Capitol Briefs: the suspense is over…for now

Budget deficit looms large on first ‘suspense day’ of the year: In Part I of the legislature’s annual suspense file tango, the Assembly and Senate Appropriations Committees acted on 1,009 bills today. Of those, lobbyist and Capitol Weekly regular Chris Micheli reports the numbers break down like this: The Senate took up 341 bills and passed 254 (74.5 percent) of them, nixing the remaining 87 (25.5 percent). Meanwhile, the Assembly acted on 668 measures, endorsing 435 (65 percent) and rejecting 233 (35 percent). In all, the two chambers passed along 689 to their respective chamber floors and held 320. That equates to a 31.7 percent clip, well above the historic average of 25 percent. Which shows what a massive budget deficit will do for you.

Strike three for Wiener shrooms bill, single-payer health care: The third time was not the charm for California Sen. Scott Wiener’s efforts to legalize the use of psilocybin and certain other psychedelic drugs in a clinical setting. Wiener’s SB 1012 was held in the Senate Appropriations Committee yesterday. The measure, co-authored by Republican Assembly Member Marie Waldron, would have allowed for the use of psychedelics under the supervision of a licensed facilitator. The effort to establish a single-payer health care system was another multi-time loser, this time as AB 2200, which had almost two dozen co-authors.

Tune in, turn on, never ever drop out…or else: Are you ready for some more near midnight emails from the boss? If not you better gird up because the Assembly Appropriations Committee nixed AB 2751, Assemblymember Matt Haney’s bill seeking to give Golden State workers the right to disconnect from work emails, texts and phone calls after regular work hours are over.

Little-known commission studying California’s antitrust law: Inflation and the concentration of power in a few hands are easily among the biggest political topics of the day. So, you’d think an effort to address those sorts of issues would at least receive some attention in Sacramento, right? Instead, you probably have no idea what we’re talking about.

Well, what we’re talking about is the California Law Revision Commission, a little-known body of state government, that has been tasked with offering the legislature recommendations to update the Cartwright Act, the Golden State’s 100-year-old antitrust statute, which regulates the concentration of markets and entrenched monopolistic power – you know, the kind of dynamics that lead to inflation and unhappy consumers, just the central themes of the zeitgeist.

Anyway, the commissions, whose members include Assemblymember Ash Kalra and Sen. Richard Roth, was authorized by the legislature in 2022 to study the Cartwright Act and, with the help of seven working groups, has authored a series of reports on various issues, including “Single Firm Conduct,” “Concerted Action” and “Technology Platforms.”

Those reports are scheduled to be reviewed in public hearings throughout the summer, with an eye towards the commission using the feedback gathered there to draft a final report that lawmakers then will use to update the Cartwright Act in 2025.

This is, like, a pretty big deal – but nobody is talking about it except for the folks at Economic Security California, who are concerned the commission’s proposals could perpetuate or even worsen monopolistic dynamics in California.

So – hey! – pay attention.

A State Senate district is bigger than you might think: Santa Clara County Supervisor Joe Simitian and South Dakota Gov. Kristi Noem both took some serious Ls recently, although for very different reasons. Simitian conceded to Assemblyman Evan Low in the race for second place in California’s Congressional District 16 primary while Noem, a would-be contender for Don Trump’s running mate, inexpiably wrote about killing one of her dogs.

But what drew those two disparate figures together in our mind was not just their recent presence in the headlines but something else entirely: the California State Senate.

Stick with us here. It’ll make sense.

California is such a large state that it tends to warp our perception of things, like the relative political power of an elected office. Serving in Congress has way more cache than serving in the State Senate, to say nothing of being a state’s governor.

But with a population of more than 39 million and only 40 seats in the State Senate, getting elected to California’s upper house is actually quite an impressive feat. Every California state senator represents roughly 988,086 Californians. Every member of Congress represents roughly 747,000 Americans.

So, weirdly, Simitian already had represented more voters when he served in the State Senate than he would have in Congress. What’s more, the whole state of South Dakota has a population (909,824) smaller than a single California State Senate seat.

Just thought we’d put that into perspective for you, especially as Noem’s canine slaughter continues to make the news.

Pushback against Newsom’s return to office policy: State workers unhappy about Gov. Newsom’s mandate to return to the office at least two days a work have an ally in Assemblymember Josh Hoover (R-Folsom). The Legislature’s Joint Legislative Audit Committee voted 13-0 last week to endorse his call to “study the rationale, timing, legality, and costs associated with the decision to rescind telework privileges for state employees.” Hoover has called the order to return “harmful and counterproductive.”