A significant amount of No on Prop. 10’s $65 million war chest comes from large, publicly traded real estate investment trusts.

Co-published by The American Prospect

One of California’s most hotly contested ballot measures, Proposition 10, would repeal the 23-year-old Costa-Hawkins Rental Housing Act that restricts a city’s ability to apply rent control to post-1995 construction and exempts single-family homes from regulation. Proposition 10’s opponents claim it will worsen the state’s housing crisis, which has left teachers, blue-collar workers and retirees struggling to keep roofs over their heads. To that end, the No on Prop. 10 campaign has deployed an ensemble of small property owners, non-profit housing developers and veterans as spokespeople against the measure.

More Ballot Measure Stories Here

However, topping the list of No on Prop. 10’s big donors are some of the country’s largest landlords — many funded by Wall Street investment dollars — whose bottom lines could be negatively affected by Prop. 10’s passage. The No campaign’s $65 million war chest is more than two-and-a-half times as much as the $25 million raised by Prop. 10 supporters, according to the California Secretary of State’s office. A significant amount of the No funding comes from large, publicly traded real estate investment trusts like the ones highlighted on a recent tour held by tenant activists in downtown Los Angeles.

Despite their affordable housing message, some No on Prop. 10 donors have long records of opposing efforts to include affordable housing in their developments.

New York-based Blackstone Group heads the list of these donors, contributing $5.6 million to defeat the measure which, if passed, would let cities enact laws to stabilize rent increases on a broader range of buildings and limit how much a landlord could increase rents when a new tenant moves in. Invitation Homes Inc., the investment vehicle created by Blackstone in 2016, owns more than 80,000 single-family homes nationwide and kicked in almost $1.3 million.

Despite their affordable housing message, these and some other No on Prop. 10 donors have long records of opposing efforts to include affordable housing in their developments, or employ business models that critics claim exacerbate the housing crisis. Some focus on high-end rentals that tenant advocates say do little to address the affordability crisis plaguing California’s job-rich urban areas. Others have been criticized for raising rents on the properties they acquire in an effort to pump up hefty returns for investors.

Also Read “California Workers and Retirees Are Unwittingly Financing an Anti-Rent-Control Campaign”

Steven Maviglio, a spokesperson for the campaign to defeat Proposition 10, claims that real estate investment trusts (REITs), which earn money for their shareholders through rental income and property value increases, only account for a tiny percentage of the state’s residential rental market. “REITs own .004 percent of California’s rental housing,” he wrote in an email, a statistic he attributes to the California Apartment Association.

On an August call with investors, Invitation Homes CEO Fred Tuomi argued that increasing housing supply — as opposed to regulating rents — was the answer to the affordability crisis facing California, where more than half of renter households pay more than a third of their incomes toward housing. “We just need more supply when it’s needed and, most importantly, where it’s needed and [at] the price points that it’s needed,” Tuomi said.

Equity Residential CEO: “Regardless of [Proposition 10’s] outcome, we will continue to fight attempts at the local level to enact rent control.”

But increasing the supply is not part of the business model of Invitation Homes, which focuses on property management and acquisition. In the aftermath of the 2008 housing collapse, the company scooped up tens of thousands of foreclosed single-family homes, mainly near Sunbelt cities, crowding out mom and pop landlords, imposing steep rent increases on tenants, and skimping on maintenance in order to generate large returns for investors, according to a report released early this year by the Alliance of Californians for Community Empowerment (ACCE) and two other advocacy organizations, and a separate Reuters investigation published in July.

In a written statement to Capital & Main, Invitation Homes countered that its residents “give us high ratings for customer service” and “stay 50 percent longer compared to the apartment industry,” adding that the company invests $22,000 per home in renovations. (Maviglio said that No on Prop. 10’s other corporate donors had no comment for this story.)

On October 10 in downtown Los Angeles, about 60 housing activists, replete with colorful T-shirts and noisemakers, held a “tour of the housing tyrants” that included stops at luxury apartments they said were owned in whole or in part by Blackstone Group and Essex Property Trust — two companies that are helping to fund the effort to defeat the rent control measure. The marchers’ “The rent is too damn high” chant attracted the attention of office workers and drivers stuck in lunchtime traffic.

One stop on the activists’ tour was Essex Property Trust’s owned Gas Company Lofts, which offers studios for about $2,000 per month and two-bedroom apartments for more than $3,500. To date, the San Mateo-based real estate investment trust has donated $4.8 million to defeat Proposition 10.

The vast majority of the company’s more than 60,000 apartment units are located in the Bay Area and Southern California. During an August 2 quarterly earnings call, Essex CEO Michael Schall told investors that the company would be “favoring market rents instead of favoring occupancy” for the next year, suggesting the company is choosing to leave units vacant in the hope of locking in higher rents.

Public policies, says ACCE’s Amy Schur, are only encouraging high-end housing where developers “can make the most money” instead of “ensuring that they contribute toward addressing housing needs of the state, which include housing that average working families can afford.” ACCE is part of the coalition advocating for passage of the ballot measure and was an organizer of the October 10 tour.

Another big Wall Street donor, Chicago-based Equity Residential, has so far invested more than $3.7 million to the No on Proposition 10 campaign. The REIT is focused on acquiring, managing—and, to a lesser extent, developing — housing in walkable urban markets favored by millennials, according to its filings with the Securities and Exchange Commission.

The company’s leadership has engaged in local and statewide rent control battles before. Equity Residential’s board chair is billionaire Sam Zell, whose heavily leveraged acquisition of the Tribune Co. was followed by bankruptcy and mass layoffs. His Equity LifeStyle Properties, another real estate investment trust (formerly Manufactured Home Communities), began to acquire mobile home parks across California more than two decades ago, and proceeded to bring costly legal actions against small cities that housed the parks in an effort to do away with local rent control laws. The leadership of its sister company, Equity Residential, apparently shares that combative spirit.

“Regardless of the outcome [of Proposition 10], we will continue to fight attempts at the local level to enact rent control,” president and CEO David Neithercut told investors on a call this past July, during a discussion about Costa-Hawkins. About 45 percent of the company’s 79,000 apartments are located in California.

Interestingly, on that same call Neithercut proposed “inclusionary zoning” as part of an alternative “basket of solutions” to the state’s affordable housing crisis. Such zoning requires developers to set aside a certain number of units in their projects for low-income tenants.

Neithercut’s endorsement of inclusionary zoning might signal a shift for Equity Residential, which sought to wriggle out of a requirement that it keep a portion of a downtown San Francisco building’s units affordable five years ago. The company attempted to raise the rents on 33 low-income occupants of apartments on Geary Street, a move that would “almost certainly have forced many tenants from their homes,” had not the city of San Francisco sued, according to a statement issued at the time by city attorney Dennis Herrera, who settled with Equity for $95,000. (The company had reneged on an agreement with the city to keep a percentage of units affordable when the complex was built in exchange for tax-exempt bond financing for the project.)

Meanwhile, No on Prop. 10 donor Geoffrey Palmer’s hardball lawsuit against the city of Los Angeles resulted in a 2009 court ruling that for eight years discouraged cities from adopting inclusionary zoning laws. That prohibition ended with the so-called Palmer fix last year, a state bill that restored cities’ ability to require set-asides if they also offered developers alternative ways to comply with the law. (Palmer, who is well known in Southern California for his fortress-like apartment complexes with Italianate names like the Medici and the Lorenzo, is an avid Donald Trump supporter and has given $2 million to defeat Proposition 10.)

Perhaps it’s not surprising to find major landlords opposing Proposition 10. But will the ballot measure upend the housing market as they contend?

Anya Lawler, policy advocate for the Western Center on Law & Poverty, a Proposition 10 supporter, says rent control is an important tool for tenants but downplays any disruptive impact the repeal of Costa-Hawkins would immediately have in California. Proposition 10’s passage won’t guarantee the enactment of any local law, she says, nor will it be a cure-all for California’s housing woes, which have been decades in the making.

“Rent control ordinances need to be negotiated locally because every housing market is different, and communities have different needs,” says Lawler, who adds that stakeholders, including property owners, will need to be consulted. The idea that the repeal of the Costa-Hawkins law will lead to “draconian rent control policies” is not rooted in “political reality.”

Lawler’s sentiments are echoed by corporate housing executives, at least in their conversations with their own investors. Asked if his company would redline cities due to a rent control, Essex’s Schall stressed, during his August 2 call, that “rent control is only one factor” that the company considers when making investment decisions.

“We’re going to seek areas that have the best dynamic – the best supply-demand dynamic,” he said. “And right now we believe that’s in California, in the various markets that we’re in.”

Capital & Main’s contributors include groups supporting Proposition 10. This website is not funded by commercial entities that stand to profit from the outcome of the ballot initiative.

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Even as Goldman Sachs markets itself as a champion of social responsibility, it is helping CEOs block key environmental and social justice reforms proposed by their shareholders.

Co-published by The Guardian

When Goldman Sachs and billionaire Paul Tudor Jones announced a partnership three months ago to help socially conscious investors support “just business behavior,” they promised that their new index fund would generate solid returns for savers while directing their investment dollars towards truly humane companies.

“Capitalism should be a positive force for change,” said Jones in a press release announcing the fund, which is designed to track an index of socially responsible companies identified by his nonprofit JUST Capital. “Its future will be driven by a new definition of corporate success that is aligned with the values and priorities of the public.”

 Socially responsible investing (SRI) offers
Wall Street an image makeover in a time of growing public distrust in the financial system.

The partnership comes as pension funds, university endowments and other institutional investors increasingly seek to put their financial weight behind ethical and sustainable corporate behavior — and as Goldman Sachs tries to shed its reputation as a “vampire squid.” So far, the rebrand seems to be working: The JUST fund debuted in June to rave reviews from the financial press and ended its first day of trading with over $250 million in assets, making its launch one of the most successful in recent history.

However, a Capital & Main review of corporate documents shows that some of JUST’s largest investments are in fossil fuel firms that have been sued for suppressing global climate research, Wall Street behemoths fined for defrauding investors, a social media platform accused of helping rig elections and a tech industry giant criticized for paying its workers starvation wages.

Table Graphic: Chase Woodruff

Moreover, proxy voting records reveal that even as Goldman Sachs now markets itself as a champion of social responsibility, the firm has been using its existing stakes in many JUST fund companies to help CEOs block key environmental and social justice reforms proposed by their shareholders. Those initiatives range from gender pay gap and diversity initiatives to corporate governance reforms; from efforts to increase lobbying transparency to prohibitions on doing business with companies tied to genocide and other human rights violations.

Meanwhile, in the months before JUST fund’s launch, Goldman was slammed for blocking a human rights resolution at its own company — and one of Goldman’s key lobbying groups in Washington was working to shape Republican legislation that would make it far more difficult for shareholders to file environmental, human rights and other socially minded initiatives in the future.

“You shouldn’t be able to, with a straight face, invest in the Dakota Access Pipeline with your left hand, and with your right hand tell people that you’re doing responsible investing,” Lisa Lindsley, Capital Markets Advisor for the shareholder advocacy group SumOfUs, told Capital & Main. “The compartmentalization is very hypocritical.”

Through a spokesperson, Goldman Sachs declined to comment on the process by which its equity funds vote on shareholder proposals, and how that process may differ with the JUST fund — which, as a newly launched fund, has not yet participated in proxy voting for any of the companies in which it holds stock.

“Ethically Motivated Versus a More Greenwashing Approach”

Goldman’s new fund spotlights socially responsible investing (SRI) — a financial strategy that represents Wall Street’s more affirmative answer to negative or exclusionary “screening” tactics like divestment from fossil fuel producers and tobacco firms.

While a recent directive by the Trump administration has been viewed by some experts as an effort to limit SRI strategies, the market for such investments remains strong. According to the Forum for Sustainable and Responsible Investment, U.S.-based assets managed using SRI strategies more than doubled to $8.7 trillion between 2012 and 2016, and now account for more than one in five dollars under professional management in the country.

Goldman’s hostility toward many SRI initiatives is illustrated by its votes on resolutions at the companies now in its JUST fund.

The rise in SRI investment comes amid questions about whether corporate boards are adequately evaluating environmental and social justice concerns when they look at their company’s long-term financial prospects. PwC’s 2017 survey of corporate officials found “that directors are clearly out of step with investor priorities in some critical areas” and the report added that “one of these areas is environmental issues.”

High-profile initiatives like the JUST fund are a chance for the industry to tout its eagerness, as Goldman Sachs executive Timothy O’Neill put it in a press release, to “[allow] investment to flow toward a more sustainable and equitable future, while seeking to generate attractive returns for investors.”

The trend has given Wall Street an opportunity for an image makeover in a time of growing public distrust in the financial system: According to a Gallup poll conducted last month, fewer than half of Americans under 30 report having a positive view of capitalism, a 12-point drop in just the past two years.

For some activists and investors, though, the rapid expansion of the market for SRI-branded financial products has raised concerns about greenwashing — the practice by which companies market themselves as socially or environmentally responsible without actually adopting business practices that meet those goals.

“Putting the word ‘ethical’ or ‘sustainable’ in the name of a fund does not make it so,” said a report by British investment advisory firm Castlefield, whose recent reports documented how some environmental funds include investments in fossil fuel firms. “It is increasingly important to differentiate between those funds genuinely responding to customer demand for a sustainable approach and those which use terms like ethical, Socially Responsible Investment or stewardship in their name but include companies such as British American Tobacco or Shell in their key holdings.”

Goldman’s Record on Socially Responsible Investing

Amid surging interest in SRI funds, Goldman’s JUST U.S. Large Cap Equity ETF aims to convince investors that the company is serious about injecting a spirit of ethics and morality into its financial strategies. To that end, the fund says it directs money only into companies that are ranked highly by JUST Capital.

The 426 companies featured in the JUST index were selected on the basis of their performance across seven different criteria, including labor practices, customer service and environmental impacts. Goldman itself ranks in the top tenth of the JUST rankings, despite the company being attacked for supporting the fossil fuel industry and also being fined $5 billion in 2016 by the Department of Justice for “serious misconduct in falsely assuring investors that securities it sold were backed by sound mortgages, when it knew that they were full of mortgages that were likely to fail.”

Whether Goldman’s new JUST fund represents a step in a larger shift towards socially responsible investment remains to be seen. Baruch College’s Jared Peifer says that one way to judge a firm’s commitment to social responsibility is to watch how it deals with resolutions brought by shareholders, whereby investors attempt to force management to adopt socially responsible policies.

“There is variance to the degree that SRI funds are ethically motivated versus a more greenwashing approach,” Peifer told Capital & Main. “Is the fund dialoguing with management? Issuing shareholder proxy votes, voting on others? If so, that seems like a more ethically motivated fund to me, because they are exerting additional effort many other funds do not bother with.”

In recent years, Goldman executives have been fighting off SRI resolutions at their own company, including initiatives that have asked management to more transparently disclose their political lobbying and create a human rights committee to review the company’s policies regarding doing business with governments engaged in censorship and repression. Only three months before Goldman announced the JUST fund, Goldman successfully pressed the Securities and Exchange Commission to bless its move to block shareholders from voting on a resolution asking the company to honor indigenous peoples’ rights.

“The company’s extraordinary no action request shows the notable lengths that the Company is willing to go, and to stretch credulity, in order to prevent its directors from shouldering fiduciary obligations on indigenous and human rights,” wrote shareholder proponents at the time.

Last year, Goldman was lauded by Share Action, an SRI activist group, for switching its position and using its holdings to support a series of climate-change-related shareholder initiatives. In its proxy voting guidelines, Goldman says it will generally vote for proposals asking companies to report on “policies, initiatives and oversight mechanisms related to environmental sustainability, or how the company may be impacted by climate change.”

However, those guidelines do not make the same commitment when it comes to initiatives requiring companies to actually reduce their carbon emissions. The guidelines also say the company will generally vote against “proposals requesting increased disclosure of a company’s policies with respect to political contributions.” The company further says it will vote to remove representatives of employees or organized labor from a company’s board if they are overseeing company audits or executive compensation, and if there is no legal requirement for them to be in that position.

Goldman Votes Against Resolutions at JUST Fund Companies

Goldman’s hostility toward many SRI initiatives is illustrated by its votes on resolutions at the companies now in its JUST fund.

For example, there is Chevron Corporation, which ranks as the JUST fund’s 17th-largest holding as it faces accusations that it is trying to intimidate environmentalists and avoid cleaning up pollution in the Amazon rainforest.

In May, the oil giant’s shareholders were asked to vote on a slate of seven proposals, including a requirement for the company’s board to nominate a director with environmental experience; the preparation of a report on transitioning to a low-carbon business model; increased transparency relating to lobbying activities; and stronger prohibitions on Chevron’s interests overseas from doing business with governments that are complicit in genocide or crimes against humanity.

As shareholders in Chevron, 14 different Goldman Sachs Asset Management (GSAM) funds voted on these proposals. The majority of funds voted in support of just one, a request for the company to prepare a report on its efforts to minimize methane emissions. In every other case, the funds unanimously or overwhelmingly opposed the proposals.

Proxy-voting records from dozens of shareholder meetings reviewed by Capital & Main show a similar pattern. In rare cases, Goldman funds did vote in favor of some shareholder reforms, including the preparation of a report on the gender pay gap at Facebook and Google. At several pharmaceutical companies, including AbbVie, Amgen and Eli Lilly, Goldman funds supported increased accountability for executives regarding high drug prices.

Such votes, however, were few and far between. Of the 10 companies that make up the largest share of Goldman’s JUST fund, eight considered shareholder-proposed reforms that were overwhelmingly opposed by Goldman-managed funds at their most recent annual meetings. The proposals included prohibitions on offshore tax avoidance schemes, increased transparency on lobbying activities and requirements that companies appoint an independent board chair — a governance model that advocates say leads to more responsible corporate behavior. The remaining two companies, Microsoft and Visa, did not consider any shareholder proposals.

At JPMorgan, the recipient of JUST’s fourth-largest investment, Goldman funds voted unanimously against a requirement for the company to release a report on its investments in PetroChina, a firm that activists accuse of helping to fund crimes against humanity due to its ongoing business relationships with oppressive regimes in Syria and Sudan. Goldman made that move despite its own proxy voting guidelines saying the company would “generally vote for proposals requesting a report on company or company supplier labor and/or human rights standards and policies, or on the impact of its operations on society.”

Eighteen of the 19 Goldman funds with shares in JPMorgan also voted against an effort to prohibit the accelerated vesting of awards for executives who enter government service, a practice often criticized for fueling the revolving door between Wall Street and financial regulators.

A shareholder proposal to the board of pharmaceutical manufacturer Johnson & Johnson, expressing concern that the company’s compensation practices “may insulate senior executives from legal risks” relating to the opioids crisis, recommended that opioid-related litigation costs be factored into executive pay. All 16 Goldman funds with stock in Johnson & Johnson voted to defeat the proposal.

Goldman asserts that its fund is designed to invest in firms that rank well in JUST Capital’s ratings. But even that assertion is not what it seems.

Because the index features companies ranked in the top half of their respective industries, it includes dozens of firms in sectors like energy and financial services that score poorly overall. For example, the fund invests in both National Oilwell Varco, a drilling equipment firm, and Entergy, a Louisiana utility, despite the fact that the companies rank 626th and 676th, respectively, among the 875 companies evaluated by JUST Capital.

“Every industry is represented at approximately the same weight as [in] the Russell 1000,” said JUST Capital’s Hernando Cortina, referring to the best-known index fund tracking the largest publicly traded companies. Cortina added that the JUST fund is designed to feature responsible companies “while providing diversified equity exposure to every industry.”

Lisa Lindsley of SumOfUs said the situation spotlights how socially responsible investing is seen on Wall Street not as a values-based cause, but as yet another way to trick investors into believing that the investment industry has reformed itself a decade after the financial crisis.

“The reason they’re going into this is that there’s money there. It’s all driven by greed,” she said. “It’s pretty easy to do some greenwashing and call yourself a responsible investment manager.”

As Goldman now markets its JUST fund, it remains unclear whether the company will change its proxy voting or its posture towards shareholder resolutions in general. Those resolutions, though, could be more rare, if congressional Republicans pass their legislation that would make it more difficult for shareholder resolutions to qualify for a vote. Federal records show that the American Bankers Association — which lists Goldman Sachs as a member — has been lobbying on that bill, which critics say could undermine the SRI movement.

“Shareholder proposals play an important role in ensuring that owners get a say in how their companies are run, and in setting the broader agenda across the market,” wrote Dimitri Zagoroff of the shareholder advisory firm Glass Lewis. “Making it harder for shareholder proposals to be resubmitted from year to year would make it that much harder for proponents to refine their ideas and build a coalition of support. This often takes several years, both to generate interest in the underlying topic, and to convince other shareholders that the specific proposal offers the appropriate means of addressing the topic.”

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California estimates that the Conservation Camp inmate-training program saves state taxpayers up to $100 million per year through firefighting and responses to other emergencies.

As California’s wildfire season grows ever longer and more intense, the state has relied heavily on thousands of prisoners, including women, to battle blazes alongside approximately 6,000 professional full-time and seasonal firefighters. Prisoner advocates, however, point out that these inmates’ criminal records prevent them from working as firefighters almost anywhere in California after their release.

Critics of the inmate program also say prisoners risking their lives to battle dozens of fires every year should get more out of the program than their current $2 per day and the additional $1 they receive whenever fighting active fires. The state’s Cal Fire firefighters earn between $3,273 and $4,137 per month, plus benefits, not counting overtime, according to a Cal Fire spokesperson. California has been using inmate firefighters since World War II, when the workforce for Cal Fire was depleted.

Approximately 3,700 inmates work at fire camps and about 2,600 of those are qualified to work on the front lines of active fires.

When Laura Weigand applied to California’s Conservation Camp, the program that trains inmates to fight wildfires, she knew it would be an uphill battle, literally. She was 43 when she joined the camp in 2009, twice the age of most of the women in pre-camp endurance trainings. One endurance test – hiking two miles straight uphill in 45 minutes – felled plenty of younger women, but Weigand was the first to the top of the hill, which meant she had her choice of camps to complete her trainings. She picked Malibu.

Two weeks after she completed training, she was working alongside Cal Fire firefighters to put out the Crown Fire, earning a fraction of what professional firefighters made for the same amount of risk. But she said she didn’t feel exploited because she went into the program to get away from the prison grounds.

“The days flew by, because there were different experiences. Even though it was not good pay it was better than you get in prison,” she said. But a foot injury threatened her limited freedom.

“I was hiking on a broken metatarsal bone for two years and was afraid to tell them about it because I didn’t want to get kicked out of the program.”

Weigand eventually became a “swamper” or trainer of other incarcerated firefighters. She estimated that she trained about 300 women before she left prison in 2012.

A Cal Fire inmate hand crew head to the fireline on a brush fire. (Photo:  David Toussaint/Getty Images)

The California Department of Corrections and Rehabilitation (CDCR), cooperating with the California Department of Forestry and Fire Protection (Cal Fire) and the Los Angeles County Fire Department, operate 44 conservation camps across the state, including three female camps. Camp populations range from 80 to 160 inmates working and learning in minimum-security facilities, supervised by correctional staff. When they’re working on an active fire, Cal Fire staff supervise them.

CDCR says approximately 30 percent of applicants who volunteer for the program successfully complete the curriculum. Not all inmates are eligible. Those who have committed more serious crimes, such as arson, rape or other sex offenses are disqualified.

Overall, there are approximately 3,700 inmates working at fire camps and approximately 2,600 of those are qualified to work on the front lines of active fires, according to CDCR. As of August 31 there were just over 1,100 inmate firefighters across 123 crews deployed to the Carr, Mendocino Complex, Hirz, Cooks, Cherae, Stone, Cache and Holy Fires.

After being released in 2011, Weigand didn’t apply to be a professional firefighter because she was above most fire departments’ threshold age. But Weigand, who now works at Social Model Recovery Systems, a substance abuse and mental health nonprofit, says even if she were younger, she probably couldn’t have gotten such a job, because most local and county firefighting jobs require an emergency medical technician (EMT) license, and most former inmates, even those convicted of lower level felonies, can’t obtain that.

In an email, a Cal Fire spokesperson said the department doesn’t require an EMT license for employment, but admitted that many fire departments throughout the state have at least the expectation of an EMT license for employment.

Such a barrier doesn’t make sense to Romarilyn Ralston, who was imprisoned 23 years and served as a fire camp swamper and clerk for Cal Fire while incarcerated. Now, as a member of the Los Angeles chapter of the California Coalition for Women Prisoners, and program coordinator for Project Rebound at California State University, Fullerton, she’s advocating for raising state employment opportunities for former inmates who made it through the Conservation Camp program.

Ralston told Capital & Main that, even though the program offers valuable training, the lack of EMT training at the camps, as well as the seeming prohibition against hiring former felons for many firefighting jobs statewide, amounts to “an exploitation of prison labor.”

“They should be paid at least the minimum wage, which is $15 in L.A. County,” Ralston added. “They’re putting their lives on the line and saving California hundreds of millions a year.”

The CDCR has estimated that the Conservation Camp program saves California taxpayers between $90 million and $100 million per year through firefighting and responses to other emergencies. Those who make it through the program, when not fighting active fires, may also be asked to clear firebreaks, maintain parks and clear fallen trees and debris. Since 1983 six inmate firefighters have died while working on fire containment, according to CDCR.

Recently California has taken steps to ease restrictions on former felons, though none of the measures would mandate local emergency medical services authorities to allow them to earn EMT licenses.

As part of the 2018 budget bill, Governor Jerry Brown expanded employment opportunities for former inmate firefighters through the Ventura Conservation Camp (VCC), in Ventura County. The program is for parolees only, and the first group of 20 is set to begin training this fall.

An omnibus safety bill, AB 1812, approved by Governor Brown in June, would allow graduates of approved fire camp training to apply for lower-level emergency medical responder (EMR) licenses, though not for EMT licenses.

California’s legislature is taking other small steps toward lowering the employment bar for incarcerated firefighters and other ex-cons seeking professional employment.

Assembly Bill 2293, in its original version would have, with certain conditions, prevented the authority licensing paramedics and EMTs from denying certification to anyone with a criminal record. But faced with strong opposition from the Emergency Medical Services Administrators Association of California, and the National Association of Emergency Medical Technicians, who said hiring those with criminal histories could pose a public safety risk, AB 2293 was amended down to a data reporting bill, according to California Assemblywoman Eloise Gómez Reyes (D-San Bernardino), who assisted in crafting both versions of the bill.

“We decided to address a glaring deficiency, which is the lack of data [on who is being denied jobs],” Gómez Reyes said of AB 2293, which now heads to an uncertain future on the governor’s desk.

Today, Gómez Reyes added, the state only has anecdotal data on many former prisoners being denied EMT certification or jobs based on their criminal past, but no hard numbers yet. “We’re trying to see in what circumstances are people being given these licenses, and what we suspect are the majority of circumstances of people being denied because of past offenses. Whatever decision we make in the future is going to be based on accurate data.”

Another bill, AB 2138, authored by Assemblymen Evan Low (D-San Jose) and David Chiu (D-San Francisco), would ease licensing restrictions for former inmates in a variety of occupations, but not firefighters. That’s still an important step, according to David Fathi, director of the American Civil Liberties Union National Prison Project, because its passage could remove some “arbitrary” barriers to employment.

“In many states there are over 100 occupations that former prisoners can’t pursue,” Fathi said. “One of the best predictors of successful reentry is securing and keeping stable employment. And yet as a society we go out of our way to make it difficult for prisoners to get a job when they get out. This is especially absurd when the prisoner has learned the skill in prison.”

Fathi points to a neighboring state, Arizona, which last year eased restrictions on ex-cons from becoming professional firefighters, as well as to a study from Arizona State University, which showed that states with larger employment barriers for felons have higher recidivism rates.

“Employment disqualification for former prisoners should be the rare exception,” Fathi said, “and it should be based on an individualized assessment of the risk posed by the particular person — not simply upon a criminal conviction.”

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