Money & Politics | Daily Report

Born in Mexico and raised in Los Angeles, comic Paul Rodriguez emerged in the 1980s as an appealing crossover star, IMBd.com says.

paulrodriguez.com

“Sticking close to his Latino roots as the basis for his comedy,” as the entertainment website puts it, Rodriguez has been featured in big-screen stand-up (“Original Latin Kings of Comedy”) and big-screen comedy (“Born in East L.A.,” “A Million to Juan”).

“Latinos are black, white, brown, beige – what does that say about our ancestors?” Rodriguez jokes. “We’ll sleep with anybody.”

But to some environmentalists, Rodriguez’s more recent role as front man for the “California Latino Water Coalition,” a growers-backed group that pushed for more irrigation water for agribusiness during the drought, wasn’t very funny.

And the prospect of Rodriguez as member of a state commission that could spend as much as $3 billion on new dams is no joke, either, they say.

On Tuesday, Rodriguez told the Fresno Bee that Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger planned to appoint him to the California Water Commission, a moribund entity that will take on new life if voters approve an $11.4 billion water bond measure on the November ballot.

Schwarzenegger’s office won’t confirm the plan. But as Capitol Weekly reports, Democrats may fight if the lame-duck governor insists on making the appointment: Environmentalists want to stop the state from spending billions on new dams, and they believe Rodriguez is “a key ally in Schwarzenegger’s efforts to build water projects,” CW says.

The water bond was last summer’s solution to the state’s long-term water needs. It was a compromise crafted in the midst of a crippling, three-year drought that made the impact of the economic recession even more severe in the Central Valley.

In that crisis atmosphere, big growers, including Stewart Resnick of Paramount Farms, lobbied the state and federal government to pump more irrigation water. To do that, the government would have had to slash water allotments that scientists said were urgently needed to save the storied Sacramento River salmon run from extinction.

As part of the protest, the Latino Water Coalition, with Rodriguez as chairman, held a series of noisy rallies, including a four-day protest march.

Latino farm workers played a prominent role in the march, but the head of the United Farm Workers union said they were only pawns in the growers’ game.

“This is not a farm worker march,” the UFW’s Arturo Rodriguez told the New York Times. “This is a farmer march orchestrated and financed by growers.”

(Details on who financed the Latino Water Coalition have never emerged. The nonprofit hasn’t yet filed a tax return with the attorney general’s charitable tax division, records reflect. The coalition’s website has gone dark. Their last known PR man didn't return a reporter's phone call.)

If voters approve the water bond, much of the money will be spent repairing the state’s brittle water-delivery infrastructure and restoring the collapsing ecosystem of the Sacramento-San Joaquin River Delta. But as much as $3 billion might be spent on new dams.

In a time when other western states are demolishing dams out of environmental concerns, the governor is said to have keen interest in a big, new dam on the San Joaquin east of Fresno. Passage of the bond measure doesn’t require dam-building, but the water commission, which last met when Gray Davis was governor, would have a big say in the matter. That’s the panel Rodriguez says he’s about to join, assuming the appointment comes through and it isn’t throttled by the Legislature.

The prospect of new dam construction has turned some environmental groups against the bond. Others oppose it simply because they’re worried about the financially-strapped state taking on even more debt.