The first week of California’s new legislative session should provide a glimpse of pandemic recovery policy that will strive to balance mitigation of the COVID-19 public health crisis with improved coordination to address economic difficulties.
“A really good place to start would be streamlining some of the processes to get people relief for lost wages and housing insecurity,” Matt Horton, a director at the Milken Institute’s Center for Regional Economics and California Center, told the Northern California Record. “A coordinated economic solution – almost like a Marshall Plan for California – is going to need to take shape on a number of different levels.”
It’s unclear how the issue of outmigration will resonate in the upcoming session. Oracle is the latest company to announce plans to move its headquarters from California to Texas.
Horton said it wouldn’t be a surprise to see stemming outmigration come up as part of an economic recovery that looks to address underlying equity issues and worker retention as a means to foster sustainable growth.
“How do we solve some of that business flight? By solving some of those fundamental investment needs, and having an economy that addresses inequity and prepares us for other economic resiliency challenges,” Horton said.
The legislature is scheduled to convene on Jan. 4.
Lawmakers have already introduced SB-74, the bipartisan Keep California Working Act as urgency legislation that would take effect immediately. It would allocate $2.6 billion to the Small Business Advocate to create a grant program for businesses and non-profits experiencing financial hardship due to the pandemic.
Sen. Andreas Borgeas, R-Fresno, who introduced the measure with Sen. Anna Caballero, D-Salinas, noted in a news release that $2.6 billion is 10 percent of California’s projected onetime surplus.
Gov. Gavin Newsom is scheduled to release his proposed 2021-22 budget in January.
“The legislature really should assert itself because it’s the legislature’s responsibility—and emphatically not the Governor’s role — to weigh the competing public health and economic concerns here,” Luke Wake, an attorney in Pacific Legal Foundation’s separation of powers practice group, told the Record by email.
“It’s important that the legislature decide fundamental policy for the state as to what businesses are permitted to be open and under what conditions because in our constitutional system the legislature is the organ of government closest to and most responsive to the governed,” Wake said. “And when the legislature acts, it must actually listen to its constituents in an open and deliberative legislative process where folks like Daryn Coleman (owner of Ghost Golf) can be heard; by contrast, the Governor and the Health Department have made all the rules here without any opportunity for public participation and without any procedural, temporal or substantive limitation.”
Among other potential legislation is a bill from state Sen. Lena Gonzalez, D-Long Beach, that would address internet access parity for low-income, minority and rural areas.