As Gavin Newsom’s reign nears end, his ability to sway legislators has also waned

During his nearly eight years as California governor, Gavin Newsom has had a somewhat unusual approach to dealing with a Legislature dominated by his fellow Democrats.

Rather than coax them into enacting his agenda, he has often kept them in the dark about that agenda, sprung it on them as deadlines approached and then strong-armed them into acting with minimal input from the public.

The June 15 constitutional deadline for passing a budget has been one pivotal point for Newsom’s tactic. He would demand that the Legislature include his agenda measures in the budget package as “trailer bills,” even though they had little or nothing to do with the budget’s financial plans.

Misusing trailer bills has become one of the Capitol’s more unseemly practices. In 2010, voters passed Proposition 25, a measure sponsored by Democratic politicians and their labor union allies that reduced the legislative vote requirement for the state budget from two-thirds to a simple majority.

Voters were told that it would end lengthy stalemates on the budget, but its true purpose was to eliminate the ability of Republicans to demand changes in the budget or other legislation in return for their budget votes.

Prop. 25 also applied to budget trailer bills, which supposedly implement the budget’s provisions. They, like the budget, could be passed with simple majority votes, take effect immediately upon being signed and therefore were immune to being challenged via referendum.

That made trailer bills ripe for enacting sweeping changes in state policy with minimal public exposure simply by declaring them to be connected to the budget, often with token appropriations.

The practice became so onerous that a subsequent ballot measure, passed over the objection of Democrats in 2016, requires bills to be in print for 72 hours before enactment.

Democratic legislators have occasionally complained, mostly in private but sometimes in public, about Newsom’s practice of dropping major policy changes on them and demanding immediate action. But they had to tolerate it because governors have many tools to get their way, such as signatures on their pet bills.

No more.

Newsom has just four months remaining in his governorship and has been slowly losing his ability to push legislators in directions they might not want to go. Two setbacks in the closing hours of the biennial session make the point.

The first and most important was the refusal of legislators to reconfigure financial liability for wildfires, making it more difficult to victims to get compensation from electric utilities when their power lines cause fires.

Newsom apparently was seeking to shore up the utilities’ financial health, but the proposal was never aired for the public to see. It existed behind closed doors, as a topic for negotiations, but drew heated opposition from wildfire victims, their attorneys and insurers, the latter because it would have limited their ability to offset payments to victims with reimbursement from utilities.

Legislators balked and Newsom had to back down, agreeing to a much milder measure, Senate Bill 492. It contains some sanctions on utilities and a “fast pay” program to speed up payments to wildfire victims while preserving their right to sue utilities.

Newsom was also attempting to help one of his major campaign contributors bypass California Coastal Commission review of a real estate project in Santa Monica. The behind-the-scenes effort was revealed last week by CalMatters. It identified the developer as Jeff Worthe who, along with his wife, has donated more than $274,000 to Newsom’s campaigns and inaugural fund.

The CalMatters revelation generated a wave of opposition in the Legislature and Newsom backed off. As a semi-lameduck governor, he just doesn’t have the clout he once wielded so aggressively.