Using a baseball tactic that former college baseball player Gavin Newsom should understand, the legislature began throwing balls back at the lame-duck governor.
The drummer leaned too close to him and cluttered the lawmakers’ plate. And legislative leaders pushed him back with indoor heaters.
In everyday language, they brushed it aside, at least temporarily, in an attempt to dissuade the California chief executive from straying too far into their territory.
The most recent and dramatic example occurred recently at the end of the two-year session of the Legislative Assembly.
As usual, and increasingly in defiance of lawmakers, Governor Newsom waited until the last minute to propose major legislation. He claimed his measure would prevent a rise in gasoline prices by imposing reserve requirements on oil refineries.
“These price spikes are actually profit spikes for the big oil companies,” he said.
But Newsom’s proposal was controversial and complicated — so complicated that his fellow Democrats in the Assembly complained that there was not enough time left in the session to fully consider the issue. House Speaker Robert Rivas (D-Hollister) declined to consider the governor’s proposal. A negative response.
So on Saturday night, as this legislature was about to end until a new elected legislature convenes in December, Newsom made good on an earlier threat and called lawmakers into a special session to act on his proposal.
But in an unprecedented uprising, the Senate stood up to the governor and refused to call a special session. Democrats could have passed the bill during the regular session and an extra session was unnecessary, said Senate Leader Mike McGuire (D-Healdsburg). See you in December.
It was a lightning return throw from McGuire.
But the Senate leader has since backtracked.
He has now announced that he will call a special session of his House, but on one condition: that the Assembly first vote on a bill and send it to the Senate. He will not ask senators to sit in Sacramento while the Assembly holds public hearings and negotiates with itself, McGuire told me.
“This issue was never just about getting the House to call the House. It was about getting the votes lined up,” he said. “The Senate had the votes. The House didn’t have the votes. The solution to all of this is finding a majority of House members to support the bill. And the House has some work to do.”
“If they get the votes, I will immediately submit the bill to our senators for discussion. Our (Democratic) caucus is 100 percent unified at this point on not meeting immediately.”
What prompted McGuire to soften his adamant opposition to a special session?
“The governor and I had a productive meeting and discussed a way forward,” he responded.
Newsom, of course, has plenty of options for retaliation. He has hundreds of bills on his desk that must be signed or rejected by September 30. Rewarding allies and punishing opponents is a basic tenet of politics.
In any case, it is questionable whether the Senate could legally reject the governor’s request for a special session. It is a separate and coequal branch of government. But the state constitution gives the governor, on “extraordinary occasions,” the right to “call the legislature into special session.”
That power has never been tested in court. And there is no penalty for asking the governor to leave.
“The way I read the Constitution, Parliament has to meet, but it’s up to them to decide when they meet,” says Chris Micheli, a law professor and lobbyist. “It’s up to them to decide whether they vote. They could immediately adjourn and be done with the session, and say, ‘We met, thank you.’”
Rivas told me he would like to start public hearings on a bill in a few days and hopes to have the bill passed by the end of September. But don’t be surprised if it drags into October.
The Speaker of the House created a massive 19-member committee on oil and gasoline supplies, representing about a quarter of the House, to hold public hearings and consider legislation.
Newsom wants to give the California Energy Commission the power to require refiners to build stable fuel reserves to avoid shortages and price spikes when equipment is shut down for maintenance. Supply and demand determine the price. That’s the basis of a free market.
But opponents and skeptics — not just the oil industry, but also some moderate Democratic members of the House — argue that the proposed remedy itself could create temporary price spikes because gasoline would be removed from the supply chain and held in reserve.
Rivas himself is not yet convinced of the merits of the bill, I am told.
Neither the Speaker of the House of Representatives nor the leader of the Senate wanted to publicly and harshly criticize the Democratic governor.
But privately, many of their fellow Democrats are fed up with Newsom’s game of rushing deadlines, especially after spending so much time traveling the country to boost his national political profile. They think he should focus more on the California Capitol, working directly with lawmakers on issues he deems important.
“Anything worth doing takes time and investment in relationships – and in putting proposals together,” McGuire told me when I asked him whether Newsom should have acted sooner to push his refining legislation.
“To be honest, we are all democrats. We have to work together.”
Rivas said that when Newsom urged him to pass the bill “without public hearings and discussion, I was very blunt and told him it wouldn’t work for me and it wouldn’t work for the Assembly.”
Newsom could have — and should have — started negotiating with the legislature on his proposal as early as January. His last-minute shenanigans have become tiresome and unproductive.
His season ends in 28 months. He better start hitting the ball better. He’ll learn counterattack shots.
California Daily Newspapers
