🏡💚 Suspense without inspiration
Today is the notorious Suspense Day, when the chairs of the Appropriations Committees speed read through the fates of hundreds of bills without so much as a hint of reason or justification as to what led to each decision. I remember learning this the hard way back in 2022 when our coalition was co-sponsoring the California Justice40 Act (AB 2419) — as the Appropriations Chair read through the bills, he skipped over our bill. At first I thought, oh I think he must have made a mistake, then followed by, maybe I misread the Suspense file and he hasn’t gotten to us yet... It took several minutes and a few stages of grief to finally realize that skipping the bill meant that it had been held, and was dead. That result was devastating, somehow made even worse that they didn’t even acknowledge us.
This year, as I look at the bills awaiting decisions in Appropriations, I can’t help but feel a little dejected. There are some worthy bills, but the total package does not inspire the sense that we are willing to meet the scale of the crises we face.
Think of where we were at the beginning of this year: Trump was just taking office (yes, that was only this year), LA was still smoldering from wildfires that had destroyed entire communities, the ongoing housing crisis was a leading concern for people across the state, and everyone was wondering who was going to stand up against the rise of authoritarianism. In the first Trump presidency, California was one of the most visible sites of resistance, from new sanctuary laws opposing cooperation with ICE, to unapologetic environmental laws aiming to assume the mantle of climate leadership while Trump tried to dismantle it all.
This year felt like we could have gone even further. The Eaton and Palisades wildfires laid bare the cost of the climate crisis, and the even greater cost of inaction. At the same time, there was a large coalition of support for companion climate superfund bills (SB 674 and AB 1243). As questions arose asking who would pay for these damages, we had answers ready to go: make polluters pay. Landlords across LA were illegally price gouging the wave of people impacted and displaced by the fires, sometimes assisted by rent-setting algorithms to maximize profits. It was clear we needed a suite of tenant protections to kick in that would freeze rents, stop evictions, and aggressively go after profiteers seeking to turn disaster to financial advantage. Speculators moved in on Altadena, speed running the disaster capitalism playbook, but we had answers for this, too: green social housing, and investment in community land trusts that could keep Altadenans in their homes. There were big proposals on the table, like AB 1157 to address the cost of living crisis and lower rent increases that were continuing to drive more people to housing insecurity and homelessness.
These crises are both terrible manifestations of injustice, and they are also openings for decisive action. People who have seen me talk this year may have heard me reuse this notorious Milton Friedman quote: "Only a crisis - actual or perceived - produces real change. When that crisis occurs, the actions that are taken depend on the ideas that are lying around. That, I believe, is our basic function: to develop alternatives to existing policies, to keep them alive and available until the politically impossible becomes the politically inevitable.”
Surrounded by crises of huge magnitude, it also felt like we had some of the ideas lying around — make polluters pay, stabilize communities through tenant protections, stop predatory speculation through permanently affordable green social housing.
But over the course of the year, we’ve seen these efforts stymied and eroded away. Legislators were unwilling to take urgent action to stabilize fire impacted areas — rejecting proposals to establish a Community Opportunity to Purchase Act (COPA), freeze rents, and hold polluters accountable for insurance claims. The bills to Make Polluters Pay were turned into 2-year bills, and will need to move out of their respective committees next January.
As usual, Newsom has made his mark on the legislative session, and he promises even more in the final weeks. But so far this has mostly meant a single-minded and hyper-narrow focus on weakening CEQA, and the looming potential for rolling back environmental protections around oil drilling in the name of preventing refinery closures.
Instead of aggressively pushing forward solutions to the climate crisis, climate and environmental justice groups are working to play defense and stave off the worst effects of legislation. Part of the budget deal to weaken CEQA included an additional exemption for “advanced manufacturing,” a vague and extremely broad category that could refer to anything from facilities involving semiconductors and microelectronics, to industrial biotechnology, to literally any systems that represent “incremental or breakthrough” advancements in manufacturing. This exemption for advanced manufacturing seemingly came out of nowhere during last minute dealmaking (it was not previously in the two big CEQA exemption bills — AB 607 and SB 609 — that were combined in the budget deal). It seems all-too-coincidental to me that shortly after budget deal was passed, the tech billionaires trying to create a new city in Solano County (“California Forever”) announced that the proposed city would be an advanced manufacturing town.
Advocates are trying to remove the advanced manufacturing exemption, and at the same time rumors are circulating the the Governor may be interested in streamlining permits for new oil wells in Kern County. This is a far cry from the end of session just a few years ago that led to the landmark environmental justice victory creating health and safety buffer zones around oil and gas drilling sites.
I realize this is a bit of a doom and gloom screed, but I think it’s easy to forget what political opportunities there once were before getting lost in the twists and turns that bring us to the current moment. Anyone working on these issues knows that the crises are only going to intensify in the years to come. We don’t know exactly when these crises will become most acute, but we do know that voters will have to reckon with the future of the state in the gubernatorial election next year.
In the meantime, there are still important issues that need our support. The biggest is probably the potential extension of the state’s cap-and-trade program, with significant questions about program design and funding allocations still up in the air. There are also GND-supported bills that are still alive and kicking, including SB 332(studying the transition from the investor-owned utility model to one “that prioritizes the needs of the people and ecology of the State of California”), AB 670 (adding affordable housing preservation to the state’s housing needs assessment process), and SB 655 (establishing state policy for a safe maximum indoor temperature). The union-led effort to create a green industrial policy roadmap through SB 787 is still moving, bolstered by a recently released report calling for a pro-worker green industrial policy.
I also know that many of these fights will continue next year — including the push to make polluters pay, and to address rent affordability. We might also have a few ideas cooking ourselves… To everyone working tirelessly on legislation during this homestretch, sending you our gratitude and support. And to everyone else: let’s keep organizing to make what may feel right now as the politically impossible, soon become the politically inevitable.
Keep up the fight Source: MakePollutersPay.net
WHAT WE’RE READING
A ‘Third Way’ Between Buying or Renting? Swiss Co-ops Say They’ve Found It. (NYTimes)
Powerful union demands 'New Deal' for the 2028 LA Olympic Games, threatens to strike (LAist)
As Flood Risk Grows, Suisun City Weighs Annexing California Forever Land (KQED)
The Root Cause Test: A Public Health Guide for Transformative Housing Solutions (Health in Partnership)
California Climate-Smart Economy Initiative Discussion Paper (CA FWD)
Organize, Industrialize, Decarbonize! A Pro-Worker, Green Industrial Policy for California (UAW Region 6)
Feel free to reply any time! I always enjoy hearing from people and getting any feedback/questions/additional thoughts.
We send these out on a somewhat weekly basis. If you don’t want to get these newsletters, feel free to unsubscribe below. If you know someone that would be interested, send me their email, or you can forward this along to them and they can use this link to subscribe.
