SACRAMENTO – Fourteen leaders of the state’s golf community spent a week ago Wednesday in California’s Capitol meeting with 21 separate legislative offices, including those of the Assembly Speaker and Senate Pro Tempore – meetings focused on those issues like water, land use, and environmental sustainability that are always atop the list of the game’s priorities, as well as specific bills of interest on this year’s legislative docket.
Among the organizations represented were the Southern California Golf Association (SCGA), Northern California PGA Section (NCPGA), Southern California PGA Section (SCPGA), California Golf Course Owners Association (CGCOA), California Chapter of the Golf Course Superintendents Association (CA GCSAA) of America, Latina Golfers Association (LGA), and San Francisco Public Golf Alliance (SFPGA).
“Unlike recent legislative sessions in which golf faced some problematic bills, we had with one exception the luxury of communicating our support of numerous bills at this year’s Capitol Day,” said California Alliance for Golf (CAG) President Len Dumas, PGA – most of them involving bills involving access to recycled water, water supply targets, investments in 21st Century storage technologies, and data collection methodologies better calibrated to the realities of a warming, drying climate that yields less water from both the State Water Project and the Colorado Basin.
Conservation is supply. A drop saved is a drop available for use when the state suffers consecutive years of drought as it did in 2020-2022. However, if conservation is the only tool in the state’s conservation toolbox, it’s hard to see how the state can continue to remain the world’s 5th largest economy and even harder to see how those active recreational activities like golf can continue to grace the lives of Californians at the levels to which they have become accustomed.
The lone exception to CAG’s “support” theme involved SB 51 (Niello; R-Roseville), a bill that would reverse the California electorate’s 2018 expressed preference to go to Daylight Saving Time year-round by going instead to permanent Standard Time – a preference expressed at the ballot box by a 24-point margin no less. It would be a significant blow to golf in California, both financially and programmatically, specifically junior and high school golf programming. But it would also be a blow to other active recreation programs, the state’s tourism industry, efforts to limit energy consumption, other sectors dependent upon daylight to ply their trades, and according to a 2015 study performed by the Brookings Institution, a blow to crime prevention as well. “Before making a change to something we have been doing for more than a century and making that change in direct contradiction of expressed public sentiment, a little more study than the limited ones cited by the bill’s proponents is in order,” said CAG Vice-President and CEO of the Southern California PGA Section Nikki Gatch, PGA.
Click here to read CAG’s opposition letter.
SB 601 (Water; waste discharge)
CAG is watching this bill closely but electing to remain neutral for reasons that are as complicated as they are nuanced – that, and the reality that this is among the most fiercely contested bills in this year’s legislative session.
Boiled down to its essence, this bill authored by Senator Ben Allen (D-Redondo Beach) would have everything in California related to WOTUS (Waters of the United States) discharge protocols revert to the protocols established by the 1972 Clean Water Act as most recently codified by the Biden Administration — an obviation of the restrictions on what is a body of water for the purposes of regulation and permitting that the US Supreme Court applied in its 2023 Sackett Decision as well as the restrictions on what constitutes a body of water as outlined in an Executive Order issued by President Trump. In plainer language, California would hew to a much stricter definition that would have the effect of bringing under the jurisdiction of the state bodies of water insufficiently connected to other bodies of water to trigger federal oversight cum regulation per Sackett and the Rules outlined in Trump’s Executive Order, so that in California “nexus waters” would be defined much more broadly than merely those bodies of waters directly connected to what are called “navigable waters” in deference to the reality that in the nation’s arid climates there are bodies of water that while they may be bone dry during much of the year, can become torrents other times and during those times connected to waters deemed “navigable.”
At least, that is how Senator Allen and the many environmental organizations backing the bill are characterizing it.
The California Chamber of Commerce, a number of water retailers, business groups of various kinds, and agricultural interests are characterizing it as exceeding the Biden codification in numerous ways, most concerning of which are the following: 1) The creation of a right of private citizen action in Superior Court for alleged violations, 2) the need for a more precise definition of “nexus waters” to avoid the litigation sure to ensue from the vague definition/direction provided in the bill, and 3) the repeal of considering certain factors in establishing water quality objectives in the water quality control plans such as economic considerations, the need for developing housing, and the need to develop and use recycled water.
On that last point, the staff analysis that accompanied SB 601 when it was heard in its first policy committee of reference (it has been double referred and will soon be moving to Senate Judiciary Committee for its 2nd policy hearing), did point out that “some aspects of this bill go beyond the advertised scope,” presaging amendments to lessen, cure, or obviate (take your pick) some of these “aspects” as the bill grinds its way through the legislative gauntlet.
The Biden codification was much less expansive than the codification proposed by the Obama Administration and very much in sync with California’s longstanding separate “Waters of California” protocols. Thus, to the degree to which SB 601 ends up in an amended form that aligns with author Ben Allen’s stated intentions as opposed to some of the fears expressed by Cal Chamber and other opponents of the bill, the California golf community recognizes that it likely represents the sweet middle spot of the California body politic; in other words, opposing that result would be an exercise in a futility that would not serve the game’s longer term interests. On the other hand, to the degree to which SB 601’s final language does end up going “beyond the advertised scope,” the golf community might feel compelled to get involved – at least regarding those points that exceed the author’s stated intent. Or not.
WATER SUPPLY REPORT CARD
How we are doing in terms of water supply is always a three-part question – 1) a short term question involving the robustness of the Sierra snowpack that feeds the state’s reservoirs year over year, 2) a somewhat longer term question regarding the status of those reservoirs as they begin to accept each spring’s snowmelt, and 3) a much longer term question involving the status of all those things the CAG team discussed in those 21 meetings with legislators two weeks ago – e.g., water supply targets, recycled water, investments in 21st Century storage technologies, updated data collection methodologies, updating of water conveyance infrastructures.
April 1 is the day each year that we answer the 1st question because it’s when the snow season typically reaches its peak and just before it begins to slowly melt into the water that refreshes and replenishes the Sacramento Delta and supplies the State Water Project. This year’s verdict: 96% of average. Early indicators of a dry year were “saved” by a series of late storms.
This year’s near average came on the heels of a very wet 2023 and a better than average 2024 (111% of normal one year ago) that left California’s above ground reservoirs at or near capacity, which will allow for generous releases into the State Water Project again this year and keep supplies stable no matter what happens precipitation-wise next year. Of course, these three rain/snow-rich years came on the heels of the driest three-year run since California started keeping records, a three-year run that put the Southern part of the state on an emergency 35% conservation regimen. That’s all it takes to deplete even filled-to-the-brim reservoirs – three very dry years in succession. And given the wide oscillations that characterize California’s 21st Century climate, it’s prudent to anticipate more such three-year runs and plan accordingly.
“Plan accordingly” – that’s the much longer term question, and every indicator is that the state is beginning to think in those longer terms. The California Alliance for Golf has the pleasure of supporting so many bills in this year’s legislative hopper, because so many of them deal with long-term strategies for adding to supply via means other than just conservation. Governor Newsom is pushing hard for the Delta Conveyance Project, sometimes referred to as the single tunnel plan. The Southern California Metropolitan Water District (MWD) has appropriated $141.6 million to fund much of the preliminary planning work for the Project. The United States Bureau of Reclamation has appropriated increased dollars for completion of California’s Sites Reservoir.
The report card: Short term excellent; somewhat longer term also excellent; much longer term looking better by the day. This is cause for relief and surcease to be sure, but it’s hardly cause for retreat from the golf community’s commitment to an ever shrinking water footprint. Indeed, it’s precisely when fortune smiles and times are good that sectors are best able to tackle “much longer term” challenges.
NATIONAL GOLF DAY
Once again, golf industry enthusiasts from around the nation will descend upon Washington D.C. to celebrate National Golf Day. The actual day is May 1, when small delegations will pay visits to Congressional Offices to generally tout the community, charitable, and environmental benefits of the game and specifically a handful of bills of high interest to the industry. Because 2025 is guaranteed to see a major tax bill, this is the year in which the game has its best chance to finally get out from under a 1977 misclassification that has been invoked to deny privately held golf courses the same kind of emergency relief accorded other businesses after major disasters – e.g., hurricanes, floods, fires, earthquakes. That relief comes courtesy of the “PAR ACT” (HR 1583), a bipartisan bill sponsored by California’s Jimmy Panetta (D-Monterey), Claudia Tenney (R-New York), and Richard Hudson (R-North Carolina). It would amend Section 144(c)(6)(B) of the United States Tax Code (IRS) to allow golf courses to take advantage of various forms of disaster relief and community development programs available to other businesses, such as restaurants, hotels, and other leisure activities.
Our hope here in California and other states now staring down bills that would put them on permanent standard time is that some focus will be placed on the “Sunshine Act,” a Senate bill authored by Rick Scott (R-Florida) and Patty Murray (D-Washington) and co-sponsored by a dozen other Republicans and Democrats who don’t agree about much else that would preempt the states by moving the entire nation to permanent daylight-saving time. That was the preference 62% of the California electorate voted for in 2018 and the preference expressed by 18 other states in recent years by vote, legislation, or resolution. Other than Hawaii and Arizona, which from time immemorial have remained on standard time, no other state has expressed the opposite preference.
Just as important if not more important, National Golf Day allows all those who practice the advocative arts across this huge nation the opportunity to meet in the same place at the same time. SCPGA CEO Nikki Gatch will chair a meeting of the PGA of America’s Advocacy Committee, of which CAG Executive Director Craig Kessler is a member. SCGA Director of Public Affairs Kevin Fitzgerald will lead a meeting of the International Association of Golf Administrators (IAGA) Advocacy Network, of which CAG’s Executive Director is also a member. Many of California’s golf course superintendents will meet with their national organization’s Government Affairs Team and Committee, and the same goes for the National Golf Course Owners and Club Managers Association.
ECONOMIC WHIPLASH
We’ve come to accept the realities of climate whiplash and its impact upon how we capture, convey, and store the water much of the state needs to sport 40 million souls and the 5th largest economy in the world – an acceptance that for golf often means figuring out how to thrive as the costs of doing business rise faster than its customers’ capacity to absorb them. Or willingness to absorb them, given that golf is a discretionary purchase.
No one really knows where all the recent turmoil in the markets is headed. If the “experts” are right, we are headed to a recession replete with an international trade war that would have a disproportionate impact upon a California economy dominated by sectors closely tie to international markets, labor, and parts. Whether they are proven right or wrong on those counts, we know that unless the markets rebound dramatically, California will lose one of its key sources of tax receipts – the capital gains reported by the state’s highest income earners. As that cascades down to cities, many like Los Angeles, which was staring down a $1 billion deficit before the markets tanked, are going to be in just that much more fiscal trouble, which will add to the pressures already felt by the roughly one out of four California golf courses owned by cities and counties.
Added to all that is the fear that the many Canadians who flock to Southern California’s deserts every winter are already telling media outlets that they have no plans to return next year. The markets may have rebounded by then, but egos and national pride once bruised don’t rebound as quickly .
Golf was rightly gratified when its expectation of a post COVID retreat was met not with retreat or correction, but rather continued growth. Should recent events presage an economic downturn, or worse, an economic downturn accompanied by continued inflation (a version of the “stagflation” of the 1970’s), we’ll find out how much of the COVID “bump” can maintain. There is a sense in some quarters that California’s urban centers are so oversaturated with demand that any normative contraction won’t be sufficient to do much more than lower margins. Other quarters remember that it wasn’t that long ago that golf suffered a decade long slide.
As for us, no predictions here – just a caveat about paying close heed to what the indicators might be able to tell us about where things are headed along with maximal caution about interpreting the meaning of the indicators’ words. No moment more than this one calls for the wisdom in William Goldman’s famous dictum about Hollywood: “Nobody knows anything.”