Capitol Briefs: It’s all over now…or is it?

The deadline for Gov. Gavin Newsom to address the hundreds of bills sent his way has come and gone. Here are a few tidbits from the bill signing period to note while we wait to see if the governor calls a special session on AI.

Gavin by the numbers: With this year’s legislative actions now in the books, lobbyist, law professor and regular Capitol Weekly contributor Chris Micheli offered up the following tally:

Total number of bills to reach Newsom’s desk this year: 1,160 bills (the highest percentage of introduced bills to reach his desk since 2022, when 65% made it to him.)

Bills signed: 1040 bills

Bills vetoed: 120 bills (10.3%)

Average veto rate for Newsom’s eight years in office: 13.5%.

On his X feed, Micheli also offered a broader perspective on Newsom’s tenure:

During his 8 years in office, Governor Newsom acted on 7,803 bills. He signed 6,752 (86.5%) and vetoed 1,051 (13.5%). How do those numbers compare to predecessors? Gov Brown – just over 8,000 bills – 13.7% veto rate. Gov Schwarzenegger – just over 7,400 bills – 26.5%.

The year-by-year breakdown looks like this:

Note that 2021 and 2022 Legislative Sessions included far fewer bills due to the COVID-19 pandemic.

How do Governor Newsom’s total bill actions compare to prior Governors? The following chart lists the last four Governors:

Laird’s clean sweep: The Rolling Stones once famously sang that you can’t always get what you want, but don’t tell that to Sen. John Laird (D-Santa Cruz). Laird authored or co-authored17 bills that made their way to the governor’s desk, and Newsom ultimately signed all of them into law. Several of those measures address environmental or water issues, but the likely most impactful is SB 577, a controversial bill intended to curb a plethora of older childhood sexual assault lawsuits against public entities that have resulted in local governments paying out billions of dollars in damages to abuse victims.

Weber Pierson’s almost clean sweep: She didn’t bat 1.000 but Sen. Akilah Weber Pierson (D-San Diego) came Tony Gwynn close, with Newsom signing off on 14 of the 15 bills she authored that got to him. Several of those measures addressed the needs of children, from math competency (SB 1067), nutrition (SB 869 and SB 977) and the use of AI in health care (SB 503). That calculates to a .933 batting average, something the late Padres hitman would have been very proud of.

Controversial sex abuse bill becomes law: Speaking of SB 577, Newsom’s signing of the bill will undoubtedly anger sexual abuse survivors who have been battling with local governments over accountability for their trauma for years.

Seven years ago, Newsom signed AB 218, authored by then-Assemblywoman Lorena Gonzalez, creating a special three-year window for survivors of childhood sexual abuse to sue public entities over incidents that had occurred years earlier, after California’s traditional statute of limitations had expired.

The legislation allowed victims to file claims on events that occurred decades in the past, opening numerous institutions within the state to unfathomable liability.

Los Angeles County was hit especially hard due to what has been described as hellish conditions at its juvenile facilities dating back to 1959. In April 2025, the county agreed to pay $4 billion to settle thousands of claims en masse.

Since then, the county has pushed a narrative that many of the claims were fraudulent while public employee unions have worried that the settlement and future litigation like it could hurt worker pay. Gonzalez, now the now the head of the California Federation of Labor Unions, found herself in the unusual position of working against her own legislation.

SB 577 seeks to remedy the situation by raising the standard of evidence for claims filed by older sexual abuse survivors, thereby limiting the exposure of public entities. The bill has been widely marketed as a compromise, but sexual abuse survivors view it as a theft of their rights.

Newsom defended his signature in a signing message, which mentioned both L.A. County’s $4 billion settlement and the unsubstantiated assertion that as many as 80% of the claims involved in that settlement could be fraudulent.

Newsom wrote that SB 577 “attempts to thread the needle of protecting and compensating children from vile and inhumane treatment, while simultaneously ensuring our most important public institutions do not crumble under the threat of oppressive, and in some cases outright fraudulent claims of abuse.”

Sexual abuse survivors are expected to seek avenues to undue the bill.