GOP pushes back on two bills on California governor’s desk

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(The Center Square) – Republican lawmakers in California are pushing back on two bills that passed the Legislature this year and are sitting on Gov. Gavin Newsom's desk for his signature.

Assembly Bill 2015, authored by Assemblymember Buffy Wicks, D-Oakland, would require state and local agencies to study navigation apps, like Google Maps or Waze, and those apps’ impact on highways and roads.

Recent amendments to that bill reduced the geographic scope of the area studied, pulling back from language that would have required a statewide study of navigation apps and requiring only one area of the state to be studied.

The California Department of Transportation, the California Transportation Agency and local authorities would have to submit a report to the Legislature with the results of the study, according to a legislative analysis of the bill.

That bill passed the Legislature on Aug. 28 and as of Tuesday was waiting for the Democratic governor to sign it into law.

Another one of Wicks’ bills, Assembly Bill 2168, would expand the allowable uses of transportation funding to pay for transit projects like walkway and bike path projects. The funding targeted by the bill, referred to as Active Transportation Program funds, comes from both the federal government and state funds. That includes $100 million from the Road Maintenance and Rehabilitation Account, according to the California Transportation Commission.

“The key thing to know about the Active Transportation Program is that it is hugely oversubscribed,” Andrew Wright, communications director for CalBike, which supported the bill, told The Center Square. “So for every dollar that it dispenses, there’s $15 in application. With that being the case, as much as we try to get more funding into the [Active Transportation Program], it’s important that the dollars that are used are used sharper, smarter and stronger.”

Wicks did not respond to The Center Square before publication time on Thursday. An organization that supported the navigation app bill, Streets For All, did not make anyone available to comment on the bill. Google, the company that owns popular navigation apps Google Maps and Waze, did not respond to The Center Square before publication time on Thursday.

Republican politicians who previously voiced opposition to both Wicks’ bills were unavailable to comment for this story before press time on Thursday. However, in a press release issued in August, the Senate Republican Caucus pushed back against those bills, saying that money meant to be used to repair roads and highways would be siphoned off to pay for bike lanes and other transit projects.