Three current state lawmakers are running this year for the Board of Equalization, the nation’s only elected tax board. They are part of a field of roughly two dozen candidates pursuing the board’s four district-based seats.

The office has long served as a steppingstone in California politics. Fiona Ma held a seat before becoming state treasurer, while Betty Yee and Malia Cohen served on the board before winning election as state controller.

The Board of Equalization dates to an 1879 constitutional amendment that created it to make county property tax assessments more consistent across California. Over time, the agency grew far beyond that original mission, eventually collecting about one-third of the state’s tax revenue and hearing appeals from taxpayers and businesses disputing tax bills.

Governors from both parties tried unsuccessfully to eliminate the board, including Pete Wilson and Arnold Schwarzenegger. But the agency survived until 2017, when allegations that board members had used public resources to promote themselves led to a state audit and major legislative action.

Then-Gov. Jerry Brown signed a law that stripped the board of most of its authority, leaving it with only the responsibilities spelled out in the state Constitution. The law also created two new departments under the governor: one to collect sales and use taxes and another to handle taxpayer appeals.

After the reorganization, Board of Equalization races became far less prominent. Ted Gaines, a former Republican lawmaker from the Sacramento area, won a seat. Former Democratic Assemblymember Sally Lieber also joined the board and is now seeking reelection. Other current members came from local government rather than the state Capitol.

Lieber, who represents District 2, a 19-county region centered on the Bay Area, said the board still serves a meaningful purpose.

“We’re lean but we’re not mean,” Lieber said. “I think the Board of Equalization is the right size in the system right now. I do really believe that the board has a role to play in being a forum for taxpayers to come forward to.”

This year’s races are expected to be more competitive.

In District 1, which covers inland California, Republican state Sen. Shannon Grove of Bakersfield enters the race with more than $900,000 in her campaign account and name recognition built through service in the Legislature since 2010. Democrats are also contesting the seat, with Fresno City Councilmember Nelson Esparza running with party support.

In District 2, Lieber faces San Mateo Community College District Trustee John Pimentel. Lieber has the state Democratic Party’s endorsement, while Pimentel has support from several Bay Area Democratic figures, including Treasurer Ma and San Jose Mayor Matt Mahan.

In District 3, which represents the Los Angeles area, former Monterey Park City Councilmember Yvonne Yiu has contributed $760,000 of her own money to the campaign and has about $1 million available. She faces Assemblymember Mike Gipson, a Gardena Democrat who has served in the Legislature since 2014.

District 4, which includes the San Diego region and parts of Southern California, has drawn a crowded field. Candidates include Democratic state Sen. Tom Umberg of Santa Ana, San Ysidro school board member Martín Arias, San Diego Unified School District board member Cody Peterson and Republican Denis Bilodeau, who is backed by Assemblymember Carl DeMaio’s Reform California organization.

Taxpayer advocacy groups have long supported the board because it provides an elected forum focused specifically on tax issues.

“It’s a very useful elected body that answers to the voters,” said Susan Shelley, vice president of communications for the Howard Jarvis Taxpayers Association.

Some candidates say the downsized agency could still do more for Californians.

Arias said the board should play a larger role in helping homeowners and prospective homeowners understand the system. As a taxpayer advocate in the San Diego County Assessor’s Office, he said he works with the Board of Equalization regularly.

“I think there’s a bigger opportunity here to make the Board of Equalization the constitutional office that it is — that it should be,” Arias said. “There’s a clear opportunity here for us to start advocating at the state level for all of our taxpayers, including those that don’t speak English.”

Umberg said he wants the board to have stronger investigative authority and more resources, particularly when overseeing county property tax assessors. He pointed to past felony cases involving assessors in San Bernardino and Los Angeles counties as examples of why oversight matters.

“Although it’s not a high-profile job, it’s a critically important job, especially when we’ve got so many revenue challenges in California,” Umberg said in an interview with CalMatters.

Not everyone agrees the board should continue to exist. Yee, who served on the Board of Equalization from 2004 to 2014, has called for abolishing it entirely. She argues its remaining duties could be handled by another state department or agency.

“I just really do question how this board continues to have relevance,” Yee told CalMatters. “I sometimes feel like the board is really doing a lot of work in search of finding problems to solve. I know with each of the board members, they feel very strongly about being a taxpayer advocate. But frankly, every public official should be a taxpayer advocate.”

Democratic lawmakers did not eliminate the board in 2017 because doing so would have required voter approval.

Mark DeSio, a former communications director for the board, said lawmakers should have gone further.

“They should have just chopped the head of the snake off and done away with the Board of Equalization altogether,” DeSio said. “They didn’t do that. They left enough of the cancer to grow back.”

DeSio cooperated with the audits that found misspending intended to raise elected members’ profiles and widespread nepotism in hiring. He later lost his job during the reorganization and filed a whistleblower retaliation lawsuit against the state.

He said he believes some lawmakers are now drawn to the board because it offers visibility while they position themselves for future campaigns.

“That was the recipe for disaster a few years back,” DeSio said. “Somebody better watch these guys. They’re not there for the policy. It’s for the exposure.”

Original source: CalMatters

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The bill would have allowed victims of natural disasters, including fires, floods and hurricanes, to sue fossil fuel companies over harm to themselves or their property for damage totaling at least $10,000. Home insurers would also have been able to seek damages under the legislation. The proposal was announced weeks after the Los Angeles-area fires broke out in January, burning thousands of homes and killing at least 30 people.

The Senate Judiciary Committee rejected the bill late Tuesday, with several Democrats abstaining, but left open the possibility for it to be reconsidered later this year. Opponents also said it would threaten jobs in the energy industry by dealing a blow to business, and that it would be difficult to prove a specific company’s responsibility for a particular natural disaster.

State Sen. Scott Wiener, a Democrat representing San Francisco who authored the bill, rejected the argument that it would lead to higher gas prices. He said it was about holding the fossil fuel industry accountable for the impacts of climate change. The bill would have eased the burden on disaster survivors and insurance companies to cover damage costs, he said.

“Today’s vote is a setback for the victims of the Los Angeles wildfires and for the cost of living in California,” Wiener said in a statement. “Victims of the Eaton and Palisades Fire — and of all climate disasters — deserve accountability for the decades of Big Oil lies that devastated their communities.”

When fossil fuels such as oil and gas are burned for energy, carbon dioxide and other emissions enter the Earth’s atmosphere, causing the planet to warm. Climate change has made natural disasters more frequent and intense.

State Sen. Anna Caballero, a Democrat representing part of the Central Valley, said ahead of the vote that lawmakers’ decision not to support the bill shouldn’t be viewed as a move to deprioritize environmental policy. And she said it wouldn’t help people who lost their homes to recent fires rebuild.

“If this was going to actually result in building homes in the fire zones faster, better and with more efficiency, I would probably support it,” she said. “But from my view, this is more about lawyers. This is about litigation.”

Wiener said it was important for California to remain a climate leader, invoking President Donald Trump’s efforts to roll back environmental policies.

Trump signed an executive order Tuesday to identify state rules he said could hinder “America’s energy dominance.” He called out California’s cap-and-trade program, as well as other climate policies in New York and Vermont.

The California bill’s failure to advance comes after lawmakers in recent years blocked a proposal that would have made oil companies liable for the health problems of people who live close to oil wells.

California, a U.S. trendsetter on climate policies, has approved policies over the years to limit emissions from cars, lawn mowers, trucks and trains. But some of those measures have faced threats from the Trump administration. The state Air Resources Board pulled back its requests for federal approval to enforce rules curbing pollution from diesel-powered big rigs and trains ahead of Trump’s return to office.

Other major California rules are at risk. Congressional Republicans introduced proposals last week to block state policies approved by President Joe Biden’s administration that would ban the sale of new gas-powered cars by 2035, cut tailpipe emissions from medium- and heavy-duty vehicles, and curb smog-forming nitrogen oxide pollution from trucks.

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But that’s what concerns many Pacific Gas & Electric Co. customers who cannot afford to pay their soaring utility bills. As of February, more than 1 million of them were behind on payments.

The California Public Utilities Commission, tasked with regulating private utilities, just approved another rate hike last month, on top of a previous increase that took effect in January, amounting to a roughly $400 annual bump for the average household. The staggering energy costs have rocked residents and business owners, who are exasperated by the inability of state leaders and commissioners to ease their financial pain.

With rates becoming increasingly unsustainable, the long-term repercussions for those already living paycheck to paycheck seem dire. More broadly, could these elevated costs serve as an impediment to wider adoption of all-electric vehicles and appliances? Will PG&E or the CPUC commissioners who approve these outrageous increases face any consequences? 

The utility’s negligence and aging infrastructure has led to loss of life, property and – in the case of Paradise – an entire California town. Nevertheless, consumers are paying the price for the consequences of their mistakes and the cost of preventing future ones. 

“They’re outraged and they’re frustrated,” Assemblyman James Gallagher, a Chico Republican and Minority Leader, said of his constituents. Over the years, Gallagher has authored multiple laws to compensate wildfire survivors and help communities recover. 

“The cost of living is already so high, and to add another rate increase, people are very angry about it,” he continued. “They don’t understand it. Why is it that rates keep going up, when you have a company that made (more than) $2 billion in profit last year?”

So far, answers to such pressing questions remain elusive, and potential solutions far from assured. 

In February, Gallagher, along with Republican Assemblymember Joe Patterson, introduced legislation that would order the CPUC to cut electricity rates by 30%. If Assembly Bill 2205 is pushed through, Gallagher hopes it will ease the burden on families and businesses. 

“We’re putting the PUC in a position where they’re proactively looking out for consumers and not looking out for utility companies,” he said.

In response to public outcry, the state’s utility regulators proposed a new, tiered billing structure designed to make the price of electricity less expensive for residential customers. Under the proposal, customers of PG&E, Southern California Edison and San Diego Gas & Electric would pay an income-based rate, helping reduce bills for lower-income customers.

According to the CPUC, the billing structure would include a flat rate of $24.15 per month for most households, which would reduce the price of electricity by 5-7 cents per kilowatt hour. If approved, it would go into effect late 2025 and early 2026.

This proposal, however, has already sparked fierce debate, and comes on the heels of a prior recommendation for a fixed rate. That proposal also received pushback from lawmakers who argued that the pricing structure might do more harm than good for low-income households.

Some legislators, including Jacqui Irwin, a Thousand Oaks Democrat who recently called the CPUC “completely out of touch,” want to repeal the proposal establishing an income-graduated fee and replace it with Assembly Bill 1999, capping the fixed charge at $10 ($5 for low-income customers).

Legislative maneuvering aside, affordable energy and climate advocates like Mark Toney, executive director of The Utility Reform Network, believe that placing a cap on utility rate hikes is just one part of the solution. Regulators should also require utilities to exercise fiscal discipline on spending, he said. Utilities, Toney explained, should not be given a “credit card with no limit and a guarantee that someone else is going to pay.” 

TURN is backing the Utility Accountability Act, a sensible bill that would prohibit utilities from using funds collected from ratepayers to pay for advertisements, political activities or membership dues of trade associations engaged in lobbying. It would also require utilities to document and disclose their spending.

Another sticking point is charging utility customers for climate initiatives that reduce wildfire risk or expand clean energy. With its ambitious climate goals, California can ill afford to discourage people from helping reduce the impacts of a warming planet.

By increasing the cost for using electricity, “that’s not rewarding people for good behavior,” Toney said. 

Gallagher contends that climate mandates can be costly requirements passed onto consumers, and routinely hears from constituents exhausted by the rate spikes and sometimes one paycheck from losing everything. PG&E failed to modernize and keep up with vegetation management, but now wants to place more underground utility wires and send consumers the bill. 

Undergrounding, he added, doesn’t have to be done everywhere just yet.

“There needs to be a greater focus on modernizing this infrastructure, but how do we go about that without putting all the burden on consumers?” Gallagher said. “A shareholder fund could be part of that, or maybe some state interest in modernizing the grid. All these things should be brought to the table.”

For Ahmad Faruqui, an energy economist based in Danville, a remedy cannot come soon enough. The No. 1 concern of friends and neighbors remains the exorbitant cost of electricity, which has been rising faster than the rate of inflation. People are just “doing their best to pay the mortgage, car payments and their children’s education,” he said. 

At some point, though, customers will grow too weary of the financial strain. Faruqui predicts there could be a “huge backlash” for the governor and legislators if it’s not brought under control.

“We are paying for their blunders,” Faruqui said of PG&E.

Californians deserve better than what they’re getting from the state’s largest and most expensive utility company – and the commission charged with regulating it. With no relief in immediate sight, more people will be faced with impossible choices, contemplating which necessities should be sacrificed just to light up their homes at night. 

Those are choices no utility customer should ever have to make. 

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Citing safety threats, California lawmakers are advancing a bill that would keep the property they own and other personal information from annual financial disclosures off the internet.

The measure, Assembly Bill 1170, would shift to an electronic filing system for the statement of economic interest, known as Form 700, that elected officials and some public employees in California are required to complete each year.

But a secondary provision proposes to expand the redactions on publicly available versions of the form, shielding the addresses of filers’ real property interests and businesses, though they would still be available upon request. Organizations that advocate for greater transparency in government have objected to withholding information that could illuminate conflicts of interest.

Laurel Brodzinsky, legislative director for California Common Cause, said Form 700 is an important tool for understanding how elected officials’ economic interests shape their decision-making. “We do think that having that transparency is really important for accountability,” Brodzinsky said. A compromise on the bill — which passed through the Assembly today on a 58-0 vote and is headed to the Senate — may be imminent. Assemblymember Avelino Valencia, the Anaheim Democrat who is carrying the measure, said he is working on amendments that would narrow the redactions to only addresses where a filer lives.

He declined to further discuss any changes. “By modernizing state processes and improving government efficiency, we are focused on the priority of saving the state money during this critical budget time,” Valencia said in a text message. “However, that will not come at the expense of the public’s access to government documents that provide transparency into potential conflicts of interest.”

Lawmakers are increasingly raising concerns about what they say has been a rise in political violence and harassment in recent years, such as the October 2022 hammer attack against then-House Speaker Nancy Pelosi’s husband at their San Francisco home. During a committee hearing for AB 1170 earlier this month, Assemblymember Gail Pellerin, a Santa Cruz Democrat, said she believes “the expanded redaction requirements in the bill are important to ensure filers’ privacy and safety.”

The Legislature approved another bill last year that would have expanded the ability of California political candidates to use campaign funds to pay for security expenses, such as home security systems and bodyguards. It was ultimately vetoed by Gov. Gavin Newsom, who said the measure did not provide enough guidance on what would be a legitimate security expense.

The Fair Political Practices Commission, the state campaign ethics regulator that manages the statement of economic interest, sponsored Valencia’s bill because it wants to require electronic filing of the form. Senior legislative counsel Lindsey Nakano said the redaction provision came out of discussions with lawmakers about increased security and safety issues. “We heard concern about people who might use the addresses found online on the Form 700s to harass the filer or those connected to them, including to potentially harass tenants of real property owned by the Form 700 filer,” Nakano said in an email. “I’m not aware of any specific incidences.”

The bill, as currently written, would also require the commission to redact the signature, personal address and telephone number of a filer, though none of that information currently appears in the copies of Form 700s available online. Brodzinsky of California Common Cause said there are reasonable limitations on what information is disclosed about elected officials and other public servants given the threat of violence. “We do understand the concerns of the privacy of the filer and they would not want their residential address out so publicly on the internet,” she said.

But there are also legitimate reasons for making the real property interests of filers known, Brodzinsky argued. She pointed to an investigation last fall by the San Francisco Standard into a city building inspector who signed off on construction permits for his own home, which cited Form 700 records. CalMatters analyzed legislators’ real property interests in 2019, as they were considering a measure to cap rent increases, and found that more than a quarter of the members of the Legislature at the time were landlords.

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It’s the job of a governor to play adult supervisor and not give adolescent state legislators all the spending money they’d like. Otherwise, they’d break the family bank. All modern California governors have performed this role, often in different ways and frequently with relish.

Many, especially Republicans, have loved to use their “blue pencil,” striking individual spending items from the annual state budget before signing it. That’s a potent power California governors enjoy that U.S. presidents don’t even have. Gov. Ronald Reagan cherished the “line item veto” and often lamented not possessing the tool as president. Gov. Gavin Newsom, however, hardly ever picks up his blue pencil.

He barely touches a spending plan before signing what he’s sent by the Democratic-controlled Legislature. That’s because he and legislative leaders already have negotiated the final version of the budget before lawmakers pass it. Then what Newsom does to slow spending by lawmakers is to emulate his predecessor, Gov. Jerry Brown.

He vetoes lots of spending bills that legislators pass after the budget is enacted. It’s in legislators’ DNA to try to squeeze more dollars out of the state kitty after there’s already a spending plan in place for the year. “They’re always asking for more,” Brown once said. “There’s no natural limit.

There’s no predator for this species of budgetary activity except the governor.” Lawmakers — Democrats, anyway — counter that it’s their constitutional right to keep dipping into the pot. “Many of my colleagues have important issues they’re trying to tackle on behalf of their constituents and they have costs,” Assemblyman Evan Low (D-Campbell) told me. “Just as the governor has the right to veto bills, it is the Legislature’s right to send him bills as part of our democratic process.” But Newsom’s admonition to legislators — implanted in veto messages on dozens of spending bills he recently rejected — is that if they want to tap into the state vault, they’d better follow a protocol.

They need to seek approval through the annual budget process that’s supposed to end on June 30. Otherwise, spending veers out of control. This was Newsom’s basic boilerplate lecture that he tucked into spending vetoes: “We enacted a budget that closed a shortfall of more than $30 billion through balanced solutions that avoided deep program cuts… “This year, however, the Legislature sent me bills outside of this budget process that, if all enacted, would add nearly $19 billion of unaccounted costs in the budget… “With our state facing continuing economic risks and revenue uncertainty, it is important to remain disciplined.”

It was a strong message. But a little humor now and then wouldn’t have hurt. Previous governors showed some occasional wit in their bill signing or veto messages.

In inking a bill to legalize the stuffing and display of dead mountain lions, Brown wrote: “This presumably important bill earned overwhelming support by both Republicans and Democrats. If only that same energetic bipartisan spirit could be applied to creating clean energy jobs and ending tax laws that send jobs out of state.” Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger used a vulgar acrostic to veto a bill by an assemblyman who had heckled the Republican governor when he crashed a Democratic fundraiser.

The second line of the message began with the letter “F” and lines six through eight started with the letters “y,” “o” and “u.” Gov. Pete Wilson enjoyed vetoing a bill that called for a state study of how best to dispose of discarded fluorescent light tubes. “Question: How many new legislative bills does it take to study the disposal of light bulbs?” Wilson wrote. “Answer: One less than you think.” Newsom recently signed 890 bills and vetoed 156 — a mediocre veto rate of 15%. In 2008, Schwarzenegger vetoed a record 35% of the bills lawmakers sent him, calling it collateral damage for them being 85 days late passing a budget. That was when budgets required a two-thirds legislative vote.

In 2011, it was lowered to a simple majority. That year, tightwad Brown vetoed the entire budget. He complained it added billions of dollars in new debt to already red ink spending. It’s the only time an entire spending plan has been vetoed. Regardless of Newsom’s tough veto message — and his restriction on when spending can be approved — he’s hardly a piker.

In his less than five years as governor, state spending has jumped by 53% — more than $100 billion, from the $203-billion budget Brown left him to $311 billion currently. The governor’s office would not provide a total amount of spending that Newsom vetoed. His boilerplate language was used in 64 vetoes. Neither would his spokespeople elaborate on the governor’s veto messages.

Was it just about saving money? Or was that sometimes merely a cover for blocking policy he disliked?. “Just about every bill that is on the governor’s desk has some cost to it,” says Assembly Budget Committee Chairman Philip Ting (D-San Francisco). “Most of the time the governor has a reason other than the spending [for a veto]. Sometimes he gives the budget excuse.” One example: He vetoed a bill requiring high schools to provide free condoms for students.

Was that just because of the “unfunded mandate” he cited? Or does the father of four children also question the policy? Another: He vetoed a measure that would have provided unemployment insurance benefits for striking union members. He said the unemployment fund was already $20 billion in debt. But did he also think it was nuts to subsidize strikers who voluntarily walk off their jobs? He vetoed a lot of spending bills that amounted to pocket change. And he was right.

Once there’s an agreed-upon budget, lawmakers shouldn’t squeeze taxpayers for more money except in a dire emergency.

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State lawmakers approved legislation late Wednesday that would bar mandatory evictions or exclusion for California tenants and their families based on criminal histories or brushes with law enforcement. Assembly Bill 1418 combats local policies known as “crime-free housing” that can require landlords to evict tenants for arrests or prohibit landlords from renting to those with prior convictions.

The bill would make many of these laws unenforceable, ending the practice in scores of communities. The bill’s author, Assemblymember Tina McKinnor (D-Hawthorne), said that its passage advances the state’s racial justice efforts by stopping communities from using crime-free housing laws to exclude or push out Black and Latino renters. “We want to make sure we keep Black and brown people in their homes and that [crime-free housing rules] are not used as an excuse for gentrification,” McKinnor said. The bill does not affect landlords’ ability to initiate nuisance-related evictions or screen tenants based on criminal histories of their own accord.

AB 1418 was inspired by a 2020 Times investigation that highlighted the proliferation of crime-free housing policies across California, especially in communities with growing Black and Latino populations. Times reporting found that local governments have approved the policies even when crime rates were stable or falling, while the number of Black or Latino residents was increasing.

The Times determined that in some areas crime-free housing rules were enforced against Black, Latino and other tenants of color in far greater numbers than their share of the population. Terrance Stewart told The Times in 2020 that he faced constant rejections from landlords in Riverside, which had a strict crime-free housing ordinance, due to a prior cocaine dealing conviction. Stewart, who is Black, had been accepted to UC Riverside and had to resort to living with his wife and then-3-month-old daughter in another city a 90-minute bus ride from campus.

Stewart’s problems finding housing in Riverside continued even after he graduated with a master’s degree five years later — nearly a decade after his drug conviction. Stewart, now 42 with three children, testified in favor of AB 1418 during a legislative committee hearing earlier this year. With the bill’s passage, he’s planning to look for apartments in Riverside in neighborhoods with good schools. “It’s just awesome that your pain becomes your ministry,” said Stewart, who works for Alliance for Safety and Justice, a national criminal justice reform group. “I’ve been so stressed out behind these ordinances.” His involvement in the repeal of crime-free housing laws, he said, “makes me feel like life, it has a purpose.”

AB 1418 passed both houses of the Legislature without a dissenting vote in a committee or on the Assembly or Senate floors. Gov. Gavin Newsom has until Oct. 14 to sign or veto the bill or allow it to become law without his signature. Newsom’s position is unknown. His office previously opposed the legislation, citing potential costs for the state to reimburse localities for having to repeal their ordinances. But McKinnor has since removed a requirement for cities to strike their policies from their municipal codes. Instead, they could remain on the city’s books but no longer be enforced.

Newsom typically does not comment on pending legislation and his office did not respond to a request for his views on AB 1418. Crime-free housing programs vary widely in California. Less severe ones include police training for landlords on criminal background checks and anticrime lease provisions. But some go much further. A now-repealed crime-free housing law in Hesperia, a high desert city, required landlords to evict tenants and their families based on police suspicions they were involved in criminal activity on or near their properties.

Before its passage, a council member described the crime-free housing law’s purpose as “to correct a demographical problem with people that are committing crimes in this community.” Last year, the U.S. Department of Justice settled a lawsuit against the city and the San Bernardino County Sheriff’s Department that claimed Hesperia’s policy violated civil rights laws after a federal investigation found that Black renters were almost four times more likely, and Latino renters were 29% more likely, to be evicted under the program than white renters. AB 1418 is the state’s highest-profile response to unwind crime-free housing policies, a cause that has been gaining momentum.

In the spring, Atty. Gen. Rob Bonta issued formal guidance to all municipalities to ensure any crime-free housing laws complied with broader civil rights and fair housing regulations. Over the summer, California’s Reparations Task Force called for repealing such laws in its recommendations for remedying the legacies of slavery and more modern government-sanctioned policies that discriminated against Black residents. And this month, Riverside and San Bernardino, the two largest cities in the Inland Empire, which has been a hotbed of crime-free housing rules, voted to repeal their ordinances. San Bernardino did so as part of a legal settlement to a case challenging its program filed by legal aid groups — and joined by Bonta’s and Newsom’s offices — on behalf of low-income residents in the city.

How many crime-free housing rules AB 1418 would bar isn’t clear, but supporters believe the number is substantial. The 2020 Times investigation found that 147 local governments in California — more than a quarter of the total — had enacted a crime-free housing law or advertised such training for landlords. AB 1418 bans the most stringent crime-free housing policies that compel landlords to use criminal background checks to screen tenants, evict them for alleged criminal behavior without a felony conviction or evict an entire household when one member is convicted of a felony, among other prohibitions.

It would allow voluntary training for landlords by city and police to continue. A survey of roughly half the local governments in the state completed for the nonprofit National Housing Law Project found that the legislation would wipe away crime-free housing rules in 130 jurisdictions. “This bill was intended to eliminate the common provisions that lend themselves most to displacement,” said Marcos Segura, a staff attorney at the National Housing Law Project, one of the principal backers of the bill.

AB 1418 has a wide-ranging list of supporters. Besides advocates for low-income tenants and legal aid organizations, the California Apartment Assn., the state’s largest landlord group, is behind the measure. The apartment association contends that cities shouldn’t have policies that require landlords to evict tenants. “This is an inappropriate and objectionable mandate on the part of local governments,” association Vice President Debra Carlton said of crime-free housing laws in a letter of support for the bill.

Historically, crime-free housing policies have attracted strong backing from police and prosecutors on public safety grounds. But there are no listed opponents to the legislation. Should Newsom sign AB 1418, it would take effect Jan. 1.

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California lawmakers approved legislation on Monday to expand a housing law that has led to the construction of thousands of new homes, despite initial opposition from both labor unions and environmental groups.

Senate Bill 423 would extend by a decade a state housing law set to expire in 2026 that lets developers skip much of the bureaucratic process often blamed for blocking construction of multifamily projects, though only in cities that have fallen behind on state-mandated housing goals. The legislation now heads to Gov. Gavin Newsom, who has until Oct. 14 to sign or veto hundreds of bills. “If you are looking for an opportunity to support housing in your community, I can assure you this is the most consequential vote you will have this year, period, full stop,” Assemblymember Buffy Wicks, an Oakland Democrat and chair of the Housing and Community Development Committee, said Thursday before a vote in her chamber.

“This is the most important housing bill that we are going to put on the governor’s desk.” The Assembly approved the bill on a bipartisan 52-8 vote, and the Senate finalized it 27 to 7. When state Sen. Scott Wiener (D-San Francisco) introduced SB 423 in February, it faced fierce opposition from some of the state’s most influential labor unions, including the State Building and Construction Trades Council of California, an organization that has aggressively and successfully opposed housing proposals that lacked rigorous worker protections.

Though SB 423 mandates that housing developers offer union-level wages and some healthcare benefits, the Trades Council and dozens of local and state labor groups worried that the protections were inadequate and would fail to protect construction workers. Wiener addressed those concerns earlier this year with amendments that strengthened labor regulations on certain projects, easing some opposition. Wiener had help from the California Conference of Carpenters, which made an unusual break from other statewide labor unions to sponsor SB 423. “Without a doubt, housing affordability is the most destabilizing issue facing Californians. Working families, struggling from paycheck to paycheck, are staring homelessness in the face,” Daniel Curtin, director of the California Conference of Carpenters, wrote in a statement. “We look forward to making the case with Governor Newsom for his signature on this year’s major housing legislation. We’re proud to have played a role in this effort.”

Other roadblocks included opposition from environmental groups, which raised issue with parts of the bill that would allow construction in certain coastal and wildfire zones. The California Coastal Commission this summer argued against SB 423’s expansion into coastal areas exempted from development in the original law. The commission argued that more construction on the coast could worsen climate outcomes amid sea level rise and a changing environment. Areas that could see new multifamily housing projects under SB 423 include wealthier coastal cities such as Carmel-by-the-Sea and Malibu, Santa Monica, Venice, western San Francisco and San Diego. “I support affordable housing,” Assemblymember Al Muratsuchi (D-Rolling Hills Estates) said during the Assembly debate. “But not at the expense of California’s iconic coastline, and not at the expense of protecting Californians from wildfires.” Wiener accepted minor amendments to the bill to clarify that it would not apply to areas that are “environmentally sensitive or hazardous, such as those that could be affected by sea level rise.”

Dozens of cities still oppose SB 423, including several in Los Angeles County and other coastal cities in Southern California. Some of their concerns extend beyond environmental impacts and into local control over housing decisions in their communities.

The League of California Cities, which lobbies on behalf of hundreds of local governments in the Capitol, is particularly concerned with a provision of SB 423 that would let the California Department of General Services step in and develop housing on state-owned property in local jurisdictions. “And they’re not obligated to follow a lot of rules at the local level, like any other developers,” said Jason Rhine, a lobbyist for Cal Cities.

A recent UC Berkeley Terner Center for Housing Innovation report found that the 2017 law has helped lead to more than 18,000 proposed new units in California, nearly two-thirds considered 100% affordable. It’s a small dent in a state that must plan for 2.5 million new homes over the next eight years, with at least 1 million set aside for low- to very low-income households. Still, housing experts say it’s an important step toward alleviating a housing shortage that’s helped spur a homelessness crisis and made California a nearly impossible place for middle- and low-income residents to find affordable places to live. Senate Bill 423 helps build on a “track record of success,” said Ray Pearl, executive director of the California Housing Consortium, one of the measure’s sponsors. “There is no silver bullet. There is no one bill that is going to solve this,” Pearl said. “But each bill hopefully makes a dent, points us in the right direction, prioritizes the production of affordable housing.”

The Senate easily approved another major housing proposal on Monday, also by Wiener, that would allow nonprofit colleges and faith organizations such as mosques, synagogues and churches to quickly build affordable housing on their properties. That measure, Senate Bill 4, is expected to free up some 171,000 acres of land for development of affordable housing projects, according to another report from the UC Berkeley Terner Center for Housing Innovation. “Enacting SB 4 and 423 will add powerful tools to our arsenal in combating the housing crisis,” Wiener said in a statement after the votes. “Californians overwhelmingly want to see these homes built, which is why both bills passed by a wide margin with bipartisan support.”

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The effort to allow California’s legislative staff to unionize — at least 23 years in the works — is nearly across the finish line.

But to win enough support from their bosses, significant changes are still being made: New lawmakers would be able to dismiss their predecessor’s staffers. In July, the bill was amended to push back when the union could organize from 2024 to 2026.

The watered-down version passed the Senate today on a 30-3 vote, and awaits a final vote in the Assembly before it goes to the governor.

The bill’s author, Assemblymember Tina McKinnor, a Democrat from Inglewood, pumped her fists outside the Senate chamber, and said this bill was the reason that she ran for office last year.

“I have tears. This is like my baby,” McKinnor said.

“It’s just time that we support our staff, that we see them, that we make sure that they don’t have a hostile environment to work under,” she told reporters after the bill’s passage. “Because this is some tough work. And we need the brightest and the best to do the people’s work.”

During the debate, Sen. Brian Dahle, a Redding Republican, said he was conflicted about the bill, but noted that during the long days leading up to adjournment on Thursday, staffers don’t get paid overtime.

This is at least the fifth time a bill to allow staff to unionize has been introduced. The first such attempt was in 2000. Critics have pointed to the absence of collective bargaining for their own employees as one way legislators don’t follow the laws they pass for everyone else.

Past efforts have failed because of concerns that a union could get in the way of elected officials representing their constituents, as well as undermining the autonomy of how lawmakers run their offices.

What changed this year?

In addition to dozens of amendments over the past few years, McKinnor, a former legislative staff member herself, is the new leader of the Public Employment and Retirement Committee where the bill has repeatedly failed. The Assembly’s leaders made it Assembly Bill 1, and it has more than 40 co-authors from both chambers — including both the former and current Assembly speakers.

McKinnor is among 21 Assemblymembers and five senators who previously worked as Legislative staff members.

The Legislature this year has made several efforts to boost workers in other industries, including proposed deals this week to increase pay for workers in the fast food and health care industries.

Lorena Gonzalez Fletcher — a former Assemblymember who carried legislative unionization bills in 2018, 2019 and 2021, and who is now head of the California Labor Federation — said this bill is one of the most important for the group this year.

If the bill is signed into law, about 1,800 full-time staffers employed by the Legislature would join statehouse workers from Oregon, the first state to allow unionizing. And congressional staffers won the right to unionize last year — which helped convince some lawmakers.

The bill allows collective bargaining, but it would be up to staff to organize and win approval for a union.

And while some concerns remain about the “constitutionality and functionality of the bill,” according to the Senate floor analysis — such as a lack of language addressing strikes, mediation, or arbitration — Gonzalez Fletcher said those details need to be addressed through contract negotiations, and would be inappropriate to include in legislation.

The analysis also notes: “While other issues remain, it is also true that very few legislative projects pass in perfect form. The need for ongoing clarification and improvement would not be unique to this bill.”

McKinnor said she isn’t worried about the bill winning final approval in the Assembly, and is similarly optimistic about the governor signing the bill, though she acknowledged there was still work to be done.

“I don’t want to jinx myself, again, I don’t want to get too excited, because I have one more step to go.” she said. “I have faith that he will sign the deal. But I look forward to meeting him and his staff to talk about it.”

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SACRAMENTO, Calif. (AP) — Major corporations from oil and gas companies to retail giants would have to disclose their direct greenhouse gas emissions as well as those that come from activities like employee business travel under legislation passed Monday by California lawmakers, the most sweeping mandate of its kind in the nation.

The legislation would require thousands of public and private businesses that operate in California and make more than $1 billion annually to report their direct and indirect emissions. The goal is to increase transparency and nudge companies to evaluate how they can cut their emissions.

“We are out of time on addressing the climate crisis,” Democratic Assemblymember Chris Ward said. “This will absolutely help us take a leap forward to be able to hold ourselves accountable.”

The legislation was one of the highest profile climate bills in California this year, racking support from major companies that include Patagonia and Apple, as well as Christiana Figueres, former executive secretary of the United Nations convention behind the 2015 Paris climate agreement.

The bill would still need final approval by the state Senate before it can reach Democratic Gov. Gavin Newsom. Lawmakers backing the bill say a large number of companies in the state already disclose some of their own emissions. But the bill is a controversial proposal that many other businesses and groups in the state oppose and say will be too burdensome.

Newsom declined to share his position on the bill when asked last month. His administration’s Department of Finance opposed it in July, saying it would likely cost the state money that isn’t included in the latest budget. Newsom has advanced California’s role as a trendsetter on climate policies by transitioning the state away from gas-powered vehicles and expanding wind and solar power. By 2030, the state has set out to lower its greenhouse gas emissions by 40% below what they were in 1990.

State Sen. Scott Wiener, a San Francisco Democrat who introduced the disclosure bill, said in a statement that it would allow California to “once again lead the nation with this ambitious step to tackle the climate crisis and ensure corporate transparency.”

California has a lot of big companies that manufacture, export and sell everything from electronics to transportation equipment to food, and most every major company in the country does business in the state, which is home to about one in nine Americans. Newsom often boasts about the state’s status as one of the world’s largest economies.

The policy would require more than 5,300 companies to report their emissions, according to Ceres, a nonprofit policy group supporting the bill.

About 17 states, including California, have inventories requiring large polluters to disclose how much they emit, according to the National Conference of State Legislatures. California’s climate disclosure bill would be different because of all the indirect emissions companies would have to report. Additionally, companies would have to report based on how much money they make, not how much they emit.

The U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission proposed rules that would make public companies disclose their emissions, up and down the supply chain. But the California bill would go beyond that, by mandating that both public and private companies report their direct and indirect emissions.

Companies would have to report indirect emissions including those released by transporting products and disposing waste. For example, a major retailer would have to report emissions from powering its own buildings, as well as those that come from delivering products from warehouses to stores.

Opponents of the bill say it is not feasible to accurately account for all of the mandated emissions from sources beyond what companies are directly responsible for.

“We’re dealing with information that’s either unreliable or unattainable,” said Brady Van Engelen, a policy advocate at the California Chamber of Commerce.

The chamber, which advocates for businesses across the state, is leading a coalition that includes the Western States Petroleum Association, the California Hospital Association and agricultural groups, in opposing the bill. They argue many companies don’t have enough resources or expertise to accurately report emissions and say the legislation could lead to higher prices for people buying their products.

Hundreds of companies in California already have to disclose their direct emissions through the state’s cap and trade program, said Danny Cullenward, a climate economist and fellow at the University of Pennsylvania’s Kleinman Center for Energy Policy. The decade-old program, which allows large emitters to buy allowances from the state to pollute and trade them with other companies, is one of the largest in the world.

Cullenward said the disclosure bill could lead to similar proposals in other states as federal regulators, faced with possible lawsuits in the future over disclosure mandates, “are going to be under pressure to not overreach.”

Supporters of the disclosure bill acknowledge it’s not a “perfect” solution that would guarantee flawless emissions reports. But they say it’s a starting point. California Environmental Voters, which supports the bill, says the legislation would put pressure on companies to move faster in lowering their emissions.

“Our state can’t just take 2023 off in terms of climate action,” said Mary Creasman, the group’s chief executive officer.

The California Air Resources Board would have to approve regulations by 2025 to implement the bill’s requirements. Companies would have to begin publicly disclosing their direct emissions annually in 2026 and start annually reporting their indirect emissions starting in 2027. Companies would have to hire independent auditors to verify their reported emissions releases. The state would not penalize companies for unintentional mistakes they make in reporting a portion of their indirect emissions.

A similar proposal introduced last year passed the state Senate but failed in the Assembly. Wiener, the San Francisco Democrat who introduced the legislation both years, has said proponents of the bill built a stronger coalition this year to have a better outcome.

A key committee in the state Assembly blocked legislation earlier this year that would have sped up the state’s timeline for reducing greenhouse gas emissions. Lawmakers are also weighing a bill that would require companies making more than $500 million annually to disclose how climate change could hurt them financially.

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California lawmakers on Friday killed a bill that would hold social media platforms liable for promoting harmful content about eating disorders, self-harm and drugs.

Senate Bill 680, which was opposed by tech companies, died in the powerful Assembly Appropriations Committee as part of a marathon hearing where lawmakers culled hundreds of bills without public debate.

“There is little doubt that social media platforms employ algorithms and design features that experts across the nation agree are contributing to harming our children,” Sen. Nancy Skinner (D-Berkeley), who wrote SB 680, said in a statement. “These companies have the power to adjust their platforms to limit this harm, yet to date we’ve seen them take no meaningful action.”

The death of the legislation underscores the uphill battle California lawmakers face as they try to make social media safer for young people. Tech industry organizations such as TechNet and NetChoice, whose members include Facebook parent company Meta, Snap and TikTok, aggressively lobbied against SB 680. Opponents said the bill would run afoul of federal law and the 1st Amendment because online platforms would end up removing more lawful speech as they err on the side of caution to avoid being sued.

Tech industry groups opposed a similar social media bill last year and are trying to block another by filing a lawsuit after it was signed into law.

California lawmakers, Skinner said, shouldn’t give up on their “fight to protect our kids.”

Another bill, Assembly Bill 1394, that focused more narrowly on combating child sexual abuse material on social media on Friday cleared the Senate Appropriations Committee and advanced to the Senate floor for consideration. The legislation would require social media companies to give California users a way to report child sexual abuse material they’re depicted in. The platform would be required to permanently block the material from being viewed. If the company failed to do so, it would be liable for damages.

“Ensuring children and teens have a safe experience online is a goal we share with the authors of SB 680 and AB 1394,” said Dylan Hoffman, TechNet’s executive director for California and the Southwest. “Unfortunately, as drafted, SB 680, would have done little to protect children from harmful content and would have resulted in fewer online spaces for teens.”

Ahead of Friday’s Senate Appropriations Committee hearing, child safety advocates expressed outrage over the changes to AB 1394 being pushed by the tech industry. The amendments, backed by TechNet, would give online platforms another way to avoid liability for failing to combat child sexual abuse materials, according to children’s advocacy groups Common Sense Media and the Children’s Advocacy Institute.

“They are basically trying to keep a golden fence around tech companies in spite of evidence that proves that their products are deeply harming children,” said Jim Steyer, CEO of Common Sense Media in an interview before the hearing. “It is absolutely shameful and disgusting what they’re doing.”

On Wednesday, the child’s advocacy group called on TechNet’s members to leave the organization or denounce the group’s behavior.

TechNet President and CEO Linda Moore on Thursday sent a letter to Steyer, saying it was working in good faith with the bill’s author Assemblymember Buffy Wicks (D-Oakland) to make changes to the bill because the legislation could be challenged in court.

The bill advanced without amendments but Wick’s office said potential changes are still being negotiated. AB 1394 also prohibits social media companies from “knowingly facilitating, aiding, or abetting commercial sexual exploitation.”

A court would be required to award damages between $1 million and $4 million for each act of exploitation that the social media platform “facilitated, aided, or abetted.” Companies would be able to avoid liability if they conducted quarterly audits of their designs, algorithms, features and practices and correct any potentially harmful impacts.

“I am confident that this bill will make it to the Governor’s desk and, when signed, will be the strongest law in the nation aimed at combating child sex abuse material,“ Wicks said in a statement.

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