@Professor Emeritus
Any thoughts on this?
I'm still sifting through the misinformation and figuring out what happened. It seems like Black members of the California legislature pulled the bills themselves because it looked like Newsom was likely going to veto, either because it's an election year or due to his own future presidential aspirations. Possibly also because he's just an a$$hole.
This obviously doesn't do anything to help the fact that I don't have a lot of positive feelings about Newsom (even though some people were gassing him earlier in the year) and would prefer he doesn't run for the Democratic nomination in 2028 or beyond. There could be worse but I don't trust him on much.
It seems like this doesn't impact the $12 million (tiny sum) that was already approved for reparations in the previous budget he signed, or the other pro-reparations bills signed by the legislature this past week, but it's still a negative for Newsom. It seems like the reparations proponents will continue to keep working on the legislation and are waiting until they can get the governor to sign (or a different one who will).
These are the pro-reparations measures that did pass, though. As the text says, how the first one will be implemented is now unknown due to the fact that there's no Reparations agency.
California lawmakers have approved a set of first-in-the-nation bills aimed at atoning for the state's legacy of discriminatory policies that have harmed Black Californians.
apnews.com
Returning seized property
The state Senate overwhelmingly approved the bill on the return of land or compensation to families whose property was taken unfairly through racially discriminatory means using eminent domain.
The topic garnered renewed attention in California when Los Angeles-area officials
returned a beachfront property in 2022 to a Black couple decades after it was seized from their ancestors.
The Newsom administration’s Department of Finance opposes the bill. The agency says the cost to implement it is unknown but could “range from hundreds of thousands of dollars to low millions of dollars annually, depending on the workload required to accept, review, and investigate applications.”
It’s not immediately clear how the initiative would be enacted even if Newsom signs it into law, after lawmakers dropped the measure to create an agency to implement it. That proposal would have formed a genealogy office to help Black Californians research their family lineage and verify their eligibility for any reparations that become law.
Formal apology
California would accept responsibility and formally apologize for its role in perpetuating segregation, economic disparities and discrimination against Black Americans under another bill the Legislature approved.
The legislation requires the secretary of state to send a final copy of the apology to the state archives, where it could be viewed by the public.
The apology would say that the state “affirms its role in protecting the descendants of enslaved people and all Black Californians as well as their civil, political, and sociocultural rights.”
Addressing Disparities in Career Education
Newsom signed a law last month requiring school districts that receive state funding for a career education program to collect data on the performance of participating students by race and gender. The legislation, part of a
reparations package backed by the California Legislative Black Caucus, aims to help address gaps in student outcomes.