Virtually every major newspaper in California carried a front-page story last week about Californians having responded to Governor Newsom’s call for 15% voluntary water cutbacks by cutting back a paltry 1.8%.

California’s 2021 legislative session closed Friday. Some bills are on their way to the Governor’s Office for signature; others didn’t quite make it this session. As in all legislative sessions, the vast majority of the bills filed at the beginning of session died somewhere along the way, most of them much earlier than Friday at midnight.

All politics are local. As is the case with all clever aphorisms, that one too has its limits. Some politics are state. More germane to this update, some public policies that affect the golf industry are decided at the state level. And it is to a few of these that we address your attention today.

At risk of hammering away at what you likely already know, here is how California’s major reservoirs stood as of midnight August 8.

We were so impressed with the Golf Strategic Plan that Los Angeles County released last week that we thought we should share it with others.

SCGA members who live in proximity to Los Angeles County’s Victoria Golf Course in Carson will be receiving information from SCGA later this morning (Friday) about how to participate in an online survey as well as two (2) public meetings in August about what to do in the wake of the demise of the Kimmelman half of what was supposed to be the redevelopment of this long troubled 18-hole regulation golf course.

To answer the most asked question about COVID, while there are many counties in California that are now recommending that all persons wear face coverings when indoors, there is only one that is mandating the use of masks when indoors – Los Angeles County.

Citing continued increases in transmission of COVID-19, the Los Angeles County Department of Public Health announced earlier this afternoon that it is issuing a mandate to require that all residents wear masks while indoors, whether they are fully vaccinated or not.

Too much has been made of Franklin Roosevelt’s 1943 speech in which he coined the phrase repeated incessantly by historians and essayists ever since – “Dr. New Deal has given way to Dr. Win the War.”

We don’t cite this letter to boil your blood but to remind you that it is indicative of what a vast majority of the state’s population thinks about golf in general and its use of water in specific.