Newsom criticized:
At an Assembly hearing to review additional funding, lawmakers expressed frustration that the governor has largely sidelined the Legislature during the pandemic.
SACRAMENTO — Gov. Gavin Newsom is facing growing resistance from the Legislature to his strategy for emergency spending on the coronavirus pandemic, just as he is seeking billions of dollars more to shore up the state’s response.
At an Assembly hearing Friday to review $4.4 billion in additional funding requests from the Newsom administration, lawmakers from both parties expressed frustration that the governor has largely sidelined the Legislature during the pandemic.
“The way legislative notification has gone in the past is, ‘Everything’s done. We’re going to be announcing this and we’re giving you 10 minutes advance notice,’ ” said Assemblyman Phil Ting, the San Francisco Democrat who oversees the budget process in the Assembly. “What is the point of a Legislature if we’re like the public watching TV to get information? It doesn’t feel very democratic to me.”
Newsom’s Department of Finance notified legislative leaders Thursday evening that it was moving another $1.8 billion into an emergency response fund, primarily to continue buying personal protective equipment for medical workers and other frontline employees.
The governor also proposed $1.5 billion in his recent budget plan for equipment purchases, hospital beds to be reserved in case of a surge of patients, and a statewide testing and contact tracing program in the next fiscal year. Newsom is also seeking a $2.9 billion contingency fund that he could tap during a potential second wave of infections in the fall while the Legislature is in recess.
That would bring state spending on coronavirus response up to as much as $8.6 billion, threequarters of which the Finance Department said would be reimbursed by the federal government because California received an emergency declaration.
The Legislature has just three weeks to pass a budget by a constitutionally mandated deadline of June 15 or forgo its pay.
Lawmakers said Friday they were concerned that the executive branch was infringing on their authority to make spending decisions for the state and had not provided enough information about how it was using emergency funds, fraying trust with the governor.
Ting lambasted the Newsom administration for showing “a disdain to properly communicate with the Legislature.” He said the new funding requests, which would allow the governor to decide how the money is spent with just a few days notice to the Legislature, represented a “huge overreach of authority.”
“In every legislator that I’ve talked to, there’s a significant amount of concern about the future of this process,” Ting said.
His comments amplified a simmering tension at the Capitol as the Legislature, which recently returned from a nearly twomonth emergency recess, tries to wrest back some control over how the state is managing the coronavirus pandemic.
State Sen. Holly Mitchell, DLos Angeles, the Senate budget chair, said Monday that the governor’s budget proposal did not give legislators enough of a say in how pandemic money would be spent. Two Republican assemblymen also introduced a longshot resolution this week to terminate Newsom’s state of emergency declaration.
Finance officials said at the Assembly budget hearing that they consistently briefed legislative staffers ahead of announcing major purchases.
The one exception was a controversial contract with the Chinese manufacturer BYD to buy 300 million N95 respirator masks and 100 million surgical masks for nearly $1 billion, Finance Department spokesman H.D. Palmer wrote in an email to The Chronicle. Newsom announced that deal on MSNBC’s “The Rachel Maddow Show.”
“That was an outlier in the
sense that we had an immediate need to secure a reliable and ongoing supply of PPE at the outset of the pandemic for public health workers and frontline responders,” Palmer said.
The BYD deal has been deeply troubled. Although California paid $495 million upfront upon reaching the agreement in April, the company has not been able to deliver any of the N95 masks. Federal regulators with the National Institute for Occupational Safety and Health rejected certification for the respirators last month, leading California to claw back half the initial payment.
Under a renegotiated contract, BYD must obtain certification for the N95 masks by May 31 or refund the rest of the state’s $495 million prepayment.
“We are in very, very close contact with NIOSH and keeping tabs on this,” Christina Curry, chief deputy director for the California Governor’s Office of Emergency Services, told lawmakers Friday.