San Diego Union-Tribune: On gas prices, Villaraigosa’s candor is just what the state needs
By UT Editorial Board
Two Democratic candidates for governor raised eyebrows this week by breaking with party orthodoxy on who’s to blame for the cost of gasoline.
San Jose Mayor Matt Mahan got more headlines when he urged the state to suspend California’s highest-in-the-nation gas tax of 61 cents per gallon, either until the end of the war with Iran or “as long as gas prices are over $5 a gallon.”
But former Los Angeles Mayor Antonio Villaraigosa offered a far more sweeping critique of how the state is run. He noted environmental regulations that push up the cost of living are regularly passed by the California Air Resources Board without regard for the millions of residents who live paycheck to paycheck.
“We can no longer allow bureaucrats who live in a bubble — with no accountability for the harm they are causing our economy and our people — to have so much power over the lives of every Californian,” Villaraigosa said in urging an “immediate moratorium” on regulations that limit the amount of gasoline that state refineries can produce and add to the Golden State’s affordability crisis.
But it’s not just bureaucrats who should be targeted. It’s all the lawmakers who have long pushed the fake narrative that the main reason gas prices are so high in California is because of “gouging” by evil oil companies — not because the state has the highest gas tax and the costliest energy regulations. This narrative is why Gov. Gavin Newsom issued a “fact-check memo” in June 2025 that ridiculed what he framed as a partisan campaign to link state policies with the high price of gas.
Less than two months later, however, the governor explicitly linked state policies to the high price of gas. The Newsom-dominated California Energy Commission voted to delay for five years the implementation of a “profit cap” on state refineries as part of an effort to prevent refineries from shutting down due to new regulations. And in September, he signed legislation to permit 2,000 new oil wells in Kern County — a shocking reversal given that in all of 2024, California only permitted 73 new wells in the entire state.
Cottie Petrie-Norris, who chairs the Assembly Utilities and Energy Committee, is right to say that the public wants not just affordable gas but clean air and safe roads. “We’ve got to be honest with Californians about trade-offs so that we can have real conversations,” the Irvine Democrat told the Los Angeles Times. But such honesty is impossible when the gap between the governor’s energy blame game and his recent record is so profound.