California lawmakers met in a special session this week — no surprise with wildfires raging around Los Angeles. What is surprising is that, while fire-relief was tacked-on to the session’s agenda, the original purpose was to authorize legal resources for a courtroom war with the incoming administration of President Donald Trump. The odd priorities of California’s politicians are now on display alongside their failures. People suffering the destruction of lives, homes, and businesses are victims of the fires, but California’s promise of an alternative governing model to Trump’s populism is also going up in smoke.
“Governor Gavin Newsom today issued a proclamation convening a special session of the California Legislature to safeguard California values and fundamental rights in the face of an incoming Trump administration,” the governor’s office announced Nov. 7 after election results were clear.
State Democratic lawmakers hammered out a deal to allocate $50 million to “Trump-proof” the state. Consideration of the matter was interrupted, though, by the need to address the wildfires around Los Angeles. As I write, the session has been postponed as legislators dicker over whether to vote on a unified bill combining anti-Trump and relief funding, or to allow separate votes on two bills.
That California officials’ effort to position the Democratic one-party state as a bastion against Trump’s GOP has degenerated into a messy effort to address a local crisis is typical of the state’s fraying status. During Trump’s first term, Newsom led a coalition of like-minded governors in setting pandemic policy independent of the federal government, and later he engaged Florida Governor Ron DeSantis in a heated public debate over the relative merits of Democratic and Republican governance.
Jokes flew over whether Newsom aspired to be president of the United States or of a new country of his and his allies’ creation.
Now, California voters are drifting rightward in frustration over the results of progressive policies. The Los Angeles wildfires bring to the forefront questions about state officials’ priorities and competence.
Last week, Alex Seitz-Wald of NBC News noted that “California was getting ready to fight President-elect Donald Trump. Instead, it’s fighting raging wildfires and a crisis that risks tarnishing the state’s image.”
Los Angeles Mayor Karen Bass, a former Democratic member of Congress, refused to answer questions when cornered by a reporter upon her return to the United States to address the fires. The trip itself was an issue since she departed for Ghana after receiving warnings from the National Weather Service about “extreme fire weather conditions” threatening her constituents. So was the readiness of her city for a fire event that had not only been predicted, but is a regular occurrence in the area.
The Los Angeles Times reported that “a large reservoir in Pacific Palisades that is part of the Los Angeles water supply system was out of commission when a ferocious wildfire destroyed thousands of homes and other structures nearby.” Capable of storing 117 million gallons, the facility was empty for a year awaiting repairs to its cover.
That’s a serious concern when firefighters complain that hydrants run dry as they fight fires. Yes, the fires are big, and the water system is being asked to do a lot, but that’s not unprecedented in a region prone to burning on a regular basis. An extra hundred million gallons of water might have helped.
Los Angeles Fire Chief Kristin Crowley added to the fury with open criticism of the city for cutting her department’s budget. Just last month, she warned that the cuts “severely limited the Department’s capacity to prepare for, train for, and respond to large-scale emergencies, including wildfires, earthquakes, hazardous material incidents, and large public events.”
Governor Newsom, for his part, has been called out for bungled efforts to maintain the state’s notoriously fire-prone forests.
“As California becomes more susceptible to extreme drought, it has become increasingly clear that mismanagement of the natural environment contributes to the current crisis,” Shawn Regan of the Montana-based Property and Environment Research Center wrote in 2023. He criticized state and federal policies that caused water shortages as well as environmental rules that delay forest restoration projects which could prevent or mitigate wildfires.
In 2021, Newsom was caught lying about the amount of land treated with fuel breaks and prescribed burns. He claimed the state had worked on 90,000 acres when the actual number from official figures was 11,399. Either figure would have been wildly inadequate, but the state wasn’t even trying. During that time, California’s government cut the budget for such projects.
Now, Newson promises to get to the bottom of what went wrong in and around Los Angeles. You can bet his own name won’t come up during the investigation.
What adds insult to injury for Californians contemplating lost lives and burned neighborhoods is that this level of incompetence doesn’t come cheaply. The Tax Foundation ranks the state among the top five where residents are the most heavily taxed in the U.S.
California’s crises — of fire and of lousy leadership — have been a long time coming. In recent years, voters worried about high crime turned out progressive district attorneys who deemphasized arrests and prosecutions. Taxes are high, but so are housing prices courtesy of restrictive rules, and gas prices largely because of environmental regulations. Once a magnet for settlers, the state is now losing population.
“California is hemorrhaging residents to neighboring states like Texas, Arizona, and Nevada,” according to Stanford University’s Institute for Economic Policy Research. Cost of living, concerns about crime, and politics were all cited by Stanford researchers as motivating emigrants. Fear of mismanaged fire danger and worries about government incompetence may join the list.
California’s politicians started this year with high hopes of securing their status as counterweights to the Republican-led government in Washington, D.C. With plenty to worry about in the policies and inclinations of the populist GOP, that could have been a vital role allowing for comparison of competing ideas. Instead, the state’s feckless political leaders seem to be establishing themselves as examples of how to not govern a state.
National Post