Budget ready for signing + Crack down on hospital mergers + Capitol car rally

Good Monday morning to you, California. Feels good to be popping back into your inboxes for the day.

Last week was wild. Here’s what happened.

DEAL

We have a 2020-2021 budget, you guys.

Via Sophia Bollag

The Senate passed the main budget bill 29-11 Thursday night and the Assembly followed suit Friday afternoon, voting 57-16 in favor. Democrats voted for the bill while Republicans opposed it. Both chambers also passed a series of additional bills to enact the budget. Gov. Gavin Newsom is expected to sign quickly.

The details:

• The budget cuts some funding from state employee pay, public universities, state courts and other areas. The budget also delays billions of dollars in payments to K-12 schools and community colleges, while allowing them to postpone cuts to their programs.

• It also includes a $716 million fund Newsom can use for emergency pandemic spending. That’s much less than the nearly $3 billion the Democratic governor initially proposed, but is nonetheless a concession from lawmakers who previously said they would not let Newsom continue spending on COVID-19 response without their input.

• And despite the cuts in the deal reached this week, the state will still face a projected deficit of about $8.7 billion the following year, setting the stage for what could be an even more difficult budget problem in 2021.

Senate Budget Chair Holly Mitchell said the reserves let lawmakers “pass a viable, defensible budget.”

• “Our decade of strategic budgeting and saving (allows) us to help guide this state through this historic public health and economic pandemic,” the Los Angeles Democrat said Thursday just before senators passed the budget.

But then, of course, there’s this: Many of the cuts and payment delays could be reversed if the federal government sends California more aid money that state officials are requesting.

Via Matt Kristoffersen

A proposal backed by Attorney General Xavier Becerra that would hand more power to his office to approve any healthcare acquisitions or consolidations now heads to the Assembly after it squeaked out of the Senate on a 21-11 vote Friday.

Hospitals, private equity groups and hedge funds would first have to ask permission from the attorney general before they merge, which advocates for Senate Bill 977 said would dismantle anti-competitive and monopolistic business practices.

“With our communities battling the coronavirus pandemic, our healthcare system must operate at peak performance,” Becerra said in a press release following the bill’s passage. “That means all hands on deck. But we’ve learned the hard way that too often ‘consolidation’ really means higher prices and a reduction of services which the surrounding community relies on.”

A slew of California’s top health care providers and groups, including the California Medical Association, Sutter Health and Kaiser Permanente, oppose the measure.

The California Hospital Association said the bill would “strain access to the health care system by creating an extreme and burdensome process for transactions like mergers and affiliations” that hands “arbitrary and absolute discretion” to the attorney general.

“This bill creates a presumption that these transactions are anti-competitive,” the association included in an analysis of the bill, “placing the burden of proof on the purchaser without due process and effectively creating a “guilty until proven innocent” system.”

HONK HONK

A lot of people aren’t happy with the budget, including immigrant, LGBTQ, in-home supportive services and environmental advocates.

Today, for Commit to Equity’s “week of action,” representatives from the California Immigrant Policy Center, California LGBTQ Health & Human Services Network, SEIU Local 2015 and California League of Conservation Voters will hold a car rally around the Capitol in protest of the budget.

Their ask? “To demand that state lawmakers and the governor increase taxes on extreme wealth to solve California’s budget crisis and real systemic change,” according to a press release.

“As Californians struggle under the pressures of the COVID-19 pandemic, a recession, and long-standing racism and inequality,” the statement reads, “billionaires and corporations in California continue to make unprecedented financial gains, yet the budget just passed by the state Legislature asks nothing of them and relies on cuts to the state’s most vulnerable if no additional federal funding materializes.”

The rally is scheduled to begin at 10 a.m., with a presser to follow at 10:30.

Best of The Bee:

• No bars for these counties, by Sophia Bollag
• Three prison inmates who were moved from San Quentin to rural Lassen County earlier this month have tested positive for COVID-19 and likely sparked an outbreak that’s left county leaders fuming as case counts soar and reopening plans hang in jeopardy, local officials said, by Jason Pohl

• Kaiser Permanente is committing $100 million to expand economic opportunities, combat systemic and structural racism, and break the cycle of trauma for African Americans and people in other underrepresented communities, by Cathie Anderson