Governor Newsom vetoes bill to return land to black families

The bill would have created a process for families to file a claim with the state if they believe the government seized their property through eminent domain on discriminatory grounds and without providing fair compensation.

The proposal itself could not have gone into full effect because lawmakers blocked another bill to create a reparations agency that would have reviewed the claims.

“I thank the author for his commitment to righting the racial injustices of the past,” Newsom said in a statement. “However, this bill requires a non-existent state agency to meet its various provisions and requirements, making implementation impossible.”

The veto dealt a blow to a key part of a package of reparations bills backed by California’s Legislative Black Caucus this year in an effort to help the state atone for decades of policies that have created racial disparities for black Americans. The caucus sent other proposals to Newsom’s office that would require the state to formally apologize for slavery and its lingering impact, improve hair discrimination protections for athletes and combat the banning of books in state prisons.

Democratic state Sen. Steven Bradford introduced the eminent domain bill after Los Angeles-area officials in 2022 returned a beachfront property to a black couple a century after it was taken from their ancestors by eminent domain. Bradford said in a statement earlier this year that his proposal was part of a “crucial framework for repairing and righting a historic wrong”.

Bradford also introduced a bill this year to create an agency to help black families trace their family lineage and implement reparations programs that became law and a measure to create a fund for reparations legislation .

But members of the Black Caucus blocked the repair agency and funding bills from receiving a final vote in the Assembly during the final week of last month’s legislative session. The caucus cited concerns that the Legislature would lack oversight of the agency’s operations and declined to comment further on the reparations fund bill because it was not part of the caucus’s priority reparations package.

The move came after the Newsom administration pushed for the agency’s bill to be turned into legislation allocating $6 million to California State University to study how to implement the reparations task force’s recommendations, according to a document with amendments proposed, shared by Bradford’s office.

Newsom’s office declined to comment to The Associated Press last month on funding proposals and reparations agencies, saying it does not typically publicly intervene on pending legislation.

The administration’s Finance Department said earlier this year that it opposed the eminent domain bill because it was not specifically included in the budget. The agency said the cost of implementing it was unknown, but could have ranged “from the hundreds of thousands of dollars to the low millions of dollars annually, depending on the workload required to accept, review and investigate applications.”