building a better bay area moving forward finding solutions. this is abc 7 news. hi there. i'm kristen z. you're watching getting answers live on abc 7 every day. we talk with experts about issues important to the bay area and we get answers for you in real time today. taylor swift fans are revolting against ticketmaster after anything but swift experience buying tickets for upcoming eras. tour even democratic congresswoman. aoc is calling for change. we'll talk with the president of the american anti-trust institute. also a bay area woman honor for her 20 year long work transforming lives and creating opportunities in afghanistan. we'll speak with roots of peace founder heidi kuhn, but first big news today out of sacramento, the state's budget picture has just gone from having a 100 billion dollar

surplus to a $25 billion dollar deficit. that's the dire forecast from the state legislative analyst today. so what does that mean for our state and for our services joining us live to talk about it is chris home executive director at the california budget. and policy center chris. what? how do you say your last name? i want to make sure i had it right. haney doesn't look like it's spelled. thank you so much for that. i really appreciate it. chris was this massive deficit figure expected? yes to some degree. it was expected. it largely reflects that economic conditions have been slowing in recent months as we've all been experiencing because of factors like inflation and efforts to curb economic growth by raising interest rates all of that resulting in the economy slowing and when that happens the state tends to collect less revenues. so well the you know the the tendency of those who forecast

revenues, you know in the state government is to be pretty conservative and so they're probably at the higher end of their forecast and it may be likely that we end up with less deficit than that, but it's really hard to know. it's important to remember that this is a forecast in november for a fiscal year that runs from july of 2023 to june of 2024 and a lot could change economic conditions conditions could change and so revenue collections could be much higher. they could be much lower. we really don't know this is this is a forecast it's the best they can do with the information they have from recent months. primarily what the state takes in? is that only taxes or are there other things as well that could affect how big our coffers ultimately end up being? right, so the state's revenues are primarily from several sources personal income taxes that we all pay on our income and wages and salaries sales taxes that we pay on our consumption and of goods and

services and corporation taxes that are levied on corporations and businesses and there are some other sources that are much smaller, but those are the three primary sources. so basically what's happening is the economy slowing and those revenue sources are slowing with the economy. and so the states probably going to have less revenue to work with than they thought they would a few months ago. okay, so as you said things could still take a turn for the better, but if they don't what does that mean? like, what do we have to start doing? seven months out right because as you said the fiscal year doesn't start till july, but do we start planning? what programs to cut? what are they doing on the state level? right, so the importance of the forecast is in part because the governor is going to release his new budget proposal starting in january and then the governor and the legislature will work through a six-month process to set a new budget. and the challenge that they'll be facing. is that the reality of those economic conditions that are slowing is also that the effects

of those slowing conditions fall hardest on low and middle-income californians many of whom are supported by state programs and services. and so state leaders will need to try to figure out how they can prioritize protecting some of that support for low and middle income folks who are already struggling in a high cost state and then probably not doing very much else if they don't have much revenue to work with when you say not much else. are you talking about things that are more like infrastructure are you talking about things like our climate initiatives or incentives for going electric things like that? there should be room for them to do work on on climate because that happens in some ways outside of the budget that we're talking about here, but it does mean less of the kinds of one time investments that have been made in climate and infrastructure that we've seen in recent years and and in the details of the report from the legislative analyst office, that's one of the things they

talk about is less less of those one time investments. how about wildfire prevention? yeah, that could be one of those places where there is less. that's one of the areas that there has been one time in flexes of money because there's been more revenue. however, i think the reality is that if we're facing emergencies the state will have to put money into emergencies and then that will create more tension on the choices that state leaders are facing because they'll have to do that with an overall revenue picture, that's less bright, right. i understand last month. it looked like governor newsom already started pulling back. he blocked the tax cut for manufacturers halted and expansion of full day kindergarten programs and also nixed unemployment benefits for immigrants living in the country. illegally. i wonder if you think you know that's reasonable in terms of spending, you know cutting back a little bit. well, the governor used fiscal discipline as the rationale for vetoes of legislation of a

variety on a variety of issues. that's pretty typical of governors. not all legislation gets through and and legislation that has budgetary costs. that doesn't that don't get done in the annual budget process often tends to fail, but i do think it comes back to the issue as raising earlier, which is those kinds of programs and supports that actually help low income californians get through periods of economic downturn are going to have to be prioritized or those folks will fall into chronic poverty and other economic conditions. we don't want them to face on a longer term basis which costs costs the state more money so that you know as state leaders think about what they have to prioritize they're gonna have to figure out that the folks who need the help the most, you know have to deserve the first attention and then they'll the rest of the list will will probably be pretty constrained what the cut. deep even because it was only i think a year and a half ago that we're talking about a record surplus a hundred billion dollars, surely we you know save

some of that or invested some of that and we have a healthy rainy day fund. we do we have the healthiest rainy day funds the states ever had both in terms of just total dollar amounts and in terms of inflation adjusted over time, so they they did put a lot of money away. that's that's in part because of an action that voters took back in 2014 that required that they put more money away. so we're in a lot better position today than we have been going into prior recessions and they do have some other tools at their disposal. that would allow them i think to avoid cuts during this period so even though 25 billion dollars sounds like a big number and it is a big number. it's also a big state budget and they'll have some options to avoid cuts if they if that 25 billion dollars proves to be the final number. yeah. what was the shares budget by the way, just so i can put that in perspective. yeah, the state's general fund budget, which is sort of like the checking account that it has to you know to fund program and

services was about 225 billion dollars. okay, i mean still that's like 10% and that's a pretty big cut. so we'll see what they do. but thank you so much chris haney for explaining all that to us. i really appreciate your time. thanks for having me. coming up next bad blood between taylor swift fans and ticketmaster the major meltdown that sparking calls for change and what can really be done about it that's coming up next on getti (vo) a medicare advantage plan should come with all the benefits you want and zero compromises. with anthem blue cross, it can. just go to anthem.com/answers or call 833-797-4179 for a free one-on-one medicare plan review. ask about our zero dollar monthly premium plans that include dental, vision and hearing coverage along with transportation, a gym membership and zero dollar copay for prescriptions all for zero extra cost. plus, you could be eligible for extra benefits to help you save even more. we have plans with up to twenty-three hundred dollars

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taking to twitter to sound off after ticketmaster crashed amid unprecedented demand when ticket sales began yesterday for her new tour. here's one of many irate fans. hoping to attend the santa clara

concert in july complaining that after hours of waiting. they were frozen out of the chance to buy tickets now many people are calling for change from breaking up ticketmaster to getting artists to not do business with the entertainment ticket sales giant joining us live now to discuss what went wrong and what can be done is diana moss president of the american antitrust institute diana. thanks for joining us. thank you explain what happened yesterday to people who don't normally buy concert tickets and have no idea. what kind of mortal kombat it's become. that's a good question. and i think if we did if we had more competition in live events and that goes everywhere from artist management to concert promotion and venues and ticketingldav firms du t service possible ts t bhe tickets. we do' tt. have monopoly in live t goes back toheve natio ticker in 2010, and that has only grown

stronger and more powerful and when you have monopolies, you don't have a lot of innovation you have high ticket prices no choice crashing digital platforms and everything else that goes along with it. you talk about the monopoly. in fact, i want to share a tweet to put out by new york democratic congresswoman alexandria ocasio-cortez. she put out this daily reminder that ticketmaster is a monopoly it's merger with live nation should never have been approved and they need to be rained in break them up. so sounds like you agree with that, but how does that get done? how do you break them up? i agree 100% and my organization has been advocating for a breakup for many years. so we we got to get some stronger antitrust enforcement the department of justice which handled this merger in 2010 and then extended the ineffective conditions again, just two years ago can bring an antitrust case

to break up the merger even though it's consummated. they could also bring a monopolization case to break up live nation ticketmaster that would benefit consumers. it would benefit artists, especially the smaller artists that don't have much bargaining power against the 800 pound gorilla. why do they need bargaining power? what would that give the artists? well, if you look at the taylor swift's and the bruce springsteen's those are incredibly popular performers. they have huge fan bases and huge bargaining power visa v. the the players in the live event space but smaller players don't have that they just have they have no choice. they have to take what's there and that's the live nation ticketmaster suite of products and services that they cannot avoid. real quickly just for folks, you know, i was looking at what people were complaining about. apparently the cues that you have to you know, the waiting rooms the where you are in line

was a moving or you crashed right before you were supposed to get into the room or you know, there was a pre-sale with capital one credit cards, but i guess people were allowed to wait in line and they didn't have the code and so that could have been pre-checked basically just the process left a lot to be desired and then some people just got booted out. so i experienced something like that myself a month ago when trying to buy these other tickets and they were not as popular as taylor swift but still within seconds it seemed like everything was bought up and people were saying were these actual people who bought tickets were just resellers. what do you know about that? yeah, so that's a really really important part of this whole story a live nation. ticketmaster is now invading the resale markets, right? they have this monopoly in primary ticketing and now they're moving and leveraging over into resale. they also have policies that really make it hard for the resale markets to function well and to deliver the benefits that resale markets do they engage in

hold backs? they don't release all the tickets so crisis bike right away. they interfere with ticket transferability. you can't get into the venue because you needed a revolving barcode so they are actively working to undermine the functioning of the resale markets which then unfortunately creates bad optics for the resale markets. that you know the scalpers whatever you would call them or bots or whoever's buying up those tickets in the first few seconds. why does it seem like they're able to get in so much more so than real people. yeah, and that that's a good real that's a big problem. and and that's why we need legislation to set some rules of the road for ticket transferability and the functioning of of resale markets and transparency. so that's that's a cry for legislation and we have several legislative proposals. and and remember, you know, remember this is a monopoly controlling an enormous digital platform using user fan data

using data analytics and artificial intelligence to exploit their market power and raise ticket fees. so we need that legislative support. we also need a case to break up live nation ticketmaster. i wonder if you think this case might do it this uproar over taylor swift. do you think that i'll urge some lawmakers to act yeah, this is high profile stuff as it should be but we need some political willpower on the part of the department of justice to bring a case against the company. um, yes, i wonder you know some fans i see are saying hey artists should not work with them or sell through ticketmaster. but is that even realistic or possible these days? not really because there's not much effective competition. there are some smaller players in the market axs and the ticketing space and aeg and the promotion space but that competition is very ineffective because of the sheer size in the

market power of live nation ticketmaster take a master has about an 80% sharing ticketing and a 60 to 70 percent share in concert promotion. and so when you have those kinds of massive market share numbers, there is no choice for artists, especially the smaller artists who you know are don't have that bargaining power and consumers are completely exposed to that market power and pay enormous fees. what fees ticketmaster fees be lower if there were more players in the market. absolutely a lot of the problems. we see would disappear with effective competition in these markets it would improve choice it would increase incentives to compete and lower prices and fees and deliver high quality services to fans. i was just looking just for kicks at the taylor swift tickets. it seems like even though the cheapest seats were supposed to go for like 50. i'm finding nothing less than

350 on stubhub, and i'm just wondering like this is now at a place where regular people just cannot afford to go and can you regulate price or is that just free market nothing to be done? about it well, we like markets and we like competitive markets because they generally deliver benefits to everyone involved but when you have, you know, a tremendous amount of market power and a monopoly sitting in that market camping out and and providing no choice to consumers or to artists or anybody else. you really don't get great outcomes, and this is a good example of where we need some support from a carefully crafted legislation to improve transparency and ticketing policies and an antitrust case to break up the company. this is a perfect venue for this type of of refereeing by the government. right diana moss president of the american anti-trust institute. thank you so much for joining us today. thank you.

coming up next a special honor for the founder of a bay area nonprofit and how its work is really making a difference stay with us. getting answers will be abc 7 isa

better bay area and that effort includes bringing you stories about bay area residents who are making a difference a north bay. nonprofit has been working in afghanistan for more than 20 years removing landmines and helping train farmers entrepreneurs and women now the founder and ceo of roots of peace heidi kuhn has received a special honor for her work leading the charge earlier this week. she was awarded and honorary degree from the american university of afghanistan and heidi is joining us live now to talk more about this achievement and also roots of pieces work heidi great to see you again and congratulations. thank you to abc 7 news for their continued coverage of afghanistan.

oh, you are so welcome on behalf of the entire station. we do like to highlight good work and we have done so many stories with you talking at first about roots of pieces work to replace landmines in afghanistan, but your work has expanded over the decades. so what are your initiatives your actively engaged in right now? well in afghanistan, we're currently managing 85 million dollars in us government funds 30 million from usaid and 55 million from the us department of state inl international narcotics and law enforcement and with roots of peace. we are are just doing our very best. we're all so down at the borders in and guatemala, you know, instead of building higher walls. we're getting to the root cause about migration and that's just giving jobs to farmers. the soil is rich in central america, and of course latin to g valueroreraining the drovide exports to international markets the video that you're seeing is, you know

the desperation when people don't have jobs, they'll do anything to feed their families and their children and roots of peace is so proud to have trained thousands of farmers in guatemala today and just as there we're working in vietnam the former dmz moving the legacy of war by hundreds of thousands of landmines that mayman kill innocent footsteps, but planting the beautiful rice and black pepper here in afghanistan. we've just finished a harvest of hope and while the traumatic fall of kabul happened over a year ago. we have ensured a harvest of hope for farmers and families recipes serves no flag we serve the farmer and in the case of afghanistan. so proud to have planted over 1.1 million fruit trees this past spring and in a country that has 97% unemployment through the work of cheryl jennings and my daughter kylie kuhn. we have helped educate these

young women and while the taliban has for prohibited education of women between seventh grade and 12th grade. we're training them in unique ways to to establish two kitchen gardens to go inside the homes bringing baby chicks inside of the home. they grow into chickens. they lay eggs. the children have protein the men market the eggs and and the family prospers. so again, this is a humanitarian action. we're so very grateful to abc 7 news and again to the american university of afghanistan. this is my new diploma. my my grandchildren said they can call me dr. heidi but most importantly it's beyond any award or piece of paper. it's the knowing that when i go to sleep at night that we have empowered farmers millions of farmers to feed their family and have the dignity again to have a yield a harvest of hope.

so, thank you and to the entire abc 7 news for telling a story that is often forgotten. yeah, you know in the summer of 2021 after us troops left afghanistan, i think a lot of people weren't even aware that there's still non. it's such as yours still operating there doing work on the ground. i know it's not a lot right? it's what a handful. of america, we're actually very right correct in that they're a year ago year. plus there was 250 ngos and organizations working in afghanistan as i've been told by top authorities in washington dc less than a dozen remained and i am very proud as an american woman-led ceo to be working in afghanistan all 16 provinces this past fall. we have cultivated peace through agriculture giving hope and you know when you have the ability to have a shovel in your hand instead of a gun it gives hope and people have a tendency to to

not join nefarious organizations like isis and and other groups that you know, just cause chaos when people are desperate when they can't feed their families. that is when war breaks out all over the world. so we are doubling down on our deepest commitment. we're very grateful to our country. it's pieces a bipartisan. organization non-political and interfaith and as a mother and a grandmother and ceo, i'm very very proud of that statement. and those are our firm roots at peace that will continue to bloom from the heart of marin county to the world. well, congratulations heidi kuhn and roots of peace on your honorary degree. i'm not sure if we have a picture of that if we do, i'm just going to show it really quickly theformer firstyh and roametary of oh, we don't have the video, but i know that was at that dinner, and i know that was a real honor for you. so once again just want to say

congratulations heidi. take care. sorry our group here. and if and it then they say i'm not doing this right. but anyway, it was the honor of also a christian almond poor pam cancel from the washington post and carlotta gaul from the new york times as well as the top marine in the united states, roberta sarah. so really a shout out to all the women who are honored at this very important american university of afghanistan. well, keep up with a great work. thank you so much, honey. thank you. we'll take a short break a

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for getting answers today. we'll be here every weekday at 3:00 answering questions with experts from around the bay area

world news tonight with david meara's next and i'll see you back here at 4. tonight, the vehicle barrelling into more than two dozen law enforcement recruits. several in critical condition. the images coming in from l.a. county. and in the northeast, bracing for a storm system that could bring several feet of snow. first, that horrific scene unfolding outside -- in critical condition tonight. what we now know about the driver. will carr is there. in the northeast, the winter storm warnings as we come on the air tonight. the system sweeping from the midwest to the northeast. up to four feet of snow possible in buffalo, new york. several feet elsewhere. new york's governor declaring a state of emergency already. heavy snow from spoe cane to denver to minneapolis. rob marciano timing this out. the war in ukraine spilling