California Gov. Gavin Newsom has vetoed a bill that would have helped Black families reclaim or be compensated for land that was taken unjustly by the government through eminent domain.
Okay, many of Newsom’s vetoes are complete BS, but I think this article really buries the lead:
The proposal by itself would not have been able to take full effect because lawmakers blocked another bill to create a reparations agency that would have reviewed claims.
“I thank the author for his commitment to redressing past racial injustices,” Newsom said in a statement. “However, this bill tasks a nonexistent state agency to carry out its various provisions and requirements, making it impossible to implement.”
I mean… If you have two co-dependent bills, one where people can make claims and one where you create an agency that reviews those claims, I feel like you kind of have to veto one if the other fails. If the bill fails to establish the agency to review the claims, then how do claims get processed? Have you just created a bill that allows the people you’ve wronged to send their complaints into a black hole? Here’s hoping this gets pushed back through at some point but either with both bills intact or combined into the same piece of legislation.
No, you pass one and replace the other one instead of starting from scratch on both.
No you don’t, because the tasks set out by this bill (SB 1050) are delegated to a non-existent agency (the “California American Freedmen Affairs Agency”) established by SB 490 (not passed), and the bill requires that this non-existent agency carry out those responsibilities. This bill can be sent back to Newsom’s desk whenever; it’s simply the case that right now, it’s not viable legislation, because it’s bestowing responsibility onto an agency that presently doesn’t exist and can’t be created. In fact, it strictly sets a deadline for January 1, 2026, that the agency will “create a database, to be updated annually thereafter, of rightful owners”. If that second bill never gets passed, then you have legislation on the books that says “you will have this thing done in 15 months even though you physically can’t because the agency tasked with doing it does not exist.”
This doesn’t make the bill start over from scratch, and I don’t understand where you’re getting that idea from.
Sounds to me like SB 1050 forces the agency to exist whether SB 490 passed or not.
??? No, no it does not. SB 490 does. SB 1050 when discussing the agency says “as provided by SB 490 of the 2023–24 Regular Session”. It is unambiguously predicated on the passage of SB 490. This is just mental gymnastics trying to take what’s ultimately a fuck-up by the state legislature and push it onto Newsom for no reason whatsoever.
“Just put the bill on the books because I don’t understand that a veto doesn’t make a bill start from scratch and that the bill sets out legal obligations it can’t fulfill.”
“Just use the bill to create the agency that the bill never creates and thereby doesn’t grant you the power to create.”
