California's Aliso Canyon Disaster and Regulating Methane Leaks

The big news from California regards a massive leak from Southern California Gas Company's Aliso Canyon storage well. The leak, which has been ongoing since October 23, is accounting for roughly a quarter of California's methane emissions.

This is bad news for numerous reasons: Methane is a greenhouse gas 20 times more potent than carbon dioxide in its heat-trapping effect over a 100-year period (and 75 times as potent over 20 years). Unburned hydrocarbons are also a noxious pollutant in their own right, causing respiratory distress, headaches and other health problems.

Worse yet, is that that SoCal Gas has proven unable to plug the leak and expect that it will continue until the spring of 2016.

What's perhaps the most infuriating for me is that this sort of leak doesn't appear to be covered by the state's Cap-and trade apparatus designed to limit emissions, since methane leaks from wells do not need to be reported as emissions under state law.  That's too bad, because as EEnews  notes, the leak is the equivalent to about three percent of the state's TOTAL annual greenhouse gas emissions.

If the leak had been covered under the California Air Resources Board's last auction (which calculates methane's impact at 20 times the, SoCal Gas would have needed to purchase SoCal Gas approximately 1.67 million permits at $12.73 per ton of CO2 equivalent to cover the amount of methane leaked at the time writing this. That's $21.3 million. Of course, applicable environmental damage and public health fines, compensation for victims, as well as medium-sized terms in state minimum-security prisons for relevant SoCal Gas executives would be layered on top of that. 

I'm not holding my breath -- though California is much more diligent about these sorts of things than my current residence of Texas.

The good news is that the state has been thinking very concretely about these sorts of emissions and I would imagine they likely will be deploying regulations and countermeasures on leaks in the near future. Colorado was the first state to regulate well and pipeline leaks in 2014.  The federal government is finalizing regulations (though these will certainly be challenged in court) as well. However, the federal regulations apply to new pipelines and wells and not existing ones.

Expanding the Umbrella: Medicaid Expansion 2015 Review and New Year's Preview

With 2016 right around the corner, and several new governors moving into office, it's as good of time as any to take stock of where the Medicaid expansion has gone and the prospects for progress in the new year.  Despite massive Democratic setbacks at the state level in the 2014 midterm elections, Medicaid expansion fared reasonably well in 2015, and 2016 posts several opportunities for new states to expand as well, as well as one at risk of backsliding.

First, we visit the ghosts of Medicaid expansion past:

As Chart I shows,  the ACA Medicaid expansion has proceeded at a similar overall pace to the original Medicaid take-up in the late 1960s, though the holdouts to Obamacare are likely to offer stiffer resistance than the late adopters of the initial program.

Democratic defeats in the 2014 elections likely prevented expansions in Maine and possibly Florida, and may have influenced resistance to expansion plans in several other states, including Tennessee, Utah and Wyoming. However, Four new states joined the expansion -- Indiana, Pennsylvania, Alaska, and Montana -- which increases the number of states fully expanding Medicaid from 26 to 30. 

Head below the fold for state-by-state analysis and a peak at 2016.

End-of-Year judicial confirmation update

On the judicial appointment front, there was good news and bad news before Congress skipped town last week. 

The good news was that the Senate confirmed two of President Barack Obama's long-pending judicial nominations.

The bad news was that the two were for the D.C. Superior Court, the local trial court for the nation's capital and not one with federal jurisdiction.

Overall, 2015 proceeded about as poorly on the judicial confirmation front as possible without a complete blockade of Obama appointees. The Senate only got around to confirming 10 District Court judges and only one Circuit Court Nominee. 

Compare that record with the 12 circuit court and 76 District Court Appointees confirmed in 2014 with a Democratic-controlled Senate and no filibuster for lower-court appointees.

And we won't even talk about the Court of Federal Claims appointees lying fallow.

Yes, elections matter, why do you ask?

Obama has compounded this problem by not nominating any more circuit court judges (though he has continued to nominate considerable numbers of district court judges). Granted, this is something of a chicken-and-egg problem, as McConnell has hinted the Senate wouldn't confirm any new circuit judge appointments anyway. However, it would still be nice to try -- especially given two long-standing openings on the Fifth Circuit, currently controlled 10-5 by GOP appointees and having a median justice somewhere to the right of Atilla the Hun, especially on reproductive rights.

Mitch McConnell has agreed to schedule final votes for four more district court judges by President's Day and Luis Felipe Restrepo on January 11.

It ain't much, but it is a start.

How do we use bikeshare in the Sun Belt?

The Kinder Institute at Rice University has an interesting report out comparing four Bike-Share Systems in four "Sun Belt" cities.  Three are in Texas (Austin, Houston, Fort Worth), while the other is in Colorado (Denver).  The report's central idea is to get a snapshot of bike share in newer cities with lower density and planning optimized for the automobile -- in contrast to the old urban areas in the Northeast with high density.

The study, which covers the first five months of 2015, notes that most kiosks and most trips are still of the two-way weekday variety (i.e. from one-Kiosk to another), indicating that most users use the system for work trips.  However, there is a greater percentage of users in Houston and Fort Worth -- especially Houston -- who use the systems for round trips (i.e. they start and end at the same Kiosk). I'd be interested to see how this compares with bike share systems in older, denser cities.

The study is a good first stab and thinking about how we use bike share in newer cities, but I do have several additional points to make here, including a criticism or two. 

First it's interesting to note that the broad pattern of trips in these Sunbelt cities still is two-way weekday trips, which indicates that many residents here use the program for similar purposes to those in older cities -- though the report doesn't explicitly compare the two.

Second, I think that the report misses a rather obvious explanation for the differences in trip types between the cities. The authors do suggest several useful variables to explain the differences in usage across kiosks and cities. For example, they note that cities with greater numbers of kiosks have more two-way work trips. Also, the kiosks with more round-trips tend to be located near bike paths or in large parks. Also, Houston allows for a full hour of use before additional surcharges kick in, unlike the traditional pay system which gives a free half hour to the first members.

However, the report misses the idea of density.  Denver's and Austin's systems seem at first glance to be more closely spaced in a tight network, facilitating two-way commuter or errand trips. In contrast Houston and Fort Worth's systems are more spread out, limiting the utility of the system and leading to people treating it like a bike rental than bike share. They don't have any measurements on density, which would be interesting to see as well (maybe a median distance between adjacent kiosks, or a distribution of distances would be a good measure here....)

Density of the network is also rather valuable to total usage, as a National Association of City Transportation Professionals study has noted. So as Houston looks to expand this year, while I hope officials expand the scope of the bike share (please, please come to Rice Village!), I also hope they reinforce its density in its existing footprint (more stations in the Museum District!). This will expand its utility as a short-distance commuting tool.

And it goes without saying that expanding the bicycle infrastructure on the ground (more and better bicycle lanes please...) will help bring more cyclists on to the roads and keep cars moving at more reasonable (and safer) speeds.

But with this gripe aside, the report is a nice initial foray into how bike share works, and has nice nuts-and-bolts data on the use of each kiosk in all the cities and some good basic visualizations of usage in each city's network.

The invaluable Charles Kuffner, as always, has a summary and extensive analysis of a Houston Chronicle article on the subject.  He also makes the trenchant point that while knowing how people use bike share is useful, the fact that they are using it widely is the most important point.

Amen to that.

Union contracts, what are they good for?

Last week, Erik Loomis posted a summary of an article about the ongoing pilots' union negotiations with Southwest.  Loomis' point (and the excellent article he links to) are that union negotiations are about more than money -- they are also about the conditions under which employees work.  In this case, pilots voted down a proposed contract that offered them a large raise in part because Southwest demanded far more flexibility on duty hours to match other airlines  (which had managed to force those concessions from bankruptcy judges).

With the constant refrain we hear about unions being all about grabbing money, this idea of the employment environment is extremely important. I would also add that rules about firing and hiring are very important as well. My old union at the University of Michigan just settled (and essentially won) a grievance filed by a Graduate Student Instructor named Alex Chen who was offered and accepted a job in the bargaining unit, before having that offer yanked by her supervisor for spurious reasons. 

Of course, Chen lost her health insurance and tuition waiver in addition to her salary. This situation is deadly to a graduate student, who probably would have to drop out of school facing a tuition bill of more than $10,000. I've known several students in situations like this; and the psychological stress they face is extreme.

Chen reached out to the union and found out that not only did contract language back her position, but that she also scores of fellow members willing to protest on her behalf.  That article, which details what happened in the meeting, contains several fabulous anecdotes about a department program chair behaving like a stubborn child who has been caught lying about doing her homework.

An interview with Chen outlining her particular situation is here.

Anyhow, I highly recommend Loomis' post -- and the excellent comment thread, which features a really good discussion of the nuts and bolts of work rules in a contract led by a freight pilot (Major Kong) who is often found in the comment threads of progressive blogs. The thread is doubly worthwhile because it brings in information from the union and not just from Southwest, as well as discussing how issues like codeshare and subcontracts with regional airlines can undercut airline unions.

And remember -- work rules and hiring practices are just as important as wages.

With Bel Edwards win, Louisiana set to expand Medicaid

A quiet legislative maneuver from last Spring combined with an unexpected triumph of Democrat John Bel Edwards in the governor's race makes it nearly certain the Louisiana will become the 31st state -- and second in the former confederacy --  to expand Medicaid.

On Saturday, Edwards, who strongly favors expansion, easily defeated sitting U.S Sen. David Vitter in Louisiana's gubernatorial run-off election (after throwing this haymaker on the airwaves). Edwards' replacement of Bobby Jindal in itself removes a massive obstacle to the Medicaid expansion, as Jindal is an implacable (and inexplicable) foe of covering 242,000 uninsured Louisianans.

However, the state legislative majorities remain firmly in GOP hands in Louisiana. This phenomenon has stalled governors who have wanted to accept the expansion: just ask Jay Nixon in Missouri, Terry McAuliffe in Virginia and (until recently) Steve Bullock in Montana.

But the good news is that the legislature in Louisiana already has acted. Well, sort of. The legislature has rejected multiple bills expanding Medicaid in 2013, 2014 and 2015. However, in 2015 both houses passed a joint resolution laying out circumstances under which the state can expand Medicaid. The resolution creates a mechanism under which -- if a new governor assents -- the department of health and hospitals will set a fee on hospital systems to fund any state portion of the Medicaid expansion. Hospitals will likely be fine with this, as the bill exempts the smallest providers and in any case accepting federal Medicaid dollars will pump a much greater amount of funding back into the system.

In short, the legislature isn't exactly pushing for an expansion, but it is devolving its power to set up a mechanism under which a governor can chose to take it. That's exactly the opposite of what Texas did in 2013, when it took away the governor's power to accept the expansion in order to make it less likely that the state would take it.

So in any case, at least we're stumbling forward toward doing the right thing -- after we've tried everything else, of course, but I'll take it.  

Finally, note that this happening is further evidence of two important points.

First, Republican resistance to the Obamacare remains strong and widespread, but continues to slowly erode at the state level.

Second, quite simply is that elections still matter. Each of the four major contenders in the Louisiana gubernatorial race, including the three Republicans, expressed openness to expanding Medicaid. However, Edwards was the most consistent and strident supporter of expansion and is the least likely to impose conditions on expansion that would hurt recipients.

How much would expanding Medicaid help in states that haven’t accepted the expansion?

Perhaps the single biggest story about the implementation of the Affordable Care Act has been the battle in states deciding whether to accept the Medicaid Expansion. The expansion is perhaps the single most important tool in the ACA’s coverage expansion tool kit. It takes 50 state-based single payer systems and drastically expands eligibility for them, which is the single largest progressive victory in politics since the Great Society. Other important Medicaid reforms drastically streamline the application procedures and eliminated asset tests to draw out formerly eligible people who might have gotten tangled up in the system or not bothered applying because the state made you apply in person on Tuesday between the hours of 2:30 p.m. and 3:04 p.m.

However, the expansion is not some magical talisman that instantly enrolls all eligible individuals. Some people will remain ignorant of the program despite the best outreach efforts, while other will not enroll for any variety of reasons. And more to the point, 24 states hadn’t fully taken advantage of the Medicaid expansion by the beginning of 2015. Pennsylvania, Indiana, Montana and Alaska have all signed on this year, leaving 20 holdouts (half of whom were in the former Confederacy – but I digress).

The cool thing that we have some real data of how ACA has actually performed on the ground over the last two years, we make some interesting dynamic projections of what would have happened had some states accepted the Medicaid, instead of simply discussing the number of people who would be eligible for help under the expansion.

I mean, heck, this Charles Gaba fellow has been counting the people who actually signed up for coverage for two years, I might as well take one shot at figuring out who would have signed up if they could have. 

To accomplish that, follow me below the fold, where I build a simple interactive regression model to project the reduction in the uninsured population in states that haven’t expanded Medicaid. Don’t worry; I’ll label the scary part where I work through the model so you can skip the simple summary where I discuss the results in plain English (but you really should read the model section, it’s rather of important and it makes fun of Bobby Jindal).