By Jeanne Kuang and Yue Stella Yu
State legislators on Friday halted hundreds of bills with new spending attached from advancing. Why? The Legislature again underwent its relatively opaque process known as the “suspense file.” Hanging over lawmakers’ heads is the expected $12 billion state budget deficit that is projected to worsen due to federal tariffs and increased state health care spending.
The Assembly and Senate’s appropriations committees hold these proceedings twice a year. As CalMatters’ Jeanne Kuang and Yue Stella Yu explain, 32% of 1,098 measures were held in the committees on Friday — meaning those proposals are essentially dead or shelved for the year.
Assemblymember Buffy Wicks, an Oakland Democrat and chairperson of the Assembly appropriations committee: “Many good bills are going to fall by the wayside today. We are not in a year where we can be expanding programs, developing new offices, new agencies, new departments and expanding our footprints.”
The Assembly trimmed about the same number of bills compared to last May, while the Senate squashed a slightly higher percentage of bills (29% compared to 25.5% in 2024), according to longtime lobbyist Chris Micheli.
Some notable bills that didn’t advance included ones that would have expanded health care services, such as a proposal to seek federal approval to cover some housing services under Medi-Cal, an insurance program for low-income residents, and another to allow more Medi-Cal patients to receive home-based care.
Two crime bills, both introduced by Republicans, were also spiked. One would have barred some prisoners from being released early through the state’s elderly parole program, and the other would have increased penalties for giving fentanyl to minors.
But the committees did pass 742 other bills, including a proposal by Assemblymember Rick Zbur and backed by Gov. Gavin Newsom to expand tax credits for the state’s film industry. Though language to increase the state’s film tax credit to $750 million annually was struck from the bill, the specific amount is expected to be ironed out during budget negotiations, said Zbur, a Los Angeles Democrat.
The bills that survived on Friday will face another hurdle next week, when they must advance out of the chamber — Assembly or Senate — where they were introduced.
Health care expansions on the chopping block
On Friday, some Assembly measures that would have expanded health care services for Californians met their fate. That includes Wicks’ own proposal seeking federal approval to qualify some housing services as Medi-Cal benefits, a $40 million endeavor that Newsom previously vetoed. The committee also killed a proposal to allow more Medi-Cal enrollees to receive home-based care and another that would have allowed higher-earning immigrants in the country illegally to purchase insurance plans on Covered California, the state-run health care marketplace.
In the Senate, lawmakers shelved a proposal by Sen. Catherine Blakespear to impose campaign contribution limits on candidates for judicial office and school board races, which the influential California Teachers Association opposed. They axed Sen. Henry Stern’s proposal to expand the state’s contentious new mental health program CARE Courts to include defendants with bipolar disorder I, and Sen. Marie Alvarado-Gil’s bill to address mountain lion interactions that has pitted rural communities against animal rights and wildlife conservation advocates.
The Senate Appropriations Committee also killed two Republican tough-on-crime proposals, showing the limits of Democrats’ recent shift slightly rightward on crime. Until Friday, it had been surprisingly smooth sailing this year for Senate Minority Leader Brian Jones’ bill to block sex offenders from being released from prison through the state’s elderly parole program, and Sen. Kelly Seyarto’s bill to increase penalties for selling or giving fentanyl to minors.
The law enforcement-backed bills were opposed by criminal justice reform advocates, who still hold sway with the majority party and often argue it would be too costly for the state to imprison more people.
In a statement, Jones, a San Diego Republican, called the suspense file process “anti-democratic” and accused Democrats of “silencing the voices of victims and the public.”
Some measures are now postponed until next year. That includes two Assembly measures seeking tighter regulations on ticket sales for sports and musical events, amid fierce opposition from ticketing platforms such as Stubhub and from local chambers of commerce. The measures would restrict when those platforms can resell tickets, strengthen the disclosure of ticket information and require venues to accept proof of purchase as tickets.
Assm. Isaac Bryan, a Culver City Democrat who authored one of the measures, said Wicks never articulated her concerns with his proposal, even though Wicks told reporters Friday her staff had been in touch with Bryan’s office. “There was never an attempt to discuss the bill,” which led him to believe her concerns had been alleviated, Bryan said in a statement.
Lawmakers also pushed off some issues to be debated further during budget negotiations between the Legislature and Newsom. That process will accelerate in the coming weeks before a mid-June deadline to pass a balanced budget.
Newsom’s film tax credit pushed to budget talk
They stripped out language in both Assembly and Senate bills to more than double the state’s film tax credit to $750 million. Newsom has pushed hard for the tax credit expansion to help the ailing Los Angeles industry and keep production in state, and he’s included the money in his budget proposals which lawmakers will debate separately.
Assemblymember Rick Zbur, a Los Angeles Democrat who authored the Assembly version of the measure, said the committee move was merely a technical one to separate budget allocations from policy changes.
“The increase in the size of the program will happen in the budget,” Zbur said. “I’m not that nervous about it.”
But to others, the move indicated that some lawmakers remain skeptical of spending so much on the program. Sen. Ben Allen, an El Segundo Democrat who sponsored the Senate bill to boost the tax credits, said he was “certainly disappointed.”
“It’s something we are going to push back against as budget negotiations begin to heat up,” he said in a statement.
An ambitious and highly technical proposal by Sen. Scott Wiener reining in the landmark California Environmental Quality Act to make it harder for opponents of development to sue to block housing projects also will be debated in the budget process.
In the Senate Appropriations Committee, lawmakers passed the bill but Caballero said they would continue negotiating it to help the state meet its housing needs “without compromising environmental protections.”
