Clarity Blog

We are big fans of the Public Policy Institute and its surveys of public opinion in California.  We like that its executive director, Mark Baldassare, came out of Chapman University here in OC, and we like even more that it presents a largely unpartisan take on what Californians are thinking.  But we’re disappointed in PPICs handling of AB32 and Proposition 23 – California’s “save the planet” global warming law, and the Nov. 2010 proposition to delay its implementation.

In a news release announcing the results of the institute’s annual Californians and the Environment survey, PPIC said:

… Californians’ views on another contentious environmental policy issue have held steady since last year. Two-thirds (67% today, 66% in 2009) favor the state law (AB 32) that requires California to reduce its greenhouse gas emissions to 1990 levels by 2020. AB 32 is the focus of renewed debate because Proposition 23 on the November ballot asks whether the law should be suspended until unemployment drops to 5.5% or below for a minimum of one year.

Because the ballot language has not been finalized, we posed a more general question about timing: Should the government take action to reduce emissions right away or wait until the state economy and job situation improve? A slim majority (53%) say California should act right away, while 42 percent say the state should wait.

Is that really what Californians said?  We don’t think so, and here’s why:

Before getting to its question on Prop 23, PPIC asked a series of questions that made it difficult to get an unbiased response to the state’s opinion on delaying implementation of AB 32. They are:

On another topic, which of the following statements reflects your view of when the effects of global warming will begin to happen—[rotate order] (1) they have already begun to happen; (2) they will start happening within a few years; (3) they will start happening within your lifetime; (4) they will not happen within your lifetime, but they will affect future generations; [or] (5) they will never happen?

and

Do you think it is necessary to take steps to counter the effects of global warming right away, or isn’t it necessary to take steps yet?

and

How serious of a threat is global warming to the economy and quality of life for California’s future—do you think that it is a very serious, somewhat serious, not too serious, or not at all serious of a threat?

Only then was a question asked about “the state law that requires California to reduce its greenhouse gas emissions back to 1990 levels by the year 2020,” which 67 percent said they supported.  Then came a slow, fat pitch:  Do you favor or oppose California making its own policies in this area, separate from the federal government?  Of course a majority likes California doing that – people almost always favor the government that’s closer to home over the one that’s farther away.

Then, at long last, came the Prop 23 question, which PPIC described as “general” since exact wording of Prop 23 isn’t yet available: “Should the government take action to reduce emissions right away or wait until the state economy and job situation improves?”  The result was much less skewed than were the answers to any of the global warming questions that preceded it: 53 percent said act now, 42 percent said wait.

We can’t help but think that if all the set-up questions had been about the state’s economy, high unemployment, the flight of jobs to other states, and California’s budget mess, rather than about global warming, the results would have been much more favorable to the idea of repealing AB32.

That said, the “Yes on Prop 23″ campaign has a tough fight ahead of them because a majority of Democrats and half the independents feel AB 32 will lead to more jobs, as do 24 percent of Republicans.  To win in November, the Prop 23 folks are going to have to convince California voters that cutting greenhouse gas emissions in the state will indeed lead to more jobs – except they’ll be in other states, as more companies flee the Golden State’s repressive and costly regulations.  They would do well to make an example of Spain, where every new green job has cost 2.2 old-school jobs.

What are the three biggest stories each week in the world of California land development?  You’ll find them right here each Monday, or follow LP&A all week long on Twitter at @LPALand for up-to-the-minute news and analysis.  This week:

1. Is Developing Alameda Point worth the hassle?

Alameda Point - What Could Have Been

The city of Alameda voted last week to terminate an exclusive negotiating agreement with SunCal for development of the city’s former Navy base, which closed 15 years ago.  SunCal invested nearly $15 million during its four-year process, but was stymied by ever-changing political winds, a city staff with personal agendas and a public that’s not happy without a fight on its hands.  SunCal came on board in 2006 after a partnership of Shea and Catellus got fed up and walked away, which begs the question:  Is developing Alameda Point worth the hassle?  >>Read More

Read the rest of this entry »

Every week, our water industry clients and more than 500 others turn to LPAWater on Twitter for the latest important news and opinion in the world of water.

The mega-tweet of the week was this one, posted at 4:27 p.m. on July 21:  Draft SWRCB flow recommendations for #SacDelta call for more flow into & thru, particularly in winter & spring – not good for SoCal.

We’ve been waiting for the State Water Resources Control Board to issue its legislature-mandated report on the health of the Sacramento Delta, hoping the Board would highlight the many stressors on the Delta that have nothing to do with water exports (ammonia, invasive species, farm run-off), and to an extent it did just that. But its focus was on the need to dramatically cut water exports to San Joaquin Valley farms and cities from the Bay Area to the border that are dependent on Delta water – specifically, cuts of up to 30% of exports from the Delta and 70% of diversions north of the Delta. Cuts of that magnitude would have dramatic quality of life and economic impacts on Southern California.

Another LPAWater tweet, published Friday at about noon, presented a good response: SF Chron calls for “gradual … shift in #water use thru conservation, tech & better planning,” not harsh cuts. http://tinyurl.com/2v7nobg

We like that idea, and we also like the emphasis the San Francisco Chronicle made that this is a draft study, and is  subject to change.

In China, the Yangtze river is flooding … a lot.  It does that pretty regularly, but this is the first time serious flooding has hit the river since the completion of the massive Three Gorges Dam.  According to the Los Angeles Times, some nervous eyes are now checking out the dam, which so far is functioning as it should and providing new levels of flood control.

Why does this merit the attention of Clarity Blog?  Well, let’s take a look at the last paragraph of the LA Times story:

The Three Gorges Dam, which spans the Yangtze, is holding back some of the flood waters. When the dam was built,  officials called the giant reservoir so impenetrable it would withstand the kind of flood that comes once in 10,000 years.

Over the course of rainy seasons after the dam was completed, officials started scaling back their claims and attempting to lower expectations, using qualifiers such as “one in a thousand” and “one in a hundred” to describe the  scale of floods the dam could resist.

No, we’re not criticizing the LA Times for its use of the word “impenetrable,” although it certainly was misused, as floods over-top dams, they don’t penetrate them.  Rather, it’s over-speak that’s on our mind; specifically, the Chinese officials’ efforts to stuff already-said hyperbole back into their collective mouths.  Can’t be done.  They’ve done a lousy job of messaging, but they’ve done a great job of introducing a little acronym we use around here:  SCUD.  Here’s what we mean:

Public Affairs “SCUD Words”

The language of public affairs is subtle.  Words that seem innocuous can be loaded with meaning, and can cause problems for our clients.  As sophisticated public affairs practitioners, we must provide our clients with messages that are tested by sensitively weighing each word.   Because misuse of these categories of words can cause our communications to bomb out, remember the acronym SCUD!

1. Superlatives
   As PR people, we gravitate towards words like “biggest” and “most.”  That’s great for consumer PR; but a potential problem for Public Affairs.  We said an endowment would “ensure maintenance of open space forever.”  Uh-uh; it just assures that if managed correctly, sufficient funds should be available.  Do mitigation measures fully mitigate all impacts?  Probably not.  Does the EIR find the mitigation is sufficient, or did it suggest it?
2. Credit Grabs
   Many of the benefits our clients’ projects offer are structured complexly.  Often multiple developers share costs or public funds are included.  A new fire station could include land from one developer, construction funds from two others, and partial state funding.  So don’t say our developer is contributing a fire station.  Donating land for a park may be done in lieu of paying park fees; it’s subtle, but opponents will point this out, so you should point it out first.

3. Ungiven Presents
   Beware of words like “dedicated” and “give.”  Clients will often use these words themselves because they expect that when the deal is finally done, that park site or school site may be a give-away.  However, they may want to sell it, or create the sense that it must be bought in order to drive a harder bargain.  In your information gathering, ask specific questions and use the specific words gained from the answer.
4. Done Deals
   Until the final electeds/regulators approve a plan, it’s a proposed plan.  The parks in it are proposed, the unit count is proposed, the amenities are proposed; the numbers are not yet final!  Another way to say it is, “As planned, the project would….”  Nothing angers elected and regulatory officials more than a developer implying that they will certainly approve a project … and you don’t want to anger someone with approval (and rejection!) authority over your client’s project!

Take out your key messages and read through them with the SCUD acronym in mind.  If you’re confronted with superlatives, credit grabs, ungiven presents and done deals, you need to whip out your anti-SCUD defense system, redraft your messages, and thereby protect yourself from possible  future attacks.

(Ed. Note: This post summarizes commentary written by Laer for the June 2010 issue of Builder News Magazine. You can read the full version here.)

The filing date for city council candidates across Southern California is fast approaching and campaign contribution requests will come just as fast.

As a public affairs consultant who has been involved in the approval of more than 400,000 homes, I’ve participated in many strategy sessions during election seasons, and have identified four fundamental ways our clients approach corporate campaign contributions:

• The pragmatists, who contribute to those considered most likely to get elected, so only “winning” investments are made
• The idealists, who contribute only to those who are likely to support building, even if it’s unlikely they’ll win
• The navel-gazers, who balance electability against support for the industry, and make highly nuanced contributions
• The deniers, who don’t make any campaign contributions at all, ever.

We’ve had clients take each of these approaches and subsequently get projects approved.  So which approach is best?  You can click here to read our full story on this topic featured in Builder News.

But the bottom line is campaign contributions are just a form of communications.  You are communicating through your money, and you are hoping your money will lead to access – the opportunity to communicate – after the election.  Consequently, the same rules apply to contributions as apply to all communications:

• Prepare your messages, and update them as circumstances change
• Seek to listen, not just to talk
• Act only after you’re fully prepared to respond to negative questions.

Lastly, be sure to make a contribution to the building industry PAC – even if you’re contributing separately, because the industry’s voice needs to be heard, too.

Did you follow Measure N on the June 8 primary ballot up in Sutter Creek? No? Well we did track it, because it was one of the only referenda in the primary challenging the approval of a housing project. At the polls, 586 residents of the Amador County town voted “yes,” and 594 voted “no,” meaning the City Council’s earlier approval of the proposed Gold Rush Ranch and Golf Resort has been overturned – by eight votes.

[Update: Absentee ballots turned the election around, swinging the results to a 12-vote victory for Gold Rush Ranch's advocates.]

Closer to our home in Orange County – and closer to our client list – was Mission Viejo’s Measure D. The ballot-box planning initiative grew out of public opposition to an assisted-living facility project we worked on – a project that died in the economic downturn long before Measure D was placed on the ballot. After a spirited campaign, 62.4 percent of Mission Viejo voters emphatically said “no” to ballot-box planning.

In other conflicting election results:

• Voters in the City of Brentwood denied an initiative making it possible to develop about 750 acres, but…
• Voters in Santa Clara paved the way for a new San Francisco 49ers stadium.

So what can the builder/developer community take away from these results?

On the surface, not much. Very different towns voted very differently on very different ballot measures. But the fact they were even on the ballot is a great example of the public’s current low regard for both government and private companies – and their growing desire to have more say in the development process.

Need more proof? Just look at PG&E’s Proposition 16. PG&E spent nearly $25 for each of the votes it got in favor of the company’s self-serving proposition. Opponents spent less than a nickel for each of the votes they gathered, successfully playing David to PG&E’s Goliath. Mercury Insurance suffered a similar, less costly, defeat on its corporate venture into propositions.

Neither proposition was particularly reprehensible, so the vote shows that Californians don’t like it when corporations try to make laws. The folks with Gold Rush Ranch may have suffered from a similar dislike and distrust of corporations.

Lack of Public Trust May Lead to More Referenda

So, if you’re a big corporation and there are laws you’d like passed, go through the legislature – voters can be too unpredictable.

And if you must launch or fight a referendum, know that it’s definitely winnable, but prepare for a tough slog because voters up and down the state have little trust in either government or big business, and are clamoring for more input in anything affecting their quality of life. Our approach has always been to get more than 50 percent of the community behind a project as we go through the city or county approval process, so our client is well prepared, should a referendum be in the cards. In today’s environment, planning for a referendum from the beginning will make it much easier to accomplish your goals in the end.

Here’s a troubling stat, from the Brandman University 2010 State of Orange County survey:

In 2000, 38 percent of Orange County residents felt their quality of life was going very well, and only nine percent thought it was going badly. In 2010, eight percent thought their quality of life was going very well and 35 percent thought it was going badly. This dramatic reversal means, at one level, a greater dissatisfaction with local government.

In our experience, there is a far greater chance decisions made by local government will be challenged by referenda in times like these, compared to more happy-go-lucky times.

As PR pros, of course we’ve been thinking a lot about the demise of the Deepwater Horizon and the ensuing performances by BP, the administration and everyone else who’s trying to make a point out of the mess.

We like the fact that BP is letting us watch the crude gush out 24/7 (today we’re watching the Remotely Operated Vehicle) and we think its dedicated website is an example of state-of-the-art transparency, but we certainly don’t think much of a CEO who says he wants to “get his life back” after an environmental disaster of this magnitude.  His subsequent apology, like all apologies following gaffes of this magnitude, was inadequate.

We think the president should have visited the Gulf Coast over the Memorial Day weekend, so he could have spent a lot of time talking to people who are trying to stop the gush, and the people whose livelihoods are threatened by it.

And, of course, we’re appalled that knee-jerk environmentalist nay-saying is holding up needed efforts to protect the environment, like Gov. Bobby Jindall’s proposal to build off-shore berms.  Cynics among us might even think for a moment that they’re trying to make the disaster get worse so they can use it to leverage future regulatory campaigns.  But of course, that’s just from the cynics among us …

What we find most interesting is the media’s failure to put the disaster – bad as it is – in perspective.  Our friends at Briscoe Ivester & Bazel recently did just that:

The blowout at Deepwater Horizon in the Gulf of Mexico has now surpassed, in volume of oil spilled into the marine environment, the grounding and rupturing 21 years ago of the Exxon Valdez in Prince William Sound, Alaska. So reported the Wall Street Journal and other news services May 28. The nation’s press has run to its morgues to exhume accounts of the Valdez grounding and spill. Forgotten, though, is a much larger spill … Mexico’s Ixtoc I. Ixtoc I was, like Deepwater Horizon, a drilling rig moored in the Gulf of Mexico, in that case about 600 miles south of the Texas coastline. It exploded June 3, 1979 for reasons similar to the Deepwater Horizon explosion. Ixtoc spilled 10 to 30 thousand barrels of oil a day into the Gulf until relief wells permitted the capping of the broken well almost 10 months later. More than five million barrels of oil spewed from the Ixtoc’s broken wellhead into the Gulf during those months. That amount was 20 times the oil spilled in the Valdez incident.

We hope Deepwater Horizon is capped long before it reaches anything even close to the magnitude of the Ixtoc I spill.  That said, when was the last time you read something about the lasting environmental impacts of Ixtoc I?  Have you ever read anything on the subject?  Well, we have. Here’s the final report prepared by the Feds after thoroughly studying the impact of the 11,000 metric tons of Ixtoc I (and Burmah Agate, another spill) oil that hit the Texas coast. The conclusion:

Petroleum residues attributable to the IXTOC and BURMAH AGATE spills were not identified in the surficial sediments of the study area. Analyses of several water column samples did indicate the presence of IXTOC oil in suspended sedimentary material. Shrimp tissue analysis results identified the presence of petroleum in chronic low levels, but only one sample was linked to IXTOC residues.

No direct links, based on fluctuations in benthic community parameters (abundance and diversity) identified in a comparison of 1976-1977 data with 1980 (post-spill) data, could be made with the IXTOC and/or BURMAH AGATE, spills.

In other words, despite all the hue and cry, all the hand-wringing, and all the condemnation of fossil fuel dependency, the long-term effects of a spill 20 times larger than the Exxon Valdez spill led to nothing more than life as usual with marine creatures and those of us who like to eat them from time to time.  (It took us about 23 seconds to find the federal study, by the way.)

Facts do have a funny way of overpowering perceptions, don’t they?  Unfortunately, facts can get as lost as a clump of crude in a sea of emotions.

I remember those blissful days a decade or so ago before the Sacramento Delta settled like a cold, wet blanket over my consciousness.  The bliss!

Now not a day goes by when the Delta (Twitter hashtag #SacDelta) isn’t talked about, thought about, flown over or toured.  It is at the crux of whatever solution we attain for California’s water problems, so it touches policy discussions we have with our water district, land development and municipal clients. It’s simply become the most important place in all of California.

And coming up next Tuesday is an important hearing at the Assembly Water, Parks and Wildlife Committee (9:30 a.m., State Capitol, room 437) into how things are going with the Delta Stewardship Council and the Bay Delta Conservation Plan. These two entities are critical to the answer to one of the most significant policy discussions of our times:  Will California be able to maintain a reliable water supply?  For those of you as interested in the topic as we are, here’s the agenda for the meeting:

A G E N D A

I. Opening Comments

II. Panel 1 – Agency Perspectives

• Lester Snow, Secretary, California Natural Resources Agency
• Phil Isenberg, Chair, Delta Stewardship Council

Panel 2 – BDCP Steering Committee Stakeholders’ Perspectives

• Laura King Moon, State Water Contractors
• Ann Hayden, Environmental Defense Fund
• Melinda Terry, North Delta Water Agency

Panel 3 – Perspectives on Integration: BDCP & Delta Counties’ HCP/NCCPs

• Don Nottoli, Delta Stewardship Council, Delta Protection Commission, Sacramento County Board of Supervisors
• Jim Provenza, Yolo County Board of Supervisors
• Kim Delfino, Defenders of Wildlife

Panel 4 – Other Interested Stakeholders’ Perspectives

• Barry Nelson, Natural Resources Defense Council
• Osha Meserve, Reclamation District 999, Stone Lakes National Wildlife Refuge Association

III. Public Comment

The Water Policy Oracles will be reading the tea leaves on this hearing for some time to come.  We’ll keep you posted on what we hear, mostly via our LPAWater Twitter page.

As featured by the Orange County chapter of the Building Industry Association

Jobs, jobs, jobs – It’s a winning message for developers and builders right now. We are seeing this message resonate with all of the industry’s key target audiences more than ever, from decision-makers and city staffs to the general public and media. But how can you emphasize jobs when a full economic impact analysis isn’t part of your budget?

Enter the Center for Strategic Economic Research – or CSER.

The Center’s study on the economic “ripple effect” of homebuilding is quantitative confirmation of what we’ve always known: New homes mean more jobs.

Specifically:

• Every home built creates 2.4 jobs
• For every $1 spent building a home, $0.9 is generated 
• Each home generates more than $360,000 in economic activity, excluding the selling price

These are terrific metrics. They are also being used by builders across the state as confirmation of their project’s economic benefit. In fact, the CSER’s Deputy Director, Helen Schaubmayer recently told us that the study could be an immensely valuable tool for builders.

“As a result of this study being updated and published for several years, we are seeing builders leverage jobs-creation messages that they were previously unable to quantify. But builders also need to realize how to package and present these findings to the right audience. If they do, it could go a long way.”

We agree. Even the best jobs message can get cluttered with industry jargon. And having clarity to your message – especially one as important as jobs – is critical to a successful project.

Take a moment to review the study. We’ve also been told by the research director that a 2010 study is in the works and may be available this summer, so we’ll be sure to keep you posted.