Overheard at the California Assembly’s budget day + Will coronavirus change jails for good?
Good morning and happy Wednesday! Here’s to a shorter work week!
A RARE GATHERING IN THE ASSEMBLY
For the first time in a quarter century, the California Assembly convened Tuesday under a special process that allowed legislators to freely discuss, without taking a vote on, the state’s ominous budget outlook.
Around 1 p.m., 76 members filed into the chamber and scattered six feet apart. They dispersed to seats in the chamber’s corners or were assigned to tables in the back of the room usually reserved for the press. Others sat at one of two desks members traditionally sit at in pairs, or settled into chairs scooted off to the side aisles.
Requested by Assembly leadership, each member donned either a homemade or generic face mask, a spectrum of colors that dotted across the floor, from Assemblyman Richard Bloom’s plain blue to Assemblyman Jay Obernolte’s American flag.
Each microphone now comes equipped with a covering that gets sanitized after meetings. It’s a good thing, too, because some members took their masks off during their impassioned speeches.
The last time the parliamentary process was called was in 1995, when Orange County faced bankruptcy.
Assembly Speaker Anthony Rendon, D-Lakewood, said he called the meeting so members could “talk freely” on California’s most pressing issue in the face of COVID-19, “without the limitations of the traditional processes.”
“The impact of the pandemic has created unprecedented changes in our revenue resources and our spending needs,” Rendon said. “We must act in the face of limitations that surround us everywhere we look today.”
And talk freely they did. Each member was allowed four minutes to direct their concerns to Keely Bosler, director of the Department of Finance, and Gabe Petek with the Legislative Analyst’s Office.
The members lamented Gov. Gavin Newsom’s May Revise, which promises deep cuts to school funding and social services. They criticized his spending of $1.1 billion in emergency relief they authorized in March at the start of the crisis. And they largely spent their time not on questions for Bosler and Petek, but on monologues that reflected their campaign promises and policy priorities.
Assemblywoman Lorena Gonzalez, chair of the Latino Caucus and a San Diego Democrat, said she was disappointed that the budget excluded undocumented immigrants. Assemblyman Kevin Kiley, R-Rocklin, railed against the $21 million included to enforce Assembly Bill 5, the new law that requires companies to give employment benefits to more workers. Assemblyman Kevin McCarty, D-Sacramento, questioned how schools could open with such severe belt tightening.
The most direct rebuke of the administration came from Assemblyman Jim Wood, D-Santa Rosa, who for weeks has scolded the administration for a lack of fiscal transparency.
“It’s clear this administration does not understand prevention,” he said. “This is nuts. This budget eliminates a lot of programs, eliminates them. Going away. No pause. This is wrong.”
The lawmakers were still delivering speeches around 6 p.m., though by that time, as members trickled out one by one, the gallery reflected more a Committee of the Half.
REIMAGINING PUBLIC SAFETY IN A PANDEMIC
California’s long history of sweeping criminal justice system changes — from life in prison for third-strike offenders to reduced sentences for hundreds of crimes — is having another moment that could dramatically alter how the state locks people up.
In a seismic, almost overnight shift, California has jailed 21,700 fewer people — nearly one-third of its daily inmate population — in county lockups since the new coronavirus hit the state. Prisons are holding about 5,500 fewer inmates than they did in late March.
The state has reduced bail to $0 for low-level offenses and sheriffs have cleared space in their jails to allow for better physical distancing. At the same time, fewer people are being arrested — jails are seeing less than half the number of weekly bookings than before the pandemic.
The result has been a 32 percent drop in Sacramento County’s jail population. Orange County holds 45 percent fewer people. And some state’s smallest county jails are housing less than half as many people as they did before the pandemic.
For many criminal justice advocates, the pandemic has offered a rare chance to reimagine what public safety really means.
A lower inmate population means counties and the state could end up spending less on housing people and more toward in-custody health services or drug treatment. It could also ease over-crowding pressures in facilities and improve conditions for jail staff who work in them.
“I’m looking forward to seeing sheriffs and other public officials seize the opportunity to really paint on a new canvas. To say, ‘Can we think about things differently? ‘ ” said Aaron Fischer, an attorney with Disability Rights California, a nonprofit that in January settled a lawsuit with Sacramento County requiring improved conditions and access to healthcare in the local jails.
Sam Lewis, who has spent decades advocating for fewer people to be locked in California’s cells from the inside and out, said the global health emergency should be a wake-up call that could transform incarceration.
“Now that we have a pandemic and we have to do this, people are starting to say, ‘Well they don’t have to be in the county jail.’ Why weren’t we saying that before this?” said Lewis, who was released in prison in 2012 after serving 24 years and now heads the Anti-Recidivism Coalition.
“We have a system that’s punitive, that wants to put more black and brown people in jail and in cages, not because they need to be there but because we don’t have the courage to be able to say we have other societal issues that we’re refusing to address.”
Read the full story by The Sacramento Bee’s Jason Pohl here.
QUOTE OF THE DAY
“I am tired of finding out via Twitter about changes to quarantine rules issued by the Governor. The Governor’s office should be keeping legislators in the loop. Pick up the phone. Send an email.”
- Newly elected Sen. Melissa Melendez, R-Lake Elsinore, via Twitter.
Best of the Bee:
Sacramento and most other California counties can begin reopening hair salons and barbershops, Gov. Gavin Newsom announced Tuesday, via Sophia Bollag, Tony Bizjak and Dale Kasler.
The Republican Party is claiming in a lawsuit that Gov. Gavin Newsom’s decision to allow every registered California voter to vote by mail is a “recipe for disaster” that will trigger widespread fraud and abuse. But independent studies and experts have repeatedly found that voting by mail does not lead to much abuse at all, via David Lightman.
Ted Howze lost GOP leader’s 2020 endorsement. Does he have a chance in November?, via Kate Irby
This story was originally published May 27, 2020 at 4:55 AM.