Lobbyists Influence Legislators to Gut Camp Safety Bill
Sacramento capitol rotunda (Photo Doug Forbes)
LISTEN TO FOUNDATION PRESIDENT DOUG FORBES’ TESTIMONY AT THE SENATE COMMITTEE ON HUMAN SERVICES
POINTS OF NOTE: (CLICK ANYWHERE ON THE BLACK BOX TO FORWARD OR REWIND)
Assemblyman Chris Holden testifies first
2:12 — American Camp Association lobbyist Catherine Barankin testifies in favor of the bill since Holden gave her and the ACA exactly what they wanted
5:15 — California Library Association lobbyist speaks in opposition
7:20 — Doug Forbes speaks in opposition unless the bill is amended because Holden gutted nearly every meaningful provision
19:38 — Senator Richard Pan, a pediatrician, shockingly speaks out against the bill’s mandated reporter clause and also chuckles while he mentions bill sponsor Doug Forbes
COMPARE THE BILL THAT THE FOUNDATION INTRODUCED TO THE BILL THAT LEGISLATORS GUTTED
SACRAMENTO — Pressure from camp, health and municipal lobbyists has, once again, reduced a California camp safety bill to a shell of its original draft.
Meow Meow Foundation introduced and sponsored AB 1737 (D - Holden) as a means to require licensing and oversight for thousands of unregulated camps serving millions of vulnerable children. In recent developments, however, legislators capitulated to a medley of influence-peddling, ignoring myriad recommendations by Foundation President Doug Forbes.
“Although we wrote the lion’s share of the original language and tirelessly pushed this bill into motion, the way it works is that Assemblyman Holden is known as the author and we are the sponsor,” said Forbes. “Now, however, we want to be clear that lobbyists appear to be the authors who have rewritten a bill that irrefutably favors camps and county stakeholders over kids, families and communities.”
Forbes said that the foundation he helms has pulled its support of the bill unless dramatically amended, similar to the situation it faced in 2020 when he and his co-founder wife Elena Matyas withdrew their far more exhaustive bill after similar parties diluted the measure beyond recognition.
In fact, Forbes testified before the Senate Committee on Human Services on June 20 in opposition to the bill. The committee nonetheless passed the measure on to the Committee on Public Safety for a hearing on June 28.
Notably, Senator Richard Pan (D-CA), a pediatrician, required that the bill be even further watered down by eliminating more robust mandated reporting requirement at camps. Mandated reporters are required to report suspected child abuse to the authorities. According to widespread media reports, child sex abuse at camps is a persistent and pervasive problem. The Boy Scouts and its camps account for 90,000 cases of child sex abuse incidents alone, the vast majority at camps. And according to CHild USA, the number of cases is likely closer to a million.
“We fully understand that concessions are part of the process,” Forbes said. “But when countless concessions actually convert a long overdue health and safety net for children into a boon for the camp lobby, we must warn our constituents about the clear and present dangers.”
The core provisions in the original bill included:
Camp licensing: CA child care facilities must be licensed and camps are child care operations that are currently not licensed.
Health supervision: Camps serve hundreds and up to thousands of kids without anyone currently being required to be certified in basic First Aid or CPR.
Certifications: Camps with live ammunition rifle ranges, high-wire activities, zip-lines, rock climbing, motorized vehicles, aquatics, etc. are currently not subject to certification requirements that ensure operators of those activities know what they’re doing.
Basic training: Camp owner-operators do not need to know the first thing about child development or how to run a complex child care operation despite the fact that the state requires training and education for operators of low risk day care operators.
Age requirement: The state does not require any minimum age to own or operate a camp and most camps hire children or very young adults to run their activities as counselors. The bill requires an owner-operator to be 25 years old, which is still quite young.
Removing the American Camp Association from the existing statute: The ACA is a camp lobby group which, under current law, serves as a proxy for meaningful oversight. Resident (overnight) camps that are accredited by the ACA are exempt from state oversight, which is a boon to the ACA because it derives money from its accreditation fees. The ACA also allows camps to abide only 19% of its standards to gain accreditation. The ACA’s inspection processes are anemic. According to its own admissions, ACA insider camp owners survey accredited camps every 3-5 years, if at all, and many do so remotely with a written honor system checklist. While the ACA has every right to represent camps, it is entirely inappropriate for a special interest camp lobby like the ACA to also dictate health and safety standards for children as young as three.
Legislators gutted every one of the above measures. They also exempted government camps which account for 25% of camps overall and traditionally serve lower income households, thereby leaving such children entirely vulnerable.
As rewritten, this bill allows high school seniors to run complex child care operations. And it allows children to suffer without anyone knowing how to ameliorate their suffering.
Legislators also removed the bill’s original requirement for any health supervision. Therefore, camps that offer higher risk activities to thousands of children each summer are not required to have a single person on site that even knows how to administer basic CPR.
Lobbyists and legislative personnel from the California Department of Social Services and the California Department of Public Health have publicly denounced the original bill and said they are opposed to managing oversight of thousands of camps serving millions of children at risk.
Yet, CDSS requires licenses for all day care operations that afford far more innocuous activities. And CDPH currently inspects operations like amusement facilities and other complex recreational operations but claims it does not have the expertise to oversee camps.
“This is beyond shocking,” said Forbes. “Of all things to willfully eliminate from this measure, [Holden] removes this one, full well knowing how Roxie died. It is an unsettling decision and one with potentially lethal consequences, as we saw with Roxie and countless other children.”
Forbes said camps will tell parents that their counselors are certified in CPR or lifeguarding, etc., but parents will continue to roll the dice without any actual requirements or notifications. And when something goes terribly wrong, he said, everyone involved will look at each other while grieving in hospitals or cemeteries and wonder how such a thing could have happened.
Forbes and the foundation said they will make sure that millions of parents know how county health lobbyists and unwilling legislators have further jeopardized the health and safety of millions of children by altogether eliminating the requirement for any health supervision at camps.
Another significant development is how Holden has decided to reinstate language that favors the American Camp Association, the national camp lobby organization that claims it is “a leading authority in child development.”
Current California law uses the standards of the American Camp Association as a proxy for meaningful oversight. This means that a third party lobby group holds enormous sway over how camps are regulated and reaps financial rewards because of that authority. The result is a dearth of camp oversight coast to coast.
“This is one of the provisions that perhaps best symbolizes how exasperating our legislative process has become,” said Forbes. “The ACA is the nation’s largest camp lobby and the only national lobby. Sadly, it has refused to acknowledge the pervasive child sex abuse and harm at myriad camps for more than a half century, including its own member camps. Nonetheless, California legislators accommodate the ACA before accommodating child advocates. This is the power of money and influence.”
Camp lobbyist Catherine Barankin has an enduring history of protecting clients like the Boy Scouts, Christian Camp Association and the American Camp Association. She has aggressively protested a multitude of meaningful camp safety bills and even garnered nearly 200 opposition letters for the 2020 bill, including 111 opposition letters from her client the Boy Scouts of America, despite the fact that the BSA has perpetrated the worst child sexual abuse campaign in American history.
Barankin originally testified against AB 1737 but on June 20, she made an about face in favor of the measure at the Senate Committee on Human Services. She did so because legislators decisively granted her and the ACA its wish list.
Forbes inquired why the bill reinstated language that benefits the ACA and who from the ACA influenced them to do so. Nobody responded.
According to numerous documents, ACA President Tom Rosenberg was also fully aware that his team offered public relations assistance to the camp operators who killed Forbes’ daughter Roxie. At the time, Summerkids and its owners Cara, Joe, Giancarlo and Maria DiMassa were ACA members. They still are. In fact, according to documents, the ACA pursued Cara DiMassa to transition Summerkids into a fully accredited camp after DiMassa and the camp killed Roxie.
According to the AB 1737 rewrite, “A children’s camp that does not register but is operating as a children’s camp, shall be subject to a monetary penalty in the amount determined by the local department,” this language does not ensure that any such penalty will be administered. In fact, one would be hard-pressed to be aware of all camps operating in the first place, let alone what “department” would have the will to pursue such penalties, since no such penalties have been required to date.
Forbes and Matyas withdrew their first camp safety bill after a consultant for the Assembly Committee on Health insisted that all language be gutted and an advisory committee be established in its place. Such committees are comprised of stakeholders who are charged with debating the issue in lieu of actual legislation.
It is debatable as to whether such committees offer any worth or if they are where legislation ordinarily goes to die. What is not debatable is how legislators cow-towed to influence-peddling in lieu of a bill with vital health and safety provisions.
The entirely rewritten AB 1737 states, “The advisory committee shall begin to convene no later than March 1, 2023, and report to the Governor and the Assembly Committees on Health, Human Services, and Public Safety, and the Senate Committees on Health, Human Services, and Public Safety, on or before December 31, 2024.
Even if the camp lobby-friendly rewrite becomes law, and even if the proposed committee is convened, recommendations would not likely take effect for 4-5 years.
Forbes has heard from senior members of the legislature — during his testimony at committee hearings and in other forums — about how important it was that he made them aware of this glaring if not lethal oversight gap. He has also heard pledge after pledge that such legislators would helm him deliver meaningful change.
The outcome, however, is almost entirely different than the promise.
“Welcome to our government,” Forbes said. “My daughter died a brutal, avoidable death. Other children have suffered year in year out. But if you think this would be enough to finally and properly protect kids at camps, think again. Politics always finds a way to prioritize conveniences over commitments, especially regarding our most vulnerable citizens. That said, we will not let a broken system break our spirit to pursue the mission at hand.”