Stealth bombs

Governor Jerry Brown is proposing to make the Delta Stewardship Council (DSC) part of the Resources Agency, where the Department of Water Resources is pushing the peripheral canal that the DSC is supposed to have the power to veto. The 2009 legislation that created the Stewardship Council made it an independent body reporting to the administration.

This proposal was tucked inconspicuously into a larger plan to streamline government, one of Brown’s ongoing initiatives.

Of course, in terms of staffing (with its revolving door for water folks), the DSC may not have been as independent as we would like. But with the Governor’s proposal, any semblance of autonomy will be gone if it becomes just another unit of the Resources Agency.

Read Alex Breitler’s report on this maneuver here.

A review of this proposed structural switch will be taken up by the Little Hoover Commission.on April 25, 2012 at 9 a.m. The meeting will be held at the EDD Auditorium, 722 Capitol Mall, Sacramento. It is listed as a public hearing. For more meeting specifics, click here.

Meanwhile, in Washington D.C., Senator Feinstein is reportedly trying to attach a rider to the appropriations bill that would allow more exports south of the Delta, remove Wild and Scenic River status and protections for a portion of the Merced River, and renege on promises made in 1992 under the Central Valley Project Improvement Act. Rules governing water sales would be further relaxed.

Slipping language benefiting San Joaquin Valley export interests into federal legislation addressing other matters is classic Feinstein.

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