legislature

SACRAMENTO — The California legislature passed a bill Wednesday that would require the state to track the use of pesticides that contain perfluoroalkyl and polyfluoroalkyl substances, known as PFAS chemicals, which can be harmful to humans.

The bill, by Assemblymember Nick Schultz (D-Burbank), heads to Gov. Gavin Newsom, who can sign it into law or veto it.

Schultz’s original bill would have phased out pesticides with PFAs and put California in line with Maine and Minnesota, which passed laws restricting their use.

The state’s powerful agricultural industry objected to the proposed ban. Nearly half of the country’s vegetables and more than three-quarters of its fruits and nuts come from California, according to the state.

The revised bill instead requires the Department of Pesticide Regulation to flag which pesticides have PFAs in its public state database.

The vast majority of PFAS chemicals have not been tested for human health effects, according to the Environmental Protection Agency. Studies show that exposure to certain levels of PFAs may lead to decreased fertility and developmental delays in children and increase the risk of cancers.

State regulators and environmental groups disagree on the definition of the chemicals, making it difficult to find a consensus on regulations.

The European Union has prohibited 23 of the PFAS pesticides in use in California, including bifenthrin, trifluralin and flufenacet, according to Environmental Working Group, a sponsor of Schultz’s bill.

Schultz expressed disappointment after his bill was changed this summer but said Thursday that the remaining regulations are “a vital step toward ensuring California’s agricultural legacy is defined by health and innovation, not by the accumulation of toxic PFAS in our soil and water.”

“We need to help our farmers transition away from these persistent chemicals so that California can be a global leader in food safety,” he added.

SACRAMENTO — Memo to Democrats and independents: Just because an idea emanates from a Republican, doesn’t mean it necessarily stinks. Here are two examples.

Legislators wearing red jerseys have proposed to:

• Make the California secretary of state officially nonpartisan. Rip off the seemingly inevitable blue jersey and replace it with a neutral referee’s garb.
• Similarly, seize the job of writing official ballot proposition titles and summaries from the partisan attorney general and hand it to the nonpartisan, universally trusted Legislative Analyst‘s Office.

Both ideas, of course, were dead on arrival when introduced in the Democratic-dominated state Legislature, which is about to wrap up a two-year session.

But both make good government sense and promote democracy, which the Democratic Party claims it’s fighting for against the President Trump-led GOP.

The secretary of state is the chief overseer of California elections. That office holder, regardless of party, has never favored one side over the other in balloting, although many GOP politicians have been parroting Pied Piper Trump’s nonsense about election rigging.

California Republicans pushing to neutralize the office argue that Democratic incumbent Shirley Weber has taken public policy positions that echo her party’s stands. Shock! This is America. She has a right — a democratic duty — to take any position vocally that she desires.

But it’s logical for the secretary of state to officially operate as a political nonpartisan — as does the state superintendent of public instruction and all county voter registrars, who actually administer the elections and count votes.

“It’s time to take the secretary of state out of the partisan mix,” says former Orange County Assemblyman Don Wagner, who is Weber’s underdog Republican opponent in the November election.

“The secretary should be calling balls and strikes as opposed to being on the red team or a blue team.”

Realistically, no red team member is likely to win any statewide office in California for the foreseeable future, given that Democratic voters outnumber Republicans by nearly 2 to 1 and Trump is widely detested in this state.

“Sometimes Trump does make it harder in California for Republicans,” Wagner acknowledges.

The legislation to make the secretary of state nonpartisan was a proposed California constitutional amendment, introduced by Republican Assemblymembers Natasha Johnson of Lake Elsinore and Josh Hoover of Folsom.

But it was submitted so late in the legislative session that there was no chance of it ever receiving a committee hearing. It didn’t really matter anyway. Even if it had been introduced on Jan. 1, Democrats would have instinctively tossed it in the trash.

They’re never going to make it remotely possible for a Republican to win this office any time soon.

The measure’s authors say their proposal would help “restore Californians’ trust in the electoral system.”

Actually, the only Californians who largely distrust the electoral system are Republicans. And the best way to fix that is for Trump to shut up and stop telling lies about stolen elections and hordes of undocumented immigrants voting illegally.

A recent poll by the UC Berkeley Institute of Governmental Studies found that 88% of Democrats and 64% of independents have confidence in California’s election system. But 76% of Republicans do not — a sign of our polarized times.

Of the two Republican proposals, the most significant is the one stripping the attorney general of the power to write titles and summaries of ballot measures.

Often, the only thing many voters know about a proposition is what they’re told in the title. They aren’t inclined to wade through neutral details in the official state Voter Information Guide.

The legislative analyst is a political noncombatant appointed by the Legislature and basically agreed to by both sides. The highly respected policy wonk already writes the proposition analyses included in the voter guide. Why not also the measures’ titles?

Increasingly in recent years under Democrats, including projected next governor Xavier Becerra, the attorney general has been dishing out party propaganda in official proposition titles.

State law requires the attorney general to provide an “impartial statement of the purpose of the measure” in language unlikely “to create prejudice for or against” the proposal.

But often on hotly contested measures, the language reads like talking points for the blue side.

The latest example is Proposition 39, a Republican proposal requiring Californians to show identification when voting. Election officials also would have to verify that registered voters are U.S. citizens.

I’m no fan of that measure. It overreaches, is unnecessary, could suppress voting and is merely a tool to drive up the GOP vote. Democratic legislative leaders and the party are fiercely opposed.

But Proposition 39’s title is unfairly negative and loaded against the measure. It reads: “Prohibits citizens from voting unless they present government-issued identification.” All some voters will focus on are the first four words.

Proponents sued, but judges are historically reluctant to interfere in election campaigns. A Sacramento judge OKd Democratic Atty. Gen. Rob Bonta’s biased wording.

The legislation for nonpartisan labeling of propositions cleared the Senate Elections Committee but later was quietly killed behind closed doors in the Senate Appropriations Committee, a notorious graveyard for measures sentenced to execution by legislative leaders.

“The Democratic leadership doesn’t want it passed,” notes the author, Sen. Roger Niello of Sacramento County, who recently was elected the next Senate minority leader. “If they kill it [in appropriations] nobody has to vote on it and it dies without fingerprints.”

That’s common legislative games-playing: Keep potentially popular but politically undesirable bills off chamber floors so majority party members can avoid shamefully voting “no.”

But these are still excellent Republican ideas.

There are times when politics should be taken out of elections.

What else you should be reading

The must-read: California backtracks on good-government policies in divided Trump era
Law & Order & Politics: Eric Swalwell briefly detained as feds seize his phone at San Francisco airport, source says
The L.A. Times Special: It’s beyond debate. California voters deserve a Becerra-Hilton face-off

Until next week,
George Skelton

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SACRAMENTO — Proposed legislation to protect animals from “Frankenstein”-like medical experimentation died in the state Senate on Thursday, and supporters blame election year politics for its demise.

Assembly Bill 1382 by Assemblymember Leticia Castillo (R-Home Gardens) would have banned the sale of genetically modified animals in California, such as glow-in-the-dark rabbits and horned “unicorn” horses.

While the business of cosmetically modified, futuristic-looking pets remains in its infancy, animal rights groups worry that eventually the creatures will be created, sold and later discarded in crowded municipal shelters.

Castillo’s bill passed unanimously in the Assembly earlier this year and sailed through the Senate Judiciary Committee in June with bipartisan support.

On Thursday, the legislation died in the Senate Appropriations Committee. The chair of that powerful committee is Sen. Sabrina Cervantes (D-Riverside) whose sister, Clarissa Cervantes, is challenging Castillo in the Nov. 3 election.

Cervantes never brought up the bill during Thursday’s hearing, which effectively kills it. Cervantes’ office didn’t respond to requests about why the legislation died.

Judie Mancuso, the founder of Social Compassion in Legislation, the bill’s sponsor, called the outcome “ludicrous.”

“When you’ve worked in the Capitol as long as I have, you understand that good bills can become political assets or political liabilities during an election cycle,” said Mancuso.

Castillo pledged Thursday to continue her focus on animals and cosmetic genetic engineering.

“This bill was never about politics — it was about protecting animals from being turned into novelty products,” Castillo said in a statement. “I’m disappointed AB 1382 did not move forward, but I am not done fighting for these animals. The technology that makes ‘designer pets’ possible isn’t going away, and neither am I.”

A 2025 Wired article entitled “Your Next Pet Could Be a Glowing Rabbit” profiled a Texas company seeking to create gene-edited pets. Josie Zayner, the founder of the company, told the Times in July that she opposed Castillo’s bill.

Castillo, at a hearing earlier this year, said she understands the concept of gene-editing animals for health reasons, but doesn’t want to see the alterations for cosmetic reasons.

Glow-in-the dark fish were exempt from her bill, which proposed civil penalties of at least $5,000.

Though the Judicial Council of California, the policy-making body for the courts, reviewed the legislation and didn’t have any fiscal concerns about it, the Senate Appropriations Committee analysis warned of “potentially significant workload cost pressures to the state funded trial court system” to resolve any civil cases related to the bill.

“The fiscal impact of this bill to the courts will depend on many unknowns, including the number of cases filed and the factors unique to each case,” the analysis stated.

The Democratic-controlled legislature uses appropriations committees to cull through hundreds of bills placed on what is referred to as the “suspense file.”

Officially, the suspense file is a tool for legislative leaders to evaluate costly bills by weighing them against one another and deciding what to advance to a vote by the Senate and Assembly. Unofficially, it’s used as a way for Democrats who control the Legislature to kill controversial bills out of the public eye.

California Democrats are making an aggressive push to unseat Castillo from the Assembly in the November election, Politico reported.

Castillo defeated Clarissa Cervantes in 2024 by nearly 600 votes to represent parts of Riverside County and San Bernardino County. Castillo lost to then-Assemblymember Sabrina Cervantes in 2022.

After the bill was moved to the Senate Appropriations Committee earlier this year, animal advocates reached out to state Senate Pro Tempore Monique Limón’s office to question the move.

“It’s my belief that there is some kind of political game going on,” Michelle Kelly, chief executive of the nonprofit welfare organization Los Angeles Rabbit Foundation, told the Times last month.

“Why would anyone not want to move forward with this bill?” Kelly said.

A representative for Limón declined to comment.

In a push toward returning Anaheim to the name of his hometown Angels, Assemblyman Avelino Valencia (D-Anaheim) last March introduced what he called the “Home Run for Anaheim Act.”

Five months later, the bill has cleared both houses of the state legislature without a single vote against it. Gov. Gavin Newsom has two months to sign the bill into law, barring a veto that would be surprising because of the lack of opposition.

The bill does not mandate the Angels — playing under a Los Angeles name in Anaheim’s city-owned stadium — revert to the Anaheim Angels name.

However, at a time teams in all sports seek to boost profits by surrounding venues with shops, restaurants, hotels, and other attractions, the bill provides Anaheim with an inducement for the Angels: If the city obtains an exemption from a state law requiring affordable housing to be prioritized in any such development — potentially maximizing revenue for the team — then the team must be called the Anaheim Angels.

Angels owner Arte Moreno has twice reached deals with the city to develop the land, only to see the city walk away both times. In the last deal, he rejected the city’s request to rename the team the Anaheim Angels.

Moreno has shown no public interest in a third negotiation with the city, and the Angels’ current stadium lease extends through 2032, with the team having options to extend the lease through 2038.

By year’s end, the city has said it anticipates the release of a long-awaited property assessment, which is expected to show Angel Stadium needs hundreds of millions of dollars in upgrades to remain viable for the long-term. The city and team may not agree on who should pay for them, and real estate development around the stadium could be part of the solution for funding a new or renovated stadium.

Moreno turns 80 this week. Should he decide to sell the Angels, the city could use the exemption as leverage in discussions with a new owner. Any new owner could have leverage of his own: Once the Angel Stadium lease expires, the owner would be free to move out of Anaheim.

The bill required five votes between the Assembly and Senate. The final vote came on Monday on a consent calendar, the place for matters considered so routine that no legislator even wishes to discuss them.

SACRAMENTO — Gov. Gavin Newsom reached an agreement Friday with legislative leaders on a $351.7-billion state budget in his final year as governor, a spending plan that uses a tax windfall to avoid major cuts and lessen California’s chronic deficit in the years ahead.

The deal provides nearly $2 billion in state revenue next year through tax hikes on corporations, new levies on software sales and a revamped tax on managed healthcare organizations. Lawmakers and the governor continue major investments in education, healthcare and agreed to increase spending on subsidized childcare and affordable housing.

“We want to leave the next governor not only a balanced budget, but a budget that is substantially structurally sound, and we’re going to accomplish that,” Newsom said in an interview Friday. “We were very cautious in terms of new spending,”

The agreement ends weeks of lobbying by outside interests and negotiations among lawmakers and the governor at the state Capitol about how to handle a surge of income tax collected on stock market gains related to artificial intelligence.

Early forecasts last June projected a $12.6-billion deficit in 2026-27, according to the California Department of Finance. Updated predictions now suggest the state will end the year with a surplus of $4.5 billion.

Democrats, following Newsom’s lead, are tucking away $6.4 billion for future years, which allows the governor to knock down a deficit previously projected through 2027-28 and assuage criticism about his spending habits.

But economists say the fix and revenue increase is likely only temporary.

Spending in California has generally exceeded revenue growth during Newsom’s tenure in the governor’s office, creating a chronic shortfall. Despite the extra funding, the budget continues a trend of relying on reserves, shifting funds, borrowing and suspending debt payments to balance state spending.

The Legislative Analyst’s Office, the nonpartisan fiscal advisor for lawmakers, has warned of a roughly $10-billion gap between the amount of money the state brings in and spends, which could grow dramatically worse if the stock market turns downward. The LAO has said the existence of any operating deficit during a revenue boom is a red flag and that the state is “ill-prepared” for even a modest decline.

Christopher Thornberg, an economist and founder of the consulting firm Beacon Economics, said it’s business as usual in Sacramento.

“They love increasing spending. But it seems politically impossible to go the other way,” Thornberg said. “We’ve seen this play out over and over again.”

Lawmakers and the governor offered a different take and asserted that their decision to put the $6.4 billion into a short-term reserve, called the Projected Surplus Temporary Holding Account, and ask voters to allow them to store more money in the rainy day fund are examples of prudent budgeting.

“You see us save more and you see try to address the immediate needs of our community, but also the structural budget that potentially awaits us,” said Senate President Pro Tem Monique Limón (D-Goleta) in an interview. “We are forecasting a moment where we will need to address these issues and we want to start now to think about the future as well.”

Under a progressive tax structure, the state budget is dependent on income taxes paid by the ultra-rich on earnings largely from capital gains. The set up leaves California vulnerable to the unpredictable nature of the stock market, dramatic swings in revenue and, in recent years, reliant on poor projections.

Negotiations at the state Capitol included an agreement on a constitutional amendment that seeks to offset the revenue highs and lows.

If approved by voters on the statewide ballot in November, the amendment would raise a cap on mandatory deposits into the rainy day fund from 10% to 20% of general fund revenue. The measure would also allow lawmakers to exempt money they put into the rainy day fund and the temporary holding account from state spending limits.

Under an existing state appropriations restraint, also known as the Gann Limit, lawmakers cannot spend more than an amount determined by a formula that takes annual tax proceeds, changes to the population and cost of living into consideration. Tax revenue above the limit must be divided between schools and refunds to taxpayers.

With few exceptions, the limit applies to most appropriations of tax revenue, including when lawmakers put money away in the rainy day fund and other reserves.

Newsom said the change will leave the state in a much better position to weather the volatility. Though calls for tax reform remain in California, the governor said being able to place more money into the reserves could ultimately solve the state’s budget challenges.

“The one thing missing is the one thing that I think we finally landed, which is the change in the reserves,” Newsom said. “It changes the political dynamic, where now you’re not exchanging general fund priorities.”

Republicans criticized the proposed constitutional amendment, which passed in a budget trailer bill this week, for failing to require that excess revenue pays down the state’s $22 billion in unemployment insurance debt.

State Sen. Tony Strickland (R-Huntington Beach) called it a missed opportunity.

“It does not require debt payment to go to the UI debt,” Strickland said. “It facilitates more spending, exempting reserve deposits from the state spending limit.”

As part of the negotiations, lawmakers agreed to delay some healthcare cuts that would have required monthly premiums for immigrants and eliminated dental care. The deal adopts a Medi-Cal asset test of $21,000 on July 1, 2027, instead of a $2,000.

The budget agreement includes a provision requiring California’s next governor to develop options to reduce taxpayer subsidies for corporations whose employees receive state-sponsored healthcare through Medi-Cal instead of the company’s health plan. The plan is aimed at raising revenue to offset federal cuts that are expected to leave millions of Californians without access to healthcare.

The California Department of Finance said state reserves are expected to total $28.8 billion under the 2026-27 budget.

New law grants president power to use military to clear roadblocks set up amid weeks of anti-government demonstrations.

Bolivia’s legislature has passed a law granting President Rodrigo Paz the authority to use the military to clear roadblocks set up by antigovernment protesters.

The legislation passed in Bolivia’s Chamber of Deputies on Sunday following an overnight debate. It had previously been approved by the Senate and was expected to be signed into law by Paz.

“This law is hereby passed,” announced Roberto Castro, President of the Chamber of Deputies.

The military has so far only been used in support roles for anti-riot police during weeks of demonstrations calling for Paz, the centre-right leader backed by the US, to step down.

About 100 roadblocks have been set up across the country in recent weeks. Authorities have said the road blockades have led to food and medicine shortages.

On Saturday, dozens of riot police backed by military vehicles fired tear gas as they attempted to clear a road in the town of San Julian.

Protesters threw stones and burned tyres to try to halt the police advance, said an AFP reporter at the scene.

The new law would allow soldiers to use force against protesters, and also grants them a “presumption of legality” in conflict situations. That means their actions will be deemed lawful unless proven otherwise.

It comes after Bolivia’s legislature voted last month to repeal a 2020 law that restricts the use of the military to crack down on protests.

Farmers, miners and transportation unions have been among those leading the protests. The demonstrations come amid widespread unrest over rising inflation, low wages and Paz’s move to abolish fuel subsidies.

Paz, who was elected last year, has charted a course as a pro-business leader, vowing to guide the country through an ongoing economic crisis.

He has received the backing of the US, with the administration of the US President Donald Trump’s so-called “Shield of the Americas” regional coalition vowing support during protests..

“We stand with Paz’s democratic government as it fights back against attempts to drag Bolivia backwards through cynical efforts to prevent the delivery of food, medicine and other vital supplies to the Bolivian people through fake road blockades,” said the alliance members, who have vowed to take a militaristic response to crime in Latin America