California Gov. Gavin Newsom has until Saturday to sign or veto bills passed from this year's legislative session. This week on KPBS Roundtable, we take a look at some of the notable bills he has signed and vetoed that impact the future of renewable energy, housing and labor in the state.
S1: This week on Kpbs roundtable. Californians will be seeing a lot of new laws soon. Hundreds of bills made it to Governor Gavin Newsom's desk. We're looking at some that were signed and others that were vetoed.
S1: Don't go anywhere. Roundtable is coming up next. Welcome to Kpbs roundtable. I'm Matt Hoffman. This year's legislative session saw the most bills introduced in more than a decade. So Californians will likely be seeing a lot more new laws. The clock is ticking , though. California Governor Gavin Newsom has until Saturday to sign or veto bills that were passed by the legislature. Joining us to discuss what has and has not made it into law are Jeremy White.
S2: The difference this year is by signing bills that advance the interests of low income workers , but did not necessarily sign those bills that they had pushed forward to try and advance the interests of unions and organizing power. You mentioned the unemployment insurance , one. That was a huge priority for labor. That was something they've tried to get to the governor's desk before and have been unsuccessful. And so , you know , they made this big push.
S4: I think the bigger context here is that Gavin Newsom ran on building a lot more homes , and you see a lot of legislators who align themselves with the movement , really in positions of power. And so I think this is an ideology that's really in the ascendant right now.
S4: The governor excuse me , the legislature can override gubernatorial vetoes with a two thirds vote. Democrats do have two thirds margins in both houses of the legislature. It might roughly decade covering California politics. I can't remember it ever happening , Alexi. I don't know if you can. I think there's a basic dynamic here , which is that ultimately lawmakers want the governor to sign their bills. They want him to enact their budget requests.
S2: And , you know , it's it's become the frame through which everyone you talk to is analyzing what he's doing. You know , he may not admit it , but it's sort of the first instinct that everybody seems to have whenever he signs or vetoes a particularly contentious issue , at least when we're having conversations among ourselves. It's what I hear constantly from advocates and lawmakers. You know.
S4: Yeah. So again California's done a lot on on restricting firearms. And this was one of the ones that was sort of hanging out there. And this was the year they got it done. S4: Well , on the topic of big labor priorities and what the governor is going to do , the big one still hanging out there , a deal to give health care workers raise to $25 an hour minimum wage. This was something that labor had been pushing for for quite a while. They struck a sort of grand bargain with health care groups like hospitals , dialysis clinics , unlike that fast food deal we spoke about before. The governor was not involved in brokering this one.
S5: The ride of waves of various highways all across the state of California. There's 15,000 miles of California highways that this bill would affect , and specifically through the San Diego , Los Angeles and Ventura County areas. There was one study that showed that nearly 1000MW of combined potential solar capacity along those busy roads were enough to power 270,000 homes. So that's the goal of Senate Bill 49.
S5: Yeah. If I could just jump in and add one more thing about offshore wind , which especially in California , it's going to be different than offshore wind that's being talked about and being built in off the coast of the Atlantic , right off the Atlantic coast in the United States , California and the West Coast is different because the offshore base for wind turbines , it drops precipitously off the continental shelf of off the West coast.
S3: So there are wells that either haven't been formally shut down but are so low or so empty. That companies haven't touched them for a long time , or ones that in a lot of cases have just been abandoned by companies that have either gone out of business or just moved on to other sites. And you've got these sort of they call them orphan wells all over California , all over the country. It's they're a big source of air and water pollution.
S3: Basically. And it was contentious. I mean , you had a lot of. There is a version of this bill in the previous legislative session that couldn't get through , and you had a lot of big companies who clearly don't want to be in a position of admitting how much emissions their operations lead to. They don't want to be consumers , to be looking at them and saying , hey , you're you're contributing a lot to climate change here , should really be doing business with you.
S7: Yeah. And he talks about this quote unquote thermal runaway and this problem of just , yeah , that excessive heat that can lead to these reactions that , you know , this this fire in Valley Center , you know , there were some evacuations as a result of it. So it's something it's a problem we're going to need to solve as we're becoming more dependent on battery storage , like you said , for our energy.
S7: I think what's really interesting is that this is just such a different direction that we normally think of it. Also in that article , Gustavo speaks with an academic who kind of talks about how it's normally foreign students go to the United States rather than leave , but it just shows there's , you know , the cost of living , the cost of college. All these things are kind of changing that dynamic along the border somewhat.
S7: There's been efforts to get state of emergency declarations at both the state level and the national level. And it looks like right now there is no state of emergency from California , according to Governor Newsom's office. They say there's some jurisdictional issues.
S7: They do emphasize these are just predictions. And predictions vary. And if you remember I think going into last winter , I don't think they could have predicted the amount of rainfall. We got more in early 2023. But , you know , near record amounts of rainfall parts of this past year we received and.
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