Let me fill you in on what the state Legislature accomplished. We set new, ambitious goals to reduce greenhouse gas (GHG) emissions and made climate-friendly solutions more affordable so every Californian can be a part of the fight against climate change.

First, the Legislature put its money where its mouth is. Last year’s state budget committed nearly $54 billion over the next five years to fight climate change. There is money to accelerate investments in zero-emission vehicles (ZEV) to make cars, trucks and buses more affordable, make the state’s electricity grid more reliable, help prevent wildfires and mitigate the impact of the state’s historic drought – and so much more.

Gov. Gavin Newsom’s new budget proposes to reduce some of this funding, but it still maintains $48 billion, or 89%, of these investments. As the new chair of the budget subcommittee that oversees energy and natural resources, I will fight to preserve and increase as many of these investments as possible.

California also refined and set major new goals. The landmark AB 1279 (Muratsuchi) creates a legally binding target to achieve net zero emissions by 2045 in all of California. My SB 1203, better known as “California Zero,” requires the state to develop a plan for getting its 24,000 buildings and structures, vehicle fleet, and electricity usage to net zero GHG emissions by 2035.

We’re pushing for more and better electrical vehicle charging stations. The budget set aside over $600 million over the next several years to build out the state’s charging infrastructure and AB 2061 (Ting) requires the state to set standards to ensure drivers are getting what they pay for.

Thousands of more Californians will be able to have climate-friendly homes because of work at the state and federal level. Heat pumps that provide GHG-free heating and air conditioning, electric hot water heaters and other home appliances that replace their natural gas counterparts will reduce our carbon footprint. My SB 1112 will let many people pay for these  climate-friendly improvements and others via an interest-free payment on their monthly utility bill, similar to how many people pay for their mobile phone as part of their monthly phone bill.

The plastic waste crisis has been well-documented and last year, the Legislature passed and the governor signed the most comprehensive measure in the nation to help tackle it. SB 54 (Allen) sets ambitious environmental mandates to ensure single-use plastic packaging and plastic food-related items can be recycled or composted within 10 years. It also calls for a 25% cut in the amount of plastic-covered material sold in California.

Finally, the governor issued an executive order pledging California will conserve 30% of the state’s land and waters by 2030 – better known as “30-by-30.” Given studies showing conservation efforts could soak up a significant amount of the carbon dioxide that has built up over the past 175 years, it’s clear efforts like “30 by 30” will play a major role in our battle against climate change.

The progress we made battling climate change in 2022 was indeed historic and will provide other states and countries with a model on how to best fight climate change. But we have so much more work to do. We need to be just as productive for years to come if we are going to win this fight. I truly believe California is up to the challenge.

Josh Becker D-San Mateo, represents District 13 in the California Senate. He is chair of the Senate Budget Subcommittee on Resources, Environmental Protection and Energy.

Our city just elected two City Council members using a voting system new to California. The process provides a model for small cities across the state that want to diversify their governing boards without carving up their communities into tiny voting districts.

Under the new system, overwhelmingly approved by Albany voters in 2020, Albany used ranked choice voting at-large to fill multiple seats from one pool of candidates. This method is sometimes called proportional ranked choice voting or PRCV.

Most jurisdictions using ranked choice voting apply it in elections for a single seat. Under that system, voters rank their preferences. If no one wins a first-round majority, the candidate in last place is eliminated, and votes of those who preferred that candidate are reallocated to their second choice. The process is repeated until one candidate has a majority.

Albany is one of two cities in California, along with Palm Desert, to use ranked choice voting in a race for multiple seats. The process is similar to ranked choice voting for a single-seat race. But, since Albany voters were choosing two councilmembers, the winners each needed to clear a 33.3% threshold. In 2024, when voters will fill three seats, the threshold will be 25%.

Academic research tells us that PRCV increases the number of candidates, improves results for candidates and voters of color, and ensures voters have the most representative government.

Albany’s experience offers tangible proof of all these benefits: Five candidates ran, two people of color were elected and more than two-thirds of voters cast a vote for a winning candidate. The passage by more than 70% of Albany’s 2020 ballot measure to use PRCV and its successful first use offer proof for other cities that this system is feasible and beneficial.

Cities potentially in violation of the California Voting Rights Act should take notice of Albany’s example. Right now, cities using traditional at-large elections  in multi-seat elections are increasingly being forced by threat of litigation to divide their cities into districts to ensure more diverse representation. This is because at-large elections generally disadvantage marginalized communities, allowing homogenous blocks of white voters to outvote minority preferences and win all seats.

The solution offered under the law is to cut your town into districts, with at least one district that a historically underrepresented community can reliably win. Albany chose not to go down this route because its voters of color live spread out across the city and it feared a problem that has plagued other small towns forced to districts: a lack of candidates.

PRCV allows small cities such as Albany to keep at-large elections while leveling the playing field for historically marginalized groups. While the law still doesn’t define this method as a safe harbor, it is hard to argue that a method that resulted in two candidates of color gaining office doesn’t achieve the intent of the Voting Rights Act.

It is worth mentioning that Albany’s election was unaffected by the clerical error that has come to dominate the conversation around ranked choice voting in the rest of Alameda County. Not only was the outcome not changed, but Albany’s final tally used the correct counting method that the registrar neglected to use in Oakland.

Instead of focusing the conversation today around the human error of the other elections, we should celebrate the successful implementation of an alternate voting system and look for other jurisdictions willing to try it.

Aaron Tiedemann is mayor of Albany.

Upon returning to in-person classes after COVID-19 shutdowns, I noticed that the skin under my backpack straps was red and my back ached. I was overwhelmed by the number of textbooks, notebooks and supplies my teachers required me to carry. I wondered if other students’ backpacks were as heavy as mine.

I conducted a research project at Pleasanton Middle School surveying a representative group of 70 students. The American Academy of Pediatrics recommends that backpacks weigh no more than 15% of a student’s body weight, although some experts — and Senate Concurrent Resolution 86, passed by the California Legislature in 2014 — draw the line at 10%. The data I collected showed that, on average, students’ backpacks were 50% over the California recommended weight. It is important to consider the outliers as well, as some students were carrying backpacks heavier than 30 pounds.

To understand the health consequences of carrying a heavy backpack, I talked to Dr. Monica Benedikt, a family medicine physician at the Cleveland Clinic. Dr. Benedikt said that back pain among children is not rare. She explained that back pain can be caused by different factors, including an overly heavy backpack. Dr. Benedikt said, based on her experience and clinical research, that the backpacks children are required to carry are too heavy.

Other health professionals are in agreement. According to the American Chiropractic Association, “Back pain is pervasive among American adults, however it is not uncommon among children and teens either. In a new and disturbing trend, young children are suffering from back pain much earlier than previous generations, and the use of overweight backpacks is a contributing factor.”

According to research by a team led by pediatric orthopedics expert Dr. William Mackenzie, children who experience back pain are at increased risk of suffering from it as adults, which can result in disability and significant economic consequences.

Overloaded backpacks aren’t only responsible for back injuries, they have also been found to cause neck pain, shoulder strain, headaches and a general exhaustion. Some researchers think that girls and younger kids are especially at risk for backpack-related injuries because they’re smaller and carry loads that are heavier in proportion to their body weight.

What should our educational system do about this? I have some recommendations. One solution that school districts could consider is the installation of lockers, as is done in schools across the country. My former middle school in Pleasanton, as well as several other middle schools in the East Bay, including those in the San Ramon Valley and Livermore Unified school districts, do not have lockers available for middle school students.

Another option is for teachers to allow students to use a single notebook for multiple classes and switch to online textbooks. Many schools provide students with Chromebooks, which can be heavy and contribute to the burden on students’ backs. It might be worth considering the use of lighter devices, even though they may be more expensive. While students appreciate the access to technology that the Chromebooks provide, the health benefits of lighter devices should also be taken into consideration.

It is important to raise awareness about this issue among students. Students should try to limit the weight of their backpacks to no more than 10% of their body weight or consider using rolling backpacks.

And with California public schools receiving record funding this fiscal year, I recommend allocating some of these funds toward researching the risks associated with heavy backpacks and finding ways to prevent health issues in students.

Naomi Burakovsky is a Pleasanton resident and a freshman at Amador Valley High School.

How to increase enrollment at community colleges? As a math professor at San Jose City College (SJCC), I have three ideas based on my experience with students.

First, widen the scope of Community College’s High School Dual or Concurrent Enrollment.

In the summer of 2022, I had the privilege of teaching math at SJCC’s Milpitas extension, a collaboration between the Milpitas Unified School District and SJCC. To see students from 9th, 10th, 11th and 12th grades earning college credits while attending high school to get a head start in their college careers was inspiring. We had animated discussions about applying quadratic equations to describe the arc of a baseball, exponential functions to describe the growth of viruses and probability to quantify uncertainty.

As expected, some dual-enrollment students attend SJCC after graduating from high school each year. While many community colleges have similar collaborations with their local high schools, Kern County Community College District spanning the San Joaquin Valley, eastern Sierra and Mojave Desert being one of the largest, there remains room for growth. SJCC, for instance, can collaborate with more local schools through an effective outreach program to ensure a steady stream of new students.

Second, improve the quality of college websites.

This seems obvious but is often overlooked. Online users, particularly prospective or current students, spend on average three minutes and visit 2-3 pages per session during which they either find what they are looking for or they leave. Many community college websites are clunky and confusing. Finding information often turns into a wild-goose chase. Students complain, and I verified it myself, that it is easier to retrieve information from the SJCC website through Google than through the website itself.

Effective websites have no clutter and have elements that spark digital joy, such as easy navigation, mobile friendly, fewest clicks for information and accessibility for all. Build coherent websites, and they will come.

Third, California’s community colleges must become equal partners to the University of California (UC) and California State University (CSU) systems. With a population of just over 39 million and an estimated GDP of about $4 trillion, California is poised to overtake Germany as the fourth-largest economy in the world, behind only the United States, China and Japan.

California’s economy has a strong positive correlation with the quality of education it offers its residents. While the eight-campus UC and 23-campus CSU systems have a combined student population of about 750,000 from relatively well-to-do families, our 116 community colleges educate more than double that many students.

California’s 1960 Master Plan for Higher Education that vastly privileges UCs and CSUs over community colleges is obsolete. Technology has transformed teaching and learning and the dynamics between research and career. To paraphrase Dorothy, “Toto, I have a feeling we are not in the ‘60s anymore.”

California’s community colleges do the heavy lifting of educating most of its students beyond high schools, especially those from disadvantaged families. By offering baccalaureate degrees without any constraints from UCs and CSUs, for example, community colleges can attract more students, one of the ways to ensure that the Golden State will continue to flourish for decades to come.

Hasan Zillur Rahim is a professor of mathematics at San Jose City College.

That’s done via land-use decisions that control how many housing units and commercial sites can be built in a given time. However, through a series of laws mandating new levels of density everywhere in the state, whether or not they are needed or justified, this key local power now belongs to largely anonymous state officials who know little or nothing about most places whose future they are deciding.

It’s being done through the elimination of single-family, or R-1, zoning. It’s being done via the new requirement that the state Housing and Community Development (HCD) Department approve housing elements for every locality. If HCD does not approve such a plan for a city, developers can target it with virtually no limits if they choose.

It’s all based on a supposed need for at least 1.8 million new housing units touted by HCD. This is despite the fact that the state auditor last spring found that HCD did not properly vet the documents and other instruments on which that estimate was based.

What’s more, only three years earlier, HCD was claiming more than 3.5 million new units were needed. Less than one-eighth of that figure have since risen, yet HCD has cut its need estimate considerably.

However, cities and counties must do what they’re told by this demonstrably incompetent agency or risk lawsuits and big losses in state grants for everything from sewers and road maintenance to police and fire departments. State Attorney General Rob Bonta even set up a new unit in his Justice Department to threaten and pursue noncompliant cities.

This leads localities to approve developments in ways they never did before, including some administrative approvals without so much as the possibility of a public hearing. It leads to the absurd, as with Atherton trying to get state approval of a plan forcing almost all local homeowners to create “additional dwelling units” on the one-acre lots long required in the city. That’s instead of building almost 400 townhouses or apartments in a town of barely 7,000 people.

And in Santa Monica, because the City Council didn’t get its housing element approved, developers can probably not be stopped as they make plans for at least 12 large new buildings. So much for bucolic seaside living.

Santa Monica is also an example of a city buckling to state pressure to allow huge projects opposed by most of its citizens, a majority of whom are renters. That city has done nothing to stop or alter the largest development in its history, to be built on a property at a major intersection now occupied by a grocery and several other stores.

Despite heavy community interest, evidenced by the more than 2,000 people on a Zoom call about the project last winter, the city will hold no public hearings and does not respond to most written communications from its citizens about the development. This is all because city officials fear the state will sue if it objects.

Several cities have begun to fight parts of today’s state domination of land use. Four Los Angeles County cities — Redondo Beach, Torrance, Carson and Whittier — are seeking a court order negating the 2021 Senate Bill 9, which lets single-family homes be replaced by as many as six units, with cities unable to nix any such project.

As city councils and county boards see their constituents objecting loudly to much of this, other lawsuits will inevitably follow. No one can predict whether or not courts will find that the state Legislature and Gov. Gavin Newsom have vastly overreached in their power grab, which is all for the sake of increased density and based on unfounded predictions by bureaucrats who answer to no one.

Thomas Elias can be reached at tdelias@aol.com. To read more of his columns, visit californiafocus.net online.

A student recently asked me, “Who will ever need to learn to write if a computer can?” I thought for a moment and told him that I’d have to write an essay to answer that one. Honestly, I am not wholly concerned and, actually, relatively intrigued.

Technology and all it brings to a society and humanity will always have some long-lasting impacts, some positive, some not so much. AI is a technology. Technological developments have always advanced our society, allowing individuals the ability to do something faster, more efficiently, more safely or more intentionally.

As such, AI should not be viewed as inherently bad, wrong, immoral or harmful. In fact, as we cautiously welcome the fact that computer-generated text really is here, we should not be fearful but see it for what it is: a tool.

Indisputably, a big change is upon us. Much discussion corroborates the idea that recent developments of AI will drastically alter education as we know it. Education typically shifts as society does, and I expect that how writing is taught will undergo a transformation, just as it did when computers first entered the classroom.

However, these advancements will not change what we teach to writers. Just as students still need to learn basic addition and the multiplication tables even though we have calculators, students will still need to learn the basics of writing: the grammar, the syntax and the structure of an essay. In both situations, the exercise of learning these basics helps a student’s brain develop and grow, and the information learned allows for the manipulation of — or recognizing the manipulation of — words.

Words and the established writing conventions allow members of a society to communicate with others competently and effectively. What we teach will not drastically change, yet what may need to be made more explicit is the why.

Why would, or should, one write if a machine can do it better, faster and easier? This perception holds that technology can effectively replace writing. I beg to differ. AI creates a product. Writing an essay, however, is so much more than a product; it is a process.

In fact, the noun “essay” has a secondary meaning: “a try or attempt.” It is only through the process of writing that students learn. They learn what they think. They learn how they think. They learn why they think. They learn to challenge themselves. They learn what interests them. They learn what interests others. They learn they are interested in something. This is something AI will never learn.

The process of writing allows us to not only learn but think, feel, dream, inspire. That same process allows us to create something unique, to present an old thought in a new form, to communicate in a way so that another will understand.

A product created by a machine can never replace the process of thought nor the reward that process brings. The product itself is shaped by the process. This is the why.

Linda Hora is an advanced placement language and composition teacher at Miramonte High School in Orinda. She holds a master’s degree in composition and has taught high school students in the Bay Area for almost 20 years.

Roughly 60,000 youth are the legal responsibility of the state of California, removed from their family homes after suffering abuse and neglect. The trauma of abuse and the separation from their families puts them at high risk for adverse consequences throughout their lives — from homelessness and suicide to exploitation and sex trafficking.

It doesn’t have to be this way. Young people can and do recover from trauma, reunite with family members, and thrive because of the support from caring professionals and nonprofit organizations that are deeply rooted in communities across the state.

Yet too many are left in harm’s way because California’s initiative to transform foster youth services, known as “Continuum of Care Reform,” has not been fully funded to truly meet the needs of all foster youth. Severe gaps remain in services.

California can’t leave vulnerable youth waiting any longer. State leaders must commit in 2023. Here’s how:

• Stabilize programs for youth with the greatest needs. Youth experiencing the most severe effects of trauma heal best with intensive therapy and support, delivered in settings that feel like a home, not an institution. Despite the growing need of this intensive care model, short-term residential programs are rapidly disappearing because state funding hasn’t kept pace with soaring costs of providing care, and costly new federal rules are accelerating the closures. Unless California significantly increases its financial support for this model, organizations will be forced to close more of these programs.

• Increase foster family retention and support. The stress of the pandemic and rising costs of raising a family are taking a toll on all families, making it harder to find, recruit and train foster parents (also known as “resource families”).  Nonprofit agencies succeed in this difficult work because of their close ties to communities, but they can’t do it alone. California must dedicate state budget funding to ensure vulnerable youth don’t have to worry if they’ll have a bed to sleep in or a family to support them.

• Prevent family separation. Child abuse and neglect can be prevented, and entry into the child welfare system can be avoided. The vital work of family resource centers, 500 trusted community partners across California, helps families ease stressors in the home and reduce the likelihood of separation. With families under more pressure than ever, keeping families together means the state must commit significant funding to prevention.

• Stop the pipeline from foster care to the streets. Nearly 1 in 3 foster youth become homeless after they exit the child welfare system — a devastating and shameful reality. For California to succeed in mitigating homelessness, leaders must commit to preventing foster youth from ever reaching the streets. A portion of the $1.5 billion lawmakers have already dedicated for a new Behavioral Health Bridge Housing Program should be used for partnerships between counties and community-based organizations that assist with housing youth ages 18-25.

• Respect, support and pay critical staff. Children who have been abused and traumatized count on talented and dedicated workers to support them during a vulnerable and challenging time in their lives. This work is fulfilling but intense, leading to burnout and high turnover. California must increase the rates it pays to care for children so we can retain these invaluable professionals and their quality of care.

Children in California’s child welfare system had little to no say about the circumstances that brought them into foster care. No budget shortfall, lack of political will or mixed-up priorities should further delay support they need to thrive.

State leaders must honor their duty to the children in their care.

Christine Stoner-Mertz is CEO of the California Alliance for Child and Family Services. She wrote this commentary for CalMatters.

In a stunning public airing of the internal fight for control of the businesses, Albert D. Seeno Jr., 78, has sued his son alleging that Seeno III, after his appointment in July 2020 as chief executive officer, improperly spent money and tried to shut out his father and uncle from their own companies.

While this court battle may seem like an internal business and family dispute, the allegations about Seeno III’s behavior and finances should concern members of the Concord City Council as they consider whether to partner with him for 40 years to develop the Concord Naval Weapons Station site.

Seeno Jr. says his son previously had taken hundreds of millions of dollars without permission from his father and his father’s companies, has debt of over $100 million, bullied his father to hire him as CEO under threat that he would otherwise never see his grandchildren, and has been abusive and misogynistic toward employees.

“Your anger is out of control, you need anger management, counseling and medication. The way you treated multiple … employees is unlawfull (sic), malicious, vindictive, mean spirited and outright wrong,” the father says in a handwritten note to his son contained in the court file.

“Have you asked yourself what would Jesus do? Are you choosing to follow God or have you been blinded by Satan?”

Seeno III, 48, in his legal filings, denies that his father was bullied into signing the employment contract and disputes that Seeno Jr. was inadequately represented by an attorney. The son says claims that he is diverting money, mismanaging workers and construction jobs, concealing documents and otherwise breaching obligations to his father’s companies are untrue.

Seeno III asserts that his father can’t fire him because his 20-year employment agreement is so airtight that he can only be terminated if he is convicted of a felony that exposes his father’s companies to “material criminal liability.”

Three related lawsuits are pending in Contra Costa Superior Court. In the main one, Seeno Jr. tries to regain control of his companies. In another, Seeno III accuses his father of trying to disrupt the operations of the son’s separately owned business, the firm seeking the development deal for the weapons station.

And in the third legal case, Seeno III has sued the trustee of the trust his parents set up for him in 2000, claiming that millions of dollars he was supposed to receive last year have been improperly diverted without his permission to paying down his debts to his father.

As the court battles wage, Seeno III’s company has obtained a temporary restraining order against his father that requires the elder to keep at least five yards away from one of the firm’s employees.

Meanwhile, Seeno Jr. has taken back control of his companies’ bank accounts, cutting off his son’s check-signing authority and company credit cards. Seeno Jr. is demanding from his son supporting documentation before signing off on bill payments. Seeno III says he has provided that information to prevent “operational collapse” of his father’s firms and his own.

Weapons station deal

The City Council, in a special meeting Saturday, is set to decide whether to continue to the next phase of negotiations with a consortium that includes Seeno III for development of the weapons station.

The consortium previously had only 3-2 support on the five-member council. The upcoming meeting is the first on the topic since the Nov. 8 elections in which one of those supporters lost his reelection bid.

Discovery Builders, the firm solely owned by Seeno III, has a 45% interest in the consortium, Concord First Partners. The other partners are a subsidiary of the Southern California development firm Lewis Group of Companies, which has a 45% interest and is the designated managing member, and California Capital & Investment Group, which has a 10% interest and is run by Phil Tagami, who is also seeking to build a controversial coal-export terminal in Oakland.

In 2021, the council chose the consortium over other prominent developers because it offered a more-lucrative deal for labor unions. But Concord First Partners later said it could not make the deal work financially and last year tried, unsuccessfully, to leverage major concessions from the city.

Now, Concord First Partners is trying again, this time seeking council approval of a radically revised deal for the 2,275-acre site that would include 16,474 homes, a 34% increase from the original terms agreed to when the consortium won the bidding over the other prospective developers.

The intrafamily legal battle should raise concerns for the council. Seeno III’s leadership of Discovery Builders is not in question in the litigation. But the court filings show how deeply tied his company is to his father’s five firms, from which Seeno Jr. is trying to oust his son. Moreover, it raises troubling questions about Seeno III’s management.

The council should not continue with Concord First Partners without first thoroughly investigating the allegations in, and financial implications of, the Seeno v. Seeno litigation. And if the council is willing to approve so many more homes for the same massive site, which completely changes the economic calculations, it should reopen the bidding for all interested developers.

Legal history

The city’s deal with the consortium was questionable from the start, given the Seeno family’s troubled legal past.

The Seeno business empire started with Albert D. Seeno Sr., who in 1938 began to build single-family houses. The construction business was passed to Seeno Jr. and his brother, Thomas Seeno, in the 1970s. And in 1997, Seeno III launched Discovery Builders.

The family has wielded great political power, especially in Pittsburg. In the early 1980s, a study by the local newspaper found that Seeno Sr. was the most influential person in the city.

In 1999, before voting on Seeno projects, then-Pittsburg Mayor Frank Aiello, with help from Seeno Jr. and a business associate, obtained a favorable home mortgage to buy a new Seeno house. Aiello also accepted from Seeno Jr. hotel lodging, a Raiders luxury suite ticket and a flight to Reno, Nev., on the developer’s private jet. The California Fair Political Practices Commission fined Aiello $20,000 for failing to report the three gifts and exceeding state gift limits.

In 2003, then-Pittsburg Councilman Frank Quesada was sentenced to 300 hours of community service after pleading no contest to conflict-of-interest charges stemming from his votes on Seeno Jr. projects while $370,000 in debt to the developer.

Meanwhile, the Seenos faced their own legal problems. In 2002, a Seeno Jr. company was fined $1 million for destroying endangered red-legged frog habitat in Pittsburg.

Two years later, the Nevada Gaming Control Board fined the Seenos, who own casinos there, $775,000 for not alerting the agency of their environmental violations and other issues.

In 2008, a Seeno Jr. company reached a $3 million settlement relating to improperly permitted grading at an Antioch development.

Then, in 2016, Seeno III pleaded guilty to bank fraud on behalf of his home sales company, Discovery Sales. As part of the plea deal, Seeno III was ordered to pay fines and restitution totaling $11 million.

Current cases

Until now, the Seenos’ publicly reported legal fights have been with outside parties. Now they are turning the battle inward.

At issue in the largest of the three current Contra Costa County cases is Seeno III’s management of five businesses headed by Seeno Jr. and Thomas Seeno. The brothers are the majority voting shareholders and only members of the boards of directors for the flagship Albert D. Seeno Construction Co., West Coast Home Builders and North Village Development. Seeno Jr. is the sole shareholder of Seecon Financial & Construction Co. and Seecon Built Homes.

When the brothers agreed in 2020 to make Seeno III CEO of the five companies, they struck a second deal that made Seeno III’s Discovery Builders the construction management firm for developments of the Seeno brothers’ five firms.

But the relationship quickly soured. Seeno Jr. alleges his son engaged in unauthorized transfer and sale of land, and authorized payment of employee bonuses, including a significant one to himself, without his father’s required approval.

Seeno III also blocked access to the companies’ books, records and computer systems and refused to allow his father to exercise his corporate-director duties required by state law, according to Seeno Jr.’s lawsuit.

It alleges that Seeno III’s “bizarre dictatorial control and secrecy” left his father and uncle, who have guaranteed bank loans related to the five companies, with unknown obligations and interfered with their duties to make disclosures to lending institutions.

The son denies he has blocked his father’s access to records. He says he has managed the day-to-day operations of his father’s firms for more than 20 years. Unless he remains at the helm of them and his separately owned company continues constructing homes for his father’s enterprises, Seeno III asserts, work will come to a halt, and job sites will be left in hazardous conditions.

Key employment agreement

Central to the litigation is the 2020 employment agreement’s provision that Seeno III can only be fired if he commits a felony affecting his father’s business.

Seeno III’s attorneys argue that the language of the agreement is clear and gives the son complete managerial control of the companies. Seeno Jr.’s attorneys claim the key provision does not override state law protecting the ability of the Seeno brothers, as company directors, to fire their CEO.

Seeno Jr. alleges that the attorneys who drafted the deal had a history of representing both Seeno III and the Seeno brothers’ companies but, unbeknownst to Seeno Jr., drafted the employment agreement at the direction of his son. The Seeno brothers say they were never represented by independent counsel.

Moreover, Seeno III coerced, intimidated and then bullied his father into the deal “by telling him that if he did not sign the Employment Agreement, Seeno (Jr.) would never see his three grandsons again,” Seeno Jr. alleges.

Seeno III’s attorneys’ response: “Of course, none of those allegations are true.”

Millions in debt

According to Seeno Jr., in the mid-2000s his son took hundreds of millions of dollars without permission from his father and his father’s companies. Seeno Jr. says his son initially denied what he had done but eventually acknowledged his deception. The father says his son still owes more than $100 million in principal and interest.

That debt is central to the litigation over the trust payments. The trust, which initially was funded more than two decades ago with $19 million, receives income from the Seeno family-controlled Peppermill Casino in Reno, Nev.

For over 15 years, according to the trustee, the primary purpose of the trust has been to pay down Seeno III’s debts to his creditors, including his father. The trustee’s attorney says Seeno III’s current debt to his father is approximately $160 million.

Seeno III says his debt to his father has been either paid off or paid down ahead of schedule and that the trustee has no right to divert his trust payments to his creditors. Seeno III says that for the last nine months of 2021 alone, the trust paid out $5.7 million that should have gone directly to him.

Judge Susanne Fenstermacher ruled in May that the trustee had not violated the terms of the trust. While the case proceeds, the judge has blocked further distributions. The next hearing is scheduled for March.

‘War of the Roses’

The legal battle in Contra Costa Superior Court threatens to turn into mutual self-destruction. “The Seeno Companies cannot endure a business version of ‘War of the Roses,’ ” Seeno Jr.’s attorneys warn in a court filing.

That could be a reference to the 15^th century series of civil wars over control of the English throne or the 1989 dark comedy movie in which a divorcing couple played by Michael Douglas and Kathleen Turner end up dead in their fight over their cherished house.

Rather than a battlefield in Europe or a fictitious East Coast home, the scene of the Seeno intrafamily fight is 4021 Port Chicago Highway in Concord, the office building that houses the father’s and son’s businesses, that Seeno Jr.’s entities own and from which he is trying to evict Seeno III’s Discovery Builders.

The employees of the father’s and son’s companies are victims of, or soldiers in, this war.

In court documents, Seeno III accuses his father of violent and erratic behavior. Discovery Builders obtained the restraining order after Seeno Jr. allegedly grabbed and tried to remove an employee with HR responsibilities from his office by force. The employee says that resulted in a scratch and a bruise on his arm.

The next day, Seeno III alleges, two men who worked for his father broke into the HR employee’s office by dropping in through the ceiling tiles, then removing the door to the office and stealing his computer.

Seeno Jr. says he never grabbed the worker. And, “I can assure the court that I do not have employees who dropped through the ceiling tiles of (the) … office like spies to remove his door; they removed the door from outside the office, not inside the office.”

Seeno Jr. says leaving his son as CEO “will cause grave damage to the Seeno Companies and their employees, who will be forced to suffer under the thumb of a tyrant who routinely abuses employees.”

In a court declaration, the Albert D. Seeno Construction Co. controller says that in 2019 Seeno III leveled misogynistic expletives at her when she carried out his father’s wishes to keep information about one of his companies confidential.

The chief financial officer of that company separately declares that Seeno III repeatedly threatened to fire him. Seeno III also allegedly hired an employee who had previously threatened the CFO’s life and then placed him in an office just down the hall.

It was “a clear act of retribution” for the CFO’s forensic accounting work at Seeno Jr.’s request, tracking down and confirming Seeno III’s taking of millions of dollars from his father, according to Seeno Jr.’s attorneys.

In court filings, Seeno III has not replied to the declarations of the controller and the CFO, which were made under penalty of perjury. Late Wednesday, he issued a statement through a spokesperson, saying, “None of those allegations have an ounce of truth.” He did not answer questions about the specifics of the allegations.

Who’s in charge?

The legal standoff leaves uncertain who is running the five Seeno Jr. entities.

On Sept. 16, Seeno Jr. sent an email to the employees of his companies telling them that he had resumed his position as CEO and that his son had been “relieved of all duties.”

Hours later, Seeno III sent an email telling workers that he was still in charge. “(P)lease disregard these messages being sent by ADS Jr. as ADS Jr. cannot terminate me nor is he the CEO of these entities.”

In October, Judge Jill Fannin rejected Seeno Jr.’s request for a preliminary injunction blocking his son from continuing to act as CEO. However, in December, Fannin rejected Seeno III’s request for an injunction essentially declaring him CEO and reinstating his access to the checking accounts and credit cards.

Case management conferences are scheduled for March in the litigation over control of Seeno Jr.’s companies and for Jan. 12 in Seeno III’s lawsuit accusing his father of trying to disrupt the operations of Discovery Builders.

With the cases unresolved and without an independent investigation of the allegations, the City Council should not commit to a 40-year deal with Seeno III and the Concord First Partners consortium.

This unhappy subject — loss of creativity in the pursuit of knowledge, or framed another way, delegitimizing music and art education in the pursuit of “career readiness” — is a familiar theme in both storytelling and educational policy. Now we have another, paradoxical version: the marginalization of arts education by a local school district’s use of a state block grant intended for arts education.

The recent news reported on the use of a taxpayer-funded music and arts education block grant by the East Side Union High School District is not surprising given the current educational policy emphasis on STEM and the decades old underfunding of education in California. According to District financials, of the total grant amount of $13,267,936, 72% will be utilized for “operational costs.”

About  $1.5 million will go to music and arts “classes”. But that money is allocated to materials and professional development.

What the budget presentation to the East Side Union High School District Board does not elucidate is how the allocated operational costs will be spent. The presentation describes the district’s system emphasis on goals pertaining to equity, career readiness, graduation rates, achievement of English language learners, student behavior responses, attendance and engagement with homeless students. Nowhere does the presentation provide specific guidance or insights on how taxpayer dollars will be utilized to achieve the titled  goals of the block grant which are, presumably, the activity of actually teaching music and art.

The impact of this obfuscating non-allocation of grant funds is the further marginalization of arts education by those who should know better. Indeed the benefits of sequential, rigorous arts education provided to students during the instructional day is a stated goal of the California Arts Council and many other arts education funders.

In fact, small and large arts education non-profits who seek arts education support must specifically provide samples of standard’s-based curriculum and other evidence of the grantee applicant’s sustainable capacity for instruction of standard’s-based arts education in California public schools, such as experience teaching music and visual arts, and an active partnership with a school site.

The numerous reports on tangible and intangible benefits of music and arts education are well documented. Among many other resources available through Californians for the Arts, there are statistics showing the benefits of a kid’s brain on music education, arts curriculum resources provided by the California Arts Education Association and California Department of Education, and data illuminating the access to arts education gap experienced by underserved communities, like the students in this district.

We can and should consider the evidence of the intangible benefits of an arts education. This is a happy paradox, too often ignored by policy wonks but definitely understood by legislators with the power to cut arts funding when art making or learning threatens prevalent points of view.

You can find this evidence on YouTube — like the video of Elementary Public School 22 of Staten Island performing “Don’t Give Up On Me.”

Or the many YouTube videos of San Jose music students, like the rock out performances at the mariachi festival or the stunning ensemble artistry of San Jose’s Firebird Youth Orchestra or the numerous jazz concerts by the San Jose Jazz High School All Stars.

With all this proof to support increased funding for arts instructional hours at the tips of District bureaucratic fingers, why are the line item expenditures for operational costs a mystery? To answer this we might remember the cultural acuity of children and youth in social groups is profound, and evident in a natural musicality kids freely use to explore musical sounds. Youthful music is unique, purposeful, self-motivated, impressively improvisational. It’s a music occupied with curiosity and enchantment, as I’m sure the music educators at San Jose Jazz, or any mariachi conference, or the Firebird Youth Orchestra will attest.

Why not take advantage of this baked in motivation to learn and show us the numbers? The answer may be in the reported District assertion that the grant is needed to help the District “stay afloat.” If this is the case, will raiding an arts block grant help ESUHSD face the music?

Marcela Davison Avilés is managing partner of TomKat MeDiA and founder of Chapultepec Group.

The reason for this potential backfire resides most prominently here in California. This state is so large and leans so strongly Democratic that if legislators here reverse some longstanding state election policies, they could cause big changes nationally. This would be especially true if some potential California actions were imitated in other large-population blue states such as New York, Illinois, Oregon or Washington.

Here’s are the stakes in the Supreme Court case brought by North Carolina Republican legislators: State legislatures could be authorized to draw future legislative and congressional district boundaries any way they like, with no say for either governors or state courts. The North Carolina GOP sued because that state’s Supreme Court wouldn’t let them get away with patently partisan district maps guaranteed to perpetuate big Republican majorities in its legislature and congressional delegation.

If the Supreme Court, as some justices have indicated it might, awards such ultimately extreme powers to state legislatures, that may also let state lawmakers substitute presidential Electoral College members of their preference for those elected by voters. This would be a prescription for election irrelevance and would make voter suppression laws of the recent past look like mild, amateur tactics.

Essentially, it would let state legislatures and not the voters of any or all states make the most important civic decisions virtually unchecked. Except … California legislators would have it in their power to reverse much of what multiple other states might do. They could create a whole new kind of check and balance for the court and those other legislatures to consider.

In a way, California voters created today’s small Republican majority in the House of Representatives when they used ballot propositions to set up independent redistricting commissions for legislative and congressional districts here.

The House’s new GOP majority exists only because California elected 40 Democrats and 12 Republicans to the House in November using district lines drawn by the independent commission, which had equal numbers of Republicans and Democrats.

However, if the Supreme Court says legislatures — and not voters — have ultimate power over redistricting, state lawmakers here could overturn the independent commission’s district lines anytime they like. With Democrats holding majorities greater than two-thirds in both houses of this state’s Legislature, they could draw any lines they wished should the Supreme Court find for the North Carolina Republicans.

Does anyone seriously think a Democratic-drawn plan here would have enabled narrow victories for Republican representatives like John Duarte, Michelle Steel, Mike Garcia, David Valadao, Kevin Kiley or Young Kim, without whom there would be no House GOP majority? Does anyone seriously think a Democratic-drawn plan would have set up Orange County Democrat Katie Porter for several nail-biting post-election weeks?

There’s not a chance of that. Nor would there be any chance for Republicans, as they just did, to take away a formerly Democratic seat in Oregon and maintain all their seats in Washington state. The same holds true in Illinois and New York, the scene of a major Republican upset. So there is plenty of room for backfire if the Supreme Court goes extreme in granting state legislators almost unchecked power.

And what if the high court gave Republican-led legislatures in states like Wisconsin and Pennsylvania authority to substitute presidential electors different from those chosen by voters, and those legislatures then actually did that and reversed a national election outcome?

Does the Supreme Court seriously believe only extremist far-right activists are capable of reacting with an insurrection? If so, they’ve forgotten the almost anonymous leftists of Antifa, who in 2020 rioted and took over parts of Portland and Seattle.

So here’s a cautionary word to the conservative Supreme Court majority: If you open Pandora’s Box and sow the wind by changing America’s traditional political and electoral checks and balances, you could reap whatever whirlwind follows.

Thomas Elias can be reached at tdelias@aol.com. To read more of his columns, visit californiafocus.net online.