North Coast’s Democratic lawmakers eye supermajority and pusback against Trump

Dec. 10--California's Democratic lawmakers, who will have virtually unchecked policymaking power next year, will use it to resist moves by the Trump administration to reverse the state's policy on issues like health care and environmental protection, while pressing for major expenditures on road maintenance funded by new taxes and fees.

Last month's election put 27 Democrats in the 40-member state Senate and 55 in the 80-member Assembly, numbers that add up to a unilateral two-thirds majority for the party -- known as a supermajority -- in both chambers.

Without the need for a single Republican vote nor fear of a gubernatorial veto, the Democrats can raise taxes, change political ethics laws, place constitutional amendments on the ballot and override a veto, should it come from Democratic Gov. Jerry Brown, who exercises that power sparingly.

Democrats in Sacramento -- along with many of the nearly 8.8 million Californians who voted for Hillary Clinton -- are bracing for dramatic changes in policy from President-elect Donald Trump, who is stocking his cabinet with nominees at odds with current policies on issues like global warming, immigration, health insurance and oil-drilling bans off the coast.

With their supermajority, the state's lawmakers say they can push back.

"Democrats will stand in solidarity against Trump initiatives that strike at the heart of everything Californians hold precious," said Assemblyman Marc Levine, D-San Rafael, whose district extends into Santa Rosa.

Levine, who said he was "horrified by Trump's election," said that any effort by the Trump administration to erase rights enjoyed by Californians would prompt an "equal and opposite reaction" by the Legislature.

Lawmakers can "immediately react" to steps by the Republican administration, such as opening state lands and water to energy development, with emergency countermeasures they can pass with a supermajority, state Sen. Mike McGuire, D-Healdsburg said.

"We are going to fight any recommendations from the Trump administration that will harm California and the progress we have made over the past decade," he said.

The fight started Monday at the Assembly and Senate swearing-in ceremonies, normally times for handshakes and photos. Both chambers passed non-binding resolutions asking federal officials to not seek the mass deportation of immigrants and continue to issue work permits to young people in the country illegally who were brought here as children.

The Assembly vote was 57-14, with two Republicans -- including Catharine Baker of San Ramon, the Bay Area's lone Republican legislator -- joining the Democratic bloc. In the Senate, all 27 Democrats prevailed against three Republican nays and 10 abstentions.

Assemblyman Travis Allen, a Republican from Huntington Beach, wrote on Breitbart.com that Democrats had "set aside reason and embraced hysteria" by adopting a "belligerent proclamation that seemingly supports California's immigrant population but in reality stokes immigrant anxieties for Democratic political gain."

Also on Monday, San Diego Democratic Sen. Ben Hueso introduced a bill that would fund legal representation for noncitizens facing deportation, and Assemblyman Rob Bonta, D-Oakland, introduced a measure that would train public defenders on immigration law.

McGuire and Assemblyman Jim Wood, D-Healdsburg, share a concern for the fate of the Affordable Care Act, President Barack Obama's signature legislative achievement that Republicans are intent on unraveling.

"A repeal without some sort of alternative, in my opinion, would cause health care chaos," said Wood, a dentist who chairs the Assembly Health Committee.

Congressional Republicans are coalescing around a plan to begin repealing Obamacare next month, while deferring the effective date, possibly for several years, allowing time to craft a replacement.

McGuire noted that 3.8 million low-income Californians have health insurance through the act's expansion of Medi-Cal and the state depends on billions of federal dollars to help cover the cost.

If Congress slashed the funding, California would face a dilemma, the lawmakers said.

"That discussion is happening today," McGuire said, with one option being litigation to tie up the cutback in the courts.

"Anything and everything is on the table," Wood said. The idea of California establishing its own health care single-payer system hasn't yet been discussed, he said.

"The problem with single-payer is we don't have the funding to support it," Wood said.

Republicans could also curtail funding for safety net programs like CalFresh, which provides food assistance to more than 4 million low-income Californians with federal funding covering 88 percent of the cost, McGuire said.

The state's alternatives would be legal action and backfilling part of the lost funding, he said.

McGuire, whose district runs from Marin County to the Oregon border, said his top priority is passing a comprehensive transportation bill, SB 1, which was also introduced Monday.

The measure is needed to address a $59 billion shortfall to maintain state highways over the next decade, along with a $78 billion shortfall for local road maintenance. Under SB 1, Sonoma County would receive $15 to $18 million a year, while Santa Rosa would get $5 to $6 million, McGuire said.

The supermajority comes into play because the bill includes a 12-cent-per-gallon gasoline tax increase, phased over three years, as well as a $38 increase in annual vehicle registration fees and a new $100 annual registration fee for zero-emission vehicles.

Democrats dropped the transportation bill this year, knowing they did not have the necessary two-thirds vote for a tax increase, McGuire said. A proposed constitutional amendment to prohibit raids on transportation dollars would also need supermajority support, he said.

Levine hopes to capitalize on the supermajority by trying again for passage of the California Disclose Act, which requires greater transparency in political advertisements by ballot measure committees and those supporting or opposing candidates. The bill would require the true names of the top three funders of any committee to be prominently displayed on all advertising.

The 2016 version of the bill sailed through the Assembly on a bipartisan vote of 60-15 but fell one vote short in the Senate on a 26-11, one shy of the necessary two-thirds for an ethics measure.

With a supermajority in hand, "there's a pathway to victory on this bill," he said.

Wood said he is convinced that California will continue to pursue strong policies to combat climate change safeguard immigrant and abortion rights and same-sex marriage regardless of what comes out of Washington.

"I don't think it's a question of could (we do it). I think California will," he said.

The supermajority puts California Democrats on a "national stage" as a counterweight to the Trump administration, said David McCuan, a Sonoma State University political scientist.

Stacked with leaders like Brown, Lt. Gov. Gavin Newsom, newly elected Sen. Kamala Harris and House minority leader Nancy Pelosi, California can be "the center of a parallel political universe" aligned against Trump and the Republican Congress nearly 3,000 miles away, McCuan said.

But the supermajority is not a 24/7 convenience to be tapped at will by Sacramento Democrats, he said. The party caucus includes a growing number of moderates, also known as "business Democrats," who don't share all the values of their liberal colleagues, McCuan said.

They will unite on "hard votes" over taxing and spending, but not necessarily on other matters, he said.

And there may be tension between the lawmakers, who favor spending on social welfare and education, versus Brown, who is still pursuing the $15 billion pair of water tunnels beneath the Sacramento-San Joaquin Delta and the $64 billion high-speed train from San Francisco to Los Angeles.

Meanwhile, the two-house supermajority -- established for only the second time since the 1930s, with the last one in 2012 -- continues to foster the marginalization of Republicans in a state that gave Clinton nearly twice as many votes as Trump.

In the 1930s, Republicans held a supermajority; Democrats last had it in the 1880s. Their 2012 supermajority was cut short in early 2014, when two Democratic senators went on leave to fight criminal indictments.

"If the Democrats are unified, Republicans are irrelevant," said Jack Pitney, a Claremont McKenna College political scientist and former Republican Party policy analyst.

California government is now "produced, directed and starring the Democratic Party," he said.

Republicans are not only shut out of most legislating, but also face greater difficulty raising money because big donors want access to officeholders and Republicans "aren't terribly valuable," Pitney said.

You can reach Staff Writer Guy Kovner at 707-521-5457 or [email protected]. On Twitter @guykovner.

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