Gov. Gavin Newsom and other democrat party progressives/liberals are salivating at the chance to “own” Donald Trump next month. But in their eagerness to score political points, they risk exporting California’s problems nationwide.
As a homeowner, business owner and former mayor, I’ve seen up close what’s wrong in our state. It’s easy to see, even for people not involved in government policy, which is why many tax-paying, productive citizens and businesses are moving to other states.
Despite its man-made warts, California remains one of the world’s largest economies, but its days as a business-friendly state are long gone. Things have gotten so bad that even some critical service providers have been forced to stop doing business there.
That’s what happened at Chiquita Canyon, one of Los Angeles County’s largest landfills.
Its operator, waste management giant Waste Connections, stopped accepting refuse on New Year’s Day 2025, arguing that California’s regulatory environment and a dispute with county officials had made the business economically unviable, even though it followed all state environmental laws.
Yes, unfortunately, the landfill began emitting foul odors from an underground reaction deep within its buried waste, but that’s what happens when millions of pounds of trash are dumped in a landfill.
However, instead of working with the operator to find a solution that would solve the issue, protect residents, and keep essential services running, California authorities set up a feeding frenzy for lawyers. A remarkable Los Angeles Times investigation uncovered allegations that a law firm paid a Las Vegas actor to dress as a cowboy and recruit residents for lawsuits.
Residents claimed they were offered cash, gift cards, and even barbecue in exchange for signing legal agreements. One resident called the resulting legal circus the Val Verde “Hunger Games,” although, naturally, the firm denied improper solicitation.
Meanwhile, lawmakers focused not on their lawyer friends’ corruption or improving trash operations, but instead on micromanaging how trash is handled.
On the surface, closing a landfill can be spun as a win for so-called environmentalists, until you consider that the trash will need to be trucked somewhere else. And that somewhere else is never closer to the trash’s source. Those trucks’ added miles will add diesel, tire, and brake-dust pollution, and add to traffic, a massive potential problem for Californians.
We shouldn’t scare off companies that do the dirty, but fundamentally important, work that serves the public good and makes our country the very definition of a first-world nation.
But decades of excessive taxation, onerous environmental regulation, and clumsy bureaucratic red tape and mismanagement have taken a grim toll on the state.
California has more than 395,000 regulatory restrictions, an 8.84% corporate income tax rate, the highest electricity prices, the highest gas taxes, and some of America’s highest personal income taxes.
It’s little wonder businesses are leaving, and taking many of their best employees with them, to other states where the weather is lousier but housing and schools are better.
According to the Hoover Institution, 352 companies relocated their headquarters between 2018 and 2021, including major employers like Tesla, Oracle and Hewlett Packard Enterprise. Heck, even In-N-Out Burger moved out of California!
Ordinary families are feeling the squeeze, too. Housing costs are 97% higher than the national average, and a University of California survey found that 66% of respondents believed their quality of life would improve if they left the state.
The Trump administration and EPA Administrator Lee Zeldin could cut through California’s regulatory maze and return us to our Golden State era, but it won’t be easy. It starts with making California business-friendly so we can innovate again — or at least competently handle the most basic public services.
California has gone from the Golden State to an over-regulated dumpster fire in the past 25 years or so, and while our Governor Newsom has been the best business development person Texas, AZ, Nevada, and Tennessee have ever had, the Trump Administration should step in before it spreads across America and the damage becomes irreversible.
Jerome Stocks is a former mayor and city councilman of Encinitas. Read more of his commentaries here.
