THE WAITING GAME 

September is the month when we learn which among the many bills sent to Governor Newsom in  unified form by both houses of the state legislature become law, which are directly vetoed, and  which are pocket vetoed. 

Governor Newsom has signed thirteen (13) bills that purport to make it easier to build housing in  California, including “affordable” housing. Housing is generally tapped by residents as the state’s  most critical need – a need followed in short order by retail crime, which is also the subject of  Proposition 36 on November’s ballot, and water. 

It’s the water that most interests California’s golf sector. While there are multiple bills in the  Governor’s queue concerning various aspects of state water law and policy (e.g., AB 460, AB 2257,  AB 1827, AB 1828, AB 805, AB 2454, AB 2875, SB 1304), there is one bill that the statewide golf  sector identified early on as separating one side of the state’s water divide from the other – from  those interests fixated on conservation as the focus of future supply and those intent on pursuing a  more diversified portfolio – from those who are often accused of believing that California can  conserve its way out of its aridification predicament and those who are convinced that if  conservation is the only tool in the state’s water resiliency toolbox, California is doomed to be  hollowed out in much the same way rust belt cities like Pittsburgh and Detroit were in the last  quarter of the 20th Century. It’s a divide that some have the luxury of navigating by posturing, some  are forced to navigate by the practical demands of their livelihoods, and some try to navigate by a balancing act that though once common, seems to have all but disappeared from today’s body  politic. 

That bill is SB 366 (Caballero; D-Merced / Bipartisan bill / Co-authors in Assembly Essalyi and  Rubio) – California Water Plan: Long Term Supply Targets. In a nutshell, SB 366 would require the  California Department of Water Resources (DWR) to coordinate with the California Water  Commission, the State Water Resources Control Board, other state, and federal agencies as  appropriate, and an expanded stakeholder advisory committee to develop a comprehensive plan  for addressing the state’s water needs and meeting specified long-term water supply targets  established by the bill for purposes of The California Water Plan. The bill would go beyond the  current approach to water supply planning by establishing specific targets to be met by certain  dates and requires a financing plan for achieving these targets. In addition, the Plan would require  the state to plan to add 9 million-acre-feet to that “specific target” by 2040.  

This would be the first water target enshrined in California law. To put that in context, there are 81  separate targets aimed at decarbonizing the state. Golf is cognizant of many of them as facilities  switch from gas powered equipment to electric powered equipment that is often less reliable but  virtually always more expensive.  

With the addition of some late amendments to the bill meant to calm the fears of environmentalists  that some of that additional 9 million-acre-feet of supply would come from the Sacramento Delta,  we believe that Governor Newsom will sign the bill into law. Legislators have the luxury of single minded advocacy on issues they deem dear to the hearts of their political bases often on the theory  that someone or something else will balance their advocacy against the advocacy of those on the  other side of various divides. Chief executives have to make things work, or if you prefer a phrase  that was once considered beyond the realm of American respectability – making the trains run on  time. Or as Gavin Newsom’s predecessor Jerry Brown defined the role – paddling down the middle  of a great river, sometimes paddling left, sometimes right, in an effort to keep the ship of state from  running aground. 

Nothing underscores that point while at the same time providing credence to our conclusion about  Newsom signing SB 366 into law than the press release he put out last Friday exulting in the  expeditious way an appellate court’s upholding of a trial court’s rejection of a CEQA challenge to  the Sites Reservoir has cleared one of the last, if not the last, hurdle to the construction of a  reservoir that will supply 3 million households with clean drinking water.  

The Governor’s exultation was as much procedural as it was substantive. The release touted how  his SB 149, which Newsom sponsored, led to a quick decision to consider all environmental  challenges and in this case reject them in their entirety and move forward.  

SB 149 works as follows: 

▪ It allows the Governor to certify qualifying infrastructure projects for judicial streamlining  under the California Environmental Quality Act (CEQA). 

▪ Courts must decide CEQA challenges to certified projects within 270 days to the extent  feasible – saving months or even years of litigation delays after a project has already passed  environmental review, while still allowing legal challenges to be heard.

“We can’t waste any more time with frivolous lawsuits to hold up major infrastructure projects,  especially building more water storage,” said Governor Newsom in the release. To which we might  add, we can’t shy away from water supply targets just because we fear they may end up  documenting our failure to fully achieve them, as if partial achievement doesn’t represent progress. 

We might also add that if last week’s report of the California Air Resources Board (CARB) is any  indication, targets do work. They do represent progress, even if more incremental than epochal. California’s emissions of carbon dioxide shrank by 9.3 million metric tons in 2022, the equivalent of  removing 2.2 million gas-powered vehicles from the road for a year – a statistic made more  significant by the fact that those reductions occurred during a year when the economy grew. Does  that put the state on track to meet what are overly ambitious 2040 targets? No; although these  things do have a way of accelerating over time to the degree to which a positive feedback loop is  sometimes generated.  

Would SB 366 guarantee that the state increase supply by 9 million-acre-feet notwithstanding the  effects of aridification in the Sierra Nevada and Colorado Basin? No, but creating and then focusing  on such a goal, any goal for that matter, holds out the hope for at least partial achievement.  Aspiration stimulates innovation, and no sector more than golf understands the role innovation has  played in reducing water consumption. The same applies to the production side of the equation.  And it is going to take both for golf and other water consumptive sectors to continue to thrive in the  arid Southwest.  

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CAG suggested that the great lesson from last year’s legislative session was “to heed labor’s roar.”  On so many fronts the 2023 session yielded many of labor’s long held goals – e.g., separate, and  much higher minimum wages for the fast food and healthcare sectors, expansions in sick  day/family leave mandates. 2023 also yielded a bill ultimately vetoed by Governor Newsom to  allow striking workers to collect unemployment insurance. 

As for 2024, while Assemblymember Ash Kalra (D-San Jose) was quoted in the Los Angeles Times as characterizing his own legislative record on union-friendly proposals this year as “a blood bath,”  labor’s yield was not that dire. But it was a long cry from the previous few years. This year’s version  of a bill to provide striking workers unemployment benefits, something the State of New York does  provide on a limited basis, flamed out before it made it to the Governor’s desk. Legislation written  by Assembly Appropriations Chair Buffy Wicks (D-Oakland) and strongly supported by journalist  unions to require Google to pay news outlets for content was shelved in lieu of a watered-down  deal. Bills to support grocery jobs over self-check-out machines, expand protections for workers  who join picket lines, and limit government agencies’ use of temporary contracts to replace union  jobs similarly failed to gain traction. 

Don’t take the wrong lesson from this. Labor remains a dominant force in Sacramento. It’s just that  a $73 billion deficit that everyone understands is more structural than temporal is also a dominant  force – one that will continue to impose discipline in differentiating priorities, something golf has to  take into consideration if it determines to run a truncated version of a failed 2024 bill (AB 2947) in  2025 that would have encouraged/enabled incentives for turf conversions. If it costs the state any  appreciable money, it’s likely to fail in Appropriations just as AB 2947 did. 

For those thinking that continued deficits might spark a reform of the state’s tax system to eliminate  the volatility created by an overdependence upon income and goods-based sales taxes by putting service taxes on the table for consideration, you might want to consider just how much political risk  such consideration would pose for any politician brave enough to suggest it. That subject is more  likely to be broached by the same death by a thousand cuts that CEQA is being curtailed than it is to  be broached by the kind of massive reform that Bob Hertzberg proposed year after year during his  term in the State Senate – year after year to no more effect than stone cold silence from his  colleagues. When Jerry Brown tagged CEQA reform as “God’s work,” everyone interpreted that as  his assignment of the highest of priority and importance to the task. In hindsight he may have  meant that only God had the stuff to tackle the environmental opposition sure to ensue.  

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It’s too early to draw final conclusions about the 2024 legislative session. But it’s not too early to  suggest that if we are right about Governor Newsom signing SB 366 into law, we will be able to  conclude that water has joined housing as one of the priorities capable of justifying intense focus  as well as increased spending in a fiscal environment disciplined by deficits.   

THE LAST ORANGE GROVE IN LOS ANGELES

When the City of Los Angeles approves Borstein Enterprises’ application for the construction of 21  luxury homes in the San Fernando Valley neighborhood of Tarzana, there will be no more citrus  groves in the county that was for the 1^st half of the 20^th Century the top agricultural county in the  nation. While the application proposes to preserve much of acreage as open space, none of it will  be devoted to farming. All that will remain will be two rows of citrus trees on the west side of one of  the tract’s streets to remind future generations of what once was.  

Should Angeles National Golf Club, located in a riverbed in a northeast corner of Los Angeles that is  so remote that most don’t know it is within the city’s limits ever close, the same story could be  written for daily fee golf in the nation’s second largest city. Once dotted with multiple daily fee golf 

courses and driving/practice ranges, Los Angeles is down to just this one. All other golf properties  are either private clubs or municipal parkland facilities.  

Agriculture and golf have two things very much in common. Both require large tracts of land, and  both cannot compete economically with almost all other forms of residential and/or commercial  development. The difference is that citrus can be grown in plenty of places in this huge state, while  golf courses need to be reasonably close to where golfers live and work.  

There is a compelling case to be made for keeping them within earshot of the roughly 3 million  Californians who play golf, but the “case” is not an economic one. It’s the case for recreation,  school sports, charitable fund raising, green space, permeability, environmental sustainability, heat  relief – all distinguished economically only in terms of being the one active recreational activity in  the public sector that generates net revenues that offset the taxpayer contributions that would  otherwise be necessary to support other public sector amenities.  

Golf has certainly made that non-economic case effectively both statewide and locally (those two  failed “public golf endangerment acts” and myriad local repurposing efforts). Golf needs to keep  making it, because there is no shortage of those who make the economic case against golf. And  many of them are not who or what you may think. Consider the following from a recent FORBES  Online story that debunks a meme about Kamala Harris having proposed an excise tax on all golf  related products, services, and activities parallel to similar excise taxes on other products/services  but debunks its veracity by suggesting all the reasons why it would be an excellent idea: 

“. . . golf courses also raise land use concerns. In many urban and suburban areas, courses  may occupy valuable real estate that could potentially be used for other purposes that  would generate more property tax revenue or benefit a broader segment of the population.  The exclusivity of golf as a sport means these large green spaces in the center of town are  often reserved for a relatively small and affluent subset of the population, raising social  equity and use of public resource concerns. Those spaces would generate more property  tax revenue if used for housing or commercial space and would be of more use to the  general community if reserved for public leisure.” 

When conservative business publications begin echoing the same arguments that Malcolm  Gladwell and “progressive” tax/legal critics have long been raising, it means that these arguments, once provinces of a distinct side of the political aisle, are moving into the mainstream. It means  more than anything else that golf needs to be vigilant and smart – vigilant in terms of paying great  heed to these critics and their criticisms – smart in terms of avoiding the critical error known as  making the other side’s argument for them. If golf suggests that it be judged by an economic  calculus that adjudges it a lesser and lower use, it will be thus judged, and golf won’t like the verdict.

September 18, 2024

Article provided by SCGA Public Affairs Team

Sacramento

September is when we find out which among the thousands of bills that legislators filed at the beginning of the year are signed into law by the governor. Just as the Assembly and Senate were under a firm deadline (August 31) to approve identical versions of bills for consideration in this session, Governor Newsom is under a firm deadline (September 30) to sign or veto them, a handful of which become law immediately, most of which become law January 1, and a few of which go into effect July 1.

To summarize what we have shared voluminously over the course of this year, every bill golf opposed has not made it to the governor’s desk, every bill golf opposed unless amended in a specific way has been thus amended, one bill we strongly supported (SB 366) has made it to the governor’s desk, and one bill we merely watched for what it portends for the unraveling of long established water rights (AB 460) has also made it to the governor’s desk.

As we stated in our last update, “we should be encouraged by just how well the golf community again fared in Sacramento. The reception the allied golf community again received from Members, Staffers, and agencies made clear that the game’s stock continues to rise in Sacramento. And all told, this should give the golf community confidence that the advocacy tools it has developed in recent years can be sharpened if necessary to continue coping with whatever Mother Nature and human institutions throw its way.”

That’s a teaser for some news about the upgrading of the California Alliance for Golf (CAG) we expect to share with you in short order. Today, a “tease.” Details to follow.

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While we await those gubernatorial signatures and those CAG “details to follow,” we would like to add to the sunny optimism suffusing both with a couple of encouraging updates from the municipal realm (Ventura and San Diego) and a summary of what a golf community can achieve when it engages for a long period of time with its most important regulatory agency (Coachella Valley Water District).

In reverse order, we start with what the golf community in the Coachella Valley (home to 121 golf clubs/courses) has managed to accomplish for itself in the decade since the SCGA organized that community into an institutionalized partnership with the Coachella Valley Water District (CVWD) – an institution called the “Coachella Valley Golf & Water Task Force.”

Coachella Valley Golf & Water Task Force

The CVWD Golf & Water Task Force was organized by the SCGA 10 years ago to create a partnership between the Valley golf community and the Water District for the purposes of meeting the conservation goals of the Coachella Valley Water Management Plan and facilitating the substitution of Colorado River water for groundwater.

Composed of allied associations, golf facilities, industry experts, CVWD staff, and two of the five elected members of the CVWD Board, the Task Force meets bimonthly with additional occasional meetings to work on specific tasks.

While the overarching benefit of the institution has been the forging of collaborative and trusting relationships between the Valley golf community, CVWD staff, the Board, and local media, the key accomplishments over the 10-year life of the body have included:

• Creation of a new and lower rate for users of canal water (Colorado River) in the East Valley to eliminate the disincentive created by a widening gap between the East Valley RAC rate and the canal rate;
• Use of debt instruments to finance the extension of the mid-valley pipeline in lieu of a pay-as-you-go methodology;
• Creation of three (3) rounds of turf and other rebates, the first such rebates for golf in the Valley;
• Partnered on a $9.1 million incentive program grant with the US Bureau of Reclamation;
• Use of 5-year averaging methodology to establish compliance with conservation goals in lieu of using specific baseline years;
• Expedition of pipeline hookups to wean courses off pumping;
• A reversal of media fortune, as golf in the Valley has gone from the sector that put “the aquifer at risk” to the sector that is making a good faith effort to cooperate with all other sectors to bring the aquifer into stasis – a goal that the region did achieve in 2020;
• Significant input into the projections and underpinnings of the current Coachella Valley Water Management Plan that CVWD and its fellow water agencies in the Valley (e.g., DWA) has submitted to the state as the region’s formal Groundwater Sustainability Plan under the terms of California’s Groundwater Sustainability Act (2014) – the document that is to guide the region’s water strategy for the next two generations.
• Provided significant input into the “Salt & Nutrient Management Plan” mandated by California’s Groundwater Sustainability Act to reflect turf’s accurate Nitrogen assimilation factor (97%) to deflect what was on its way to being fodder for criticism of the sector for polluting the groundwater table.
• Collaborated on development of a massive mapping project RFP to acquire the data necessary for the water district to make effective state and federal grant applications for golf industry rebates/incentives, and to make fair and accurate budgets under California’s Groundwater Sustainability Act. 

That’s a lot of “accomplishments,” all of which have proven of incalculable value to the 100 plus golf courses in the California desert, many of which will prove indispensable as things tighten along the Colorado River and mandates from Sacramento arrive with increasing frequency.

The Task Force meets again next Wednesday to continue creating mutual benefit for the Valley golf community and CVWD. The point of sharing this story, other than what is obvious from this long list of “key accomplishments” is to hammer home the following two (2) characteristics of ALL effective advocacy efforts:

1. The effort must be organized and institutionalized.
2. The effort is all about the long-distance run, not the sprint.

The ad hoc effort is almost always the losing effort. Effective advocacy is more presence and persistence than it is genius – a version of Thomas Edison’s dictum about inventiveness being 1% inspiration and 99% perspiration.

The CVWD Golf & Water Task Force is not the only such collaborative effort between a golf community and a water agency. The one in Los Angeles may meet less frequently but is arguably as impactful. And next month the SCGA Public Affairs team meets with the leadership of another large water agency to establish another major “golf & water task force.”

Buenaventura Municipal Golf Course

A mainstay of Ventura golf for 92 years, the Buenaventura Municipal Golf Course has been closed since January 2023. That is when torrential rainstorms caused the Santa Clara River to overflow, carrying massive amounts of debris and sediment onto the golf course that did not recede as it had during previous flood events. Like many municipal golf courses in Southern California, Buenaventura is in a flood plain.

In May of 2023, the city retained a golf course architect to prepare plans for full restoration of the golf course but discovered that for a variety of reasons not fully understood, full restoration alone would not be capable of preventing continued flooding. Some in the city used that discovery to advocate for the closure of the golf course. However, Ventura’s public golf community, particularly the members of the golf clubs at Buenaventura and Olivas Links, the city’s other municipal golf course, advocated strongly for finding alternative ways to restore the 92-year-old mainstay. They attended Council meetings, wrote letters, hounded the media, and engaged the assistance of the SCGA in their effort.

That “effort” came full circle last week when the Ventura City Council voted unanimously to award a contract to develop a scope of work that considers the hydraulics of the adjacent river, identifies potential flood mitigation measures, protects the integrity of the golf property, evaluates different course structures/routings/holes, vets potential new revenue streams – all in an updated golf course design consistent with the footprint available after application of whatever additional mitigation measures are revealed by the study.

In addition, the golfers asked for direct input into the process of updating that golf design per whatever constraints are discovered, or perhaps not discovered as the case may end up being upon completion of the study. That request was granted. Beyond this project, Council sanctioned the resurrection of the Citizen Golf Advisory Group that had lapsed during COVID – something many who testified before Council also requested. Whatever emerges once the needs of flood mitigation are balanced against the city’s resolve to restore normative golf on the site, it is clear that the Ventura golf community has earned a seat at the table where that balancing act will be finalized. It is equally clear that whatever sentiment there had been for simply closing the course or repurposing it as a passive park was trumped by a level of citizen golfer engagement that we have not always seen but are increasingly seeing from Azusa to Duarte to Carson to Palm Springs to La Verne to Los Angeles’ Sepulveda Basin to Brea to San Diego, the subject of our next foray into exemplary citizen golfer engagement.

Mission Bay Golf Course

To make a very long story short, after more than eight (8) years of managing to preserve the full integrity of San Diego’s Mission Bay executive golf course & practice facility in the city’s Mission Bay Master Plan, the San Diego golf community lost out to a combination of other active recreational amenities and wetland preservation in the “vision plan” that was established by the San Diego City Council as the starting point of the “General Development Plan” (GDP) that will soon get underway to determine a final plan for the De Anza Cove section of the Mission Bay Park in which the Mission Bay golf facility is located.

During those eight (8) years, a group of dedicated San Diego golfers, including many who have served and, in some cases, still serve on the San Diego City Council’s Municipal Golf Committee, attended scores of public meetings in defense of San Diego’s exemplar of affordable, accessible, junior/school centric golf. But so did devotees of camping, boating, baseball, soccer, open space, and wetland restoration. In the penultimate analysis – not the final analysis because that is yet to come during the GDP process – not all could get what they wanted nor what they were promised by members of the City Council. Given the need, a need acknowledged by all; to restore some of the wetlands, it just wasn’t possible within the remnant footprint. Bottom line: The political powers concluded that upsetting the golf community would be their least objectionable option.

Thus, was born the “Save Mission Bay Golf Course Coalition,” the details of which, according to the basic “mission” document they put together, are as follows:

WHO: A concerned group of organizations and individuals, including but not limited to:

• SD CIF Section High School Golf Teams
• San Diego Junior Golf Association
• Pro Kids Academy / First Tee of San Diego
• San Diego Municipal Golf Committee
• Southern California PGA Section (SCPGA)
• Southern California Golf Association (SCGA)

WHAT: A coalition whose sole purpose is to protect the accessible, affordable, and complete municipal golf course experience which the Mission Bay Golf Course (MBGC) has provided to generations of San Diegans of all age groups, to the greatest extent possible given competing priorities imposed by the De Anza Cove Amendment to the Mission Bay Park Master Plan (MBPMP). We seek to preserve the integral role played by the facility by continuing to create new generations of local golfers, providing San Diego schools with a golf facility indispensable to their continued ability to host junior golf teams and programs, and continuing to function as a unique and irreplaceable resource for older and working San Diego golfers.

WHY: The planning process attendant to implementing the MBPMP as recently amended requires that park stakeholders be prepared to work collaboratively and in a spirit of compromise to ensure that active recreational users are able continue to provide their sports programs and enjoy the usage of this parkland given that the City of San Diego now proposes to convert substantial acreage to wetland.   This Coalition is formed in the spirit of constructive collaboration coupled with a firm commitment to preserve the core purpose of the MBGC as a unique 18-hole executive golf facility in all of San Diego.

HOW: By working with the other active/passive recreational, environmental, and commercial stakeholders to determine the amount of acreage which might end up being available to the MBGC once other stakeholder needs and priorities are preliminarily identified and negotiated, the coalition then anticipates the city retaining necessary professional services to determine how the proposed remaining parcel might be redesigned/reimagined to maintain a fully functional 18-hole executive golf course that includes practice facilities similar to the facilities provided today.

VISION: The “Save Mission Bay Golf Course” coalition pledges to operate at all times in a spirit of compromise, shared sacrifice, and respect for the other interests and stakeholders whose recreational claims, virtues, and values are as important to the residents of San Diego as the utility, virtues and values of MBGC are to the San Diego golf community – a commitment to the preservation of as much of the MBGC’s current value as required to maintain current levels of functionality and community resonance while accommodating certain constraints imposed by the De Anza Cove Amendment to the MBPMP.

The “Coalition” put together a comprehensive “fact” sheet that explains the value this San Diego golf gem has provided generations of San Diegans. Click here to read it.

The Coalition plans to secure signatures of San Diego devotees of the heavily played facility, both in person and per a QR Code that will allow for offsite signature gathering. If you are a San Diego municipal golfer, you are sure to see it one way or the other.

What was lost at the last minute in the “vision” process can easily be recaptured in the coming GDP process – whether in whole or part. It won’t be easy, but as today’s headline makes clear, “when golf organizes and advocates, it wins.” And this effort is organized, and its advocates have already demonstrated the passion and perseverance to match if not exceed the passion and perseverance of the other interests sure to be involved in the GDP process.

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We will continue to share the myriad challenges the golf community faces, many of them critical, because it’s important to know and then face head-on what’s coming our way. But we would be remiss if we didn’t also share all the ways the golf community continues to meet and overcome them.

– SCGA Public Affairs Team

PUBLIC AFFAIRS NEWSLETTER 

Where Golf and Public Policy Intersect 

[August 2024] 

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IT ALWAYS COMES BACK TO WATER 

Three things of long-term significance for the California golf community occurred last week, all of  them involving water:  

1. The Assembly and Senate performed their second and final “great culling” of 2024 by  moving some bills off suspense and holding others in committee, with those escaping their  respective Appropriations Committee Suspense Files almost certain to move forward to the  Governor for his signature or veto and those held in committee dead for the year. The bills  golf was most interested in involved water. 

2. The Imperial Irrigation District (IID) announced that it was giving back 700-million-acre feet  of its Colorado River allocation each of the next 3 years while it and the other agencies in  the seven (7) states in the Colorado Compact agree to a set of permanent reductions  beginning in 2026 to accommodate the Basin’s reduced water production. 

3. The California Department of Water Resources (DWR) released its annual “State Water  Project Delivery Capability Report” that increased the percentage decrease of that  “capability” over the next 20 years to 13% on the low end and 23% on the high end, the 3^rd

year in a row in which those numbers were increased, a trend reflected by other academic  studies released in the last year. 

The Great Culling – What Came off Appropriations Suspense Files and What Didn’t 

Two (2) bills that CAG was watching with great interest to see whether they survived their respective  Appropriations processes – one a bill CAG strongly supported, one a bill CAG was tracking, and  both strong harbingers of the trajectory of California water law and policy – did come off suspense  and move to floor votes that will occur sometime between now and end of session the 1^st week of  September.  

SB 366 (Caballero; D-Merced)  

In late May CAG reported that “It isn’t often that one bill can highlight all that separates one side of  California’s great water divide from the other – from those interests fixated on conservation as the  focus of future supply and those intent on pursuing a more diversified portfolio – from those who  are often accused of believing that California can conserve its way out of its aridification  predicament and those who are convinced that if conservation is the only tool in the state’s water  resiliency toolbox, California is doomed to be hollowed out in much the same way rust belt cities  like Pittsburgh and Detroit were in the last quarter of the 20th Century.”  

SB 366 was that bill. Tagged “California Water Plan: Long Term Supply Targets,” SB 366 would revise  and recast certain provisions regarding The California Water Plan to, among other things, require  the department to coordinate with the California Water Commission, the State Water Resources  Control Board, other state and federal agencies as appropriate, and a stakeholder advisory  committee to develop a comprehensive plan for addressing the state’s water needs and meeting  specified long-term water supply targets established by the bill for purposes of The California Water  Plan. It would go beyond the current approach to water supply planning by establishing for the 1st  time in the history of the state specific targets to be met by certain dates and requires a financing  plan for achieving these targets.

Given that the California golf community’s long-term interest lies with the side of the “great water  divide” that finds conservation to be an important but by no means the only tool in the state’s water  resiliency toolbox, the California Alliance for Golf (CAG) joined more than 100 hundred other  organizations in support of the bill when it was heard in the Assembly Water, Parks, and Wildlife  Committee in June, where it passed through on a unanimous bipartisan 13-0 vote. 

When Senator Caballero presented her bill to the Assembly Committee in June, she noted that  California had already adopted 81 targets in support of electrifying and otherwise decarbonizing the  state, making it more than reasonable to adopt targets for the supply of something as vital to the  sustainability of the state as water. She cited the same UCLA/UC Merced/UC Davis study that the  bill’s sponsor (California Municipal Utilities Association) cited in their support of the bill –“The  Magnitude of California’s Water Challenges” – a study that makes a strong case that changed  climactic conditions in the Sierra Nevada and Colorado Basin all but guarantee that California is  looking at somewhere between a 10 and 20 percent loss of supply by 2050. Without focusing on  certain 21st Century supply modes (e.g., storm water capture, aquifer recharge, reuse – potable  and non-potable, desalination) in addition to continuing to ramp up all forms of conservation, the  state won’t be able to thrive.  

As amended subsequent to that Assembly committee hearing to assuage the criticisms of  environmental organizations concerned that some of the “supply” envisaged by the bill might come  at the expense of the water used to maintain the environmental integrity of the Sacramento Delta,  SB 366 moved to Assembly Appropriations where last Thursday it moved off Suspense and forward  to what is almost certain to be a successful floor vote. To which we would add that given the fact  that SB 366 author Senator Caballero is Chair of Senate Appropriations, it is highly unlikely that  Governor Newsom will veto it, notwithstanding the expense associated with it in a year in which the  state is trying to cope with a substantial deficit.  

The success of this bill represents a huge shift in the state’s approach to coping with the effects of  aridification – from an almost single-minded obsession with conservation as the primary tool to a  more diversified approach that combines conservation with the construction of a 21^st Century  appropriate equivalent of the 20^th Century’s State Water Project. While that offers relief to a sector  like golf that is sure to be among the first activities on the chopping block should circumstances  become as dire as they were just 23 short months ago before Mother Nature bailed us out with  record precipitation, do keep in mind that massive infrastructure projects are massively expensive,  and the costs therefore are sure to fall disproportionately upon those that are large consumers of  water. For both practical and political reasons, it behooves golf to keep developing and playing  conservation cards, albeit that too is a resource consumptive activity. When it comes to water in  Southern California all roads lead to increased costs of doing business – costs sure to always run  ahead of the CPI. 

AB 460 (Bauer-Kahan; D-San Ramon) 

A bill that was pulled and made a 2-year bill by its author late in 2023 due to the limited time  available at the end of the 2023 session to craft the amendments necessary to earn the votes  required for passage, AB 460 is another in a string of recent bills that presage a reworking of certain  established “water rights” increasingly seen as impediments to achieving long-term water 

sustainability and equity. In short, AB 460 gives the State Water Resources Control Board (SWRCB)  the enforcement tools (interim relief orders and hefty fines) capable of effectively policing the  ”illegal diversions” now capable of the documentation necessary to deem them “illegal” per a bill  authored by Senator Ben Allen (D-Redondo Beach) and signed by the Governor last year – another  of the bills presaging the reworking of certain established water rights.  

With an amendment extending the commencement date envisaged therein, AB 460 escaped  Suspense last week and moves to what is almost certain to be a positive floor vote. The  significance for the golf community: Expect more of this as time passes; as with last Century’s  water capture and conveyance infrastructure, what worked for the 19^th and 20^th Centuries is simply  not going to work for the 21^st.  

Imperial Irrigation District Gives Back 700 Million Acre-Feet of Water 

In an arrangement complicated by certain trade-offs with the San Diego County Water Authority  that in the opinion of multiple environmental organizations blunts its impact and doubles down on  the environmental catastrophe known as the Salton Sea, the largest user of Colorado River water,  the Imperial Irrigation District (IID), has agreed to voluntarily forgo 700 million acre-feet of its  allocation between now and 2026. That is when the seven states and the agencies operating within  those states are set to agree to a new long-term Compact in which all of them agree to cede some  of their extant allocation to accommodate the significantly lessened water production of the  Colorado Basin.  

While the number of golf courses in the Imperial Irrigation District are few and very far between, the  same cannot be said for the number of golf courses in the other areas of Southern California  dependent in some part upon Colorado River water for their needs.  

For the 19 million Southern California customers of the Metropolitan Water District (MWD),  including those in Ventura County and parts of Los Angeles County that don’t have access to  Colorado River supplies, the impact is obvious to the degree to which it presages what is likely going to come out of the 2026 negotiations going on right now. For the Coachella Valley Water  District (CVWD) that serves more than 100 golf courses, though those golf courses are not potable  customers, they are in part reliant upon raw water from the Colorado River to supplement pumping,  and the 35,000 acre-feet that the Coachella Valley is ceding back to the River at the moment is  water that the District had been annually contributing to its Levy Spreading Grounds, a forbearance  made possible in part by Mother Nature’s recent bounty and the fact that the aquifer beneath is  capable of stasis without that water between now and 2026. But as CVWD has reminded its active  Golf & Water Task Force, that forbearance is temporary, and the permanent cuts beyond 2026 may  well be higher once those negotiations are completed.  

For those in Northern and Central California that don’t depend upon imports from the Colorado  Basin or imports from the State Water Project (see DWR update below), the same effects of  aridification that are driving reductions in the flows upon which Southern Californians are dependent apply to Northern California supplies, whether in the form of Central Valley and Central  Coast groundwater, San Francisco’s draws from Hetch Hetchy, captured rainfall, or the snowmelt  that feeds the Sacramento Delta and so many of Northern California’s rivers every spring. 

One more thing for the golf community to consider. The cuts made in IID are made possible by  paying farmers handsomely to fallow fields that support crops amenable to fallowing, e.g., hay.  That is not an option for golf courses, which even if they were amenable to fallowing, no public largesse would ever be made available to something so purely discretionary and recreational as  golf.  

DWR’s State Water Project Delivery Capability Report 

Consistent with the Governor’s data in his Executive Order “Making Conservation a California Way  of Life,” the UCLA/UC Merced/UC Davis study cited by the sponsors of SB 366, and every other  credible academic and governmental analysis of the state’s water situation, the California  Department of Water Resources (DWR) most recent annual report on the capability of the State  Water Project’s ability to deliver water to the Southern part of the state has downgraded that  capability. DWR now reports that California can expect somewhere in the range of 13-23 percent  less water therefrom in the next 20 years. A 23 percent decline would be equivalent to about  496,000 acre-feet a year, enough to supply 1,736,000 homes for a year. 

Again, while the State Water Project feeds the Southern part of the state, the water it sends south comes from the Northern part of the state. Lowered water yields are lowered water yields no matter  where one sits in the state.  

Rare is the instance in which all the data point in the same direction. We may not like the direction,  but certain knowledge of direction does spare us from having to slog through conflicting evidence to figure the game and industry’s best course forward. 

A Few Thoughts in Closing 

First, anyone who thought that the pressure to investigate new cards to play in the game known as  water footprint reduction and then invest in them might lessen in the coming years, needs to think  again. Everything screams the opposite. Risk aversion in current circumstances poses the much  greater risk. 

Second, anyone who fails to understand that the need to modernize and upgrade what everyone  agrees is an outmoded water capture and conveyance infrastructure can only add to the real costs  of conducting golf operations in California fails to anticipate and prepare for the inevitable. And in  the process may just plain fail.  

Third, notwithstanding the first two “thoughts,” we should be encouraged by just how well the golf  community again fared in Sacramento. The bills CAG opposed either failed or were amended to  CAG’s satisfaction (e.g., AB 3192 & SB 1413). The bills CAG supported are either on their way to the  Governor’s desk (e.g., SB 366) or gained sufficient traction to merit a future credible run (e.g., AB  2947). The lone late session surprise was cured when the author of last year’s “junk fees” law  (Dodd; D-Napa) rushed through a gut-and-amend emergency bill to make clear that restaurants  were never meant to come under its provisions. The reception the allied golf community again  received from Members, Staffers, and agencies made clear that the game’s stock continues to rise  in Sacramento. And all told, this should give the golf community confidence that the advocacy  tools it has developed in recent years can be sharpened if necessary to continue coping with  whatever Mother Nature and human institutions throw its way.

June 10, 2024

Article Provided by SCGA

SB 478 (Dodd; D-Napa) sailed through the legislature last year with nary a mention from SCGA Public Affairs, because it was common knowledge, or at least the “commons” thought it was common knowledge, that no aspect of a golf operation, public or private, would be affected by its passage.

The “commons” got it wrong!

First, a little background; then why we’re reporting on this today.

While passed into law last year, SB 478 was slated to become effective July 1, 2024 to allow for all affected businesses to accommodate its requirements. As for those “requirements,” the bill prohibited hidden surcharges and what it referred to as “junk fees” from being tacked onto customers’ bills, requiring that they be included in the charges posted and advertised.

We didn’t track or otherwise report on the law, because the California Attorney General’s Office in 2023 opined that were the bill to become law, restaurants could continue to apply surcharges as long as they were disclosed on the menu, with the clear implication that clear and full disclosure on banquet contracts would also permit their use for this common form of golf club/course business practice.

However, last month the Attorney General reversed course and announced that SB 478 would also apply to restaurants and related food/beverage operations. With that announcement we received calls from public golf courses and private equity clubs as to what that would mean for them. With our standard disclaimer about never issuing anything resembling a formal legal opinion, we suggested that our reading would indicate applicability in both contexts, notwithstanding the fact that the business model of a private golf club food/beverage operation has little to nothing to do with “advertising” or “posting” fees to the public; to themselves as owners of the operation perhaps, but not to the public.

Senator Dodd is now proposing that the law carve “restaurants” out of the law. Specifically, Dodd is proposing that restaurants be permitted to continue adding surcharges and mandatory gratuities/fees to bills as long as those surcharges and mandatory fees are revealed upfront, clearly, and conspicuously.

It goes without saying that the California Restaurant Association (CRA) supports the carve out; indeed, smart money would be on that organization having gone into high gear upon the Attorney General’s reversal of course last month. Unite Here Local 11, the labor union that represents numerous restaurant workers also supports the carve out, as do some but certainly not all of the state’s many consumer watchdog groups. While we shy away from making predictions, we do believe that given the circumstances, Senator Dodd’s proposed carve out has a high likelihood of coming to fruition.

We know that many California golf operations are interested in how this plays out in the coming weeks, and we will do our best to keep you informed.

Tuesday, May 14, 2024

Article provided by SCGA Public Affairs

It isn’t often that one bill can highlight all that separates one side of California’s great water divide from the other – from those interests fixated on conservation as the focus of future supply and those intent on pursuing a more diversified portfolio – from those who are often accused of believing that California can conserve its way out of its aridification predicament and those who are convinced that if conservation is the only tool in the state’s water resiliency toolbox, California is doomed to be hollowed out in much the same way rust belt cities like Pittsburgh and Detroit were in the last quarter of the 20th Century. A divide who some have the luxury of navigating by posturing, some are forced to navigate by the practical demands of their livelihoods, and some try to navigate by a balancing act that though once common, seems to have all but disappeared from today’s body politic.

The bill?

SB 366 (Caballero; D-Merced / Bipartisan bill / Co-authors in Assembly Essalyi and Rubio) – California Water Plan: Long Term Supply Targets – A bill that would revise and recast certain provisions regarding The California Water Plan to, among other things, require the department to instead establish a stakeholder advisory committee and to expand the membership of the committee to include tribes, labor, and environmental justice interests. The bill would require the department to coordinate with the California Water Commission, the State Water Resources Control Board, other state, and federal agencies as appropriate, and the stakeholder advisory committee to develop a comprehensive plan for addressing the state’s water needs and meeting specified long-term water supply targets established by the bill for purposes of The California Water Plan. The bill goes beyond the current approach to water supply planning by establishing specific targets to be met by certain dates and requires a financing plan for achieving these targets.

Click here to read the 11-page bill as most recently amended in the Assembly April 8.

SB 366 cleared the Senate floor in 2023 by a unanimous 40 – 0 vote but was pulled and made a two-year bill by its author due to the Water, Parks, and Wildlife Committee Chair’s opposition to the setting of specific supply targets, a heartburn over targets very much shared by the Governor’s Office. Both were worried, and rightfully so, that a set of targets cum dates supported by a financing plan for the achievement thereof would commit the state to spending mandates it might find difficult if not impossible to fund, let alone complete.

We know what you’re thinking. The state has little problem fixing targets cum specific dates that vary from impossible to meet when they’re established to possible but onerously expensive to accommodate when the day of reckoning comes. Think SORE equipment, EV’s, industrial emissions of all types, fossil fuel phase-outs, electrification, etc. Of course, what those have in common is that the expenses incurred to meet them fall not on the state, but on the private sector, albeit various levels of government do offer rebates, credits, and other incentives to cushion the expense. For the golf community, think about the roughly doubled cost of that electric mower to replace the gas-powered one that is no longer available for sale in California as of January 1.

SB 366 would very much put the State of California on the hook for at least trying to develop a workable plan cum funding mechanism for meeting the targets established per the process outlined therein. Of course, when the stakes are high enough and the sector is big enough, target dates get extended. Think those nuclear power and natural gas plants that are scheduled to operate well past their decommission dates. Think those EV targets that are nowhere near coming to fruition by the dates established therein.

We know what you’re thinking. What about the golf courses, not to mention the “mom-and-pop” landscapers, which have to purchase much more expensive electric equivalents that often don’t work as efficiently as the gas-powered equipment they are replacing? Think, but do get over it. Feasibility and cost arguments that work when the stakes are high and the affected sector is enormous just don’t cut it when the sector is puny. Yes, we know that the California golf industry is a $15.1 billion enterprise, which is $4 billion higher than Florida and more than double that of Texas, according to the American Golf Industry Coalition (AGIC). However, that represents exactly 0.003% of California’s GDP. So, get with the program, buy the new equipment, figure out how to absorb the expense, and live to tackle issues that golf can and does tackle effectively – e.g., AB 5, AB 2257, AB 672, AB 1910, AB 1572, AB 3192, and the many common-sense conservation protocols and programs the game has developed in close collaboration with water wholesalers, retailers, utilities, and districts throughout the state.

The Assembly Committee on Water, Parks, and Wildlife has a new Chair in 2024, and SB 366 will be heard in that Committee sometime in June. On one side of the “divide” is the large and growing coalition of the state’s water providers/retailers/districts that understand better than most that they came perilously close to performing triage in 2022 and would have in some cases literally run out of water in 2023 had Mother Nature not intervened to bring them record precipitation in that year followed by a much better than average year in 2024.

The California Municipal Utilities Association (CMUA) is the lead agency of the “coalition.” To read their 2-page “fact sheet” click here. To read their 2-page “benefits sheet” click here. Between now and June CMUA is planning to seek the support of those California sectors (e.g., business, agriculture, recreation) whose interests are very much on the supply side of the “divide,” those that while they may very much consider conservation to be one of the components of an effective supply portfolio, don’t share with those of a more puritanical bent the notion that California can conserve its way out of what many have come to refer to as our current state of weather “whiplash” – long dry spells punctuated by wet years driven almost entirely by atmospheric rivers whose waters are not now capturable.

On the other side of the divide? That would be some of the powerful environmental organizations concerned that we have not yet done enough to add to supply through conservation and worried that much of the supply created by means other than conservation will come at the expense of the environmental integrity of the Sacramento Delta. To them we would add those elected leaders concerned that any set of targets set by the long-term demands of the world’s 5^th largest economy can only create funding demands that can be met by gutting current funding priorities. Depending on how one counts, California is facing a $43 or $73 billion deficit in 2024 that shows signs of only going up in the next couple of years – hardly a propitious moment for ambitious funding mandates.

Stuck squarely in the middle of the divide is the Governor. Chief executives don’t have the luxury of single-minded advocacy on the theory that someone or something else will balance their advocacy against the advocacy of those on the other side of various divides. They have to make things work, or if you prefer a phrase that was once considered beyond the realm of American respectability – making the trains run on time. Or as Gavin Newsom’s predecessor Jerry Brown defined the role – paddling down the middle of a great river, sometimes paddling left, sometimes right, in an effort to keep the ship of state from running aground.

On water matters Governor Newsom has been paddling “right” recently if one considers focusing on supply a rightward political drift. He is pressing for the construction of the Delta Tunnel and the completion of the Sites Reservoir. His State Water Resources Control Board (SWRCB) has reversed course in favor of urban water use and supply with respect to the Rule effectuating his “Making Conservation a California Way of Life” executive order to the delight of the Association of California Water Agencies (ACWA) and the chagrin of most of the state’s normative environmental organizations.

Support of SB 366 in its current form would amount to not just another “rightward” shift, but one of considerably more consequence than the three cited here. And it would be a shift requiring the assumption of massive funding commitments. But there are reasons why every governor since the 1970’s, both Democrats and Republicans, have pressed for some form of Delta conveyance, whether one tunnel or two, and every governor has tried to rise above the parochial concerns of those on both sides of the “divide” through various balancing schemes that often seem like walks on a circus tightrope. And so, while we would be foolish to suggest that we have a clue as to how this will play out when SB 366 is joined in the Assembly next month, we would suggest that while the Governor cannot just say no to the coalition of water agencies bent on pressing the supply issue with specific targets cum funding mandates, he is not likely to say yes to everything contained in the bill, but rather use the power given him by the California Constitution to soften it into something that makes a powerful statement about the compelling need to develop a more robust supply strategy while deferring the attachment of specific targets to a dilatory process described but not necessarily prescribed in the language.

As for which side of this “divide” the interests of the California golf community fall, the audience that consumes these “Updates” doesn’t need our counsel to figure that out. As for whether the California Alliance for Golf (CAG) and the constituencies that comprise it will make clear that preference in the form of a formal public position, that is the subject of an internal debate already underway.

How all this plays out will tell us much about how many things in California will play out. We’ll do our best to keep you informed. Stay tuned.

Wednesday, April 17, 2024

Article provided by SCGA

When introduced by Assembly Member Al Muratsuchi (D-Torrance) February 16, AB 3192 contained a provision that would have banned the use of all nonorganic pesticides and fertilizers on golf resorts in California’s Coastal Zone. The bill defined “golf resorts” as golf courses attached by ownership/management to resorts with at least 300 rooms. At minimum, Pebble Beach, Half Moon Bay, Terrenea, Pelican Hill, Aviara, Monarch Beach, and La Costa would have come under the prohibition. Torrey Pines could have come under it as well, since the two adjoining on-site hotels may have sufficient direct business connection to trigger the necessary nexus.

The California Alliance for Golf (CAG) did not follow suit with the hospitality sector and California Chamber of Commerce in opposing the entirety of the bill, much of which deals with labor and other issues not of direct concern to a golf centric advocacy alliance, but did file an “oppose unless amended” letter with the Assembly Natural Resources Committee – unless amended to remove the blanket ban on the use of all nonorganic pesticides and fertilizers in favor of language consistent with these facilities’ ability to continue offering high quality golf experiences, including Pebble Beach’s ability to host five US Opens in the next 16 years and the AT & T PGA Tour stop on an annual basis.

The bill fell one vote short of the number required to pass out the Natural Resources Committee when it was heard April 8; however, the author was granted reconsideration, giving him the ability to bring it back before the Committee in the time frame necessary to move out of that Committee and on to its second committee of reference (Assembly Judiciary) before the Assembly’s April 26 deadline for bills to pass out of their committee and on to Appropriations.

In that interim Mr. Muratsuchi amended the provision that animated the golf community’s opposition as follows:

30750.3. The use of any nonorganic pesticide or fertilizing material at, or on any part of, any major coastal resort is authorized on areas of a course only when applied in a manner consistent with established integrated pest management principles and where no alternative fit for intended use and proven effectiveness is available. Where nonorganic pesticide or fertilizing material is used, the major coastal resort shall use the least toxic alternative possible in the smallest quantity possible.

As confirmed by the Directors of Agronomy and Superintendents at a number of affected “golf resorts,” this language met the standard the Alliance sought in terms of allowing the affected facilities to continue to offer high quality golf experiences, while at the same time substituting organic equivalents where applicable, minimizing the use of non-organics, and following “well established IPM (integrated pest management) principles.” Those USGA Championships and annual PGA Tour stops would be safe.

Other amendments now part of AB 3192 include a redefinition of what constitutes a “golf resort” that reduces the number of such “resorts” affected, including Pebble Beach, and a clarification of the protocols for selecting the “independent qualified consultants” that are to perform the periodic audits that remain central to the bill’s prescriptions.

With that, the California Alliance for Golf (CAG) and Golf Course Superintendents Association of America (GCSAA), which had filed a separate “oppose unless amended” letter, withdrew their opposition. Whether that proves enough to secure one of the three (3) previous “no vote” Democratic Members when the bill goes up for reconsideration is anybody’s guess. The bill has plenty of opponents, but if and when it is reconsidered, it will be reconsidered without the provision that would have caused great harm to some of the state’s venerable golf properties. Just as importantly, should the bill fail in 2024 but come back in a future session, something that is quite routine in Sacramento, it is highly likely to come back sans this objectionable provision.

If one of your conclusions from all this is that the statewide golf community’s stock is on a consistent upward trajectory in Sacramento, you’re on the right track. Whether AB 5, AB 2257, AB 1572, AB 672, AB 1910, and now AB 3192, golf has been faring rather well in recent years. Some might suggest that we have found our way to a formula that can be scaled up to a much more robust advocacy presence in the future. Include us as part of the “some.”

Wednesday, April 10, 2024

Article provided by the SCGA

A cautionary tale from semi-rural Santa Barbara County to remind you that the pressure to repurpose golf courses is not just a phenomenon in California’s densely packed urban cores.

Glen Annie Golf Club in an area of unincorporated Santa Barbara County close to UC Santa Barbara has long been zoned “agricultural,” along with the rest of the open space and avocado orchards surrounding it. Given that efforts to construct housing to meet the needs of an exploding student population at nearby UC Santa Barbara have long been met with failure in the planning processes of Santa Barbara County, the owners of Glen Annie understood that unless they preferred harvesting avocados to greens fees, any effort to develop their land for residential or commercial purposes was an exercise in futility.

Not anymore. Faced with the threat of the “builders remedies” that would follow from failing to offer up substantial tracts of land for housing development, the Santa Barbara County Planning Commission April 1 took a long-anticipated action to rezone substantial tracts of agricultural properties as residential in order to keep the State of California at bay. Glen Annie will soon be free to sell the property per a residential valuation that is multiples of a golf course.

The same process of market capitalism that destroyed the daily fee market in the City of Los Angeles is now in the process of operating in rural Santa Barbara County, and by implication is likely to be duplicated in other rural communities that have failed to meet the state’s onerous new housing element requirements.

Excerpted from the item approving the rezoning of the land beneath Glen Annie and roughly 17 other large tracts of unincorporated Santa Barbara County land:

“The HEU rezone amendments would primarily create the potential for new housing on infill sites in the existing Urban Area. However, the amendments would facilitate some new housing development on sites currently located within the Rural Area. For example, the Glen Annie site is located in the Rural Area and would transform a golf course surrounded by natural areas and agricultural uses into an urban residential neighborhood with up to 40 units per acre in some areas on the site. Rezoning of this site and others in the Rural Area require an expansion of the Urban Area boundary. As such, the proposed Land Use Element and Coastal Land Use Plan amendments (Attachment C, Exhibits 1 and 4 to the staff report, respectively) include amendments to the South Coast Rural Region Land Use Designation Maps and Goleta Land Use Designation Map to expand existing or create new Urban Areas to encompass these rezone sites. As mentioned above, the County identified all available urban infill rezone sites that had a reasonable likelihood of developing within the eight-year planning period. However, these sites were not enough to satisfy the County’s RHNA plus the 15 percent buffer for the lower- and moderate-income levels. As a result, the County was obligated under State housing element law to identify other available sites outside the Urban Area, such as Glen Annie. Though these sites are located in the Rural Area, they would create logical extensions of existing urban areas and neighborhoods as they are adjoined by existing residential uses and city boundaries.””

It should not be lost on anyone that Glenn Annie GC is in the same unincorporated area of Santa Barbara County as another golf course that closed not too long ago – Ocean Meadows, a 9-hole regulation golf course adjacent to the Isla Vista community that sits between where Ocean Meadows once was and the UC Santa Barbara campus. Built in the 1960’s as a 9-hole golf course, Ocean Meadows’ business plan was from that inception to add another 9 holes as the population of the region grew. As later Sandpiper in the 1970’s and Glen Annie in the 1990’s opened for business in the same area, that never happened. But what did happen was a public call aided by environmentalists, land conservancies, and UC Santa Barbara, which was among the first American universities to offer an Environmental Science Major, to add the land occupied by Ocean Meadows back to the contiguous wetlands to which it was originally a part – a “call” funded by state/federal grants, the land conservancy attached to the contiguous wetlands, and UC Santa Barbara.

Two publicly accessible golf courses (and practice facilities) one lost and one likely to be lost to higher and better economic suitors – in one case (Glen Annie) private sector higher and better suitors and in the other (Ocean Meadows) public sector higher and better suitors – a dual squeeze that works consistently over time to reduce California’s stock of golf courses. Again, NOT all in the state’s densely packed urban communities.

# # # # # # # # # # #

We trust you find as we do that all three of the latest “news” issues covered here today are in truth all the same issue – the game’s use of the land it requires to offer its great pleasures and benefits to 3.1 million Californians. And yet, one rarely if ever encounters an industry conference, show, or symposium where land use is discussed qua land use and not in some tangential way that avoids the issue. The game can and must do better.

Wednesday, April 10, 2024

Article provided by the SCGA

The National Golf Course Owners Association’s (NGCOA) Harvey Silverman may have characterized the City of Los Angeles’ uncommonly quick reaction to intense media scrutiny (five separate Los Angeles Times stories including a Sunday lead editorial) of the depredations of tee time brokering with his quip in the organization’s “Golf Business Weekly” about the city having reacted “faster than fixing potholes.” Much faster we would add. And with a pilot program that the city offered as but the first of more steps to come to restore public confidence in the fairness of its Internet reservation system. As for the steps:

• A non-refundable $10 deposit per golfer to be collected at the time of booking. If the golfer cancels the tee time, the deposit is forfeited. If the golfer plays, the $10 deposit is be applied to the green fee at check-in. Think of it in one of two ways: 1) A fee for the privilege of holding a high demand tee time, or 2) earnest money to ensure that the booker is acting in good faith with every intention to fulfill the transaction. In other words, not the other and perhaps more common method of ensuring good faith and validating credit cards known as the “advance reservation fee,” which the city accurately deemed a de facto greens fee increase in rejecting it in favor of this non-refundable deposit tool.
• A “Code of Conduct” for use of the system that explicitly states that violations of the Golf Rules may result in fines and/or prosecution in accordance with existing municipal codes that allow for fines up to $1,000 or 6 months of jail time and beefs up existing definitions of “brokering” to now include the transfer of tee times through any web-based site, web-based application, other applications, publication, or mobile device for a fee.

The ”pilot” was adopted by the city’s Board of Recreation & Park Commissioners last Thursday and will become fully effective within days. Yes, indeed; faster than those potholes get fixed! Los Angeles managed to get this together for a quick emergency meeting of its Golf Advisory Committee the Monday prior, where impressively 15 of its 18 members managed to make the meeting on 72 hours notice, and then on to the Mayoral Park Board three days hence.

It’s important to note that the city made clear that it intends to work with its vendor to add features such as random release of cancelled times to further obviate the business models of the brokers taking financial advantage of a system operated not on market principles, but rather on the same basic set of principles that the City of Los Angeles operates all its park/recreation amenities – provision of public services that would otherwise be onerously expensive and thus out of financial reach for the vast majority of the population but for their provision by government. Yes, golf generates net revenues for the city, and golfers should take pride in that. But in a market that the NGF describes as representing the worst supply to demand ratio in the nation – the most golfers chasing the fewest golf holes – those net revenues could be considerably higher were the city to operate them for maximal financial benefit. Los Angeles, once dotted with daily fee facilities, is now, with one anomalous exception, home to only private clubs and municipal golf courses. There is no “in-between” anymore. Such is the creative destructive power of market capitalism.

Wednesday, April 10, 2024

Article provided by the SCGA

AB 3192 – Rest in Peace Maybe

Every year there seems to be one bill filed in one house of the California Legislature that keeps the California golf community up at night. This year’s version is AB 3192 (Muratsuchi; D-Torrance). Among many other things AB 3192 places a 100% ban on the use of all non-organic pesticides and fertilizers on “golf resorts” in the California Coastal Zone. We believe the way the bill defines “golf resort” ensnares PGA Tour and major professional and college championship sites such as Pebble Beach, Torrey Pines, and Omni La Costa in its proscriptions. It ensnares some prominent golf facilities in Orange and San Mateo Counties as well.

We can sleep again, maybe.

AB 3192 appeared to have failed to make it past its first committee of reference yesterday when it fell one vote short of the six votes necessary to move out of the 11-member Natural Resources Committee and on to its second committee of reference, the Assembly Judiciary Committee. Because the three Republican members of the Committee were declared “no” votes in advance of the meeting, six of the eight Democratic members needed to vote “aye” for the bill to move. However, three of them stayed off the bill – Buffy Wicks (D-Oakland), Jim Wood (D-Healdsburg), and Gail Pellerin (D-Santa Cruz). Significantly, Buffy Wicks is Chair of the powerful Appropriations Committee and Jim Wood is Speaker Pro Tempore.

We say, “appeared to have failed,” because it now appears that sometime well after the members departed the committee room, bill author Muratsuchi was granted reconsideration and is likely trying to convince one of his colleagues who stayed off the bill to switch his or her vote to aye and move the bill forward to Judiciary.

The allied California golf community in the form of the California Alliance for Golf (CAG) worked with myriad other interests to inform legislators of the unnecessary and unintended consequences of a total ban on all non-organic inputs at these golf facilities, one of which is set to host five (5) United States Open Championships (three men & two women) in the next 16 years. We were in the process of moving forward an amendment that would have allowed for measured and regulated use of certain non-organic fertilizers and pesticides when the bill apparently failed to move. Should it indeed move on reconsideration, we remain optimistic that some form of this amendment, which had already gained considerable traction, can move forward with it. In any case, what happened at yesterday’s Natural Resources Committee hearing doesn’t bode well for the ultimate success of the bill.

Other than a pair of Assembly-Senate bills that propose making California a year-round Standard Time state, the rest of the game’s Sacramento agenda is all about support of certain bills – in particular one (AB 2947) that would encourage the California Department of Water Resources (DWR) to provide funding for turf conversion in addition to turf removal and another (AB 2285) that would focus more funding on parks, green spaces, and recreational amenities in the state’s dense urban areas. AB 2947 dovetails with golf’s ongoing conversations with multiple water wholesalers and retailers in Southern California – conversations that for the most part have been well received and productive. AB 2285 dovetails with the game’s increasing passion for providing overt support for those municipal and developmental golf courses that are in the state’s “underserved” communities and are the literal staging grounds for almost all of the game’s growth, sustenance, and diversification programs.

Monday, March 25, 2024

Article provided by the SCGA

One of the standards in the American songbook is a song written not by an American but by a Mexican. Its English title – “What a Difference a Day Makes.” It’s an old song made famous in 1959 (in America, that is) by Dinah Washington and recorded by scores of others since.

With respect to the issue of tee time brokers in the greater Los Angeles area (they exist in the Southland’s other counties too), what a difference a week makes. It’s hard to remember an issue in the golf world that has received so much media coverage – multiple newspaper stories, television clips, radio shows, social media, podcasts, magazine articles, topped off yesterday by a lead editorial in the most widely circulated issue (Sunday) of the state’s largest newspaper (Los Angeles Times). For those able to access the newspaper’s subscription, click here to read yesterday’s lead Editorial, “L.A. should stop allowing people to hog golf tee times.”

Here’s the difference this last week made, and it’s a difference not just in terms of the alacrity with which we can expect the major municipal golf systems to begin implementing mitigations, but also in terms of what the week means in terms of disabusing all notions of golf somehow being underutilized and golfers not as passionate about the object of their affection as others are about theirs.

Remember, the predicate for virtually every proposal to repurpose a municipal golf course for another use, whether that proposal is for affordable housing (AB 1910), open space (Sepulveda Basin & Tahquitz Creek), other recreational uses (Mission Bay & Bell Gardens), or general commercial uses, is that there is too much golf. After this last week, that’s a hard predicate to sell. The premise underlying that predicate is that golfers are apathetic in comparison to others, not just enthusiasts of other sports/recreation activities, but enthusiasts of wetland restoration, open space acquisition, and various other forms of environmental preservation. Judging not just by the media attention, but also the massive number of rank-and-file golfers that responded to social media calls to action, that too is a hard premise to sell to elected officials, media, and government agencies.

We would be remiss if we didn’t share how proud we were of the substantial number of golfers who showed up and testified before the Los Angeles City Golf Advisory Committee last Monday. They were frustrated but not angry. They were on point. They came armed with solutions. Unlike the coverage of one large local media organ in particular, they steered completely clear of making this an issue involving only the Korean American community; they made it an issue of equitable access to a system that they acknowledged would continue to be difficult to access even if made 100% equitable to all comers.

We would also be remiss if we didn’t share certain clear parallels between the way this issue is playing out and the way the whole AB 1910 issue played out in favor of the statewide golf community. In both cases it was the participation of large numbers of rank-and-file golfers that spelled the difference. Yes, with respect to AB 1910, the game’s leadership organizations, particularly SCGA, did much to lay the groundwork and work the strategies and angles that only organizations with broad reach and access to intelligence can. Yes, with respect to tee time brokers, if truth be known, the same leadership organizations have been following that same playbook. But without the engagement of large numbers of rank-and-file golfers in the mix, we cannot say with full confidence that AB 1910 would have been so thoroughly rejected, nor can we say with full confidence what we’ll boldly issue now. We are on the cusp of the kinds of changes capable of restoring some measure of the equity that all properly demand of these Internet reservation systems and in the process steer dollars away from 3^rd party profiteers and to the owners and managers of these systems and the golf courses they own/manage.

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In addition to the action we anticipate in the next 30-40 days with respect to the whole tee time brokering issue, we anticipate much action in the next 30-40 days with respect to the legislation we are tracking, opposing, opposing unless amended, and supporting in this session. We will report on both and whatever else pops up on our radar screens as things unfold.