As California Democrats convened a new two-year legislative session in December, they were still reeling from Donald Trump’s victory.
They’d just lost three legislative seats to Republicans. Voters rejected several progressive priorities on ballot initiatives. Kamala Harris had one of the worst showings in California for a Democratic presidential candidate in 20 years.
It was clear, according to most election experts, that voters were frustrated with rising costs under Democratic leadership.
With that in mind, Democratic Assembly Speaker Robert Rivas issued a plea to his 78 colleagues in the Assembly on the opening day of the new session.
“Colleagues, our constituents told us two very important things in November,” Rivas said. “First, they continue to believe deeply in California’s values of tolerance, of equality and of human rights … Second, our constituents, they don’t feel that the State of California is working for them. That’s their lived experience in this moment. Californians are deeply anxious. They’re anxious about our state’s cost of living.”
He urged lawmakers to draft their legislation largely through the lens of affordability.
Last week was the deadline to introduce bills that will be debated over the coming months. Judging from the 1,160 or so bills Rivas and his Democratic Assembly colleagues filed, the Democratic affordability agenda appears to be a work in progress, according to a Digital Democracy analysis.
At least 250 of the Democratic bills appear to be “spot bills,” or placeholders for future legislation. A Digital Democracy review of the other bills found that about 80 appear to be trying to make things more affordable in some way, but most appear to be one-offs that aren’t organized around a sweeping, unified plan.
Nick Miller, a spokesperson for Rivas, said that’s not a surprise. His office is also reviewing all the bills to see where they fit in the speaker’s affordability agenda, which is still taking shape as the session gets started and as lawmakers grapple with the wildfires that burned thousands of homes in Los Angeles County.
Plus, he said, lawmakers are trying to figure out how to respond to the Trump administration, which has sought to gut federal agencies and has threatened to cut funds California relies on, including federal disaster relief. The California business impacts of tariffs and other pending Trump proposals are also still uncertain, Miller said.
“Those are real concerns that are front and center as we also vet the current (legislative) proposals to determine how they’re going to save money for Californians, build more housing and improve services,” Miller said.
What are Democrats doing to make California affordable?
But Rivas already has taken some action to address affordability.
He renamed the Assembly Jobs, Economic Development and the Economy Committee to the Economic Development, Growth and Household Impact Committee and said that it will hold hearings in the Capitol and throughout the state in coming weeks. He also announced plans to fast-track housing legislation next month aimed at getting wildfire victims back in homes quickly.
Meanwhile, Republicans and Senate Democrats also began unveiling affordability proposals on Wednesday.
Senate Democrats presented a bill package that they say aims to head off one major affordability concern in California: home insurance.
“Of course (affordability is) still a priority,” Sen. President Pro Tempore Mike McGuire told CalMatters in a statement. “We can and will do more than one thing at a time. It’s why our sweeping wildfire bill package and budget proposals aim to bring down soaring insurance costs, help expedite the rebuilding process and get more funding to impacted schools and students. And it’s why we’ll be advancing significant affordability-focused legislation in the coming weeks.”
Republicans at a press conference on Wednesday proposed cutting gas taxes and taxes on tips and lowering energy costs.
“The Democrats talked a big game starting at the beginning of this year about affordability,” Assembly Republican Minority Leader James Gallagher told reporters. “But where are the bills? Where are the bills from Democrats actually reducing people’s costs?”
Learn more about legislators mentioned in this story.
Gov. Gavin Newsom also hinted at his legislative priorities for lowering housing costs Wednesday when he spoke to reporters in Los Angeles to announce a “California Jobs First Economic Blueprint” and $245 million in funding for jobs and business initiatives.
He said policymakers need to adopt the same mindset that sped up the regulatory process to clear fire debris and approve building permits to get Angelenos back into homes after the wildfires. He said “the inability of the state of California to get out of its own way” is driving much of the state’s problems ranging from “homelessness, housing, the issue of our competitiveness, our tax base, all of it.”
“I am all-in, fully committed to extending this emergency mindset to the pre-existing emergency in the state of California,” he said. “We are now getting out of our own way as it relates to this recovery, and this mindset, it must be maintained moving forward.”
Here are some of the Democratic affordability bills
CalMatters reporters used the Digital Democracy database to sort through hundreds of bills filed by the deadline last week, looking for Democratic proposals that sought to lower costs, create more housing or other affordability issues.
Some of the introduced bills are geared towards specific groups — such as extending access to free meals to K-12 students during emergencies and school breaks, or allowing students in need of temporary housing to park overnight at Cal State and community college campuses.
Others aim to reach a broader population, such as Fremont Democratic Sen. Aisha Wahab’s Investor-Owned Utilities Accountability Act, which caps electric rate increases for residential customers, and reduces the amount residents contribute to a wildfire fund.
“Those on a fixed income — our senior population, those on social security, those with a union job, a good paying union job — do not get six increases to their pay, and yet PG&E gets six increases to be able to toss onto ratepayers,” she said at a hearing, adding that “ratepayers are not a bank.”
Meanwhile, representatives for two of the state’s most influential lobbying organizations agreed that it’s still too early to make many conclusions about what bills might be the most impactful.
“We appreciate Speaker Rivas’ commitment to focusing on affordability this legislative session,” Ben Golembek, an executive vice president at the California Chamber of Commerce, said in a statement. “Californians spoke clearly in the last election that the cost of doing business here is too high. We look forward to seeing which bills are part of the affordability package and working together in an effort to reduce costs and regulations on businesses and customers alike.”
Lorena Gonzalez, the president of the California Labor Federation, said she expects a lot of the bills that could move the needle on costs will show up in spot bills over the coming weeks.
But perhaps surprisingly, Gonzalez, a former Democratic Assembly member from San Diego, said she hopes lawmakers consider the real danger of having the state’s few remaining oil refineries close, which would drive up California gas prices, already the nation’s highest.
“We absolutely cannot afford to lose refineries in California,” she said.
Whatever affordability legislation Democrats end up prioritizing, a new poll released Wednesday found it’s a top issue for Californians. In the survey from the Public Policy Institute of California, about half of Californians cited the cost of living and inflation, housing costs and availability and the environment as the most important issues for the governor and the Legislature to work on in 2025.
Sarah Bohn, a labor economist at the institute, said making things affordable in the short term won’t be easy for lawmakers, considering international and national issues “can sometimes really factor into volatile categories like food and energy.”
But she said it’s important to focus on “helping people get the skills they need to access good jobs and that help invest in communities.” She said “there are a lot of levers” that lawmakers could try to pull.
“I don’t know … how quickly they could be pulled to have it really feel like a big difference for Californians,” she said. “But I think that’s the direction to go in.”
By Ryan Sabalow and Sameea Kamal. This article was originally published by CalMatters.
