California’s state budget once again includes millions of dollars in earmarks that critics say benefit lawmakers’ pet projects more than the public at large — a practice that continues to draw scrutiny even as the state grapples with steep federal cuts to health care funding.
This year, the Legislature set aside $400,000 for a San Francisco mime troupe, $250,000 for a San Luis Obispo nonprofit focused on beaver conservation, and $500,000 for a Los Angeles-based nonprofit that mentors young people interested in filmmaking. Those allocations are part of roughly $1.3 billion in so-called pork-barrel spending — a long-standing but largely opaque budgeting practice that allows individual legislators to direct funds toward projects in their home districts, according to a CalMatters investigation by reporter Yue Stella Yu.
While earmarking isn’t unique to California, watchdogs argue the process lacks transparency and often fails to prioritize communities with the greatest needs. That concern carries extra weight this year as state leaders scramble to offset major reductions in federal health care support.
An analysis of this year’s earmarks shows Democratic-held districts received the overwhelming majority of the funding. Santa Barbara County — home to Senate President Pro Tem Monique Limón and roughly 450,000 residents — landed at least $72.8 million in special appropriations, including $29 million to renovate a gymnasium at a local college.
Marin County, where Gov. Gavin Newsom lives, received $13 million to help build a farmers market and food innovation center. Meanwhile, the UC Berkeley-based Innovative Genomics Institute — which already has backing from the Chan Zuckerberg Initiative and the U.S. Department of Defense — was awarded an additional $25 million in state funds.
By contrast, 17 counties, most of them rural areas represented by Republican lawmakers, appear to have received no earmark funding at all this year. Tulare County, which has a population comparable to Santa Barbara County at about 485,000 residents but leans conservative politically, received just $200,000.
Sen. Dave Cortese, a San José Democrat, said Limón placed an informal $5 million cap on earmark requests from Senate Democrats; he ultimately secured $6.5 million for his own district. Republican Sen. Roger Niello of Roseville said GOP senators were held to a $1 million limit — a disparity he called unfair given that senators on both sides of the aisle represent similarly sized districts.
“That means that I’m not able to do enough for my district as Dave Cortese is for his, and we both have the same size districts,” Niello told CalMatters. “Is that fair? To me, it’s not.”
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In other Capitol and statewide news:
A CalMatters investigation found that at least nine California public school districts have acquired military-grade equipment — including semi-automatic rifles, less-lethal launchers and smoke grenades — without fully disclosing their inventories as required under state law. Reporting by Phoebe Huss for CalMatters’ College Journalism Network found that five districts have not made this year’s disclosures public at all, two updated their reports only after being contacted by CalMatters, and two others released inventory information for the first time this year despite having owned the equipment for years.
The findings have reignited debate in some communities over how heavily armed school police departments should be. At a Sacramento County school board meeting in May, parents and teachers voiced concern about growing militarization of campus security, while supporters argued officers need adequate tools to respond quickly to potential mass-casualty situations. “If the time comes… that these officers need to go into a shooting incident, and they don’t have the tools, and they call for backup, and officers are 15, 20 minutes away — that’s not good,” said Dean Broussard, CEO of a private security firm.
Separately, the U.S. Supreme Court on Monday declined — at least for now — to allow the Trump administration to impose new U.S. Postal Service restrictions on mail-in voting ahead of the Nov. 3 election. In a concurring opinion, Justice Brett Kavanaugh suggested the postal service may eventually have legal authority to enact such rules, but said doing so this close to the election would be “arbitrary and capricious” given how little time states and local election officials would have to adjust.
Gov. Newsom praised the ruling, calling California’s mail-in voting system “safe and accessible.” Attorney General Rob Bonta, who joined more than 20 other state attorneys general in suing to block the restrictions, said the case carried enormous stakes. “In California and several other states, mail voting is the primary way elections are conducted,” Bonta said in a statement. “Had this rule been allowed to take effect, the consequences would have been catastrophic.” California counties are expected to begin mailing ballots the first week of October.
And in Sacramento, board members overseeing the California Public Employees’ Retirement System spent part of Monday’s meeting discussing an unusual topic: the potential existential risks of artificial intelligence. The conversation followed the resignation of a researcher from AI company Anthropic, who warned that unchecked development by leading AI firms could threaten human life within the next decade. “This is humanity,” CalPERS’ board president said during the discussion, according to CalMatters reporter Adam Ashton.
Original source: CalMatters
