Newsom shows penchant for shiny new issues on California tour
By Dan Walters / CalMatters
As a species, politicians love information conferences and different occasions that remember new applications or public works tasks.
The syndrome might clarify why officers usually ignore long-festering issues in current applications, such because the Employment Improvement Division and the bullet prepare mission. Merely making issues work higher doesn’t have the political enchantment of one thing new and glossy.
Gov. Gavin Newsom is especially liable to the affliction, declaring early on his love for “large, furry audacious objectives” and later including, “I’d fairly be accused of (having) these audacious stretch objectives than be accused of timidity.”
That proclivity led him, as a candidate, to pledge that he would attempt to clear up California’s housing disaster by constructing 3.5 million new homes and flats by 2025 and make California the primary state to embrace single-payer well being care.
Later, when each proved to be unattainable, he declared them to be “aspirational” fairly than agency guarantees.
Newsom’s tendency towards the grandiose was very evident this month when he as soon as once more shunned a standard State of the State tackle to the Legislature and as a substitute toured the state for serial bulletins.
One is changing San Quentin jail right into a laboratory to check whether or not a softer strategy to making ready felons for launch, modeled after a program in Norway, will likely be more practical in steering them away from crime. Newsom boasted that the renamed San Quentin Rehabilitation Middle would be the “most modern rehabilitation facility” within the nation, displaying one other attribute, his obsession with being the primary to do one thing.
The splashiest of Newsom’s new issues is a multi-billion-dollar plan to deal with hundreds of homeless and mentally unwell Californians in new services that might mix shelter with therapy for his or her afflictions.
The mission could be financed largely by a bond challenge within the $3-5 billion vary to be positioned earlier than voters subsequent yr and could be an adjunct to Newsom’s “Care Court docket” program that permits the mentally unwell to be compelled to simply accept therapy.
“It’s unacceptable what we’re coping with at scale now in California,” Newsom mentioned. “We've to handle and are available to grips with the fact of psychological well being in our state and in our nation.”
Even when carried out as hoped, the 2 psychological well being tasks would make solely a comparatively tiny dent within the state’s homelessness disaster. California nonetheless lacks a complete strategy and is mired in finger-pointing amongst state, county and metropolis officers over who’s answerable for coping with it.
Billions of dollars have been spent by all three ranges of California authorities, plus no small quantity of federal funds, however the variety of unhoused Californians continues to climb, formally approaching 200,000 however in all probability a lot larger.
The exchanges between Newsom and county officers have been particularly pointed. He’s accused counties of dragging their ft on successfully spending state grant cash whereas county officers say they want a devoted and predictable income stream for long-term applications.
As Newsom was touring the state, the California State Affiliation of Counties, or CSAC, issued what it mentioned is a complete strategy to homelessness embracing housing, social companies, training and employment with clear traces of accountability and accountability for outcomes.
“Nobody stage of presidency is solely answerable for the homelessness disaster,” CSAC president Chuck Washington, a Riverside County supervisor, mentioned in a press release. “However any and all efforts to handle homelessness will fail with no complete system during which roles and tasks are clear.”
Basically, CSAC is looking for making the techniques and companies already in place work higher. That doesn’t have a lot political enchantment however is, to make use of one in every of Newsom’s favourite phrases, “foundational” for progress on the homelessness disaster.
Dan Walters is a CalMatters columnist.