PRIORITIES • Lower Cost of Living • Policy to
Cut the Red Tape
So We Can Build More Homes and Open More Businesses
Why I believe this — and how I’ll fight for it.
Two of the most powerful things an ordinary person can do — build a home and open a business — have been made needlessly, punishingly hard. It’s not an accident. Most of these rules started with good intentions, but the moment you regulate an industry, the biggest players in it move in to shape the fine print — they’re the only ones who can afford the lobbyists, lawyers, and compliance teams it takes. For them, it’s a double win. The rules become a moat: small builders and small-business owners drown in the cost and paperwork, while the giant absorbs it without blinking — and gets to look responsible for “accepting” regulation on top of it. Great PR, at a price only it can easily pay, and one less competitor to worry about. We told ourselves we were reining in big business. We handed it a weapon against everyone smaller.
Nowhere is it worse than in California — and I’ll say plainly what most in my own party won’t: Democrats went too far. And it isn’t only overreach; it’s who the establishment answers to. When your politicians are bought out by industry lobbyists, you get exactly the rules those industries want — rules that sound tough but mostly wall off the little guy. It finally got so indefensible that in 2025 my own party started rolling back the environmental-review law it had defended for decades, because it had become a tool to tie up housing for years. That’s a real start, and I’ll give credit for it — but a first step isn’t a finish line. I’ve watched this up close — my wife is an architect and designer who builds homes, and I’ve co-owned her small design practice — and I’ve seen red tape that protects no one add months and thousands of dollars to work that should be simple.
We can fix this without giving up a single protection that actually matters. Cut the red tape the giants built to keep you out, and two things happen: families can build and buy homes again, and regular people can open the businesses that make a community thrive — all without spending a public dime.
Here’s what I’ll do — and why
Cut the red tape strangling local builders and small businesses. The people who build in our communities — and the people who open the shops, restaurants, and small firms in them — get hit hardest. Permitting delays, duplicate reviews, and fees that stack up before the first wall goes up or the first door opens, all landing on the price you eventually pay. I’ll fight to clear those bottlenecks: hard deadlines on approvals so a project or a permit can’t sit in limbo for years, an end to duplicate reviews that add time but not safety, and lower fees for the local builders and small businesses actually creating homes and jobs. Faster and cheaper means more homes, more businesses, and profits that stay in our communities — instead of flowing only to the national chains big enough to wait out the delays.
Modernize permitting — approve the routine stuff instantly. So much of what stops people isn’t complicated; it’s routine work stuck behind months of waiting and thousands in fees. For standard, low-risk projects — a home addition, a storefront build-out, opening a small shop — I’d move to automated, by-right permitting: you go online, certify that your plans meet code, and you’re cleared to start. Inspectors still check the work on the back end, and if you cut corners, the penalties are real. We keep the safety and lose the standstill — trust people to follow the rules, verify that they did, and come down hard on the ones who don’t, instead of making everyone wait years for permission to do something simple.
Reward the places that cut red tape — using the power of the federal government. Most of these rules are local, so a big part of this fight is using the weight of their federal representative to move them. Washington sends billions to states and cities every year, and I’d tie more of it to results — reward the communities that legalize more housing, shorten permitting, and make it easier to open a business, and stop rewarding the ones that block it at every turn. I’d cut the federal red tape we control directly, too. And I’ll be a loud, relentless voice telling Sacramento to keep going where it started in 2025 — because our families and our small businesses can’t afford another decade of “studying” the problem.
And it costs nothing. This is the rare fix that’s free. Cutting red tape doesn’t take a new program or a new dollar — it takes the courage to admit what isn’t working, and to stand up to the industries that profit from keeping the little guy locked out. More homes, more small businesses, lower costs, no new spending. The only thing it costs is the comfort of the giants who wrote the rules.
What this means for Our District
From Petaluma to Yuba City, this district is full of people who could build a home, add a unit, or open a business tomorrow if the system got out of their way. Instead they wait, and pay, and too often give up — while everything keeps getting more expensive. The big players can afford the delay and the lawyers; your neighbor with a small crew, or a dream of opening a shop, cannot.
You will never get leaders who cut this red tape as long as they’re bought out by the industry lobbyists who profit from keeping it. It always comes back to the same fight — we need representatives corporate America doesn’t own. I take no corporate PAC money, no special interest money, and no foreign money, so I can say the unpopular thing and mean it: we buried our own builders and small businesses in red tape to protect the biggest players, and I’m going to help dig everyone else out.
The bottom line
We can protect what actually matters — clean air, safe homes, honest business — without a system so tangled that only the giants can afford to get through it. That balance is within reach. So let’s cut the red tape the powerful built to keep you out, and make it easy again to build a home and open a business from Petaluma to Yuba City. That’s how an ordinary family gets ahead — and how a community comes back to life.
SOURCES
California’s 2025 CEQA reform (AB 130 & SB 131, signed June 30, 2025 — infill-housing exemptions and 30-day approval deadlines): Office of Governor Gavin Newsom — “Governor Newsom signs into law groundbreaking reforms to build more housing, boost affordability”