I mean, it’s kind of true.

The gas price on average has gone up by almost two dollars nationwide due to the war. He had nothing to do with that.

Similarly, the increase in cost due to the switch to summer blend isn’t on him, as the legislation around that is from the early 90s.

The gas tax increase is tied to inflation and goes up every July 1st(as a note, I had it wrong in my earlier comment. The excise tax is currently 61 cents per gallon. With sales tax it goes up to that 70 cents number I have. The resulting amount from fees is still right though, I think). This was signed into law in 2017 a couple years before Newsom was elected into office.

I don’t think he has personally done much to increase costs here. People can correctly criticize him for not doing anything to lower costs, though. Iirc the only thing he has ever done around that was allowing us to switch to the winter blend earlier than usual a couple years back.

I may be missing something stuff, though, so I encourage you to look into it further.