Political friction penetrates the CA’s housing policy

From And WaltersCalmness

This comment was originally published by CalmattersS Register about their ballots.

The conflict between civil servants in California and its nearly 500 cities and counties – especially over money – is nothing new.

However, relations between state and local authorities are nowadays the highest in living memory, as illustrated by several questions that relate to the last week of the legislative session in 2025.

Senate Bill 79The last state of the state’s great effort to force local authorities to adopt high -density housing projects is a point of dispute. Would essentially released such projects which are within half a mile of public transit services from local supervision, regardless of the local zoning of the construction site.

“It is here that we have to build more homes, just from our highest quality transit,” says Seni State. WienerThe author of the bill.

He has caused heavy criticism from local officials who would lose their ability to monitor such projects and from residents of single -family neighborhoods that could be affected.

Opponents even include the Los Angeles Municipal Council, dominated by Wiener’s progressive democrats. The Council voted 8-5 to oppose the measure and Los Angeles Mayor Karen Bass signedSaying that cities with state -approved housing plans must be released.

“As I support the intention to accelerate the development of housing throughout the country, as it is written, this bill risks unforeseen consequences for LA,” Bass said.

Housing and homelessness have been particularly acute problems in the relations between the state and the local authorities since Gavin Newsom became governor in 2019. While the office campaign, Newsom, promised to jump to housing and reduce the large population of state people without home.

NEWSOM has signed numerous bills designed to stimulate housing construction by reducing the local land use body, and its administration has broken down in cities that fail to determine sufficient land to meet state residential quotas. However, the state still does not reach much of its declared level of the necessary housing production.

Newsom also promised to appoint a king for homelessness to control the programs to reduce homelessness, and after being expelled by reporters, he finally declared himself a king. As homelessness levels remained high although the state spent more than $ 20 billion, NEWSOM transferred the guilt of local employees Because, he said, he is not aggressive enough to clean the camps and shelter their inhabitants.

“I’m no more interested in a failure of funding,” he said at one point. “So I’ll talk about myself, only one person who has three more budget loans in front of him. I want to see results. Everyone wants to see results.”

After threatening to break direct assistance to local authorities for homelessness programs, he signed a budget in June that Stops funding for at least one yearS Local employees claim that receiving one -year budget loans, without guarantees of continuity, makes them impossible to establish current housing projects and services.

Thus, the question is a stalemate that can continue until Newsom releases its office for 16 months, therefore.

In addition to these controversial points between state and local employees, there are a number of relatively insignificant problems, one of which is Senate Bill 487S Sponsored by a raft by police and firefighter unions, the measure will limit the amount of money that public employers can recover from the court cases of their employees for workplace injuries.

Local authorities opposed the bill, saying that it could potentially increase the cost of compensation to their workers. Their opposition focused on bitter denunciation last week after the government of the state was released from its impact.

“This is the classic state directly, so that no-to-be hypocrisy,” says Graham Knus, CEO of the California State Association of Counts. “It is a clear indication that legislators know it is a terrible public policy, but they are good to force local authorities to live with it.”

This article was Originally Published on CalMatters and was reissued under Creative Commons Attribution-Noncommercial-Noderivatives License.