Tag: state politiics

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Newsom Proved Them Wrong

By SHIFT-BAY AREA: substack – excerpt

When Bay Area transit leaders are backed into a corner, they rely on a familiar, patronizing refrain: “The public just doesn’t understand how transit funding works.”…

The False Claim: The transit establishment’s response was swift, arrogant, and entirely dismissive. In KQED’s recent reporting on the Connect Bay Area Act, campaign spokesman Jeff Cretan dismissed proposals to redirect money from major capital projects toward transit service…

They Already Did It: Earlier this year, Newsom negotiated a financing package allowing Bay Area transit agencies to borrow hundreds of millions of dollars from state funds that had already been allocated for transit capital projects.

The largest share of those capital dollars had originally been reserved for construction of the San Jose BART extension. Instead, they became the source of loans designed to keep existing transit systems operating.

As columnist Daniel Borenstein observed, the package did not require new state money. It relied on capital funds that had already been committed to construction projects, temporarily converting those resources into operating support through a loan structure.

The accounting mechanism may have been creative.

But the result was unmistakable.

Capital resources were used to sustain operations.

Exactly the scenario transit advocates now insist cannot happen… (more)

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SPUR, Yimbys say stealth state laws can force more housing

By Zelda Bronstein : 48hills – excerpt

But what happens if developers don’t want to build anything but luxury condos — and maybe not even those?

On Friday, February 12, SPUR hosted a webinar entitled “Can Cities Use State Law to Overcome Housing Resistance?” The four panelists, all of the Yimby/Wiener persuasion, answered that question with a resounding Yes.

To anyone who’s depended on the mainstream media for an understanding of the current battle over California housing policy, that response must to be mind-boggling. The establishment press has claimed ad nauseam that the state has done little if anything to address California’s housing crisis.

Reporters have repeatedly memorialized the defeats of state Sen. Scott Wiener’s SB 827 (d. 2018) and SB 50 (d. 2019 and again in 2020) and the midnight-hour death of Assemblymember Toni Atkins’ SB 1120 in 2020, leaving the impression that these were the only housing bills or at least the only ones that mattered.

At Friday’s forum, the panelists told a different story. Since 2017, the state Legislature has enacted a slew of housing laws that, as former director of the Department of Housing and Community Development Ben Metcalf put it, “buil[t] out the power of the state” to overrule local land-use authority…(more)

The developer bills that force density on single family homes may be the governor’s downfall, as more people learn about his efforts to overthrow local jurisdiction and remove single family zoning all over he state. All it will take is a candidate who listens to what the voters want and, hopefully knows how to make it happen. Governor Newsom is really pushing his luck. He intends to included a new Housing Accountability Unit (HAU) in his proposed budget, to fund enforcement of the forced density bills.
See details on the bill and actions you may take to fight back. https://www.livablecalifornia.org/governor-newsoms-latest-executive-overreach-a-housing-accountability-unit-in-hcd/

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Gavin Newsom could be ‘undermined’ by Democrats in recall efforts, report says

By Eric Ting : sfgate – excerpt

The sixth attempt to recall California Gov. Gavin Newsom is rapidly gaining steam amid the worsening pandemic, a controversial new stay-at-home order and an unemployment fraud scandal.

It was previously reported by Politico’s Carla Marinucci that those close to the governor were growing “increasingly worried” about the recall efforts, and Marinucci’s latest report on the recall adds another twist.

After detailing the new Republican fundraising efforts behind the recall — while noting the challenges the GOP will face in a heavily Democratic state — Marinucci quotes a “Sacramento insider aligned with a major special interest group” who says, “We’ve gotten calls from Democrats who are already kicking the tires” on getting on the ballot in a potential recall election in 2021….(more)