California Deficit Forces Lawmakers to Shelve Bills on Psychedelic Therapy, Reparations

“Authors were asked to amend their bills to take out the more expensive stuff,” Caballero said. “We don’t have the money.” The Assembly’s appropriations committee held 233 of the 668 bills on its suspense file, or about 34.5% — slightly higher than last May when 29% were shelved. Those included Assembly Bill 2751 by Assemblymember Matt Haney, a San Francisco Democrat, which would have barred employers from contacting workers outside of scheduled hours, and AB 2808 by Assemblymember Buffy Wicks, an Oakland Democrat who chairs the committee, which would have limited companies such as Ticketmaster from being able to resell event tickets exclusively. “We have an obligation to balance the budget here in California — we can’t go into debt,” Wicks told reporters after the hearing, where she killed another attempt to establish a single-payer health care system in California, a policy she has supported in the past. “We needed to be responsible with taxpayers’ money, so that’s why we had to make some tough calls today.” Assemblymember Ash Kalra, who authored the single-payer bill, said after two years of negotiations, he was confident it would have passed the Assembly.  “I am deeply disappointed the Assembly Appropriations Committee failed to...