The question, typically posed with New York condescension, fails to recognize the obvious reality that L.A. is a city of actors. True, most of them are here to make their names on-screen, but the talent pool rivals those of more established theater capitals. Don’t bother, however, trying to convince those denizens of New York and London who cling to old stereotypes of L.A., perhaps to compensate for their own inferior weather.
Southern California, of course, boasts some of the most prestigious playhouses in the country. The Mark Taper Forum, Pasadena Playhouse, South Coast Repertory, La Jolla Playhouse and the Old Globe are all recipients of the Regional Theatre Tony Award. The Geffen Playhouse, once considered the entertainment industry’s local theater, has entered a new era of bold vision and integrity under the leadership of playwright Tarell Alvin McCraney. It would surprise no one if the Geffen Playhouse is similarly honored in the next few years.
East West Players, the Latino Theater Company, Ebony Repertory Theatre and Native Voices at the Autry reflect the cultural, ethnic and racial diversity of a majority-minority city. The avant-garde is admittedly not L.A.’s strong suit, but REDCAT and CAP UCLA have filled the breach hosting interdisciplinary performance work from all over the world.
The Getty Villa’s annual outdoor classical theater production treats the canonical treasures of ancient Greece and Rome not with kid gloves but with an exploratory 21st century spirit. And A Noise Within has cultivated in its loyal audience an understanding that the classical repertory exists in the present tense and can speak directly to us today.
The stage is still the basis for acting training, and there comes a time when even the most successful film and TV actors want to return to their roots. Those with civic consciences are happy to tread the boards close to home. When Tom Hanks chose to play Falstaff in Shakespeare Center of Los Angeles’ production “Henry IV,” he did so at an outdoor venue, the Japanese Garden on the West Los Angeles VA campus, that was only a short commute from his own backyard. Annette Bening, a stalwart champion of L.A. theater, has notably performed at the Mark Taper Forum, the Geffen Playhouse and UCLA’s Freud Playhouse.
Beyond the A-listers, there’s a vast population of working actors hungry for opportunities to hone their craft. It’s to satisfy this need that L.A. has built up an extensive array of small, shoestring companies. This scene is decentralized, dispersed within an uncoordinated sprawl of regional fiefdoms, but the independent spirit has endowed many of these companies with astonishing capacities for survival.
Indeed, it’s this network of 99-seat theaters — those houses with 99 seats or fewer — that are the lifeblood of the local theater scene. The cultural landscape would be unimaginable without Rogue Machine Theatre, the Fountain Theatre, Echo Theater Company and Boston Court Pasadena. The resilience, imagination and integrity of these small companies have demonstrated that heart matters more than size.
L.A. is indisputably a theater town, but a theater town that operates by its own rules and urban logic, neither of which is easy for an outsider to crack. What follows is a curated list of some of the most essential venues in the city and surrounding region. Not meant to be comprehensive, this compilation tilts toward companies that have been active in recent seasons and have a dedicated home. Nomadic ensembles and those that have been dormant or less prominent in the post-pandemic recovery phase have been excluded from this selection. But the ecology of L.A. theater is ever-changing and ever-adapting, calling for updates and new classifications. Stay tuned for future lists and supplemental guides.
The Exxon gas station on Capitol Hill in Washington, DC, in 2006. Exxon Mobil has sued the State of California in federal court challenging a pair of laws that require the oil giant to report climate emissions data tied to its products, worldwide. File photo by Kamenko Pajic/UPI | License Photo
Oct. 26 (UPI) — Petroleum giant Exxon Mobil has filed a federal lawsuit challenging a pair of California laws that would require the company to report greenhouse gas emissions tied to the worldwide use of its products.
The complaint, Filed in U.S. District Court for the Eastern District of California, argues that the California statutes violate the company’s free speech rights by compelling it to “trumpet California’s preferred message even though Exxon Mobil believes the speech is misleading and misguided.”
Calif. SB 253, known as the Climate Corporate Data Act, requires the state’s Air Resources Board to adopt regulations that mandate private companies with more than $1billion in annual revenue to disclose their greenhouse gas emissions, indirect emissions, such as the electricity purchased by the company and emissions from the company’s supply chain, including water, water usage, business travel and employee commutes. The indirect emissions account for about two-thirds of a company’s greenhouse gas emissions.
The legislation does not require Exxon to change anything about its production process or limit what consumers can use, only that the company provide data on its emissions.
Michael Gerrard, a climate change researcher at Columbia University, said the oil giant has a long history of resisting making such information public, and said the suit reflects “Exxon’s pattern of aggressively pushing back” on any climate change-related regulation.
Supporters of the law say it discourages “corporate greenwashing,” such as marketing efforts that falsely depict a company’s efforts to reduce climate-warming emissions.
“We need the full picture to make the deep emissions cuts that scientists tell us are necessary to avert the world’s impacts of climate change,” said Sen. Scott Wiener, D-San Francisco, the bill’s author.
In its lawsuit, Exxon said SB 253 and a companion measure, SB 261, would require the company to “engage in granular conjecture about unknowable future developments and to publicly disseminate that speculation on its website.”
SB 261 requires companies with revenue in excess of $500 million to disclose their climate-related financial risks.
U.S. Transportation Secretary Sean Duffy warned Sunday that he’s about to make good on a threat to revoke millions in federal funds for California because he says the state is illegally issuing commercial driver’s licenses to noncitizens.
In an appearance on Fox News Channel’s “Sunday Morning Futures” Duffy said California Gov. Gavin Newsom has refused to comply with U.S. Department of Transportation rules that require the state to stop issuing such licenses and review those already issued.
“So, one, I’m about to pull $160 million from California,” Duffy said. “And, as we pull more money, we also have the option of pulling California’s ability to issue commercial driver’s licenses.”
Newsom’s press office did not immediately respond to an email seeking comment on the matter Sunday, but California has defended its practices previously. When Duffy threatened to revoke funds last month, a spokesperson for the governor dismissed the attack and noted that commercial license holders from California have a significantly lower rate of crashes than the national average and the Texas average, which is the only state with more licensed commercial drivers.
Last month, the Transportation Department tightened commercial driver’s license requirements for noncitizens after three fatal crashes that officials said were caused by immigrant truck drivers. Only three specific classes of visa holders will be eligible for CDLs under the new rules and states must verify an applicant’s immigration status in a federal database. The licenses will be valid for up to one year unless the applicant’s visa expires sooner.
Duffy said last month that California should never have issued 25% of 145 licenses investigators reviewed. He cited four California licenses that remained valid after the driver’s work permit expired — sometimes years after. The state had 30 days to come up with a plan to comply or lose funding.
A nationwide commercial driver’s license audit began after officials say a driver in the country illegally made a U-turn and caused a crash in Florida that killed three people. The audit found licenses that were issued improperly in California, Colorado, Pennsylvania, South Dakota, Texas and Washington.
Duffy said Sunday that California has unlawfully issued tens of thousands of these licenses to noncitizens.
“So you have 60,000 people on the roads who shouldn’t have licenses,” Duffy said. “They’re driving fuel tankers, they’re driving school buses, and we have seen some of the crashes on American roadways that come from these people who shouldn’t have these licenses.”
Duffy said earlier this month that he would withhold $40 million from California because it is the only state that is failing to enforce English language requirements for truckers. California defended its practices in a formal response to the Transportation Department, but federal officials were not satisfied.
The investigation launched after the Florida crash found what Duffy called significant failures in the way California is enforcing rules that took effect in June after one of President Trump’s executive orders. California had issued the driver a commercial license, but these English rules predate the crash.
Oct. 26 (UPI) — California Gov. Gavin Newsom confirmed Sunday that he is considering a bid for the 2028 Democratic presidential nomination.
Newsom, among President Donald Trump‘s most strident critics, said during an interview that aired on “CBS News Sunday Morning,” that he is likely to make his decision following the 2026 midterm elections.
Newsom’s current term expires in January 2027, and term limits prevent him from seeking another term as governor, which would clear the way for him to seek the presidential nomination.
“Fate will determine that,” Newsom continued, when asked about his plans to seek his party’s presidential nomination.
Newsom, 58, has made repeated trips to politically sensitive battleground states, including a visit in July to South Carolina, which is currently scheduled to hold the nation’s first 2028 presidential primary.
He met with party leaders and shook hands in local coffee shops, grass roots style, and even went behind the counter to serve espresso to customers, typical of would-be candidates measuring sentiment among likely voters even years before a key election.
“I happen to, and thank God, I’m in the right business,” he said during the interview when discussing his South Carolina trip. “I love people. I actually love people.”
Newsom said he is currently focused on promoting Proposition 50, a California ballot initiative that would allow Democrats in the state to temporarily redraw congressional district boundary lines, which would make them more favorable to his party.
The fate of the measure is scheduled to be decided in a special election this week.
Supporters have said the proposition is in response to efforts by states such as Texas, which has pushed to change district maps to be more favorable to GOP candidates, and increasing their odds of holding on to their slim majorities in the U.S. House.
Harris, a longtime politician whose ties run deep in progressive California politics, said in an interview with the BBC that she has more to offer.
“I am not done,” Harris said. “I have lived my entire career as a life of service and it’s in my bones.”
Former Chicago Mayor Rahm Emanuel, who was the Biden administration’s ambassador to Japan, reportedly is also considering a run for the Democratic nomination.
In a sign of California’s rising status as a major hub of Democratic politics, Gov. Gavin Newsom said Sunday he’s considering a run for president in 2028 — just a day after former U.S. Vice President Kamala Harris made the same pronouncement.
Newsom, a Democrat who has won national prominence this year pitching himself a leader of the resistance to President Trump, admitted for the first time publicly that he is seriously weighing a 2028 presidential run.
In an interview with “CBS News Sunday Morning,” Newsom was asked whether he would give “serious thought” after the 2026 midterms to a White House bid.
“Yeah, I’d be lying otherwise,” Newsom replied. “I’d just be lying. And I’m not — I can’t do that.”
Harris said this weekend in an interview with the BBC that she expects a woman will be president in the coming year. “Possibly,” she said, it could be her.
“I am not done,” she said. “I have lived my entire career as a life of service and it’s in my bones.”
It’s still more than three years until the November 2028 election, and entirely possible only one or neither of the two California politicians could throw their hat in the race.
But the early willingness of Newsom and Harris to publicly consider a White House bid shows that the Golden State is still a major hub of Democratic politics. It also sets up a potential 2028 political showdown between two of California’s weightiest political figureheads.
For years, Newsom has denied presidential ambitions. But since Trump defeated Harris in the November 2024 election, the California governor has emerged as a vocal critic of the Trump administration’s agenda.
Under Newsom’s leadership, California has filed dozens of lawsuits against Trump — most noticeably against the Trump administration’ deployment of National Guard and Marines to Los Angeles. The governor has also become more aggressive on social media, taking to X to taunt and troll Trump.
Still, Newsom, whose term ends in January 2027 and who cannot run again for governor because of term limits, cautioned that he is not rushing into a 2028 presidential campaign.
“I have no idea,” Newsom said Sunday of whether he will actually decide to run.
After Trump defeated Harris in November, Harris was viewed as a possible candidate for California governor. But in July she announced that, after “serious thought” she would not run for the top California office.
“For now, my leadership — and public service — will not be in elected office,” Harris said in a statement. “I look forward to getting back out and listening to the American people, helping elect Democrats across the nation who will fight fearlessly, and sharing more details in the months ahead about my own plans.”
Newsom’s interest in the White House raises the stakes for passing Proposition 50, a California ballot measure he has pushed — in response to a similar initiative in Texas — that would allow state Democrats to temporarily change the boundaries of U.S. House maps so that they are more favorable to Democrats. California voters will vote on Prop 50 in a special election next week.
Newsom has cast his effort as a response to Trump’s push to redraw maps in Republican-controlled states to make them more favorable to the GOP.
“I think it’s about our democracy,” Newsom said in the CBS interview. “It’s about the future of this republic. I think it’s about, you know, what the founding fathers lived and died for, this notion of the rule of law, and not the rule of Don.”
If Newsom is successful and Proposition 50 passes, the move could potentially help future Democratic candidates for the White House.
But either way, both Newsom and Harris would face high hurdles in battleground states if they ran for president.
Just being a Californian is a liability, some argue, at a time when Republicans depict the state as a bastion of woke ideas, high taxes and crime.
While California boasts the world’s fifth-largest economy and is home to the massive tech powerhouse of Silicon Valley and the cultural epicenter of Hollywood, it has struggled in recent years with high housing costs and massive income inequality. In September, a study found California tied with Louisiana for the nation’s highest poverty rate.
Newsom, 58, a former San Francisco mayor who was born to a wealthy and well-connected San Francisco family, suggested in the CBS interview that he had already surmounted significant obstacles. Early on, Newsom struggled in school and suffered from dyslexia.
“The idea that a guy who got 960 on his SAT, that still struggles to read scripts, that was always in the back of the classroom, the idea that you would even throw that out is, in and of itself, extraordinary,” Newsom said. “Who the hell knows? I’m looking forward to who presents themselves in 2028 and who meets that moment. And that’s the question for the American people.”
Harris, 61, who served as a U.S. senator and California attorney general before she became vice president in 2020 and then the Democratic Party’s nominee in the 2024 presidential election, received criticism last year after losing to Trump by more than 2.3 million votes, about 1.5% of the popular vote. Some Democrats accused her of being an elite, out of touch candidate who failed to connect with voters in battleground states who have struggled economically in recent years.
“I wrote the book for many reasons, but primarily to remind us how unprecedented that election was,” Harris said.
“Think about it. A sitting president of the United States is running for reelection and three and a half months before the election decides not to run, and then a sitting vice president takes up the mantle to run against a former president of the United States who has been running for 10 years, with 107 days to go.”
Newsom has already raised eyebrows this year by traveling to critical battleground election states.
After Newsom spoke in South Carolina, Rep. James Clyburn, the highest-ranking Black member of Congress and renowned Democratic kingmaker who rescued former President Biden’s 2020 campaign, told The Times that Newsom would be “a hell of a candidate.”
“He’s demonstrated that over and over again,” Clyburn said, stopping short of endorsing him. “I feel good about his chances.”
But other leading South Carolina Democrats voiced doubts that Newsom could win over working class and swing voters in battleground states.
Richard Harpootlian, a South Carolina attorney, former state senator and former chairman of the state Democratic Party, called Newsom “a handsome man with great hair.”
“But the party is searching for a left-of-moderate candidate who can articulate blue-collar hopes and desires,” Harpootlian told The Times.
“If he had a track record of solving huge problems like homelessness, or the social safety net, he’d be a more palatable candidate,” he added. “I just think he’s going to have a tough time explaining why there’s so many failures in California.”
WASHINGTON — Twenty-two days into the government shutdown, California Rep. Kevin Kiley spent an hour of his morning in Washington guiding a group of middle school students from Grass Valley through the empty corridors of the U.S. Capitol.
Normally, one of his staff members would have led the tour. But the Capitol is closed to all tours during the shutdown, unless the elected member is present. So the schoolchildren from Lyman Gilmore Middle School ended up with Kiley, a Republican from Rocklin, as their personal tour guide.
“I would have visited with these kids anyway,” Kiley said in his office after the event. “But I actually got to go on the whole tour of the Capitol with them as well.”
Kiley’s impromptu tour is an example of how members of California’s congressional delegation are improvising their routines as the shutdown drags on and most of Washington remains at a standstill.
Some are in Washington in case negotiations resume, others are back at home in their districts meeting with federal workers who are furloughed or working without pay, giving interviews or visiting community health centers that rely on tax credits central to the budget negotiations. One member attended the groundbreaking of a flood control project in their district. Others are traveling back and forth.
“I’ve had to fly back to Washington for caucus meetings, while the opposition, the Republicans, don’t even convene and meet,” Rep. Maxine Waters, a longtime Los Angeles Democrat, said in an interview. “We will meet anytime, anyplace, anywhere, with [House Speaker Mike] Johnson, with the president, with the Senate, to do everything that we can to open up the government. We are absolutely unified on that.”
The shutdown is being felt across California, which has the most federal workers outside the District of Columbia. Food assistance benefits for millions of low-income Californians could soon be delayed. And millions of Californians could see their healthcare premiums rise sharply if Affordable Care Act subsidies are allowed to expire.
For the California delegation, the fallout at home has become impossible to ignore. Yet the shutdown is in its fourth week with no end in sight.
In the House, Johnson has refused to call members back into session and prevented them from doing legislative work. Many California lawmakers — including Kiley, one of the few GOP lawmakers to openly criticize him — have been dismayed by the deadlock.
“I have certainly emphasized the point that the House needs to be in session, and that canceling a month’s worth of session is not a good thing for the House or the country,” Kiley said, noting that he had privately met with Johnson.
Kiley, who represented parts of the Sacramento suburbs and Lake Tahoe, is facing political uncertainty as California voters weigh whether to approve Proposition 50 on Nov. 4. The measure would redraw the state’s congressional districts to better favor Democrats, leaving Kiley at risk, even though the Republican says he believes he could still win if his right-leaning district is redrawn.
The Senate has been more active, holding a series of votes on the floor and congressional hearings with Atty. Gen. Pam Bondi and CIA Director John Ratcliffe. The chamber, however, has been unable to reach a deal to reopen the government. On Thursday, the 23rd day of the shutdown, the Senate failed to advance competing measures that would have paid federal employees who have been working without compensation.
The Republicans’ plan would have paid active-duty members of the military and some federal workers during the shutdown. Democrats backed a bill that would have paid all federal workers and barred the Trump administration from laying off any more federal employees.
“California has one of the largest federal workforces in the country, and no federal worker or service member should miss their paychecks because Donald Trump and Republicans refused to come to the table to protect Americans’ health care,” Sen. Alex Padilla said in a statement.
Working conditions get harder
The strain on federal employees — including those who work for California’s 54 delegation members — are starting to become more apparent.
Dozens of them have been working full time without pay. Their jobs include answering phone calls and requests from constituents, setting the schedules for elected officials, writing policy memos and handling messaging for their offices.
House Speaker Mike Johnson speaks about the shutdown at a news conference Thursday with other Republican House members.
(Eric Lee / Getty Images)
At the end of October, House staffers — who are paid on a monthly basis — are expected to miss their first paycheck.
Some have been quietly told to consider borrowing money from the U.S. Senate Federal Credit Union, which is offering a “government shutdown relief loan program” that includes a no-interest loan of up to $5,000 to be repaid in full after 90 days.
The mundane has also been disrupted. Some of the cafeterias and coffee carts that are usually open to staffers are closed. The lines to enter office buildings are long because fewer entrances are open.
The hallways leading to the offices of California’s elected officials are quiet, except for the faint sound of occasional elevator dings. Many of their doors are adorned with signs that show who they blame for the government shutdown.
“Trump and Republicans shut down the government,” reads a sign posted on the door that leads into Rep. Norma Torres’ (D-Pomona) office. “Our office is OPEN — WORKING for the American people.”
Rep. Ted Lieu, a Democrat from Torrance, posted a similar sign outside his office.
A sign is posted outside of the office of Rep. Ted Lieu, a California Democrat, in Washington on Wednesday.
(Ana Ceballos / Los Angeles Times)
Rep. Vince Fong, a Republican who represents the Central Valley, has been traveling between Washington and his district. Two weeks into the shutdown, he met with veterans from the Central Valley Honor Flight and Kern County Honor Flight to make sure that their planned tour of the Capitol was not disrupted by the shutdown. Like Kiley’s tour with the schoolchildren, an elected member needed to be present for the tour to go on.
“His presence ensured the tour could continue as planned,” Fong’s office said.
During the tour, veterans were able to see Johnson as well, his office said.
Shutdown highlights deep divisions
California’s congressional delegation mirrors the broader stalemate in Washington, where entrenched positions have kept both parties at a negotiation impasse.
Democrats are steadfast in their position that they will not agree to a deal unless Republicans extend the Affordable Care Act tax credits expiring at the end of the year, while Republicans are accusing Democrats of failing to reopen the government for political gain.
Kiley is one of the few Republicans who has called on Johnson to negotiate with Democrats on healthcare. Kiley said he thinks there is a “a lot of room to negotiate” because there is concern on both sides of the aisle if the tax credits expire.
“If people see a massive increase in their premiums … that’s not a good thing,” he said. “Especially in California, where the cost of living is already so high, and you’re suddenly having to pay a lot more for healthcare.”
Rep. Robert Garcia, the chair of the House Democratic Caucus, in a press event Wednesday with five other California Democrats talked about the need to fight for the healthcare credits.
Garcia, of Long Beach, said he recently visited a healthcare center in San Bernardino County that serves seniors with disabilities. He said the cuts would be “devastating” and would prompt the center to close.
“That’s why we are doing everything in our power to negotiate a deal that reopens the federal government and saves healthcare,” he said.
As the shutdown continues, many Democrats are digging their heels on the issue.
At an Oct. 3 event outside of Hollywood Presbyterian Medical Center, for instance, Rep. Laura Friedman held a news conference with nurses and hospital staff and said she would not vote for a bill to reopen the government unless there is a deal on healthcare.
Last week, the Glendale Democrat said her position hasn’t changed.
“I will not support a shutdown deal that strips healthcare from tens of thousands of my constituents,” she said.
When Boxer retired in 2017, after serving 24 years in the Senate, she walked away from one of the most powerful and privileged positions in American politics, a job many have clung to until their last, rattling breath.
(Boxer tried to gently nudge her fellow Democrat and former Senate colleague, Dianne Feinstein, whose mental and physical decline were widely chronicled during her final, difficult years in office. Ignoring calls to step aside, Feinstein died at age 90, hours after voting on a procedural matter on the Senate floor.)
Last week, she drew a second significant challenger to her reelection, state Sen. Scott Wiener, who jumped into the contest alongside tech millionaire Saikat Chakrabarti, who’s been campaigning against the incumbent for the better part of a year.
Boxer, who turns 85 next month, offered no counsel to Pelosi, though she pushed back against the notion that age necessarily equates with infirmity, or political obsolescence. She pointed to Ted Kennedy and John McCain, two of the senators she served with, who remained vital and influential in Congress well into their 70s.
On the other hand, Boxer said, “Some people don’t deserve to be there for five minutes, let alone five years … They’re 50. Does that make it good? No. There are people who are old and out of ideas at 60.”
There is, Boxer said, “no one-size-fits-all” measure of when a lawmaker has passed his or her expiration date. Better, she suggested, for voters to look at what’s motivating someone to stay in office. Are they driven by purpose — and still capable of doing the job — “or is it a personal ego thing or psychological thing?”
“My last six years were my most prolific,” said Boxer, who opposes both term limits and a mandatory retirement age for members of Congress. “And if they’d said 65 and out, I wouldn’t have been there.”
Art Agnos didn’t choose to leave office.
He was 53 — in the blush of youth, compared to some of today’s Democratic elders — when he lost his reelection bid after a single term as San Francisco mayor.
“I was in the middle of my prime, which is why I ran for reelection,” he said. “And, frankly,” he added with a laugh, “I still feel like I’m in my prime at 87.”
A friend and longtime Pelosi ally, Agnos bristled at the ageism he sees aimed at lawmakers of a certain vintage. Why, he asked, is that acceptable in politics when it’s deplored in just about every other field of endeavor?
“What profession do we say we want bright young people who have never done this before to take over because they’re bright, young and say the right things?” Agnos asked rhetorically. “Would you go and say, ‘Let me find a brain surgeon who’s never done this before, but he’s bright and young and has great promise.’ We don’t do that. Do we?
“Give me somebody who’s got experience, “ Agnos said, “who’s been through this and knows how to handle a crisis, or a particular issue.”
“I thought that I had done a good job … and a number of people said, ‘Gee, it’s a pity that you can’t run for a third term,’ ” Wilson said as he headed to New Haven, Conn., for his college reunion, Yale class of ’55. “As a matter of fact, I agreed with them.”
Still, unlike Boxer, Wilson supports term limits, as a way to infuse fresh blood into the political system and prevent too many over-the-hill incumbents from heedlessly overstaying their time in office.
Not that he’s blind to the impetus to hang on. The power. The perks. And, perhaps above all, the desire to get things done.
At age 92, Wilson maintains an active law practice in Century City and didn’t hesitate — “Yes!” he exclaimed — when asked if he considered himself capable of serving today as governor, even as he wends his way through a tenth decade on Earth.
His wife, Gayle, could be heard chuckling in the background.
“She’s laughing,” Wilson said dryly, “because she knows she’s not in any danger of my doing so.”
SACRAMENTO — Though hailed by some for signing new laws to combat antisemitism in California schools, Gov. Gavin Newsom expressed enough reservations about the bills to urge state lawmakers to make some changes.
Supporters of the legislation, Senate Bill 48 and Assembly Bill 715, said it was needed to protect Jewish students on campus, while opponents argued it was broadly written and would stifle free speech and classroom discussions about current events in the Middle East, including the Israel-Hamas war.
Newsom, when he signed the bills, directed legislators to work quickly on a follow-up measure to address “urgent concerns about unintended consequences.”
The governor made similar requests for nearly a dozen other major bills he signed into law this year, including measures providing safeguards on artificial intelligence, protections for children online and banning law enforcement officers donning masks — a direct response to federal agents hiding their identities during immigration raids across the state.
Newsom’s addendums provide a glimpse into the sometimes flawed or incomplete process of crafting new laws, at times hastily at the end of legislative session, requiring flaws or unresolved conflicts to be remedied later.
San Jose State University professor emeritus and political analyst Larry Gerston said governors sometimes go this route when, despite having concerns, they feel the legislation is too urgent to veto.
“I think you are looking at a situation where he thought the issue was sufficiently important and needed to go ahead and get it moving,” he said.
Gerston, however, noted those with a cynical view of politics could argue governors use this tactic as a way to undo or water down legislation that — for various political reasons — they wanted to pass in the moment.
“Depending upon your attitude toward the governor, politics and legislation, [that viewpoint] could be right or wrong,” he said.
One of the authors of the antisemitism bills, Assemblymember Rick Chavez Zbur (D-Los Angeles), said he will put forth another measure next year and continue working with educational organizations and the California Legislative Jewish Caucus to ensure the right balance is struck.
“The assertions that the bill is intended to prevent instruction about controversial topics, including topics related to Israel, is just not accurate,” said Zbur, who introduced AB 715. “We will be making sure that it’s clear that instruction on complicated issues, on controversial issues, that critical education can continue to take place.”
Zbur said he will reexamine a provision requiring the “factual accuracy” of instructional materials.
“One of the things that we’ve agreed to do was focus on making sure that the bill continues to meet its goal, but revisit that factually accurate language to make sure that, for example, you can continue to teach [works of] fiction in the classroom,” he said.
Another new law flagged by Newsom bans local and federal agents from wearing masks or facial coverings during operations.
The governor approved Senate Bill 627 — carried by Sens. Scott Wiener (D-San Francisco) and Jesse Arreguín (D-Berkeley) — last month as a response to the Trump administration’s aggressive immigration raids that are often conducted by masked agents in unmarked cars. Newsom said it was unacceptable for “secret police” to grab people off the streets.
“This bill establishes important transparency and public accountability measures to protect public safety, but it requires follow-up legislation,” Newsom wrote in his signing statement. “Given the importance of the issue, the legislature must craft a bill that prevents unnecessary masking without compromising law enforcement operations.”
Newsom said clarifications about safety gear and additional exemptions for legitimate law enforcement activities were needed.
“I read this bill as permitting the use of motorcycle or other safety helmets, sunglasses, or other standard law enforcement gear not designed or used for the purpose of hiding anyone’s identity, but the follow-up legislation must also remove any uncertainty or ambiguities,” he wrote.
Wiener agreed to revisit the measure.
“I’m committed to working with the Governor’s office to further refine SB 627 early next year to ensure it is as workable as possible for many law enforcement officers working in good faith,” he said.
California is the first state to ban masking for federal law enforcement and the law will likely be challenged in court. The move drew ire from U.S. Department of Homeland Security Secretary Kristi Noem, who called the legislation “despicable” and said forcing officers to reveal their faces increases their risk of being targeted by criminals.
Newsom is also urging legislators to adjust two new tech-related laws from Assemblymember Buffy Wicks (D-Oakland).
Assembly Bill 853, dubbed the California AI Transparency Act, is intended to help people identify content created by artificial intelligence. It requires large online platforms, such as social media sites, to provide accessible provenance data on uploaded content starting in 2027. Provenance data is information about the origin and modification history of online content.
In his signing statement, Newsom called the legislation a “critical step” but said it could interfere with privacy.
“Some stakeholders remain concerned that provisions of the bill, while well-intentioned, present implementation challenges that could lead to unintended consequences, including impairment of user privacy,” he wrote. “I encourage the legislature to enact follow up legislation in 2026, before the law takes effect, to address these technical feasibility issues.”
Assembly Bill 1043 aims to help prevent children from viewing inappropriate content online. It directs operating system providers to allow parents to input their children’s ages when setting up equipment such as laptops or smartphones, and then requires users to be grouped in different age brackets. It gained approval from tech companies including Meta and Google while others raised concerns.
“Streaming services and video game developers contend that this bill’s framework, while well-suited to traditional software applications, does not fit their respective products,” Newsom wrote in his signing statement. “Many of these companies have existing age verification systems in place, addressing complexities such as multi-user accounts shared by a family and user profiles utilized across multiple devices.”
The governor urged lawmakers to address those concerns before the law is set to take effect in 2027.
Oct. 24 (UPI) — The U.S. Department of Justice announced Friday that it will monitor some polling sites in California and New Jersey “to ensure transparency.”
Both states are having elections on Nov. 4.
“Transparency at the polls translates into faith in the electoral process, and this Department of Justice is committed to upholding the highest standards of election integrity,” said Attorney General Pam Bondiin a press release. “We will commit the resources necessary to ensure the American people get the fair, free, and transparent elections they deserve.”
The California counties where the department plans to monitor the polls are: Kern, Riverside, Fresno, Orange and Los Angeles. It will also monitor polls in Passaic County, N.J.
While election monitoring is not unusual, the two states listed are Democratic strongholds.
The effort will be overseen by the DOJ’s Civil Rights Division and will be led by Assistant Attorney General Harmeet K. Dhillon.
“The Department of Justice will do everything necessary to protect the votes of eligible American citizens, ensuring our elections are safe and secure,” Dhillon said in a statement. “Transparent election processes and election monitoring are critical tools for safeguarding our elections and ensuring public trust in the integrity of our elections.”
Civil Rights Division personnel will be available to take questions and complaints from the public on possible violations of federal voting rights laws, the release said.
The U.S. Department of Justice will monitor polling sites in five California counties as voters decide on Proposition 50 on Nov. 4, it said Friday, after being asked to do so by state GOP officials.
Monitoring, which is routinely conducted by the Justice Department, will occur across Southern California and in the Central Valley, in Fresno, Kern, Los Angeles, Orange and Riverside counties, the Justice Department said.
Proposition 50 — one of November’s most hotly-watched electoral issues, with national political implications — asks California voters whether the state should redraw its congressional districts to better favor Democrats. It is a response to President Trump’s pressure campaign on Texas and other red states to redraw their lines in favor of Republicans, and is considered a must-pass measure if Democrats hope to regain control of the House in next year’s midterms.
The Justice Department said its monitors would work to “ensure transparency, ballot security, and compliance with federal law,” including the Voting Rights Act, National Voter Registration Act, Help America Vote Act, Uniformed and Overseas Citizens Absentee Voting Act, and the Civil Rights Act.
“Transparency at the polls translates into faith in the electoral process, and this Department of Justice is committed to upholding the highest standards of election integrity,” Atty. Gen. Pam Bondi said. “We will commit the resources necessary to ensure the American people get the fair, free, and transparent elections they deserve.”
“Our democracy depends on free and fair elections,” said acting U.S. Atty. Bill Essayli, the top federal prosecutor in the L.A. region, who will be helping to coordinate the monitoring effort. “We will work tirelessly to uphold and protect the integrity of the election process.”
The Justice Department also announced monitors will be stationed in Passaic County, N.J. That state is holding a consequential gubernatorial election.
While federal monitoring is routine, it has been viewed with heightened skepticism from both parties in recent years. When the Justice Department under President Biden announced monitoring in 86 jurisdictions across 27 states during last November’s presidential election, some Republican-led states balked and sought to block the effort.
Democrats have been highly skeptical of the Trump administration’s plans for monitoring elections, in part because of Trump’s relentless denial of past election losses — including his own to Biden in 2020 — and his appointment of fellow election deniers to high-ranking positions in his administration, including in the Justice Department.
Corrin Rankin, chair of the California Republican Party, had specifically asked the Justice Department to send monitors to the five counties in a letter to the Justice Department on Monday.
Rankin wrote that the party had “received reports of irregularities” in each of the counties during recent elections, which they feared could “undermine either the willingness of voters to participate in the election or their confidence in the announced results of the election” this November.
Rankin called Proposition 50 a “politically charged question,” and said it was “imperative to have robust voter participation and public confidence in the results regardless of the outcome.”
Matt Shupe, a spokesperson for the California GOP, declined to comment on the letter Friday.
California officials, including Secretary of State Shirley Weber and California Atty. Gen. Rob Bonta, have promised safe and fair elections and said their teams will also be out in the field enforcing California’s election laws in November.
“Our election laws provide the backbone for a free and fair election, and as California’s top law enforcement officer, I will do everything in my power to protect your right to vote,” Bonta recently said. “In the lead-up to the election and on Election Day, my office will be on call to provide assistance to the Secretary of State’s Office in enforcing California’s election laws, as needed, through a team of attorneys and administrative staff located across the state.”
Dean Logan, elections chief for Los Angeles County, said in a statement Friday that federal election monitors are welcome to view election activities and that the state has “clear laws and guidelines that support observation and prohibit election interference.”
“The presence of election observers is not unusual and is a standard practice across the country,” Logan said.
Logan didn’t directly address the California GOP’s specific statements about Los Angeles County, but said that the county regularly updates and verifies voter records in coordination with state and federal agencies and protects the integrity of the election process.
“Voters can have confidence their ballot is handled securely and counted accurately,” he said.
With the fate of President’s Trump’s right-wing agenda at stake, the California ballot measure crafted to tilt Congress to Democratic control has turned into a fight among millionaires and billionaires, a former president, a past movie-star governor and the nation’s top partisans.
Californians have been inundated with political ads popping up on every screen — no cellphone, computer or living-room television is spared — trying to sway them about Proposition 50, which will reconfigure the districts of the largest state congressional delegation in the union.
Unions representing California school teachers, carpenters, state workers and nurses have plowed more than $23 million into efforts to pass Proposition 50, according to an analysis of campaign finance disclosure reports about donations exceeding $100,000. That’s nearly one-third of the six-figure donations reported through Thursday.
Not only do these groups have major interests in the state capitol, including charter school reform, minimum wage hikes and preserving government healthcare programs, they also are deeply aligned with efforts by Gov. Gavin Newsom and his fellow Democrats to put their party in control of the U.S. House of Representatives in the 2026 election. “There are real issues here that are at stake,” said veteran Democratic strategist Gale Kaufman, who has represented several unions that have contributed to Newsom’s committee supporting Proposition 50.
“There’s always a risk when making sizable donations, that you’re putting yourself out there,” Kaufman said. “But the truth is on Proposition 50, I think it’s much less calculated than normal contributions. It really is about the issue, not about currying favor with members of the Legislature, or the congressional delegation, or the governor. Even though, of course, it benefits them if we win.”
High stakes brings in big money from across the nation
Newsom’s pro-Proposition 50 committee has raised more than $116 million, according to campaign disclosure filings through Thursday afternoon, though that number is sure to increase once additional donations are disclosed in the latest fundraising reports that are due by midnight Thursday.
The multimillion-dollar donations provide the best evidence of what’s at stake, and how Proposition 50 could determine control of the House during the final two years of Trump’s presidency. If the Democrats take control of the House, not only could that derail major parts of Trumps agenda, it probably would lead to a slew of congressional hearings on Trump’s immigration crackdown, use of the military in American cities, accepting a $400-million luxury airliner from Qatari’s royal family, the cutting of research funding to universities and the president’s ties to sex offender Jeffrey Epstein, among many others.
The House Majority PAC — the Democrats’ congressional fundraising arm — has donated at least $15 million to the pro-Proposition 50 campaign, and House Minority Leader Hakeem Jeffries (D-N.Y.) was in Los Angeles to campaign for the ballot measure last weekend. Obama joined Newsom on a livestream promoting the proposition Wednesday, and Democratic National Committee Chairman Ken Martin hosted a bilingual phone bank in Los Angeles on Thursday.
“Make no mistake about what they’re trying to do and why it’s so important that we fight back,” Martin said. “We’re not going to be the only party with one hand tied behind our back. If they want a showdown, we’re going to give them a showdown and in just a little under two weeks it starts right here with Prop. 50 in California.”
Billionaire financier George Soros — a generous donor to liberal causes and a bogeyman to Republicans — has contributed $10 million. Others have chosen to fund separate entities campaigning in favor of Proposition 50, notably billionaire hedge-fund founder Tom Steyer, who chipped in $12 million.
On the opposition side, the largest donor is Charles Munger Jr., the son of the longtime investment partner of billionaire Warren Buffett, who has contributed $32.8 million to one of the two main committees opposing Proposition 50. The Congressional Leadership Fund — the GOP’s political arm in the House — has donated $5 million to the other main anti-Proposition 50 committee and $8 million to the California Republican Party.
Although Republicans may control the White House and Congress, the California GOP wields no real power in Sacramento, so it’s not surprising that Republican efforts opposing Proposition 50 have not received major donations from entities with business before the state.
The California Chamber of Commerce opted to remain neutral on Proposition 50. Chevron and the California Resources Corp., petroleum companies that have given to California Republicans in the past, also remain on the sidelines.
In contrast, Democrats control every statewide office and hold supermajorities in both houses of the California Legislature. The pro-Proposition 50 campaign has been showered with donations from groups aligned with Sacramento’s legislative leaders — with labor organizations chief among them.
Among the labor donors, the powerful carpenters unions have donated at least $4 million. Newsom hailed them in July when he signed legislation altering a landmark environmental law for urban apartment developments to boost the supply of housing. The California Conference of Carpenters union has become one of the most pro-housing voices in the state.
“This is the third of the last four years we’ve been together signing landmark housing reforms, and it simply would not have happened without the Carpenters,” Newsom said at the time.
Daniel M. Curtin, director of the California Conference of Carpenters, pointed to a letter he wrote to legislators in August urging them to put redistricting on the ballot because of the effect of Trump’s policies on the state’s workers.
“These are not normal times, and this isn’t politics as usual. Not only has the Trump administration denied disaster assistance to victims of California’s devastating forest fires, he’s damaging our CA economy with mass arrests of law-abiding workers without warrants,” wrote Curtin, whose union has 70,000 members in the state. “The Trump administration is now unilaterally withdrawing from legally binding union collective bargaining agreements with federal workforce unions. The President has made it clear that this is just the beginning.”
Proposition 50 was prompted by Trump urging Republican leaders in Texas to redraw their congressional districts to boost the number of GOP members in the House and keep the party in control after the 2026 election. Newsom sought to counter the move by altering California’s congressional boundaries in a rare mid-decade redistricting.
With 52 members in the House, the state has the largest congressional delegation in the nation. But unlike many states, California’s districts are drawn by an independent commission created by voters in 2010 in an effort to end partisan gerrymandering and incumbent protection.
The state’s districts would not have been redrawn until after the 2030 U.S. census, but the Legislature and Newsom agreed in August to put Proposition 50, which would give Democrats the potential to pick up five seats, on the November ballot.
Money from California unions pours in
Although much of the money supporting the efforts comes from wealth Democratic donors and partisan groups aimed at helping Democrats take control of Congress, a significant portion comes from labor unions.
The Service Employees International Union, which represents more than 700,000 healthcare workers, social workers, in-home caregivers and school employees and other state and local government workers, has contributed more than $5.5 million to the committee.
On Oct. 12, the union celebrated Newsom signing bills ensuring that workers, regardless of immigration status, are informed about their civil and labor rights under state and federal law as well as updating legal guidance to state and local agencies about protecting private information, such as court records and medical data, from being misused by federal authorities.
“Thank you to Governor Newsom for … standing up to federal overreach and indiscriminate, violent attacks on our communities,” David Huerta, president of SEIU California, said in a statement.
Huerta was arrested during the first day of U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement raids in Los Angeles in June and charged with a felony. But federal prosecutors are instead pursuing a misdemeanor case against him, according to a Friday court filing.
An SEIU representative did not respond to requests for comment.
The California Teachers Assn., another potent force in state politics, has contributed more than $3.3 million, along with millions more from other education unions such as the National Education Assn., the California Federation of Teachers and the American Federation of Teachers.
CTA had a mixed record in this year’s legislative session.
Newsom vetoed a bill to crack down on charter school fraud, Senate Bill 414. The CTA opposed the bill, arguing that it didn’t go far enough to target fraud in some of the schools, and had urged the governor to reject it.
Newsom signed CTA-backed bills that placed strict limits on ICE agents’ access to school grounds. But he also vetoed union-backed bill that would have required the state Board of Education to adopt health education instructional materials by July 1, 2028.
CTA President David Goldberg said their donations are driven not only by issues important to the union’s members, but also the students they serve who are dependent on federally funded assistance programs and impacted by policies such as immigration.
“It’s about our livelihood but it really is about fundamental issues … for people who serve students who are just incredibly under attack right now,” Goldberg said.
“The governor’s support for labor would be exactly the same with or without Proposition 50 on the ballot. But he would acknowledge this year is more urgent than ever for labor and working people,” said Newsom spokesperson Bob Salladay. “Trump is taking a wrecking ball to collective bargaining, to fair wages and safe working conditions. He would be backing them up under any circumstances, but especially now.”
Critics of Proposition 50 argue that these contributions are among the reasons voters should oppose the ballot measure.
“The independent redistricting commission exists to prevent conflicts of interest and money from influencing line drawing,” said Amy Thoma, a spokesperson for the Voters First Coalition, the committee backed by Munger Jr., who bankrolled the 2010 ballot measure to create the independent commission. “That’s why we want to preserve its independence.”
Other labor leaders argued that although they are not always in lockstep with Newsom, they need to support Proposition 50 because of the importance of Democrats winning the congressional majority next year.
Lorena Gonzalez, the head of the powerful California Labor Federation, said the timing of the member unions’ donations of millions of dollars to Newsom’s ballot measure committee for an election taking place shortly after the bill-signing period was “unfortunate” and “weird.”
“Because we have so many bills in front of him, we were gun-shy,” she said, noting that the federation has sparred with the governor over issues such as the effect of artificial intelligence in the workplace. “Never be too close to your elected officials. Because we see the good, the bad, the ugly.”
Times staff writers Andrea Flores and Brittny Mejia contributed to this report.
Oct. 24 (UPI) — A district attorney in Southern California has filed manslaughter and DUI charges against a 21-year-old man in connection with a highway crash that killed three people and injured several others.
Jashanpreet Singh, 21, of Yuba City, was arrested Tuesday after the semi-truck he was driving at a high rate of speed crashed into stopped traffic on the 10 Freeway West near Ontario, Calif.
San Bernardino County District Attorney Jason Anderson filed a four-count complaint Thursday charging Singh with three counts of gross vehicular manslaughter while intoxicated and one count of driving while under the influence of a drug causing injury, with great bodily injury and multiple victims enhancements.
Three people were killed and at least three others were injured, at least two seriously, according to the complaint.
One of the deceased victims has been identified in court documents as Jamie Flores Garcia. The other two were identified as Jane Doe and John Doe.
Federal immigration authorities have identified Singh as an Indian citizen and an undocumented immigrant.
Anderson rebuked law enforcement over the crash, which he said “was easily avoidable if the defendant was not driving in a grossly negligent manner and impaired.”
“Had the rule of law been followed by state and federal officials, the defendant should have never been in California at all,” he said in a statement.
The Department of Homeland Security on Thursday said it has lodged an immigration detainer for the suspect. It said Singh entered the United States in 2022 through the southern border and was then released into the country.
It blamed the Biden administration for the crash.
“It’s a terrible tragedy three innocent people lost their lives due to the reckless open border policies that allowed an illegal alien to be released into the U.S. and drive an 18-wheeler on America’s highways,” Assistant DHS Secretary Tricia McLaughlin said in a statement.
The crash comes amid a political immigration fight, with the Trump administration seeking to carry out mass deportations of undocumented immigrants.
The Trump administration and Republicans frequently blame the previous Biden administration and Democrats.
Transportation Secretary Sean Duffy rebuked Democrat-run California for failing to “enforce my new rules for obtaining licenses to operate trucks.”
The office of California Gov. Gavin Newsom, a Democrat feuding with President Donald Trump, responded that Duffy was manipulating facts “to score cheap political points” as the state does not determine commercial driver’s license eligibility.
“The FEDERAL government approved and renewed this individual’s FEDERAl employment authorization multiple times — which allowed him to obtain a commercial driver’s license in accordance with FEDERAL law,” it said on X.
“State rules and regulations for commercial driver’s licenses must be CONSISTENT with the standards set by FEDERaL law.”
Singh is to be arraigned Friday at the Rancho Cucamonga Superior Courthouse. No bail was set and the San Bernardino County District Attorney’s Office said it will request the suspect not be granted bail due to the seriousness of the offense and his potential to be a flight risk.
STOCKTON — Four of California’s gubernatorial candidates tangled over climate change and wildfire preparedness at an economic forum Thursday in Stockton, though they all acknowledged the stark problems facing the state.
Riverside County Sheriff Chad Bianco, a Republican, stood apart from the three other candidates — all Democrats — at the California Economic Summit by challenging whether the spate of devastating wildfires in California is linked to climate change, and labeling some environmental activists “terrorists.”
After a few audience members shouted at Bianco over his “terrorists” comment, the Democratic candidates seized on the moment to reaffirm their own beliefs about the warming planet.
“The impacts of climate change are proven and undeniable,” said Tony Thurmond, a Democrat and California superintendent of public instruction. “You can call them what you want. That’s our new normal.”
The fires “do have a relationship with climate change,” said former Los Angeles Mayor Antonio Villaraigosa.
Besides environmental issues, the hour-and-a-half forum at the business-centric California Forward’s Economic Summit focused primarily on “checkbook” topics as the candidates, which also included former state Controller Betty Yee, offered gloomy statistics about poverty and homelessness in California.
Given the forum’s location in the Central Valley, the agricultural industry and rural issues were front and center.
Bianco harped on the state and the Democratic leaders for California’s handling of water management and gasoline prices. At one point, he told the audience that he felt like he was in the “Twilight Zone” after the Democrats on stage pitched ways to raise revenue.
Other candidates in California‘s 2026 governor’s race, including former Secretary of Health and Human Services Xavier Becerra and former Rep. Katie Porter, were not present at Thursday’s debate. Former Assembly Majority Leader Ian Calderon planned to come, but his flight from Los Angeles was delayed, audience members were told.
All are vying to lead a state facing ongoing budget deficits caused by overspending. A state Legislative Analyst’s Office report released this month cited projected annual operating deficits ranging from roughly $15 billion to $25 billion through 2029. At the same time, federal cutbacks by the Trump administration to programs for needy Californians, including the state’s Medi-Cal healthcare program, will put more pressure on the state’s resources.
All of the candidates had different pitches during the afternoon event. Asked by moderator Jeanne Kuang, a CalMatters reporter, about ways to help rural communities, Thurmond cited his plan to build housing on surplus property owned by the state. He also repeatedly talked about extending tax credits or other subsidies to groups, including day-care providers.
Yee, discussing the wildfires, spoke on hardening homes and creating an industry around fire-proofing the state. Yee received applause when she questioned why there wasn’t more discussion about education in the governor’s race.
Villaraigosa cited his work finding federal funds to build rail and subway lines across Los Angeles and suggested that he would focus on growing the state’s power grid and transportation infrastructure.
Both the former mayor and Yee at points sided with Bianco when they complained about the “over-regulation” by the state, including restrictions on developers, builders and small businesses.
Few voters are probably paying much attention to the contest, with the battle over Proposition 50 dominating headlines and campaign spending.
Voters on Nov. 4 will decide whether to support the proposition, which is a Democratic-led effort to gerrymander California’s congressional districts to try and blunt President Trump’s attempt to rig districts in GOP-led states to retain control of the House of Representatives.
“Frankly, nobody’s focused on the governor’s race right now,” Yee said at an event last week.
California welfare recipients using state-issued debit cards withdrew more than $1.8 million in taxpayer cash on casino floors between October 2009 and last month, state officials said Thursday.
Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger issued an executive order requiring welfare recipients to promise they will use cash benefits only to “meet the basic subsistence needs” of their families. The order also gave the state Department of Social Services seven days to produce a plan to reduce other types of “waste, fraud and abuse” in the welfare program.
The moves came after The Times reported Wednesday that officials at the department failed to notice for years that welfare recipients could use the state-issued cards to withdraw taxpayer cash at more than half of the tribal casinos and state-licensed poker rooms in California. The state initiated the debit card program in 2002.
Casino withdrawals, which represented far less than 1% of total welfare spending during the eight months for which the department released data, averaged just over $227,392 a month.
Schwarzenegger has already ordered the vendor that runs the state welfare system’s ATM network to prohibit the cards from working at casino machines. Republican lawmakers are now calling on the administration to track down the people who withdrew cash at gaming centers and recover the money.
“I’d say that $227,000 per month is an astounding waste of taxpayer dollars,” said Seth Unger, spokesman for Assembly Republican Leader Martin Garrick of Solana Beach. “To me it is absolutely clear that the department failed in its duty to provide oversight. We should explore all options to get the money back.”
The electronic benefit transfer cards allow welfare recipients to access two accounts: cash offered through the Temporary Assistance for Needy Families program and an electronic version of food stamps, which comes with strict rules governing how the money can be spent.
The cash benefits, however, can be withdrawn and spent just about anywhere. A Times review of state records found that the cards work at ATMs in 32 of 58 tribal casinos and 47 of 90 state-licensed poker rooms.
Most of the ATMs impose a withdrawal limit of about $300 a day. The monthly cash grant for a family of three ranges up to $694, while families with more than 10 people can get as much as $1,469, documents from the Social Services Department show.
Some Assembly Republicans called Thursday for assurances that welfare recipients can’t access ATMs at other “seedy” businesses. “If they’re going to shut down … the casinos, why not also shut down the ATMs at liquor stores and bars?” Unger asked.
Schwarzenegger spokesman Aaron McLear said the point of the executive order was to force the department to examine the program for all manner of abuse, but did not specify any other kinds of businesses that might be weeded out of the network. “We’re going to eliminate any waste, fraud and abuse that makes sense to eliminate,” he said.
Democrats, who have been fighting to preserve the state’s fraying social safety net in the face of a $19-billion budget gap, angrily rejected a Schwarzenegger proposal last month to eliminate the cash portion of welfare.
That was before anyone in Sacramento realized the money could be withdrawn by someone strolling from a poker game to a blackjack table.
Democratic leaders steered away from specifics while discussing calls for reform.
“We will conduct timely legislative oversight,” said Senate President Pro Tem Darrell Steinberg (D-Sacramento). “We want to make sure all families are spending the money on the children it’s intended to serve.”
I felt like a child again as I wandered down to the riverbank to look at crawdads.
“Oh, the L.A. River folks posted on Instagram about this, but I didn’t know they were right here,” my walking partner said.
Dozens of bright red crustaceans swam and fought and hid in the warm shallow water of the Glendale Narrows of the Los Angeles River. A Cooper’s hawk swooped down to grab a branch presumably for a nearby nest. A black-crowned night heron accidentally dropped its lunch, perhaps a frog, back into the water.
Crawdads, or crayfish, fight each other, eat and bask in the sun in the L.A. River.
(Jaclyn Cosgrove / Los Angeles Times)
Later, I’d witness Canada geese arriving in formation before landing on the river for their evening dinner and rest.
In all honesty, I hadn’t expected such abundant life less than a quarter of a mile from the 5 Freeway. But that’s what you’ll discover along the sandy, soft bottom segments of the L.A. River where nature rejected concrete and instead built back life.
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Jason Wise, an L.A.-based conservationist, was my walking partner who spotted the crawdaddies, as I was raised to call them in Oklahoma. I had asked Wise, who regularly hosts educational hikes, if we could walk along the river and explore one of its soft bottom segments.
Since moving to L.A., I’d wondered why certain parts of the river were lush and beautiful. My wife and I had biked a few times from Koreatown to the river trail, usually eating at Spoke Bicycle Cafe. Why did this segment look like an actual river and not the concrete flood channel featured in the 1978 film “Grease”?
Ducks stand on rocks in the sandy bottom of the Los Angeles River.
(Jaclyn Cosgrove / Los Angeles Times)
We’ll get to that precise answer, but first, a bit of geography and history.
The L.A. River has existed for thousands of years and was the site of Indigenous villages for more than 1,000 years. It is, in its current iteration, a 51-mile “engineered waterway” whose banks were channelized with concrete starting in 1938 and finished by 1960, according to the county public works department.
Three portions of the river, though, remain unpaved:
As we watched its waters flow by, Wise explained that the L.A. River was a wild, free-flowing river that often changed course.
The Glendale Narrows area of the L.A. River.
(Jaclyn Cosgrove / Los Angeles Times)
For example, as Times columnist Patt Morrison pointed out: “From today’s downtown, it coursed west and southwest all over the Los Angeles Basin until around 1825, when another flood redirected it toward where it flows today, more or less south from the original pueblo.”
This was a problem for L.A.’s developers. And not only that, Wise said, but the river flooded seasonally throughout the 1930s. At the same time, L.A. was growing rapidly, with lots of money to be made in building industry and homes as close to the river as possible.
In 1938, L.A. experienced a great flood — which in today’s meteorological lingo, we’d explain as essentially back-to-back atmospheric rivers hitting in 4½ days, bringing about 16 inches of rain, which is on average how much the area gets in a year. At least 96 people died (although experts say the number is probably higher).
The flood was the impetus for controlling the river, especially given that officials wanted to keep building near it.
At that time, two plans emerged, Wise said. This moment, dear Wilder, would be a good one to correct if you perhaps have a time machine on hand.
A beautiful evening at the Glendale Narrows of the L.A. River.
(Jaclyn Cosgrove / Los Angeles Times)
In a report titled “Parks, Playgrounds and Beaches for the Los Angeles Region,” designers recommended the region create an “emerald necklace,” or a series of parks along waterways, including the L.A River, the Rio Hondo, the San Gabriel River, Ballona Creek and Compton Creek. Officials could engineer the river with slopes to better handle flooding, and parks would soak up water and replenish the water table.
Areas near the river still might flood, and “we might have to replace some picnic tables or a playground, but otherwise, the whole city has all these parks, and a connection to nature and our wild river that is actually the foundation of the city, the reason that L.A. exists,” Wise said.
We didn’t do that.
Instead, officials asked the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers for a faster, simpler (and, in other words, cheaper) solution, Wise said. “Not that it was cheap to dig up and concretize a river, but if you locked this into place … you can then develop right up to the edge,” Wise said.
But in certain places, including the Glendale Narrows, the plan didn’t work. The Glendale Narrows has a higher water table than other areas of the L.A. River, and the engineers realized the concrete wouldn’t set because of the high amount of water and springs bubbling up.
White-faced ibises mingle on rocks at the Glendale Narrows of the L.A. River.
(Jaclyn Cosgrove / Los Angeles Times)
With the soil exposed, seeds could take root, plants returned, and wildlife came back. The ecosystem, as best it could, rebounded.
“It was an amazing mistake,” Wise said of the Corps’ inability to lay concrete over the entire L.A. River. “I’m so grateful that the Army Corps screwed that up.”
And now, there’s momentum to rethink the landscape of our river’s design.
My first question about that was: “Would we have to tolerate flooding again?” Wise told me that’s a common misconception. For one, it’s arguably impossible to “rewild” the entire river.
“You can’t get rid of this right now because there are homes right there,” Wise said. “We can’t completely undo the mistakes of the past, but we can find a way to create a better future and learn from those mistakes. The best thing to do with a mistake is to learn from it and do things better. It’s harder now, but what can we do to bring some wild back?”
Geese and other birds float along the Glendale Narrows of the Los Angeles River.
(Jaclyn Cosgrove / Los Angeles Times)
A few days after my visit with Wise, I returned to the L.A. River for sunset. I parked again at Elysian Valley Gateway Park and walked about a third of a mile south to an area of the river where heaps of rocks make it easier to cross the still-concrete part of the river to reach the natural area.
And then for an hour, I stood in awe as a concert of birds performed their evening serenade. White-faced ibises stood perfectly balanced on rocks among the calm river. Great blue herons passed by overhead. American coots submerged themselves underwater in search of food. A few large fish popped up to eat bugs.
Then I heard honking. Not the kind from the nearby 5 Freeway, which for this moment in time, didn’t exist. Four Canada geese appeared above in formation, swooping down to land together on the water. They floated over to the bank, just 15 feet or so from me, where one goose stood watch, protecting its three flock members as they ate and rested. I felt lucky to witness that, like I was living in a Mary Oliver poem.
A Canada goose watches out for its flock members as they eat and rest on the L.A. River.
(Jaclyn Cosgrove / Los Angeles Times)
It grew darker, and I soon left — only to hear more honking as nine more geese landed.
On my way home, traffic felt less obnoxious. My empty fridge felt less of a problem. Even the Trader Joe’s parking lot left me unaffected. Instead, I felt connected to not only our river and our city, but to the humans around me. As Wise reminded me:
The L.A. River “is the foundation of the city. Nature is all around us, and it’s even there within the city. There should be more of it … and through that connection, we realize we are nature. We are also animals on this planet, that everything is connected. We’re all one big living, breathing organism. Nature is a conduit to the rest of community and supporting each other and building each other up and helping each other out.”
3 things to do
Children’s paintings of P-22, L.A.’s late lion king who lived in and around Griffith Park for more than a decade, at the 2022 P-22 Day Festival.
(Save LA Cougars)
1. Keep P-22’s memory alive in L.A. 🦁🕯️ The #SaveLACougars campaign will host its annual P-22 Day Festival from 11 a.m. to 3:30 p.m. Saturday in Shane’s Inspiration (4800 Crystal Springs Drive) in Griffith Park. The event honors the legacy of P-22, a male mountain lion who inspired countless Angelenos into advocating for our local wildlife. Several local conservation and Indigenous groups will host tables with information about how attendees can get more involved in protecting our public lands. Guests can also meet the people behind the Wallis Annenberg Wildlife Crossing, take home native plants, enjoy art, crafts and food-trucks and check out the latest P-22 merchandise. Learn more at savelacougars.org.
2. Prowl for the phantasmal in Pasadena L.A. Fright Club, a horror-themed fitness group, will host its spooky hike club at 7 a.m. Sunday at the Lower Arroyo Seco trail. The group will meet at the trailhead in the San Pascual Stables parking lot (221 San Pascual Ave. in South Pasadena). Costumes are encouraged. Learn more at the group’s Instagram page.
3. Embrace the eerie in Elysian Park We Explore Earth will host Forest Bridges Day Camp, a Halloween-themed community celebration, from noon to 8 p.m. Saturday in Elysian Park. Attendees can participate in guided hikes, workshops, pumpkin carving, cornhole and more. Participants should bring a blanket, camping chair and/or pillows for the movie “The Nightmare Before Christmas” at 5:30 p.m. Tickets are available at eventbrite.com.
The must-read
Spanish mountaineer Kilian Jornet climbed 72 summits over 14,000 feet in the contiguous U.S. in 31 days this fall. Jornet is pictured here in the Sierra Nevada range known as the Normans 13, which connects 13 summits over 13,000 feet (3,962 meters).
(Andy Cochrane)
In just 31 days, Spanish mountaineer Kilian Jornet recently climbed all 72 summits in the contiguous United States that stand over 14,000 feet tall — a feat similar to climbing Mt. Whitney 2½ times per day, every day, for a month, writes Times staff writer Jack Dolan. Jornet’s journey included California’s “Norman’s 13,” which is 13 summits over 14,000 feet in remote alpine terrain between Lone Pine and Bishop. My first question, reading Jack’s piece was: “Why?” Jornet said he doesn’t do it for the glory. “I do these things because I love them, because they bring me joy and happiness, not because I think they’re very important,” he said.
Happy adventuring,
P.S.
For fans of one of California’s silliest native animals, I have great news! Reservations opened Monday for guided elephant seal tours at Año Nuevo State Park, which is about 6½ hours northwest of L.A. Every December, these massive sea mammals migrate to the beaches of Año Nuevo for their breeding and birthing season. There is fighting — drama! — along with lots of vocalizing and “galumphing,” the park said on its Instagram page. To reserve your spot for a tour, visit this website, and from the “category” dropdown menu, choose “guided seal walks” before choosing which day you’d like to go. Reservations are available 56 days (eight weeks) in advance of your desired walk date.
For more insider tips on Southern California’s beaches, trails and parks, check out past editions of The Wild. And to view this newsletter in your browser, click here.
Does everyone who is registered to vote get to choose their leaders in elections? Or do only property owners get to vote for the managers? Maybe the public has no say at all in selecting the people who make decisions that determine safe and affordable drinking water?
“We see significant differences based on democracy,” said Kristin Dobbin, a researcher at UC Berkeley. “It really does influence the outcomes of a water system.”
In a new study she led, it turns out that water utilities where all voters have a say in choosing leaders tend to perform better.
I contacted Dobbin to learn more about what she and her colleagues discovered about what they call “water democracy” in California.
The researchers analyzed nearly all of the state’s residential water suppliers, more than 2,400 of them. They looked at three categories: those where all registered voters can elect board members; those where only property owners can; and those where people have no vote in choosing decision-makers. Fully 25% of the systems fall into this last category.
In 2012, California became the first state in the nation to declare access to clean, accessible and affordable drinking water a human right. The researchers wanted to see how these different types of utilities have fared in achieving that.
They already knew more than 700,000 Californians rely on water systems that are failing to meet drinking water standards, according to the State Water Resources Control Board, and an additional 1.8 million have systems considered “at risk” of failing.
The study, published this month in the journal Nature Water, found that 13% of water utilities with limited voting rights are identified as “failing,” similar to those where customers can’t vote on leaders. For fully democratic water systems, only 9% fall into that category.
Fully democratic water purveyors, which tend to be larger, also have significantly fewer cases of E. coli contamination from sewage leaks or agricultural runoff.
Those with the most cases of bacterial contamination are water utilities with no elected boards that are run by companies or mobile home parks. These serve many low-income communities and tend to serve more African Americans.
“We find very clearly that low-income communities of color are less likely to have water democracy than others,” Dobbin said.
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The group of for-profit utilities led by unelected managers is also more likely to rely on a single source of water rather than diversifying, which Dobbin said puts them more at risk of an emergency if a well goes dry or tests reveal contamination.
Growing numbers of Californians are also struggling to afford the rising costs of their water bills. And on affordability, the group that performs the worst is utilities that allow only property owners, not all registered voters, to vote. The researchers found the utilities with the most democracy perform much better in delivering affordable water.
One caveat: Another recent study, led by UC Davis professor Samuel Sandoval Solis, examined who is leading nearly 700 public water agencies in California, and found that Latinos, as well as Black and Indigenous people, remain significantly underrepresented on their boards, as do women.
Here’s a look at other news about water, the environment and climate change this week:
Water news this week
I wrote about how tribes are urging Los Angeles to pump less groundwater in the Owens Valley. In addition to siphoning water from streams into its aqueduct, the Department of Water and Power says the city has 96 wells it can use to pump groundwater. Indigenous leaders told me the pumping has dried up springs and meadows. DWP says the water is used locally for purposes including controlling dust on the dry bed of Owens Lake, and that the city is taking steps to ensure protection of the environment.
Meanwhile, in a unanimous vote, the board of the Metropolitan Water District of Southern California, which delivers water for 19 million people, chose the agency’s new general manager: Shivaji Deshmukh, who leads the Inland Empire Utilities Agency. His appointment comes nearly nine months after the board fired general manager Adel Hagekhalil after an investigation into allegations of discrimination that exposed divisions within the agency.
Up north along the California-Oregon border, one year after the last of four dams was dismantled on the Klamath River, tribes and environmentalists say the river and its salmon are starting to rebound. Damon Goodman, regional director of the group California Trout, says shortly after the dams were removed, “the fish returned in greater numbers than I expected and maybe anyone expected,” Debra Utacia Krol reports in the Arizona Republic. Oregon Public Broadcasting also reports that Chinook salmon have returned to southern Oregon for the first time in more than a century.
In a new report, researchers say President Trump’s proposed budget would slash funding for federal programs aimed at bringing clean drinking water to Native communities by about $500 million, a nearly 70% decrease. The researchers, part of an initiative called Universal Access to Clean Water for Tribal Communities, said the proposal would reverse “hard-won progress toward clean, reliable water supplies for Native communities,” and they’re urging Congress to reject the cuts.
More climate and environment news
California hasn’t issued an emergency plea for the public to conserve energy, known as a Flex Alert, since 2022. As my L.A. Times colleague Hayley Smith reports, much of the credit for that goes to new battery energy storage, which has grown more than 3,000% since 2020.
The Trump administration plans to further cut staff at the Environmental Protection Agency and the Interior Department. Inside Climate News’ Katie Surma reports that the Interior Department plans to slash about 2,000 positions affecting national parks, endangered species and research. The plan surfaced in a court case after a judge temporarily blocked the administration from cutting staff during the government shutdown.
Earlier this year, my colleague Grace Toohey wrote about problems in Ventura County during the Thomas fire of 2017 and the Mountain fire of 2024, when firefighters saw hydrants run dry and found themselves short of water. Assemblymember Steve Bennett (D-Ventura) introduced legislation requiring Ventura County water suppliers to take various steps to try to prevent that, including having 24 hours of backup power to pump water for firefighting. Gov. Gavin Newsom signed the bill, which Bennett says is “implementing the lessons learned” from the fires.
One other thing
My former colleague Sammy Roth recently left the L.A. Times and has started his own newsletter about climate and culture called Climate-Colored Goggles. His first edition just came out, focusing on how Toyota has tarnished its green reputation so much that some of Hollywood’s leading environmentalists no longer want to be associated with it. Sammy writes that the Environmental Media Assn., Hollywood’s leading sustainability group, appears poised to cut ties with Toyota, its sponsor.
Sammy’s piece is, as usual, hard-hitting and insightful. I hope you’ll join me in continuing to follow and subscribe to his work.
Boiling Point, which Sammy helmed so brilliantly, will be back with a new installment next week from another member of our Climate and Environment team.
This is the latest edition of Boiling Point, a newsletter about climate change and the environment in the American West. Sign up here to get it in your inbox. And listen to our Boiling Point podcast here.
Early voter turnout is exceeding expectations in California’s Nov. 4 special election over redrawing the state’s congressional districts, a Democratic-led effort to counter Republican attempts to keep Congress under GOP control.
“We’re seeing some pretty extraordinary numbers of early votes that have already been cast, people sending back in their ballots,” Gov. Gavin Newsom said in a livestream with former President Obama on Wednesday.
More than 3.4 million mail ballots have been returned as of Wednesday, with votes from Democrats outpacing ballots from Republicans and Californians registered as not having a party preference, according to a ballot tracker run by Democratic strategist Paul Mitchell. Mitchell is deeply involved in the Democratic effort, and drafted the proposed congressional districts on the Nov. 4 special election ballot.
That’s roughly the same number of ballots returned by this time in the White House contest between then-Vice President Kamala Harris and then-former President Trump in 2024, notable because turnout during presidential elections is higher than in other years.
About a million more ballots had been turned in by this point in the unsuccessful 2021 attempt to recall Newsom, but that was during the COVID pandemic.
This year’s turnout is also especially significant because Proposition 50 is about the esoteric topic of redistricting. Redrawing congressional districts is usually a once-a-decade process that takes place after the U.S. census to account for population shifts.
California’s 52 congressional districts currently are crafted by a voter-approved independent commission, but Newsom and other California Democrats decided to ask voters to allow a rare mid-decade partisan gerrymandering to blunt Trump’s efforts in GOP-led states to boost his party’s numbers in the House.
Obama, who has endorsed Proposition 50 and stars in a television ad supporting the effort, on Wednesday said the ballot measure will affect the entire country.
“There’s a broader principle at stake that has to do with whether or not our democracy can be manipulated by those who are already in power to entrench themselves further,” Obama said. “Or, whether we’re going to have a system that allows the people to decide who’s going to represent them.”
About 51% of the ballots that have been returned to date are from registered Democrats, while 28% are from registered Republicans and 21% are from voters who do not express a party preference.
It’s unknown how these voters cast their ballots, but the Democratic advantage appears to give an edge to supporters of Proposition 50, which needs to be passed by a simple majority to be enacted. About 19.6 million ballots — roughly 85% of those mailed to California voters — are outstanding, though not all are expected to be returned.
The current trend of returned ballots at this point shows Democrats having a small edge over Republicans compared with their share of the California electorate. According to the latest state voter registration report, Democrats account for 45% of California’s registered voters, while Republicans total 25% and “no party preference” voters make up 23%. Californians belonging to other parties make up the remainder.
Mitchell added that another interesting data point is that the mail ballots continue to flow in.
“Usually you see a lull after the first wave — if you don’t mail in your ballot in the first week, it’s going to be sitting on the counter for a while,” Mitchell said. But ballots continue to arrive, possibly encouraged by the “No Kings” protests on Saturday, he said.
A spokesperson for the pro-Proposition 50 campaign said they are taking nothing for granted.
“With millions of ballots still to be cast, we will keep pushing to make sure every Californian understands what’s at stake and turns out to vote yes on Nov. 4th to stop Trump’s power grab,” said spokesperson Hannah Milgrom.
Some Republican leaders have expressed concerns that the GOP early vote may be suppressed by Trump’s past criticism about mail balloting, inaccuracies in the voter guide sent to the state’s 23 million voters and conspiracy theories about the ballot envelope design.
“While ballot initiatives are nonpartisan, many Republicans tend to hold on to their ballots until in-person voting begins,” said Ellie Hockenbury, an advisor to the “No on Prop 50 — Stop Sacramento’s Power Grab” campaign committee. “As this next phase starts — and with nearly two weeks until Election Day — we expect already high turnout to continue rising to defeat Proposition 50 and stop Gavin Newsom’s partisan power grab.”
Amy Thoma, a spokesperson for the other major group opposing the proposition, said the data show that the voters who have returned ballots so far are not representative of the California electorate.
“Special elections tend to be more partisan, older and whiter than general elections, which is one of the reasons we’ve been concerned about the speed with which the politicians pushed this through,” she said.
Among the small army of prospects who’ve eyed the California governorship, none seemed more qualified than Toni Atkins.
After serving on the San Diego City Council, she moved on to Sacramento, where Atkins led both the Assembly and state Senate, one of just three people in history — and the first in 147 years — to head both houses of California’s Legislature.
She married that expertise with the kind of hardscrabble, up-by-her-bootstraps backstory that a calculating political consultant might have spun from whole cloth, had it not been so.
Atkins grew up in rural Appalachia in a rented home with an outdoor privy. Her first pair of glasses was a gift from the local Lions Club. She didn’t visit a dentist until she was 24. Her family was too poor.
Yet for all of that, Atkins’ gubernatorial campaign didn’t last even to 2026, when voters will elect a successor to the termed-out Gavin Newsom. She quit the race in September, more than eight months before the primary.
She has no regrets.
“It was a hard decision,” the Democrat said. “But I’m a pragmatic person.”
She couldn’t and wouldn’t keep asking “supporters and people to contribute more and more if the outcome was not going to be what we hoped,” Atkins said. “I needed sort of a moonshot to do it, and I didn’t see that.”
She spoke recently via Zoom from the den of her home in San Diego, where Atkins had just returned after spending several weeks back in Virginia, tending to a dying friend and mentor, one of her former college professors.
“I was a first-generation college kid … a hillbilly,” Atkins said. She felt as though she had no place in the world “and this professor, Steve Fisher, basically helped turn me around and not be a victim. Learn to organize. Learn to work with people on common goals. … He was one of the first people that really helped me to understand how to be part of something bigger than myself.”
Over the 22 months of her campaign — between the launch in January 2024 and its abandonment on Sept. 29 — Atkins traveled California from tip to toe, holding countless meetings and talking to innumerable voters. “It’s one thing to be the speaker or the [Senate leader],” she said. “People treat you differently when you’re a candidate. You’re appealing to them to support you, and it’s a different conversation.”
She heard plenty from business owners and, especially, put-upon residents of red California, who griped about Sacramento and its seeming disconnection from their lives and livelihoods. “I heard in Tehama County … folks saying, ‘Look, we care about the environment, but we can’t have electric school buses here. We don’t have any infrastructure.’ ”
Voters seemed to be of two — somewhat contradictory — minds about what they want in their next governor.
First off, “Someone that’s going to be focused on California, California problems and California issues,” Atkins said. “They want a governor that’s not going to be performative, but really focused on the issues that California needs help on.”
The challenge, Atkins suggested, is “convincing people … you’re absolutely going to fight for California values and, at the same, that you’re going to be focused on fixing the roads.”
Maybe California needs to elect a contortionist.
Given her considerable know-how and compelling background, why did Atkins’ campaign fizzle?
“I hoped my experience and my collaborative nature and my ability to work across party lines when I needed to … would gain traction,” Atkins said. “But I just didn’t have the name recognition.”
Or, more pertinently, the huge pile of cash needed to build that name recognition and get elected to statewide office in California.
While Atkins wasn’t a bad fundraiser, she simply couldn’t raise the many tens of millions of dollars needed to run a viable gubernatorial race.
That could be seen as a referendum of sorts. If enough people wanted Atkins to be governor, she theoretically would have collected more cash. But who doubts that money has an unholy influence on our elections?
“I’ve lost parents, but it’s been decades,” she said. “And to lose Steve” — her beloved ex-college professor — “I think I’m going to take the rest of the year to reflect. I’m definitely going to stay engaged … but I’m going to focus on family” at least until January.
Atkins remains optimistic about her adopted home state, notwithstanding her unsuccessful run for governor and the earful of criticisms she heard along the way,
“California is the place where people dream,” she said. “We still have the ability to do big things … We’re the fourth-largest economy. We’re a nation-state. We need to remember that.”
Reporting from Sacramento — California is poised to charge the highest taxes and fees on gas in the country when an increase kicks in July 1, but officials say the state is still billions of dollars short of what’s needed to properly fix the roads and are considering additional charges.
The gasoline tax is set to climb by 5.6 cents per gallon, the second in a wave of increases approved by state leaders two years ago to raise billions of dollars for road and bridge repairs and mass transit.
Combined with a 12-cent increase that took effect in November 2017, the taxes and vehicle fees approved in a bill known as SB 1 are projected to add $5.4 billion in the coming year to transportation funding.
But officials estimate $130 billion is needed to bring the state’s roads and bridges into a state of good repair. The gas tax increases of 2017 will raise some $52 billion during the first 10 years but that will leave a road repair shortfall of approximately $78 billion.
The tax does not expire after 10 years and will continue to grow with the cost of living in future decades.
“The current funding is not sufficient, it is not enough,” said Tony Akel, a Fresno engineer who is a leader of the American Society of Civil Engineers. “We know that there is a big gap that is a result of years of underfunding.”
The group just released a study that gives California’s roads a “D” grade, saying they are among the worst in the country. State Sen. Jim Beall (D-San Jose), who authored the gas tax measure, said the evaluation appears accurate, but argued it is not a failure of the tax measure, just too early an assessment.
“You won’t see the impact of SB 1 for another couple of years,” Beall said. “The grades are based on actual conditions, and the SB 1 projects are underway but they are not finished. Road conditions will improve.”
The state has completed about 100 transportation projects and 400 more are in the works, according to the administration of Gov. Gavin Newsom.
Projects funded so far include $135.9 million to improve 104 lane miles of Interstate 605 and $54.9 million for 99 lane miles of State Route 1 in Los Angeles County. Projects completed so far include repaving a stretch of Interstate 5 between the 605 and Washington Boulevard in Los Angeles County.
“SB 1 was never expected to completely fund all backlog work, but it has given us a great start to making up for years of underfunding,” said Jeff Burdick, a spokesman for Caltrans.
The increase taking effect next month means the total state taxes and fees on gasoline will be 57.8 cents per gallon, based on the current average price of gas across California.
That will just edge out the 57.6 cents-per-gallon charged by Pennsylvania. Washington state will remain in third place, charging motorists 49.4 cents per gallon.
(Some of the California tax is based on a percentage of the cost of a gallon of gas, so a significant drop in prices could cause the overall tax to drop — at least temporarily — below Pennsylvania’s.)
Alaska and Missouri have the lowest gas taxes in the country, with per-gallon charges of 14.34 and 17.35 cents respectively, according to the American Petroleum Institute. Motorists in all states also pay 18.4 cents per gallon in federal fuel taxes.
“California will be number one in another category that it shouldn’t be number one in,” said state Sen. John Moorlach (R-Costa Mesa), who opposed SB 1 as it made its way through the Legislature. “These incremental increases drive people nuts. They are trying to meet their budgets, and we keep pounding away at it.”
Assembly Democrats, in a 49-17 vote, on Monday blocked an attempt by Republicans to postpone the July tax hike. “Democrats reaffirmed their support for a regressive gas tax increase that punishes every Californian who can’t afford a Tesla,” said Assemblyman Devon Mathis (R-Visalia). “So much for being the party of working people.”
SB 1 calls for additional annual increases to California’s gas tax based on inflation starting July 1, 2020.
Beall, the chairman of the Senate Transportation Committee, agreed with the assessment of the engineers’ group that current revenue is insufficient.
“Money went to local [agencies] from the gas tax, but they still need more,” Beall said, adding that the federal government needs to increase its funding for roads, while counties also can go to their voters for local sales tax increases for transportation projects.
Voters in Riverside County are among those who may be asked next year to raise taxes to fill a funding shortfall to fix the roads.
The Riverside County Transportation Commission has launched a study to determine how to make up a $12.6-billion gap between its transportation needs and expected funding over the next 20 years, according to Cheryl Donahue, a manager at the agency.
“As part of its review, the commission will determine whether asking county voters to consider a sales tax measure to fund transportation improvements is part of the best overall approach to reducing congestion and improving mobility,” Donahue said.
The San Diego Metropolitan Transit System also is considering whether to ask voters to increase the sales tax by up to one-half cent next year to pay for transit, highway and road improvements, spokesman Rob Schupp said. The San Diego Assn. of Governments released a poll in March that found strong voter support for such a tax, with 70% of those surveyed saying “improving roads to support transit services” is important.
Voters in San Mateo and San Benito counties approved sales tax increases in November for road projects.
Moorlach said Orange County, where he lives, has approved two local tax measures to fund its transportation needs in recent years, and he does not have a problem with other counties following suit.
The group Move L.A. has proposed a grander plan, suggesting that raising local sales taxes by a half-cent in Los Angeles, Orange, San Bernardino and Riverside counties could bring in about $1.5 billion per year for public projects.
Much of the money would go to South Coast Air Quality Management District efforts to increase non-polluting transportation, including electric cars and trucks. But some could be spent on infrastructure including bike and pedestrian lanes, which SB 1 finances.
The air district has sponsored a bill, SB 732, that would allow it to ask voters to raise the sales tax by up to 1% in the four counties. The legislation is expected to be taken up next year.
State law requires a two-thirds vote to approve a local tax increase for transportation, but a pair of other pending bills could make approval easier. A bill in the Legislature would put a measure on the November 2020 statewide ballot that would allow cities, counties and special districts to impose taxes if 55% of local voters approve. The measure would benefit projects involving affordable housing and infrastructure, including improvements to transit and streets and highways.
Another bill, AB 1413, would allow local transportation agencies like San Diego’s to seek voter approval of tax increases in any portion of the county, so if some areas want better roads they can vote on them. The measure would allow communities to pay for “improving roads, transit, highways, or other transportation infrastructure as they see fit,” said Assemblyman Todd Gloria (D-San Diego).
But the Howard Jarvis Taxpayers Assn. argued agencies “shouldn’t be able to pick and choose among their tax base to make it easier to increase regressive sales taxes.”
State lawmakers also are considering a bill that would charge a 10% tax on every barrel of oil pumped from the ground in California to bring in some $900 million annually. That, critics say, would mean motorists will pay more at the pump. Backers of the bill deny there would be a significant impact on drivers.
Money raised by the bill would go to the general fund but could help with transportation, said Sen. Bob Wieckowski (D-Fremont), the legislation’s author.
“While other states have brought in billions of dollars for their constituents through an oil severance tax, California has had to dip into its own pockets to cover extensive clean-up costs brought about by the oil industry’s irresponsible actions,” Wieckowski said. “Californians deserve better.”
Former National Football League (NFL) running back Doug Martin has died aged 36 while in police custody in California.
The Oakland Police Department said the former American football star – who played for teams including the Tampa Bay Buccaneers – died after being involved in an alleged home break-in and a struggle with officers on Saturday.
“While attempting to detain the individual, a brief struggle ensued,” the department said, adding Martin became unresponsive and was taken to a hospital, where he later died.
His family announced his passing and said his cause of death was “unconfirmed”.
“It is with great sadness to inform you all that Doug Martin passed away Saturday morning,” his family told US media. The family asked for “privacy at this time”.
In a statement, Martin’s former team, the Tampa Bay Buccaneers, said they were “deeply saddened to learn of the sudden and unexpected passing of Doug Martin”.
“From his record-setting rookie season in 2012 to his multiple Pro Bowl selections during his six seasons as a Buccaneer, Doug made a lasting impact on our franchise,” the team added.
Born in Oakland, California, Martin was Tampa Bay’s first-round pick in the 2012 NFL draft. During his first season, Martin rushed for 1,454 yards and made 11 touchdowns.
Martin spent six of his seven NFL seasons playing for the Buccaneers, and was nicknamed the “Muscle Hamster” because of his high strength despite being relatively short for a professional player at 5ft 9in (1.75m) tall.
But he struggled with injuries and was also suspended in 2016 for four games for violating the NFL’s drug policy, after testing positive for a banned substance. He apologised and went to a drug treatment facility.
Martin also played for the Oakland Raiders, which is now in Las Vegas, at the end of his career in 2018.
