Page 280 – Bohemian | Sonoma & Napa Counties

Park Service Pushes Back on ‘Apocalypse Cow’

Bohemian Staff

Feb 17, 2021

Park Service Pushes Back on ‘Apocalypse Cow’

The Point Reyes National Seashore (PRNS) responded last week to an investigative report published in the North Bay Bohemian and Pacific Sun in early December.

On Tuesday, Feb. 9, PRNS staff sent out an email newsletter titled “Corrections to Media Coverage on the General Management Plan Amendment” to an unknown number of recipients. The agency posted the same text to a Frequently Asked Questions page of its website under the subtitle “Corrections regarding misinformation published in the press.”

The newsletter presents itself as an effort to correct alleged “factual inaccuracies” in “Apocalypse Cow: The Future of Life at Point Reyes National Park,” an investigative article by Peter Byrne published in the Bohemian and Pacific Sun on Dec. 9, 2020. However, PRNS management’s statements about the facts presented in the article are demonstrably inaccurate.

Two month’s prior to the seashore park’s posting of these public facing messages, on Dec.15, PRNS’s Melanie Gunn emailed the Pacific Sun’s editors contesting the accuracy of several facts as reported in “Apocalypse Cow.”

The editors reviewed Gunn’s allegations and decided that the article was accurate. In a Dec. 21 email, news editor Will Carruthers informed Gunn that the article was factually correct and offered to participate in an electronic meeting with Gunn and Byrne to discuss the documentation of the facts.

Gunn did not respond to the Pacific Sun’s offer. Instead, almost two months later, NPS officials published a revised version of Gunn’s original allegations in the newsletter and on its website without first contacting the Pacific Sun for a response.

In an email to Gunn and the Seashore’s new superintendent, Craig Kenkel, last week, Byrne requested that the federal agency remove the inaccurate information from its website and send a retraction to the newsletter email list. Byrne sent the park officials and their bosses at the U.S. Department of Interior a factually detailed rebuttal of the allegations. So far, the agency has not issued a retraction, nor has it removed the offensive information from the website.

The PRNS’s campaign to push back on Byrne’s reporting comes weeks after Kenkel was appointed by the outgoing Trump administration as superintendent of the Point Reyes National Seashore. In his prior position, Kenkel served as superintendent of Cuyahoga Valley National Park in Ohio, a national park which offers leases to farmers.

In a December interview with the Point Reyes Light, Kenkel was open to extending 20-year leases to cattle ranchers using the PRNS, stating that there is “a long history of ranching at Point Reyes” which is “worth preserving.”

Below we respond to a few of the Park Service’s allegations about our reporting. A full rebuttal to the allegations is available here.

Park or Seashore?

The PRNS’s first allegation is that the article’s headline is “wrong.”

“The park name is Point Reyes National Seashore not Point Reyes National Park,” the Feb. 9 newsletter complains.

Whether or not the use of “Seashore” or “Park” meaningfully changed any readers’ understanding of the issues covered in the article, Gunn’s first allegation is undercut by the Park Service’s own publications.

The PRNS website features a subhead reading “Learn About the Park” and other references flagging the National Seashore as a “park.”

The NPS also uses “park” to refer to the PRNS in a standard lease issued to ranchers by the PRNS which defines the “Park” as “all lands, waters and structures within the legislative boundaries of or within areas administered by Point Reyes National Seashore…”

Despite using “park” in the headline, Apocalypse Cow repeatedly referred to the park by its more formal appellation — Point Reyes National Seashore — throughout the story.

Protected Species

The PRNS’ Feb. 9 newsletter alleges that the article inaccurately identified Tule Elk as a threatened or endangered species, which are legal terms. The article did not use those terms. It correctly identified tule elk as a “federally protected species,” which is a true statement supported by the Park Service’s written policy.

The elk have long received federal protections inside the park, leading to the Pacific Sun’s choice to refer to them as “federally protected.” For example, the Park Service’s’ 1998 “Tule Elk Management Plan” repeatedly refers to the elk as “protected”:

The NPS has an agreement with California binding it to “Protect and preserve the tule elk population at Tomales Point consistent with NPS policies.”
“Tule elk are a distinct subspecies of elk endemic to California that was given special protective emphasis by State and Federal agencies (Phillips 1976), although it is not a state or federally listed threatened or endangered species.”

Unfortunately, in accusing the Pacific Sun of factual inaccuracy, the Park Service has resorted to issuing false statements about a critical story. For more details documenting the Park Service’s errors, please see the Pacific Sun’s full response.

California Considers Stimulus for Undocumented Workers

Nigel Duara, CalMatters

Feb 17, 2021

California Considers Stimulus for Undocumented Workers

As Congress hammers out President Joe Biden’s $1.9 trillion stimulus package, California lawmakers are working out their own plan to get cash into the hands of struggling Californians, particularly undocumented families left out of federal assistance.

In recent weeks of public hearings and closed-door negotiations, a number of lawmakers and coalitions of immigrant advocates have pushed for two alternatives that would target Gov. Gavin Newsom’s $2.4 billion Golden State Stimulus proposal to send larger cash payments to California’s nearly one in 10 workers who are undocumented.

Under his record-breaking January budget proposal, Newsom proposed sending $600 tax refunds to the families of approximately 4 million workers with annual incomes below $30,000, including some undocumented workers. But some lawmakers argue that money would be better spent on filling gaps in federal relief, rather than trying to jumpstart the economy. Newsom and legislative leaders are expected to announce a deal today.

Sending thousands in relief to undocumented immigrants would be a political nonstarter in most other parts of the country. But it might just work in California, which has used its growing Democratic super majority of legislators — of which one in four are Latino — to break economic barriers for those without legal status, granting them driver’s licenses, sending them low-income tax refunds, and expanding health care for undocumented children and young adults.

“I think about my community and the 2 million people across the state who have been left out of any type of assistance,” said Assemblymember Wendy Carrillo, a Democrat from Los Angeles who was formally undocumented herself, in a hearing on the proposal.

Californians left out

Undocumented Californians, many who work in industries ravaged both by pandemic closures and the coronavirus itself, don’t qualify for federal stimulus payments and unemployment benefits. They are also largely ineligible for other safety net benefits, like food stamps. Newsom created a program to send $500 to undocumented immigrants last spring, but there was only enough money for about 150,000 people.

Still, it’s unclear whether the governor will embrace the progressive proposal. Newsom faces mounting recall efforts over his handling of coronavirus restrictions, which might make him squeamish about fueling more conservative backlash. Meanwhile, California’s coffers have grown. Newsom announced earlier this month that the state now expects $10.3 billion more in revenue than was projected in January, driven by the pandemic gains of the state’s wealthiest residents.

Newsom’s proposal would function like an early, one-size-fits-all version of California Earned Income Tax Credit. Numbers are fuzzy, but according to an analysis by the left-leaning California Budget and Policy Center, the $600 payments could reach the families of roughly 250,000 undocumented workers who file taxes with an Individual Taxpayer Identification Number, thanks to a new law passed last year that allowed ITIN holders to get the CalEITC.

But analysts, lawmakers and advocates argued in legislative hearings that California should do more for those families.

Alternative plan

The nonpartisan Legislative Analyst’s Office recommended an alternative: send $1,800 payments just to the low-income ITIN filers, cutting the plan’s price tag to under $1 billion. Then distribute the remaining funds to the approximately half of undocumented workers who don’t have ITINS or other very low-income Californians.

Unlike Newsom’s proposal, which would send $600 to each household, the LAO’s proposed payments would go to each ITIN filer in the household.

Fiscal and policy analyst Chas Alamo says Newsom’s $2.4 billion proposal is too small to stimulate California’s $3.1 trillion economy. “Although large by state standards, (it’s) much smaller than the federal actions that have been taken to date,” said Alamo.

By contrast, he noted Californians received about $4 billion in unemployment benefits each week during 2020.

The LAO alternative has gained support from a group of 17 Assembly Democrats.

“We must continue to work together to address the void created by years of inaction by the federal government that has left our undocumented worker population in the cold, without any viable economic support to survive this pandemic,” the lawmakers wrote in a letter to the budget committee.

Additional relief

Meanwhile, a coalition of pro-immigrant and anti-poverty advocacy groups have called for lawmakers to build immigrant relief on top of Newsom’s original proposal, raising the Golden State Stimulus price tag to $3.6 billion.

For most workers, they want to keep the $600 tax credits. For households making less than $50,000 last year that file taxes with ITINS, they want California to send $1,200 per parent and child. This would reach the families of over 430,000 undocumented workers, the policy center estimates.

Take the example of a single citizen mom with two children, who would have qualified for unemployment and received $4,000 in stimulus payments so far. But a single undocumented mom would have received no aid. Under Newsom’s proposal, her family could receive $600. Under the LAO’s proposal, the family could receive $1,800. Under this proposal, they could receive $3,600.

“One of the most compelling points for us is that California has a huge surplus,” said Anna Hasselblad, public policy director at United Ways of California. “We keep getting more of our surplus.”

This article is part of the California Divide, a collaboration among newsrooms examining income inequality and economic survival in California.

Santa Rosa’s Multilingual Radio Station KBBF Wins Recognition

Will Carruthers

Feb 17, 2021

Santa Rosa’s Multilingual Radio Station KBBF Wins Recognition

On a Monday morning, Oct. 9, 2017, Francisco Pardo, the host of the Mañanitas Campiranas radio show on KBBF, drove from Petaluma to the station’s studio in Santa Rosa.

“He called me later and he said he realized, ‘Oh my gosh, I’m the only car going towards Santa Rosa,’” says Alicia Sanchez, the board president of the Bilingual Broadcasting Foundation, the nonprofit which oversees KBBF, a multilingual radio station which has broadcast from Santa Rosa for nearly five decades.

Hours before Pardo drove north that morning, a historic series of fires erupted near Santa Rosa, threatening the city and panicking hundreds of thousands of Sonoma County residents. However, local officials weren’t issuing evacuation orders—much less any other information—in any other language than English, making Pardo’s radio show, which had a large following among Sonoma County farm workers, more crucial than ever.

Sanchez calls the radio station’s volunteers the “first responders” of local media for the Spanish-speaking community. “There was nothing [in Spanish], not even from the commercial radio stations,” Sanchez says.

To fill the gap, Edgar Avila, KBBF’s programming director, and other volunteers wrote down information from English-language press conferences, translated it and then re-broadcast the news in Spanish.

Sanchez says that one of Pardo’s daughter’s later told him, “Dad, on those days, you saved lives” by transmitting crucial information.

However, KBBF, which has broadcast a variety of shows in Spanish, English and Indigenous languages for 47 years, offers its listeners much more than disaster coverage.

“We have a lot of shows that make you think about the relationship of the government to your personal life, but we also have a program by a psychologist about mental and emotional health,” Sanchez says. Other shows cover dental health, local school systems, financial advice and a variety of other topics. Some shows are also broadcast in indigenous languages like Mixteco and Triqui.

Earlier this month, the Northern California Chapter of the Society of Professional Journalists (SPJ) honored KBBF with a Silver Heart Award as part of the journalism group’s 2020 Excellence in Journalism awards, a sign of outside recognition for the station’s decades of work. SPJ’s Silver Heart Award is issued to journalists and media outlets that strive to expose important social issues and make significant contributions to their communities.

“Broadcasting from studios in Santa Rosa, [KBBF’s] mission is to create a strong multilingual voice that empowers and engages the community to achieve social justice through education, celebration of culture, and local and international news coverage. KBBF played a critical role communicating in indigenous languages to ensure farmworkers could stay safe during wildfires that threatened their lives,” the journalism group’s Feb. 3 announcement of the award winners states.

KBBF’s transmitter is located on the south peak of Mount Saint Helena and, at one time, broadcast the station’s signal into 18 counties. Although the station does not have the resources to pay for a detailed audience study, Avila, the station’s programming director, says the signal currently reaches an estimated 5 million households, 1 million of which are Spanish speaking, according to 2010 Census data.

Although the radio station has a loyal base of listeners and volunteers, the station doesn’t always receive recognition outside of that group.

Sanchez, who has been an activist for decades and has won awards in her own name, says she was pleased the station won the recognition, which may help it win more grants and supporters outside of the current listeners.

“KBBF has a legacy that I want to keep going. Not my legacy, but the legacy of KBBF and the whole family that contributes to it,” Sanchez says.

The station again proved its value to the non-English-speaking community when the volunteer staff took on the translating work the county did not during the October 2017 wildfires.

A December 2019 report by the California State Auditor’s office faulted Sonoma, Butte and Ventura counties for failing to issue evacuation orders in any language other than English during wildfires in 2017 and 2018.

“When counties do not provide translated evacuation warnings, residents who do not speak English may unknowingly remain in unsafe locations or may have to find others to translate the messages for them, delaying their ability to safely evacuate,” the auditor’s December 2019 report notes.

Although faulted for a lack of services in the October 2017 fires, Sonoma County issued emergency alerts and other information in Spanish in more recent wildfires, including in the October 2019 Kincade fire. County and state fire officials now also offer live translations of press conferences held during wildfires.

During the Covid-19 pandemic, which has disproportionately impacted the county’s Latinx community, the county has begun offering more translation services in response to further criticisms regarding a lack of equal language access to public meetings and documents.

For instance, the Board of Supervisors now offers translation services for its virtual meetings, but only by request. Meanwhile, most day-to-day government publications, like Board of Supervisors’ agendas and staff reports, are never translated into any language other than English.

Still, many argue the county still has a long way to go in terms of translation—and trust of government institutions within historically marginalized communities.

“This county is rich because of people who pick grapes. This county gets its money from farm workers,” Aliva says. “Every single government document, every single word that’s printed on every single document, and every single office and building needs to be translated.”

Avila is currently reporting on why some of the people on Sonoma County’s Latinx and Indigenous communities are distrustful of Covid-19 vaccines.

To Avila, the issue stems in part from the county’s mishandling of past scandals, including the 2013 killing of 13-year-old Andy Lopez by Sonoma County Sheriff’s Deputy Erick Gelhaus.

Instead of prosecuting Gelhaus, the District Attorney declined to press charges and the county gathered public input from community members about possible law enforcement reforms for nearly two years.

More than seven years after Lopez’s death, the county has passed some reforms—often opposed by law enforcement unions and their allies—but many feel that justice was never served in the case which caused so much pain in Lopez’s community.

“Now, people are baffled that the Latino community is suspicious of the vaccine,” Avila says. “So, what I’m working on right now is a special report to convince people to take the vaccine.”