What Did and Didn’t Survive Newsom’s Desk

Sacramento Report Countdown

32 days until the November election

A plan to speed up construction for a billionaire-backed San Diego sports arena got its biggest break yet.

Gov. Gavin Newsom on Wednesday signed a bill to shield Midway Rising, a planned sports arena and housing project in the Midway District, from environmental lawsuits. The project, backed by Los Angeles Rams owner Stan Kroenke, has long been on the wish list for San Diego Mayor Todd Gloria, who’s staked his legacy on replacing the Pechanga Arena with a 16,000-seat stadium and more than 4,000 housing units.

The most dedicated Voice of San Diego readers will know Midway Rising has struggled to break ground for years amidst local opposition and court rulings stalling it because of the arena’s proposed 165-foot height.

In January, city officials cranked up the heat on state lawmakers to introduce legislation that would make it easier to protect Midway from environmental lawsuits. Things got even toastier when they lobbied for a separate, last-minute proposal toward the final days of session that some San Diego members, including Assemblymember Tasha Boerner who represents the community, opposed.

State Sen. Akilah Weber Pierson authored the two laws to make construction possible: Senate Bill 958 and Senate Bill 344. The bills, each of which Newsom signed, allow the city’s ongoing environmental review of the project to fulfill the California Environmental Quality Act requirements and exempt building height as a possible significant environmental impact.

CEQA reviews can lead to lengthy and costly litigation and are sometimes used by opponents of housing or infrastructure projects to delay or outright block development. And the Legislature has a storied history with CEQA carveouts for stadium projects, including for the Sacramento Kings stadium in 2013.

In a statement, Weber Pierson said the laws will help developers finally break ground. The San Diego City Council still needs to approve the project.

“This law helps provide the certainty needed to transform an underutilized site into a vibrant community with new housing, businesses, public spaces and opportunities for all San Diegans,” she said in a statement.

Newsom also signed off on a plan to tweak California’s mental health CARE Court system that has struggled to meet the needs of many vulnerable Californians since it launched three years ago. 

The new law, written by state Sen. Catherine Blakespear, is designed to make it easier for first responders to refer people to get CARE Court treatment.

It was the surviving legislation from a bigger bill package that sought to implement stronger reforms to allow people who deny voluntary treatment through CARE Court to be placed into involuntary conservatorship.

Blakespear told CalMatters the new law is an “incremental improvement.”

“I don’t want to make it seem like these things are accomplishing more than they are,” she said.

But it wasn’t all signatures and roses. Some notable vetoes included a bill by Assemblymember David Alvarez to return nearly four acres of San Pasqual Battlefield State Park to the San Pasqual Band of Mission Indians. In his veto message, Newsom said the legislation would undermine pre-existing agreements California has through its tribal lands program.

The lame duck governor also vetoed a measure that would have required companies to prove their recycled content claims. Boerner, who authored the bill, said it was meant to address deceptive marketing that claims to be more environmentally friendly than it actually is, also known as “greenwashing.” 

Industry groups and Republicans lined up to oppose the legislation, Assembly Bill 2253, arguing that it’d create needless costs for packaging manufacturers. And 17 Assembly Democrats didn’t vote for it on the chamber floor, a common tactic by lawmakers who oppose a colleague’s bill but don’t want to  directly vote against it.

Newsom echoed similar industry concerns in his veto message, writing that he worries new requirements would “unduly burden manufacturers and suppliers already facing economic headwinds caused by federal tariff and trade policy actions” while adding “little benefit to consumers.”

The Encinitas Democrat told Voice that the governor’s message was “disappointing” and that her bill was about holding companies accountable for deceptive marketing.

“I believe that consumers deserve to know what is in their products,” Boerner said. “If a product claims to have a certain amount of recycled content, then it should have a certain amount of recycled content.”

Join Us at Politifest

Don’t miss Politifest, the must-see San Diego political festival hosted by yours truly, this weekend where I’ll be joined by CalMatters’ Deborah Brennan (and Sacramento Report alum) to discuss all 14 ballot propositions on the November ballot.

We’re expecting to draw out lots of conversation, especially on Proposition 40, the proposed one-time five percent wealth tax on California billionaires.

Diligent readers will know that the wealth tax has divided Democrats in all kinds of idiosyncratic factions, as we reported in last month’s newsletter.

There’s also Prop. 41 and Prop. 42, the tax measures that would cancel out the billionaire’s tax if either one receives more votes than that measure.

And there’s more: We’ll go over Prop. 39, the ballot measure that would require voters to bring a government-issued ID to polling places or write the last four numbers of their Social Security or driver’s license number on their mail ballot.

Other propositions you may (or may not have) heard of that we’ll also touch on including a measure to allow public campaign funds for state and local officials, and another to speed up environmental reviews for housing and infrastructure projects.

So, what are you waiting for? Join us at 11:30 a.m. at the  KPIJ Theater at the University of San Diego. See you there! Get your ticket here. 

What I’m Reading Now

Major companies operating in California will soon be required to disclose if they’ve profited from slavery, from CalMatters.

Newsom signs bill to revoke ICE detention center charity tax break, KPBS explains.

Look up, and you might see an array of tiny power plant balconies now that a novel technology is legal in California, Grist reports.

Thank you for reading this week’s Sac Report! Please reach me at [email protected], as always.

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