SACRAMENTO: California lawmakers passed just one part of a three-bill package addressing reparations for slavery and racism in the waning days of their state house session, amid reports the governor had raised concerns.

Dozens of demonstrators arrived to support the measures proposed by Senator Steven Bradford on Saturday, the last day of the State Assembly session. The bills were moved to the inactive file shortly before the session ended.

Earlier last week, a bill on land restitution that is part of the package passed 56-0. It was unclear how that measure could be implemented without the other two one creating a fund and the third an agency to determine matters such as who would be eligible for reparations.

The `Sacramento Bee` quoted sources as saying that Governor Gavin Newsoms administration proposed dropping the implementing agency but setting aside $6 million for university researchers to study reparations and recommend a way to determine eligibility.

The changes would have removed the substance of what we were trying to do, Bradford, a Democrat, said, adding that the administration had expressed fiscal concerns.

Newsom, a Democrat who has expressed support for reparations legislation broadly, in July set aside $12 million for reparations initiatives. A recent government analysis projected the cost of the agency Bradford proposed to be between $3 million and $5 million.

The agency Bradford proposed would have been in charge of implementing the recommendations of the California Reparations Task Force, which spent two years studying the state`s history of slavery and subsequent decades of racial violence, political disenfranchisement and racially exclusionary legislation.-Reuters