Newsom has vetoed 123 bills this year, citing costs and Donald Trump

from Ryan SabalowCalMatters

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Sen. Anna Caballero is one of the most powerful legislators in California because she heads a committee that decides in secret to kill hundreds of accounts every year, often by order of the Governor’s Administration.

But even though Caballero is the powerful chairman of the Senate Appropriations Committee and regularly works with the governor’s staff, Gov. Gavin Newsom still vetoed seven of her bills this year, the most of any lawmaker.

“I do hard math,” Caballero, a Democrat who represents the Merced area, told CalMatters. “So sometimes I’m lucky and other times it’s frustrating. And, you know, you learn to live with it.”

Her vetoed bills include one which aimed to reduce emissions at state ports, another which seeks to add oversight of metal crushing facilities and one which seeks to train police to investigate foreign governments that targeting immigrant communities.

In his veto messages, Newsom described these bills as unnecessary because state agencies already do similar work. It’s one of the most common themes in Newsom’s 123 vetoes this legislative session, which he ended up signing earlier this month. According to an analysis of CalMatters Digital Democracy Database.

The analysis highlights how Newsom has used his veto pen to assert authority over the Legislature that his fellow Democrats control, while rejecting bills he deems too expensive, redundant or politically risky. Newsom cited fiscal implications dozens of times in his veto messages, reflecting the challenges of tough budget year. This year’s veto also gave him a chance to throw some shade at Newsom’s biggest nemesis: President Donald Trump.

Newsom mentioned Trump by name three times in his vetoes, and he cited Trump’s “hostile economic policies” in nearly a quarter of his veto messages, 28 times.

“With significant fiscal pressures and the federal government’s hostile economic policy, it is vital that we remain disciplined when considering bills with significant unbudgeted fiscal consequences, such as this measure,” Newsom wrote, vetoing Caballero bill who wanted to exempt hydrogen fuel from sales taxes.

He used an almost identical line to veto three other Cabayero bills, including a measure to provide tax credits for medical equipment, account which would provide grants for carbon dioxide removal and another which seek to stimulate biomass power plants.

The vetoes represented only a small percentage of what Newsom did with the 917 bills that were sent to his desk this year. He vetoed just 13.4 percent of them, a slightly lower rate than in previous years, according to Chris Micheli, an assistant professor at McGeorge Law School and a veteran lobbyist who keeps detailed statistics on the Legislature.

Certainly not everyone vetoed Caballero. Newsom also signed 10 of her bills into law.

Zombie accounts return for second veto

There was another theme in Newsom’s veto: jump-start bills he had previously vetoed.

He did it six times.

As reported by CalMatterseven if a bill is vetoed for a year, lawmakers often bring the legislation back again — often with wording identical to the previous version.

Previously vetoed measures are especially likely to be resurrected if well-funded lobby groups that donate heavily to politicians push for a new law.

That was the case with two bills Newsom canceled for the second time this year.

One was a union-backed bill by a member of the Democratic Assembly Dawn Addis of San Luis Obispo, which seeks to make it easier for farmworkers to win workers’ compensation claims against employers for heat-related illnesses. The other was previously vetoed measure by a member of the Democratic Assembly Emerald Soria of Merced, which seeks to allow community colleges to offer bachelor’s degrees in nursing. Nurses’ unions, hospitals and community colleges supported the bill.

Newsom noted that these bills are “nearly identical” to measures he’s killed before, and he cited the same reasons.

Newsom struck again account which would require counties to establish multidisciplinary behavioral health teams, proposal to force insurers to pay for menopause treatment, a bill of reparations and measure to fund a study on the mental health of women veterans.

First-year Democratic Assemblyman John Harabedianrepresenting the Pasadena area, had five vetoes this year, the second most in the Legislature. They were mostly related to health insurance and the effects of last winter devastating forest fires in Los Angeles County.

Newsom vetoed it his account it would require insurers to pay for up to 12 mental health visits to people living where there has been a recent wildfire. another would create a state-led Los Angeles County Disaster Housing Task Force. The governor also vetoed it measure which seeks to accelerate patients to obtain care recommended by their doctors.

“Big, transformative policies often require multiple attempts, and I’m proud to continue pushing forward to serve my constituents,” Harabedian said in an emailed statement.

Newsom signed four of Harabedian’s bills.

Not a single Democratic member of the Assembly Ash KalraThis year, the bills were pushed through — the first time in the San Jose lawmaker’s nine-year legislative career. He had 12 laws signed.

This includes a bill aimed at preventing foreign labor contractors from exploiting their workers, which was similar to a measure Newsom had previously pushed. Kalra said he narrowed the bill to cover only farmworkers to address Newsom’s concerns.

“You have to be persistent,” he said. “Sometimes it takes three, four or five times, or in the case of the foreign worker bill, seven years.”

How other lawmakers avoid vetoes

Other lawmakers also got much of their bills past Newsom’s veto.

Democratic Santa Ana Sen. Tom Umberg had Newsom sign 16 of his bills, the most behind San Francisco Sen. Scott Wienerwho had 21. As chairman of the Senate Budget Committee, Wiener is a leading author of mandatory budget bills that skew his overall results.

Umberg’s accounts include one banning streaming providers such as Netflix from playing overly loud ads; another prohibit Elon Musk and others from running sweepstakes to create party voter registration, one intended to stop the puppy mills and audit of the state problematic bar exam.

Umberg, a former federal prosecutor and attorney nearing the end of his term, said his success is due in part to having served in the Legislature since the 1990s. He’s served under four different governors, so he said he knows what they’re looking for.

“I hope that my years of experience provide some benefit and some experience in legislation and how to work a bill through the process and how to sign a bill,” he said.

Newsom vetoed one of Umberg’s bills this year, measure it would add new protections and penalties for raising prices in disaster areas. Newsom did not like the fact that the bill would have allowed the Legislature to override the governor’s authority over disaster declarations.

Republicans are vastly outnumbered in the Legislature, and not many of their bills even make it to the governor’s desk, so it stands out that Assemblyman Josh Hoovera Republican representing the Folsom area had the most bills signed among GOP lawmakers, with nine. Hoover is out of the country this week and was not available for an interview, his spokesman said.

People’s representative in the Republican Assembly Laurie Davis has signed seven of her bills, the third most among Republicans.

Davis’s bills were not particularly controversial and did not involve party politics. They include measure which requires schools to provide educational materials on drowning prevention. another requires the state to tell those who file complaints against a drug and alcohol treatment center the outcome of their complaint. Another one from her suggestions prohibits the sale of equipment to modify electric bicycles so that they are no longer classified as electric bicycles.

Davis, who represents a competitive swing district in the Oceanside area, said she wants her bills to solve problems, not take partisan punches that almost certainly won’t be signed into law under a Democratic administration.

“We don’t pay bills for social media clicks or cable news invitations,” she said.
Newsom vetoed one of her bills this year, measure which seek to get battery storage plants to improve their fire safety plans. Davis opposes a proposed battery storage facility in her district.

Newsom’s veto message used one of his favorite words: “Duplicate.”

“This bill largely duplicates existing requirements and imposes a new procedural requirement that risks delaying critical clean energy projects,” he wrote.

Digital Democracy’s Foaad Khosmood, Forbes Professor of Computer Engineering at Cal Poly San Luis Obispo, contributed to this story.

This article was originally published on CalMatters and is republished under Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-No Derivatives license.