Solano nonprofit executive lived in domestic violence safe house rented from city of Fairfield
A SafeQuest advocate said she encountered a lawyer for the organization outside a shuttered safe house in 2021. | Illustration by Tyler Lyn Sorrow.
SafeQuest Solano, the main provider of domestic violence services in Solano County, allowed an executive to live in a shelter rented from the city of Fairfield for $1 a year.
Cassandra Chanhsy, an advocate who worked for the nonprofit SafeQuest Solano, was doing yardwork outside a Fairfield safe house for victims of domestic violence and rape in early 2021, when she was surprised to see a man walk out. Not only was it unusual to see a man at the safe house, she thought it was empty, as it had been shut down for months. Chanhsy recognized the man as Richard Bruce Paschal Jr., SafeQuest’s business officer, who typically went by his middle name.
“And I’m like, ‘What are you doing here?’” Chanhsy recalled.
“I live here,” he told her.
SafeQuest — which has provided services for victims of domestic violence in Solano County for nearly 40 years — rents the house from the city of Fairfield for $1 per year, according to the city’s contract with the organization. But Chanhsy said she hadn’t worked in the shelter since late 2019, when the organization closed it. Her manager told her and the residents that the shelter was closing because of a plumbing issue, Chanhsy recalled in an interview.
When the Fairfield house closed, Chanhsy and the roughly 10 people who were staying there went to a different safe house in Vallejo. But she occasionally returned to Fairfield as a volunteer when the grass was overgrown or leaves needed raking.
It’s unclear how long Paschal lived at the Fairfield safe house, but three other former SafeQuest employees said they were aware that Paschal lived there. One former employee who requested to remain anonymous said that SafeQuest executive director Mary Anne Branch told her that Paschal was living in the house as part of his compensation. In a brief phone interview, Paschal declined to say whether he ever lived in the house.
An anonymous complaint that was emailed to the California Governor’s Office of Emergency Services in May 2022 that the Sun obtained states that he lived there from sometime in the summer of 2020 until March 2021. “No victims were taken in instead,” it states.
Meanwhile, Chanhsy and another victim advocate said the Vallejo shelter was largely empty. One advocate who worked there for a month before she resigned provided documentation that SafeQuest turned away 10 women in that time, saying there was no room when plenty of beds were available.
When operational, the Fairfield house had a capacity of 12 people per night, according to records submitted to the city of Fairfield. An advocate who worked in the Vallejo house said that its capacity was similar. But employees like Chanhsy said those beds sat empty while they worked alone in Vallejo with nothing to do. The organization received hundreds of thousands of dollars in federal and state grant funding, yet a log of late payments obtained by the Sun shows that many employees weren’t paid on time. The records show that the organization at times owed thousands of dollars in back pay and penalties.
The lack of services draws into question a bedrock service for Solano County that governments throughout the county rely on to protect victims of violent crime. SafeQuest has operational agreements to provide advocacy for victims of sexual assault and other services with nearly every police agency in Solano County, the Solano County District Attorney’s Office and Solano County Superior Court.
Millions in funding, few services
Former employees, including Chanhsy, said that the shelters in Fairfield and Vallejo were mostly empty for two years starting in late 2019. Records the organization submitted to the city of Fairfield showed that the safe house there was used very little in 2020 and 2021, even as the city had effectively donated it to the organization for that purpose.
But SafeQuest’s services were particularly necessary in those years as the COVID-19 pandemic drove an increase in domestic violence incidents around the world. A 2021 United Nations report found there was a global “shadow pandemic” of violence against women following stay-at-home-orders. A study by the American Journal of Emergency Medicine reported a spike in domestic violence-related calls to police immediately following lockdown measures in the United States.
According to SafeQuest, there was a 9% increase in instances of domestic violence in Solano County during the first two months of the pandemic. “Meanwhile, shelters, childcare centers, and rape crisis centers are overwhelmed and understaffed,” a 2020 grant application by SafeQuest stated.
The kinds of services SafeQuest is supposed to offer — in particular, emergency housing for people escaping domestic violence and transition services — can also help to prevent homelessness as the region struggles with a crippling shortage of affordable housing.
Mayor Steve Young endorses former West Sac Mayor Chris Cabaldon for State Senate
State Senate District 3 Candidate Chris Cabaldon. | Image from campaign website.
After speaking with two front-running candidates, Benicia Mayor Steve Young has endorsed Chris Cabaldonto replace Sen. Bill Dodd for State Senate District 3.
Benicia Mayor Steve Young
“Having spent a substantial amount of time talking with both candidates,” Mayor Young wrote, “it was clear to me that Christopher is far more familiar and knowledgeable about the many diverse challenges facing Solano County and the 3rd District. He is someone who is both a progressive and accomplished elected official.”
“When I worked in Sacramento, Chris was the Mayor of West Sacramento for more than 20 years,” Mayor Young continued. “Under his leadership, W. Sacramento transformed from a primarily industrial city as shown by the construction of Raley Field and the redevelopment of the riverfront across from Sacramento. We were both active in the League of California Cities, where he chaired the Asian-American caucus and was the first Filipino LGBTQ Mayor in the US.”
The endorsement was first announced in the Vallejo Times-Herald last week, where Cabaldon responded: “I am honored to have earned the support of Mayor Young. Benicia is a beautiful community, and I look forward to working with Mayor Young to protect access to clean drinking water, create good paying jobs, and invest in the infrastructure our Delta communities – and cities throughout Solano County – need to thrive.”
District 3 includes all or portions of Solano County as well as Contra Costa, Napa, Sacramento, Solano and Yolo counties. The district has been represented by Sen. Dodd since 2016. State senators are limited to serving two 4-year terms, which disqualifies Dodd from seeking another term.
Only the top two candidates in the March 5, 2024, primary will advance to the general election next November, regardless of party affiliation.
The candidates
Per the best of my web sleuthing, three candidates have announced their candidacy for the opening seat: former West Sac Mayor Chris Cabaldon, Vallejo Vice-Mayor Rozzana Verder-Aliga and Rohnert Park City Council Member and former Mayor Jackie Elward. All three candidates are running as Democrats.
Dr. Rozzana Verder-Aliga
State Senate District 3 Candidate Rozzana Verder-Aliga. | Image from campaign website.
Dr. Rozzana Verder-Aliga is the first Filipino-American woman elected to public office in Vallejo and Solano County. She is a mental health professional and licensed marriage and family therapist, and serves Vallejo as Vice-Mayor.
Verder-Aliga served on the Vallejo School Board for 12 years and the Solano County Board of Education for 6 years before being elected to a partial term on the Vallejo City Council in 2013 and re-elected to full terms in 2016 and 2020.
According to various press releases, Verder-Aliga has been endorsed by sitting State Senator Bill Dodd, CA State Treasurer Fiona Ma, CA Lieutenant Governor Eleni Kounalakis, former CA Superintendent Delaine Eastin, Napa Mayor Scott Sedgley and current West Sacramento Mayor Martha Guerrero, as well as Benicia Independent‘s very own Roger Straw. Lionel Largaespada, a former Benicia council member, also endorsed Verder-Aliga. A full list of Verder-Aliga’s endorsements was not available on her campaign website.
“My goal is to reinvigorate the California dream and strengthen the opportunities it promises its people in the state Senate,” said Verder-Aliga in a press release announcing her campaign.
Jackie Elward
State Senate District 3 Candidate Jackie Ellward.| Image from campaign website.
Jackie Elward is a first-generation immigrant from the Democratic Republic of the Congo. Although she has been described as a relative political newcomer, she is a veteran labor organizer and activist as well as a professional educator.
Elward was elected to Rohnert Park City Council in 2020, unseating a six-term council member in the process, and was unanimously selected to serve as mayor by her fellow council members. As the leader of a diverse and progressive majority on City Council, she was the first Black, immigrant woman to serve Rohnert Park.
Elward has spoken openly about the discrimination she has encountered as a Black woman in office, but said that the support of community and labor groups encouraged her to run for higher office regardless.
A list of Elward’s endorsements is available at her campaign website, although it is unclear if the endorsements included there are for this upcoming race and not previous campaigns.
In news releases, Elward has described herself as a “bridge builder” focused on uniting people from different backgrounds even around the most fractious of issues, and she has said she would work to fill a similar role in Sacramento.
Groups with names like Californians Against Higher Taxes sprung up to oppose Gov. Gavin Newsom’s plan to penalize oil companies. Advocates say one man is behind three of them.
California lawmakers were on the verge of passing Gov. Gavin Newsom’s proposal to allow the state to cap the profits of oil companies when a trio of advocacy groups with innocuous-sounding names went on an advertising blitz.
The groups — nonprofits that call themselves Californians Against Higher Taxes, Californians for Affordable and Reliable Energy and Californians for Energy Independence — campaigned against Newsom’s measure in a blizzard of social media posts and television ads. The groups said that further regulation of oil refineries would make the state more dependent on foreign crude oil imports or would raise the cost of gas for consumers, dubbing the proposal “Gavin’s gas tax.”
Those groups also billed themselves as coalitions of thousands of concerned taxpayers or small-business owners. Their ads and websites are rife with stock images of everyday-looking people.
But the organizations, according to corporate and lobbyist filings, weren’t created by average Californians or small businesses. One attorney from the North Bay, who has a long history of working with oil companies and trade associations, was central in organizing all three groups.
Steven Lucas, a San Rafael attorney who specializes in political law, is listed as the CFO and secretary for two of the groups, Californians for Affordable and Reliable Energy and Californians for Energy Independence. He also held the same roles with Californians Against Higher Taxes until last year.
Lucas did not respond to emails and voicemails requesting comment. The groups he operated were heavily funded by oil refineries and the Western States Petroleum Association, an industry trade group.
Environmentalists and consumer advocates said the advertising campaign is an example of how the oil industry used “astroturf” or “front” groups to try to kill Newsom’s proposal using misleading tactics.
It’s designed to create the perception that there’s a grassroots movement that’s against oil industry accountability. These are not real groups; these are phony groups created for the purpose of preventing the oil industry from facing accountability for its high prices and environmental crimes.” Jamie Court, president of Consumer Watchdog
“It’s designed to create the perception that there’s a grassroots movement that’s against oil industry accountability,” said Jamie Court, president of Consumer Watchdog, an advocacy group that pushed to cap soaring gas profits. “These are not real groups; these are phony groups created for the purpose of preventing the oil industry from facing accountability for its high prices and environmental crimes.”
Lawmakers ultimately passed Newsom’s proposal, though it was significantly scaled back after he got a lukewarm response from some moderate Democrats amid the oil industry’s ad push.
The bill Newsom signed into law gives state energy regulators the authority to place a cap on oil refiners’ profits in California — and to set the amount. They also now have the authority to fine companies that exceed the cap and require them to disclose information about their operations and prices.
The Democratic governor’s original proposal would have gone further by requiring legislators to set the amount of the profit cap. Still, the bill that passed was a major victory for environmentalists and consumer advocates who had failed, for decades, to pass measures designed to combat California’s highest-in-the-nation gas prices.
As lawmakers considered Newsom’s measure, the oil industry spent more than $9.4 million in the first quarter of 2023 on lobbying and public-influence campaigning, largely centered on Newsom’s oil profit proposal. About $5.2 million of that money was funneled into the three advocacy groups with ties to Lucas.
Combined, the oil-industry affiliated groups have run 568 social media ads on Facebook and Instagram since December, according to data from parent company Meta.
The ad tsunami started in late 2022, quickly after Newsom called a special session for lawmakers to consider measures to combat skyrocketing gas prices consumers were paying at the pump. He accused the oil refiners of “price gouging” Californians as the price of a gallon of regular gasoline soared to a statewide average of $6.42 last fall.
But opponents of the measure said the accusation that they used “astroturf” or deceptive tactics to stoke a perception of opposition is unfair and negates the concerns of a broad coalition of groups.
They said many business interests, including the California Chamber of Commerce and agricultural companies, also had concerns that Newsom’s approach, including the proposal that lawmakers ultimately adopted and his more aggressive earlier pitch, could have the unintended consequence of driving prices up if it causes oil companies to produce less gas in California.
In addition to Lucas, the three advocacy groups are headed by business association executives. Californians for Energy Independence listed Allan Zaremberg, the former leader of the state Chamber of Commerce who died this year, as its CEO. Californians for Affordable and Reliable Energy lists its CEO as Robert Lapsley, president of the California Business Roundtable, another association of business groups that includes oil companies.
Californians Against Higher Taxes, which was organized by Lucas and the law firm where he works, is now led by Jennifer Barrera, CEO of the Chamber of Commerce; and Thomas Hiltachk, a political attorney. Hiltachk did not respond to a request for comment.
Kevin Slagle, a spokesperson for the Western States Petroleum Association, said the notion that the opposition campaign cloaked its efforts is laughable. He said the groups had to report their spending, and that the effort through third-party groups was combined with ads directly funded and managed by oil companies and WSPA.
“It’s disingenuous to call these efforts fake. They’re very real and they’re based on legitimate policy concerns,” Slagle said. “Our political system has so much transparency built into it.”
Of the two dozen oil companies and trade associations that poured more than $9.4 million into California lobbying and influence campaigns, Chevron contributed more than half of that total. The company, the largest oil refiner in California, spent $4.9 million, including $3.63 million it contributed to Californians for Energy Independence.
Ross Allen, a Chevron spokesperson, defended the company’s lobbying efforts and suggested “attacks” on oil refining in the state are putting the supply at risk. He said California has volatile energy markets, in part, due to its clean-fuel standards that cut off its gas supply from the rest of the country.
“Chevron works hard to educate policymakers and the public about how fragile California’s energy markets really are,” Allen wrote in an email.
But Melissa Aronczyk, an associate professor at Rutgers University in New Jersey who studies the impact of public-relations campaigns on climate change policy, said the playbook that oil companies used by deploying “astroturf” groups in California is hardly new. She said the difference is that environmentalists have become more adept at uncloaking such tactics.
“People have much more awareness about greenwashing than they did ever before,” she said, using a term for marketing that’s intended to mislead the public about environmental impacts.
“[…] the tactic of using outside groups with seemingly innocuous names is designed to trick voters who might be more skeptical of advertising if they could see it’s paid for by oil companies.”
Aronczyk said the tactic of using outside groups with seemingly innocuous names is designed to trick voters who might be more skeptical of advertising if they could see it’s paid for by oil companies. In California, candidates and ballot measure campaigns must disclose their major donors in fine print at the bottom of ads. But that same disclosure requirement doesn’t apply to ads for issue-based campaigns that aren’t tied to an election.
She likened the “puppet campaign” strategy to the marketing tactics employed by other embattled industries, including tobacco companies and prescription drug firms, which bankrolled third-party advocacy groups to fight regulations targeting cigarettes and the proliferation of opioid drugs, respectively.
“They really are running scared, and that’s why they’re resorting to these tactics,” Aronczyk said. “It is a very short playbook, and it has been used for many decades.”
Indeed, Lucas, the attorney behind oil-industry-funded advocacy groups, is a partner at a law firm, Nielsen Merksamer, which also has a long history of working with tobacco companies to fight restrictions in California.
In 2017, two other attorneys from the firm were the treasurers of an advocacy group dubbed “Let’s Be Real” that worked with the tobacco industry in an unsuccessful attempt to overturn San Francisco’s law banning the sale of flavored tobacco and vaping products. Similarly, the firm played a major role in coordinating a failed referendum to repeal a 2020 statewide law that banned most flavored tobacco products.
Martinez Refinery’s Chemical Release Poses No Long-Term Hazard, Tests Find
Martinez Refinery. | Anda Chu/Bay Area News Group.
KQED, by Ted Goldberg and Dan Brekke, June 8, 2023
Contra Costa County health officials announced Thursday that soil testing conducted in the months after a Martinez oil refinery released nearly 50,000 pounds of powdered industrial chemicals last November has found no long-term health risks to residents in the area.
Contra Costa Health Officer Dr. Ori Tzvieli said the county is immediately lifting a March 7 advisory (PDF) that recommended residents refrain from consuming fruits and vegetables grown in soil that had received fallout from the Martinez Refining Company’s release. The refinery company is owned and operated by PBF Energy, based in Parsippany, New Jersey.
Tzvieli said the soil testing and an associated risk assessment “confirms that the primary health risk from the spent catalyst release occurred in the initial hours and days after the refinery release.”
The soil-testing results were released to a community oversight committee formed after the releases, which occurred last Nov. 24–25, on Thanksgiving and the following day.
Tzvieli added during a media briefing that followed the committee meeting that because PBF failed to immediately notify officials about the release, questions remain about what health effects residents might experience because of their exposure to the toxic dust immediately after it settled on their neighborhoods.
“We weren’t able to do measurement in real time because we didn’t know this was going on until several days later,” Tzvieli said. “So had we been able to do measurement in real time, we would have been able to look at concentrations — what was in the air.”
Some of the heavy metals in the dust, such as nickel, pose health concerns, he said.
“Some of those can have effects on the immune system, some of these metals can be carcinogenic. So it is a concerning incident,” he said.
At the same time, he added, the inability to measure the November release as it was occurring makes it hard to distinguish the hazard the incident posed from the impact of ongoing refinery emissions.
“So that’s why it’s hard to give people specific information about the risks that stemmed from this particular release,” Tzvieli said.
Consultants hired by the county analyzed soil samples from 14 sites stretching from El Sobrante to Benicia for more than a dozen metals that may have been associated with the release of 24 tons of refinery dust — material described as “spent catalyst” used in the refining process.
The results for most of the heavy metals the samples were analyzed for, including aluminum, copper, nickel, zinc and chromium, all came back both within an expected regional background range and below residential health limits set by the state Department of Toxic Substances Control.
Jenny Phillips, a toxicologist employed by consultant TRC, reported that samples of arsenic and lead were close to or exceeded state health limits at a handful of sites. But she added that the higher levels of those two toxic metals were probably unrelated to last November’s refinery release. [Emphasis added.] TRC’s report will be made available to the public sometime in the next two weeks, and it will be open for comment for 45 days.
‘One hundred ninety-four days after the release, we are now at the point where we’re telling people it’s OK to eat the fresh fruits and vegetables. The process is flawed.’Tony Semenza, Martinez resident and member of the oversight committee
Matt Kaufmann, Contra Costa County’s deputy health director, emphasized that the investigation of the Martinez incident is far from over. The county has hired a consultant to perform an independent root cause analysis of the release, and county prosecutors are weighing potential charges against the refinery.
Kaufmann criticized the refining company for failing to immediately notify local officials when the incident occurred.
The test results released Thursday “do not excuse the Martinez Refining Company for the lack of notification at the onset of this incident,” he said. “The lack of timely notification negated our ability as health officials to protect our community, including those most vulnerable, namely the medically compromised, the elderly and the children within our community.”
In a statement, PBF Energy spokesperson Brandon Matson said the company was “pleased” the county had released the soil-testing analysis and lifted its health advisory.
“The results are in line with our initial statements about the material,” Matson said. He also offered the latest in a string of apologies the company has offered to Martinez residents, saying the company has investigated the release, has identified corrective actions and is committed to implementing them.
Tony Semenza, a Martinez resident serving on the oversight committee, expressed frustration that it has taken so long to assess the hazard posed by the releases.
“One hundred ninety-four days after the release, we are now at the point where we’re telling people it’s OK to eat the fresh fruits and vegetables,” Semenza said. “The process is flawed. This should have been done much quicker, a while ago. … I’m upset with the way the process works.”
The test results come less than two weeks after the FBI confirmed it has launched a joint investigation with the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency into the Martinez plant’s spent catalyst release.
Members of the refinery accountability group Healthy Martinez welcomed the largely reassuring test results, but expressed continuing misgivings about PBF and the refinery.
“I’m grateful that the Thanksgiving release no longer poses serious danger and that Contra Costa Health has demonstrated leadership in this process, but I still don’t trust the refinery that didn’t report it,” said Martinez resident group member Jillian Elliott.
“Today’s results are only one piece of the larger issue,” said Heidi Taylor, a longtime Martinez resident and Healthy Martinez member. “It doesn’t change the fact that this oil refinery dumped toxic metals on our community (and) didn’t report it to county health.”
Healthy Martinez has also called on PBF to install improved emissions control and air monitoring equipment at the refinery.
FBI agents and EPA personnel have gone door to door asking residents about their experience during and after the incident. The probe also has included circulation of an online survey.
Martinez resident Wendy Ke said representatives from both federal agencies approached her late last month and asked a series of questions.
“It was primarily, ‘Do you have photos, do you have videos, do you have factual documentation? Did you touch the spent catalyst? Did you see it?’” Ke said.
She said the morning after Thanksgiving, her neighborhood was coated with what looked like ash, as if there had been a major wildfire nearby.
“But it did look a little bit different,” she said. “It didn’t have a light-weight ash to it, like flaky ash. It seemed a little more sticky.”
The same morning, resident Zachary Taylor found his neighborhood covered in dust.
“Just a consistent coating across everything, almost like a snowfall, like a light dusting, but then we go out across the street and absolutely everything is covered with it,” Taylor said.
Refinery dust known as ‘spent catalyst’ from the PBF Energy plant sits on a car windshield in Martinez in late November 2022.
Refinery catalyst is a powdered chemical compound used in the process of breaking down crude petroleum into products like gasoline. Spent catalyst is the material left over after the high-temperature refining process and contains a mix of potentially hazardous components.
Before Thursday’s test results were released, county health officials told Martinez residents that the dust that coated homes, vehicles, lawns, gardens and a nearby schoolyard included heavy metals (PDF), including aluminum, chromium, nickel, vanadium and zinc. The county health department said there could have been short-term respiratory problems from breathing in the dust right after the incident, and that potential long-term health impacts would depend on each person’s exposure.
Contra Costa County hired TRC, a Connecticut-based consulting and engineering firm, to take soil samples in 14 locations (PDF) from El Sobrante to Martinez to Benicia. Those locations were chosen after local air regulators mapped fallout from the release (PDF). Crews began collecting samples in May. Health officials say the samples were taken to a lab to see which health risks they might pose through touching, inhaling or consuming food.
The department also asked local prosecutors to file charges against PBF Energy. That request is under review, according to Ted Asregadoo, a Contra Costa County District Attorney spokesperson.
Asregadoo said the office is investigating whether PBF violated the law by failing to report an actual or threatened hazardous material release to county officials and whether the company made illegal discharges into the county stormwater system.
The Bay Area Air Quality Management District has said the release was caused by a malfunction (PDF) within the refinery’s fluid catalytic cracking unit. The air district has issued 21 notices of violation against PBF in connection with the November release and continues to investigate the incident, according to district spokesperson Ralph Borrmann.
PBF representatives have apologized for the releases, noting the company has cooperated with regulators and made changes to prevent a repeat of the Thanksgiving incident.
Nevertheless, some refinery neighbors say their sense of safety has been shattered.
“At this point I feel very uncertain about what I’m breathing, knowing what the potential is for release on a daily basis,” said Ke, who has lived in Martinez for more than a decade.
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