Governor Newsom is hitting back at critics who say his evasive answers about a reparations task force’s proposal to hand out billions of dollars to Black residents in California signal a lack of support even as the Golden State prepares for its most difficult fiscal challenge since the Great Recession. 

The California Reparations Task Force approved a tentative plan on May 6 that would cost the state as much as $640 billion — more than double the size of Mr. Newsom’s proposed $297 billion state budget for 2023. 

Mr. Newsom’s lukewarm reaction to the plan was notable, as he often makes national headlines for his opinions on abortion, healthcare, climate change, and other issues. Much attention was paid to his statement that addressing the legacy of slavery was about “much more than cash payments,” which led many to believe he was backing away from the reparations plan.

After press outlets reported that he declined to explicitly endorse cash payments, Mr. Newsom’s office decried the “sensationalized framing” that suggested he was not supportive of a cash payment plan. “The Governor looks forward to reviewing the final report — and all recommendations — when complete,” his office said in a statement to the Sacramento Bee. 

That price tag is especially concerning, as California faces a dismal fiscal picture for the year ahead. Mr. Newsom’s administration recently announced that the state would see a budget shortfall of $32 billion next year — the largest deficit for California since 2009. 

In January, budget projections had the deficit sitting at just more than $22 billion, meaning the deficit outlook has increased by nearly 50 percent in just four months. 

Mr. Newsom has proposed some solutions to closing the budget gap, all of which are likely to upset his liberal base. He is now calling for nearly $10 billion in cuts to the state’s climate mitigation goals, as well as reneging on his promise to offer tax rebates to help residents pay utility bills. 

The minority leader of the California assembly, Assemblyman James Gallagher, tells the Sun that Mr. Newsom has backed himself into a corner — either sign legislation that could lead to financial ruin for the state or reject the proposal and anger his own ideological base. 

“The governor doesn’t like to put himself in embarrassing situations,” Mr. Gallagher says. “He likes to focus on other things, so I think he would like to do anything other than talk about this.”

Under the task force’s proposal, any Black person who lived in California between 1970 and 2020 would be entitled to $2,352 a year as recompense for alleged police brutality against Black people. Should a citizen claim 50 years of residency, that person would be entitled to $115,260. 

The proposal would also award reparations to those affected by “redlining” by banks between the early 1930s and late 1970s — the practice of using the banking system to keep Black people out of certain neighborhoods. Those residents would be entitled to $3,366 a year and could total as much as $148,099 a person.     

While California itself entered the union as a free state in 1850 and never allowed slavery, the state supreme court did mandate the enforcement of the Fugitive Slave Act, forcing residents to turn over escaped slaves to the authorities so they would be sent back to their white owners. 

The reparations proposal says that for this and other injustices, the state of California is guilty of aiding and abetting disenfranchisement and white supremacy. “By participating in these horrors, California further perpetuated the harms African Americans faced, imbuing racial prejudice throughout society through segregation, public and private discrimination, and unequal disbursal of state and federal funding,” the document states.

A 2022 poll from the Pew Research Center found that nearly 70 percent of Americans oppose paying reparations to the descendants of slaves, but more than 60 percent of Democrats and 80 percent of Blacks support reparations as a concept. 

In March, a polling expert with the University of Massachusetts Amherst, Tatishe Nteta, told National Public Radio that the overwhelming number of Americans oppose reparations for two major reasons: the first being that many people feel that Black Americans are treated equally today, and the second being that those who were never slaves do not deserve reparations.