Interview: Newsom ‘frustrated’ by local governments’ inaction on homelessness, behavioral health crises

As California grapples with the crises of homelessness and behavioral health, Governor Gavin Newsom says several local governments are not doing enough to help address these issues.

In a one-on-one interview with Nexstar, Newsom said he’s especially frustrated that some counties may hold off on implementing some reforms he signed off on, including allowing counties to designate a caretaker for people experiencing serious mental illness or substance abuse disorders and those deemed at risk of harming themselves.

Several counties say they do not have the resources to implement the law now.

The California State Association of Counties issued a statement in response to Newsom’s comments. The full statement is below the transcript of the interview.

The complete interview with Newsom is in the video player above. The text of the interview is below and has been edited for clarity.

Capitol Reporter Eytan Wallace: Let me ask right at the top, Mr. Governor, we heard you in that virtual press conference talking about behavioral health, talking about conservatorships, talking about CARE Court. You were frustrated as it pertains to local government here. What’s your message?

Gov. Gavin Newsom: Well, accountability. At the end of the day, localism is determinative. The state vision will be realized at the local level. It’s the responsibility of the counties to deliver when it comes to the issue of healthcare, when it comes to the issue of brain care, the issue of mental health, behavioral health, and so this state has provided unprecedented resources, and we’ve cleared the decks in terms of flexibility as well in zoning reforms, land use reforms and we want to see the results of these unprecedented investments.

Is it fair to say you’re frustrated with some local governments?

I’m frustrated by the lack of intentionality and urgency. People are dying on the streets and sidewalks. People have had it. I don’t think anything’s more frustrating than hearing from people like me (saying) ‘how much money we’re spending, how much money we’re throwing at the problem.’ They don’t see the results. Five years ago there was no homeless strategy coming from the state of California.

On the issue of behavioral health, we were barely making any real investments outside of the Mental Services Act itself. It really wasn’t an area of focus. So we’ve refocused and reprioritized this issue. But at the end of the day, it is the local government that has to deliver. Mayors are frustrated along with state leaders.

We have to see the counties lined up. A lot of them are doing good work, some are frankly scapegoating and still talking about the lack of resources when in fact that is no longer a valid excuse.

So are you prepared to name names? In other words, which counties are doing it right and which counties do you feel are doing it wrong?

….Literally, I’ve been an open hand, not a closed fist with the counties. They asked us, to reform the Medi-Cal system in the state of California. They said we need more behavioral health money, $11.6 billion this year. They said we need citing and zoning reform. We did seek reform. We did land use reform. We did streamlining reform. They said we need ongoing money to focus on the most chronic (homelessness). That’s why I’ve got an initiative on the ballot in March.

They said we need more housing. That’s why we have a bond on the ballot in March for 11,150 new units.

So in every instance what they’ve asked, we’ve delivered including conservatorship reform and what’s happened to this specific question is you have a lot of counties, Sacramento included, Santa Barbara, San Diego, Riverside County, that have now pulled out.

They’re saying we’re not going to touch it. We’re not going to move forward in January with conservatorship reform, even though the state cleared the decks. I signed the bill and they can go forward on January 1st, but they’re opting out of moving forward. That’s not acceptable.

In terms of what happens next… last year when you met with several local leaders…You withheld money. What are some consequences you are prepared to make for these counties?

We for the first time ever said, look, we’re not going to hand out a billion dollars a year to the city and counties unless there’s a plan.

We got the plans back, the first-year plans, and it was completely inadequate, and so I rejected the plans. There were about 100 people that descended on a meeting with me very upset, and we came back, we compromised, and they came back with more ambition and a better plan. That’s the approach I want to start taking on the behavioral side.

Look at the end. I think what people want to see, they spend a lot in taxes, they don’t understand the disconnect. They hear me all the time saying, ‘$15.3 billion, that’s our homeless plan,’ and then they walk down the street, they go to school, they walk over people on the street sidewalks and they don’t believe it or they get more angry, saying it’s just being wasted.

I get that frustration and so at the end of the day, I am not the mayor. I am not the supervisor. I’m not the city administrator of each of these counties. That’s not an excuse.

They have to deliver at the local level and my job is to partner with them and push them, and if they’re not doing the job, find someone that can and that’s the consequence.

We’ll do direct contracting. (If) you don’t want to get in this business, the state will do it for you. If you’re not producing results, we’ll redirect the money to counties and cities that are. And that’s the approach we’ll take next year.

You have said in the past that the buck stops with you. So let me ask, right here right now, does the buck stop with you?

Yeah, of course, it does, because no one will believe otherwise.

When I was mayor of San Francisco, I never looked at the state of California for support on the homeless issue or behavioral health. It wasn’t their responsibility, it wasn’t their role. That’s radically changed.

Now, the cities and counties can’t do it alone, and I recognize that. And that’s the job I took as governor of the state of California. And I’m here in partnership. But the partnership is two-way, it’s not one-way.

It’s not just the state, ‘do more, give more, be more,’ it’s also now accountability in terms of having a capacity to deliver on that promise in all counties in the state, recognizing each county’s different. They have different resources and different resourceful mindsets. Some have more investment, some have less. And I want flexibility. I want to see them have the kind of flexibility that they deserve.

But again, no more excuses. Don’t act like you don’t have the money or the capacity of support. You have more resources than ever and you have more support than ever, so it’s time to do your job.

I’m going to ask about Prop 1, a more than 6 billion-dollar bond measure for thousands of behavioral health beds, outpatient units. As you mentioned, the Newsom administration has spent billions of dollars so far on homelessness and housing, and the situation has not necessarily gotten better. So can you understand the frustration?

100 percent. 68,000 people we’ve gotten off the street. We’ve removed almost 6,000 encampments. Those are just state-sponsored efforts. That doesn’t include all the local efforts.

Again, not one program of significance and consequences five years ago, so absolutely, the answer is yes. I understand that frustration and that’s why we’re driving these subsequent reforms, focusing on the most chronic, focusing and prioritizing encampments with new encampment resolution grants of $750 million and we’re driving accountability.

If I don’t see results We’re going to redirect resources, we’re going to claw back.

And in terms of Prop 1, polls show it’s doing quite well. But can you look taxpayers in the eye and guarantee that Prop 1 will make a difference?

I know it’ll make a difference because it’s best practices. We know what works. We’re not replicating failure, we’re replicating success. And this program is the most significant and consequential program to realize a vision that’s been 50 years of being promoted to make it real, and that is to reconcile the fact that this state in the 60s had 22,000 locked beds. Then we started deinstitutionalizing folks from the state hospitals and we promised and promoted community alternatives, but we never funded them. This is the funding.

This links to that original vision and redresses the issue in a most honest and transparent way ever. I’m very proud of the details, not just the money, but how we’ve attached accountability and transparency and how we’ve required relationships to be formed between cities and counties. One single plan.

Now we focused on the essential, and that is what’s happening with the most chronic and focusing on housing now being linked to mental health which had been delinked in the previous initiative.

Can you understand a concern out there that putting more and investing more money, billions of dollars more will only lead to more of the same?

The opposite, opposite. We can pull all that money back and things can get much worse. We can send those 68,000 people we’ve gotten off the streets back out on the streets and sidewalks. We can shut all these programs down and get in complete denial that things are going to get better or we can work on what we can advance, what’s working and then we can start to pull back on things that aren’t working. I guess that’s the message today.

I’m with the taxpayers. I’m not interested in funding failure anymore. We’re done with waste and duplication.

You know, the biggest beneficiaries sometimes are the people delivering the services, not the folks that are supposed to be receiving them. At the same time, we don’t have a lot of people who even want to be in this business, so we also have to support that workforce.

We’re also investing unprecedented money to build and train and support our workers who also feel overwhelmed by this as well. But I’m not interested in sort of institutional failure or apathy in this space anymore.

I want to break through the cities and counties and some of the clay layers of bureaucracy and drive direct reforms and direct results. And there’s a reason this thing is overwhelmingly popular, Republicans, and Democrats get this issue and they also understand what’s at stake if we fall short and they also understand what’s at stake if we actually can deliver on this and finally fulfill a half century of promises that have been broken.

The independent Legislative Analyst Office projects the State is facing a $68 billion projected deficit. When you heard that number, what was your reaction?

We have different numbers and you’ll see them on January 10^th, and we’ve put unprecedented reserves in the state’s coffers and we’re prepared to meet that head on on January 10th. I’m working on the budget in real-time.

Are you prepared to dip into the reserves and are you prepared to make cuts?

We’re prepared. Look, this is the boom and bust that is California… $177.7 billion operating surplus over 2 fiscal years… and we’re now seeing some leveling out. It was an absurd surplus and this may seem like an absurd deficit.

When it all balances out, it’s around consistent with a lot of what I was saying in my January budget presentation last year and in my May (revised budget), none of this is shocking or surprising and that’s why it explains a lot of what we were doing in the last few years in terms of how we were managing and how we were investing in one-time programs not ongoing programs and how we made multi-year commitments that we can look to augment in a way that we don’t see will have a profound impact on delivering services in the state.

I’m not looking at tax increases. We’re looking at doing what you would do in your home, in your business, tightening our belts, reconciling some of this. But we also batten down the hatches in terms of a lot of reserves and a lot of areas in the budget last few years and we’re in a position to lay out a strategy of how we manage in the short run and the medium and long run in a way that again is unsurprising and pretty consistent with what you’ve heard in the past.

Final question, can you promise fiscal responsibility?

We promote it. We don’t just promise it, we also promote it and we’ve achieved it. We paid pension liabilities paid off our wall of debt have the highest reserves in our state’s history, and created a new social service safety net reserve. We have the highest reserves for our K through 12 education system we’ve ever had in our history. So we’ve been doing that and that prepares you for the boom and bust, which is California’s tax system.

Love it when you’re running massive surpluses, it allowed us to hand back close to $20 billion to the taxpayers. We just finished sending those checks out and we’ll manage it. We’ll get through it. None of this is easy, but it’s the nature of the volatility of a tax system that the voters continue to reinforce and prefer.

Response form the California State Association of Counties

The California State Association of Counties issued the following statement:

“Counties are leading on the state’s response to behavioral health and homelessness but cannot do it alone. We appreciate Gov. Newsom’s deep commitment to addressing the issue of behavioral health. Over the last year, counties have brought his CARE Court to life, taking the initiative from words on a page to a real program getting people in the door. Eight counties are already implementing the program and serving as a roadmap for the remaining counties that are continuing to build their systems.

Senate Bill 43 is the first substantial change to conservatorship law in nearly 60 years. The Legislature recognized the complexity of the expansion by giving counties until January 1, 2026, to implement. Counties have answered this urgency by immediately consulting with hospitals, law enforcement officials, county behavioral health professionals and their communities to identify the infrastructure capacity, staffing, training, and other needs to make the law successful.

These steps are critically needed to ensure Senate Bill 43 accomplishes its goal of addressing the crises of mental health and homelessness. Counties continue to lead with purpose on behavioral health and homelessness, advocating for a comprehensive system with clear responsibilities aligned to resources for all levels of government. Implementation of Senate Bill 43 and other programs like CARE Court will only be successful with an ongoing commitment of funding, investment in infrastructure, and the siting of facilities by our city partners.”

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