Newsom adds monkeypox to list of emergencies + Capitol commenter shenanigans

Good morning and welcome to the A.M. Alert!

NEWSOM DECLARES MONKEYPOX EMERGENCY

Gov. Gavin Newsom on Monday declared a state of emergency over the monkeypox outbreak, adding to the list he’s already overseeing.

Newsom has kept the state’s COVID-19 emergency in place for more than two years, and he recently declared two more to address the Oak Fire in Mariposa County and the McKinney Fire in Siskiyou County.

Emergency declarations give officials more flexibility to respond to complex and fluid situations, allowing them to cut through some bureaucratic red tape and provide resources more quickly.

But they also provide leaders with more unilateral power than they ordinarily have, which tends to tick off the opposing party.

California Republicans have long urged legislative leaders to end the COVID state of emergency, saying it gives him too much control over the state.

Senate President Pro Tem Toni Atkins, D-San Diego, allowed a committee hearing in March to debate ending the emergency. But the measure, authored by Sen. Melissa Melendez, R-Lake Elsinore, was not successful.

It’s unclear whether pressure to end the COVID emergency delayed Newsom’s decision to declare one in response to the monkeypox outbreak.

But legislators pushing the governor to take monkeypox seriously cheered his announcement on Monday.

“This declaration will help expand vaccination, testing, and other critical strategies around the outbreak,” said Sen. Scott Wiener, D-San Francisco, in a statement. “I look forward to working with the Governor and his Administration to combat this dangerous health situation.”

LEGISLATURE COMES BACK WITH A BANG

The Legislature returned from a month-long recess on Monday to a huge agenda — more than 200 bills to consider. And some commenters calling into the Senate Appropriations Committee had a lot of pent-up frustration to unleash.

Senate Appropriations Committee Chair Anthony Portantino, D-Burbank, had to ask the moderator monitoring the phone lines multiple times to cut off callers yelling at legislators about topics that had nothing to do with the bills being discussed.

“I oppose this bill,” one caller said. “I oppose this sham of a process. We’re sick of your tyranny.”

“We will not be silenced!” another caller yelled.

It was challenging to decipher whether one or multiple voices were making the calls. At one point, the moderator said the person kept calling in using different phone lines.

“This is my final polite request to ask you to confine your testimony to the bill which is agendized at that time,” Portantino said before instructing the moderator to start ignoring one caller.

“And if not, we’re going to have to skip over you going forward, because that is the tool provided for the public process, not (to) have you just go off on tangents, criticizing everything under the sun. So I apologize for that, but I don’t want you to infringe on other people’s rights.”

QUOTE OF THE DAY

“For the record, I didn’t ask for these laws.”

- Senate Appropriations Committee Chair Anthony Portantino, D-Burbank, in response to a commenter who complained, “we’re not asking for these laws.”

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