This being my first California-related column of the new year, let’s see if much has changed since 2020 mercifully came to an end.
Sadly, things seem little different in San Francisco—eight depressing words that shouldn’t come as a surprise.
Whipsawed by a pandemic, a fragile economy, and an unanswered question as to what the city’s post-COVID existence will resemble (does the gilded age of tech resume?), “pressing business” includes a school district renaming committee wanting to remove Abraham Lincoln’s name from one of San Francisco’s high schools.
The logic, per one of the committee members: “The history of Lincoln and Native Americans is complicated, not nearly as well-known as that of the Civil War and slavery. Lincoln, like the presidents before him and most after, did not show through policy or rhetoric that black lives ever mattered to them outside of human capital and as casualties of wealth building.”
Okaaay . . .
But it’s not just the “the Railsplitter” whom San Francisco’s PC mob wants to ride out of town on a rail. George Washington, Thomas Jefferson, and Theodore Roosevelt—yes, the other three faces on Mount Rushmore—made the hit list, as did those noted subversives Paul Revere and the naturalist John Muir (here’s a spreadsheet explaining the rationale for junking each of these deceased white males).
A more serious matter is what happens to the remainder of San Francisco’s school year. The county’s school district won’t reopen on January 25 as planned because it failed to find common ground with the local teachers’ union—an impasse that San Francisco mayor London Breed called “infuriating.”
Roughly 90 miles to the northeast, the approximate distance between San Francisco’s City Hall and California’s State Capitol, the question is whether Gov. Gavin Newsom likewise is seething over the slow progress pertaining to California school reopenings.
In Newsom’s case, that would be an improvement—for California’s beleaguered governor, “infuriating” being an upgrade over a 2020 that had the Golden State’s highest elected official vacillating between inconsistent, incompetent, and ineffective.
Newsom closed out his 2020 by unveiling a plan to reopen schools for in-person instruction by next month. That strategy includes a very big carrot dangled educators’ way—a one-time payment of $450 per student for those districts that forge ahead with reopening (such funding requires legislative approval, so look for more goodies to be added to the mix).
However, the governor’s approach lacks any kind of “stick” that would compel the same heel-dragging unions to speedily transition from the present virtual learning back to traditional in-classroom studies. Indeed, the California Teachers Union’s immediate reaction to Newsom’s proposal was to say that reopening should commence only when counties have seen their daily numbers of new cases at far lower levels. Newsom’s plan would take effect when counties’ daily new case rate falls below 28 per 100,000 residents—at present, that would rule out about three-fourths of California’s 58 counties and the state’s population centers (here’s a map).
Equally disturbing: the governor’s somewhat pollyannaish attitude. Asked if teachers might balk at returning to classrooms, Newsom told reporters: “The greatest incentive is the inspiration that spark that led someone to want to contribute in such a profound and dignified way by educating the minds of the next generation,” he said. “So I don’t know that that needs to be much more impetus than that.” Presumably, Newsom remembers when Los Angeles and Oakland teachers walked out on their students in the middle of the 2018–19 academic year.
We’ll know soon enough if the reopening plan will pan out. Meanwhile, here are three ways in which Newsom might want to approach the new season in Sacramento.
Find a New Foil. Two weeks from now, a Democrat will take the presidential oath and Donald Trump will once again become a private citizen. That presents something of a quandary for Newsom, being as he’s long relished his standing as the leader of California’s anti-Trump “resistance.”
If Newsom’s willing, why not take on a less predictable foil—and take a few swings at the education establishment?
This runs countercurrent to Sacramento’s political being, as Democratic lawmakers and teachers’ unions work in tandem. But what happens if, in a few weeks, Newsom’s plans for reopening schools are derailed by mass sickouts, “safety strikes” (the head of the American Federation of Teachers has indicated that her national organization will support local unions if they want to go down that road), or an exorbitant list of union demands (if the past is any indication, that might include Medicare for All, an insistence upon new wealth taxes, plus a federal bailout of California’s cash-strapped school districts).
Where this gets complicated: should a recall election materialize at some point in 2021 (we’ll know if that’s a go by mid-March), Newsom would benefit from union cash to fend off the challenge. By that logic, it’s not in his best interest to offend the education establishment. Then again, the last thing California’s teachers’ unions want is a Republican governor who parts ways on charter schools and curriculum matters. Would they really sit out a recall election knowing that could happen?
Stick with Minimalist Governing. Lack year, Newsom signed 372 new laws. The significance? That’s the fewest laws signed by a California governor since 1967 and Ronald Reagan’s first year in Sacramento.
The difference between then and now: Reagan was a conservative outsider clashing with an entrenched Democratic legislature. For Newsom, the pandemic was the disrupting factor—lawmakers couldn’t return to Sacramento throughout the summer and couldn’t pursue new laws with their usual vengeance.
Will 2021 be different? Assuming the legislature isn’t interrupted between now and March, look for anywhere from 2,200 bills (2020’s rough count) to 2,600-plus measures (2019’s rough total) to be introduced. Assuming there’s not a repeat of 2020 and public health concerns don’t bottleneck the legislative process, look for 1,000 or so bills to pass both legislative chambers and require the governor’s attention.
Newsom could take a page from his predecessor’s playbook and signal his intentions ahead of legislation possibly coming his way (Brown did this so as to sidestep single-payer health care). Or maybe California’s current governor enjoys spending his time weighing the merits of such weighty matters as banning the sale of pets in pet stores?
Start Following Through. If year two of the Newsom administration taught us anything, it would be this alarming pattern: big ideas followed by lousy follow-through.
It’s a problem that dates back years, actually—all the way back to 2003 and the beginning of Newsom’s stint as mayor of San Francisco and a failed promise to eradicate homelessness (the numbers show a mixed bag of results).
Per this California Healthline report:
Last April, Newsom told reporters he’d signed a deal to bring up to 200 million protective masks every month to California. Two months later, just 61 million masks had found their way to the Golden State—none of them the top-flight N95 masks that the governor had promised.
Newsom also announced a deal with the Motel 6 chain in which some 5,000 rooms at nearly four dozen sites would be made available to homeless Californians. How it panned out: 628 rooms in use at just six sites.
In the six months after Newsom had vowed to target businesses that ran afoul of public health orders, just 424 citations had been issued and only two business licenses suspended (New York, on the other hand, had issued nearly 1,900 fines and temporarily yanked nearly 280 business liquor licences in the second half of 2020).
California’s Board of Barbering and Cosmetology, which oversees about 54,000 salons and barbershops, has levied just all of two citations and suspended two licenses—both held by the same shop in Vacaville. Meanwhile, no citations have been issued for COVID-19-related public health violations by California’s 280 state parks, nor by the California Highway Patrol.
What this speaks to: a lot of lip service by a governor who’s good in front of a camera, but the risk of an increasingly jaded population as the results don’t match the rhetoric.
Perhaps that’s one way in which 2021 differs in California: look past what the governor has to say in his State of the State Address (last year, the pre-pandemic speech focus was homelessness) and wait to see what nature and mankind deliver in the first three months of the year—a smooth vaccination rollout, locals and visitors flouting stay-at-home rules and other restrictions, plus the odds of a mutated virus wreaking further havoc.
Happy thoughts those aren’t, for a besieged California hoping for a happier new year.
