BILL ANALYSIS Ķ SB 1187 Page 1 SENATE THIRD READING SB 1187 (Lara) As Amended August 11, 2016 2/3 vote. Urgency SENATE VOTE: 30-5 ------------------------------------------------------------------ |Committee |Votes|Ayes |Noes | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | |----------------+-----+----------------------+--------------------| |Appropriations |19-0 |Gonzalez, Bigelow, | | | | |Bloom, Bonilla, | | | | |Bonta, Calderon, | | | | |Daly, Eggman, | | | | |Gallagher, | | | | | | | | | | | | | | |Eduardo Garcia, | | | | |Holden, Jones, | | | | |Obernolte, Quirk, | | | | |Santiago, Wagner, | | | | |Weber, Wood, Chu | | | | | | | ------------------------------------------------------------------ SUMMARY: Appropriates $36.6 million from the General Fund (GF) SB 1187 Page 2 to the Department of Justice (DOJ) to pay two legal settlements, as follows: 1)Ballona Wetlands Land Trust v. Santa Monica Bay Restoration Commission, $235,400; and 2)Pauma Band of Luiseņo Mission Indians of the Pauma & Yuima Reservation v. State of California, et al., $36.3 million. Any funds appropriated in excess of the amounts required for the claims revert back to the General Fund. FISCAL EFFECT: One-time GF appropriation of $36,555,686.11 to DOJ for the two legal settlements. COMMENTS: 1)Purpose. This bill is one of the bills carried by the Chairs of the Appropriations Committees each year to provide appropriation authority for legal settlements approved by DOJ and the Department of Finance (DOF). These settlements were entered into lawfully by the state upon advice of counsel (DOJ). They are binding state obligations. 2)Ballona Wetlands Land Trust v. Santa Monica Bay Restoration Commission, $235,400. This claim is the result of litigation involving a California Public Records Act (PRA) dispute. Petitioners, the Ballona Wetlands Land Trust (Land Trust) sought records from the Santa Monica Bay Restoration Commission (Commission) with the goal of proving that the Commission had misused public grant funds in its management of a restoration project. SB 1187 Page 3 The Commission responded by saying that the majority of the records sought regarding the project were in the possession of a separate, nongovernmental entity: a private non-profit called the Santa Monica Bay Restoration Foundation (Foundation). The Land Trust alleged that these two entities (the Commission and the Foundation) were virtually identical, with shared staff and a joint work plan, and that the Foundation should be subject to PRA requests relating to that partnership. The Land Trust was told that only a subset of the requested records would be disclosed, and in response, filed a petition for writ of mandate in February of 2015. In March of 2016, the Superior Court found in favor of the Land Trust, awarding attorney's fees and compelling the Commission to disclose certain Foundation documents that the Court declared to be public records, but not all documents requested by the Land Trust. Attorneys for DOJ collaborated with counsel for the Commission to negotiate a settlement of $220,000 for the payment of a portion of the Land Trust's attorney's fees and costs. The agreement also provides for the payment of interest on the settlement amount at a rate of 7% per annum, calculated daily from March 1, 2016, the date the Court issued its Final Statement of Decision. This bill provides an appropriation that includes the settlement amount of $220,000 plus $15,400, or the equivalent of a full year of interest payment. A portion of the interest amount will revert to the General Fund, assuming the bill is enacted this month. 3)Pauma Band of Luiseņo Mission Indians of the Pauma & Yuima Reservation v. State of California, et al., $36.2 million. In September, 2009, Pauma sued the State seeking rescission of its 2004 amended Triable-State gaming compact (2004 Amendment). In support of is rescission claim, Pauma alleged that the State misrepresented the number of gaming device licenses available under the parties' previous 1999 Tribal-State gaming compact. (1999 Compact) when the State SB 1187 Page 4 communicated that the license pool was exhausted December, 2003. Pauma claimed that the misrepresentation induced it to enter into the 2004 Amendment, which contained higher fees than the 1999 Compact. In support of the Pauma's claim that it was entitled to rescission of the 2004 Amendment as a result of the misrepresentation, Pauma relied on a 2009 district court decision in another case, Cachil Dehe Band of Wintun Indians of the Colusa Indian Community v. California, in which the court determined that the 1999 Compact did in fact authorize more licenses than the state said were available. In 2010, the Ninth Circuit upheld the Colusa decision. In 2014, the district court granted summary judgment to Pauma, finding that, pursuant to the Colusa II decision, the State had misrepresented the number of gaming device licenses under the 1999 Compact and that Pauma had been induced to enter into the 2004 Amendments as a result. The district court thus ordered the 2004 Amendment rescinded and Pauma restored to its 1999 Compact's license fee provisions, resulting in a refund of $36,235,147.01, plus $85,139.60 in interest, due to Pauma from the State, representing the total fees Pauma paid the Sate under the 2004 Amendment over what it would have paid had it remained under the 1999 Compact. The state appealed the summary judgment in favor of Pauma. A divided panel of the Ninth Circuit issued a published decision upholding the district court's summary judgment in favor of Pauma on the misrepresentation claim. The court upheld the monetary award against the state, though the court regarded the monetary relief as restitution flowing from rescission of the 2004 Amendment rather than specific performance, and found that the State had waived its Eleventh Amendment sovereign immunity from monetary restitution awards by express waiver language in the compacts. The State filed a petition for a writ of certiorari in the United States Supreme Court, and the court denied the State's petition on June 27, 2016. All avenues of appeal having been SB 1187 Page 5 exhausted, the judgment is final and the sum of $36,320,286.61 is due and payable to Pauma. Analysis Prepared by: Pedro Reyes / APPR. / (916) 319-2081 FN: 0003952