Opinion: California struggles with three dysfunctional Democrats in power

This could be the worst threesome to run California in a very long time.

Gov. Gavin Newsom, Assembly Speaker Robert Rivas and Senate Pro Tem Mike McGuire emerged at the end of this year’s legislative session, which ended Saturday, as independent autocrats as opposed to a functioning team of Democrats. They disagreed. They proposed big reforms at the last minute. Too often they failed.

And while they can’t make spectacles of themselves any more this session because it is thankfully over, there’s no reason to think that they can do any better conducting the people’s business any time soon.

This session’s lowlights began with the implosion of an effort to address the state’s electricity crisis and the skyrocketing bills of the investor-owned utilities such as Pacific Gas & Electric. There had been weeks of chatter that the Democrats would make some effort to lower electricity bills for consumers, but no actual legislation. The whole concept appeared dead.

And then within mere days of the close of session, Democrats unveiled complex pieces of legislation. Its centerpiece was Assembly Bill 3121 by Assemblymember Cottie Petrie-Norris, D-Irvine. It proposed to give one-time refunds of electricity bills, estimated in the $30 range, to the millions of customers of these for-profit utilities. But it would have done so in the most destructive of ways, by diverting funds from existing programs intended to support schools and low-income Californians.

McGuire in the Senate led in this so-called “California Made” package of reforms. But soon after AB 3121 made its debut, it was dead in a Senate committee.

AB 3121’s death was a blessing that needed no disguise. It purported to lower electricity bills with a one-time refund that couldn’t cover a tank of gas. It wouldn’t have reduced a penny of actual electricity costs.

It turned out that the leadership meltdown over this bill was just the beginning. Following through on his threat, Newsom on Saturday called an immediate “special session” to ram through yet another last-minute idea, this one a mandate of the state’s oil refineries to amass more reserves to avoid price spikes during production slowdowns.

But McGuire ignored Newsom’s maneuver. The governor’s ability to actually force a session and a vote is as murky as a barrel of crude. And in the end, outmaneuvered and out of time, Newsom called off his session, as if that action had any real-world meaning.

This dysfunction starts at the top. Saturday night exemplified how the imperious and distant Newsom has horrible relations with his fellow Democrats in the Legislature. He treats them more like children than partners. Newsom leads like an island unto himself, now relocated to Marin.

All Rivas and McGuire have done is replicate Newsom’s style of bad governance. They have become their own islands. None of them seem to care what the other two think. They are bereft of the civic mindedness of putting the public first, leaving egos at the door and making some really tough decisions. They all have come to prefer island living.

The longer this threesome has been in power, the worse their coordination has become. The implosion at the end of this session may be a small taste of what is to come. Newsom finds himself in political steerage with Kamala Harris’ ascendancy to the Democratic Party’s throne. He is fast becoming an asterisk on the national stage. He has grown so tired of Sacramento, his family no longer calls it home. None of this bodes well for his home stretch as governor.

Real answers to any of our crises — housing, insurance, electricity, homeless, climate change — will not be popular. For California’s three top Democrats, real change means respectfully working together, reaching a consensus, watching each other’s back and working with legislators on both sides of the aisle. And that simply isn’t happening.

Good governance is an endangered species in Sacramento. With the threesome of Newsom, Rivas and McGuire, it is on the verge of extinction.

Tom Philp is a columnist for the Sacramento Bee. ©2024 The Sacramento Bee. Distributed by Tribune Content Agency.