Critical pandemic bills await legislators

New state session requires fast action to confront toll

SACRAMENTO — California legislators who return to work Monday will quickly be asked to vote on a flurry of highprofile spending measures to confront the worsening toll of the coronavirus pandemic.

At the top of their agenda: find a way to reopen schools for millions of students who have been out of the classroom since

March, provide cash payments to lowincome families, distribute COVID19 vaccines more quickly, and extend an eviction moratorium.

Ostensibly, legislators and

Gov. Gavin Newsom agree on the broad strokes of the budget proposal he released

Friday, which includes a $ 5 billion “immediate action” plan he wants approved within weeks.

“Right now, we have one job: stopping COVID and helping those who have been affected,” said state Sen. Steve Glazer, DOrinda. “Everything else is just second.”

But beyond their shared goals, legislators are eager to reshape several of Newsom’s key proposals and assert more oversight over the governor’s pandemic response.

Among the most pressing issues for the Assembly and Senate:

Reopening schools: Newsom has proposed offering schools more money if they reopen for inperson learning by midFebruary. His Safe Schools for All proposal would give districts $ 450 to $ 750 for every elementary student, money that districts can use to implement safety measures.

The $ 2 billion plan is designed to give districts a financial incentive to bring back younger students and those who are vulnerable, including disabled and homeless children and foster youth.

But some Democratic legislators say tying funding to a specific deadline could give more money to wealthy communities and punish districts in urban areas that face more challenges in reopening.

“It seems unfair,” said Sen. Connie Leyva, a Democrat from Chino ( San Bernardino County) who chairs the Education Committee. “What about smaller or poorer school districts that can’t get up and running by then? We don’t want to penalize them.”

Leyva said legislators hope to refine Newsom’s plan by emphasizing inperson learning for vulnerable students first.

The governor released his proposal amid a growing demand from parents to reopen schools. Newsom wants the Legislature to approve his proposal “in the next few weeks,” citing what he sees as the negative effects of distance learning on young children’s education and emotional health.

“In this environment, we can’t wait,” Newsom said at a news conference Friday. “Those kids are falling through the cracks.”

Eviction moratorium: California’s

partial eviction moratorium protecting tenants facing hardship because of the pandemic expires at the end of January, raising concerns that thousands of renters could lose their housing.

Newsom says he wants to extend the law, but he hasn’t said for how long. “That’s part of the negotiations, that’s part of the give and take,” he said Friday.

Legislators also aren’t sure

how long they want to extend the moratorium. Competing bills introduced last month could extend the pause for two months or through the end of the year, as Assembly member David Chiu proposed.

The San Francisco Democrat said widespread evictions could increase deaths during the most dangerous phase of the pandemic. “We must keep people safe in their homes,” he tweeted.

Cash payments: Newsom is pushing lawmakers to swiftly approve onetime $ 600 direct payments to lowincome people, an effort designed in part to help keep families housed. The payments would cost $ 2.4 billion.

Checks would be sent to taxpayers who received the state’s earned income tax credit for the working poor, typically those who earn $ 30,000 or less. Newsom said payments could go out within weeks.

Assembly member Phil Ting, the San Francisco Democrat who chairs the budget committee, said there’s broad support for such payments.

“If we don’t do it now, we run the risk of having a greater catastrophe down the road,” Ting said. “A little bit of money today will help significantly tomorrow.”

Some legislators, however, also support larger or more frequent payments. Last summer, Democrats unsuccessfully called for the state to pay an

extra $ 600 a week in federal unemployment benefits that expired.

Assembly member Alex Lee, DSan Jose, said Friday that matching the “paltry” $ 600 onetime payments that Congress approved in last month’s stimulus package isn’t enough to protect people facing economic ruin.

Some progressive legislators, including Lee, called Thursday for the state to set aside an additional $ 5 billion to help tenants facing eviction for missing rent.

“It is so not enough with the dire straits we’re in, especially in California,” Lee said of $ 600 payments. “We need to be getting real, material aid in people’s hands, so they can pay back that debt.”

Newsom has also asked legislators to quickly approve a swath of aid for business owners, including $ 575 million for grants to help small businesses adapt operations to the pandemic and $ 71 million to waive fees for bars, restaurants, barbershops and other businesses forced to close or limit service.

Vaccine distribution: California has received about 2 million doses of the coronavirus vaccine, but it has been slow to administer those doses. Newsom proposes spending an estimated $ 372 million to improve distribution.

The governor has said the money will help the state build the vaccine management system for health providers, purchase transportation and storage supplies, and expand a public education campaign. His budget doesn’t give specifics of how much would be spent where.

Newsom didn’t include the vaccine funding in his immediate budget action plan, and legislators said they also hadn’t received details.

Sen. Richard Pan, a Sacramento Democrat who chairs the Health Committee, said that beyond improving the logistics of administering doses, the state must fund an extensive public education campaign to counter falsehoods from antivaccine activists.

He said misinformation about the risks of the vaccine is spreading rapidly on social media and threatens to undermine the vaccine’s effectiveness if enough people aren’t inoculated.

“The biggest challenge has been that the pandemic response has been politicized,” Pan said. People’s “Instagram and Facebook feed has been fused with lies and myths that we have to basically explain away.”