Bills passed, blocked and promised in the final hours

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** The not-so-final flurry of the 2024 legislative session
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Dear John,

The 2024 California legislative session came to a close last Saturday and Gov. Gavin Newsom now has more than 900 bills to consider on his desk. This is after he’s already signed and vetoed dozens of bills in the previous weeks after taking some time off to recover from not being selected as the nominee for President. His deadline is September 30 to decide on whether to sign or veto the remaining bills. Those that he doesn’t address automatically become law. California Policy Center tracked select bills, but it’s an overwhelming process to watch the sausage-making inside the Capitol.

For starters, many high-profile bills were ultimately left out in the cold without a final vote. Indeed, the appropriations committees in both houses killed hundreds of bills by simply allowing them to languish in their so-called “suspense files” where controversial bills go to die.

Of those bills that made it to the final stretch, a number of them survived ”hostage negotiations” where each house holds particularly important bills until the end of the session to use as leverage in negotiations over their own priority bills. It’s the legislature’s version of planned obsolescence.

The level of gamesmanship involved in getting a bill over the finish line shows that our legislature is not a serious policy making organization. It has instead been completely taken over by special interests. Many — but not all — lawmakers are in office to simply do the bidding of their donors. In California, of course, that often means unions and radical progressive organizations.

This is the problem with having a semi-professional legislature. The state doesn’t pay legislators enough to be full-time, so holding office becomes an audition for their post-legislative career, where electeds can cash-in by becoming a well-paid lobbyist or leader of a trade or advocacy association.

Because of the size and importance of California’s economy, state legislators are in a unique position. They make decisions about hundreds of billions of dollars every year via the state budget, as well as legislation that affects the state’s $3.9 trillion economy that can have an impact for generations.

Accordingly, legislators can and do leverage their positions for future employment. If we were to triple the size of the legislature, we’d be able to better diffuse the decision making process and better represent the people, especially those in the political center. But as it stands, too few lawmakers hold the reins of lawmaking and many prepare for retirement by selling their souls to the highest bidder.

Many of the bills that follow, however, are buoyed by the kinetic force of radical left-wing politics. Public sector unions and far-left lobbying groups have hundreds of millions of dollars in their political war chests, and California is often the testing ground for taking their extreme agendas national.

REPARATIONS

The legislature took on a lot of controversial issues this session, but one of the more high-profile debates was over the proposal to pay “reparations” to Black Californians, despite the fact that California was never a slave state ([link removed]) . Insiders understood that Gov. Newsom was not interested in receiving the bills on his desk because the issue is deeply politically unpopular — and cash-strapped California doesn’t have the hundreds of billions of dollars to pay the amount recommended by the Reparations Task Force.

Democrat legislators had promised reparations supporters they would take action on the issue. But last week, legislators made it clear they had no intention of doing anything but stonewall SB 1403 and SB 1331, which would have established a reparations state agency and reparations fund respectively. Angry activists descended upon the Capitol ([link removed]) to make their voices heard, but the Legislative Black Caucus ([link removed]) blocked both bills.

Enter Assemblyman Bill Essayli, a fearless Republican from Corona who has ruffled feathers this session by calling out Assembly leaders for stifling legislators’ free speech on the floor. Although Essayli didn’t intend to support the reparations bills, he urged the Assembly to at least allow the issue to be debated.

Sadly, Essayli was shut down repeatedly by several Speaker Pro Tems who (once again) forbade him to speak and even turned off his microphone — telling the only Muslim assemblymember and Black reparations advocates that they weren’t worth listening to.

“I believed there should be a debate and a recorded vote on the issue. Politicians cannot be allowed to make promises to the people who elect them, and then hide like cowards when it’s time to go on record,” Essayli said ([link removed]) in a statement.

In an interview with Sacramento’s KCRA 3 ([link removed]) , Kamilah Moore, the chair of California's Reparations Task Force, put it this way: "What we saw was a complete betrayal by the California Legislative Black caucus against their own constituents.”

TARGETING LOCAL AUTHORITY

Another favorite pastime of Sacramento’s Democrat leadership is passing bills that gut the prerogative and ability of local elected officials to govern California’s cities, counties and school districts. One example that made headlines this week was the passage of the controversial AB 1174, proposed by Assemblyman Dave Min (D-Irvine). The bill prohibits local governments from enforcing voter identification requirements in municipal elections. Min introduced the legislation to block Huntington Beach’s Measure A, passed by voters earlier this year, which allows the city to require voters to provide identification before casting their in-person ballot starting in 2026.

Another case in point is AB 1955, signed into law by Gov. Newsom earlier this summer. The bill was introduced by Assemblyman Chris Ward (D-San Diego) to kill the parental notification policies passed by a growing number of local school boards, which required school officials to inform parents if their child officially changed their gender, name or pronouns at school.

CALIFORNIA KIDS

Democrats continue to campaign on phony “book bans,” and another bill to watch is AB 1825, the Orwellian-named “California Freedom to Read Act.” The bill prohibits public libraries from limiting access to library materials that “may include sexual content.” The books at the center of this fight are often “graphic novels” designed to look similar to comic books that depict and promote sexual behavior that is grossly inappropriate for young readers. If Newsom signs the bill, it will effectively require that sexually explicit material be included in the children’s section of California’s public libraries.

At California Policy Center, we’re proud that we were able to convince lawmakers to amend out provisions in the bill that would have required school libraries to put objectively obscene material on their shelves after it was clear that common sense wouldn’t kill the bill.

We’re not sure why Democrats are so determined to expose children to graphic sexual content, and we're even more confused by their drawn out opposition to SB 1414. The bill, introduced and courageously fought for by Republican Sen. Shannon Grove (Bakersfield), cleared its final floor votes on Saturday. It increases from a misdemeanor to a felony the purchase or solicitation of a child 15 years old or younger ([link removed]) for sex. Newsom is expected to sign the bill.

So what’s the problem? Inexplicably, it took months of parent advocates and eventually the media calling out Democrats who refused to bring the bill forward for a vote — and party leaders only finally agreed to do so if the age of the victims protected by the bill were reduced from under 18 to 15-year-olds and younger.

The last time we checked, 16 and 17-year-olds are still kids and they’re certainly at grave risk of being sex trafficked. Apparently, Sacramento Democrats are good with protecting some kids but not all.

Which takes us to SB 1283, introduced by Senator Henry Stern (D-Malibu) ([link removed]) , which would have authorized school officials to snoop on students’ cell phones to monitor their social media. What’s worse is that if they found anything objectionable, they were prohibited from alerting parents. California Policy Center drew enough attention to the unseemly language in the bill and the author immediately amended the legislation back to its original, innocuous intent language.

ENVIRONMENTAL GRANDSTANDING

They say the definition of insanity is doing the same thing over and over again and expecting different results. The new plastic bag ban — AB 2236 and SB1053 — passed by legislators last week comes to mind. In another example of lawmakers missing the plot, the bill’s environmental backers said the legislation was necessary to address the massive increase in plastic pollution — almost a 50 percent increase — that followed the original plastic bag ban they convinced Californians to pass a decade ago.

Legislative bans don’t work ([link removed]) , and this latest political ploy ([link removed]) is an attempt by environmental activists to change the narrative. Maybe they’re hoping no one will notice that their ideas are rarely based in reality.

We’ll see if the governor signs the ban. But if anyone is looking for real solutions to plastic pollution, they might start with improving the state’s failed recycling program or actually enforcing state littering laws.

Other environmental legislation was passed in the final flurry of activity, but curiously, lawmakers completely ignored the state’s massive fires ([link removed]) , including the ongoing Park Fire, the fourth-largest wildfire in state history ([link removed]) .

VEHICLE TRACKING

Still, perhaps the silliest bill to pass Saturday is SB 961, introduced by San Francisco Democrat Scott Wiener that will require car manufacturers to add a feature to vehicles that will notify drivers if they drive 10 miles over the speed limit. Newsflash to Wiener: That’s what speedometers are for. Perhaps nothing captures Wiener’s uselessness better than this bill, which would not only be a threat to individual liberty — but the required “audio signal” would also be incredibly annoying when you’re driving across the state on the I-5.

SPECIAL SESSION ON GAS

Lastly, as the session was winding down on Saturday, Gov. Newsom called for a special legislative session, to run conveniently into November, that will focus on gas prices and lampooning the oil industry in the run up to the election. In reality, the move is just a means to give political cover to incumbents who are facing voter backlash over sky-high energy and gas prices.

Of course, the legislature is likely to expand regulations instead of loosening the noose, so gas prices will ultimately increase even more.

“It’s blatantly undemocratic for Newsom to finally show up to his day job and demand the Legislature instantly cave to his demands, all so that he can feel relevant again and get a splashy headline,” said Senate Republican leader Brian Jones (San Diego), according to Cal Matters ([link removed]) .

True, but then again, “undemocratic” seems to have been a recurring theme of the 2024 legislative session.

For more information, be sure to visit our Take Action ([link removed]) page to learn more about the bills on the governor’s desk.

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** Radio Free California #351: Is This the End of Gavin Newsom?
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CPC president Will Swaim and CPC board member David Bahnsen consider Governor Newsom’s sudden impotence in California politics, Kamala Harris’s vapid CNN interview and her actual record as San Francisco’s DA, Erwin Chemerinsky’s call to end the U.S. Constitution, and the special contempt they hold for corrupt Republicans. Listen now. ([link removed])

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