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Los Angeles Times
01-07-2025
- Politics
- Los Angeles Times
Newsom pushes major housing reform through California Legislature
SACRAMENTO — California lawmakers stood around Gov. Gavin Newsom on Monday and celebrated the passage of the state budget and 'transformative' housing legislation at the state Capitol. Between mutual praise and handshakes in front of television news cameras, there was little acknowledgment of the power dynamics that played out behind the scenes: Democratic lawmakers once again gave into the demands of the soon-to-be termed out governor. 'We've seen multiple situations now where it's clear that the Legislature is one place and the governor is in another, whether that's bills that have passed overwhelmingly and been vetoed, or it's dragging the Legislature along on budget bills,' said Lorena Gonzalez, leader of the California Labor Federation. 'At some point the Legislature needs to legislate.' Newsom took a rare step earlier this year and publicly supported two bills to lessen environmental review standards to speed up the construction of housing in California. Despite vowing to supercharge home building, Newsom previously backed only smaller-scale policies and construction has stagnated. In his recently published book 'Abundance,' journalist Ezra Klein argued that California's marquee environmental law stands in the way of housing construction — a critique that struck a chord with the governor. Newsom, who is considering a 2028 presidential run, this year was hellbent on proving that he's the kind of Democrat who can be part of the solution and push through the government and political logjams. When a pivotal bill designed to streamline housing construction recently stalled in the state Senate, Newsom effectively forced it through despite the concerns of progressive lawmakers, environmental interest groups and labor unions. The governor did so by ensuring that a state budget bill included a 'poison pill' provision that required lawmakers to pass the housing legislation in order for the spending plan to go into effect on July 1. Newsom called the bills the 'most consequential housing reform that we've seen in modern history in the state of California' on Monday evening. 'This was too important to play chance,' Newsom said, adding that he worried reforms would have fallen prey to the same opposition as prior years if he allowed the 'process to unfold in the traditional way.' Democratic lawmakers for years have tried to cut through the thicket of regulations under the California Environmental Quality Act, known as CEQA, and faced stiff opposition from powerful labor groups. These groups, notably the State Building and Construction Trades Council, have argued that any relief offered to developers should be paired with wage and other benefits for workers. The legislation Newsom signed Monday sidestepped those demands from labor. Assembly Bill 130, based on legislation introduced by Assemblymember Buffy Wicks (D-Oakland), exempts most urban housing projects from CEQA, requiring only developers of high-rise — taller than 85 feet — and low-income buildings to pay union-level wages for construction workers. Senate Bill 131 also narrows CEQA mandates for housing construction and further waives the environmental restrictions for some residential rezoning changes. The bill, led by state Sen. Scott Wiener (D-San Francisco), additionally designates a host of non-residential projects — health clinics, childcare and advanced manufacturing facilities, food banks and more — no longer subject to CEQA. Experts in development said the new legislation could provide the most significant reforms to CEQA in its 55-year history, especially for urban housing. CEQA generally requires proponents to disclose and, if possible, lessen the environmental effects of a construction project. The process sounds simple but often results in thousands of pages of environmental assessments and years of litigation. CEQA creates substantial legal risk for homebuilders and developers and past efforts to alleviate its burdens fell short, said Dave Rand, a prominent Southern California land-use attorney. The bills signed Monday provide relief for the vast majority of housing, he said. High-rise and affordable housing construction often already require union-level pay. 'The worst cog in the wheel has always been CEQA,' Rand said. 'It's always been the place where projects get stuck. This is the first clean, across-the-board, objective, straightforward exemption that anyone can figure out.' He said clients are eager to take advantage of the new rules, which take effect immediately. 'There's over 10 projects we're going to push the go button on with this exemption probably Tuesday,' Rand said. For non-housing projects, the changes do not amount to a comprehensive overhaul but are still meaningful, said Bill Fulton, publisher of the California Planning & Development Report. In the past, state lawmakers have passed narrow, one-off CEQA waivers for projects they supported, such as increased enrollment at UC Berkeley in 2022. SB 131 continues the Legislature's penchant for exempting specific kinds of development from CEQA rules, he said, though the nine categories of projects affected provide more expansive relief than prior efforts. 'They're cherry picking things that they want to speed through,' said Fulton, who has termed the phenomenon 'Swiss cheese CEQA.' Observers said Newsom's actions were the strongest he's taken to force large-scale housing policies through the Legislature. For years, the governor has made audacious promises — on the campaign trail in 2017, Newsom famously promised to support the construction of 3.5 million new homes by the end of this year, a goal likely to fall millions short. But he's been more likely to work behind the scenes or swoop in and praise bills once they've passed rather than publicly shape housing policy, said Chris Elmendorf, a UC Davis law professor. Elmendorf, who supports the new laws, called Newsom's arm-twisting and willingness to challenge entrenched interests, 'an incredible about-face from his MO with respect to the legislative process on controversial housing and environmental issues for the last six, seven years.' The governor has jammed his policy priorities on other topics through Legislature before, including climate legislation, infrastructure and oil regulations, with mixed results over the years. Newsom's term ends in early 2027. His endorsement of the meaningful housing policies, and his strategy to propel one through the state Senate, became a bellwether of his strength at the Capitol as his time in office wanes. Wicks said Newsom 'put a ton of skin in the game' to force the proposals through. 'He went all in on pushing for taking on these sacred cows like CEQA because I think he recognizes that we have to tackle this problem,' Wicks said. Wicks' legislation had cleared the Assembly before the proposal became part of the state budget process, which added pressure on lawmakers to pass the bills. She described herself as 'cautiously optimistic' as it moved through the Capitol and said her house understood the need for reform. Wiener's legislation was slower to gain traction. Just last week, the inability of the Senate and the governor's office to reach an agreement on the proposal held up the announcement of a budget deal. Then Newsom tied the proposal to the budget, essentially requiring lawmakers to pass the bill or risk starting the fiscal year on July 1 without a spending plan. During the debate on SB 131, Sen. Henry Stern (D-Calabasas) said the legislation had 'significant issues' but that he would vote in favor of the measure because of assurances that those would eventually be addressed. 'I think nature and abundance can live side-by-side. In fact, they must,' Stern said. 'We don't want to live in a moonscape California. Want to live in a livable one.' Despite the concerns, lawmakers passed both bills on Monday. Gonzalez was critical of legislators, saying 'nobody is voting their values.' She compared the Legislature going along with Newsom's plan to Republicans in Congress. 'California Democrats are crying foul that legislators and senators are passing things that they don't even know the effect of that aren't in line with their constituents that are just being shoved down their throats by Donald Trump,' Gonzalez said. 'And those same legislators in California are allowing that to happen to themselves.'
Yahoo
27-06-2025
- Politics
- Yahoo
Chabria: Zohran Mamdani and Donald Trump have a lot in common. California should pay attention
Zohran Mamdani is a stylish, millennial, African-born Muslim with a Hollywood pedigree who just won the Democratic primary in the New York City mayor's race. If he sounds like Donald Trump's worst nightmare, he just might be. But he's also a lot like him. They're both charismatic leaders who have bucked their parties, tapped into the current political ethos that eschews traditional loyalties and by doing so, made themselves popular enough with fed-up voters to win elections when — to many in the political elite — they seem exactly like the kind of candidate who shouldn't be able to get their grandmother's vote. "Working-class people want somebody who really takes on the status quo, who pushes an economic populist agenda and convinces them that something's going to change," Lorena Gonzalez told me. She's the head of the California Labor Federation, which represents unions, and even she's fed up with Democrats. "There are days that I'm like, why am I still in this party?" she said. "When I see them cozy up to tech, when I see this abundance issue that streamlines worker protections, when I see this fascination with billionaires and this acquiescing to not taxing billionaires and not doing anything about rent control, you know, there's a point where I'm like, come on, grow some balls, go decide who you're for." Or, as Trump put it in a social media post after Mamdani's win, "Yes, this is a big moment in the History of our Country!" Read more: Chabria: How conflict with Iran could supercharge Trump's domestic agenda Trump is right, words that I don't often say — Mamdani's victory may signal something deeper than a lone mayor's race on the East Coast. People — both on the left and the right — crave authenticity, and want someone to believe in, be it an orange-hued boomer or a brown-skinned hipster. The Democrats, as political strategist Mike Madrid put it, are having their own Tea Party moment, when populist anger eats the old guard, as it did beginning in 2007 when the far-right of the Republican party began its now-successful takeover. Trump was never the impetus of the party's swing to the fringe, he just capitalized on it. "This is just a populist revolt of the Democratic Party against the establishment base," Madrid said. There's been ad nauseam amounts of pontificating about the current state of the Democratic party. Should it go more centrist? Should it embrace the progressive end? But the truth is the voters have already decided. They do indeed want lower grocery prices, as Trump promised but failed to deliver. But they also want democracy to not crumble. And they want to buy a house, and maybe not have their neighbors deported. But really, in that order. And they don't trust many, if not most, of the current Democrats in office to deliver. Like Republicans before them, they want outsiders (Mamdani, 33, is serving in the state Assembly), or at least someone who can sound like one. Gonzalez spends a lot of time talking to voters and she said left and right, Democrat and Republican, they see few differences remaining between the two parties, and are tired of voting for career politicians who haven't delivered on economic issues. Mamdani, whose mother is the film director Mira Nair (and who once rapped under the name Young Cardamom), campaigned on "a New York you can afford." That included freezing payments on rent-controlled apartments, building new affordable housing with union labor, making both transit and child care free and — you guessed it — cheaper groceries. Whether he delivers or not, those were messages that a broad swath of New Yorkers, struggling like all of us with the cost of living, wanted to hear. And he delivered them not just with credibility, but with an entertainment value that nods to his mom's influence: hamming it up Bollywood style for the South Asian aunties, walking the length of Manhattan to talk with people, jumping in the Atlantic ocean in a suit with a skinny tie. Charisma and chutzpah. Which, of course, is how Trump made his own rise, promising, with showman verve, to be the voice of the toiling voiceless who increasingly are in danger of becoming the working poor. Yes, he is a con man who is clearly for the rich. But still, he knows how to deliver a line to his base: "They're eating the cats. They're eating the dogs." That may be the biggest lesson for California, where we will soon be voting for a new governor from a crowded field — of establishment candidates. Even Kamala Harris, maybe especially Harris, fits that insider image, and certainly Gavin Newsom, despite zigzagging from centrist to pugilist, can't forward his presidential ambitions as anything but old-guard. "What makes someone like Zohran so compelling, is even if you don't agree with him on everything, which few voters do, you understand that he believes it and that you know where he's coming from," said Amanda Litman, the co-founder and executive director of Run for Something, a PAC that recruits young progressives to run for office. "I think that's the distinction between him and say someone like Gavin Newsom, which is, like, does Gavin believe what he says? Does he buy his own bull—? It's sort of unclear," Litman added. The anger of voters is strikingly clear, though, especially for ones who have for so long been loyal to Democrats. A new Pew analysis out this week found that about 20% of the Republican base is now nonwhite, nearly doubling what it was in 2016. Republicans have made gains with Black voters, Asian voters and Trump drew nearly half of Latino voters. Ouch. "One of the real challenges for the Democrats is two central pieces of the orthodoxy has been that they are the party of the working class and that they are the party of nonwhite voters," Madrid said. "Both of those are increasingly proving untrue, and the question then becomes, well, how do you get them back? The way you get them back is by having some sort of economic populist policy framework." Read more: Chabria: The secret police are everywhere. Do they really need the masks? Litman said that the way to capture voters is by running new candidates, the kind who don't come with history — and baggage. In the 36 hours after Mamdani was elected, her organization had 1,100 people sign up to learn more about how to run for office themselves, she said. It's the biggest spike since the inauguration, and it shows that voters aren't disinterested in democracy, but alienated from the existing options. "The establishment is not unbeatable. They're only unchallenged," Litman said. "And I think the more that the Democratic Party establishment, as much as it exists, can understand that the people and the playbooks that got us here will not be the people and playbooks that get us out of it, the better off we'll be." So maybe there are more Mamdani's out there, waiting to lead the way. If Democrats are looking for advice, Trump may have offered the best I've seen in a while — highlighting the insider/outsider Democrats who have, like Mamdani, made their name by rattling the establishment. "I have an idea for the Democrats to bring them back into 'play,'" he wrote on social media. "After years of being left out in the cold, including suffering one of the Greatest Losses in History, the 2024 Presidential Election, the Democrats should nominate Low IQ Candidate, Jasmine Crockett, for President, and AOC+3 should be, respectively, Vice President, and three High Level Members of the Cabinet — Added together with our future Communist Mayor of New York City, Zohran Mamdani and our Country is really SCREWED!" Or not. Wouldn't that be a slate? Sign up for Essential California for news, features and recommendations from the L.A. Times and beyond in your inbox six days a week. This story originally appeared in Los Angeles Times.
San Francisco Chronicle
27-06-2025
- Business
- San Francisco Chronicle
California budget comes down to the wire as Newsom, lawmakers face off over housing
SACRAMENTO — California lawmakers are scheduled to pass a budget that rolls back health care benefits for undocumented immigrants and makes other cuts, even as they continue to negotiate with Gov. Gavin Newsom over housing policies that have so far prevented them from reaching a final deal. The housing policies at issue would represent some of the most significant reforms to the state's landmark environmental law, the California Environmental Quality Act, known as CEQA, since its inception. They would grant broad exemptions to CEQA for homes and other buildings in already developed areas. The lawmakers who crafted the original proposals argue that the law has been abused by people trying to block development and that building more homes in already densely populated areas where people live and work is good for the environment. Newsom agreed, and has made his signature on the budget contingent on lawmakers agreeing to enact some of the CEQA exemptions. But when the negotiated language was released earlier this week, it drew swift backlash, especially from labor unions. Lorena Gonzalez, who leads the California Labor Federation, criticized the proposal because she said it did not require high enough wages for construction workers who build the projects allowed under the bill. For years, bills meant to kickstart housing construction have been stymied by labor unions' insistence on provisions that would effectively require that new homes be built by union workers or ones paid what developers often describe as prohibitively high wages. The budget bill lawmakers plan to pass Friday contains a clause that would render it inoperative if lawmakers don't also approve much of the CEQA overhaul that Newsom has called for. The budget deal makes up for a projected $12 billion shortfall in part by taking out billions of dollars in loans and taking money from the state's reserves. It also partially scales back the state's health care coverage for undocumented people who make less than 138% of the federal poverty level. It will freeze enrollment for the program starting next year and will charge undocumented people ages 19-59 $30 per month in premiums starting in 2027. Growing health care costs, in addition to the economic toll from import taxes imposed by President Donald Trump, made the state's budget outlook particularly challenging this year. 'We had to make some very difficult decisions to balance this budget,' Erika Li, a top budget official for the Newsom administration, told lawmakers during a committee hearing earlier this week. Republicans criticized some of the borrowing and budgeting techniques Newsom and lawmakers used to balance the budget, arguing there should have been more cuts given the economic uncertainty in the years ahead. 'This budget that we see today, to the extent that I can understand it, still has a large dose of hope for a miracle, and it is seemingly less likely,' Sen. Roger Niello, R-Fair Oaks, said during the committee hearing. Cities and counties, meanwhile, have criticized the agreement for not providing more funding for reducing homelessness and implementing Proposition 36, which increased penalties for drug and theft crimes. The budget does include a $750 million loan for struggling Bay Area transit agencies and an expansion of the state's film tax credit program to $750 million to try to keep the industry in California.
Los Angeles Times
27-06-2025
- Politics
- Los Angeles Times
Zohran Mamdani and Donald Trump have a lot in common. California should pay attention
Zohran Mamdani is a stylish, millennial, African-born Muslim with a Hollywood pedigree who just won the Democratic primary in the New York City mayor's race. If he sounds like Donald Trump's worst nightmare, he just might be. But he's also a lot like him. They're both charismatic leaders who have bucked their parties, tapped into the current political ethos that eschews traditional loyalties and by doing so, made themselves popular enough with fed-up voters to win elections when — to many in the political elite — they seem exactly like the kind of candidate who shouldn't be able to get their grandmother's vote. 'Working-class people want somebody who really takes on the status quo, who pushes an economic populist agenda and convinces them that something's going to change,' Lorena Gonzalez told me. She's the head of the California Labor Federation, which represents unions, and even she's fed up with Democrats. 'There are days that I'm like, why am I still in this party?' she said. 'When I see them cozy up to tech, when I see this abundance issue that streamlines worker protections, when I see this fascination with billionaires and this acquiescing to not taxing billionaires and not doing anything about rent control, you know, there's a point where I'm like, come on, grow some balls, go decide who you're for.' Or, as Trump put it in a social media post after Mamdani's win, 'Yes, this is a big moment in the History of our Country!' Trump is right, words that I don't often say — Mamdani's victory may signal something deeper than a lone mayor's race on the East Coast. People — both on the left and the right — crave authenticity, and want someone to believe in, be it an orange-hued boomer or a brown-skinned hipster. The Democrats, as political strategist Mike Madrid put it, are having their own Tea Party moment, when populist anger eats the old guard, as it did beginning in 2007 when the far-right of the Republican party began its now-successful takeover. Trump was never the impetus of the party's swing to the fringe, he just capitalized on it. 'This is just a populist revolt of the Democratic Party against the establishment base,' Madrid said. There's been ad nauseam amounts of pontificating about the current state of the Democratic party. Should it go more centrist? Should it embrace the progressive end? But the truth is the voters have already decided. They do indeed want lower grocery prices, as Trump promised but failed to deliver. But they also want democracy to not crumble. And they want to buy a house, and maybe not have their neighbors deported. But really, in that order. And they don't trust many, if not most, of the current Democrats in office to deliver. Like Republicans before them, they want outsiders (Mamdani, 33, is serving in the state Assembly), or at least someone who can sound like one. Gonzalez spends a lot of time talking to voters and she said left and right, Democrat and Republican, they see few differences remaining between the two parties, and are tired of voting for career politicians who haven't delivered on economic issues. Mamdani, whose mother is the film director Mira Nair (and who once rapped under the name Young Cardamom), campaigned on 'a New York you can afford.' That included freezing payments on rent-controlled apartments, building new affordable housing with union labor, making both transit and child care free and — you guessed it — cheaper groceries. Whether he delivers or not, those were messages that a broad swath of New Yorkers, struggling like all of us with the cost of living, wanted to hear. And he delivered them not just with credibility, but with an entertainment value that nods to his mom's influence: hamming it up Bollywood style for the South Asian aunties, walking the length of Manhattan to talk with people, jumping in the Atlantic ocean in a suit with a skinny tie. Charisma and chutzpah. Which, of course, is how Trump made his own rise, promising, with showman verve, to be the voice of the toiling voiceless who increasingly are in danger of becoming the working poor. Yes, he is a con man who is clearly for the rich. But still, he knows how to deliver a line to his base: 'They're eating the cats. They're eating the dogs.' That may be the biggest lesson for California, where we will soon be voting for a new governor from a crowded field — of establishment candidates. Even Kamala Harris, maybe especially Harris, fits that insider image, and certainly Gavin Newsom, despite zigzagging from centrist to pugilist, can't forward his presidential ambitions as anything but old-guard. 'What makes someone like Zohran so compelling, is even if you don't agree with him on everything, which few voters do, you understand that he believes it and that you know where he's coming from,' said Amanda Litman, the co-founder and executive director of Run for Something, a PAC that recruits young progressives to run for office. 'I think that's the distinction between him and say someone like Gavin Newsom, which is, like, does Gavin believe what he says? Does he buy his own bull—? It's sort of unclear,' Litman added. The anger of voters is strikingly clear, though, especially for ones who have for so long been loyal to Democrats. A new Pew analysis out this week found that about 20% of the Republican base is now nonwhite, nearly doubling what it was in 2016. Republicans have made gains with Black voters, Asian voters and Trump drew nearly half of Latino voters. Ouch. 'One of the real challenges for the Democrats is two central pieces of the orthodoxy has been that they are the party of the working class and that they are the party of nonwhite voters,' Madrid said. 'Both of those are increasingly proving untrue, and the question then becomes, well, how do you get them back? The way you get them back is by having some sort of economic populist policy framework.' Litman said that the way to capture voters is by running new candidates, the kind who don't come with history — and baggage. In the 36 hours after Mamdani was elected, her organization had 1,100 people sign up to learn more about how to run for office themselves, she said. It's the biggest spike since the inauguration, and it shows that voters aren't disinterested in democracy, but alienated from the existing options. 'The establishment is not unbeatable. They're only unchallenged,' Litman said. 'And I think the more that the Democratic Party establishment, as much as it exists, can understand that the people and the playbooks that got us here will not be the people and playbooks that get us out of it, the better off we'll be.' So maybe there are more Mamdani's out there, waiting to lead the way. If Democrats are looking for advice, Trump may have offered the best I've seen in a while — highlighting the insider/outsider Democrats who have, like Mamdani, made their name by rattling the establishment. 'I have an idea for the Democrats to bring them back into 'play,'' he wrote on social media. 'After years of being left out in the cold, including suffering one of the Greatest Losses in History, the 2024 Presidential Election, the Democrats should nominate Low IQ Candidate, Jasmine Crockett, for President, and AOC+3 should be, respectively, Vice President, and three High Level Members of the Cabinet — Added together with our future Communist Mayor of New York City, Zohran Mamdani and our Country is really SCREWED!' Or not. Wouldn't that be a slate?
Politico
26-06-2025
- Business
- Politico
‘Abundance' movement hits a labor wall in California
SAN FRANCISCO — California's Year of Abundance just crashed into political reality. For months, Democrats here raved about an ascendant movement to supercharge housing and energy infrastructure, mainlining the buzzy Ezra Klein book, 'Abundance.' Gov. Gavin Newsom, a potential presidential contender, and allies in the Legislature argued that an aggressively pro-building agenda could lift their moribund fortunes by addressing skyrocketing housing prices while proving they are the party of bold action. But now top Democrats are confronting opposition from unions wary that the rush to ease regulations could undercut hard-fought wage and training standards. The animosity spilled over this week, with proposed new wage minimums for fast-tracked housing projects spurring a backlash from unions and some Democratic legislators. 'Abundance' may be a wonky rallying cry for many California Democrats. But for some of their closest allies, it has become a slur. 'On one hand, we have Gavin trying to sit down with these right-wing podcasters to talk about losing young men, and on the other hand he's putting his name on some bill that reduces the wages of working-class men in California,' California Labor Federation leader Lorena Gonzalez. 'Anyone who thinks this abundance movement is how we're going to get our groove back just hasn't talked to real people.' Or as state Sen. Dave Cortese, a San Jose Democrat and a staunch labor ally, put it: 'I've been around long enough to know that some of this latest trendy stuff is bullshit.' Democrats focused on spurring housing development insist they are on labor's side. They've enlisted an influential ally in California's carpenters union, and argue that crushing housing costs — the result of decades of under-building — are burdening the very working men and women unions represent. Democrats still reeling from defeats in 2024 are desperate to win back working-class voters who have fled the party. 'No one wants to actually go against labor — and not because they're powerful, but because we stand with labor,' said Matt Lewis, communications director for California YIMBY, an influential pro-development advocacy group. 'We don't want to undermine labor. We want people to have good wages and be able to live in the homes we've built.' But many union officials are unpersuaded. They recoiled when journalist Josh Barro tolda gathering of centrist Democrats last month that when he examined policies that 'stand in the way of abundance,' he'd often 'find a labor union,' following up with a post entitled, 'In Blue Cities, Abundance Will Require Fighting Labor Unions.' Barro does not speak for the nebulous abundance movement. But the kind of sentiment he expressed does little to disabuse progressives and union members of their belief that it is a Trojan Horse for the kinds of big-donor-friendly policies that have unmoored Democrats from their onetime base. The wage proposal in Sacramento this week offered them more evidence. 'Folks who want to make dramatic changes to the system to benefit their agenda like to repackage them as the new shiny thing,' said Scott Wetch, a longtime labor lobbyist who on Wednesday likened the bill to Jim Crow-era efforts to suppress wages. Gretchen Newsom, a representative of the International Brotherhood of Electrical Workers, said Democrats should focus on struggling working-class voters. 'Instead,' said Newsom, who is not related to the governor, 'we're doing this abundance theory that is abundantly going to abandon workers.' It's widely accepted among politicians of both parties in California that building housing and infrastructure takes too long. San Diego County Building and Construction Trades Council leader Carol Kim pointed to unions' efforts to translate Biden-era infrastructure funding into projects and jobs, noting that excessive red tape and delays posed 'the biggest challenge in convincing blue collar workers that Democrats were taking the right steps to help working people.' 'We've been doing that work, so this whole abundance stuff is not new,' Kim said. 'What some of us in labor right now are worried about is that it's absolutely being glommed onto by the bad actors, the people who use these types of exceptions to undermine job quality standards or fatten their own pockets.' In some ways, 'abundance' applies a new name to an old idea. Long before Klein's book with Derek Thompson was published, California Democrats — particularly in sapphire-blue San Francisco — had rallied around an agenda that faulted excessive regulation and protracted environmental reviews for stalling needed housing, driving up costs. Bills to speed up that process have repeatedly run into opposition from construction unions who warn of eroded labor standards. But this year the philosophy became inescapable. Legislative leaders met in San Francisco with Klein, who had already forged ties with housing-focused Bay Area elected Democrats. Newsom hosted Klein on his podcast, where the governor said 'abundance is fundamentally, foundationally who we are' and boasted about his administration forcing San Francisco to proceed with a contested housing project. 'You've got an ideological war that's going on in progressive cities,' Newsom told Klein. 'They don't believe in the supply-demand framework. They don't believe in this notion of abundance. Fundamentally, they don't have a growth mindset.' Weeks later, Newsom transformed California's housing debate by sweeping ambitious housing bills into his state budget proposal, putting more pressure on Democratic lawmakers to approve them. The maneuver thrilled abundance-aligned allies whose agenda was now being advanced at the highest echelons of political power. 'The Legislature has a chance to deliver the most significant housing and infrastructure reforms in decades,' Newsom's press office posted on X this week. 'This is our moment to build the California Dream for a new generation.' But Newsom also set up a showdown by making a budget deal contingent on passage of housing legislation. Labor and environmental groups condemned the wage proposal in extraordinarily acrimonious hearings where legislative Democrats echoed concerns about alienating allies. 'To ask the legislature to, in a very sweeping manner in the name of abundance or something ... take down years and years of thoughtful labor standards,' Cortese said, 'should be shocking to people.' Facing enormous pressure, lawmakers on Thursday pulled the minimum-wage bill in a compromise that reverted to existing labor standards, although the proposal could still resurface. Accompanying streamlining legislation was expected to be pared back during negotiations. Those shifts vindicated labor foes and underscored the volatile politics at play. 'The governor has historically pushed the boundaries and tested some creative policies,' said Joseph Cruz, executive director of the California State Council of Laborers. 'We have to make it easier to build in California, and I don't think anyone disputes that. But at what expense to workers?' Eric He contributed to this report.
