California has its hands full these days. With catastrophic L.A. wildfires, rampant homelessness and soaring housing costs, lawmakers have plenty of problems to tackle.
I spoke to some members of San Diego’s Sacramento delegation to learn their priorities for the year. They’re still working on legislation and probably won’t finalize their agendas for this session until Feb. 21, the deadline to submit bills. But they’re honing topics they plan to take on and for most of them, housing, homelessness and affordability topped the list.
Housing: State Senator Catherine Blakespear introduced a bill to close loopholes in a state law that let developers build denser, taller projects without adding much housing.
Her bill targets projects such as a controversial 22-story building proposed for Turquoise Street in Pacific Beach. The project would employ California’s density bonus laws – which let developers build bigger, higher structures if they include affordable housing – to build a 239-foot high-rise with extensive retail space and a few low-rent apartments.
Blakespear’s bill would “prohibit developers from benefiting from the state’s bonus law when building projects that don’t include significant amounts of housing.” It requires developers to devote two-thirds of floor space in their projects to housing, in order to get exemptions from local height and density limits.
“We don’t want to be using this for a luxury hotel,” Blakespear said.
Some opponents of the project say her bill doesn’t go far enough to require affordable housing, the San Diego Union-Tribune reported.
Assemblymember Chris Ward hopes to introduce legislation on “passive homes,” which would set design standards to encourage natural methods for lighting, heating and energy efficiency. He also introduced a bill to streamline construction standards for small multi-family units, to make it easier and more affordable to build those.
Assemblymember David Alvarez introduced a bill last week to use bond funds to cover catastrophic wildfire losses under the FAIR Plan, the state’s high risk insurance pool. It would authorize the California Infrastructure and Economic Development Bank Fund, or iBank, to issue bonds and then loan those funds to the FAIR Plan to cover claims.
State Sen. Brian Jones is also looking at fire insurance. He said recent wildfires, which destroyed more than 16,000 homes according to CalFire, have opened conversations about home insurance reform.
“Rates are unstable in California,” Jones said. “Insurance companies are leaving the state. This L.A. situation could put some out of business. The FAIR Plan can’t backfill the entire insurance market across the state. Those are questions we’ll be having across the aisle.”
Homelessness: Blakespear aims to introduce legislation on sober-living homes, which allow people recovering from addiction to live in group homes in residential areas. She wants to regulate how many can operate in a particular area, and make sure there is timely investigation of deaths on site.
“There could be community concerns and nuisances, but they’re also providing a really important community need,” Blakespear said.
She’s also considering a bill to require counties to provide social services for homeless facilities, if cities build the shelters.
Jones wants the state to account for $27 billion spent on homelessness programs since 2019. “What we’re going to have to do is start with disbursements to counties and cities to provide information on where they spent it,” he said.
Jones thinks Gov. Gavin Newsom has dropped the ball on tracking homelessness spending. It’s a fraught issue between the governor and legislature.
Newsom himself has called for greater accountability, and in October announced a $837 million homeless funding package that he said comes with strict reporting requirements. But a month earlier he vetoed a bipartisan bill to create a statewide council to administer and track homelessness spending.
I’ll be watching to see how Sacramento keeps track of homeless spending this year.
Affordability: With costs soaring for everything from gas to groceries, lawmakers want to get a handle on rising prices.
Alvarez authored a bill that would change fuel formulas to allow a higher percentage of ethanol to gasoline, to reduce costs and increase engine efficiency.
Jones introduced a bill to reverse a new fuel standard that the California Air Resources Board last year, which he estimates will raise gas prices by at least 65 cents per gallon
Blakespear wants to take the edge off childcare costs for military families and address “a critical shortage of childcare slots” by cutting red tape for childcare providers in the military community. It would waive state childcare license requirements for providers that have already met Department of Defense standards for home daycare.
By opening new options for military families, she said. “It takes the pressure off local childcare providers.”
Lawmakers are flagging other issues including immigration, public safety and LGBTQ rights.
While many California lawmakers are devising ways local and state governments can resist ramped up immigration raids in California under President Donald Trump, Jones, a Republican, thinks there’s room for cooperation.
“If the federal government is going to get involved in immigration in California, I’m going to encourage them to focus first and primarily on violent illegal criminals, and let’s deal with those and keep our streets and communities safe,” he said.
He plans to make a fourth attempt to reform the state’s program for releasing sexually violent predators, high-risk prisoners convicted of violent sexual offenses. When they’re released after incarceration the California Department of State Hospitals hands them off to a contractor, Liberty Healthcare, which settles them in homes in mostly rural areas.
Jones wants to change the process by adding transitional housing on state land, which he thinks would be safer and more cost-effective.
“If we’re going to release these people from prison the state should take responsibility for transitional housing,” he said.
As Trump launches federal efforts that conflict with California laws on climate action, LGBTQ rights and other issues, Ward said lawmakers are preparing to defend the state’s autonomy.
“Nobody wants to get into a fight,” Ward said. “We’d rather work cooperatively together, but if there is a violation of the legal standing that California has to maintain its laws, we are going to fight that. We have our vision on civil rights and the environment that we make decisions on for ourselves.”
The Sacramento Report runs every Friday. Do you have tips, ideas or questions? Send them to me at deborah@voiceofsandiego.org.
I DON’T BELIEVE YOU.
MY CONFIDENCE IN YOUR LEADERSHIP IS LOWER THAN ZERO, BECAUSE YOU HAVE DONE NOTHING TO OVERTURN EXISTING REGULATIONS AND HAVE NOT PROPOSED A TECHNICAL ENGINEERING SOLUTION WITH A LOWER COST BUDGET.
ALL OF THIS POLITICS IS GLADHANDING AND SELF SERVING.