S1: Coming up on KPBS roundtable. Environmental Protection Agency head Lee Zeldin visited San Diego's South Bay this week. He wanted to see firsthand the impacts of the cross-border sewage crisis in the region. We discuss his plans to address the problem and put more pressure on Mexico to find a fix.
S2: I think that was a big deal , particularly for these communities that have been asking for more federal officials that are all the way in the East Coast to come and witness that crisis close up.
S1: Then we take a look at recent reporting on special interest spending in California and what it tells us about how lobbying impacts state policymaking. That's ahead on KPBS roundtable. The head of the federal Environmental Protection Agency , was in town this week to see firsthand the impacts of cross-border sewage flows in San Diego's South Bay. The visit came just days after a change in leadership at the U.S. International Boundary and Water Commission. So what does it all mean for the cross-border sewage crisis ? In the response from the US and Mexico. Here to discuss is Tammy Murga. She covers the south County for the San Diego Union Tribune and Axios San Diego's Andy Keates. Thank you both for joining us.
S3: Thanks a lot for having us.
S2: Thanks for having us.
S1: Before we dive in , let's briefly just set the scene here. What's the latest on what's causing the sewage flows from Mexico and what impacts are we seeing ? Tammy , I'll start with you.
S2: We've been hearing a lot lately from local residents that live and work near the 200 River Valley , about way more sewage odors , and I think , have you been seeing a little bit of those announcements from the IWC ? There's a lot of constructions happening south of the border , and there's been some sewage spills. There's been some complications with that. But we've had a new change at the post , the IWC , and of course , the latest with Lee Zeldin to visit and kind of give this message that they'll be doubling down on pressure to get Mexico to stop this once and for all.
S1: And again , the IWC is the International Boundary and Water Commission. Andy , what's been done so far to address the problem ? Let's look back into recent history. What's been going on ? Yeah.
S3: So I mean , the basic problem facing the IWC and the people of South Bay is that there is a much larger volume of untreated sewage that comes through the Tijuana River valley than is capable of being handled by the wastewater plant. One that is on the San Diego side of the border , and then one about six miles south of the border. So what's been done previously has mostly been a funding fight in Washington , D.C. , to secure enough revenue , initially enough revenue to expand the capacity of the South Bay water treatment plant. Then it was learned that the plant was in need of significant repairs that had not been maintained for a very long time , and so the amount of money that had been secured wasn't going to be enough to cover all the problems , and the cost of expansion turned out to be more than had initially been estimated. And so you sort of kicked up the funding fight again to include maintenance and repair costs and the increased estimate for expanding the plant. So this is all , you know , talking about hundreds of millions of dollars intended to essentially double the capacity of the wastewater treatment plant to handle the sewage that's coming through Tijuana. However , even with all the repairs , once they once they begin and once they're completed , which is in years , even that is not expected to handle the full volume of untreated sewage that comes through. So. But but that's where we've been so far.
S1: So earlier this week , Lee Zeldin , the EPA administrator under President Trump , toured areas in the South Bay impacted by this cross-border sewage crisis. And he held a press conference laying out his vision and goals to address the problem.
S2: He really just started his role as the top administrator in January. Right. And he's been touring all over the country. He's been visiting multiple communities. So to stop by the affected areas in San Diego and even he himself mentioned that he smelled those noxious odors. I think that was a big deal , particularly for these communities that have been asking for more federal officials that are all the way in the East Coast to come and witness that crisis close up. So to have them there and even meet with Navy Seals was was a big deal.
S1: Right ? In the Navy Seals have been complaining or raising issue with health effects. They've been feeling from being in this water where sewage is flowing up.
S3: I think that the the other element is if you just take a look at everything else that the administration has done and said in the last few months since it has taken office , you wouldn't be completely outside of your mind to have wondered whether we were on safe footing , that we were going to continue to pursue the infrastructure solution. That had been the primary focus for everyone involved in this issue for the last few years. So there had never been anything said that indicated the new administration intended to abandon those efforts. But , you know , it's a it's a international diplomacy issue between the United States and Mexico. And that is a significant source of source of tension and news with this administration. So , you know , certainly just finding out that the EPA head was going to come here and basically not blow things up , I think is sort of itself a piece of news. The the lack of any significant news in changing the direction of things is itself , I would say , pretty significant. Yeah.
S2: Yeah. I think Zeldin again , has mentioned , you know , he just started this role. I think he definitely stressed that urgency of stopping this once and for all. And I think that's there was a lot of energy with that. And I think a lot of people are waiting to see how exactly they'll , they'll deliver if there's anything new. Yeah.
S1: Yeah. Right. So Zelda's presence in itself was important was news. Let's jump into what he had to say while he was here. So he. He's pressuring Mexico to , quote , fulfill its part in addressing the problem. So what is he saying here ? And does he have a point that Mexico maybe hasn't put in as much effort in addressing the issue , or maybe has lacked urgency ? Yeah.
S3: I mean , look , the sewage comes from the Mexico side of the border. So it is at a base level. True that this is a problem that emanates in Mexico , not in the United States. The United States share of the problem is the condition of its water treatment plant here. Um , so , you know , I think he , you know , his piece of news , the sort of announcement that they decided to lean on was that he was going to demand that the Mexican government did his part , it did its part. And the sort of form that that took was that he was going to work with his counterpart there and put together a comprehensive list of all the projects necessary to solve this problem once and for all. Now you know what does that list going to look like ? Is it going to include a bunch of new ideas that no one has ever thought of before ? You know , probably not. I don't really think that that that anyone thinks that the , the issue here is like a lack of brainstorming to put together a list of , of projects. It's more a lack of , you know , political will and the complexity of these sort of cross border issues. Um , but nonetheless , I guess you could say that one of the things that he did is is to squarely , um , indicate rhetorically that this is Mexico , that Mexico needs to take a bigger role in solving this problem. And that hasn't always been the focus of , of of any administration. Um , you know , speaking in those sorts of terms.
S1:
S2: There's it's not necessarily new. Right. That the we have agreements like minute 328 that Mexico and the US already committed to a few years ago. It's a list of projects. What exactly that list will include. We've yet to see Zeldin did double down on on the desire to cut down timelines. He wants projects done a lot quicker on the US side and on the Mexico side. And I think Mexican officials on the same day and the night before , when meeting with Zeldin , really emphasized that they're committed to ending this just as much and that they're collaborating with the new administrator. I think , you know , again , what that list will include , it'll be new projects , or if it's really just to tighten up , streamline these timelines for some of these projects. I think that that is something that we've yet to see. Another thing to write , as we mentioned , there was a lot of pressure , right ? Delivering this message of pressure and making sure that Congress members that were standing alongside him really underscored this idea that they're not really going to support investing more money , more than the 600 million that they've already invested. They're really going to wait to see their return on their investment on these projects that were already that are already underway. But how exactly they'll keep Mexico accountable. I think that's something too. That wasn't very clear. And we're we're going to find out.
S1: There are already some pretty contentious issues between the US and Mexico , tariffs being one of them. Obviously immigration being another issues down at the border , the border wall. How does this fit into that complicated picture of the relationship right now between the US and Mexico.
S3: Yeah Scott I mean I think that's a really interesting question with this whole thing. You know , the former mayor of Imperial Beach has said in the past that he believes part of the reason that this issue has not been resolved is because it has taken a backseat to other issues between the United States and and Mexico immigration , fentanyl weapons. Now add into that tariffs and that there has sort of just , you know , been less urgency and less interest from Washington in , you know , grappling with this issue. But , you know , he also said , you know , he told me this , that there was a political cost to pay for being outspoken on this issue and that that political cost came from Mexico to the point that he stopped traveling there after being critical of the Mexican government over the problem. And the Baja governor held a series of press conferences criticizing him and sort of demanding he apologize. So there's no question that this sort of gets tangled up in all of those other issues , particularly as the Trump administration enjoys , it seems , using whatever leverage he has at his disposal for each of those other issues. You know , the fentanyl crisis becomes leverage for the tariff negotiations. And it's not that hard to imagine that the suddenly the sewage crisis could become a leverage point in tariff negotiations as well. It's not totally clear to me how that will work itself out , but I definitely think it's it's not easy to detach this one thing between the US and Mexico from all the other things that are ongoing right now.
S1:
S2: I think to , you know , do follow up a little bit on what I mentioned earlier. There's been a lot of push to have more federal officials come visit. I think it was generally welcomed. I think a lot of people were very interested to see what announcement he was going to make , what so new solutions potentially they could offer. There was also some level of skepticism. How would he , uh , you know , execute this , this pressure that , uh , you know , he had been already previewing in on social media on certain statements that he's made that he was that was going to be the approach that he was going to take. I think it was a little bit of both , some sense of hope that there is somebody really , you know , here in their backyard looking at this firsthand , but also , you know , it's sort of like a let's wait and see moment.
S1:
S2: I think so , I think there was also a lot of , I guess , support for it. There was one point during the press conference where , uh , there was mentioned no more , no more , uh , studies done. I think a lot of people have really doubled down on that. They're really tired of seeing more data , more and more studies being done. Would they just want this to stop ? How ? You know , that is what we'll really see. But I think people really enjoyed that. Those statements that people just really want this to stop no matter how. Or waiting more time to get more studies out of the way. And yeah , just collecting more data. Right.
S1: Right. And a lot of those studies have been looking at things like , you know , potential health impacts. Does this or does this not have any sort of impact , maybe potentially long term , especially when it comes to the air quality and so forth. What I thought was interesting was Zeldin , you know , said , look , I went down there , I smelled it , I'm trusting my nose. There's a problem here. So I could see why some community members might be sort of studied out , so to speak , and they're looking for action here.
S2: I just want to mention , too , that he also kind of pointed at this local push to designate the Tijuana River Valley a Superfund site. As we saw this at the county level and the EPA , the regional officials from the EPA came down and essentially rejected that. And Zeldin sort of indicated that , hey , we need to get these projects completed first before we can really sort of , yeah , clean up this , this environment , because it's going to be short lived if we continue to have spills into the river valley. So I thought that was interesting that he he pointed that out. Andy.
S1: Andy. Yeah.
S3: Yeah. And I think the other thing that that maybe is , is suddenly on the table , um , and it has been , you know , understandably very frustrating for people watching this issue to see , uh , lots of discussion , lots of heated discussion , lots of political debate that hasn't , you know , led to real results. I mean , you know , the number of celebrations that have been held for secured funding that has not yet meant any amount of , you know , less untreated sewage going into the ocean. Um , and , you know , ultimately ultimately resulting in beach closures. Um has has been significant. But but now that we're we can start to say , look , you've got all the money that you're going to get for this project and we don't need to have another fight about that. It does free up a little bit of bandwidth , I think , to talk about what comes next. And I think we did hear that from the Imperial Beach Mayor , Paloma Geary. Um , and some of the comments she made this week saying that it's time to start discussing , um , divergence projects , um , with what remains in the Tijuana River that won't be treated even after all of these wastewater treatment plant upgrades are made. Um , you know , like out of the 100 million gallons of untreated sewage that comes through the valley every day , um , we're going to get to , you know , something approaching maybe 70% of that will be treatable based on the the upgrades at the on the San Diego side and the and the in the , on the Mexico side. So she started to to to pivot to. Okay. We'll figure that. We'll finish those projects. We should finish them faster than we than the current , you know , off delayed timelines have indicated. But after that we're going to have to do something else as well. And maybe that is related to the project list that that EPA Chief Zeldin indicated. But , you know , I do think that maybe sort of , um , we're seeing a point where because we don't have to fight about the funding anymore , we can start to avail ourselves to the next fight.
S1: Meanwhile , amidst all of this , the Trump administration replaced the head of the US International Boundary and Water Commission , or the BWC , which runs the South Bay International Wastewater Treatment Plant and has been a key player when it comes to addressing or trying to address raw sewage flows from Mexico. What is this new appointment mean ? Does this change the picture here ? Does this complicate the picture ? Tammy , I'll go to you.
S2: I think it's going to be an interesting point as well. Right. Lee Zeldin is new. We have a new , um , commissioner at the IBEW , and I think there's for the for the most part , a lot of people were really happy with how he sort of , uh , took on this overhaul of the commission. As we know , she it wasn't just the South Bay plant. It was several other projects along the border. And we'll we'll really see if this new commissioner can kind of pick up where he left off. Um , given so many projects that , uh , the commissioner was also trying to oversee or not oversee , but work with Mexican officials , right to she was constantly reporting. Uh , I think almost every week and meeting with them daily on the status of certain projects recently that were having some issues and leading to spills and then leading to many complaints with odors. I think it's there's a lot that this , uh , post has to oversee and deal with and handle , not to mention oversight from the water board. But I think it's going to be really interesting to to see how this , um , if he hits the ground running per se and kind of keep it afloat , especially with this new list , right , that we are all talking about that may soon be released.
S3: Yeah , I think also , you know , the the previous director had been , you know , in charge during a , uh , a crucial time , um , the commission's revelation a few years back that they had this , um , previously unstated , um , operations and maintenance deficit , this big problem that the , the there was a repair backlog that had been allowed to , to build up at the plant and that , you know , therefore , they needed more money to fix those things. That was something , you know , people were pretty upset about that when that was first , um , revealed. That led to some difficult conversations. I talked to representative Mike Levin , who sort of indicated that maybe his relationship with the director hadn't always been great , and then it had been , had had grown into a very productive one that he was very pleased with by the end. Um , and so , you know , new leadership is sort of a familiar story. Whenever you have new leadership in an organisation like this. Um , they make , as Tammy said , pick up where they left off and , and be able to keep going. But , you know , also maybe not , you know , so it's um , the previous director had simply sort of been in charge during a pivotal moment. And so it bears watching whether this new director will sort of no , no , all the buttons to push and where all the levers to pull are , um , as , as , you know , they get started.
S1: And what do you expect to see from here ? I mean , we've been talking about lists. We've been talking about more a little more pressure on Mexico. There's some updates as well with the San Antonio de Los Buenos wastewater plant in Mexico. What's something specific that you're keeping an eye on that you're looking out for , whether it be action from the Trump administration or Mexico or something else. Tammy , I'll go to you. Yeah.
S2: Yeah. Personally , as you mentioned , the San Antonio de Los Buenos plant , uh , Mexico just said , uh , uh , during , uh , Lee Zeldin visit , that the plant is just days away from opening , and this is a plant that has been essentially broken for years and years and has been dumping millions of gallons of water of wastewater , untreated wastewater every day. And that leads to most of our beach closures. So I think there's a lot of eyes on whether this plant will essentially help Andy's put an end to to these beach closures. Right. In addition to all these other projects , like the international collector in Mexico , that's supposed to also undergo a major overhaul. Both of these , I think , will be really huge to see if they can essentially stop again , flows by the river and the ocean. So hopefully by this summer we can see some changes , some progress in odors and beach closures. So I think that's for me that's those are the two main ones that I'll be watching out for.
S3: Yeah , I think that's the biggest ones. I mean , I think also , you know , I think if we go back through the assorted headlines of everyone who's covered this issue over the last five years , there's probably been a lot of , um , overly optimistic timelines for when projects would get started and when projects that were started would get finished. Um , so in terms of what we're watching , I would also say we could , um , be careful to , to keep an eye on the improvements and upgrades at the South Bay water Treatment Plant as well.
S1: I've been speaking with San Diego Union Tribune's South County reporter , Tammy Murga. Tammy , thanks for joining us.
S2: Thank you for having.
S1: Me , as well as Andy Keates from Axios San Diego. So glad to have you on. Thanks , Andy.
S3: I appreciate it.
S1: Up next , spending on lobbying in California jumped to a record high in 2024 , surpassing half $1 billion. We hear more about who spent the most and why. Roundtable is back after the break. Welcome back to KPBS roundtable. I'm Scott Rod. Special interest spending in California reached a new high in 2020 for lobbying groups , and large corporations spent over half $1 billion to influence state lawmakers and officials. That figure is up 10% from the previous year. The Calmatters Digital Democracy Project looked into where this money came from and its influence on state policymaking. Jeremiah Kimmelman joins me now to talk about it. He's a data reporter with Calmatters , which is a nonprofit newsroom based in Sacramento. Jeremiah. Thanks for joining roundtable.
S4: Thank you so much for having me.
S1: So half $1 billion , a lot of money certainly seems like it. What did you make of that spending ? Tell us about it.
S4: Yeah , it is a lot of money. You know , spending more than $540 million. Uh , there's no way. There's no way. That's not a lot of money. But some experts I talked to said that's kind of in line with what happens in American politics. If you take the national GDP and the California GDP , it's about the same level of lobbying by that metric as the federal government. The thing is that people , when they spend half $1 billion , they want something for that money. That's not just free money that they're willing to give to charity. And so we tried to look at how effective were people at getting what they wanted by spending that much money.
S1: And I want to get into some of you know , who are the big spenders. What did they potentially get out of it ? But I'll start first with when people hear special interests , when they hear lobbying , they associate it with like backroom deals or something. Right. But the reality is lobbying is a part of the lawmaking and policymaking process. Like anything else , it could be done above board on the up and up. Sometimes it can be done in a shady way.
S4: You know , if you talk to a lobbyist , they'll make sure to highlight that lobbying is allowed in the in the Bill of rights. You know , you're allowed to address the government to try and get them to fix your problems. So you're right , it's going to happen. It's part of the American political process. And just because it's happening doesn't mean that it's nefarious by , you know , just by it being there. I'll say something else that lots and lots of different types of organizations spend money to lobby , you know , big business interests all the way down to tiny non profits last year. This year , over half $1 billion was spent. More than 3700 organizations spent some money to try and persuade state officials in some capacity. Now , what does that look like ? It can take a bunch of different forms. There can be individual meetings with officials or regulators or legislators , but there can also be a public side to it , where an organization can go and give testimony in front of the legislature or a committee or a regulator and put their position out in the public. They say , we want this because of these reasons. So there's lots of different ways that lobbying can , can actually happen in California.
S1: And so again , over $500 million spent on lobbying in California last year. Tell us , where did most of that money come from ? Who were the big spenders.
S4: Yeah , exactly. That's the question that everyone wants to know. And it's a good one. So the major special interests that lobby the state government are the same year in and year out. And those are the oil companies that are in the state , business trade groups and labor unions. You know , they show up every year with millions of dollars , but every year you also see a few organizations or companies that have a regulatory fight on their hands. And sometimes they think it's existential. So a good example of this is last summer Google was fighting two bills , one about AI regulation and another that would require them to pay newspapers when they use their content and search results. And they didn't like either of those bills. And so they spent more money in three months last year than they had in total since 2005. And the reason they did that , and by the way , they got their way on both those bills is because , you know , if they could spend $10 million to fight two bills that would have hundreds of millions of dollars of impact. That's a good business decision. But the largest spender last year and the largest spender most years is the oil interests in the state. The Western State Petroleum Association is the trade group that represents a bunch of oil companies here in California.
S1: Let's take spending from from the oil lobby. What were they ? What were they lobbying ? What were. It sounds like. Like you said , they're often spending lots of money year after year. Last year , what are some examples of what they were pushing for ? Right.
S4: They spend money every year. And people might not think of California as a big oil producing state , because maybe they think of it having a green reputation. Or you listen to some of the rhetoric coming from our state politicians. But make no mistake , California produces a lot , a lot of oil. And so these groups spend money every year to to fight some legislation or change regulations. Last year , at the end of the year , if you recall , in the fall , Governor Newsom called a special session just to deal with gas prices , which were which were higher than than they are now. And the oil companies jumped into action. And so a whole special session was formed around their industry. They spent a lot of money to have a lot of influence on the outcome of that special session.
S1: Let's jump to Google. You had mentioned them in the third quarter of last year. They dumped a bunch of money into into lobbying , And you mentioned a few bills that they were that they were lobbying on. What would those bills have done ? Tell us a little bit more about that. And what was the outcome of what lawmakers ultimately voted on ? Sure.
S4: Let's start with the outcome first. Uh , Google had its way on both bills. They didn't want either bills to survive and both bills died. So one was a bill from Assembly member Buffy Wicks that would have required Google to give money to news publishers when that when their content shows up on Google's search results. Um , and this is something that's been tried in other countries like Australia and Canada. And so this was the California version. And , um , you know , Google didn't want that. That would mean they have to spend money that they don't currently have to spend. So ultimately they lobbied a lot. And that bill died in a in a compromise. It didn't even get to the to a vote. Actually , the next bill that they were really concerned with was a bill from Senator Scott Wiener from San Francisco that was all about AI regulations and increasing the amount of testing for harm that the state would require companies doing AI products to do , and so Google doesn't have to do that now. They didn't want to do that in the future. And so they fought that bill. And that bill also didn't make it out of the legislature.
S1: Well , let's look big picture.
S4: So one thing we will not know from the state data is the exact amount of money and time spent lobbying a particular bill. All the state requires is that a company like Google or Chevron list everything that they lobbied on. They don't have to say who they met with specifically. They could have met with one legislative office or all 120 , and we wouldn't know the difference. So it's a little hard to quantify , you know , how much did they get their way when the disclosure is so opaque ? But we have a project here at Calmatters called Digital Democracy. And what that does is it sucks in a bunch of data from across the legislature , stuff like campaign Contributions , gifts , lobbying and also what is said and happens in committee hearings and on the floor. And from that , we can actually say these groups took this public position on this bill , whether they wanted it to succeed or fail or some sort of change. And so we did an analysis that showed , in general , those business groups got their way about 60% of the time. Now , I have to also give you a caveat to that. A longtime lobbyist named Chris Micheli told me that that might be an undercount , because it can take more than one year to successfully pass a bill. Sometimes it takes six , seven , eight years , and you fail every year. But when it works , you get a seismic change in the law. And so my analysis wouldn't account for that because it's hard to do. But what we found is that these big businesses got their way about 60% of the time when they took public positions.
S1: So it seems like money well spent for the most part. I'm curious , considering all these caveats , right , that we don't know exactly where the money is going in terms of spending on a specific bill or lobbyist going to a specific meeting. It seems like we get kind of the big picture.
S4: So I don't know that whether that means we're likely to see one in the future. But as of now , I haven't heard of any efforts to increase that kind of transparency in the legislature.
S1: Let's go behind the scenes a little bit on your reporting. You had mentioned Cal Matter's Digital Democracy project. I'll say I've used this platform in my own reporting. It's excellent. It's awesome. First , just tell us a little bit about the Digital Democracy Project , what it aims to do and essentially what it offers to the public. Sure.
S4: Sure. Well , first of all , thank you for the kind words and I'm glad it's useful for you. We think it's really useful , too. What it does is it tries to make the legislature less opaque. If you don't live in Sacramento , if you don't go to these committee hearings a lot , the the activity that goes on is is really hard to discern. You have to watch hours of hearing meetings justifying the two minutes where they're talking about the particular relevant thing , or you have to go to those meetings. And what digital democracy does is try and make it so you can do that from anywhere in the state or really the world. We take the legislative hearings , we generate a transcript , and then we annotate that and say , well , this is this person and they're talking about this bill and they're from this organization. And once we have all that data kind of put together structured , we can really do some compelling analysis , like what I've just told you about trying to figure out how effective our lobbying. Or you can go on our Digital Democracy website and see which legislators have taken the most gifts from from different companies , or who has taken the most campaign contributions from a particular sector , organized labor or oil or even solar energy.
S1: In this story , specifically on lobbying. How did you dig through state records , put and put this all together and get a detailed understanding of who was spending what and where the money was going , what went into that , and how does that compare to maybe what you would have had to do before Calmatters built this digital democracy project ? Because I know that the state of California often gets dinged for its pretty outdated systems for tracking data and making public information available to Californians.
S4: Well , they do , don't they ? The state does get some criticism for that. And , you know , the site that they published this data on , it was actually built during the Clinton administration. So I'll just leave that there. But what we did is we we take the state data that that the state publishes , and they do put it online on a website from the Secretary of state. And so we make sure to go and capture all that data , download it and make sure to organize it by by lobbying group like who's spending the money and then also aggregate it by year. So the state doesn't do that and we do that. And from that we're able to draw some trends and some comparisons. That's why I'm able to tell you I know every year the oil interests are one of the top three spenders. Going back to 2005.
S1: And for folks wanting to see how their representatives may be impacted by lobbying , folks here in San Diego maybe want to see how their Assembly member or senator may be , you know , impacted by lobbying.
S4: The state doesn't really require any sort of disclosure of that. So the best we can do is say , well , this legislator is on this committee , and this bill went before them and they voted in this way , and that is either for and or against this particular organization. And then what digital democracy can also do is say , oh , by the way , that organization has given this legislator X amount of dollars over the last ten years or whatever it might be. So that's kind of the way that we draw these inferences. But unfortunately , with current state disclosures , you can't really get as granular as we would like.
S1: Yeah , it sounds like certainly with the elected officials , but perhaps organizations or companies based in San Diego , I know , for example , SDG and E , the utility company down here , there may be a way to look at perhaps their lobbying efforts on certain issues. Is that right ? Absolutely.
S4: You know , lobbying about state policies in Sacramento. It might feel far away from your from your listeners in San Diego and Southern California. But what happens up here in Sacramento can have really big impacts on people's lives all across the state. You know , the state can have new laws about zoning reform or even whether your electricity rate has increased. And so last year , a few San Diego organizations spent money. So , as you said , San Diego Gas and Electric spent nearly $1.7 million to lobby state officials , including the Public Utilities Commission. And remember , that's the the regulatory agency that decides if your electricity rates can go up or not. So they were lobbying them. But it's also important to note that the city of San Diego and the county of San Diego both spent millions of dollars to lobby the state government as well. And you might say , well , why is the government lobbying another government ? Well , because the state government can have a big impact on the operations of a municipal government , whether that's changing how much housing density needs to be allowed near a transit stop or going to something like how much transparency and data must be collected and reported by local law enforcement agencies.
S1: Really excellent reporting. Thank you so much for staying on top of this. Jeremiah Kimmelman is a data reporter with Calmatters Jeremiah. Thanks for joining roundtable.
S4: Thanks so much for having me.
S1: Coming up next , our roundup of other stories from the week. That's ahead on roundtable. Welcome back to KPBS roundtable. I'm Scott rod. It's time now for our roundup of other stories from this week's news. Joining me is KPBS producer Andrew Bracken. Hey , Andrew.
S5: Hey , Scott.
S1:
S5: Ready for the weekend ? Yeah.
S1: Yeah.
S5: Me too.
S1: Uh , I'll start things off this week. There was a story in the story in Politico , and it is about an interest group that's lobbying Governor Gavin Newsom in a pretty novel way. I haven't heard of this before. They are trying to push him on a certain issue by advertising on his podcast. Now , we've talked about Newsom's podcast before. It's called This is Gavin Newsom , and he has on a rotating cast of characters , so to speak , from Charlie Kirk to Steve Bannon to Ezra Klein and many , many others. He's been putting in a lot of work on this podcast. He seems to be doing it every week , and sometimes I think multiple times a week. I've listened to it a few times. I haven't heard anything like this when listening to it , but apparently it's the childcare providers United , which is currently in contract talks with the administration , with the state in terms of basically how much they get paid. So they're playing two audio spots that will run during all episodes during the breaks on these episodes. And according to a spokesperson for child care providers United. The ads will also be targeted at a list of major donors and decision makers across all iHeartMedia podcasts. I'm not really sure what that means. It's I know you can target things pretty specifically in advertising. I don't know if they know how to pinpoint a specific person or donor.
S5: I think marketing's getting pretty exacting with things like newsletters and podcasts are kind of integrating to that. Yeah.
S1: I think that's right. Yeah. And I think with the amount of data that's out there on us , like they can probably figure out exactly where you are at any moment and make sure they get your their message to you.
S5: And this seems like a kind of a new angle. Like you said , kind of working into this podcast space. And I think you've made the point. While the governor is producing all this content on his podcast , he's not really doing interviews with reporters , right ? And the kind of he's controlling his message in this kind of space. Don't you think.
S1: He's trying to. Yeah. Um , and I say trying to because , I mean , if you listen to some of these podcasts , especially with some of the conservative voices , conservative activists , really , who come on , uh , they're. Charlie.
S5: Charlie. Kirk.
S1: Kirk. Like Charlie Kirk. Yeah. Like Steve Bannon , who ? Come on there , ready to deliver a message. And and the ones that I listen to , they seem to have kind of a field day and just sort of took it to me , seemed like to control the conversation and allowed it to go wherever they wished. Uh , and it seemed like got a lot of publicity and attention out of those podcasts.
S5: I did listen to the ad because on that story , you can actually listen directly to the ad again , sort of like a weird reverse engineering of lobbying there. It's kind of , uh , we'll see where that goes , but I haven't heard of that before. Yeah.
S1: Yeah. Me neither. I'm curious how much money they put into those spots before we move on.
S5: Three stars. Two stars. I don't know. 2.9.
S1: 2.9. Okay. Yeah , he'll get there. Gavin. We'll get the three stars soon enough. All right. What about you ? What are you.
S5: Reading ? Well , I mean , on. You know , we've been talking a lot about the state of California , and there's been , you know , I have a couple stories on that. People in California can now buy generic Narcan. That's the anti overdose medication. It's a generic version that the state has offered for sale. I think they introduced it last year. But now they have a way you can buy it online. Um and it's it's cheaper than a lot of places. You know other pharmacies , things like that. This is a big a big issue as we've seen overdose deaths over the last like half decade or so really impacted by the rise of fentanyl. I think the highest number , you know , reached nearly 108,000 overdose deaths in the US and 2022. That number started to come down. And I think , you know , some point to increasing the access to things like Narcan. And this is , you know , a statewide effort now to kind of make it more accessible. And it's , you know , it's offered in a , in a spray and you can get two doses for $24 , which seems to be , you know , about half the price of other places. There's actually a website where you can go and put in orders for that. That's Kal x naloxone , dot com naloxone.
S1: I think this is great that they're making it more available. They're more. Accessible.
S5: Accessible.
S1: More accessible , cheaper. It'd be great if they were available in stores. Um , but hey , if you can go on , go online and order it , I think that's great too. You know , I think it's good for anyone to carry Narcan. I think I think this is something where , unfortunately , we're in a reality where it's not out of the realm of possibility that in your day to day life , at some point you may come across someone who needs to be , uh , who needs to receive Narcan. It's a sad reality , but better to be prepared than not. And it's sort of a miracle product in a way that it counteracts an opioid overdose. And I think it's great that they're making it more available. We got time for one last story. I'll leave it to you.
S5: Another California related story I think we've been been overwhelmed by negative , negative economic news. I'll just say that recently , right , with tariffs with a lot of uncertainty. I'm hearing the word recession thrown around a lot. And this is a story I've found in the LA times that California just became the fourth largest economy. This is from the LA times Hannah Fry and Clara Harder. And it just looked at data from the IMF and the US Bureau of Economic Analyses released California's nominal GDP and it overtook Japan.
S1: IMF , International Monetary Fund.
S5: Yeah , yeah. And so , you know , it's good for California. We have a lot of different industries. I think , you know , first thing I think of is high tech. And I think that's like a big driver. California agriculture is huge , right. I think Newsom was attributed it to those as well as , like manufacturing. Like there's just a lot in California. I don't know , it's nice to get a little , like , more positive news on the economy. That said , the story did note there's attributing factors and we'll see what happens and how the tariffs will impact California. Yeah.
S1: Yeah. And I think everyday people , when they see news like this , maybe they feel heartened or reassured by it. But a lot of people are also struggling. So they may see , okay , the state as a whole , its economy is doing well. But how are.
S5: You ? What does that mean for me ? Yeah.
S1: How does that what does it mean for everyday people ? A lot of people are still struggling , especially with a lot of recent uncertainty over , as you mentioned , tariffs. The stock market has been , you know , suffering. There's a lot of uncertainty in the economy more broadly.
S5: And on that I mean Newsom last week or so announced a lawsuit against the Trump administration , you know , arguing for those tariffs not to go into effect. So we'll see where it goes. Yeah.
S1: Yeah. For sure. I've been speaking with KPBS , Andrew Bracken. Thanks , Andrew.
S5: Thank you. Scott.
S1: Thanks for listening to KPBS roundtable. You can listen to the show any time as a podcast. Roundtable airs on KPBS FM at noon on Fridays and again Sundays at 6 a.m.. If you have any thoughts on today's show , you can email us at roundtable at PBS.org. You can also leave us a message at (619) 452-0228. Roundtable's technical producer this week was Brandon Troopa. This show was produced by Andrew Bracken. Brooke Ruth is Roundtable's senior producer. Supervising audio producer is Quinn Owen. And I'm Scott Rodd. Have a great weekend.
