Blind Squirrels in Sacramento

An old saying holds that even a blind squirrel finds an acorn occasionally. We see that adage playing out in Sacramento, a town overrun by the blind squirrels who currently sit atop our state government.

In short, and much to the surprise of people around California with common sense, the governor and legislature have done a few good things recently.

Exhibit One is the effort to reform CEQA which recently passed the legislature at the urging of the governor. CEQA is the decades old California Environmental Quality Act, originally enacted by Governor Ronald Reagan and then warped beyond recognition by leftist environmental activists. A good idea gone wrong — everyone wants clean water and breathable air — the environmental community for two generations used CEQA as a bludgeon to stop not just irresponsible development, but virtually all significant development in the once Golden State. So bad have become the abuses of CEQA that even former Governor Jerry Brown, during my years in the legislature, sought but failed to accomplish CEQA reform.

We have it now under this governor and legislature. Even a blind squirrel …

CEQA had morphed in the years since Gov. Reagan into a regulatory and judicial quagmire that made development around the state extraordinarily expensive and time consuming. Good projects to provide housing, infrastructure, roads, parks — incredibly, even the much needed and desired Orange County Veterans Cemetery — slowed to a crawl under the burdens of CEQA. Any activist with the few dollars needed to file a lawsuit could delay virtually any project or extract ruinous costs and concessions from project proponents.

The obvious result of CEQA abuse is the current housing crisis we face and the much-deserved reputation of California as a regulatory nightmare. Our quality of life suffered, rather than being enhanced, under so-called environmental “protections”.

The problem became so bad that even Sacramento could no longer ignore it and had to stand up against the activists. Gov. Newsom, perhaps the blindest of squirrels, insisted on CEQA reform as a condition of signing the state’s most recent budget.

Reality may be starting to sink in.

Time will tell if these CEQA reforms sufficiently curb the abuses California endured. Notably, the reforms are limited only to certain favored types of development. But it is a start not even Jerry Brown could achieve. It is a start for the blind squirrels. Good on them, finally.

Exhibit Two is a bill authored by hard left Bay Area (but I repeat myself) Assemblyman Matt Haney (D-San Francisco). His bill, Assembly Bill 564 which passed the Assembly and awaits debate in the state Senate, would adjust the state’s Cannabis Tax Law and prevent implementation of an excise tax increase on purchasers of cannabis or cannabis products sold in California.

Make no mistake, I am not a supporter of cannabis products or cannabis legislation. As Mayor of Irvine, I opposed efforts by the industry and its lobbyist — who currently awaits federal sentencing and admitted to trying to bribe at least one of my council colleagues — to get a foothold in the City of Irvine. But the logic of Haney’s AB 564 shows another blind squirrel finding an acorn.

Haney objects to the excise tax increase because, he says, it will price legal distributors out of the market and drive cannabis buyers to the black market.

Hello. Reality finally intrudes on Assembly Member Haney and his colleagues.

Tax policy matters. The market responds to bad, and to good, tax policy. Bad policies, and the bad markets they engender, drive people away — away from their preferred products and producers, away from the legitimate market, ultimately, away from California.

Haney’s solution is to carve out a tax break for his preferred industry. But the logic of his bill makes the point unmistakably clear: The rest of the state’s business also need and deserve help as they continue to be taxed to death under Sacramento’s untenable, financially illiterate leadership. Tax policies matter everywhere, not just in the cannabis industry.

Sadly, of course, not all of Sacramento’s blind squirrels are yet willing to use common sense to find an acorn or two. Let’s not kid ourselves that our problems with Sacramento misrule are now behind us.

For example, our Secretary of State Shirley Weber, who served with me in the legislature, and I can testify as to her being one of the hardest of hardcore leftists, recently used the bully pulpit of her office to push the failed “defund the police” narrative. Law enforcement is beyond the Secretary of State’s responsibilities. Yet she has recently advocated for police “reform,” including the elimination of police dogs — making the job of law enforcement much more dangerous for human beings.

Separately, the secretary also hosted a fundraiser for a candidate whose only qualification for office is being a lawyer who sues police departments. Defund the police is still alive and well in certain pockets of state government.

So, the news out of Sacramento is not all good. It never is. But at least some of the squirrels recently found a few nuts.