

The deadline to submit public comments for the Environmental Protection Agency’s (EPA) proposed rule on Waters of the U.S. (WOTUS) was last Friday, November 14, 2014.  It has been reported that the EPA has received roughly 500,000 comments.  RCRC submitted comments in response to the proposed rule.  Also, several local government organizations including the National League of Cities, the U.S. Conference of Mayors, and the National Associations of Counties (NACo) filed a joint comment letter asking that the rule be substantially revised, or set aside and replaced with a process that engages state and local governments.  No timeline has been set for EPA to move forward with the proposed rule.  RCRC’s comment letter can be accessed here.

Drought Bill Negotiations End; Feinstein Vows to Work on Legislation Next Year

Late Thursday, Senator Dianne Feinstein announced that negotiations with the House on drought legislation have come to an end.  However, House advocates claim they will continue to work on a bill in hopes of advancing a compromise by the end of the year.  "Although we have made progress, it has become clear that we will be unable to present an agreed-upon proposal before Congress adjourns this year," Feinstein said.  California’s other senator, Barbara Boxer (the out-going chair of the Senate Environment and Public Works Committee), remained neutral during the negotiations, and stated that she was glad Feinstein was "taking the time to get more feedback."  

Led by Rep. Devin Nunes, southern California congressmen want to continue working on a bill, while northern California members are relieved that the process seems at an end for the year.  "We are pleased Sen. Feinstein will not be pursuing passage of the water legislation secretly negotiated by her and House Republicans," Reps. Jared Huffman, George Miller, Mike Thompson, Doris Matsui, Jerry McNerney, John Garamendi, and Ami Bera said in a statement.  "We will continue to demand next year that any water legislation responding to California's severe drought be balanced and take into consideration the array of stakeholders in California."

National Skills Coalition Releases State Strategic Planning Report

This week, the National Skills Coalition (NSC) released their highly anticipated “Realizing Innovation and Opportunity in WIOA” report to assist states and workforce stakeholders with implementation of the Workforce Innovation and Opportunity Act (WIOA).  While passage of WIOA largely maintains the basic local governance structure of the Workforce Investment Act of 1998 (WIA) through local and/or regional Workforce Investments Boards (WIB), the measure includes a number of policy changes that aim to strengthen local and regional economic development through targeted investments in regional industry and sector-based job training and education initiatives, and requires states to develop unified or combined state workforce development strategic plans.  

The NSC Report provides a series of recommendations to establish a vision for the state’s workforce system, and to develop a unified state strategic workforce development plan that includes various federal and state-funded workforce development programs.  These programs include those funded by state and local Workforce Investment Boards (WIB), labor, business, adult education, employment service, vocational rehabilitation, secondary and postsecondary education institutions, public and private training providers, community-based organizations, and other workforce development stakeholder groups.  The NSC report can be accessed here.

In July 2014, the President signed WIOA to reauthorize and modernize WIA, which had been up for reauthorization for more than a decade.  The WIOA represents more than a decade of negotiations between House and Senate leadership, culminating in a compromise agreement between the House-passed Supporting Knowledge and Investing in Lifelong Skills (SKILLS) Act and the Senate Health, Education, Labor, and Pensions Committee’s Workforce Investment Act of 2013.

RCRC has long advocated for reauthorization of WIA.  Not only has WIA been critical to strengthening local, regional and state economies, but WIA investments in employment training programs and services, particularly for rural counties, are vital to developing the highly-skilled and technical workforce our businesses need to sustain, maintain and grow our competitive edge.  RCRC will work with our member-county WIBs and the California WIB to ensure that WIOA implementation maintains local WIBs and their governance structure, and supports rural employment and job training programs.

EVENTS/NOTICES

Notice of Funds Available: Tire-Derived Product Grant (FY 2014/15)

Click here.

REGULATORY UPDATE

RCRC members are encouraged to submit comments on regulatory matters to state and federal regulatory bodies, and to provide a copy to RCRC’s Government Affairs staff.  Click “Read More” to access information related to the current status of regulations impacting California’s rural counties.  

Endangered and Threatened Wildlife and Plants; Threatened Species Status for West Coast Distinct Population Segment of Fisher: Proposes to list the west coast distinct population of fisher as threatened under the U.S. Endangered Species Act.  Agency: U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service Status: Draft published on October 7, 2014 for a 90-day comment period, comments due January 5, 2015.  Proposed regulation and related documents can be accessed hereRCRC Comments: Staff is seeking input from member counties.  RCRC Advocate: Staci Heaton sheaton@rcrcnet.org