Democrats Accuse Newsom Administration Of Inflating Cost Of Failed Bills

Here are the morning’s top stories on Thursday, August 29, 2024…

• When California is dealing with a big budget deficit, it’s harder to get bills with big price tags approved. But now, a handful of lawmakers say they think the Newsom administration purposely overestimated how much their bills would cost to help ensure they wouldn’t advance in the legislature. 
• A milestone in the largest dam removal in U.S. history happened early Wednesday. Two temporary dams were breached, directing the Klamath River back into its historic channel for the first time in more than a century. 
• Immigration advocates this week rallied outside the San Francisco Immigrations and Customs Enforcement field office in support of detainees who say they’re being mistreated. Dozens of people resumed a hunger and labor strike at two detention facilities near Bakersfield, after ICE ended free legal phone calls there earlier this month.

Lawmakers Say Newsom Staff ‘Inflated’ Cost Of Failed Health Care Bills

Lawmakers and advocates say Gov. Gavin Newsom’s administration is making inflated estimates about the cost of legislation, with some suggesting his subordinates have been trying to kill the bills without making the governor politically accountable for the outcome.

“While people are dying on the streets from a lack of access to behavioral health care treatment, state agencies continue to fabricate exorbitant cost estimates,” Sen. Dave Cortese, a Democrat from Campbell, told CalMatters after one of his mental health proposals died recently in the Assembly Appropriations Committee.

Sen. Scott Wiener, a Democrat from San Francisco who authored another mental health bill that died recently, said in a public hearing last month that the administration’s cost estimate of his bill was “extreme and outrageous.”

The pointed accusations from Democratic lawmakers and health care advocates who tend to be friendly with the Democratic governor are extraordinary because such criticism is rarely made in public. The examples also stand out because they challenge the administration’s response on one of the governor’s top priorities, mental health. The administration did not accept an interview request with CalMatters and would not provide more detail – to CalMatters or to lawmakers – to explain the cost estimates. By email, however, a spokesperson insisted the costs were accurate and rejected the idea that they were intentionally inflated.

Klamath River Flows In Historic Channel For The First Time In A Century

Now that two temporary cofferdams—one at Iron Gate dam; one at Copco 1—have been breached, the Klamath River is running freely, and salmon will be able to access 420 miles of habitat that had been blocked by the dams.

The massive earthen barrier that was Iron Gate dam is gone. Only the gate tower remains. On Wednesday morning, crews dug out a notch in the temporary earthen structure that was holding the river back from its historic channel.

Sisters and Yurok Tribal members Amy Cordalis and Ashley Bowers were among those who had gathered to witness history. “What’s remarkable to me observing the river, is [that] it knows what to do,” said Cordalis. “It’s just been waiting all these years to be set free, and finally the humans have done the right thing and facilitated its freedom.”

The Klamath was once known as the third-largest salmon-producing river on the West Coast. But after power company PacifiCorp built the dams to generate electricity between 1918 and 1962, the structures halted the natural flow of the river and disrupted the lifecycle of the region’s salmon, which spend most of their life in the Pacific Ocean but return up their natal rivers to spawn.

Protesters Decry Conditions At ICE Detention Centers As ACLU Report Detail Alleged Abuses

Advocates are escalating their condemnation of federal immigration authorities and a private prison company that operates ICE detention facilities in California, where dozens of detained men have waged months-long protests over what they say are sub-standard and abusive conditions.

At a protest in San Francisco Wednesday outside the office of the U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement agency, several dozen activists called on the agency’s field director to meet with detainees who are waging hunger and labor strikes inside two Kern County facilities: Mesa Verde ICE Processing Center and Golden State Annex. 

After ICE ended free phone calls earlier this month, dozens of people resumed a hunger and labor strike they have waged intermittently for more than two years. The detainees began by protesting $1/day pay for cleaning dormitories and bathrooms and then used the strikes to call attention to what they say are sexually abusive pat-downs, retaliatory use of solitary confinement and substandard care and conditions. Advocates say eight people are still refusing food.