California Gov. Gavin Newsom on Thursday signed several bills into law, stemming from a years-long effort to provide race-based reparations for the state’s Black residents and their descendants. Members of the California Legislative Black Caucus announced that he signed four bills into law, including an apology for the state’s role in promoting slavery.
But some advocates — and at least one lawmaker — said the bills don’t go far enough to address the generational disparity created by slavery for blacks.
Senator Steven A. Bradford was a member of the published California Compensation Task Force extensive list of recommendations for policies and programs to comprehensively address the social and financial wrongs of slavery and racial discrimination in the state.
One of his own bills, which would have established a process for restitution of land taken by racist tactics, was the only bill in a separate reparations package to pass the Legislature.
Passed with bipartisan support in the California Senate and Assembly, but was vetoed by Newsom on Wednesday.
Newsom said in his speech that the bill could not work without the accompanying Freedmen’s Affairs Agency, which would be created with one of Bradford’s other bills. Bradford said the Black Caucus is preventing this bill from reaching the floor for a vote. “We collected enough votes and reached the finish line” he said in a statement.
Advocates who had hoped for more ambitious laws to drive greater investment in reparations were sorely disappointed.
Measures passed by the Legislature and signed into law by Newsom prohibition of discrimination Relying on natural and protective hairstyles to review the list of banned books in prisons is closer to “racial equality measures,” said Kamilah Moore, a lawyer and chair of the Reparations Task Force. The policies did not require particularly high price tags.
Bradford’s bills “represented strongest recommendations in the report“he said. They “matched the true nature of the reparations.”
The task force met from June 2021 to June 2023, conducted research, collected testimony, and ultimately released a report with more than 100 policy recommendations for consideration by the governor and legislature.
Among those recommendations were repealing Section 209 of the 1996 law that banned affirmative action in government agencies, as well as abolishing the death penalty and increasing funding for schools to address racial inequality.
All together, the task force’s recommendations will carry a price tag of hundreds of billions of dollars. Newsom, who said had “swallowed” the report and said that he supports the compensations in general, allocating 12 million dollars to the state budget for the implementation of any successful measures.
But given California’s perennial budget deficit, lawmakers have expressed concern about the cost of any policies that make it to his desk. Bradford said the caucus blocked the bills because they were worried about a potential veto. Newsom’s office did not respond to requests for comment.
Assemblywoman Lori Wilson, chairwoman of the Black Caucus, said the caucus has been concerned about the bills “from the beginning” and that “the governor’s concern is not surprising to us.”
He declined to comment on what the other concerns were, saying any changes would be clear when the legislation is reintroduced next session.
Central to Bradford’s reparations package was the Freedmen’s Affairs Agency, which oversees the state’s reparations initiatives. According to a government report, the agency will cost $3-5 million to operate annually.
In the last week of September, at the close of the state legislative session, two dueling reparations packages were expected to come up for a vote: Bradford’s three bills and six bills introduced by the Black Commission.
The governor’s office sent Bradford a series of significant reforms on Sept. 23 that would replace the Freedmen’s Affairs Agency with a depleted research program in the state’s university system.
Bradford rejected the proposed amendments, thinking he still had the support of his colleagues in the Black Caucus, who must bring the bills to a vote.
By the end of the week, it was clear that caucus members had changed their minds and decided to block two of Bradford’s bills, even though there was enough support for them to pass.
In the final hours of the legislative session, dozens of protesters gathered in the lobby of the Capitol to support Bradford’s bills.
One of those people was Moore, the task force chairman who traveled from Los Angeles to Sacramento that day with 20 others. He wanted to appear in person to express his support for Bradford’s bill. “I wanted to see the process all the way through,” he said.
Organizer Chris Lodgson was another community leader who traveled to the Capitol to lobby for Bradford’s bills. Lodgson works with a descendant-led organization called the Fair and Equal California Coalition, or CJEC, which holds community education and feedback sessions on behalf of the task force around the state.
“To say we are extremely disappointed is an understatement,” he said. “We have been betrayed by members of the caucus.”
Last week, Bradford said he was responding to the concerns of broader pro-reparations politicians, including those in the Congressional Black Caucus in Washington.
Bradford said national, state and local lawmakers looking to California as a blueprint for passing progressive compensation legislation are disappointed.
As 16 municipalities, New York state and Illinois developed compensation proposals, members of California’s task force reached out to a wide network of lawmakers working on compensation.
Lawmakers are also debating the fate of HR 40, federal legislation that would create a commission to study the history of slavery and develop reparations, and who will reintroduce it after the death of U.S. Rep. Sheila Jackson Lee this summer.
“It’s not just about California,” he said. “That goes for the rest of the nation.”