SACRAMENTO, CA (MPG) - Governor Newsom is rolling out an executive order to ease California’s supply chain gridlock that’s driving up prices, threatening the availability of goods for holiday shoppers and may have even been behind the recent Orange County oil spill. 
 
It’s filled with big, bold steps to provide immediate relief like continuing to coordinate with a federal task force and thinking about how we can spend money nine months from now.

While those certainly sound impressive, there are a couple other things Democrats can do to ease the backlog in our ports: 

1. Repeal AB 5. By threatening trucking companies with millions of dollars in penalties (applied retroactively) for working with contractors to increase capacity, AB 5 has discouraged the flexibility we need in the supply chain. 

2. Allow state funding for port automation. The labor shortage is slowing operations throughout the supply chain, making it hard to move goods 24/7 like we need. Democrats didn’t help the situation when they banned state funding for automated cargo handling equipment. Sadly, there are 50,000 reasons the governor might not go for this one. 

Bottom line: We’re never going to get out of the supply chain crisis if Democrats stick with half measures that prioritize their special interest friends over real solutions. And that’s bad news for everyone.