|
I've been digging into the platforms of the candidates for California Governor over the last few weeks. I was trying to understand both their ideas and how they propose to actually implement them. The implementation piece varies wildly across the field. It's the last month of California's primary. Eight candidates on the CBS debate stage in Claremont last week. Trump has endorsed Steve Hilton. Tom Steyer has poured over $130 million of his own money into his campaign. We in California have already received the ballots in our mailboxes. And almost every candidate, in every forum, keeps talking about on the same word: affordability. A few months ago, the SF Examiner asked Tom Steyer a direct question: is climate still a winning issue in 2026? His answer was no. He has reframed his climate pitch around cutting electricity rates 25% and lowering home insurance bills. Affordability is the New ClimateAcross the field running for California governor, climate is being rebranded as affordability. It’s not forgotten. It’s rebranded. Xavier Becerra's campaign talks about clean energy as something that should lower household bills. CalMatters has reported he's open to dialing back California's climate goals if that's what it takes to keep fuel affordable for the middle class. Antonio Villaraigosa wants a top-to-bottom regulatory review of cap-and-trade, the Low-Carbon Fuel Standard, and oil and gas rules. His plan calls the current setup "opaque, unpredictable, and punitive." Steve Hilton wants to suspend environmental regulations to bring down gas prices. Even Katie Porter, who seems to be the candidate most openly defending California's climate framework, talks about energy through utility bills, insurance rates, and cost. Across the spectrum, the message is the same: climate policy has to deliver lower costs first. The money is still there. Cap-and-trade revenue and climate bonds are still feeding the state. What's changing is the story. Programs that used to be sold as climate action will now have to be sold as cost relief. That's a different sentence to write in a grant application. But that's the language. The harder question is whether the language comes with an implementation strategy. But, do the candidates have any plans for implementation? Is it is just a new framing? A campaign slogan is not a policy. A target is not an implementation strategy. Newsom promised 3+ million homes in 2018, maybe a quarter delivered. It’s not a critic of Newsom. I actually appreciate his push on housing. But, implementation is hard. The gap between the goal and the how is where good intentions die. Policy makers and planners have done a great job in ideation and dreaming. But, not a great job in delivering.
So when you read each campaign, the questions are: What's the mechanism. Who has the authority. Where's the money. Who pays.
Those four questions are really three. Clarity: Has the candidate named the mechanism, or just the goal? Trust and power: Do they understand where the authority actually sits? Tradeoffs and courage: Have they told you who pays?
A few candidates have actually answered. Tom Steyer have proposed a mechanism in the Democratic field. His housing plan proposes a ballot measure to raise property taxes on commercial sites, what's called a split roll, to generate around $20 billion a year. He's said he'd consider a special election in his first year to put it on the ballot. On utilities, he's named the levers like appointing CPUC commissioners willing to push down the guaranteed rate of return, enforce grid interconnection deadlines, fund distributed energy. Whether his target of one million homes in four years is realistic is a separate question. But on mechanism, Steyer has proposed a few ideas. Matt Mahan proposed a concrete fiscal lever in the field. His plan is about reinstating California's redevelopment agencies the RDAs that Jerry Brown dissolved in 2012 to plug a budget hole. Bringing them back would let cities keep more of their property tax revenue to fund housing infrastructure and fee cuts. When I was at Governor Newsome’s office, we tried to bring them back too. So, personally I am happy to see this. It's also a real tradeoff: redevelopment was killed because it was siphoning property tax from schools, counties, and special districts. Based on my review, Mahan has not put a production number on the plan. He's told Politico those promises are empty. That's an unusual position for a candidate — refusing to give reporters the headline they want! Steve Hilton has a ballot initiative on file from 2023. It would ban CEQA private right of action and cap impact fees on homebuilders. You can disagree with the policy. You can argue, as the SF Chronicle has, that it's a developer giveaway. But the mechanism is here, the legal text exists, and the path is clear. Katie Porter's 20% cost-reduction target is based on a 2025 RAND study, and the study's lead author told Politico her target is achievable. The catch is that the levers identified by the study sit mostly with local governments, not the state. And, we all know that state has limited power over local jurisdictions in California. Then there are candidates running on goals that could benefit from more concrete mechanisms. Xavier Becerra's headline number is 40,000 "shovel ready" affordable units in his first 100 days. The figure comes from a 2026 Enterprise Community Partners report on California's stalled pipeline. Fully financing those units would require about $4.1 billion in new state grants, loans, and tax credits the Newsom administration does not see to plan to spend. Becerra's campaign told Politico he'll find the funding. His formal housing platform was scheduled to release this week, less than a month before the primary, after ballots had already gone out. And, I am curious to read it when out. Antonio Villaraigosa's plan calls for a comprehensive regulatory review of cap-and-trade, the Low-Carbon Fuel Standard, and oil and gas rules. Plus a regulatory coordination office. I am all for such reviews. But, neither of those is still a mechanism. They're processes that might produce mechanisms eventually.
|
