California voters may soon get another chance to weigh in on how the state responds to federal cuts in scientific research funding — this time at the ballot box in March 2028.
After appearing all but finished earlier this year, a $7.5 billion science research bond measure has been revived through a last-minute agreement between state lawmakers and Gov. Gavin Newsom. The proposal, Senate Bill 895, is authored by San Francisco Democrat Sen. Scott Wiener and cleared the Legislature Monday with broad bipartisan support. It now heads to the governor’s desk for a signature.
The bond’s path to this point has been anything but smooth. It began life more than a year ago as an ambitious $23 billion request, was later trimmed to $12 billion, and appeared headed nowhere after missing a June deadline to qualify for this year’s ballot — at one point shrinking to just $5 billion. Wiener, along with an unusual alliance of the University of California system and the union representing graduate student researchers, kept pushing to keep the effort alive over the summer.
That persistence has paid off. For the first time, leadership in both the Assembly and Senate, along with Newsom, are united behind the measure, which underwent significant last-minute changes.
“We have performed a ritual legislative resurrection of the bill,” Wiener said during a Friday press conference announcing the deal.
Under the proposal, $1 billion would go toward building new science facilities at UC and Cal State campuses and establishing a system of scientific review panels to evaluate research proposals on their merits. The remainder would fund a broad spectrum of priorities, including biomedical research, wildfire prevention and water supply projects. Some money would also support efforts to commercialize scientific breakthroughs and create opportunities for researchers early in their careers.
Bonds function as a form of government debt, repaid gradually over time. Under this measure, public and private research institutions — universities, medical centers, labs and other organizations — would be eligible to apply for grants or loans. A newly created California Foundation for Science and Health Research Council would be tasked with developing detailed guidelines for how the money gets distributed.
Supporters frame the bond as a defense mechanism against the Trump administration’s ongoing efforts to slash research funding at UC campuses and elsewhere. The Department of Justice has argued in court that some federal grants it canceled ran afoul of the president’s restrictions on research tied to diversity initiatives and climate change — even though many of the affected projects focused on disease research, including work on cancer, dementia and new pharmaceutical treatments.
Federal money makes up roughly half of all research funding across the UC system — about $3 billion in federal grants during the 2024-25 fiscal year alone. Last year, the White House suspended or canceled more than 1,000 California science grants funded through the National Institutes of Health and National Science Foundation. Court filings later revealed the administration used bulk keyword searches for terms associated with diversity and climate topics to identify grants for elimination. Most of those grants have since been restored, at least temporarily, following lawsuits filed by university researchers — though at least one major legal challenge remains unresolved.
The administration has also floated a plan to let political appointees decide which science grants receive funding, a break from the long-standing practice of using independent peer-review panels of scientists to make those calls.
That shift, along with broader anxiety about federal interference in research, has already prompted some prominent American scientists to relocate abroad, drawn by new incentive packages from other countries. Dr. Harold R. Collard, vice chancellor for research at UC San Francisco, said during Friday’s announcement that California’s bond measure could help retain researchers who might otherwise leave — and attract new talent to the state. Economic research suggests every dollar spent through NIH grants generates roughly $2.57 in broader economic activity.
The bond’s rocky road through the Legislature appears to have stemmed largely from timing concerns. Lawmakers and political observers say the measure initially stalled in the Assembly amid worries it would compete for voter attention — and campaign resources — with a separate, higher-priority bond: an $11.25 billion housing measure set for the November ballot aimed at expanding affordable housing construction statewide. Advocates for that measure worried a second large bond on the same ballot could hurt both efforts.
“I think there’s some legitimate political concerns about placing something competing with the housing bond,” said Chris Micheli, a longtime Sacramento lobbyist and law professor, when the science bond first hit a wall in June.
Wiener confirmed that was indeed part of the calculation. “We already placed a housing bond on the ballot,” he said Friday. “There are a lot of items on the state ballot, and I understand why some people were concerned about placing yet additional items on the ballot for November. That’s why we were able to, after the deadline passed, work collaboratively toward March of 2028.”
The housing bond has faced its own version of this dance before — it was bumped in 2024 to make way for two other $10 billion bond measures covering school construction and climate resilience.
Complicating matters further, California voters will actually see a different science-related bond measure this November. Proposition 38, backed by a wealthy private funder, would direct $8.4 billion toward immunology and immunotherapy research, with particular focus on Alzheimer’s, cancer and heart disease. According to CalMatters reporting, roughly half of that funding appears likely to benefit a single research institute closely tied to the measure’s billionaire backer.
Wiener doesn’t see that measure as competition for his own bond effort, given the different scope and timeline. “That ballot measure primarily funds one particular institute. It’s not a broad science policy funding measure, and so it’s just very different,” he said.
Now the real work begins: persuading California voters, more than two years from now, that investing billions more in scientific research is worth the cost.
Original source: CalMatters
