How California’s most pressing problems fell victim to Legislature’s infighting

When the state Senate leader’s priority housing bill died as the clock struck midnight on the Legislature’s annual session, it shone a spotlight on infighting that contributed to the stunning collapse this year of an agenda to tackle California’s most pressing problems.

In a bleary-eyed Zoom news conference two hours later, Senate President Pro Tem Toni Atkins criticized the “absolute needless delay of housing production bills,” including her own SB1120, which aimed to address the state’s housing shortage by making it easier to split lots and convert homes into duplexes.

The measure — which passed the Assembly three minutes before the legislative deadline Monday night, leaving no time for final approval in the Senate — would have paved the way to build out neighborhoods that are now limited to single-family housing.

“That was impossible,” the San Diego Democrat said. “To lose a common-sense bill like SB1120 in the middle of a crisis because of running out the clock, that’s a little bit harder to understand.”

After a night in which major proposals on housing, policing procedures and other top issues simply stalled for lack of time, fingers pointed to a legislative session shortened by the coronavirus pandemic and a quarantine that forced most Senate Republicans to vote remotely in the final week, a ponderous exercise that slowed the chamber down.

But the failures were exacerbated by a longstanding friction between the two houses, which ratcheted up to new levels this year. Some lawmakers said the distrust was the worst they could remember. A fresh group of legislators will take office in December to sift through the fallout, but the leaders of the Senate and Assembly likely will still be there.

“There was more dysfunction in this last week than I’ve seen in a long time,” said Sen. Nancy Skinner, D-Berkeley, who lost two bills in the chaos. A measure enhancing the density bonus for housing projects never came up for final approval as frustrated Republican senators filibustered the session’s waning hours, while another opening police records didn’t make it back to the Senate at all after passing the Assembly too late. Read more >>>