Newsom should’ve vetoed more bills

Just before the Sept. 30 deadline, Gov. Gavin Newsom vetoed and signed numerous bills, good and bad. CalMatters reported for the whole year he faced down 1,200 total bills. This year the veto ratio hit 16%, up from last year’s 15%. Too bad it wasn’t 90%.

Senate Bill 984 by Sen. Aisha Wahab, D-Silicon Valley, was rightly vetoed. It concerned Project Labor Agreements, under which construction projects must pay union-level wages even to private-sector workers. The bill would have tasked the California State University and the Judicial Council, which sets policy for state courts, to pick at least three state construction projects costing $35 million or more each, and subject them to PLA rules.

In his veto message, Newsom said he was “generally supportive” of PLAs, but SB 984 would raise costs “not accounted for in this year’s budget,” which began in January with a $73 billion deficit that had to be reduced. An August RAND Corporation study of PLAs for housing in Los Angeles found they “added 21 percent to total development costs.”

One bill the governor was wrong to veto was Assembly Bill 2903, by Assemblymember Josh Hoover, D-Folsom. It would have required state agencies or departments administering homeless programs to report annually all “cost and income data” to the California Interagency Council on Homelessness. Newsom’s veto message said “similar measures are already in place.”

Just this past April California State Auditor Grant Parks published an alarming audit, “Homelessness in California.” Of five state programs he examined, two were “likely cost effective,” but he was “unable to fully assess the other three programs due to insufficient data on outcomes.” The state spent $24 billion on homeless programs from 2018-19 to 2022-23. And in March Newsom convinced voters to barely pass Proposition 1, another $6.4 billion in bonds for more homeless programs. All this spending needs auditing.

Two bills he should’ve vetoed were Assembly Bill 2236 by Assemblymember Rebecca Bauer-Kahan, D-Orinda, and Senate Bill 1053 by state Sen. Catherine Blakespear, D-Encinitas. They ban plastic bags at grocery stores, again. Can the state focus on things that actually matter?