Newsom tries to bamboozle Californians with call for a special session

I believe it was Harry Houdini who said, “Never do the same trick for the same audience twice.”

It’s good advice if bamboozling is your chosen profession. Had Gov. Gavin Newsom heeded that advice, he might have been saved from the embarrassment of thunderously proclaiming a special session of the legislature only to have Senate leader Mike McGuire tell reporters, “The Senate Democratic Caucus is 100% united that we’re not going to come back for a special session.”

In the fall of 2022, Newsom attended a Climate Week conference in New York and smugly bragged, “I had to jam my own Democratic legislature in the last few weeks of our session to get these four critical, of the 40 climate bills, done.”

Then he called a special session for the purpose of passing a tax on what he called “excessive” oil company profits, trying to force “his” legislature to cast votes for a bill that had the potential to increase gasoline prices and put supply reliability at risk.

This year, the legislature is not going quietly. Newsom is a lame duck who is term-limited out of office after 2026. Senate Pro Tem McGuire and Assembly Speaker Robert Rivas have succeeded Toni Atkins and Anthony Rendon in legislative leadership. And the unity of the supermajority has more cracks than the windshield of a car parked on the street in San Francisco.

As the clock ticked toward adjournment, Newsom tried to jam the legislature again with a bill that would further regulate oil refinery maintenance and attempt to require oil companies to maintain specific inventory levels. The purported purpose of the legislation was to prevent price spikes from supply disruptions.

The real purpose, obviously, was to shift blame for high gasoline prices to the energy industry, and away from the blithering idiocy of California’s energy policies.

A full listing of the idiocy could fill volumes, but a sampling: California has intentionally limited in-state oil and gas production, resulting in the state importing more and more oil from other countries. And California has mandated utilities to sell an increasing percentage of power that is generated from “renewable” sources, defined as solar and wind but not hydropower or nuclear, and then the state imports electricity from other states on transmission lines to help keep the lights on.

These are just two of the reasons that gasoline, diesel and electricity prices are so much higher in California than in other states that do not choose to practice blithering idiocy.

The Newsom-backed legislation to regulate refinery maintenance and storage was Senate Bill 950, a gut-and-amend that suddenly appeared near the end of August. It would empower the California Energy Commission, advised by an “Expert Advisory Committee” appointed by the governor, the Assembly Speaker and the Senate Rules Committee, to control “by regulation” the timing of refinery maintenance and the minimum levels of inventories of transportation fuels held by oil companies.

Chevron executive Andy Walz sent a comment letter to the California Energy Commission with a few thoughts.

“This bill risks the safety of refinery operations, the orderly functioning of markets and would leave industry and labor experts without a voice in key policies,” he wrote. “This bill creates safety risks by giving the [California Energy Commission], an unelected body with no refining experience or expertise, unbridled authority over details of maintenance and compliance work.”

Walz warned that SB 950 could impact reliability and supply, not just in California but also in Nevada and Arizona. He pointed out that there are “physical, operational and cost burdens to sustain unnecessary inventory,” and that building just one new storage tank “can take a decade and cost $35 million.”

Guess who pays for that.

“California policymakers continue to risk making the state ‘uninvestable,’ which erodes energy infrastructure and increases consumer costs,” Walz continued. “Without investment in the critical energy infrastructure that allows California consumers to live their daily lives, these products will, most certainly, become more expensive and unreliable.”

Gov. Newsom’s press office responded to the letter with a post on X/Twitter showing a yawn emoji and the words, “predictable lies.”

Really? Does anyone believe that oil companies are intentionally gouging California consumers but not drivers in other states?

Maybe the California legislature doesn’t. It’s a start.

Write Susan@SusanShelley.com and follow her on Twitter @Susan_Shelley