Good morning, and welcome to the
Essential California newsletter. It’s
Friday, May 17, and I’m writing from Los Angeles.
The machinations of state politics rarely burst beyond the Sacramento bubble, but
Sen. Scott Wiener’s proposal to radically rethink California housing has dominated the conversation more than any bill in recent memory. It generated countless inches of national newspaper ink and heated dinner-table debates during its first go-round last year. And it was somehow even
more talked-about after being reborn in the current legislative session.
The battle over
Senate Bill 50 has been about much more than politics. What people have really been debating in those newspaper columns and living room conversations is
the future of California. Or rather, a choice between two very different Californias.
Are we a state of “little boxes” and suburban dreams, where the good life is inextricably linked to a two-car garage and the promise of your very own front lawn? Or have we reached a point in the housing crisis where our cities must densify or die?
Wiener’s proposal would have
increased home building near mass transit and in single-family home neighborhoods. It would also have forced California to choose a future where our living patterns might sharply diverge from the past.
But yesterday, in a development that shocked nearly everyone watching, the bill was effectively killed without a vote in the Senate Appropriations Committee. The bill will be eligible again in 2020 but will likely face a steeper climb in an election year.
I called L.A. Times state politics and policy reporter
Liam Dillon last night to try to understand what just happened. Dillon, who has covered this bill extensively, spoke on the phone from his office in Sacramento, where he’d just finished
a story on the bill that ran on this morning’s front page.
How did this bill die?The bill died because it was held in the Senate Appropriations Committee. Essentially, this is a way that the Legislature can hold bills without having a formal vote, particularly sticky bills where they don’t want to leave fingerprints on who actually killed them.
[This 2016 story by John Myers offers a little more context on how that process works.]So, we don’t actually know whose decision this was?That is correct. However, the chairman of the committee, Sen. Anthony Portantino, who is from La Cañada Flintridge, is very much opposed to the bill.
When I asked him if he was responsible for the decision to kill it this year, he said, “I’m the chair of the committee.”
Did anyone expect this to happen today?This was a surprising decision. I was expecting the bill to advance. I was expecting this to have advanced from the Senate floor, and then I think it was up for debate what was going to happen after that.
It was very clear that Sen. Portantino was opposed to this bill. But I think it was very much a surprise that those objections were not overruled by those in positions of higher authority. While committee chairs certainly have a lot of power in the Appropriations Committee, people that are more powerful are legislative leadership and the governor.
While Senate President Pro Tem Toni Atkins put out a statement complimenting Sen. Wiener for his efforts, apparently Sen. Portantino’s opinion carried the day.
Similarly, Gov. Gavin Newsom — who did not take a position on the bill previously — put out a statement afterwards saying he was disappointed that the bill did not move forward. But again, it's unclear and no one would say whether Gov. Newsom made any formal interventions to try to keep it alive.
Does the governor have the power to formally intervene there? Or would it just be a matter of applying political pressure?Because he’s the executive, he doesn’t have any formal vote on any piece of legislation. But there are lots of levers that a governor holds that can certainly influence how things work.
No comments:
Post a Comment