Tom Philp: Gavin Newsom shows his 'French Laundry' colors in some elitist legislative logic

Gavin Newsom’s infamous 2020 dinner at the exclusive French Laundry restaurant in Napa Valley, where he flouted state health guidelines by gathering unmasked and indoors with other big shots at the height of the COVID pandemic, did not have to be a defining moment as governor.

But with some recent decisions on legislation, Newsom has tapped into the same elitism that blinds him to his own hypocrisy.

The governor’s decision to require private insurance coverage of fertility treatments marked a complete reversal on new such mandates from a year ago. He sided against farmworkers suffering in California’s intensifying heat, but he was all for after-hours drinking for VIP patrons at California’s newest arena with the big bucks to gain entry.

It was Newsom’s situational French Laundry logic.

Health care hypocrisy

It was merely a year ago when Newsom, in a wildly heartless moment, vetoed a bill that would have required health insurers to provide hearing aids to infants born without the ability to detect a single sound. Fortunately, only 1,000 or so children are born in the state in any given year with this devastating condition. The statewide cost of providing the hearing aid, to ensure the child’s cognitive development proceeds (costs capped at $3,000 per infant in the legislation) smoothly, would have been insignificant. But Newsom vetoed it nonetheless.

Why? Newsom was in love with his own state-run program to dispense hearing aids to these children, never mind that relatively few kids had benefited from it at the time. And he was worried about rising health care costs. Or so he said.

“A pattern of new coverage mandate bills like this could open the state to millions to billions of dollars in new costs to cover services relating to other health conditions,” Newsom wrote in his veto message. “This creates uncertainty for our healthcare system’s affordability.”

Fast forward to this year. Ever since the Alabama Supreme Court ruled that frozen embryos outside the womb are considered children, the fertility treatment known as in vitro fertilization has become a political cause celebre.

In the California Legislature, three previous attempts to require insurers to cover IVF had gotten nowhere dating back to 2019, the bills all authored by Democrats. But thanks to the nation’s far political right, this year’s attempt at the same mandate suddenly had legs. Ironically, the bill was authored by the same legislator, Democrat Caroline Menjivar of Van Nuys, who had championed hearing aids for infants in the previous year.

This year, Newsom was all too eager to sign Menjivar’s Senate Bill 729. The governor seemed to care less about costs. After all, it was time to stick it to Republicans. In his press release., Newsom said, “We are proud to help every Californian make their own choices about the family they want.”.

Christina Janes, a Rocklin mother of an infant who needed hearing aids and who pushed for the 2023 legislation, said Newsom “has apparently reversed course and done what he said he wouldn’t,” namely add a new mandate to insurance coverage. She thinks Newsom should care just as much about children needing hearing aids as well. “There is nothing standing in his way now. When it comes to supporting families and our most vulnerable kids, we shouldn’t pick and choose.”

In the fields — and the luxury box

The ongoing heat wave in the Central Valley, with triple-digit weather in October becoming the norm, is a reminder of the dangers of farm labor. State Sen. Dave Cortese, D-San Jose, authored a straightforward piece of legislation that presumed that if a farmworker ended up suffering a heat-related injury, the cause of that ailment was his or her job. It would streamline a farmworker’s ability to gain access to the state’s workers compensation system, a much-needed safety net for farmworker families who can be living paycheck to paycheck.

Newsom vetoed Senate Bill 1299. His logic?

“There is no doubt that climate change is causing an increase in extreme temperatures and that California farmworkers need strong protections from the risk of heat-related illness. However, the creation of a heat-illness presumption in the workers’ compensation system is not an effective way to accomplish this goal,” he wrote.

Where else would the farmworker have gotten heat illness? Getting a poolside tan a little too long at the club?

The governor was far more sympathetic, however, to the needs of some special privileged revelers to keep drinking long after the arena event is over.

Our hard-at-work Democratically-controlled legislature somehow found the time to pass a bill to allow the state’s fancy new arena, the Intuit Dome in Inglewood, to become the rarest of California locales, one that can serve alcohol until 4 a.m. A Los Angeles Clippers fan in the cheap seats, however, would not qualify for after-hours drinking under Assembly Bill 3206 by Tina McKinnor, D-Inglewood. Rather, stipulates AB 3206, “The sales occur in a private area in the arena that is available only to members of a private club who are assessed dues in order to belong to the club and thereby gain access to the area, and guests of those members, when the member is in attendance.”

This bill reeked of French Laundry. It barely passed out of the Senate, some Democrats unable to get to Yes.

It would be perfectly in character for Gavin Newsom to go ahead and sign AB 3206.

Which, of course, he did.

At least the revelers, at 4 a.m., do not have to worry about heat illness. As these tipsy patrons are hopefully driven home, our farm workers are waking up at 4 am to harvest our food and battle the sun. Newsom, in vintage French Laundry mode this bill-signing season, only seems to care about certain Californians, with a shifting logic that fits his personal politics.

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