CGA member Northgate Gonzalez Market was one of four winners of the Food Marketing Institute’s 2014 Community Outreach Awards. The awards recognize the creative, charitable programs established and carried out by food retailers to enhance the lives of those in the communities they serve.

“In an industry experiencing tumultuous change, the generous spirit and community-focused attitude of food retailers remains a constant,” said David Fikes, FMI’s vice president of communications and consumer affairs. “Our 2014 awardees, and all nominees, demonstrated great creativity and dedication in finding new ways of fulfilling the food retailer call to feed families and enrich the lives of those they serve.”

Winners were selected across four categories: programs addressing food insecurity, youth development, neighborhood health improvement programs and community engagement. FMI added a community engagement category in 2014 in order to recognize the retailer who best engaged their online social community and received the most fan support for their program on Facebook.  FMI’s judging criteria included participation, community need and impact.

Each winner will receive $1,000 from FMI to further their program:

Neighborhood Health Improvement Programs: 
Northgate Gonzalez Market Viva la Salud 
Northgate Gonzalez Market created “Viva La Salud Program a Community Partner” to provide affordable, quality health products and services, including in-store mammograms and health screenings.

Programs Addressing Food insecurity: 
Food Lion Feeds 
Food Lion launched “Food Lion Feeds” with a commitment to donate 500 million meals to families in need by the end of 2020. In 2014, over 40 million meals were donated.

Youth Development Programs: 
Hy-Vee/Sanford Legends
Since 2005, the Legends Grants Program has helped local nonprofit sports organizations build facilities, purchase equipment and improve their programs. The program has raised $1,298,000 to date.

Community Engagement: 
Russ’s Market Russ’s Community Rewards 
This program allows customers to use points earned through in-store shopping to support local organizations. 2,700 households have used their community points to redeem over 11,000 offers for community organizations.

Sacramento Bee Editorial

A new academic study out this week, and published in the journal PLOS ONE, for the first time gives a hard number to the amount of plastic garbage littering our oceans. It’s a sobering figure: 5.25 trillion particles of plastic.

That’s a number so large as to be incomprehensible. So, picture it this way: 269,000 tons of water bottles, Lego pieces, disposable pens and lighters, take-out coffee lids, Barbie heads, detergent containers and, of course, lots of plastic bags floating atop the sparkling blue horizon.

That’s a helpful image for people to recall should they run across one of the petitions being circulated by the plastic bag industry trying to stop California’s ban on single-use plastic bags.

A group of plastic bag makers, most of them outside of the state, are spending millions on misleading ads and paid signature gatherers to get a referendum on the bag ban on the November 2016 ballot.

If the referendum qualifies for the ballot, it will postpone the July 15 bag ban implementation date until after the 2016 election. We don’t think the ban would be overturned by voters, who, according to polls, are mostly supportive. The plastic bag industry probably doesn’t either, but qualifying a referendum will give them more than a year reprieve.

It’s impossible to say how many more plastic shopping bags will be added to the Pacific Ocean during that time, but it’s a fair bet that a good portion of the 14 billion plastic grocery bags used in the state each year will end up in storm drains that flow into the ocean.

Though the bags can be recycled in California, hardly any are. Some are used a second time, especially by dog owners, but most end up in landfills where they will sit for generations before breaking down. Many of those, however, will escape their confines, catching the wind in their unique parachute design until they end up strewn about the state’s wild places – clogging up rivers flowing through the Valley, wrapping around Joshua trees in the desert and tying up manzanita bushes in the mountains.

There are ways for Californians to derail the plastic industry’s fight to keep profiting from polluting our state. The first, anyone can do: Don’t sign the petition.

The plastic bag industry is pulling every trick out of its, er, bag of them to win back waning public support of plastic bags: spurious claims that it’s no more than a crooked deal between politicians and the grocers, who can charge a fee for paper bags; baseless job-loss claims; and even absurd warnings that using reusable bags will spread disease.

The second way is for elected leaders in cities that have held off on enacting local bans to do so now.

Mayor Kevin Johnson has started this process for Sacramento in case the referendum qualifies. If the City Council passes a ban, it would join more than 130 other cities and counties in the state already covered by one.

It also would send a strong message from the capital to the main supporter of the bag ban referendum, South Carolina-based Hilex Poly, that Californians are done being complicit in the trashing of our precious natural resources.

We don’t expect a single-use plastic bag ban in California to stop the flow of plastic trash into the oceans altogether. Opponents of bag bans rightly point out that plastic bags are just one of the many sources of trash. But every difficult journey begins somewhere. Stopping the flow of one significant source of garbage is a great way to begin.

Reprinted from The Los Angeles Times (12/1/2014)

Stung by losses in the November election, the California Legislature’s Democratic majority arrives for the first day of a new session Monday facing a political terrain more hostile to tax increases and other priorities of liberal lawmakers.

The Democrats’ failure to win a supermajority in either the Senate or Assembly, after capturing both just two years ago, is expected to produce a more centrist agenda and give more clout to moderate Democrats and Republicans.

The political shift probably dooms the long-proposed revision to Proposition 13, the 1978 initiative that capped property tax hikes, said Larry Gerston, a political science professor at San Jose State.

“The Democrats had their chance with the bulletproof, absolute two-thirds majorities last year, but they were unwilling to pull the trigger,” Gerston said. “That window is now shut.”
Assemblyman Henry T. Perea (D-Fresno), who leads the moderate Democrats, said the subtle shift to the middle will be felt when energy issues come to the forefront during the upcoming, two-year legislative session.

Last year, he led a high-profile but unsuccessful effort to delay the inclusion of transportation fuels in the state’s cap-and-trade program to limit carbon emissions. He said to expect more “robust debate” about the state’s efforts to address climate change in the coming session.

“Nearly half the [Democratic] caucus could be considered more moderate than in the past, but I do think that, for example, a moderate in Fresno is going to be very different from a moderate in the Bay Area,” Perea said.

State law requires the Legislature to meet for one day in early December to convene the new session, swear in newly elected members and elect the leadership. Members will get a 2% pay raise Monday and can begin introducing bills, but the Legislature adjourns at the end of the day until Jan. 5, when the session begins in earnest.

Both houses will see some new leadership. Sen. Kevin De León (D-Los Angeles) is the new president pro tem of the Senate, and Assemblywoman Kristin Olsen of Modesto becomes the new Republican leader in the Assembly.

Senate Democrats start the new session with 25 of the 40 seats in the Senate, when 27 are needed for a supermajority; Republicans have 14. The Democrats have a 52-28 majority in the Assembly.

There is one vacancy in the Senate, caused by the resignation of Democratic Sen. Roderick Wright over criminal charges, and a Democrat is expected to win the Dec. 9 special election.

“I expect there will be a more deliberate pace with respect to policy-making next year, largely because the makeup of the Senate has changed,” said Senate Republican Leader Bob Huff of Diamond Bar.
“The voters sent a message by electing Republicans in key swing districts, which eliminated the Democrats’ supermajority, and it forces them to continue working with us,” he said. “And they clearly do not want any tax increases.”

When Democrats held a supermajority in both chambers in 2012, they had enough votes to approve tax increases or place proposed constitutional amendments on the statewide ballot without a single Republican vote.

De León said Democrats would have to collaborate with Republicans on the state’s problems. “It’s about getting things done together,” he said.

Along with the changing political dynamics, the new Legislature will see a record number of African American and Asian American members, including the first Vietnamese American member of the state Senate.
Republicans have been touting the diverse backgrounds of their newly elected members. Three new GOP lawmakers come from Asian backgrounds: Sen.-elect Janet Nguyen (R-Santa Ana) was born in Vietnam; incoming Assembly members Ling-Ling Chang of Chino Hills and Young Kim of Fullerton were born in Taiwan and South Korea, respectively.

They help swell the membership of the California Asian & Pacific Islander Legislative Caucus from 11 to a record 12 members. That could stymie efforts to roll back the state’s ban on affirmative action in public colleges and universities. A proposal to do so was pushed by Latino and African American Democrats last year, but it stalled after heated pushback by some Asian American communities.
In addition, the California Legislative Black Caucus will have a record 11 members for the first time in its 47-year history and will probably increase to a record 12 if former Assemblyman Isadore Hall (D-Inglewood) wins the special election for Wright’s Senate seat, as expected.

The Legislative Latino Caucus and the Legislative Lesbian, Gay, Bisexual and Transgender Caucus will both see slight drops in memberships in the new session.

The departing LGBT members include former Speaker John A. Pérez (D-Los Angeles), the first openly gay speaker, and Assemblyman Tom Ammiano (D-San Francisco).

“We’ll feel their losses, there’s no question,” said Assemblyman Rich Gordon (D-Menlo Park), the caucus’ chairman.

Although their numbers are slightly diminished, Gordon was bullish on gay rights and other priority issues in the coming years, in part because they have increasingly been embraced by moderate lawmakers.

In both parties, he said, “you’re seeing folks — even if they’re labeled more moderate — understanding the equity issues.”

Another change in the new Legislature is the departure of lawmakers embroiled in scandal.

Wright was convicted of voting fraud and resigned in October. Democratic Sens. Leland Yee of San Francisco and Ronald Calderon of Montebello were indicted by federal grand juries on separate public corruption allegations. Both left office Nov. 30 as their terms expired.

Listening to the plastic-bag industry oppose bans on their product is eerily similar to what carmakers said decades ago in opposition to seat belts and air bags.

Bad idea, they argued. Bad for consumers. Won’t accomplish what supporters intend.

In fact, seat belts cut the number of crash-related injuries and deaths in half, according to the National Highway Traffic Safety Administration, and the combination of seat belts and air bags reduced fatalities by more than 60%.

And now we have plastic-bag manufacturers claiming that bans at the local and state level hurt the economy, kill jobs, tax the poor and don’t actually help the environment.

“It’s yet another job-killing, big grocer cash grab masquerading as an environmental bill,” Mark Daniels, chairman of the American Progressive Bag Alliance, said of California’s ban on plastic bags that takes effect in July.

It’s yet another job-killing, big grocer cash grab masquerading as an environmental bill.- Mark Daniels, chairman of the American Progressive Bag Alliance
A ban on plastic bags in Los Angeles County took effect four months ago. A 10-cent fee is charged for paper bags.

The plastic-bag industry, like the auto industry before it, wants people to think it’s fighting the good fight on behalf of personal freedom, individual liberty and common sense.

All it’s really doing is trying to protect its profits.

The plastic-bag industry is now gearing up — and spending heavily — to place a referendum on the November 2016 ballot that would overturn California’s bag ban. It has until Dec. 29 to collect the more than 500,000 signatures needed to put the matter to voters.

I spotted an ad on Craigslist for people to receive $1.50 for every signature they gather in support of the referendum. “It is basically to reverse the ban,” the ad says, “but the way you pitch is to vote on it whether you want it or not.”
Daniels acknowledged that the industry is employing professional signature gatherers.

Plastics companies recently contributed about $1.2 million toward the referendum campaign, according to public records. All but $50,000 came from companies based outside California.

The largest donation — $566,666.67 — was made by South Carolina’s Hilex Poly, one of the country’s largest plastic-bag makers and the main provider of funds for Daniels’ American Progressive Bag Alliance.

Indeed, when he isn’t defending “progressive” bags, which are more friendly sounding than plastic bags, Daniels is Hilex Poly’s vice president of sustainability and environmental policy.

California’s ban, Daniels told me, is not about the environment. “It’s about a backroom deal to scam Californians out of billions of dollars.”
By the industry’s reckoning, he said, state lawmakers bowed to pressure from grocery stores and unions to require that consumers pay extra for paper or reusable bags.

“We’re getting inundated with calls from Californians thanking us for doing this,” Daniels said of the planned referendum. “It’s very encouraging for our industry.”

Mark Murray, executive director of Californians Against Waste, which spearheaded the statewide bag ban, said he very much doubted that bag makers are being swamped with calls of support from state residents.

About 60% of voters said they support the statewide bag ban, according to a USC Dornsife/Los Angeles Times poll released Friday.

Murray said the industry’s claims of broad support mirror its insistence that plastic bags are environmentally safe. “They don’t have a real argument, so they’re using bogus arguments,” he said.

A plastics industry website, BagTheBan.com, says that “studies show banning plastic bags could increase global warming, put more carbon in the air, require more trucks on the road and use up more water because consumers would be forced to use resource-heavy alternatives like paper and reusable bags.”

The reality, Murray said, is that plastic bags are a blight on the landscape after being discarded by careless consumers or blowing from trash cans, garbage trucks or landfills.

The Natural Resources Defense Council reported last year that California communities spend more than $428 million a year trying to prevent litter from entering the state’s waterways.

Plastic bags make up as much as a quarter of all that trash, the group found. They pose a threat to wildlife, clog storm drains and threaten vital industries, such as tourism and commercial fishing, it said.

“The environmental cost of this product far exceeds its utility,” Murray said.

He said California’s bag ban was the result of many hours of public hearings and negotiations with interested parties. But because the industry didn’t get its way, Murray said, “they’re now just buying their way onto the ballot.”

It’s a fair point. If Californians were clamoring for an end to a law that hasn’t even taken effect yet, they’d be signing petitions at a grass-roots level, not at the behest of mercenary hustlers making $1.50 a signature.

The California Legislature passed a bill in 2011 that would have prohibited petition circulators being paid on a per-signature basis, but it was vetoed by Gov. Jerry Brown. He said the legislation was “a dramatic change to a long-established democratic process in California.”

Contrast that with Oregon, which in 2002 required that petition circulators be paid by the hour, not per signature gathered. Since then, the state’s initiative process hasn’t died. It’s just become more representative of the public’s wishes.

Both Daniels and Murray predicted that a referendum on California’s bag ban will come before voters in 2016. Even if it fails to pass, it would likely delay implementation of the ban for months.

And that would translate into additional profit for the bag industry.

Call it the best democracy money can buy.

David Lazarus’ column runs Tuesdays and Fridays. He also can be seen daily on KTLA-TV Channel 5 and followed on Twitter @Davidlaz. Send your tips or feedback to [email protected].

It’s been a dispiriting drumbeat for the Chamber of Commerce this year at Los Angeles City Hall.

In a matter of weeks, three initiatives opposed by the chamber were embraced by the City Council: a ban on the use of hydraulic fracturing, or fracking, in underground oil extraction; a prohibition on e-cigarettes in most workplaces; and a sweeping overhaul of commercial trash pickup promoted by labor and environmental groups.

The latest defeat came last week, when the council voted to hike the minimum wage to $15.37 for thousands of workers at L.A.’s large hotels — increasing pay for some employees as much as 71%. Business groups, who complained that their warnings about job losses were ignored, were left “alienated to a degree that I’ve never seen before,” said Fernando Guerra, director of the Center for the Study of Los Angeles at Loyola Marymount University.

Almost every month, someone has an idea at City Hall that makes it more challenging to grow your business, hire people and contribute to the economy of the community.

– Gary Toebben, president of the L.A. Area Chamber of Commerce

“This decision seemed to say: ‘Not only are you going to lose, we’re not going to listen to you. You’re a non-factor,’” he said.

The chamber and its allies now are bracing for an even bigger battle: Mayor Eric Garcetti’s proposal to hike the minimum wage for all workers in the city to $13.25 by 2017. Lawmakers appear likely to approve an increase of at least that amount, further underscoring the diminished clout of traditional business lobbying groups at City Hall.

Gary Toebben, president of the Los Angeles Area Chamber of Commerce, said the wage hikes, fracking plan and trash initiative have fueled a growing sense that the business community is “under siege.”

“Almost every month, someone has an idea at City Hall that makes it more challenging to grow your business, hire people and contribute to the economy of the community,” he said.

The anxiety — and, in some cases, anger — expressed by business organizations is sharply at odds with the message Garcetti and city lawmakers have been trying to send: that they have flung open the doors to investors and are working hard to expand the L.A. economy.

On Monday, the mayor disputed the idea that businesses are under siege, saying L.A. added tens of thousands of jobs last year. “This is not Detroit struggling to come back or Pittsburgh that lost half of its population,” he added. “This is L.A. It’s growing its economy.”

The widening disconnect between the narratives of key business leaders and city elected officials was on full display last week at City Hall.

During the chamber’s yearly presentation to the council on the state of the local economy, Toebben warned lawmakers that the city’s business tax is driving companies out of L.A. Noel Massie, chairman of the chamber’s board of directors, pointedly challenged lawmakers to examine why e-commerce businesses, such as large distribution centers for online retailers, are bypassing the city for other parts of Southern California.

Councilman Paul Krekorian countered that he’s seen no evidence that L.A.’s business tax, which requires companies to pay the city a percentage of their gross receipts, has sparked an exodus to nearby cities. He pointed to Chamber of Commerce data showing tourism, construction activity and tax revenue are on the rise and urged business leaders to move “the rhetoric away from gloom and doom.”

“There are a lot of great, great things going on in the business community in Los Angeles,” he told chamber officials.

The following day, hotel industry leaders called a news conference on the steps of City Hall to declare they would continue fighting the council’s hotel wage hike, possibly in the courts. They vowed to seek public records on any behind-the-scenes communications between elected officials and the unions that backed the wage increase.

Labor leaders and their allies are now pushing for a citywide wage hike that goes beyond Garcetti’s plan, by taking the minimum hourly pay to $15. They contend that business groups have racked up valuable victories at the local level, including tax subsidies for new downtown hotels and the passage of a 2008 county sales tax that is raising billions for transportation improvements. Union officials also argue that, with incomes remaining stagnant, the public mood has shifted on minimum wage laws.
“Business interests will always have a voice in City Hall,” said Rachel Torres, lead organizer with hotel workers union Unite Here Local 11. “But on wages, the pendulum has swung.”

Garcetti says his citywide minimum wage proposal will benefit businesses, giving families on the brink of poverty more spending power.

At a Woodland Hills luncheon last month for chambers of commerce across the San Fernando Valley, the mayor also pointed to his efforts to keep film production in California, eliminate red tape for real estate development and cut the business tax in coming years.

“We want to make sure we have a City Hall that works for you,” he told the crowd.

The audience applauded the speech. But afterward, some business owners spoke anxiously about the mayor’s minimum wage proposal. Real estate agent Victor Viereck, a board member with the Universal City North Hollywood Chamber of Commerce, predicted it would be a “destructive” force on the city’s economy. Bob Cohen, president of the Sherman Oaks Chamber of Commerce, called it “just one more thing” for small businesses to deal with.

L.A.’s chamber warned the Garcetti plan will slow the city’s recovery from the recession by forcing business owners to lay off workers, cut hours or move to cities with a lower minimum wage. The group also contends the mayor’s proposal will hit younger workers and those with limited skills especially hard, by making fewer jobs available to them.

Business advocates have long had an uphill climb in heavily Democratic Los Angeles, where political representatives tend to be vigorously pro-labor. Since the mayor’s minimum wage plan was unveiled, business owners have been divided on the concept, making it difficult for advocates to deliver a unified message to City Hall.

Tony Safoian, chief executive of the North Hollywood information technology company Sada Systems, has endorsed the mayor’s plan, saying it doesn’t make sense for full-time workers to live below the poverty line. If the measure is defeated, Safoian said, taxpayers will continue absorbing the cost of services for those on the brink of poverty.

“So many business groups and business voices have automatically considered [Garcetti’s plan] to be a bad thing,” he added. “We provide a counterpoint.”

Real estate developer Tom Gilmore, a leader in the revitalization of downtown, also supports the Garcetti proposal, saying he worries L.A. is developing a “permanent underclass.” He expects the higher wages to drive prices upward. “I say those effects are worth it,” he added.

Even among business groups critical of the mayor’s proposal — which would take the $9 minimum wage to $10.25 in 2015, $11.75 in 2016 and $13.25 in 2017 — there are diverging strategies on how to fight it. Some are seeking to soften the effect on businesses, while others are opposing it outright. Garcetti wants a vote on the proposal by January.

The California Fashion Assn., a networking group for the apparel industry, expects garment makers to be hit especially hard by the proposal. The group wants tax credits for apparel manufacturers and a lower “training wage” for new employees. The downtown-based Central City Assn. wants Garcetti to phase in the wage increases more slowly and include tips and employee health benefits in any pay requirement.

The Chamber of Commerce, which objects to the citywide minimum wage hike, hasn’t sought specific amendments. Toebben, the chamber president, said he expects more businesses will speak up as additional information comes out on the costs of Garcetti’s plan.

“I believe there will be many phone calls and letters and communications from small businesses to our mayor and members of our City Council — and that they will pay attention to these communications,” he said.

Others were more skeptical about the chances of stopping the measure.

“We are very realistic about this,” said California Fashion Assn. President Ilse Metchek. “It is a done deal. Nothing we say is going to change it.”

Reprinted from The Los Angeles Times (10/6/2014)

Yes on SB 270 Coalition Thanks Governor Jerry Brown for Making History

The Yes on SB 270 Coalition cheered Gov. Jerry Brown’s historic signing of a bill that makes California the first state to ban single-use plastic carryout bags.

“History was made today, and our environment and economy will be better for it,” said Ronald Fong, President and CEO, California Grocers Association. “SB 270 will foster innovation, create operational consistency, California green jobs, and protect our precious natural resources. We are grateful to Sens. Padilla, de León and Lara for bravely standing up for California.”

SB 270 (Padilla, de León, Lara) has been supported by dozens of groups representing a spectrum of sectors, including environment, organized labor, business organizations, grocers, retailers, poverty rights organizations, Latino leaders, waste management firms, local governments and others.

More than 100 cities and counties in California, including our largest metropolitan areas, have enacted bans on single-use carryout plastic bags. SB 270 will bring uniformity to California, while further reducing the use of plastic bags that litter streets, clog waterways, endanger animals and natural resources and cost taxpayers.

Gov. Brown’s Official Press Release »