Sacramento Report Countdown
52 days until the Legislature reconvenes
California Democrats’ mandate is clearer than ever after clinching a historic supermajority in the state Legislature where they’re expected to outnumber Republicans 120 – 19. In San Diego, that means all but one of the county’s 11 state representatives will be Democrats. They include:
- David Alvarez, D-Chula Vista
- Catherine Blakespear, D-Encinitas
- Tasha Boerner, D-Solana Beach
- Carl DeMaio, R-San Diego
- Mara Elliott, D-San Diego
- Steve Padilla, D-Chula Vista
- Darshana Patel, D-San Diego
- LaShe Sharp-Collins, D-La Mesa
- Chris Ward, D-San Diego
- Akilah Weber Pierson, D-San Diego
And…
- Sergio Farias, D-Oceanside, who will represent part of San Diego County.
What will they do with this resounding majority?
I spoke to current members to get a better idea of their policy priorities before the next legislative session convenes on Jan. 4 under Gov.-elect Xavier Becerra.
Restoring Medi-Cal Cuts
Democrats last year rolled back healthcare benefits for residents without legal status to make up the state’s $12 billion deficit.
The move wasn’t without criticism, as lawmakers tussled and wrangled through hours of debate and faced dissent from the powerful 30-member Latino caucus.
But ultimately, most of them and the rest of the Legislature approved the plan to pause Medi-Cal enrollment for noncitizens, including Chula Vista Sen. Steve Padilla, who voted for the bill package.
He and other Democrats now want those cuts reversed. Padilla said restoring those benefits would be cost effective because it would save taxpayers money in the long run.
“You prevent future costs because more people have access to preventative care, which means you’re not showing up in emergency departments with an acute condition that costs 10 times more than what it would have had they had early intervention,” he said.
Restoring healthcare benefits for noncitizens, as well as backfilling federal funding cuts to Medi-Cal that are expected to cause hundreds of thousands of low-income Californians to lose coverage is also a top priority for La Mesa Assemblymember LaShae Sharp-Collins.
While Gov. Gavin Newsom largely ignored these demands from progressive flanks of the party this year, Becerra has signaled support for them.
Both Padilla and Sharp-Collins pointed to Becerra’s former role as the U.S. Secretary of Health and Human Services as a sign they’d be able to make inroads with the incoming governor.
“I do want us to take the opportunity to tap into Gov.-elect Becerra’s understanding of health and human services,” to help restore healthcare cuts, Sharp-Collins said.
Becerra is making the rounds meeting with legislators before his inauguration, but Padilla said while he campaigned with Becerra before Election Day, he hasn’t spoken to him in recent weeks. Sharp-Collins said she hasn’t met with him yet.
CARE Court Reform
A group of lawmakers have been meeting over the break to discuss how to fix California’s mental health service program, CARE Court. Family members, first responders and mental health professionals can refer people suffering from psychosis into the program, where a judge then sets up a treatment plan in coordination with the county.
Sen. Catherine Blakespear, an Encinitas Democrat, has been leading this effort, she told Voice of San Diego.
It’s to prepare for a comeback of sorts for her marque bill on the issue. Senate Bill 1016 would have created a pathway for severely mentally ill people who refuse voluntary treatment through CARE Court to be entered into a conservatorship.
The legislation died in the Assembly appropriations committee this year. Plenty of lawmakers, both Democrats and Republicans, didn’t like that the proposal would have made it easier to force people into treatment, Blakespear said.
More than a dozen senators passed on voting for the bill when it came up on the floor, including Padilla and Democrat Akilah Weber Pierson, who both abstained. In a later interview, Pierson said she didn’t support making changes so early on to CARE Court, which launched three years ago.
CalMatters’ reporting found the program is seriously underutilized, with just a few hundred Californians receiving treatment plans so far. That’s far less than the approximately 12,000 residents Newsom’s administration estimated it would reach.
Blakespear said she hopes Becerra’s health background and emphasis on being collaborative with lawmakers will help her overcome political opposition this time around.
“I’m optimistic because our governor is a former health and human services secretary. And he’s a former [Attorney General]. So that naturally comes with professional experience around these topics that would create the possibility for different solutions,” said Blakespear.
And, with an even bigger Democratic supermajority, she thinks the political winds have shifted just enough that not doing anything on CARE Court reform will feel less like an option.
“There has to be a stronger legislative coalition,” she said, and that’ll likely include Sen.-elect Mara Elliott of San Diego.
Elliott told Voice in an interview last month that she wants to prioritize allocating more money for rehabilitation centers and shelter beds under Proposition 36.
Talks with lawmakers will continue throughout the break, Blakespear said, and she’s already been in conversation with Becerra about her reform proposals.
Wildfire Liability Reform
If you blinked, you might have missed the failed closed-door negotiations that happened between Newsom and the Legislature on wildfire liability reform in the final weeks of session.
While rumors of a special session to address the botched last-minute plan have mostly fizzled since then, Democrats are still itching to address how much utility companies should pay after they cause a wildfire.
Padilla, who chairs the Senate Insurance Committee and backed the failed eleventh-hour deal, said he doesn’t want to “double whammy homeowners” and just shift costs onto ratepayers. He said he wants to prioritize home hardening and other wildfire prevention efforts to help lower homeowners’ insurance premiums.
“If you reduce risk, you reduce cost and liability,” he said.
But he didn’t specify how he plans to address concerns that California’s for-profit utilities are financially unstable, and that continuing to bear these costs could result in them being passed onto ratepayers in the form of higher electricity bills.
Vaccine Exemptions
Weber Pierson, a physician and chair of the Senate Health Committee, held an informational meeting on Thursday in San Diego about medical exemptions to vaccine requirements. The hearing came about to correct “misleading information” about vaccines after a committee debate for a failed bill, Senate Bill 1377, earlier this year, Weber Pierson said.
The bill, introduced by Sen. Brian Jones, sought to loosen the state’s vaccine exemption requirements by raising a cap that limits physicians from writing more than five exemptions a year before being audited by a third party after a 2020 law. The 2020 law was partially inspired by Voice’s reporting on a single doctor who had written nearly a third of all medical exemptions in San Diego Unified School District.
Jones’ legislation, which died after sparking fierce debate and being overwhelmingly rejected by Democrats in the Senate committee, would have set the new limit at 50 vaccine exemptions a year per physician.
At Thursday’s meeting, Jones said these requirements have created a “chilling effect” where doctors are too fearful to authorize vaccine exemptions and threaten parental rights.
“My concern is, in the state of California, are parents gonna have the authority over their children to make medical decisions that are important to their family?” he said.
Local public health officials and medical experts with the American Academy of Pediatrics defended the state’s current restrictions, arguing they are working just fine.
“I care for a few thousand children and generally write a few exemptions each year,” said Eric Ball, a Children’s Hospital of Orange County pediatrician.
What I’m Reading
- Flights have been halted across the US due to communication problems, including at San Diego International Airport, The San Diego Union-Tribune writes.
- All five of San Diego’s congressional members will be Democrats. inewsource explains what that could mean for federal policy in the region.
- Gavin Newsom tells a Turkish news outlet that he’ll decide on whether to run for president in 2028 next month once he steps down from office, The Sacramento Bee reports.
Thanks for reading this week’s report! Please reach me at nadia@voiceofsandiego.org for any questions or comments.