County Supervisor Suggests Removing Controversial Section of Independent Report on February Refinery Fire
Powerful trade unions group bashes investigators' conclusion on 2014 law governing contract workers; refinery gets new manager; Brenda Leal wins special school board election
Flexing its considerable political muscle, the State Building and Construction Trades Council of California (SBCTC) showed up in force at a public meeting Tuesday to lambaste a section of the independent report on the Feb. 1 fire at PBF Energy’s Martinez refinery that called into question a law that it lobbied for over a decade ago. At the end of the meeting, county Supervisor Shanelle Scales-Preston, who received major financial support from trade unions affiliated with SBCTC in her narrow election victory last year, suggested that the section dealing with the state law, SB 54, be stricken from the report.
The 2014 law, which placed strict requirements on which contract workers refineries could hire to perform certain tasks, has become a lightning rod since the report by JEM Advisors was made public, though it wasn’t cited as the root cause of the fire. JEM concluded that the primary cause of the fire was a lack of adequate oversight and work control by the Martinez Refining Co. that allowed two contractors to open the wrong flange during “turnaround” work on a process unit and release hydrocarbon liquid that ignited the fire.
But the law, which, according to the report, effectively required that such contract workers come through SBCTC-controlled union halls, was cited among four “contributing” causes of the fire, with the consultants saying it has prevented refineries from hiring experienced, skilled contractors that had previously performed such work. Such an outcome was predicted by some when the bill was debated in Sacramento in 2013.
"This excludes many highly experienced turnaround professionals who have worked on California turnarounds prior to 2014,” the consultant report reads.
While SB 54 wasn’t the focus of Tuesday’s presentation by JEM’s Rex Kenyon and Tom Hanson, longtime veterans of the oil and refining industries, it was the theme of the public comment period as SBCTC officials and workers who attended the meeting in Martinez took turns trashing that conclusion, claiming that refinery safety has actually improved as a result of the bill and that the section related to SB 54 should be stricken from the report.
Mark Mulliner, the Northern California regional director of the SBCTC, directed sharp comments at Kenyon in particular over the inclusion of SB 54 in the report, peppering him with questions about his background and experience with the work performed by such contractors.
“This board needs to know when a third-party analysis comes in and starts making legislative remarks about something they know nothing about. … How many crafts union people did you work around? How many training facilities did you go to, Rex? … Before you made your analysis, did you go to local union halls? Was there a manpower shortage?
“Do you have any data? Do you have any training? You ever instruct? Do you ever teach people? Or you sit in your office and you pump shit out of it? Because your personal opinion in this matter about SB 54 is shit.”
When Mulliner challenged Kenyon and Hanson to answer his flurry of questions, county HazMat Programs chief Nicole Heath interjected that they would would be addressed at the end of the public comment period. But Kenyon and Hanson were never asked to respond after the public comments ended.
Commenting after the public comment period, Scales-Preston backed striking the discussion around SB 54 from the report.
“Listening to the report, what I heard from JEM was that the incident occurred because of inadequate oversight of contractor work, despite the walkthroughs, despite the labeling (of equipment). There was not supervision there. That’s on MRC.
“Processes are important. It’s not just that we put them in the book and put it up on the shelf, but we actually follow each of those processes. And that has nothing to do with SB 54 at all. That has to do with making sure the work is done. … I think SB 54 should be removed from this report. I don’t want it to seem as though we’re going to focus on SB 54 and not focus on the changes in protocols.”
The trade union members clapped in response to her comments.
With the JEM consultants given no opportunity to respond to the criticisms leveled at them by Mulliner and several other trade union representatives, Heath followed Scales-Preston’s remarks by also calling into question the accuracy of the report’s findings related to SB 54 and said she would work with the MRC Oversight Committee on whether to remove them.
“Contra Costa Health has always been committed to ensuring that anything that we put out is technically and factually accurate,” she said, noting that amendments had been made to past investigative reports following public comments. “What I’m hearing today is that there is a portion that is factually inaccurate. …. I’m happy to commit to having our oversight committee work with our contractors to look at the removal of SB 54 language from the report.”
Despite the long-term decline in refinery accidents and releases in California, MRC has experienced a series of such incidents since November 2022’s spent catalyst release that dumped at least 20 tons of toxic dust on the surrounding community. Incidents of varying severity continued through 2023, and after a relatively quiet 2024, the Feb. 1 fire once again shined a spotlight on the refinery’s safety practices. Another, much smaller fire at MRC in April involved a contract worker who was hospitalized.
While speakers from the trade unions at Tuesday’s meeting characterized JEM’s conclusions surrounding SB 54 as nonsense, the same questions raised by Kenyon and Hanson in the report were raised a decade ago when the bill was being debated in Sacramento. On Oct. 2, 2013, United Steelworkers representative Catherine Houston posted the following on the website Patch:
This is the first time there is legislation that flat out legislates who gets jobs and who loses jobs, not based upon safety records, which is the current criteria for getting the work. Instead it’s based upon being a graduate of the only training program available to only a select group – the bill sponsor.
Then-Gov. Jerry Brown ultimately signed the bill into law.
The Construction and Building Trades Council has long been a powerful political force at both the state and local levels, pouring large sums of money into the campaign coffers of Democrats (SB 54 was passed largely along party lines, with all but one of the 27 yes votes in the state Senate coming from Democrats).
In last year’s hotly contested supervisors race, a consortium of trade and service-oriented labor unions, including several SBCTC affiliates, spent over $650,000 through the Contra Costa County Works PAC to boost Scales-Preston in her race against Mike Barbanica. Several unions also contributed directly to Scales-Preston’s campaign. Scales-Preston prevailed in the race by 3,421 votes out of more than 79,000 cast.
In a follow-up conversation with me on Friday, Scales-Preston said no one from organized labor groups had asked her to push for the removal of the section on SB 54 and that she based her opinion upon reading the report. She reiterated what she said at the meeting, that the cause of the fire was the failure by MRC to follow safe practices and processes, and the report should focus on that.
Also at Tuesday’s meeting, MRC’s new refinery manager, Bevan Lewis, introduced himself. Lewis replaces Daniel Ingram, who has taken over PBF’s refinery in Chalmette, Louisiana.
After graduating from the University of Toledo in 2001 with a chemical engineering degree, Lewis worked for Air Products, Sunoco and BP prior to joining PBF in 2011, where he took on numerous roles at the company’s Toledo, Ohio, refinery before joining MRC in 2022 as its operations manager.
“I wanted to come here tonight primarily just to reaffirm our commitment to cooperating, in an open and transparent manner, with the county in all ongoing investigations and inspections related to the Feb. 1 incident,” he said. “Fortunately, we’ve already made significant progress on the most substantive action items recommended from the county’s third party independent investigation. We look forward to completing all necessary, required actions in the coming months.”
Lewis said that MRC also would be implementing additional corrective actions from its internal investigation, which it is wrapping up and which should be submitted to the county by the end of the month.
Addressing the controversy surrounding SB 54, Lewis said the refinery valued its relationship with its contract partners and the building trades and was the first company in California to implement the bill.
Ingram led MRC through the string of incidents that started with the 2022 spent catalyst release, seeking to reassure the public and community leaders of the refinery’s commitment to safe operations. He gave several presentations to the Martinez City Council in 2023 and 2024 where he highlighted the refinery’s various safety initiatives and progress in reducing incidents but, other than attending a town hall organized by Scales-Preston in March where he came under heavy criticism from the public, had kept a low profile since the February fire.
Craig’s take: I emailed the following public comment to Contra Costa Health in response to the events at Tuesday’s meeting, and also expressed these sentiments to Scales-Preston in a conversation on Friday:
I was troubled by some comments made at the end of the June 17 public meeting suggesting that the contributing cause conclusions centering on SB 54 as it pertains to restrictions on the hiring of contractors should be stricken from the "independent" investigation report.
First of all, the integrity and credibility of any independent investigation depends on such an investigation being free of political influence. Once political influence enters the picture, such an investigation ceases to be "independent" and becomes subject to the whims of our flawed and dysfunctional political system that is largely controlled by special interests and the money they spend on election campaigns.
The suggestion by Supervisor Scales-Preston that the SB 54 discussion should be stricken from the report smacks of political interference in an independent process, thereby compromising the integrity of the report and investigation. The State Construction and Building Trades Council and its affiliates, which spend large sums of money on local and statewide election campaigns, are clearly angry about the questions being raised about the impact of SB 54 on the availability of qualified contract workers to perform dangerous turnaround work, and are applying political pressure to have the report changed. They appear to be succeeding. As I stated in my public comment June 17, such questions were also raised about this bill's impact on refinery safety by the United Steelworkers when it was passed along party lines in the state Legislature in 2013.
I make no judgement about whether the conclusions that the consultants drew on the impact of SB 54 on the refinery contract workforce, or its role as a contributing cause to the Feb. 1 fire, are valid. I make no judgement about whether the points raised by BTC representatives at the June 17 meeting are valid. I believe it is an issue that requires further inquiry and exploration, as do the rest of the conclusions in the report. When Contra Costa Health chose to contract with JEM Advisors to conduct the "independent" investigation, it clearly made a decision that it was qualified and equipped to carry out the investigation with integrity. Now, because some of its conclusions have generated fierce political backlash, county officials are trying to eliminate an entire section of the report that addresses the ability of the refinery to carry out dangerous turnaround work in a safe manner. As someone who has lived in close proximity to the refinery for more than a quarter of a century, I find that not only troubling but unethical.
Two things can be true. The primary fault for the Feb. 1 fire was a lack of adequate oversight and supervision by MRC of the contractors that were conducting dangerous work on its property. But a contributing reason for the accident could also have been the lack of properly qualified and trained contractors who were carrying out the work. If this is true, it should be part of the report and subject to a robust discussion among regulators and elected officials at the local and state levels. The county owes those who live in the shadow of the refinery, and have experienced one troubling incident after another over the past two-plus years, an investigation free of political influence and meddling, that addresses ALL aspects of the Feb. 1 fire as they pertain to the safety of the facility both now and in the future. If SB 54 does constrain refineries from hiring the most qualified, skilled contractors to perform this work, that impacts my safety and that of my family and neighbors, and, frankly, that is more important than the economic interests, or political influence, of the Building Trades Council. If elected or other officials believe the references to SB 54 in the report are themselves influenced by political ideology or inaccurate, they are free to say so, as are members of the BTC and the public. You can also request that the consultants provide more detailed evidence to back up their conclusions, and note in the report if they are unable to do so.
But a responsible public agency doesn't hire a consultant that it deems trustworthy and qualified with the proper expertise to carry out an investigation of this scope, then demand that its findings be altered because they create political discomfort from deep-pocketed, influential special interest groups. That is exactly what erodes trust in government and democracy, and makes me question whether my taxpayer dollars are being spent to protect myself and my neighbors from yet another refinery accident, or to protect political agendas and special interests.
Leal wins special election for MUSD board seat
Retired teacher Brenda Leal easily won the special election for the Area 3 seat on the Martinez Unified School District Board of Education, capping a tumultuous five months that started with a petition to terminate the appointment of Brittany Ayala, who was unanimously appointed by the four current trustees to fill the seat in January.
Ayala, the daughter of Mexican immigrants and the only member of an ethnic minority group on the board, served as a trustee for only two board meetings before her appointment was terminated after a sufficient number of signatures of Area 3 voters were verified to trigger a special election. Ayala, a parent of two school-age children who has held several education-related positions at UC Berkeley, then filed to run for the seat in the June 17 mail-in election against Leal, the former head of the district’s teachers union who was the only other candidate who applied for the vacancy in January.
With nearly all votes counted as of Friday, Leal had collected 73% of the vote in what was, as expected, a very low turnout election. Only 21.5% of ballots from registered voters in Area 3 were returned. As of Friday, 913 ballots had been counted among the 4,247 registered voters who had received one in the mail.
The highly unusual special election was the first known one in MUSD since 1977, and it’s the first known time that a provisional appointment to fill a board vacancy was successfully challenged. A county elections official said in February that this was the first special election challenging a school board appointment that the department was aware of in the county.
Leal’s term will run until the next regular election in November of next year. She will be sworn in once the final elections results are certified, which the Elections Office expects to complete by June 27.
The special election was expected to cost the school district about $43,000.
Reflecting on the divisions that the special election had caused within the district community, board Trustee Courtney Masella-O’Brien, who voted to appoint Ayala in January and endorsed her in the election along with two of the three other board members, wrote the following on Facebook on Monday ahead of the election results:
Serving as a school board member is likely the most challenging elected position. We must accomplish numerous critical tasks with limited flexibility and resources, all while managing understandably high expectations that are often unrealistic. I am hopeful that following tomorrow's election, we can set aside adult conflicts and move forward collectively, focusing on what is best for our students.
School board to vote on new contract for superintendent
The Martinez Unified Board of Trustees, still at four members until the results of the June 17 special election are certified, will vote Monday evening on approving a three-year contract to hire Gigi Patrick as superintendent, effective July 1. The contract comes with a base salary of $250,000 annually. Assuming satisfactory performance evaluations, Patrick will be eligible for annual raises of 2% or 3% in the second and third years of the contract.
The contract approval will complete a months-long search for a new superintendent to lead the district amid a continuing structural budget deficit that has steadily depleted district reserves, fueled by years of declining enrollment, surging special education costs and significant staff pay increases (totaling 26 percentage points over four years). Patrick has spent the past 30 years at the Vallejo City Unified School District, most recently as assistant superintendent.
In her last board meeting before retiring, Superintendent Helen Rossi will present a report on options for creating workforce housing for educators on underutilized district properties.
The meeting agenda can be found at this link: https://simbli.eboardsolutions.com/SB_Meetings/ViewMeeting.aspx?S=36030321&MID=41786&Tab=Agenda&enIID=15ZTIht0hHwpluse1677gfHLA%3D%3D
Supervisors to consider moving Hazmat to Fire District
In what would be a major organizational change to the department responsible for responding to refinery accidents and releases, the Contra Costa County Board of Supervisors will consider at Tuesday’s meeting a proposal to transfer the county’s Hazardous Materials Programs to the Contra Costa Fire Protection District. Hazmat is currently part of Contra Costa Health Services.
According to a staff presentation attached to the meeting agenda, the transition would create a number of operational efficiencies:
Reduced redundancy of inspections, permitting and enforcement
Shared administration, IT systems and cost-recovery efforts
Improved and unified community messaging during incidents
Improved familiarization of the different technologies and equipment used in the field
Improved training for hazmat responders to promote operational effectiveness
The presentation also highlights a number of other potential benefits, including data sharing, intelligence and training; unified community messaging; and stronger grant and funding opportunities.
County Hazmat has been kept busy since late 2022 responding to various incidents at PBF Energy’s Martinez refinery, including a toxic spent catalyst release that started on Thanksgiving night that year and the major fire at the refinery in February of this year. It’s also responsible for operating the Community Warning System in collaboration with the refinery for incidents at the facility and determining the nature and level of community advisories, an issue that has come under heightened scrutiny amid delays or limitations in public notification. In the aftermath of the February fire, questions were raised about why the refinery and Hazmat did not issue a shelter-in-place advisory more quickly given that the fire was raging out of control.
The full presentation can be found at the following link: https://contra-costa.legistar.com/View.ashx?M=F&ID=14306555&GUID=D334C496-9034-47DB-BA6B-29C9DE18B02F
Social media post of the week
A painting on display at the Main Street Arts Gallery of the iconic bridge at the waterfront.
