Nearly 60 years ago, when Jesse Unruh became Speaker of the California Assembly, the state’s legislature became a model for legislatures all across the land. Unlike most legislatures, which met briefly and sporadically and had little if any staff to help members do the research required for new legislation, California’s lawmaking body professionalized under Unruh, passing landmark civil rights bills, enlarging the nation’s best
system of public colleges and universities, and generally treating lawmaking as a serious business.
Would that could be said of California’s legislature today. In its just-completed session, it failed to enact significant police reform or any bill that would have increased the state’s completely insufficient housing stock. This despite the fact that the Democrats have supermajorities in both houses, not to mention a Democratic governor.
Part of the problem was the legislature’s inability to finish its work before its self-imposed deadline for adjournment, which was exacerbated by having some legislators working remotely and also by Republican delaying tactics. But part was due to the baffling timidity of some Democrats to support such police reforms as stopping the practice of cities or counties hiring officers who’d been fired for brutality in other cities or counties. Part of it was due to the NIMBYism of some Democrats who blocked a bill
that would have permitted duplexes—duplexes, O the horror!—in neighborhoods zoned solely for single-family dwellings.
There’s a short-term solution to these failings: Gov. Gavin Newsom could call the legislature back into special session, inasmuch as most Californians realize their state faces crises in policing and housing. A longer-term solution would be for progressives to run challengers in the next round of primaries against those Democrats who couldn’t bring themselves to rein in abusive cops or take even a first timid step to address the state’s chronic and acute housing shortage.
To my fellow California progressives: This is why God invented primaries.
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