nonprofit

SACRAMENTO — Gov. Gavin Newsom sat onstage at the Munich Security Conference in Germany on Friday and described one of the primary ways he is responding as the Trump administration shifts federal climate priorities.

“I’m showing up,” he said.

In recent months, that has meant trips to Brazil, Switzerland and now Germany, where he has repeatedly positioned California as a global climate partner. The travel has also revived a recurring question from critics and watchdog groups: Who pays for those trips?

In many cases, the costs are not borne by taxpayers. The governor’s office said his international travel is paid for by the California State Protocol Foundation, a nonprofit that is funded primarily by corporate donations and run by a board Newsom appoints.

For decades, California governors have relied on nonprofits to pick up the tab for official travel, diplomatic events and other costs that would otherwise be paid with taxpayer funds.

“The Foundation’s mission is to lessen the burden on California taxpayers by reimbursing appropriate expenses associated with advancing the state’s economic and diplomatic interests,” said Jason Elliott, a former high-ranking advisor to Newsom, who the governor added to the foundation’s board.

While the arrangement helps the state’s pocketbook, critics say it is another avenue for corporate interests to gain influence.

“The problem with the protocol foundation and others like it is that donors to these foundations receive access to the politicians whose travel they fund,” said Carmen Balber, executive director of the advocacy group Consumer Watchdog.

When did nonprofits start paying for gubernatorial travel?

The protocol foundation was created as a tax-exempt charity during Republican Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger’s administration in 2004.

Similar nonprofits have existed since Gov. George Deukmejian created one in the 1980s. In the early 2000s, Gov. Gray Davis dramatically increased the use of nonprofits to cover travel, housing and political events.

When Schwarzenegger left office, his supporters turned the protocol foundation over to Democratic Gov. Jerry Brown’s backers, who in turn handed it over to Newsom’s camp. The foundation describes its mission in federal tax filings as “relieving the State of California of its obligations to fund certain expenditures of the Governor’s Office.”

Newsom appoints members to the foundation board, which then is responsible for determining what expenses to cover in the governor’s office. In its most recent tax filing covering 2024, the foundation lists its board chair as Steve Kawa, who served as Newsom’s chief of staff when he was mayor of San Francisco. The foundation’s secretary in those filings is Jim DeBoo, who was Newsom’s chief of staff in the governor’s office until 2022.

The foundation reported total revenue of $1.3 million in 2024 and, after expenses, had a balance of less than $8,000.

What is the foundation paying for?

Publicly available records are vague, but annual financial disclosure forms show the foundation paid more than $13,000 for the governor’s 2024 trip to Italy, where he delivered a speech on climate change at the Vatican.

That same year, the foundation paid nearly $4,000 for his trip to Mexico City to attend the inauguration of Mexico’s first female president, Claudia Sheinbaum. The cost of both trips included flights, hotel and meals for his “official travel,” according to the disclosure records, which are filed with the Fair Political Practices Commission and known as Form 700s.

Newsom has reported receiving $72,000 in travel, staff picnics and holiday events from the protocol foundation since he took office in 2019, according to the disclosures.

The foundation paid $15,200 for the governor’s 2023 trip to China, where he visited five cities in seven days during an agenda packed with meetings, sightseeing and celebrations, including a private tour of the Forbidden City.

In 2020, the foundation paid $8,800 for Newsom to travel to Miami for Super Bowl LIV — where he said he was representing the state as the San Francisco 49ers faced the Kansas City Chiefs.

The governor’s office said it did not yet have the amount picked up by the foundation for Newsom’s travel to Brazil to attend the United Nations climate summit known as COP30 or to Switzerland for the World Economic Summit.

Who are the donors behind the foundation?

In some cases, the well-heeled funders behind the foundation’s cash flow are easy to identify on state websites.

Donations to the foundation that are solicited directly or indirectly by Newsom are recorded with the Fair Political Practices Commission as behested payments. A behested payment occurs when an elected official solicits or suggests that a person or organization give to another person or organization for a legislative, governmental or charitable purpose.

The William and Flora Hewlett Foundation donated $300,000 in a 2023 behested payment earmarked for the California delegation traveling to China for the meetings on climate change. UC Berkeley gave $220,000 for the governor’s office’s trip to the Vatican in 2024.

Most donations simply indicate that they are directed for “general operating support” of the foundation. That includes two donations from the Amazon-owned autonomous vehicle company Zoox Inc. cumulatively worth $80,000.

Two charities set up to pay for Newsom’s inaugurations in 2019 and 2023 moved more than $5 million to the protocol foundation since 2019. The financial backers behind those inaugural charities include powerful unions, corporations, tribal casino interests, trade associations and healthcare giants — organizations with significant financial stakes in state policy decisions.

Past spending by the foundation has been criticized

During Schwarzenegger’s administration, his office avoided fully disclosing $1.7 million in travel costs paid for by the foundation, instead relying on vague internal memos and, in some cases, oral accounting, according to a 2007 Los Angeles Times investigation.

Schwarzenegger’s expenses picked up by the foundation included leased Gulfstream jets costing up to $10,000 per hour and suites going for thousands of dollars a night. The Times’ investigation found among the costs was $353,000 for a single round trip to China on a private jet in 2005.

The foundation also paid for Schwarzenegger’s travels to Japan, Europe, Canada and Mexico.

At the time, Schwarzenegger’s representatives told The Times the governor did not have to report the travel costs on his annual disclosure forms because the payments for the jets and suites were gifts to his office, not to him.

Newsom’s office said the governor travels commercially, not on private jets.

A tech executive who made a fortune developing education software, then waded into the fight against homelessness, is now entering the race for Los Angeles mayor.

Adam Miller, co-founder of Better Angels, a nonprofit focused on preventing homelessness and building affordable housing, filed paperwork on Wednesday to run against Mayor Karen Bass in the June 2 primary election.

Miller, in an interview, said the city is on a downward trajectory and beset with problems — and needs someone with strong leadership skills at City Hall.

“A lot of the issues we face in the city are management problems, and I know how to manage,” he said. “I’ve managed effectively teams that are big and small. I’ve managed teams that are domestic and international. And I’ve managed programs at every stage, so I know how to scale things up and make them operate at scale for a big system.”

The 56-year-old entrepreneur and nonprofit executive is making his move at a moment when the candidate lineup remains unsettled. Even with Saturday’s deadline for filing candidate paperwork fast approaching, some are still undecided on whether to run.

Los Angeles County Supervisor Lindsey Horvath has spent several days hinting that she may jump into the race, while also taking shots at Bass on CNN and elsewhere.

Maryam Zar, who founded the Palisades Recovery Coalition in the wake of the Palisades fire, is also weighing a run. Even real estate developer Rick Caruso, who publicly ruled out a mayoral bid last month, told KNX on Wednesday that he may reconsider.

Former L.A. schools Supt. Austin Beutner, who launched his campaign in October, has been out of the public eye since the death of his 22-year-old daughter on Jan. 6. Reality TV star Spencer Pratt has spent the last several weeks promoting his book “The Guy You Loved to Hate,” and emerged earlier this week to file his candidate paperwork.

Community organizer Rae Huang has been courting the city’s left-leaning voters, appearing with podcaster Hasan Piker in a conversation about housing policy.

Meanwhile, Bass has been using the trappings of her office to promote her work, scheduling two State of the City speeches in a three-month span. The first of those, delivered Monday, sounded in many ways like a campaign stump speech, except longer.

After Miller filed his paperwork, Bass spokesperson Douglas Herman immediately derided him, describing Miller as a “wealthy venture capitalist” who sold software that helped large companies “systematically lay off workers.”

“The last thing Los Angeles needs now is another self-funder who doesn’t understand the crisis of affordability in our city,” Herman said. “Mayor Karen Bass will continue working to solve the biggest problems facing our city with groundbreaking efforts on housing affordability, reductions in street homelessness and public safety stats sitting at 60-year lows.”

Miller pushed back on the mayor’s statement, saying his company’s software was used for training and helping employees build their skills. He said that, although he will provide a loan to his campaign to get things started, he will be raising money like any other campaign.

Miller is the former chief executive of Cornerstone OnDemand, the global training and development company that he built over more than two decades, growing it to more than 3,000 employees. The publicly traded company was sold in 2021 to a private equity firm for $5.2 billion, he said.

The Brentwood resident has been heavily focused on philanthropy, serving as chair of the nonprofit 1P.org, which is a charitable foundation that provides funding to other nonprofit groups.

Miller said he and his wife, Staci, while mapping out their philanthropic work, chose to focus on intractable problems at the local, state, national and global level. Locally, he said, homelessness was the issue they identified as the most intractable.

1P.org has been providing funding to Better Angels, which has been working to build affordable housing while also distributing micro-loans to families facing eviction. In addition, the nonprofit has developed an app to help homeless outreach workers stay connected.

Sara Reyes, executive director of SELAH Neighborhood Homeless Coalition, said its 700 volunteers use Better Angels’ outreach app to maintain relationships with one another and their clients in neighborhoods stretching from Hollywood to Atwater Village.

The app is not integrated with the homeless database maintained by the Los Angeles Homeless Services Authority, a city-county partnership, and would be more effective if it was, Reyes said.

Miller said the city needs help with issues that go well beyond homelessness. For example, he said, city leaders have made L.A. “one of the least developer friendly cities in the country,” hindering the construction of new homes.

“We have a major housing shortage,” he said. “We have an unacceptable number of people who are unhoused. We have affordability issues. I’d say city cleanliness is on the decline. We are not well prepared for disasters, as was clearly seen last year.”