Why one of Gavin Newsom’s pettiest vetoes of the year is also among his most infuriating

Californians just survived a close call. Our wayward Legislature was poised to unleash chaos on our streets. But one man stood athwart the impending catastrophe yelling, “Stop!”

That man? Gavin Newsom.

That menace? Pedestrians.

Opinion

The governor in recent weeks declined to sign a series of bills advancing such fundamental progressive projects as college affordability, labor organization and workforce diversity. But his veto of a bill to decriminalize jaywalking was the most picayune, exemplifying his aversion to taking tiny risks to lead the state in the right direction.

The bill in question, by Assemblyman Phil Ting, D-San Francisco, sought to ease unnecessary and disproportionate enforcement of California’s uncompromising law against crossing the street outside a crosswalk, which sets a base fine of nearly $200 for the offense.

Ting’s legislation was no open invitation to dive into freeway traffic — not that there’s any evidence of anyone’s propensity to do so. Rather, it would have done away with fines and other criminal penalties for jaywalking in the absence of immediate hazards, legalizing the routine and rational act of crossing an empty stretch of asphalt.

Giving police officers broad discretion to cite and arrest people for jaywalking and all manner of other insubstantial infractions doesn’t just contribute to the stultifying overcriminalization of our state and society. It also furthers the sort of excessive and dangerous policing of minority groups that ignited last year’s nationwide protests.

A Sacramento Bee analysis found that Black people received nearly half the jaywalking tickets issued in North Sacramento and Del Paso Heights in 2016 even though they made up less than a sixth of the area’s population. In 2018, the city agreed to pay $550,000 and reform police procedures to settle a lawsuit by Nandi Cain Jr., a Black man who was beaten by a police officer following a dubious jaywalking stop. Last year, another jaywalking stop of a Black man, Kurt Andras Reinhold, ended with his fatal shooting by Orange County sheriff’s deputies.

Depriving law enforcement agencies of a little revenue and a lot of leeway to bother people on questionable pretexts is a minor concession to avoiding such violence and injustice in the future — so minor that the final vote for the bill in the Assembly was 58-17. Even a few members of the Republicans’ micro-minority joined most Democrats in voting for it.

Assembly Bill 1238 was also supported by an array of civil rights, legal aid, environmental, public health, urban, cycling and pedestrian advocates in Sacramento and across the state. Nearly all the registered opposition came from the law enforcement lobby.

But Newsom’s veto message, boldly timed to coincide with the first ever National League Division Series match-up between the San Francisco Giants and Los Angeles Dodgers, explained that California has to keep up the crackdown on pedestrians for their own good. The state ranks eighth in pedestrian fatalities per capita, he noted — not mentioning that this distinction had weathered decades of stern jaywalking enforcement — and “63% of the crashes resulting in pedestrian fatalities were the result of pedestrians taking actions against traffic controls or safety laws.”

That’s right: The governor considered the continuing car-vs.-person carnage and concluded that most of the blame lies with the people.

That must have been a revelation to the pedestrian advocates who backed Ting’s bill, who noted correctly that jaywalking laws “actually discourage walking as a mode of transportation and do not lead to any safer conditions or fewer collisions.”

Newsom sided with cars and cops not once but twice, also vetoing a bill to allow bicyclists to roll through stop signs when no vehicles are present. This sensible pro-cycling measure was an even more modest retreat from automobile absolutism. Similar laws have been adopted in states as conservative as Idaho and Arkansas.

Not that the liberals and progressives Newsom so avidly embraced just a month ago, when he was fending off a recall attempt, should fret. The governor’s jaywalking veto message included the reassurance that biased and unequal enforcement of minor offenses “is unacceptable and must be addressed” and that he therefore remains “committed to tackling this issue” — short of, you know, signing legislation tackling this issue.