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.”
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.
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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.
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.
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.
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 3rd 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.
The more things change, the more they stay the same, albeit as the technology improves the same things come in different packages.
With respect to the furor over tee time brokers making it nearly impossible for Los Angeles Basin’s public golfers to secure tee times at almost any time of the day or week, let’s just say that we’ve seen this picture before.
Before golf’s most recent spike in popularity (2020 – present), golf had peaked nationally in 1999 and then declined incrementally but steadily thereafter through 2016 before turning slightly up just before COVID. In Southern California the game peaked in 1991-1992 and declined slightly the rest of the 1990’s before entering the same decline cum flattening in this century, followed in turn by the same incredible burst of growth 2020 through today.
With the stage thus set, we direct you to a May 1991 Los Angeles Times article entitled, “Golf: Tee Times are Tough on L.A. City Courses.” After pointing out that weekday greens fee in Los Angeles in 1970 were $3.50 and the same fee in 1991 had risen to $10.50, the story noted that “increased fees hadn’t muffled the golf explosion . . . The real problem is just reserving a starting tee time at one of the city’s seven 18-hole courses, or even at one of the six nine-hole courses. As for reserving a weekend time, the chances are slim to none.” The same Marty Tregnan whose name adorns the city’s junior golf academy in Griffith Park is quoted as saying, “the solution is obviously more courses.”
Of course, 33 years later Los Angeles has fewer public golf courses, not more. As a result, despite fees roughly 60% higher in real dollars than they were in 1991 ($10.50 in 1991 would be $23.92 in 2024 inflation adjusted dollars), it is even harder to get that tee time – not just in the City of Los Angeles, but Los Angeles County, Long Beach, and Pasadena as well, although due to significant resident preferences and a higher fee structure for non-residents, it is less difficult in Long Beach than the rest. A testament not just to increased demand, but also the fact that these municipal golf courses are just that much better operated and maintained today than they were in 1991, making them more suitable alternatives to private clubs, whose fees and dues have also risen commensurately.
Does this make it any less outrageous that there are tee time brokers who deny equal access to these systems, no matter how slender that access may be? Does it make it any less damaging to have liquidity that could be going to the owners and operators of these facilities and these facilities’ capital reserve funds going to 3rd parties?
Absolutely not! But it does mean it is imperative that before we all get our populist knickers in a twist, we get a firmer grip on the root of the tee broker problem – a problem that like all difficult problems is in part a function of attributes of local municipal golf systems that most reading these words would consider virtues to be cherished and maintained, not jettisoned cavalierly.
The root of the “problem” is twofold:
The National Golf Foundation (NGF) identifies Los Angeles as the most golf starved golf market in the United States – the most golfers chasing the fewest golf holes, and by a very wide margin over the next worst supply to demand ratio in the nation. There are fewer public golf courses today than there were 50 years ago, when the population of the region was much smaller and the percentage of the population that played golf was a smaller percentage thereof. Once dotted with “daily fee” golf courses (privately owned but open for business to the public facilities), Los Angeles is now home only to very pricey private country clubs and municipal golf courses (publicly owned parkland facilities), with one exception – a golf course in the rural northeast corner of the city (Tujunga Wash) that sits literally in a riverbed (Angeles National GC).
The city and county of Los Angeles as well as Long Beach and a few of the region’s smaller municipal systems (e.g., Pasadena, Burbank, and Downey) don’t set their public parkland golf course greens fees per a market mechanism that would literally turn these publicly owned parks into playgrounds for the privileged, but rather set fees that recover costs, create the capital reserve funds necessary to allow for infrastructure replacement through user fees as opposed to tax dollars and bonded indebtedness, and in the cases of the big three in Los Angeles County (LA City, LA County, Long Beach) and Pasadena, provide revenues over and above all that for use by park departments (LA City and County), general funds (Long Beach), and an old college football stadium (Pasadena – Rose Bowl).
Where there is money to be made, persons seem to find a way, and when the “way” is technologically based as in Internet Reservation Systems, those finding that way have both the incentive and the capacity to stay a step ahead of governments, which are notoriously slow in figuring out modern technological platforms. How many billions did California’s EDD “lose” to fraud and theft during COVID? And often the fixes are as expensive as they are transitory, rendering them bad cost versus benefit propositions. That as much as anything explains the slow response to what influencers and others accurately portray as a genuine problem.
These governments and many of these governments’ private sector operators understand the depth of the problem. It’s a problem exacerbated by the reality that none of the standard Internet Reservation Systems commercially available in the United States are built to manage the security that the Los Angeles market practically alone among America’s golf markets would require to stay one step ahead of the re-sellers. And just as in 1991, the problem is one of re-sellers, not bots. Re-selling may violate the policies of these municipal systems, and there are remedies to address policy violations. However, re-selling does not violate any laws.
This doesn’t mean that the handful of Internet Reservation/POS providers that remain after a period of rapid consolidation won’t be able (for a price) to craft technological mitigations unique to the LA market. Our guess is that this is going on right now. But it won’t happen overnight, and costs will have to be borne by someone, and that “someone” is likely to be golfers.
The problem has garnered universal attention. The municipalities and their operators very much want to offer equal access for the limited stock of tee times they offer, and they want to offer them for access fees that keep these facilities in the affordable range for the average working men and women for which they were built in the first place and maintained for decades. They want to maintain as well the very generous junior, school, and senior citizen rates that have come to characterize virtually all of the region’s municipal programs.
Easier said than done, given the fact that more golf is being played today in the United States than at any time in the past. It may well be that some of that price consciousness will need to be sacrificed, not to better manage the facilities themselves, but to pay for the technology necessary to mitigate much of the damage now being done to the integrity of these systems by the brokers. Those solutions do exist, and we expect them to be implemented sooner than later. If there has been resistance to doing this, it has not been due to the indifference suggested by some; it has been due to these municipalities’ strong belief in the affordable/accessible mission at the heart of their municipal golf programs. A slowness to respond that is a function of mission, not callousness.
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There are three (3) glaring takeaways here – so glaring to an audience of golfers that we easily forget that they are not so glaring to non-golfers, among them significantly, office holders and media.
Every word above describes why it was so important to take dead aim at AB 672 and AB 1910 and not be shy about killing them as swiftly and comprehensively as possible – and why the California golf community must remain hyper-vigilant to their reemergence in any form.
Every word above describes why the campaigns to “save” municipal golf courses (e.g., Mission Bay, Bell Gardens, the Links @ Victoria, Sepulveda Basin) are central to the game’s hopes to thrive, let alone grow.
Every word above describes why a game whose public policy issues were on the front pages of the main sections Los Angeles Times and San Diego Union Tribune and the “California Section” of the Los Angeles Times this weekend, cannot continue to pinch its pennies in its spend on all forms of advocacy – local, regional, and state.
Our 1st Public Affairs Update of 2024 reported that the State Legislative Analyst’s (LAO) official take on the State Water Resources Control Board’s (SWRCB) Proposed Rule to effectuate the Governor’s “Making Conservation a California Way of Life” Executive Order was aligned with the criticisms issued by the state’s water agencies/providers. Specifically, the LAO criticized the SWRCB’s Proposed regulations as having created implementation challenges that go well beyond what legislation requires or the State’s Department of Water Resources recommends, creating difficulties for water suppliers by adding needless complexity and overly stringent performance measures, adding onerous costs that are likely to outweigh potential benefits, adding to the burdens of already overburdened lower income customers, establishing overly aggressive timelines, and placing too much emphasis upon commercial outdoor use that represents only 3% of California’s water use. The LAO then issued a series of recommendations for legislative consideration.
Yesterday, the SWRCB accepted most if not all of those recommendations in a revised Proposed Rule – to refresh your memories a Rule to establish, for the first time, budget-based water conservation targets for the over 400 large water suppliers that supply most Californians with water. Per the press release put out by the Agency, the revised Proposed Rule, whose comment period runs through March 26, is different from the one so roundly criticized last autumn by the state’s water agencies, the LAO, and the DWR in that it extends “timelines for water suppliers to meet efficiency goals, broadening their access to alternative compliance pathways and increasing the overall flexibility for how the proposed regulation can be implemented.” Under the proposed regulation, water suppliers would develop their own budgets for six different urban water needs and then use them to calculate a total water use objective. The six budget categories are: Residential indoor water use, residential outdoor water use, water loss (or the amount lost to leakage), and the irrigation of commercial, industrial, and institutional landscapes. The regulation requires suppliers to meet their overall objective only, not the budget set for each of the components.
As SWRCB Executive Director Eric Oppenheimer put it in his agency’s release: “The Legislature recognized that conservation is not one-size-fits-all, so the proposed regulation provides water suppliers with the tools and flexibility to adjust their conservation actions to local conditions and unique circumstances. . . and for some suppliers that still find meeting their objectives challenging, the draft regulation offers alternative, easier ways to do so.”
The revised draft increases the number of suppliers that would qualify for alternative compliance pathways. It also extends the effective date for meeting objectives based on the most efficient outdoor standards by five years. In addition, the draft delays the board’s assessment of suppliers’ compliance with the regulation until 2027.
To give you an idea of just how different the new Proposed Rule is from the one that incurred so much criticism late last year, here is part of the statement that the Association of California Water Agencies(ACWA) released in response to yesterday’s action:
“ACWA appreciates the work of the State Water Board over the past several months to understand the concerns of the water community. While ACWA staff continues to review the details of the revised draft regulation, it appears to address our primary concerns and is moving in the right direction toward a regulation that is feasible, cost-effective and avoids unintended impacts, while establishing an ambitious framework for advancing long-term water use efficiency in California.
The revised draft regulation now provides the appropriate flexibility in how urban water suppliers across the state can continue working with their customers to build on existing efforts to further advance long-term water use efficiency.”
The reviews from some of the state’s significant environmental organizations were not so sanguine. The Natural Resources Defense Council (NRDC), Heal the Bay, Pacific Institute, and California Coastkeeper Alliance among others issued criticisms of SWRCB’s reversal of course.
Readers of these “Updates” don’t need us to connect the dots for them. The more dilatory approach adopted by the SWRCB, particularly its recognition of just how little can be gained by overly focusing on 3% of the state’s water use, comes as welcome relief to a sector that is a small part of that 3%.
Click here to read the Water Board’s updated fact sheet as it has now been amended to reflect changes in the way the Proposed New Rule affects compliance.
Today we update you on two (2) topics of ongoing interest: 1) 2024 legislation, and 2) the two snowpacks (Sierra Nevada & Colorado Rockies) that determine Southern California’s import allocations.
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First up, where things stand just before the legislative policy committees take up the bills that were either filed by the February 16 deadline for 2024 filings or made it through the January 31 deadline for bills filed in the first year of the 2023-24 two-year session.
AB 3192 [“Major Coastal Resorts Environmental Accountability Act”] would among other things prohibit the use of “any nonorganic pesticide or fertilizing material at a “major coastal resort” that per the Act is defined as a resort or hotel that “Includes or operates a golf course on the premises.”The California Alliance for Golf (CAG) has decided to join the Golf Course Superintendents Association of America (GCSAA) in opposing the bill unless amended to remove the prohibition on all non-organics; there are other provisions in the bill that are beyond the scope of the golf community’s specific interest.The bill may be heard in the Assembly Natural Resources Committee March 19 but not yet docketed.
AB 2285 [“Environmental protection: 30×30 goal: urban nature-based investments: parity”] would among other things make the following declarations that presage future actions: 1) It is the intent of the Legislature to codify the priorities identified in the November 2023 report of the Outdoors for All initiative, “Providing Equitable Access to Parks and Nature,” and to encourage the Governor’s administration and the Legislature, when distributing resources towards conservation and restoration goals during future budgetary deliberations, to ensure parity in allocations toward urban nature-based investments; 2) It is the intent of the Legislature to require state funding entities, including, but not limited to, state conservancies and the Wildlife Conservation Board, when programming and awarding funds to revise, modify, or amend guidelines as necessary to meet the 30×30 goal, to allow for urban nature-based projects on degraded lands to be eligible and competitive for state funds.Because AB 2285 specifically references the massive “Parks Needs Assessment” study the County of Los Angeles completed in 2022 as having “piggybacked off the Governor’s and First Partner’s work on the 30×30 goal and “Outdoors for All” and prepared the 2022 Parks Needs Assessment Plus (PNA+) that identifies areas for Los Angeles-based environmental conservation and restoration that form the basis of the 30×30 goal, SCGA has determined to join other of Los Angeles County’s “active” recreational stakeholders in strongly supporting the bill and working with them and LA County to secure funding therefore, funding that very much could include golf projects such as the Maggie Hathaway $15 million “Legacy Project” in South Los Angeles as well as similarly situated ones in the county’s other “underserved” areas now served by SCGA Junior Golf Foundation programming at golf properties in those areas.The California Alliance for Golf (CAG) has yet to determine whether the bill is sufficiently impactful beyond Los Angeles County to merit the same full-throated support, although it is leaning in the direction of some measure of support.The bill is scheduled to be heard in the Assembly Natural Resources Committee March 19 along with another bill (AB 2240 – Reyes; D-San Bernardino) that also purports to effectuate the Governor’s Outdoors for All Initiative, albeit in a form much weaker in terms of providing funding for underserved communities in urban areas.
AB 1776 [Year-Round Standard Time] would repeal daylight saving time in the state and the provisions regarding the Legislature’s authority to amend the above-described provisions by a 2/3 vote. It would instead require the state and all political subdivisions of the state to observe year-round standard time and would exempt the state and all political subdivisions of the state from the provisions of federal law that establish the advancement of time. [Note: While a separate enabling act of Congress is required to go to year-round Daylight Savings Time, a state may go to year-round Standard Time without it.]The bill has been double referred to the Assembly Energies & Utilities and Governmental Organizations Committees but not yet set for hearing.There is widespread consensus that year-round Standard Time would harm the California golf community to the degree to which municipal and daily fee golf courses would lose twilight golf revenues with spring/summer sunsets one hour earlier than they are today with at best a negligible increase realized from sunrises that would be one hour earlier.The California Alliance for Golf (CAG) has yet to determine what course if any it will take, but smart money would be on filing a letter of opposition that points out this harm.
SB 1413 is a Senate version of AB 1776 [Year-Round Standard Time]. Both in the Assembly and Senate these companion bills are before Committees chaired by Members that have demonstrated strong support for the golf community.
AB-817 [Open meetings: teleconferencing: subsidiary body], a 2023 filing that made its way through January’s 2-year bill process, is a bill that would allow some measure of virtual participation for members of purely advisory bodies that because their advice has some measure of connection to a “legislative body” as defined in the state’s Open Public Meetings Law (Brown Act), come thereunder. Its passage would enable “subsidiary bodies” such as the region’s many golf advisory commissions/committees to allow for virtual participation so long as a quorum of the body is established in-person, and this could allow for more robust participation by the citizen advisors who populate them. Or as some have suggested, less effective overall participation to the degree to which personal critical mass is lost. The golf community is tracking this bill for the moment, undecided whether it merits overt support.
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Now up, how are things shaping up water-wise as we get close to the April 1 date that informs Southern California what it can expect in terms of import allocations – more specifically and accurately, what it portends in terms of the State Water Project’s allocations and the Colorado Basin’s reductions? The days of 100% Colorado Basin allocations are over, replaced by a set of pre-2026 givebacks that presage more permanently reduced allocations as the seven (7) states in the Colorado Compact continue to negotiate reduced allocations 2027 and beyond.
The Sierra snowpack was at 96% of the April 1 average as of March 7. Worst case scenario is that the rest of March will be precipitation free, and California will have enjoyed an average year after having enjoyed a 2023 that saw enough rain and snow to bring the state’s network of 154 reservoirs to 77% capacity as of March 4, which is 8% above the average of the last 30 years for that date, presaging more atop that as this year’s snow melts into the State Water Project. What next year and the years immediately beyond will bring is anybody’s guess, but the climatologists guess is that California’s Sierra Nevada has entered a period of “whiplash” – long periods of hot/dry conditions punctuated by short bursts of intense precipitation that the state’s infrastructure was not built to capture and store for use in the hot/dry years.
As the readers of these “Updates” know all too well, the Colorado Basin is another matter. Yes, this has been a bountiful precipitation season for the Colorado Basin as well, albeit not as bountiful as California. While this has helped stave off what looked not too long ago as Lakes Mead and Powell dropping below the levels required to generate electricity, it has not obviated the need for the three (3) Lower Basin states (Arizona, California, and Nevada) to voluntarily cede allocations before more permanent reductions are negotiated among all seven (7) states of the Compact 2026 and beyond – givebacks that are much more digestible now that Lake Mead is at 34% capacity, Lake Powell is at 37% capacity, and the region’s reservoirs are full. [The groundwater basins, not so much, but the readers of these “Updates” understand that as well. It takes considerably more rain and snow to replenish depleted aquifers than it does to fill above ground reservoirs, but that’s a subject for another day.]
The commitments Arizona, California, and Nevada made last year to reduce 3 million-acre-feet between then and 2026 pencil out to a 14% reduction that when added to the region’s conservation efforts promises to add thereto when the results are finally tallied. The three states drew less water off the river last year than in any year since 1983, and California’s draw was its lowest since 1949, a testament to the effectiveness of Southern California’s conservation and import substitution efforts. This will be enough to get the region through 2026, but the following statement issued last week by Bureau of Reclamation Commissioner Camille Touton, the federal government’s point person for all things Colorado Basin, should tell us all we need to know about the long-term sufficiency of those givebacks. As reproduced in the Los Angeles Times:
“The prolonged drought crisis is driven by effects of climate change, including extreme heat and low precipitation. The reality is that aridification will only intensify the drought-related impacts in the Colorado River Basin and the communities it supports. We know we must adapt to this new reality with innovative and durable solutions.” [Los Angeles Times – “Reprieve for the Colorado River” – March 9, 2024]
Added to the “whiplash” phenomenon that characterizes the region’s other major imported source, Touton’s comments should tell the Southern California golf community all it needs to know about the imperative to continue making the investments, undertaking the innovations, and developing and using the technologies that are the sine qua non of continued water footprint reduction.
We picked up this late entry into the 2024 Assembly pile just before we sent out last Wednesday’s Public Affairs Update – a report that was mostly about the way in which Mother Nature and the California Legislature had given us a breather “to focus less on the exigencies of the moment and more on the challenges of the longer term.” “Mostly” but not entirely, as we edited the Update just before sending to indicate that we had tagged AB 3192 for additional scrutiny with an eye toward coalescing SCGA’s partners in the California Alliance for Golf (CAG) around some kind of response.
That “additional scrutiny” has only heightened our resolve to proceed down this road.
SUMMARY
AB 3192 [“Major Coastal Resorts Environmental Accountability Act”] would among other things prohibit the use of “any nonorganic pesticide or fertilizing material at a “major coastal resort” that per the Act is defined as a resort or hotel that meets all of the following:
Is composed of more than 300 guest rooms or units.
Includes or operates a golf course on the premises.
Is located in whole or in part in the coastal zone.
Is either of the following:
Located, in any part, within 100 meters of the mean high tide line of the sea.
Includes, is adjacent to, or is within 400 meters of, any part of any of the following:
An environmentally sensitive area.
A sensitive coastal resource area.
An area otherwise protected or preserved under state, federal, or local law, including, but not limited to, marine managed areas and marine protected areas as defined under Section 36602.
The habitat of a species protected under state, federal, or local law, including, but not limited to, species that are identified as endangered, threatened, rare, species of concern, or species of special concern by a state or federal agency, and special status species tracked by the Department of Fish and Wildlife’s California Natural Diversity Database.
Per the language of the bill:
“Pesticide” means a conventional pesticide with all active ingredients other than biological pesticides and antimicrobial pesticides, with conventional active ingredients generally produced synthetically, including synthetic chemicals that prevent, mitigate, destroy, or repel any pest or that act as a plant growth regulator, desiccant, defoliant, or nitrogen stabilizer, and shall include insecticides, herbicides, rodenticides, fungicides, and growth regulators.
A broad definition to say the least and certainly one that would include at least some of the products now permitted in California’s Coastal Zone. It’s important to remember that certain non-organic inputs permitted in the rest of California are already prohibited in the area deemed “coastal zone” and regulated as well as permitted separately by the California Coastal Commission.
There are additional proscriptions in the bill related to the use of single use plastics along with additional layers of oversight, stringent compliance audits, and a set of focused whistleblower protections for employees who report violations to state agencies. But it’s the blanket use of all “fertilizing materials” that is of concern to the golf community.
HISTORY
AB 3192 is almost identical to a bill (AB 1590) filed last session that imploded when brought before the Assembly Natural Resources Committee – “imploded” as in coming close to failing to get a second to the motion to move it out of committee, a motion that the bill’s author had to make when none of her colleagues saw fit to move it, and then receiving less than half of the votes required to move it. One of the members who stayed off the bill was none other than the author of this 3192 duplicate, who may be the author, but it’s clear from last year’s Committee hearing that the sponsor of the bill is Unite Here Local 11, and the target of the bill is not so much those resorts in the Coastal Zone and ONLY those resorts in the Coastal Zone that “include or operate a golf course on the premises” but one resort in the author’s District. Labor and this golf course have been enmeshed in a long running labor dispute, which we thought had subsided when the parties reached a settlement last year, but apparently not.
When the bill imploded in committee, it was made clear that both author and sponsor were open to working with many of the organizations that had filed letters opposing the bill unless amended as well as organizations that had filed letters opposing the bill. This wasn’t surprising given the numerous obvious questions that neither the bill’s author, its sponsor, nor its language could answer – questions driven by the bill’s many anomalies, including but hardly limited to its application only to resorts sporting golf courses but not stand-alone resorts or stand-alone golf courses in the Coastal Zone, its failure to define what it means to “include” a golf course, its failure to define what it means to “operate” a golf course, and its creation of a complicated regulatory structure to oversee what may only be six (6) resort properties in a state with 900 miles of coastline. IMPLICATIONS
The slope here is slippery to say the least! The precedent created by the successful passage of this bill could open the door to discussion of the same blanket 100% prohibition on ALL “fertilizing materials” at all golf courses in the Coastal Zone and perhaps beyond. It could presage something much different and much more impactful than the cascade of restrictions the golf community has become accustomed to accommodating over the years – things such as the addition of more non-organics to the state’s list of prohibited substances, the creation of more invasive auditing protocols, the promulgation of rules that restrict previously unrestricted applications only to those directly licensed by the state, the issuance of reporting mandates requiring ever increasing detail, and the creation of new local, state, and federal discharge permits. The California golf community has managed to not just cope but prosper with all that. But the precedent of a blanket proscription on everything as apparently outlined in AB 3192 is another matter. CONCLUSION
The California Alliance for Golf (CAG) cannot ignore AB 3192. First order of business is to acquire as much intelligence about the bill, its implications, its amenability to amendment, and its prospects for passage that the members of the Alliance can before determining what the wisest course moving forward might be. That is a process as iterative as it is collaborative; thus, we cannot provide anything more specific or definitive at this early moment other than to share that SCGA and its allied partners in the California Alliance for Golf will be taking the bill very seriously. And given that this may be the only bill in the 2024 hopper that merits such heightened scrutiny, we can still safely conclude that both Mother Nature and the California Legislature have given us a bit of a breather “to focus less on the exigencies of the moment and more on the challenges of the longer-term.”
Last Friday was the deadline for the filing of 2024 bills. Because 2024 is the second year of California’s two-year legislative session as well as a presidential election year, there were fewer bills filed this year than last. But that doesn’t mean that there weren’t a lot of filings. California’s legislators like to file bills, many of them duplicative. It will take us a few more days to decipher the details of all of them and then determine which among those “details” are in bills that may have some measure of traction, but thus far, our sense is that unlike recent sessions in which the statewide golf community was confronted with impactful bills regarding subjects like independent contracting, non-organic inputs, subsidies to convert municipal golf courses to housing, weakening of Surplus Land Act protections, and prohibitions on the use of potable water for certain types of turf, this session looks benign in comparison, although there is one bill we’ve tagged – AB 3192 (Muratsuchi; D-Torrance) – that has our attention. It’s a version of a similar bill that in 2023 imploded at the Committee level. While there are other prohibitions in AB 3192, the proscription that affects golf, albeit ONLY those golf courses that are parts of resorts in California’s coastal zone, is a blanket prohibition on “the use of any nonorganic pesticide, as defined, or fertilizing material, as defined, at a major coastal resort.” While it would appear that only those golf courses that are tied by ownership to a resort are included in the prohibition, it’s not entirely clear.
There are additional bills dealing with some of the subjects above to be sure, albeit none that are in any way comparable to the two bills (AB 672 and AB 1910) that stimulated the game’s “Public Golf Endangerment Act” campaign or the game’s efforts to preserve a measure of independent contracting for those PGA golf professionals desirous of that status.
The California golf community should use the time-out to be proactive. The game’s issues with water, land use, and the public’s perceptions of both that spell the difference between good and bad outcomes in the public arena aren’t going to disappear during this brief respite.
If we do find disturbing nuggets in the 2024 pile of bills in addition to AB 3192, we’ll certainly let you know. We’re still culling through the deluge of late filings.
In the meantime, we would like to share a couple of bills that aim to begin the process of implementing the hundreds of millions of dollars of general fund allocations enunciated in Governor Newsom’s Executive Order N-82-20 and spelled out in detail in the Governor’s November 2023 “Outdoors for All” initiative calling for the “equitable” provision of access to parks, programs, and nature – in plainer English known as directing investment in urban based needs and programs in addition to the more suburban and exurban needs that have tended to be the beneficiaries of these kinds of commitments cum allocations in California’s past.
Okay, that may not have been “plainer English” as many would describe it. So, let us be blunt. There are two (2) bills in the 2024 file that take aim at the state’s propensity to expend disproportionate resources on the green space, environmental, and recreational tastes and preferences of affluent Californians by focusing more of those resources on California’s tightly packed urban areas that have long been deemed “park poor.” If you understand those places as precisely the places where the game of golf focuses virtually all of its developmental and “grow the game” resources (Team USA notwithstanding) as well as the places that were most endangered by the “Public Golf Endangerment Act,” suffice it to say you are a regular reader of these “Updates” and a follower of SCGA’s campaigns to increase the game’s societal benefit quotient among the 90% of the population that doesn’t play the game.
Two (2) bills in the 2024 hopper, one much better in our opinion than the other. The much better one is AB 2285 (Rendon; D-Lakewood). Its title:“Environmental protection: 30×30 goal: urban nature-based investments: parity.” Two (2) of its “key” declarations:
It is the intent of the Legislature to codify the priorities identified in the November 2023 report of the Outdoors for All initiative, “Providing Equitable Access to Parks and Nature,” and to encourage the Governor’s administration and the Legislature, when distributing resources towards conservation and restoration goals during future budgetary deliberations, to ensure parity in allocations toward urban nature-based investments.
It is the intent of the Legislature to require state funding entities, including, but not limited to, state conservancies and the Wildlife Conservation Board, when programming and awarding funds to revise, modify, or amend guidelines as necessary to meet the 30×30 goal, to allow for urban nature-based projects on degraded lands to be eligible and competitive for state funds.
AB 2285 specifically references the massive “Parks Needs Assessment” study the County of Los Angeles completed in 2022 as having “piggybacked off the Governor’s and First Partner’s work on the 30×30 goal and “Outdoors for All” and prepared the 2022 Parks Needs Assessment Plus (PNA+) that identifies areas for Los Angeles-based environmental conservation and restoration that form the basis of the 30×30 goal. The three (3) findings the bill makes about the relationship between the author’s intent and this LA County “Assessment” is telling:PNA+ goes beyond traditional conservation models that involve the acquisition and protection of natural lands and reimagines the 30×30 goal through a more equity- and access-facing lens to direct funding and resources into the healing and conversion of blighted, degraded, and otherwise underutilized urban-based lands into green spaces and microhabitats promoting nature-based opportunities, access, and enhanced community and neighborhood aesthetics.Through thorough analysis, PNA+ identifies possible green space acquisition and restoration opportunities within the county and reveals a sharp contrast among regions in the county.PNA+ discovered that most of the available land for acquisition pursuant to the 30×30 goal was in the north County of Los Angeles, an area already rich in park and open-space resources as compared to the south County of Los Angeles, an area richer in diversity and more challenged economically, wherein the opportunities for 30×30 projects are confined to degraded and underutilized lands.
While AB 2285 is very intentional in terms of that component of the Governor’s Executive Order highlighting the need to focus on underserved communities/constituencies, the way in which Los Angeles County’s 2022 “Parks Needs Assessment” study is perfectly suited to effectuate that component of the Governor’s EO, and the need to direct more of the resources called for by the “30 by 30” aspiration contained in that EO (30% more public lands by 2030) to urban California, the “other” bill in the 2024 file that aims to begin the legislative effectuation of the Governor’s November 2023 “Outdoors for All” initiative is more oriented toward the environmental, biodiversity, and coastal aspects of Governor Newsom’s Order, so much so that much of the funding and priorities oversight envisaged therein is reposed in a statewide council dominated by the environmental interests that have long skewed heavily in favor of those kinds of “environmental” concerns (e.g., natural habitat, rewilding, and coastal restoration) that as LA County’s “Needs Assessment” study points out tend to direct public resources in directions opposite of the “equitable outdoor access” that forms one of the pillars of that same Gubernatorial Order.
That “second bill” is AB 2440 (Reyes; D-San Bernardino). It does not reference the Los Angeles County Park Needs Assessment that AB 2285 author Anthony Rendon declared an effectuation of the “equity” principle that suffused so much of the Governor’s “Outdoors for All” Executive Order. Nor does it put the same focus on urban specific investments. As such, it is the much weaker of the two bills in terms of focus on the “park poor” communities where so many of golf’s growth programs are located and dollars invested.
To the degree to which the Southern California golf community has managed to reposition the game in the minds of so many urban park departments and elected leaders as being heavily invested in the golf facilities, programs, and residents who live in these “park poor” communities, there are park departments and elected leaders prepared to invest some portion of the funds envisaged by these bills in municipal golf courses and municipal golf programs.
That discussion is there for the taking, and it is there because of the solid work SCGA has been doing in support of those communities for years, not just in terms of the work the SCGA Junior Golf Foundation has been doing, but as much in terms of just how much emphasis the SCGA has placed on the role that golf can play in those communities for both those who play the game and those who don’t. There are no toolboxes for that, no elevator speeches, no bullet point lists, no best practices – no shortcuts to the long hard work of translating high minded words into the kinds of deeds that convince those who live in those communities and those who represent them that SCGA does these things not out of any sense of “noblesse oblige, but rather because it intends to live the words behind the tag line, “Golf for All.”
It’s why we say as often as we can that our central task is not the parsing of bills and regulations, but rather the narrative that drives the views held by those who don’t play the game. If their view defines the game as too much land that uses too much water to serve the interests of the too few who have had too much for too long, the bills and regulations are not likely to break our way. If their view defines golf as environmental, social, charitable, and recreational contributors to the quality of the lives lived in the communities where golf courses are sited, golf will get fair treatment. The game may even get a few of the dollars envisaged by AB 2285, AB 2440, and other bills calculated to mitigate the dearth of resources dedicated to urban park/green space needs.
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Those interested in AB 2285 and AB 2440 as they were filled by their authors (unamended) can click here for a PDF version of AB 2285 and here for a PDF of 2440. Those interested in tracking the bills as they are amended and move through the legislative process can click here for direction.
The many more of you likely interested in AB 3192 can click here for a PDF version or click here to track it as it is amended and moves through the legislative process.
Join CAG today and help us establish a strong and dynamic presence in Sacramento so we can participate in regulatory processes affecting the Golf Industry. [READ MORE.]
