Anyone who has doubted the effectiveness of government advocacy need only look to California and the industry's defense of public golf for validation.
A measure that threatened the future of municipal golf in the country's most populous state died, at least for the remainder of the year, on May 19 when Assembly Bill 1910 was held in the California Assembly Appropriations Committee Suspense File, where it was held in committee and was not brought up for a vote. Advocacy for public golf by the Southern California Golf Association and the USGA are in part responsible for the failure of the proposed legislation.
AB 1910, known by advocates of the game as the Public Golf Endangerment Act, passed through the Assembly's Local Government Committee and was referred to the Appropriations Committee, pending changes, on April 27. The Appropriations Committee sent the proposed legislation to the Suspense File, where it is subject to further review by the committee. The committee did not vote on the proposed legislation, meaning it is finished at least for the rest of 2022.
There are a lot of positive attributes to public golf. . . . If you don't have anywhere to do those things, then how do you do it? What happens to that pipeline of growth in the game?
"Bills have to get a successful floor vote in their committee of origin by next Friday to move on to the Senate," said Craig Kessler, director of government affairs for the Southern California Golf Association. "Since there are no more Suspense hearings in Appropriations before next Friday, it gets held up and dies for 2022. (Suspense File) is where bad bills go to die."
The bill proposed providing public relief in the way of developer subsidies and grants to local agencies to redevelop California's municipal golf courses into low-incoming housing and green space. To be eligible for public assistance in converting a golf course, a project must meet several criteria under AB 1910 in its current form. At least 25 percent of all new dwelling units must be affordable to, and occupied by, lower-income households; at least 15 percent of the development must be publicly accessible open space (a golf course is not considered public space under AB 1910); no more than one-third of the square footage of the development, excluding the portion reserved for open space, is dedicated to nonresidential uses, such as parking.
Assembly Bill 1910 was first introduced in 2021 as AB 672 by assembly member Cristina Garcia of Bell Gardens in Los Angeles County. It appeared dead in January after it passed through two California Assembly committee hearings on Jan. 12, but failed Jan. 20 to get the necessary support in the Appropriations Committee.
It was brought up again to the Housing and Community Development committee on March 23, where it passed by a 6-2 vote. An early April vote by the Local Government Committee was postponed by the bill's author when it did not have the support necessary to get through the committee. It passed with a 5-2 vote in the Local Government Committee on April 27.
The SCGA sees the death of the proposed legislation as a win for the future of the game. There are 960 golf courses in California, about 20 percent of which are publicly owned.
"There are a lot of positive attributes to public golf," Kessler said.
"If you don't have anywhere to do those things, then how do you do it? What happens to that pipeline of growth in the game?"
Garcia, the bill’s author, is running for the U.S. House of Representatives in November, so this might be the last gasp for such a bill for quite a while.
No one in California wants to be on against housing. The lack of housing in California is real, and it is a crushing problem. But this was a bad bill.
"I'm not sure how much of an appetite any of her successors will have for this," Kessler said.
"No one in California wants to be on against housing. The lack of housing in California is real, and it is a crushing problem. But this was a bad bill."
The SCGA and USGA both ran PR campaigns advocating for the benefits of public golf and calling for golfers to lobby their local representatives.
"The SCGA and the whole alphabet soup of golf's leadership organizations may have made solid public policy arguments to counter the bill," the SCGA said in a news release, "but without the support of rank-and-file golfers, those arguments would have carried far less weight."
The battle, even for public golf, is fighting against perception.
"The industry, instead of focusing on municipal golf, which is the meat and potatoes we all grew up on, instead we focus on Augusta," Kessler said. "We love Augusta, but that doesn't define golf. We've let that define golf, and that leads people to think it's elite and aloof, when it is the opposite.
"I think what finally happened is legislators in California found out that golf is not the soft target they thought it was."
