Newsom displays penchant for shiny new things on California tour

As a species, politicians love information conferences and different occasions that remember new applications or public works tasks.

The syndrome might clarify why officers typically ignore long-festering issues in current applications, such because the Employment Growth Division and the bullet prepare undertaking. Merely making issues work higher doesn’t have the political enchantment of one thing new and glossy.

Gov. Gavin Newsom is especially vulnerable to the affliction, declaring early on his love for “large, furry audacious objectives” and later including, “I’d reasonably be accused of (having) these audacious stretch objectives than be accused of timidity.”

That proclivity led him, as a candidate, to pledge that he would attempt to remedy California’s housing disaster by constructing 3.5 million new homes and residences by 2025 and make California the primary state to embrace single-payer well being care.

Later, when each proved to be unattainable, he declared them to be “aspirational” reasonably than agency guarantees.

Newsom’s tendency towards the grandiose was very evident this month when he as soon as once more shunned a standard State of the State tackle to the Legislature and as a substitute toured the state for serial bulletins.

One is changing San Quentin jail right into a laboratory to check whether or not a softer method to getting ready felons for launch, modeled after a program in Norway, shall be more practical in steering them away from crime. Newsom boasted that the renamed San Quentin Rehabilitation Heart would be the “most modern rehabilitation facility” within the nation, displaying one other attribute, his obsession with being the primary to do one thing.

The splashiest of Newsom’s new issues is a multi-billion-dollar plan to deal with 1000’s of homeless and mentally ailing Californians in new amenities that will mix shelter with remedy for his or her afflictions.

The undertaking could be financed largely by a bond concern within the $3-5 billion vary to be positioned earlier than voters subsequent 12 months and could be an adjunct to Newsom’s “Care Courtroom” program that enables the mentally ailing to be compelled to just accept remedy.

“It’s unacceptable what we’re coping with at scale now in California,” Newsom mentioned. “We have now to deal with and are available to grips with the truth of psychological well being in our state and in our nation.”

Even when carried out as hoped, the 2 psychological well being tasks would make solely a comparatively tiny dent within the state’s homelessness disaster. California nonetheless lacks a complete method and is mired in finger-pointing amongst state, county and metropolis officers over who’s answerable for coping with it.

Billions of {dollars} have been spent by all three ranges of California authorities, plus no small quantity of federal funds, however the variety of unhoused Californians continues to climb, formally approaching 200,000 however most likely a lot larger.

The exchanges between Newsom and county officers have been particularly pointed. He’s accused counties of dragging their toes on successfully spending state grant cash whereas county officers say they want a devoted and predictable income stream for long-term applications.

As Newsom was touring the state, the California State Affiliation of Counties, or CSAC, issued what it mentioned is a complete method to homelessness embracing housing, social companies, schooling and employment with clear strains of accountability and accountability for outcomes.

“Nobody degree of presidency is solely answerable for the homelessness disaster,” CSAC president Chuck Washington, a Riverside County supervisor, mentioned in a press release. “However any and all efforts to deal with homelessness will fail with out a complete system through which roles and obligations are clear.”

Essentially, CSAC is looking for making the programs and companies already in place work higher. That doesn’t have a lot political enchantment however is, to make use of considered one of Newsom’s favourite phrases, “foundational” for progress on the homelessness disaster.