Governor Newsom Delivers State of the State Address 3.8.22

SACRAMENTO — Governor Gavin Newsom delivered his State of the State address earlier than the California Legislature at the moment.

Under is the textual content as ready for supply:

State of the State Deal with
California Governor Gavin Newsom
March 8, 2022

On Worldwide Girls’s Day, it’s nice to say thanks, Madam Lieutenant Governor, for that introduction.

Speaker Rendon and Professional Tem Atkins, thanks for being right here tonight. 

To members of the Legislature and different state officers, thanks for becoming a member of us this night.

And to my spouse, Jennifer, the First Companion. Thanks for being the guts of our household, and for every part you do for California.

Given the state of our world, I don’t think about there are numerous individuals exterior these partitions ready on the phrases that will probably be stated right here tonight.

However it’s important for us to come back collectively, nonetheless.

Not simply to mark how far we’ve are available our combat in opposition to COVID, but in addition to reaffirm our dedication to democratic establishments.

Because the individuals of Ukraine proceed to come back beneath assault, 2 million already displaced from their houses, we take power from their contagious braveness, and their willingness to combat for his or her freedom.

Tonight, can be a second for us to mirror on what it means to stay in a society the place elected leaders nonetheless settle our disagreements by and huge with civility and compromise.

And the way we derive power from a authorities that displays the individuals we symbolize.

Our Speaker, son of working-class dad and mom and grandson of Mexican immigrants, labored his means via California’s public training system, incomes a Ph.D. from UC Riverside. Now, dedicated to making sure each youngster has entry to early studying.

Our Professional Tem, born in poverty in Virginia, got here to California and have become a champion for housing and equal rights for all — the primary brazenly homosexual girl to steer each the Meeting and state Senate.

Our Chief Justice, public college graduate, descendant of migrant farmworkers, talking out in opposition to revenue inequality and tackling the price of justice for individuals in poverty.

And our constitutional officers right here tonight — they embody the daughter of an Arkansas sharecropper, an immigrant from the Philippines, the daughters of fogeys born in China and Greece, one raised by a instructor from Panama, and the proud son of undocumented Mexican immigrants.

Thanks on your service.
 
California does democracy like nowhere else on the earth.

No different place affords alternative to so many from such various backgrounds.

However we can’t take our democracy without any consideration.

Authoritarian and intolerant impulses aren’t simply rising abroad, they’ve been echoing right here at dwelling for a while. Whereas we could not have strongmen actually waging struggle in our nation, we’re stricken by brokers of a nationwide anger machine fueling division, weaponizing grievance.

Highly effective forces and loud voices – stoking worry and in search of to divide us, weakening the establishments of our democracy. Relying on complacency to erode voting rights, scapegoating minorities. Conjuring conspiracies and selling “otherness.”

Actively exploiting the “anger of the anxious.”
 
Anger that finds a house when individuals really feel understandably disconnected from one another and our collective future, when that future doesn’t look as shiny because the previous. Making them extra prone to the siren calls of these attempting to tear us aside.
 
Foundationally, it is a menace we should all face, collectively and show there may be
a greater means – a California Manner – ahead.

The California Manner means rejecting previous binaries and discovering new options to large issues.

Take local weather coverage, for instance. California has no friends.

For years, we’ve set the foundations and others have adopted. However over time, we’ve discovered we will’t clear up large issues like local weather change situationally, with short-term pondering. Look, nobody’s naive concerning the second  we’re residing in, with excessive fuel costs and the geopolitical uncertainty fueling them.

In January we proposed to pause the fuel tax improve.

Now, it’s clear we should go additional.

That’s why — working with Legislative management — I’ll be submitting a proposal to place a reimbursement within the pockets of Californians, to handle rising fuel costs.

However at a time, once we’ve been heating and burning up, one factor we can’t do is repeat the errors of the previous by embracing polluters. Drilling much more oil, which solely results in much more excessive climate, extra excessive drought, extra wildfire.

What extra proof do we’d like?

Simply previously few years, we’ve seen entire communities practically wiped off the map.

Greenville. Paradise. Grizzly Flats.

What number of extra are we keen to sacrifice?
 
We must be combating polluters, not bolstering them. And in so doing, liberating us as soon as and for all from the grasp of petro-dictators.

However this dialog can’t simply be about oil provide. Every day life nonetheless calls for an excessive amount of fossil gasoline.

That too has to alter.

Underscoring the significance of accelerating California’s management in clear know-how, this isn’t only a nationwide safety and an environmental justice crucial — clear power is that this technology’s biggest financial alternative.

An ideal instance — our dominance in electrical car gross sales and manufacturing.

It was California’s insurance policies that created this market.

Now we now have the chance to increase this management, to safe a crucial element of the provision chain for batteries, by tapping one of many world’s largest lithium reserves – proper right here in California.

Our nation-leading local weather investments — $38 billion — will be sure that different improvements will certainly comply with. Not by re-creating the twentieth century by extracting extra oil, however by extracting new concepts, drilling for brand spanking new expertise, by working our financial system on a carbon-free engine.

That’s the California Manner.

Relating to the financial system, California is unmatched.

We dominate in analysis, innovation, entrepreneurialism, enterprise capital — and stay the world’s fifth largest financial system. Our GDP progress has constantly outpaced not solely the remainder of the nation – however most different, massive western democracies. In December alone, 25 % of America’s jobs have been created proper right here in California. One million new jobs within the final 12 months. Extra new enterprise begins in the course of the worst of the pandemic than Texas and Florida mixed.

However what makes us completely different than these states — moreover the liberty of a lady’s proper to decide on? It’s that, as our companies develop, we don’t depart our employees behind.

Simply contemplate what we did final 12 months for the center class in California, sending 12 billion {dollars} again — the most important state tax rebate in American historical past.

However we didn’t cease there.

We raised the minimal wage.
 
We elevated paid sick depart.

Offered extra paid household depart.
 
Expanded youngster care to assist working dad and mom.

And this 12 months, along with your assist, we’ll do one thing no different state in America has performed — present Well being For All, no matter immigration standing.

That’s the California Manner.

Talking of not leaving individuals behind, no state took bolder steps to guard public well being and human life during the last two years.

Our lockdowns, distressing as they have been, saved lives. Our masks mandates saved lives. Your decisions saved lives.
 
California’s skilled far decrease COVID demise charges than some other massive state. Fewer than Texas, Ohio. Fewer than Florida — 35 %, to be precise.

However even with three quarters of Californians being absolutely vaccinated, we’re conscious that we can’t let our guard down.

That’s why final month, we put out our SMARTER Plan – the nation’s first blueprint to remain a step forward of future variants and seasonal surges.

I simply wish to thanks, thanks members of the Legislature for all you probably did these previous two years to maintain us protected.

However there’s one other disaster we’re nonetheless tackling. That’s the disaster of homelessness, which has worsened during the last decade, not solely right here in California, however throughout the nation.

Just some years in the past, California lacked any complete technique. No accountability and no significant state assets to unravel the issue.

However that’s all modified.

In simply three years, we not solely have a complete plan, we’re additionally requiring new accountability and offering unprecedented investments for cities and counties on the entrance traces. 

And whereas we moved a report 58,000 individuals off the streets for the reason that starting of the pandemic, we acknowledge we now have extra to do – notably to handle what’s taking place on our sidewalks, reaching individuals who want the assistance essentially the most.
 
These with schizophrenia spectrum and psychosis problems, many
self-medicating with medicine or alcohol addictions.

That’s exactly what our encampment decision grants and our new CARE Court docket search to handle.

Getting individuals off the streets, out of tents, and into housing and therapy is crucial to creating our streets protected for everybody, however public security actually isn’t nearly homelessness.

Bobby Kennedy, simply six weeks earlier than he was killed by an murderer’s bullet, reminded us that the well being of a society will depend on the flexibility of individuals to stroll their very own streets in security. To not be frightened into isolation.

“A nation,” he stated, “which surrenders to crime – whether or not by indifference or
heavy-handed repression, is a society which has resigned itself to failure.”

Our strategy is to be neither detached to the realities of the current day, nor revert to heavy-handed insurance policies which have marked the failures of the previous.

We’re funding native legislation enforcement and prosecutors to research and clear up extra crime, bolstering the Lawyer Basic’s Workplace, prosecuting organized
theft rings and getting unlawful weapons off the streets.

However we’re additionally investing a whole lot of hundreds of thousands in new applications to deal with the basis causes of crime, doubling down on confirmed violence-prevention applications.
 
That’s the California means.

After all, to deal with any root trigger, we have to speak about training.

And I’m not speaking about that model of training “reform” being promoted in some states, the place they’re banning books, the place you’ll be able to sue your historical past instructor for educating historical past, and the place you’ll be able to’t say the phrase “homosexual.”

I’m speaking about actual transformation of our public training system, like we’re doing proper right here in California.

By creating decisions – actual decisions – for fogeys, and unprecedented assist for his or her children.

An entire new grade — transitional kindergarten for all, 9 hours of enrichment a day with true common before- and after-school applications. Expanded summer time college. Common, nutritious meals, hundreds of thousands of recent youngster financial savings accounts and free neighborhood school.

That’s the California Manner.

Look, individuals have all the time appeared to California for inspiration.

And now, within the midst of a lot turmoil, with stacking stresses and dramatic social and financial change, California is doing what we now have performed for generations, lighting out the territory forward of the remaining, increasing the horizon of what’s doable.

We all know that authorities can’t be the complete resolution, however we additionally know that authorities has all the time been a part of the answer.

By making a platform for individuals and the personal sector to thrive.

As Friedman stated — we now have a formulation for fulfillment setting guidelines for risk-taking, not recklessness.

Infrastructure, Analysis & Improvement, investing in our conveyor belt for expertise — the best system of upper training on the earth, our neighborhood faculties, UCs and CSUs. Guaranteeing society offers a hand up when individuals need assistance. Sustaining our pro-immigrant insurance policies and welcoming refugees from all over the world.

These are California values.

Embracing variety, but in addition in search of widespread floor. Pursuing larger connectedness.

Not exploiting division, with performative politics, and memes of the second however by unifying towards widespread function.

Inviting extra individuals with various views, from completely different backgrounds –“To try, to hunt, to search out, to not yield” — all into the combat for a greater California. 

Thanks.

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