By Jon Coupal – December 14, 2024

Gov. Gavin Newsom has yet again forced the Legislature into special session to continue his war against the oil companies. This time, his proposal is to empower the California Energy Commission to “develop and impose requirements for refiners operating in the state to maintain minimum levels of inventories of refined transportation fuels meeting California specifications.”

The governor claims this will prevent price spikes but clearly doesn’t understand the laws of supply and demand. Even Joe Lombardo, the Republican governor of Nevada, and Katie Hobbs, the Democratic governor of Arizona, sent a letter warning that his proposal would increase prices, not lower them.

It isn’t the oil companies that are adding almost a dollar per gallon in direct taxes, indirect taxes and costly special fuel requirements. Add in the higher costs of simply doing business in California and you know why gas prices are about $1.50 over the national average. It’s California.

Gov. Newsom and the Legislature could lower prices anytime they want. The reality is, they don’t want to. They want the tax money. They just don’t want you to be mad at them when you go to the polls, so they feign outrage. That’s what the special session is about.

So, since we don’t need a special session to lower gas prices, maybe we should have one about the multitude of other issues plaguing our state. Here are some suggestions.

Let’s call a special session on California’s highest-in-the-nation homeless rate. According to the state auditor, California spent more than $24 billion on homelessness programs in the last five years and the problem has only gotten worse. The state’s most recent “point-in-time” count estimated more than 180,000 were homeless. That’s up 6 percent from the previous count.

Despite the state auditor noting that no one is tracking the impacts of this spending, the governor managed to talk the voters into throwing $6 billion more on the fire earlier this year.

Maybe we need a special session on why California has the second-lowest literacy rate in the country. According to the EdVoice Institute, 60 percent of California students are not reading at grade level by the third grade and approximately 28 percent of California adults are not literate.

Assembly Bill 2222 would have required phonics-based reading instruction that research shows is more effective but it didn’t get a hearing because the teachers’ union opposed it.

How about a special session on California’s highest-in-the-nation home prices? The median home price in California was $906,600 according to the latest numbers from the California Association of Realtors. They calculate a minimum annual income of $236,800 was needed to qualify for the purchase of a median-priced, existing single-family home.

But that might be hard to do if you can’t find a job. Might be good to have a special session on why California has one of the highest unemployment rates in the country. According to the U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics, California had a seasonally adjusted unemployment rate of 5.3 percent in August 2024. That puts us just ahead of Illinois, Nevada and the District of Columbia.

Meanwhile, Proposition 32 asks voters to raise the state’s minimum wage from $16 to $18 and then adjust it annually for inflation. Unfortunately, raising the hourly minimum wage often results in businesses cutting hours and laying off workers – once again proving the adage that the real minimum wage is zero.

Or what about our soaring home insurance rates? Let’s have a special session about that. Many insurers have simply stopped writing policies in California and the ones that remain are raising rates as fast as they can. State Farm has requested permission from the state’s insurance commissioner to raise rates 30 percent. Allstate is raising them 34 percent.

Now, a study from Insurify says they expect car insurance rates to increase 54 percent in California – that’s more than double the national average.

California has a lot of problems. Maybe we should talk about those instead of playing political games about gas prices.

Jon Coupal is president of the Howard Jarvis Taxpayers Association.