🏡💚 End of session madness
It’s the end of the legislative session, where each year we re-learn that all of the rules and procedures that say how a bill becomes law are pretty much never how the most important issues get decided. Nine months of detailed discussions and advocacy that move bills through policy committees and on-the-record floor votes are thrown out the window in a flurry of gut-and-amends, waived procedures, back room dealmaking, and broken promises.
Let’s start with this year’s climate and energy package, which to be fair, did have a fair amount of policy discussion over the course of the session. On Wednesday morning, Governor Newsom, Senate Pro Tem McGuire, and Assembly Speaker Rivas announced a three-party deal on a package of climate and energy bills. The most significant of these is an extension of the state’s cap-and-trade program, but there are other major policies including creating a regional energy market, adding an additional $18 billion to the state’s Wildfire Fund (with ratepayers paying for half of it), and boosting oil drilling in Kern County.
The move to increase in-state oil drilling is a huge blow to environmental justice communities, and a big swing of the pendulum away from previous legislative sessions. In 2022, the end of the legislative session saw the passing of SB 1137, the landmark EJ bill to create health and safety buffer zones around new oil wells. In 2023, Newsom called a special legislative session that ended with passing a bill to “take on Big Oil” and stop price gouging at the gas pumps. And last year, another special legislative session led to the requirement for oil refiners to maintain minimum fuel reserves in an effort to prevent price spikes.
This year was a big reversal, with Newsom and the legislature working closely with the oil industry to increase oil production. This was prompted by two refineries announcing closures in the past year, stoking concerns that gasoline prices would climb even higher. With ‘affordability’ as the buzzword of this year, Big Oil was able to use that to shift the politics to where lawmakers are now asking them how they can maintain oil production in the state.
To some degree, I understand where this is coming from. Even as people who see climate change as an urgent and existential threat, we should recognize that our efforts to decarbonize will be undermined if they are perceived as causing huge increases in the cost of living. That’s why we need an actual plan of managed decline that lays out a sequence of steps that move us toward clean energy as quickly as possible. Instead, we have a set of one off policies that shift with the political winds. (I will also just say — decarbonization is going to be costly. But the costs of inaction are much, much higher. It remains one of the biggest challenges for the climate movement to convince the mass majority of people that the short-term costs are a necessary part of moving to a healthier, safer, and better quality of life for everyone).
Then there’s cap-and-trade. Advocates have spent an incredible amount of time doing research and providing evidence that changes to the cap-and-trade program would make it more effective and more equitable. In the end, the agreed bill (AB 1207) made very few changes to the existing program, for the most part just reauthorizing the program as it is. This has led to a somewhat familiar rift in the climate movement, with environmental justice groups opposing the bill on the grounds that it makes no substantive changes to improve the program, and other green groups supporting the bill because it provides the program with stability. Other groups, like transit and housing advocates, were mostly concerned with how the funds from cap-and-trade were allocated, and were sufficiently satisfied with the set asides to support the funding allocation bill (SB 840).
Beyond this particular package of environmental bills, there have been a number of broken and maybe-possibly-fulfilled promises. In particular, the Bay Area let out a collective sigh of relief as this week Newsom made the commitment to follow through on the previous budget deal to extend a lifeline to Bay Area transit agencies. The agreed $750 million loan is meant to be a bridge to help BART, Muni and other transit systems maintain service through November 2026, when advocates hope to have a ballot measure in front of voters to fund transit. According to advocates, without the loan Muni would have to cut services by as much as 50%, and BART would cut service by as much as 85% — which would be unequivocally disastrous for the region. As Politico reported this morning, a call from Nancy Pelosi may have helped save the deal. It is beyond depressing to me that it would take a call from Pelosi to make this happen — but it is also a testament to the organizing and advocacy that is happening on the ground to get people like Pelosi to weigh in. Newsom seems to have come around on this, but the deal isn’t done yet. The final terms may not be set until later this fall, or possibly even sometime next year.
In the broken promise category, the legislative failed to follow through on their commitment to “clean up” SB 131, the budget deal made back in June that made sweeping changes to the state’s environmental quality act (CEQA). As I’ve written about previously, SB 131 curiously contained a broad exemption for “advanced manufacturing.” This exemption was hastily added at the end of those negotiations, which raised concern for many lawmakers and advocates who were told that it would be revisited and cleaned up. It appears that won’t happen, and I’m sure those legislative leaders will want to forget any commitments were ever made in the first place. There is an ongoing effort to introduce clean up language that could be revisited next year, but for now, the advanced manufacturing exemption will remain as is.
Finally, a last minute deal that is simultaneously good, bad, confusing, concerning, and relieving. This week, a new bill came out of nowhere to try to overhaul Los Angeles’ voter-approved Measure ULA — the mansion tax that provides hundreds of millions of dollars for housing solutions, including social housing. It was prompted by Mayor Karen Bass, who worked with LA legislators Lena Gonzalez and Tina McKinnor to do a “gut-and-amend” where they take an existing bill and replace all of the existing language with a new policy — since the “bill” has already gone through all of the committees, it doesn’t need to start over again. It all makes sense.
This is disturbing for many reasons. On one level, both McKinnor and Gonzalez are generally thought to be community allies — Gonzalez has been a longtime EJ champion, authoring and championing the health and safety oil well buffer bill (SB 1137). It is really discouraging to see them being the ones to introduce this bill. But more than just the individuals, the policy itself is deeply troubling, and may be a signal of more to come. Ever since ULA passed, the real estate industry has had its sights on it. We’ve heard that they felt deeply embarrassed that they let a bunch of upstart community groups get organized enough to pass this, and they are pulling out all of the stops to spike it and prevent anything like that from happening again. This has led to threats of a ballot measure from the Howard Jarvis Taxpayers Association and California Business Roundtable (boooooo), with rumors swirling that they might be aiming to run something next year — that might be part of what’s motivating this move by the Mayor. But it’s crazy to me that they would try to overturn a voter-approved ballot initiative in Los Angeles through a state bill in Sacramento.
Yesterday, Mayor Bass announced that she would withdraw the bill, which speaks to how organized and unified the defense of ULA is. Many organizations and individuals were able to quickly mobilize to stave this off, but Bass said she intends to try again in the next legislative session. So that’s one fight we can already see coming.
As I wrote a few weeks ago, this has been a very tough legislative cycle. Instead of standing up against the Trump administration to provide a model of progressive leadership, the legislature has mostly tacked to the center. The legislative session will continue into tomorrow (even though the deadline for bills to pass is today??) so we’ll see how the last pieces fall into place. And then we’ll get back to organizing.
Newsom isn’t standing up to Big Oil like he used to. Source: LA Times via CalMatters
WHAT WE’RE READING
Insurance in the Polycrisis (Phenomenal World) — really good piece about the potential cascading effects of the insurance crisis amidst the climate crisis. I’ll probably write about this soon, but very much encourage reading this
Amid AI boom, San Francisco rents are up. So are eviction notices. (Mission Local) — more fuel to the ongoing series of how the tech industry impacts on housing
Los Angeles Is Contaminated Now (NYTimes)
Why California backed down from forcing landlords to keep residents cool(CalMatters)
Feel free to reply any time! I always enjoy hearing from people and getting any feedback/questions/additional thoughts.
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