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IN THIS ISSUE – “I am not looking to the next two years to be timid. I feel like we still have a lot in the tank”
Gov. Newsom talks to the New York Times about his final two years
- California Becomes POTUS Campaign Issue, So Newsom Veers to the Middle
- Legislature Seldom Overrides Governor’s Veto
- Newsom’s AI Bill Veto Changes Worldwide Policy Debate
- Warehouse Industry Pummeled
- California Economy Will Lag US in 2025
- Governor Candidates Differ Little…Thus Far
Capital News & Notes (CN&N) curates California policy, legislative and regulatory insights from dozens of media and official sources for the past week. Please feel free to forward this unique client service.
FOR THE WEEK ENDING OCT. 4, 2024
California Becomes POTUS Campaign Issue, So Newsom Veers to the Middle
NY Times
For much of the past year, conservatives have considered Gov. Gavin Newsom of California a perfect symbol of liberal excess, a well-coifed coastal governor with national aspirations whose state seemed to embrace undocumented immigrants while homeless encampments proliferated on the streets.
It was Mr. Newsom who was invited to debate Gov. Ron DeSantis of Florida on Fox News last November. It was Mr. Newsom whose political action committee ran ads in Republican states to criticize their policies on abortion rights.
But Mr. Newsom, a business owner, often governs more from the middle than his critics acknowledge. And over the past month, as he has sifted through hundreds of bills that the heavily Democratic Legislature sent his way to sign or veto by this Monday, his decisions indicate a more centrist shift than usual.
With Vice President Kamala Harris, a former senator from California, in a hotly contested race for the White House, Republicans have aimed a spotlight on her and Mr. Newsom’s home state.
As such, the governor has been under pressure to make sure that California’s lawmakers don’t give them more ammunition for political attacks.
Mr. Newsom approved many measures that were in keeping with what most Americans would expect in California. There were big bills to address the state’s ongoing housing crisis; labor bills to protect the earnings of child influencers and the likenesses of Hollywood performers; and an outright ban on all plastic bags at retail stores.
There was legislation to name the Dungeness crab as the official state crustacean, the banana slug as the official slug, and the black abalone as the official seashell. There was a bill pushed by celebrities like Woody Harrelson and Whoopi Goldberg that will allow Amsterdam-style “cannabis cafes” to open.There was a measure that will require health insurers to cover infertility treatment, including in vitro fertilization, as Democrats have attacked Republicans nationally for restricting access to fertility services.
But the governor, despite cracking down on digital abuses such as deepfakes, also vetoed a first-in-the-nation plan to regulate artificial intelligence amid pushback from the tech industry. He frustrated environmentalists by rejecting warning labels on gas stoves. He blocked free condoms in high schools.
And his legislative allies saw to it that a landmark exploration of cash reparations for Black Americans was whittled down to an apology for enabling slavery, as California faces another budget deficit.
The moderating strategy partly reflects California’s political diversity: Registered Democrats dominate the electorate, but pockets of conservatism run through the agricultural Central Valley, some inland suburbs and the far north part of the state. And California governors have historically been a check on Democratic legislators on spending and bills that reach furthest to the left.
But more moderation also serves Democrats and Mr. Newsom’s own legacy in the height of a high-stakes election. California, with its immense wealth and poverty, diversity and social tensions, has often served as a proxy for national Democratic leadership.
This year, Republicans have sought to attack Ms. Harris by tarnishing her home state.
“We cannot allow comrade Kamala Harris and the communist left to do to America what they did to California,” former President Donald J. Trump proclaimed at a recent appearance in Los Angeles County. As Mr. Trump spoke, the coastal fog gave way to California sunshine and the Pacific Ocean sparkled spectacularly. No matter. California was “a mess,” he said.
By this calculus, any talking point against California that Mr. Newsom can bat away is a win for Ms. Harris — and, if she loses in November, for his own political future.
Mr. Newsom has come under personal attack from Mr. Trump, who has called the governor names and blamed him for the state’s woes. Mr. Newsom has largely ignored such mockery and suggested that the former president is being immature.
But Mr. Trump’s attacks have resonated with his own supporters and with moderate voters who believe that California — and, by extension, Ms. Harris — remain too liberal. Mr. Newsom himself has acknowledged that retail theft and homeless encampments have reached a tipping point.
In recent weeks, Mr. Newsom signed Republican-backed measures that toughen penalties for retail theft and human trafficking of children. The governor also signed new punishments for those who participate in street-racing “takeovers” and “sideshows.”
As Republicans have slammed Democrats on immigration and suggested that California is enticing migrants with free benefits, Mr. Newsom vetoed bills that would give unemployment benefits, mortgage assistance and campus jobs to undocumented workers.
Amid conservative claims that the government was “coming for your gas stove,” Mr. Newsom vetoed California’s version of that proposal. And he sidelined an effort to deter speeding with special sensors that would have alerted drivers when they exceeded the speed limit by more than 10 miles per hour.
As pro-Israel Republicans charged that California failed to quell campus protests over the war in Gaza, Mr. Newsom signed a bill requiring public universities to update campus codes of conduct and train students to conduct civil demonstrations.
“We are seeing some patterns this year,” said David McCuan, a political scientist at Sonoma State University. “And one is that Newsom has been trying to eliminate issues that could help Trump paint Kamala Harris in this election as Angela Davis 2.0,” he said, referring to the noted leftist activist.
Mr. Newsom, who was young and single when he first ran for office in San Francisco, is now the 56-year-old married father of four school-age children. When he took office as governor in 2019, he unveiled a sweeping family agenda, with statewide transitional kindergarten and more robust paid family leave.
Mr. Newsom’s wife, Jennifer Siebel Newsom, has spoken publicly about their children being cyberbullied, and several of the bills he signed this year addressed concerns about children and technology. Among them: laws restricting cellphones in schools and prohibiting tech companies from providing minors with “addictive” social media feeds.
Mr. Newsom also signed legislation to ban certain additives from food served at California schools by the end of 2027. The law would block popular items such as Flamin’ Hot Cheetos and Froot Loops from being sold on school grounds during school hours, barring any changes in how they are processed.
With just over two years left in his term-limited tenure, Mr. Newsom has also been cognizant of his own legacy as an elected official. The billions of dollars he has continued to pump into programs to alleviate homelessness, for example, have lately been accompanied by demands that local officials do more to clear sprawling encampments and add local housing.
Part of that is impatience, his aides say. Part of that, too, is that it is unclear how long he will be able to have a direct impact on public policy. Once considered a top Democratic contender for the White House, Mr. Newsom has, at least for now, been shut out of the presidential sweepstakes.
“I am not looking to the next two years to be timid,” Mr. Newsom said in a recent interview after signing nearly three dozen bills on housing. “I feel like we still have a lot in the tank.”
Legislature Seldom Overrides Governor’s Veto
CalMatters
Nearly all of the 189 bills vetoed by Gov. Gavin Newsom this year passed the Legislature with support from more than two-thirds of lawmakers — meaning the same votes from those legislators would be enough to override the governor’s veto.
But that almost never happens. In fact, the last time the Legislature overrode a governor’s veto was 1979.
So why don’t legislators fight for the bills that have such broad support?
Party loyalty, and self-protection, says Dan Schnur, politics professor at the University of California, Berkeley, USC and Pepperdine University.
“A governor who’s been overridden is generally not a happy governor — and unhappy governors tend to issue more vetoes, especially against the members who voted to override,” he said.
The current Democratic supermajority — 93 of 120 seats – also means that a legislator who goes against the governor can be easily replaced among the politically favored.
In other words, Schnur said, it’s the modern-day version of, “if you come for the king, you’d best not miss.”
Monday was the deadline for the governor to act on the 1,206 bills the Legislature sent to his desk of the 2,159 introduced during the regular session this year. Newsom vetoed about 15.7% of the total bills passed – slightly higher than the state’s 15% average in recent years.
Of the 189 vetoes, 170 of the bills — about 90% — passed by more than a two-thirds majority in both the Assembly and Senate, according to a Digital Democracy analysis. About 96% of the vetoed bills passed with a two-thirds majority in at least one chamber.
A veto override requires a two-thirds vote in each chamber: which would mean at least 52 members in the Assembly and 26 in the Senate. (Democrats currently make up 62 of 79 Assemblymembers, and 31 of 40 state senators).
Asked whether the number of vetoed bills that passed with broad legislative support showed a disconnect with the executive branch, Izzy Gardon, a spokesperson for the governor, said: “The executive branch and legislative branch are independent branches of government. The governor’s decisions on legislation are made solely on the merits of each bill.”
The last veto override in 1979 was on a bill by then-Assemblymember Lou Papan that banned banks from selling insurance. It was vetoed by then-Gov. Jerry Brown. It was the second override of a Brown veto in 11 days.
If there is going to be an override, legislative leadership would have to be involved in the political mutiny.
Senate President Pro Tem Mike McGuire, a Democrat from Santa Rosa, showed some willingness to stand up to Newsom recently by initially refusing to convene the Senate for the governor’s desired special session on gas prices. He declined to comment, however, on when he would consider an override of a governor’s veto.
Robert Rivas, speaker of the state Assembly, also declined to comment.
MORE:
https://calmatters.org/politics/2024/10/californa-veto-overrides/
Newsom’s AI Bill Veto Changes Worldwide Policy Debate
Sacramento Bee
Gov. Gavin Newsom vetoed a bill closely watched by leaders in California’s tech industry to impose strict regulations on the largest generative artificial intelligence models in development.
Senate Bill 1047 by Sen. Scott Wiener, D-San Francisco, would have required developers of large-scale AI models to create guardrails to prevent “critical harms” like those out of a sci-fi movie: bank meltdowns, power grid paralysis and new biological weapons.
It also would have allowed the state attorney general to enforce the rules and create a state board to monitor the industry. The proposal split Silicon Valley’s tech scions and political representatives.
Some argued it would have stifled innovation while others said it included “light touch” regulations that were necessary in the absence of federal rules around the quickly growing technology.
Newsom, in a three-page veto letter, said the bill “magnified the conversation about threats that could emerge from the deployment of Al” but said it missed the mark by focusing only on the largest models in development.
“Adaptability is critical as we race to regulate a technology still in its infancy. This will require a delicate balance,” Newsom wrote.
His veto message continued: “While well-intentioned, SB 1047 does not take into account whether an Al system is deployed in high-risk environments, involves critical decision-making or the use of sensitive data.
Instead, the bill applies stringent standards to even the most basic functions — so long as a large system deploys it. I do not believe this is the best approach to protecting the public from real threats posed by the technology.”
The governor said he agreed with Wiener that “we cannot afford to wait for a major catastrophe to occur before taking action to protect the public.” “California will not abandon its responsibility,”
Newsom wrote, adding that “safety protocols must be adopted. Proactive guardrails should be implemented, and severe consequences for bad actors must be clear and enforceable.
“I do not agree, however, that to keep the public safe, we must settle for a solution that is not informed by an empirical trajectory analysis of Al systems and capabilities. Ultimately, any framework for effectively regulating Al needs to keep pace with the technology itself,” he continued.
Newsom said he was “committed” to working with lawmakers, the federal government, tech experts, ethicists and those in academia on a path forward.
“Given the stakes — protecting against actual threats without unnecessarily thwarting the promise of this technology to advance the public good — we must get this right,” he concluded in his veto.
“This veto is a missed opportunity for California to once again lead on innovative tech regulation — just as we did around data privacy and net neutrality – and we are all less safe as a result,”
Wiener wrote in a statement on X. The San Francisco Democrat said the bill’s rejection “leaves us with the troubling reality that companies aiming to create an extremely powerful technology face no binding restrictions from U.S. policymakers, particularly given Congress’ continuing paralysis around regulating the tech industry in any meaningful way.”
Newsom signed 16 other AI-related bills this month, according to his office. A handful of previously signed legislation impose new regulations on AI use in elections and in the entertainment industry.
One bill requires the Governor’s Office of Emergency Services to expand assessments of potential threats by generative AI to the state’s critical infrastructure. Another bans child pornography generated or altered by AI.
Newsom in a press release announced that “California will work with the ‘godmother of AI,’ Dr. Fei-Fei Li, as well as Tino Cuéllar, member of the National Academy of Sciences Committee on Social and Ethical Implications of Computing Research, and Jennifer Tour Chayes, Dean of the College of Computing, Data Science, and Society at UC Berkeley, on this critical project.
“The Newsom Administration will also immediately engage academia to convene labor stakeholders and the private sector to explore approaches to use GenAI technology in the workplace.”
https://www.sacbee.com/news/politics-government/capitol-alert/article293229384.html#storylink=cpy
CalMatters
It’s been a rough couple weeks for California’s warehouse developers – a significant source of jobs and economic activity in recent years.
Two weeks ago a San Bernardino Superior Court overturned the county’s approval of a massive warehouse complex on more than 2 million acres in the community of Bloomington.
Then on Sunday Gov. Gavin Newsom signed a bill that reins in warehouse development statewide by tightening building standards and restricting diesel truck routes in neighborhoods.
The new law is likely to have a big impact in the Inland Empire, which already includes 4,000 warehouses that sprawl over nearly 40 square miles. Those facilities bring jobs, but also air pollution, noise and traffic.
Environmental activists applauded the court case reversing the Bloomington warehouse approval.
Developers of the Bloomington warehouse complex proposed building three new distribution centers, including a cavernous facility of more than a million square feet. Their plan involved buying and demolishing more than 100 homes.
A coalition of nonprofits sued San Bernardino County and the developer in 2022, saying officials missed the mark on environmental standards. On Sept. 17 Superior Court Judge Donald Alvarez agreed. He overturned the project approval and its environmental impact report, ruling that it failed to offer reasonable alternatives or properly analyze impacts on air quality, noise, energy and greenhouse gas emissions.
“We are very happy that the judge has looked at all the evidence and agreed” the environmental review was inadequate, said Alondra Mateo, a community organizer with the San Bernardino-based People’s Collective for Environmental Justice, which sued to stop the project.
The demolition of homes that carved away a swath of the community goes beyond typical development concerns, Mateo said: “It’s not just an environmental impact; it’s a cultural impact, it’s a mental health impact.”
While advocates for the logistics industry panned the law as a job-killer, community groups say its public health protections aren’t strict enough.
Paul Granillo, president and CEO of the Inland Empire Economic Partnership, described the law as bad policy “created in a smoke-filled room without experts.” He predicted it will hurt jobs in the Inland Empire and other parts of California.
Environmental groups weren’t any happier. The law requires warehouse loading docks be set back 300 to 500 feet from to sensitive sites, including homes, schools and playgrounds. That’s not enough of a buffer to protect nearby residents, Mateo said, arguing that the ideal distance should be about one kilometer, which is more than 3,280 feet.
Reyes has said the law offers a starting point that local governments can expand on to protect public health. Mateo maintained it gives developers an out, enabling them to comply with the letter of the law by meeting minimum limits.
Lawmakers acknowledged the law will require amendments. The critics are ready to go. Industry groups say they’ll press for more flexible rules, while environmental groups want stricter ones.
“If anything we’re going to push even harder,” Mateo said.
MORE:
California Economy Will Lag US in 2025
CalMatters
California’s economy will grow more slowly than the rest of the nation this year, a new UCLA Anderson forecast.
With national economic growth not expected to pick up until after next month’s election, “a full year of subpar growth in California is forecast,” said Jerry Nickelsburg, director of the UCLA Anderson forecast, this week.
Growth in 2025 and 2026 should be faster than the nation’s, Nickelsburg said, “but not by much.”
Reasons for the sluggish outlook are similar to those that California has faced for some time. Employment in sophisticated technology and in rural areas has been lagging, and housing continues to struggle.
The state’s unemployment rate has been among the highest in the United States all year, and the trends that have sent that rate up are expected to continue during the rest of 2024. The state’s economy grew at a 2.8% pace in the second quarter of this year, slightly less than the U.S.
Silicon Valley, San Francisco and San Diego all saw job growth proceed more slowly than in the rest of the country, thanks largely to a slowdown in the technology sector.
Also lagging has been the economy in the San Joaquin Valley, hit hard by a second straight year of what the report called “unusual winter weather.”
“The employment picture leads to a relatively weak California forecast for 2024 and a slow return to the national unemployment rate,” the outlook said.
California’s unemployment rate in August, the latest data available, was 5.3%. That tied the state with Illinois for the nation’s second highest rate. Nevada was first at 5.5%.
The UCLA forecast saw the California rate averaging 5.3% in the first three months of next year, then dropping to 4.9% in the spring and 4.4% in the summer. The rate is projected to stay at roughly that level through 2025 and 2026.
Nationally, the August rate was 4.2%. The federal Bureau of Labor Statistics will report the September rate on Friday.
UCLA saw the national rate averaging 4.4% in the first six months of next year, followed by 4.3% in the summer.
There was a brighter prediction for housing in California. The forecast said the market “may well be on the cusp of a trend toward normalization.”
Mortgage interest rates are at two-year lows. The Federal Reserve is expected to continue cutting its target rate, considered a strong influence on other rate trends.
The forecast did come with a warning: “With existing home sales at depression levels, builders should be responding to new developments, but a very wet winter has resulted in very little growth in building permits.”
Still, the report saw better times ahead. Home sales should rebound as interest rates drop, it said, which will also boost the health of the finance sector.
Manufacturing of durable, or bigger, items such as computers should “turn around with new factories now in construction opening (and) increased demand as the economy grows over the next two years.”
Governor Candidates Differ Little…Thus Far
CalMatters
If the early days — very, very early days — of the campaign are any indication, choosing California’s next governor could be a matter of splitting hairs and parsing degrees of difference between the candidates.
At a forum today hosted by the National Union of Healthcare Workers and the Los Angeles Times — the first in a race where no votes will be cast until 2026 — four top Democratic hopefuls sounded nearly indistinguishable in their positions on the progressive priorities and unresolved problems likely to define the election in this liberal state.
Create a publicly funded universal health care system, a key platform for the union? Check. Raise the minimum wage and allow striking workers to collect unemployment benefits, which organized labor has lobbied for in recent years? Check and check. Maintain Gov. Gavin Newsom’s death penalty moratorium and commitment to phasing out sales of new gas-powered cars? Check again.
The accord was so thorough that the participants often began their answers throughout the 90-minute event by noting their agreement with what their colleagues had just said. That left primarily biography as a means for them to carve out their own lanes.
Lt. Gov. Eleni Kounalakis pointed to her background as a housing developer as uniquely preparing her to help California build its way out of an affordability crisis. Superintendent of Public Instruction Tony Thurmond, who grew up relying on public assistance, said he would fight for working people. Former Controller Betty Yee asked voters to consider her nearly 40 years in public service taking on big interests and solving problems. Former state Senate leader Toni Atkins said she was the candidate most ready to hit the ground running on day one, because of her record of accomplishment on all these issues in the Legislature.
Notably, the most moderate major Democrat to jump into the race so far — former Los Angeles Mayor Antonio Villaraigosa, who tried tacking to the center in an unsuccessful gubernatorial bid against Newsom in 2018 — was not present. Villaraigosa was invited, but a spokesperson said he was unavailable to attend, which may have robbed the forum of some clearer differentiation.
One of the few issues raised where the foursome did not sound in total lockstep was Proposition 36, a measure on the November ballot to increase the penalties for repeat theft and drug crimes that voters rolled back a decade ago, making them felonies again.
While Newsom has been a vocal opponent of the initiative, voters appear poised to pass it overwhelmingly amid ongoing frustrations about crime rates. That puts Democratic officials, who have worked to lessen harsh sentencing policies that they believe contributed to over-incarceration in California, in a political bind — especially those who will be on the ballot in less than two years.
Only Yee definitively said she would vote no on Proposition 36. She said more money for community supervision and supportive services for people leaving prison would be a better investment.
“We have successful, holistic reentry programs that can be helpful here,” she said. “This is an economic issue. For many who are committing crimes, they are doing it because they’re just trying to put food on the table for their families.”
Atkins said she preferred a package of legislation passed this year to deal with retail theft, so she would likely not support Prop 36. The state should focus on penalties for those who commit violent crimes, she added.
“I do not want the pendulum to swing back and incarcerate more people. We’ve been there, we’ve done that, it doesn’t work,” she said.
Both Thurmond and Kounalakis said they were undecided on Prop. 36. Thurmond took issue with provisions of the measure dealing with drug crimes and called for expanding programs that aim to keep young people out of the criminal justice system in the first place.
“It is proven just by locking up more people in this state is not going to prevent crime,” he said. “I don’t think it’s a good idea to put people in jail who have a substance abuse problem.”
Kounalakis acknowledged concerns about “deteriorating public safety” and said California has “to send the message that it’s not okay to steal,” but she worried that “this initiative is complicated and it is probably not going to do what people want.” She said wanted to keep her vote private.
Californians won’t vote for their next governor for another year and a half — the primary election is in June 2026 — but the race has already long been underway.
Kounalakis formally kicked off the campaign last year in April, just months after she was sworn into her second term as the state’s second in command. A parade of prominent Democratic officials has followed, including Thurmond, Atkins, Yee and Villaraigosa — many of whom would make history by winning the governorship.
Atkins, Kounalakis or Yee would be California’s first woman governor. Atkins would also be the first openly LGBTQ+ person to lead the state, while Thurmond would be the first Black person and Yee would be the first Asian American.
Though voters are more focused these days on a maddeningly tight presidential contest in November, the early start gives gubernatorial hopefuls an opportunity to raise the tremendous financial resources needed to run a statewide race in California and to curry favor with influential groups whose endorsements and volunteers could augment the candidates’ own efforts.
That’s what so many major players were doing today at the National Union of Healthcare Workers’ candidate forum, held in San Francisco during its annual leadership conference.
Though the union is not issuing an official endorsement yet, more than 300 members in the audience and watching remotely conducted a non-binding straw poll following the forum. They selected Thurmond, the union said in a press release that did not include a breakdown of the results, which could give him momentum in a crowded and unsettled field. At least two top Democrats are reportedly still considering whether to enter the race at a later date: Attorney General Rob Bonta and U.S. Health and Human Services Secretary Xavier Becerra.