For the 2025 legislative session, 350 Southland Legislative Alliance will be meeting on the 2nd and 4th Mondays of the month at 7pm. To join our meetings, please email us: 350southland @ gmail.com. In January we will be meeting with legislators and starting to track bills as they are introduced.
Here are some recent headlines about local climate policy in Los Angeles and the new legislative session:
- This excellent article by Nicole Levin goes deeper into the use of hydrogen to prolong the life of methane fueled power plants such as LADWP’s Scattergood plant than we had time to get into at our meeting on Monday. Nicole is a Sierra Club organizer working to end oil and gas operations in Los Angeles County. https://knock-la.com/
greenwashing-green-hydrogen- scattergood/ - Over 80 advocates rallied outside SouthCoast AQMD on December 8, sending a clear message: We need action on clean air rules for buildings, ports & industry. Healthy air standards for furnaces & water heaters could achieve the largest emission reduction of any SouthCoast AQMD rules in the past 30 years, but a vote has been delayed. Communities can’t wait any longer. https://spectrumnews1.com/ca/
southern-california/ environment/2024/12/07/south- coast-aqmd-rule-updates-socal? cid=share_clip
California Assembly & State Senate
The goal of the special legislative session called by Gov. Gavin Newsom is to establish a $25 million fund for legal challenges to federal polices that the governor said could “harm the state,” including when it comes to civil rights, abortion access and immigration.
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As the Legislature welcomed 35 new members — including a record number of women — Democrats, who maintain a supermajority, said the legal preparation was a necessary precaution. During Trump’s first term as president, California filed more than 100 lawsuits against the federal government, winning protections for undocumented people who came to the U.S. as children and securing clean air rules.
“If Washington, D.C., refuses to tackle climate change in the coming four years, mark my word that California will continue to lead as we always have,” Senate Pro Tem Mike McGuire (D-Healdsburg) said on the Senate floor Monday.
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Rivas reduced the limit of bills allowed to be introduced and requested that all proposals focus on “affordability and prosperity.”
California’s legislative leaders will reduce the number of bills that members of the state Assembly and Senate could introduce during each two-year session, from 50 to 35 in the Assembly and from 40 to 35 in the senate, according to rules adopted by each chamber at the kickoff of the new session.
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Today, legislators can request a waiver to exceed the cap on bills they are allowed to introduce. Nineteen of the 40 senators hit or went over the bill limit in the most recent session. In the Assembly, 24 of the 80 lawmakers hit the cap or went over, according to the Digital Democracy database.
In all, legislators introduced 4,821 bills this session and sent 2,252 to Gov. Gavin Newsom.
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In 2017, when Assemblymember Anthony Rendon took over as Speaker, he increased the bill limit from 30 to 50. He said it was to make up for the reduced time legislators were allowed to serve in office after voters approved more restrictive term limits that took effect in 2012.
- LA Times Newsletter: California prepares for Trump 2.0: Here’s how things will be different this time
A huge freshman class was sworn in Monday, making up about one-third of the Legislature. A few interesting facts:
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Women (finally) make up half the Legislature. When Trump was elected last time around, women made up about 22% of the lawmakers in Sacramento. Now, for the first time in state history, the number of women lawmakers is almost equal to the number of men, with women holding 49% of the seats.
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The Legislature is gaining Republicans. Though one close race has not officially been called, Republicans are on track to flip three seats previously held by Democrats. It’s still not enough to block Democrats from using their supermajority to pass tax increases, change political ethics laws or put constitutional amendments on the ballot with no GOP support. But the Democratic supermajority in Sacramento is getting a little bit smaller.
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The GOP caucuses are getting more diverse. Several of the newly elected Republicans are Latino or Asian American. They include: Assemblymembers Jeff Gonzalez of Indio and Leticia Castillo of Corona, and Sens. Suzette Martinez Valladares of Santa Clarita and Steven Choi of Irvine. “It’s huge. It represents a realignment,” Assembly Republican leader James Gallagher told my colleague Anabel Sosa. “We’re starting to see more and more Latino voters that were loyal Democratic voters and have started to break away from that.”