Sacramento, California. – California Gov. Gavin Newsom vetoed a bill Wednesday that would have assisted Black families in reclaiming or receiving compensation for property confiscated unlawfully by the government.
The bill would have established a process for families to claim with the state if they believe the government acquired their property using eminent domain for discriminatory reasons and without offering fair compensation.
The concept would not have been fully implemented since lawmakers blocked another bill that would have established a reparations agency to assess claims.
“I thank the author for his commitment to redressing past racial injustices,” Newsom stated. “However, this bill tasks a nonexistent state agency to carry out its various provisions and requirements, making it impossible to implement.”
The veto dealt a blow to a crucial component of a package of reparations bills supported by the California Legislative Black Caucus this year to help the state atone for decades of policies that created racial inequities for Black Americans. Other recommendations put to Newsom’s desk include requiring the state to formally apologize for slavery and its long-term consequences, improving athlete rights against hair discrimination, and combating the ban on books in state prisons.
Democratic state Sen. Steven Bradford filed the eminent domain law after Los Angeles-area officials returned a beachfront property to a Black couple in 2022, a century after it was taken from their family through eminent domain proceedings. Bradford stated earlier this year that his plan was part of a critical “framework for reparations and correcting a historical wrong.”
Bradford also presented a bill this year to establish an agency to assist Black families in researching their family history and enacting reparations programs that become law, as well as a proposal to establish a fund for reparation legislation.
However, Black caucus members prevented the reparations agency and fund legislation from gaining a final vote in the Assembly during the final week of the legislative session last month. The caucus expressed worry that the Legislature would not have oversight of the agency’s functioning and declined to comment further on the reparations fund bill because it was not included in the caucus’ reparations priority package.
The move came after the Newsom administration pushed for the agency bill to be converted into legislation that would allocate $6 million to California State University to study how to implement the reparations task force’s recommendations, according to a document with proposed amendments shared by Bradford’s office.
Last month, Newsom’s office declined to comment to The Associated Press on the reparations agency and fund ideas, saying it does not normally comment publicly on pending legislation.
The administration’s Department of Finance stated earlier this year that it opposed the eminent domain law since it was not explicitly included in the budget. The government stated that the cost of implementation was unknown, but it might have varied “from hundreds of thousands of dollars to low millions of dollars annually, depending on the workload required to accept, review, and investigate applications.”
