![\"Former](\"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-content\/uploads\/2026\/07\/SAC_671_HA_241202_Senate.JPG\" "\\"Former")
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Former Senate President pro Tems John Burton, left, and Darrell Steinberg attend the ceremony to swear in members of the California Senate at the start of the 2024 session at the state Capitol. Steinberg now works for California Forever, the proposed new city in Solano County.<\/p>\n
Hector Amezcua<\/p>\n
Sacramento Bee file<\/p>\n
There is a time-honored tradition in Sacramento known as the \u201crevolving door,\u201d referring to the time when former lawmakers smoothly transition from writing public policy to cashing checks from the very industries they once regulated. Usually, it\u2019s done with enough subtlety to avoid blinding flashes of hypocrisy. But sometimes, a political pivot is so contradictory it demands a closer look.<\/p>\n
Welcome to the discussion, former Senate President Pro Tem and Sacramento Mayor Darrell Steinberg.<\/p>\n
According to recent reporting by<\/a> CalMatters<\/a>, Steinberg has joined the payroll of California Forever<\/a>, the tech billionaire-backed venture aiming to build a massive, master planned city from scratch on tens of thousands of acres of agricultural land in Solano County.<\/p>\n To be clear, this isn\u2019t a commentary on the merits of California Forever or its newly proposed Solano Shipyard<\/a>. Reasonable people can disagree on how to solve California\u2019s housing crisis. Maybe building a new metropolis on raw land is a visionary solution to our staggering housing shortage and manufacturing needs; maybe it\u2019s a Silicon Valley pipe dream. That is for local and state entities to decide.<\/p>\n What is afoot with California Forever is a profound and comical elasticity of political principles \u2014 or the complete lack thereof.<\/p>\n For anyone with a memory that stretches back to 2008, Steinberg\u2019s alignment with California Forever is nothing short of jaw-dropping. The former Sacramento mayor\u2019s crowning ideological achievement during his years as a powerful leader in the Legislature was Senate Bill 375<\/a>, widely hailed as California\u2019s landmark anti-sprawl law.<\/p>\n SB 375 was designed to do one primary thing: force regional planners to curb greenhouse gas emissions by stopping \u201curban sprawl.\u201d The legislation did so by forcing the creation of strategies to reduce these emissions by building the right projects in the right places. It championed the philosophy of \u201csmart growth\u201d and infill development.<\/p>\n The sermon from Steinberg and environmentalists at the time was clear: California must stop a lopsided housing strategy that emphasized carving up its pristine agricultural lands and open spaces to build isolated, commuter-heavy developments. We were told the future belonged to density within existing city footprints.<\/p>\n Now, however, the father of California\u2019s anti-sprawl framework has been hired to help California Forever bypass local roadblocks so they can build a massive new urban footprint on 70,000 acres of Solano County farmland.<\/p>\n The irony deepens when you look at the legislative tool kit Steinberg is using to advance his clients\u2019 interests. In 2013, Steinberg authored Senate Bill 743<\/a>, which allowed the state to fast-track environmental litigation for \u201cEnvironmental Leadership Development Projects.\u201d It was a tool meant to accelerate high density, transit-oriented urban projects<\/a>.<\/p>\n Now, Steinberg is lobbying Sacramento to use that exact \u201cenvironmental leadership\u201d designation to fast-track California Forever\u2019s industrial shipyard proposal.<\/p>\n During his tenure as mayor, Steinberg fiercely defended local control and the authority of city hall. He never would have tolerated outside billionaires going over his head to strip him of his decision-making power. Yet here he is, acting as the wrecking ball against local governance for another municipality.<\/p>\n When a statesman spends decades building a legacy based on a specific set of land use principles only to pivot to deploy his insider knowledge to help wealthy speculators dismantle those exact principles, we are left with only one logical conclusion: It\u2019s not about a sudden change of heart regarding urban planning, it\u2019s about the money.<\/p>\n Apparently, in Sacramento, the price for consistency is negotiable.<\/p>\n Matt Rexroad is an attorney, political consultant and certified fraud examiner.<\/p>\n Related Stories from Sacramento Bee<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Former Senate President pro Tems John Burton, left, and Darrell Steinberg attend the ceremony to swear in members…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":394610,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[6],"tags":[7,9,8],"class_list":["post-394609","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-california","tag-california","tag-california-headlines","tag-california-news"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/394609","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=394609"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/394609\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/394610"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=394609"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=394609"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=394609"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}