By Ben Christopher : calmatters – excerpt
IN SUMMARY
Two consecutive committee chairs getting overruled by their committee members signifies a growing rift among California Democrats about how to address the housing crisis.
One of the most controversial housing bills of the year has lived to be voted upon another day, but only by surviving the Legislative equivalent of two back-to-back prison breaks.
Last week, Senate Bill 79, a bill by San Francisco Democratic Sen. Scott Wiener to boost apartment and commercial construction around major public transportation hubs, passed the Senate Housing Committee over the strenuous objections of its chair, Sen. Aisha Wahab, a fellow Democrat from Fremont.
That was a notable development in its own right. Chairs tend to get their way on the bills that pass through their committees. When a majority of a committee’s members decide to buck legislative decorum and tradition and steamroll that committee’s chair, it’s often taken as a sign that California’s dominant Democrats are unusually divided over an issue; that the issue at hand is especially contentious; that the legislators either aren’t receiving clear guidance from legislative leadership or are willing to ignore that advice; or some combination of all of the above.
Fast forward to this week and it happened again.
In the Senate Local Government Committee, Sen. María Elena Durazo, a Los Angeles Democrat, urged a no vote on Wiener’s bill.
She didn’t get her way. The bill passed with the backing of all the other Democrats on the committee. Durazo voted “no” with the two Republicans.
A chair getting “rolled” is an unusual spectacle in Sacramento. In the typically arcane and perfunctory proceedings of the Legislature, this bit of human drama pops up once or twice a year. For it to happen twice in a row for the same bill is without any obvious precedent.
“Extra unique” is how Chris Micheli, a longtime California lobbyist and public commentator on the Legislative process, described the situation. “Beyond the particular bill at hand, it could give an indication that there is a philosophical split in the caucus.”… (MORE)
Pushback is probably coming from the public that no longer trusts the government that has been running the same scheme for over a decade and still complains and blames everyone else for the lack of housing. The huge number of entitlements cannot be lost of the public. We have a much more neutral media, including CalMatters, to thank for bringing the truth to the public. The obvious is becoming hard to ignore.