Trust in Gail Pellerin remains high following investigation into her investments
On her way to winning her first term as a state legislator in 2022, Assemblymember Gail Pellerin boasted a smorgasbord of endorsements across Santa Cruz County’s civic class and statewide environmental organizations. The former Santa Cruz County clerk built a platform on her experience in election access and security, and her strong environmental views.
But a Los Angeles Times investigation published in December found that Pellerin, during her 2022 campaign and throughout her first year in office, held financial stakes in several companies that conflicted with her views, from Big Oil to pesticide producer Dow Chemical Company.
Earlier this month — only weeks after the Times published its investigation — Pellerin announced she had divested from the companies. When I asked her, and her team, several times, to offer more clarity to Santa Cruz voters on this apparent conflict between her financial interests and her platform, they declined, offering the same, brief statement she gave to the Los Angeles Times.
Despite this revelation, several prominent local supporters say their support for Pellerin has not wavered. Although they admitted the initial news caused concern, everyone I spoke with was quick to say Pellerin is as trustworthy a representative as Santa Cruz County has had in Sacramento.
Santa Cruz’s 120-foot downtown redwood doesn’t survive city council
Despite organized support and fundraising efforts to rescue it, the 12-story redwood tree at the corner of Walnut Avenue and Lincoln Street in downtown Santa Cruz will soon be sawdust and ground-down stump following a city council vote last week.
The vote marks the end of the story for this particular sequoia (whose roots ruptured an adjacent sidewalk and were pressing into an apartment building); however, it could also mark the beginning of a more dedicated campaign to consider the future of downtown Santa Cruz’s remaining redwoods. Led by local 26-year-old Keelan Franzen, the organized group that hoped to save the tree has started a website that shows a vision beyond the giant at Walnut and Lincoln.
The city council was supposed to decide the tree’s fate on Jan. 9, but that meeting was overrun by the Israel-Hamas cease-fire resolution, and the decision was booted to the Jan. 23 meeting.
Speaking of that meeting, remember how the Santa Cruz City Council sat through 10 consecutive hours of unrelenting public comment and didn’t finish until around 4 a.m.? In the aftermath, Mayor Fred Keeley told me that, despite his age, he had an “iron butt” and could sit through public comment all night.
However, Keeley’s iron butt met its match last week when Andrea Ruiz got up to speak in support of saving the redwood. Ruiz said she was a tree whisperer, and had learned the tree’s name, age and will through direct communication with it. As Ruiz’s allotted three minutes expired, she refused to relinquish the public podium until city councilmembers answered her request to visit the redwood and commune with it. Keeley blew up.
Of Note
Ballots go out in February, but who is winning the money race? Candidates running in the March 5 primary have filed their campaign finance reports. Absent polling and endorsement announcements, these reports give us the best metric (albeit an imperfect one) of support in the local races. Where the candidates in the District 1 and District 2 county supervisor races are neck and neck, one person has blown the doors off the donations race in District 5. My colleague Max Chun has that report. Expect further analysis on this in the weeks to come.
County’s Democratic Party passes a cease-fire resolution: Santa Cruz County’s elected leaders said no; the city of Santa Cruz’s said no; Watsonville’s said maybe. Resolutions proposing support for a cease-fire between Israel and Hamas have had a lukewarm reception up and down the county. However, on Wednesday, the Santa Cruz County Democratic Central Committee said yes, in a 24-3 vote, to a resolution that urged the Biden administration “to immediately call for and facilitate deescalation, release of all hostages and a permanent, sustainable, bilateral cease-fire.”
Looking Ahead
OVO gets a review: The City of Santa Cruz Planning Commission is set to hold a meeting about the oversized vehicle ordinance within the coastal zone on Thursday at 7 p.m. in the council chambers at Santa Cruz City Hall.
The ordinance took effect on Dec. 4, and prohibits vehicles more than 20 feet long or 7 feet wide and 8 feet high from parking between midnight and 5 a.m. without a permit. The law is a one-year pilot project the city hopes will paint a fuller picture of the impact of a ban before it decides to extend or revise it. – Max Chun
A reorganization of the county’s commissions: Carlos Palacios, head of the county bureaucracy, is proposing that the time has come to rethink the county’s advisory commissions. Appointed by the board of supervisors, bodies such as the Human Services Commission and the Substance Use Disorder Commission have struggled to reach quorum and get anything done. The board of supervisors will vote on whether to initiate a reorganization of commissions, consolidating some and potentially eliminating others.
A Measure N endorsement: The county supervisors will vote on whether to support the tax measure proposed by the Pajaro Valley Health Care District to raise $116 million for the Watsonville Community Hospital. Primary voters in South County will get the final say on whether to tax themselves and finance a revenue boost viewed by many as critical to the hospital’s future.
County homelessness response gets a review: On Wednesday, the county will host the first of three meetings focused on analyzing its homelessness response. Representatives from the Santa Cruz County Housing for Health Partnership will discuss and take feedback on how it can connect more people to housing and services, reduce the courts-to-homelessness pipeline and ensure that the people who receive housing are able to keep it. The first meeting will be Wednesday, Jan. 31, from 4:30 p.m. to 6:30 p.m. at 1400 Emeline Ave., Room 206/207. To RSVP, visit the county’s Regional Homeless Action Plan website.
The West Cliff conversation continues: Given the implications of global warming, extreme weather and sea-level rise, what will Santa Cruz’s scenic West Cliff Drive look like in 50 years? The City of Santa Cruz will continue that conversation Tuesday with a virtual meeting from 5:30 to 7 p.m.
Weekly News Diet
Local: Since going into effect on Dec. 4, how has the City of Santa Cruz’s long-contested oversized vehicle ordinance performed? As my colleague Max Chun reports, the program, in its second month of a one-year pilot, has produced hundreds of citations but remains imperfect.
Golden State: Another major home insurer announced it would stop writing new policies in California. Hartford Financial Services Group, the only home and auto insurance program endorsed by the AARP, said writing new policies in California was no longer viable given the challenges posed by wildfire risk and other natural disasters. Hartford follows State Farm, Allstate, USAA and Farmers Insurance as companies that have stopped writing policies for Californians. Kevin Truong for the San Francisco Standard has that story.
National: After a botched lethal injection in 2022, Alabama on Thursday executed Kenneth Smith, this time using a method untested in the U.S.: nitrogen hypoxia. The move is evidence of a larger trend of states that have had trouble both successfully administering lethal injection executions and obtaining the necessary drugs. Some states are regressing back to death by firing squad. How did we get here? Nicholas Bogel-Burroughs has an excellent explainer for The New York Times.
One Great (Vintage) Read
From 2002: Rubbish! By Chris Lydgate and Nick Budnick for Willamette Week
If the gall of journalists ever needed a heroic portrayal, Chris Lydgate and Nick Budnick pulled it off in 2002 as reporters for Willamette Week, an alternative weekly based in Portland, Oregon.
Earlier that year, Portland detectives were investigating one of their own, Officer Gina Hoesly, for drug charges. As part of their fact-finding, they scoured through Hoesly’s garbage after she brought it to the curb for weekly collection. The officers did this without permission from Hoesly or a judge. The police, district attorney and Portland mayor at the time argued that once a person brought their garbage to the curb, they no longer possessed it. It, in essence, belonged to the public. A judge disagreed with this interpretation, a ruling that the Portland triumvirate criticized and promised to fight.
Historical context here is important. The Patriot Act and the broad surveillance powers it afforded to the government were just over a year old. Any example of further privacy invasion, by any arm of government, had a prickling effect on American citizens. Even if it dealt with garbage.
Already Patriot Act skeptics, Lydgate and Budnick saw a rare opportunity to turn the tables. So, in the middle of the night, they swiped the garbage of the DA and police chief, and the recycling of the mayor since her garbage was still on her private property. Then, they presented what they discovered to each public official: scraps of information and data ranging from the mundane candy wrapper to receipts with credit card information, stock holdings and job applications.
Consider this one muckraking with integrity.