Are lawmakers' trips fact-finding or influence peddling?
After touring Portland, Oregon, and Seattle in 2020 to research waste disposal, state Sen. Ben Allen, a Santa Monica Democrat, carried a measure to restrict which plastics can bear the triangular arrow recycling symbol.
Because of a study trip to Japan in November, Assemblymember Devon Mathis, a Visalia Republican, introduced a bill this year, which failed in committee, that would have required the state to procure more electricity from nuclear power plants instead of natural gas facilities.
And inspired by a visit to Portugal two years ago to learn about offshore wind farms, Assemblymember Laura Friedman, a Glendale Democrat, is pursuing legislation to streamline the approval of electrical infrastructure projects such as new transmission lines.
“I came back and sat down with the utilities and said, `What do I need to do so that it doesn't take you two to five years to upgrade a substation to be able to put in charging, for instance, or to bring clean energy?'” Friedman said. “That came directly out of that trip.”
All of these tours were organized and paid for by the California Foundation on the Environment and the Economy, a San Francisco nonprofit that for the past four decades has been taking legislators and other state officials on free trips to learn about policy issues — trips funded and attended by representatives of companies and interest groups with business before the state.
The foundation's study tours and conferences — which take place everywhere from Napa to the Netherlands, Lake Tahoe to Iceland — are by far the biggest source of sponsored travel that lawmakers annually report. They accounted for about 40% of the nearly $1 million in
trips that California legislators took in 2022.
The foundation organizes several policy conferences across California each year, but it gets more attention for its lengthier study trips to international destinations, including Mexico, Switzerland and France, Chile, Germany and the Czech Republic, Australia and Singapore.
Last year, 32 of the state's 120 legislators, from both parties, attended at least one study trip or conference hosted by the foundation.
These events, which can cost tens of thousands of dollars per legislator for international trips, are funded through membership fees paid by CFEE's board of directors — 92 somewhat strange bedfellows, including major corporations, oil companies, environmental groups, construction trade unions, public utilities and water districts.
The trips serve as an influential tool for shaping policymaking at the state Capitol, with lawmakers returning with new perspectives and ideas on energy, the environment, water, transportation and housing.
The sponsored travel also draws regular criticism for giving wealthy interest
groups an intimate venue for relationship-building that is beyond the reach of most Californians.
“If I'm holding a seminar just to provide information and advocate for my policy views, I can do that without spending money,” said Sean McMorris of California Common Cause, a nonprofit that advocates for governance in the public interest. “I can invite them to a webinar or a conference that I don't pay them to attend.”
But legislators who attend defend the study tours as educational with a balance of perspectives from across industries.
“Don't go on a CFEE trip if you don't want to see factories and infrastructure,” Friedman said.
Jay Hansen, president and CEO of the foundation, stressed in an email that the trips are not designed to pitch legislation, but rather to help lawmakers “better understand complex issues, witness best practices and contemplate policy implications.”
CFEE does not “craft bills or get involved in legislative debates,” Hansen wrote.
Created in 1979 by labor economist Don Vial and former Gov. Pat Brown, among
others, to focus on modernizing the state's economy and infrastructure, the California Foundation on the Environment and the Economy brings together people who might not normally be at the same political table.
Trip delegations are diverse, Hansen said, drawing veteran and rookie lawmakers from across the political spectrum and the state and about 15 to 20 board members.
Legislators said the trips are useful because they see projects and technology up close that they might not have access to in California.
Friedman said she attended the trip to Portugal two years ago because she was working on a bill promoting offshore wind energy and she wanted to see turbines in person.
“How can I tell communities that they should have this, how can I go out and try to streamline approvals, without knowing what the impacts are going to be physically?” she said.
Critics complain that the sponsored travel amounts to unofficial lobbying, with organizations able to buy precious time with elected officials that others cannot afford, on luxurious tours whose agendas they set.
Attendees are building a familiarity that can serve them down the line, argues McMorris of California Common Cause.
“If a friend comes to you and asks for help, you're much more inclined to help them than a stranger,” he said.
During a 2013 trip to Poland hosted by CFEE, thenCalifornia Public Utilities Commission President Michael Peevey secretly met with an executive of Southern California Edison to discuss apportioning costs for the shutdown of the San Onofre nuclear power plant. Materials from the undisclosed meeting were discovered during a search of Peevey's home while he was under investigation by the state for improper communications with the utilities he regulated, though criminal charges were never brought.
Some changes have tightened oversight of sponsored travel. In 2010, the California Fair Political Practices Commission limited the ability of third parties to directly pay for public officials' travel costs. Five years later, then-Gov. Jerry Brown signed a bill requiring organizations that sponsor travel for elected officials to disclose their major donors and politicians to report the destinations of trips they accept.
Then-Sen. Jerry Hill, a San Mateo Democrat, carried the measure. He said he
grew more concerned about sponsored travel after the PG&E pipeline explosion in his district in 2010, which led to revelations about Peevey's close relationship and travel with companies regulated by the PUC.
“The coziness that's created by some of these trips” is “very palpable and really has a long-term effect,” Hill said. “Some legislators, I found that they looked forward to that opportunity, whether it had educational value or not. It was a free trip.”
He did not want to ban the travel, however, and sought instead to increase transparency because, Hill said, “I do believe there is some educational benefit derived from a trip or a conference.”
Legislators who attend the tours point out that the groups that sponsor the trips also have access to them in Sacramento.
“It's not like you're going and they have this secret agenda that they're going to brainwash you on,” Mathis said, who argues that, away from the “bubble” of Sacramento, there are more in-depth and candid policy discussions than during committee hearings.
Mathis defended the presence of groups that have business before the Legislature because it allows attendees to learn from experts and ask tough questions before introducing bills.