California takes on oil companies over high prices with new law

By Staff

Bill stiffening penalties for fentanyl dealers stalls in committee

By City News Service

Abipartisan bill sponsored by Southland state senators aimed at cracking down on fentanyl dealers whose customers die stalled in a state Senate committee Tuesday.

Senate Bill 44, also known as Alexandra's Law, was sponsored by state Sen. Tom Umberg, D-Santa Ana, and state Sen. Rosilicie Ochoa Bogh, R-Redlands, and has also drawn the support of San Diego Mayor Todd Gloria and San Francisco District Attorney Brooke Jenkins. The denial in the public safety committee came as Orange County Supervisors and Orange County District Attorney Todd Spitzer voiced support for it at Tuesday's board meeting.

The bill seeks to provide fentanyl dealers with a warning that if they get caught dealing again and one of their customers dies they could face an upgrade in punishment from manslaughter to second-degree murder. It has been compared to the so-called Watson Advisement given to drunk drivers.

Following record gas prices in 2022, Gov. Gavin Newsom on Tuesday signed legislation that gives state regulators the power to penalize big oil companies for price gouging.

Authored by Senator Nancy Skinner, D-Berkeley, co-sponsored by Attorney General Rob Bonta and approved by a supermajority in both the Senate and Assembly, SBx1-2 creates an independent watchdog division within the California Energy Commission staffed by market experts, economists and investigators tasked with analyzing the petroleum market to identify industry abuses. The division will have subpoena power and can refer violations to the attorney general for possible prosecution. The California Energy Commis- sion is also authorized to impose a price gouging penalty on refiners based on the work of this division.

The law will go into effect on June 26.

“With this legislation, we’re ending the oil industry’s days of operating in the shadows. California took on Big Oil and won,” said Newsom at a press conference surrounded by legislators and community leaders at the State Capitol Tuesday. “We’re not only protecting families, we’re also loosening the vice grip Big Oil has had on our politics for the last 100 years.”

Initially, Newsom proposed penalizing refiners with excess profits to fund rebates for consumers but that idea was scrapped due to fears over how it might affect supply. According to

CalMatters, “Even Democratic allies feared that, without more information, they might unintentionally create a disincentive for gasoline production, further constraining supply and leading to even higher costs for drivers.”

Last year, gas prices in California reached upwards of $6.42 per gallon, $2.61 more than the national average. According to the governor’s office, the majority of those increases “went straight to Big Oil’s bottom line — leaving them with a record $200 billion in profits for the yea

“For too long, Californians have been left in the dark when it comes to the practices of the gas industry,” said Bonta. “And while oil companies have been lining their pockets, many Califor- nians are struggling to make ends meet.”

In a statement last October, the Western States Petroleum Association blamed high gas prices on supply shortage caused by what the group claims is “a lack of investment in refining capacity and necessary infrastructure.”

As California tries to reach its goal of carbon neutrality by 2045, the state aims to reduce “fossil fuel demand by 86% within that time frame,” according to the Associated Press. Furthermore, in 2020, the governor signed an executive order requiring sales of all new passenger vehicles to be zero-emission by 2035 and last August the California Air Resources Board approved a roadmap to have all new cars sold in the state to be zero-emission vehicles.

Matt Capelouto, the father of Alexandra Capelouto, who the bill was named after, slammed the lawmakers at a news conference in Sacramento. His 20-year-old daughter died in December 2019 when she thought she was buying the prescription painkiller Percocet, but the drug turned out to be fentanyl-laced Oxycodone and she died while home in Temecula on a break from college. The dealer, Brandon Michael McDowell, has been sentenced to nine years in federal prison.

"I'm appalled to be standing here once again expressing disagreement with a decision of the public safety committee (that) refuses, absolutely refuses, to do anything about the epidemic ripping our communities apart," Matt Capelouto said. "The first time I was stunned. The second time I was angry."

Capelouto, who has led a national campaign to raise awareness of the dangers of fentanyl, said he and other advocates "went back to work on it," and this time around earned the support of 41 co-sponsors.

"Over half the senate endorsed this measure," Capelouto said. "We bent, we adjusted, to clear all of the hurdles and concerns this committee could have had with it."

But the lawmakers "once again stopped a bill that would absolutely save the lives of Californians and protect our most vulnerable," he said.

"They quibble about words and phrases and worry about how fair or unfair it might be to drug dealers. And while they do so people keep dying," Capelouto added. "I am not here because I want revenge. My daughter was

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