Newsom Prop. 1 homelessness projects delayed

I’m CalMatters reporter Ryan Sabalow, and I’m pinch hitting for Lynn today.

As Gov. Gavin Newsom courts national voters for his anticipated presidential campaign, he’s sure to face criticism on two fronts. One is California’s largest-in-the-nation homeless population. The other is California’s inability to complete ambitious, multi-billion-dollar projects, even after voters give the go-ahead.

The poster child for California’s bureaucratic morass is the voter-approved and hugely-expensive High Speed Rail project that stalled under Newsom’s watch. Another is the state’s inability to build large new reservoirs 12 years after voters approved an expensive water bond under the promise additional water storage would help drought-proof the state.

Now, Newsom is forced to confront a promise he made about the $6.4 billion Proposition 1 bond voters passed in 2024 in the hopes of quickly getting homeless people off the streets and into mental-health treatment.

CalMatters reporter Marisa Kendall reports that none of the Prop. 1 mental-health projects Newsom promised would be done in 2025 got completed on time. 

Read more here about why the projects hit delays or were canceled outright and what Newsom has to say about the delay.

Lawmakers called the head of the Department of Motor Vehicles to testify about the troubling findings in CalMatters’ License to Kill series. Investigative reporters Robert Lewis and Lauren Hepler have reported that, again and again, the California DMV keeps giving licenses to dangerous drivers even after they’ve killed. 

Legislators this session have so far introduced a dozen road safety bills aimed at addressing the issues and cracking down on dangerous driving.

DMV Director Steve Gordon had few answers this week to lawmakers’ toughest questions. Read more here.

Some California lawmakers have been trying to ban paper receipts printed out at grocery and drug stores for the better part of a decade. In 2019, San Francisco’s former Democratic Assemblymember Phil Ting famously had one of his staffers dress up as a receipt as he tried to gin up support for his bill. That measure died – as did Ting’s subsequent efforts.

California lawmakers are trying again. This time, the focus is on the chemicals in the receipts.  

San Francisco’s Democratic Assemblymember Catherine Stefani’s measure seeks to prohibit cancer-causing bisphenols in receipts. Her bill passed the Environmental Safety and Toxic Materials Committee on Tuesday. 

“It is a long-held San Francisco tradition, and I hope you have more success than your predecessor,” Stefani’s Democratic colleague, Rebecca Bauer-Kahan, said at the hearing. “And I think not dressing your staff up as a receipt is a great first step.”

Watch the nine-minute hearing on Digital Democracy. Read the Sacramento Bee’s story on the bill here.

A new report offers some steps California and its neighbors in Mexico should take to clean up the pollution in the Tijuana River in San Diego. The river has sickened surfers, swimmers and Navy SEALS for decades. Read about the report’s findings here.