Villasenor Illustrates Asymmetry in Data Privacy Laws

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Public Policy Professor John Villasenor co-authored an article with UC Berkeley Professor Rebecca Wexler describing the dangers of new data privacy laws and their unintended contribution to wrongful convictions. They explain how the “growing volume of data gathered and stored by mobile network providers, social media companies, and location-based app providers has quite rightly spurred interest in updating privacy laws.” However, these laws often favor prosecutors in legal cases, making it easier for them to deploy state power to search for and seize data, while defense attorneys struggle to access the same data using subpoenas. The article for the Brookings Institution’s TechTank blog describes a “fundamental asymmetry”: “While law enforcement can compel the production of data that can help establish guilt, a defendant will have a much harder time compelling the production of data that establish innocence.” The authors recommend drafting laws that accommodate “the legitimate needs of both law enforcement and defense investigations.”

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Astor Weighs In on Violence Against Teachers

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Social Welfare Professor Ron Avi Astor co-authored an article in the Conversation discussing the findings of an American Psychological Association task force investigation of violence against teachers. The task force surveyed about 3,000 teachers across the country in 2010 to gauge the scope of the issue. While the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention reported that only 9% of U.S. teachers recounted being threatened with injury, 80% of those surveyed by the APA said they had personally experienced some form of violence or abuse in the past year. The article noted that the discrepancy in statistics could be attributed to teachers choosing not to report incidents of violence out of fear of jeopardizing their jobs. The task force is now focusing on whether the way schools are managed and their overall cultures contribute to the conditions that lead to teacher assaults.

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Manville, Monkkonen, Lens Zero In on Single-Family Zoning

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A new Sidewalk Talk article on Medium highlighted the main points of a paper written by Associate Professors of Urban Planning Michael Manville, Paavo Monkkonen and Michael Lens arguing for the elimination of single-family housing regulations. The three associate professors wrote the essay for the January issue of the Journal of the American Planning Association, which presented nine different arguments about the future of single-family zoning. The debate over single-family zoning has been fueled by new bills in Maryland, Oregon, Minneapolis and California that have proposed loosening single-family regulations, with limited success. In their paper, Manville, Monkkonen and Lens argue that removing single-family zoning doesn’t prevent single-family homes from being built; this means that developers can continue to build them in response to household preference and market demands. However, “in the 21st century, no city should have any land where nothing can be built except a detached single-family home,” they conclude.

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Census Change Could Reduce Indigenous Population Count, Akee Finds

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The New York Times featured a study conducted by Randall Akee, associate professor of public policy and American Indian studies, in an opinion piece about the 2020 Census. The Census Bureau is testing an algorithm that scrambles the final population count to preserve the confidentiality of individual data records. A test run using records from the last census showed that the algorithm may produce wildly inaccurate numbers for rural areas and minority populations. Akee’s study found this to be true for Native American reservations. On reservations where the population fell below 5,000 people, the algorithm reduced the count of indigenous people by an average of 34%, the study found.

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Gas Tax Is ‘Absolutely Necessary,’ Wachs Says

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Martin Wachs, distinguished professor emeritus of urban planning, spoke to the San Diego news site inewsource about Senate Bill 1, a gas tax  passed in 2017 to improve the condition of California roads. Some communities are unsatisfied with the pace of road repairs, the article noted. But Wachs called the law “a short-term fix that was absolutely necessary.” In the future, he added, different solutions will be needed as fuel mileage rates increase and more people drive electric cars that don’t use gas — two trends that will cut into gas-tax revenue. “We’ll be selling less gasoline in relation to the driving that we do as years go by,” Wachs said.

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Lens on Eminent Domain and Affordable Housing

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Michael Lens, associate professor of urban planning and public policy, spoke to LAist about a Los Angeles City Council member’s proposal to create more affordable housing  by using eminent domain to take over an apartment building. The council may consider whether to seize a 124-unit affordable housing complex in Chinatown that was built under a covenant that guaranteed affordable housing for 30 years. The covenant, set to expire this year, allowed the owner to then legally raise rents to the market price.  Lens said that using eminent domain could potentially have a “chilling effect” on future affordable housing developments. “The developer entered into a 30-year covenant with the expectation that whomever owned the property at the end of that 30-year period would be free to do whatever made sense to that owner,” he said. “All financial decisions over that 30-year period have been made with that assumption.”

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Phillips’ Research Illustrates Achievement Gap

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Recent articles by KCET and CalMatters noted Public Policy Associate Professor Meredith Phillips’ research contributions regarding the persistent achievement gap in education. In its discussion of the disparities in California education, the CalMatters article cited the 1998 book “The Black-White Test Score Gap,” co-edited by Phillips, which analyzed the causes and significant consequences of the achievement gap, as well as options for closing it. The KCET article highlighted the findings of a 2017 UCLA study co-directed by Phillips that investigated the college enrollment rates of Los Angeles Unified School District high school graduates. The study found that high school counselors’ large caseloads got in the way of helping students with college and financial aid applications. Counselors at 75% of the schools reported that some students were not getting the help they required.

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Leap Weighs In on CalGang Reform Process

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Adjunct Professor of Social Welfare Jorja Leap spoke to the Los Angeles Times about the current debate surrounding the Los Angeles Police Department’s use of CalGang, a secretive statewide database with information about suspected gang members, including their family members, nicknames and tattoos. Since only approved law enforcement has access to the database, it has been nearly impossible for those outside of law enforcement to gauge the integrity of the process or check the accuracy of its records. At least 20 LAPD officers are suspected of falsifying information used to identify gang members, putting additional pressure on the state Department of Justice to reform the system to prevent law enforcement from unfairly targeting people by race and economic status. Leap said the LAPD investigation “is the booster rocket to say this has got to be reformed and it’s got to be reformed not in a superficial way but in a meaningful way.”

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Gilens on the Disproportionate Influence of the Wealthy

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A New York Times article discussing the dangers of private campaign funding cited Public Policy Professor Martin Gilens’ research on the disproportionate influence of wealthy Americans in politics. The Supreme Court’s 2010 decision in the Citizens United case allowed corporations to spend freely on electioneering, making it easier for wealthy individuals and corporations to translate their economic power into political power. The article cited a dinner party last year at the Trump International Hotel, where wealthy donors spoke to President Trump about their corporate interests. They included the owner of a steel-making company who urged the president to let truck drivers work longer hours, even though studies show that driver fatigue is a frequent factor in fatal crashes. In their 2017 book “Democracy in America?,” Gilens and co-author Benjamin Page illustrate the disproportionate influence that the wealthiest Americans exercise in politics. According to Gilens, wealthy Americans are particularly successful in blocking even broadly popular policies they don’t like.

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Shoup’s Solution to Game-Day Congestion

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Distinguished Research Professor of Urban Planning Donald Shoup wrote an article for CityLab proposing transit validation as a solution to traffic and congestion at major sporting events. Due to limited bus service and no direct rail connections to Miami or Fort Lauderdale, most of the 62,000 football fans who attended the Super Bowl in Miami Gardens on Sunday arrived by car. While game-day congestion is often seen as part of football tradition, Shoup recommended that sporting venues contract with public transit operators so that all ticket holders can ride buses and trains free on game days. He argued that by arranging fare-free public transit on game days, sporting venues could increase transit ridership, reduce traffic congestion, save energy, and reduce pollution and carbon emissions at a very low cost. Validating transit rides is cheaper than building parking lots or garages for occasional game-day drivers, and it could reduce drunk driving incidents after sporting events, he said.

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