California is the land of expensive, useless bureaucracies, which Democrats allow to do nothing but impose more regulations on Californians.In 2023, California created a fast-food council to micromanage fast-food restaurants from wages to working conditions. The council, the first of its kind in the United States, exists to justify California’s fast-food minimum wage hike, which jumped to $20 an hour, and the council has the ability to increase over the coming years. By now, you know how this went: Fast-food restaurants shut down, cut jobs, cut worker hours, raised prices, or did some combination of those things.
More notably, though, the council that is required to meet at least twice a year does not really exist. The last subcommittee meeting for the council took place in February 2025. It has now been over a year since the council has done anything, and even then, it could not be bothered to gather all nine members. Gov. Gavin Newsom (D-CA) plucked the council’s chairman for a different state appointment after that last subcommittee meeting, and it hasn’t gathered since.
Despite this, the council was still allocated $1.1 million from the state budget.
This is not a call for Newsom to appoint someone to chair the committee, though it is noteworthy that he can’t even be bothered to do something as simple as that. If a council of bureaucrats can exist and not actually do anything for a span of 15 months (and counting), then what is it actually accomplishing? If a group of nine people cannot meet, as is required by state law, why are they receiving millions in taxpayer dollars? Why does this council even exist?
