Will anything change under California’s new Assembly Speaker Robert Rivas?
New Assembly Speaker Robert Rivas, D-Hollister, takes over the 80-member body at a critical time for California. As the state and nation look to be entering a recession, last year’s $100 billion budget surplus is long gone, while the crises in education, homelessness and housing seemingly remain perpetual problems.
In his first speech as speaker, Rivas eloquently described how, for some, the California Dream has become “a cliché,” but for his family it is the “foundation” of their lives. His family picked grapes and his grandfather joined in the United Farm Workers movement with legendary organizer Dolores Huerta.
Rivas may give the Legislature a special appreciation of the importance of the state’s $50 billion agricultural industry, especially the ongoing struggles over water policy.
Rivas spoke how his family pooled their savings in 1988 and bought a house in Hollister for $145,000.
“It was a massive, massive investment, but it was doable,” he said.
But today, the average home price in the state is “just under $775,00 … An entire generation of Californians will be locked out of home ownership if we do not do reform.”
Rivas has been lauded by California YIMBY for his past support of housing reform laws like Senate Bills 9 and 10 in recent years to significantly liberalize where and what sort of housing can be built.
This editorial board encourages Rivas to champion making it easier to build housing through deregulation and reform of the California Environmental Quality Act.
Efforts to make California more affordable through policies like rent control or government subsidies have been a costly disaster.
Commendably, he thanked both Democrats and Republicans, even though the latter are a super-minority, as “so many of you on both sides of the aisle have lent me your advice, your encouragement.”
We hope he looks to Republicans for some of their best ideas.
The key problem will be bucking the power of the state’s public-employee unions, which we don’t think Rivas is likely to be willing to do.
According to CalMatters, Rivas has taken at least $634,000 in campaign contributions from them since being elected in 2018.
Rivas, like most members of the Assembly, has been a reliable vote for unjustifiable prison guard union contracts. Rivas hasn’t shown a particular inclination to stand up to the state’s powerful teachers unions, which have kept California’s students trapped in a failing K-12 system. And Rivas has voted in support of cutting off the ability of cities to get out from under the state pension system (Assembly Bill 2967).
Until union power is challenged, little is going to change in California.
We don’t expect much from Rivas. Here’s to hoping he helps steer California in a less destructive direction.