Why lawmakers disagree on CA reparations

Three months after the California Legislative Black Caucus unveiled a series of priority bills to address reparations, some advocates say the measures don’t go far enough to compensate eligible Black Californians for the lasting damage of slavery. 

And some lawmakers are pushing legislation outside the bill package to extend the reach of reparations even further, reports Wendy Fry of CalMatters’ California Divide team.

The priority bills include measures to restrict the use of solitary confinement; create a state-funded grant program to confront community violence; limit book bans in state prisons; and provide a formal apology for slavery.

But Chris Lodgson, an organizer with the Coalition for a Just and Equitable California, argues that the bills are “almost insulting” — especially after the state’s first-in-the-nation task force on reparations spent two years deliberating and holding public hearings to develop the recommendations.

Democratic Sen. Steven Bradford of Inglewood, who was a member of the task force and is in the last year of his final term, said that while the caucus bills are a great start, “there’s much more heavy lifting that will be needed.” He has introduced bills focused on descendants of enslaved persons, which include creating a state agency to administer reparations and established financial assistance to help descendants of enslaved people buy homes.

The differing sets of bills highlight the debate over how far the state should go to rectify the wrongs of slavery — and how much it’s willing to spend.

Though none of the bills include direct cash payments, 60% of California voters oppose reparation payments for Black residents. Public enthusiasm for racial justice has also appeared to have waned since the task force’s formation in 2020, after the police murder of George Floyd.

Figuring out how to pay for the various reparations measures — even as the state faces a multibillion-dollar shortfall — is one hurdle some legislators say they must overcome. 

• Assemblymember Reggie Jones-Sawyer, Los Angeles Democrat and task force member: “A group of people gave free labor for 400 years…. We need to be able to figure out a way to excise money so that it can be brought back into the Black community.”

To learn more about the issue, read Wendy’s story. And check out CalMatters’ detailed explainer for a deep dive on the reparations debate.

Speaking of budget constraints: CalMatters Capitol reporter Alexei Koseff watched state lawmakers quickly pass, along party lines, an early action budget package Thursday, sending Gov. Gavin Newsom a plan to reduce the looming deficit by $17 billion. It includes some program cuts, but mostly relies on new revenue, internal borrowing and funding delays and shifts for savings — the majority of which cannot take effect until officials negotiate the rest of the state spending plan later this spring.

While Republicans objected to the early budget proposal as mostly gimmicks that would not address the underlying reasons for California’s deficit, Democrats said it makes substantial progress in addressing the shortfall. Assembly Speaker Robert Rivas, a Salinas Democrat, touted a provision freezing one-time funding from past years that he said would provide billions of dollars of options for the final budget agreement in June.

• Rivas, to reporters: “Because of that longer structural nature of this deficit, we don’t know what to expect in future years. We’re very concerned to ensure that we have the appropriate amount of savings if this budget deficit gets any worse moving forward.”

From CalMatters Capitol reporter Sameea Kamal:

California’s Legislature has a team of attorneys who help draft bills. State agencies need the same to avoid flawed regulations, says Sen. Roger Niello. 

Niello introduced Senate Bill 1104 — based on an idea from veteran lobbyist Chris Micheli — that would establish an Office of Regulatory Counsel in the governor’s office to draft regulations. 

Currently, the 600 or so regulations proposed each year are typically drafted by staff, and go through public hearings. The Office of Administrative Law reviews them to make sure they comply with some basic standards, such as whether the agency making the rule has the authority to do so. And the Office will look at whether the language is clear, but that usually happens at the tail-end of the process. 

If state agencies have a central group similar to the Legislature’s Office of Legislative Counsel, it would give regulations a better shot at moving through the approval process, Niello said at a Senate Governmental Organization committee hearing Tuesday. 

And while the Roseville Republican doesn’t believe California needs more regulations, he said he sees it as inevitable that the Democratic supermajority will pass bills that create more. 

Better regulations — ones with fewer errors and chances for misinterpretation — would make them easier for the public to comply with and for the state to enforce, Niello said. 

That’s why the California Association of Winegrape Growers supports the idea. 

• Michael Miller, the association’s director of government relations, at Tuesday’s hearing: “One of my most frustrating experiences is when a regulation is proposed and the agency says it does XYZ. And then we sit down with lawyers and we get the lawyers with them and they say, no, it actually does ABC because of these other provisions of law that it conflicts with and how it all fits together.”

But given the multibillion-dollar budget deficit, creating a new office is a tall order this session. Niello, who is vice chairperson of the Senate budget committee, said he’s sensitive to budget concerns, but doesn’t see the new office as adding too many costs. 

Read more about the bill in the story.

Next week, the Senate Public Safety Committee will consider a bipartisan bill to ban homeless encampments near “sensitive community areas” statewide, such as schools, open spaces and major transit stops.

The measure, authored by Senate GOP leader Brian Jones of San Diego, is based on that city’s “Unsafe Camping Ordinance,” which took effect last July. But while San Diego Todd Gloria said the city “looks better than it did six months ago,” CalMatters homelessness reporter Marisa Kendall explains that determining the policy’s success is not as straightforward.

By one narrow metric, the ordinance has worked: The number of unhoused people downtown has been halved, from 2,104 in May 2023 to 1,063 in February. But there’s no evidence the city’s overall homeless population has decreased, and encampments appear to have become more prevalent outside the prohibited areas, such as along freeways. The number of unhoused people camped along the San Diego River has also doubled.

The proposed statewide ban is also missing one key provision that San Diego’s ordinance does consider: Requiring cities to set up alternative shelters or safe camping areas. While San Diego is nowhere near providing the thousands of shelter beds it needs, it did set up two “safe sleeping” sites.

• Gloria: “Simply saying ‘you can’t go here’ is only doing half the job. You have to point to where folks can go.”

San Diego’s approach to homelessness has fallen under particular scrutiny after the state auditor released a report Tuesday on California’s homelessness programs. In addition to several statewide shortcomings, the auditor found that San Diego and San Jose, in particular, could not accurately measure the cost of their programs and failed to determine whether the nonprofits they contracted with were effectively spending city money.

What California cities can do on homeless encampments could be decided by the U.S. Supreme Court: This month, it is scheduled to hear a case on whether cities can ban encampments in public places.

Learn more about San Diego’s encampment ban in Marisa’s story.

An update: Marisa also reports that Camp Resolution, the self-governing encampment in Sacramento she wrote about, is closing next month under city orders. The city says it has met with camp organizers to discuss possibly setting up a new safe parking site.

As part of its climate change action, California requires many new homes to have solar panels. But what about those whose homes burned down? There’s a bill for that, writes CalMatters Digital Democracy reporter Ryan Sabalow.

Digital Democracy: CalMatters has launched Digital Democracy, a project using the latest technologies to help Californians understand their state government and create more accountability for politicians. The website introduces each of the state’s 120 legislators and explains this year’s policy agenda. In our unprecedented database, you can instantly find any word uttered in a public hearing, every vote cast, every bill introduced and every dollar donated. Finally, artificial intelligence will generate story ideas for reporters throughout the state. “This has the possibility of transforming how newsrooms cover state government,” said Dean Baquet, former editor of The New York Times and a board member at CalMatters. For more details, see our about and methodology pages and read more from our engagement team.