The 2024 legislative session concluded at midnight Monday. It was another positive session for the California golf community. The bills we opposed never made it to the Governor’s desk. The bills we opposed unless amended were amended to our satisfaction. The bills we watched for what they portended for the direction of future legislation were concluded in a manner that so informed us. As for the bills we supported, most were successful, albeit in one case the bill that is now law was the lesser of our two preferences on the subject. Most were successful with one big exception. Governor Newsom vetoed SB 366, a bill that golf and myriad sectors, including most of the state’s water retailers, strongly supported.
Tagged “California Water Plan: Long Term Supply Targets,” SB 366 would have revised and recast certain provisions regarding The California Water Plan to require the Department of Water Resources (DWR) to coordinate with the California Water Commission, the State Water Resources Control Board, other state and federal agencies as appropriate, to develop a comprehensive plan for addressing the state’s water needs and meeting specified long-term water supply targets established by the bill for purposes of The California Water Plan. It would have gone beyond the current approach to water supply planning by establishing for the 1st time in the history of the state specific targets to be met by certain dates along with a financing plan for achieving those targets, with a specific target of 9 million-acre-feet of additional supply by 2050.
This would have represented a huge shift in the state’s approach to coping with the effects of aridification – from an almost single-minded obsession with conservation as the primary tool to a more diversified approach that combines conservation with the construction of a 21st Century appropriate equivalent of the 20th Century’s State Water Project. A shift clearly in the interests of the golf community.
Reproduced in its entirety is Governor Newsom’s veto message. Before we add our comments admittedly in the form of speculation, albeit informed speculation, we’ll let you read it with open hearts and minds:
To the Members of the California State Senate:
I am returning Senate Bill 366 without my signature.
The bill would require the Department of Water Resources (DWR), as part of the 2033 update, to revise the contents of the California Water Plan to, among other provisions, focus on developing a long-term water supply planning target for 2050 to identify and create plans for future water needs of various water sectors.
The California Water Plan (Plan), updated every five years, is the state's guidance document for sustainably and equitably managing, developing, and stewarding the state's water resources. My Administration recently released the 2023 Plan to lay out a statewide vision promoting climate resilience across regions, water sectors, and natural and built infrastructure. This Plan update includes clear goals, watershed-based climate resilience planning, and regional and interregional infrastructure modernization strategies.
While I appreciate the author's intent, this bill would create substantial ongoing costs for DWR, the State Water Resources Control Board, and other state agencies and departments to assist in the development of water supply planning targets. A revision to the Plan of this magnitude, that creates such significant costs, must be considered in the context of the annual budget.
In partnership with the Legislature this year, my Administration has enacted a balanced budget that avoids deep program cuts to vital services and protected investments in education, health care, climate, public safety, housing, and social service programs that millions of Californians rely on. It is important to remain disciplined when considering bills with significant fiscal implications that are not included in the budget, such as this measure.
For these reasons, I cannot sign this bill.
Sincerely,
Gavin Newsom
We thought it much more likely than not that the Governor would sign SB 366, as did many others, including the California Municipal Utilities Association (CMUA), which sponsored the bill and coalesced hundreds of organizations in support of it, including the California Alliance for Golf (CAG).
Assuming that the price tag attached to SB 366 was accurate, which the CMUA vigorously disputed, that “tag” amounted to $15 million over the next 5 years, which though not accounted for in the 2024-2025 state budget, is but a drop in the huge bucket known as California’s $290 billion 2024-2025 budget.
With the caveat that only Gavin Newsom knows his own mind, here are our “speculations” about what may have been the more compelling reason for his veto. It wasn’t the money, but rather the politics. Governor Newsom has incurred criticism from many in the environmental community for his Sacramento Delta Conveyance Plan and his staunch support for expediting the construction of the Sites Reservoir. While we and many others are convinced that SB 366 as finally amended in the Assembly eliminated all possibility of creating that additional 9 million-acre-feet of supply by tapping the Sacramento Delta, many in the environmental community were not so sanguine on that point. There is only so much bucking of important political partners elected leaders are willing to do.
CMUA is almost certain to run a version of this bill in 2025 and given the fact that California law mandates 81 separate decarbonization targets, it shouldn’t strain credulity to suggest that the state might benefit from just one about the supply of something as important as water.
Keep in mind that it often takes multiple stabs and sessions to pass legislation, even legislation involving serious subjects like water supply. The Sustainable Groundwater Management Act (SGMA), which has received much recent coverage of its 10th anniversary celebrations, took multiple sessions to come to fruition.
A statewide advocacy organization celebrating its 30th anniversary, the California Bicycle Coalition (CalBike), an organization that strikes us as an effective advocacy force for an activity that is much more individualistic, fractured, and resource strapped than golf, put the principle succinctly and well in its September 26 newsletter:
To be a bicycle advocate is to know disappointment. We have more experience than we care to with compromise or good ideas getting shut out altogether. Sometimes, it takes years of getting rejected and coming back the next year to try again, of submitting and resubmitting session after session until it passes.
But if we keep coming back, eventually, we win. The disappointments have made us stronger as an organization and a movement, with anger sometimes spurring people to aim even higher. Here are a few of the victories CalBike has achieved in the past 30 years.
The “achievements” are not our point here. Suffice it to say that the list is long, impressive, and inclusive of substantial dollops of public largesse. To be a golf advocate is also to know disappointment. But it is also to know significant accomplishments. Golf’s advocacy record is not nearly as long as that of the California biking community, but it too is impressive when its benefits are compiled in one place – something we too often fail to do to our detriment.
The Governor’s veto of SB 366 was a disappointment. But in the greater scheme of those matters that affect the California golf community, it was but a small setback in an otherwise positive legislative year in a string of positive legislative years. A “setback” and nothing more. Or in the words of every sports fan of every favorite team that failed to capture the crown – wait ‘til next year.
The information in this newsletter is being distributed among allied associations that form the California Alliance for Golf (CAG), the organization that speaks with one voice in the Capitol regarding legislative and regulatory issues of statewide scope.
