Proposition 40 would place a 5 percent tax on the fortunes of California’s roughly 200 billionaires, with most of the resulting revenue earmarked for healthcare programs. Backers call it a long-overdue reckoning for the state’s wealthiest residents. But the measure’s path to passage is anything but straightforward, tangled up in union infighting, competing ballot initiatives and a leadership scandal that has handed opponents a ready-made talking point.

The measure is the brainchild of the Service Employees International Union-United Healthcare Workers West, yet it has drawn opposition from several other major labor organizations — an unusual alignment that puts unions on the same side as the billionaires Prop. 40 targets. Adding to the turmoil, Dave Regan, the union’s outspoken president, is facing serious misconduct allegations from fellow SEIU leaders, who say an independent probe substantiated claims of bullying, harassment, intimidation and even physical violence. Those officials have called for his resignation, saying their union must hold true to its values around respect and accountability. Regan has denied the accusations, but the controversy has become a liability for the campaign as it fights to win over skeptical voters.

Even if Proposition 40 clears the ballot, its future isn’t guaranteed. Wealthy interests opposing the tax have placed two rival measures before voters: Proposition 41, which would bar new taxes that exceed the state’s existing spending cap, and Proposition 42, which would prohibit any tax on personal property. Under California’s rules, if multiple conflicting measures pass, only the one receiving the most votes takes effect. That means a strong showing for either Prop. 41 or Prop. 42 could effectively cancel out the billionaire tax, regardless of how Prop. 40 fares on its own.

A recent survey from the Public Policy Institute of California illustrates just how tight the race has become. Support for Prop. 40 stood at 52 percent among likely voters, with 46 percent opposed — a margin narrow enough that either outcome remains plausible. Meanwhile, both rival measures showed slim leads of their own in the same poll. Notably, those surveyed were given only the official ballot summaries, without any explanation of how the three measures might interact or cancel each other out — a wrinkle that could catch many voters off guard once they’re filling out their ballots.

Mail voting is set to begin within weeks, giving campaigns on all sides a short window to sway an electorate that appears genuinely split.

Absent from the fray, at least publicly, is Gov. Gavin Newsom. Before Prop. 40 even qualified for the ballot, Newsom had voiced concerns that a wealth tax could push high-income residents and businesses out of California, potentially hurting a tax base that already relies heavily on the state’s top earners for income tax revenue. Since then, though, he has softened his stance, suggesting that taxing extreme wealth is better addressed at the federal level rather than through a single state’s ballot measure. Political observers note that Newsom’s shift may reflect his own ambitions beyond Sacramento — a potential presidential run makes alienating the progressive wing of his party over billionaire taxation a risk he seems unwilling to take, even as he stops short of endorsing Prop. 40 outright.

With labor unions divided, competing tax measures on the same ballot, and a scandal complicating the campaign’s messaging, Proposition 40’s fate looks likely to hinge on which side can cut through the noise and reach voters before ballots start arriving in mailboxes.

Original source: CalMatters

The post California’s Millionaire Tax Faces New Hurdles as Proposition 30’s Future Hangs in Balance appeared first on The Hemet & San Jacinto Chronicle.

More than 40 years ago, I was walking along a beach in Santa Monica with my young daughters when we came across a sign that read: “Water Polluted. No Swimming.”

My daughters looked at me, confused. They wanted to know why they couldn’t go in the water.

I didn’t have a good answer.

But I knew then that I wanted to do something about it.

That moment set me on a path that led to the fight against offshore drilling off California’s coast. I never imagined that, more than four decades later, we’d still be working to keep it at bay.

For generations, Californians have chosen to protect this coastline. Yet the federal government’s newly released plan threatens to undo that progress by once again proposing to open our waters to expanded offshore oil and gas drilling.

Over the years, I’ve watched Californians rally again and again to defend the coast we love. If there’s one lesson in all of this, it’s that progress is never permanent. Every victory has to be defended anew.

Californians don’t need to imagine what another spill would look like — we’ve lived through it. From Santa Barbara to Orange County, we’ve watched oil wash up on our shores, seen wildlife coated in crude, and witnessed beaches shut down while local businesses, fishing families and coastal communities absorbed the damage.

No parent should have to explain to a child why a pelican is soaked in oil, or why their favorite beach is suddenly closed because of another spill. I never wanted to have that conversation with my own daughters decades ago, and I shouldn’t have to have it with my grandchildren now.

The White House and oil industry often talk about energy security and cheaper gas. But even the rosiest projections show that opening California’s entire coastline to new drilling would add less than one-quarter of one percent to the global oil supply.

That wouldn’t bring down gas prices for Californians anytime soon. What it would do is scatter more rigs along our coastline and raise the odds of another catastrophic spill — one that would put our beaches, marine life and coastal economy at risk all over again.

Fortunately, Californians aren’t without options. While Washington pushes in the wrong direction, Sacramento has a chance to push back in the right one.

State lawmakers recently passed Assembly Bill 1448, legislation that would give California stronger tools to block new offshore drilling and stop old oil infrastructure from being repurposed to support fresh drilling operations. It’s a practical, common-sense measure built on a simple idea: the cheapest oil spill to clean up is the one that never happens.

Given his outspoken record on defending our coast from federal drilling proposals, Gov. Gavin Newsom should sign this bill into law without delay.

Protecting the coast isn’t a partisan cause. It’s not a Democratic priority or a Republican one — it’s a California priority.

Our coastline ranks among the great public treasures anywhere in the world. It’s where families build memories that last a lifetime, where whales pass by on their annual migrations, where surfers paddle out at dawn, where fishing crews make their living, and where millions come each year to experience something larger than themselves.

Our beaches, kelp forests and nearshore waters aren’t simply economic assets — they’re part of our identity. For generations, we’ve decided this coastline is too precious to risk. There’s no reason to change that now.

I remain hopeful.

Time after time, Californians have proven that when the coast is threatened, politics gives way to a shared commitment to protect what we cherish. I believe we’ll rise to the occasion again.

When I think back to that day on the beach, I still picture my daughters looking up at me, puzzled by that warning sign. My hope is that the next generation of parents never has to stand in front of one just like it, left to explain that it didn’t have to happen this way.

Original source: CalMatters

The post California Must Fight Back Against Trump Administration’s Offshore Drilling Push appeared first on The Hemet & San Jacinto Chronicle.

The announcement builds on charges filed earlier this year against three other defendants, and officials warned that more indictments are likely as the investigation continues.

Speaking at a news conference, First Assistant U.S. Attorney Bill Essayli said the latest case centers on a bribery scheme involving fabricated “ghost” clients — a scam he described as evidence of systemic failure rather than an isolated incident.

“Nobody was minding the shop,” Essayli told reporters when asked about the pattern of fraud. “There’s no vetting. There’s no auditing. There’s no accounting. It was just a rush to push as much money out the door.”

Among those arrested was Michael Young, founder of the Culver City-based nonprofit Home At Last. Prosecutors allege Young used shell companies and rigged bidding processes to misappropriate roughly $12 million in public funds. According to the charges, the misused money helped bankroll a $1 million investment in an upscale nightclub, a nearly $50,000 vacation to Tahiti, and a $140,000 restoration of a classic Chevrolet Impala.

U.S. Housing and Urban Development Secretary Scott Turner said Young’s organization has received more than $118 million in public funding for homeless housing programs since 2019, with over $75 million of that flowing through the Los Angeles Homeless Services Authority, commonly known as LAHSA.

A second defendant, Lakiya Malone, worked for the nonprofit Special Service for Groups and was responsible for referring homeless individuals into LAHSA-funded housing programs. Prosecutors say she accepted about $180,000 in bribes from Alexander Soofer, former head of the now-defunct nonprofit Abundant Blessings, in exchange for funneling fake, or “ghost,” clients his way so he could bill for services that were never actually provided.

“She was supposed to guard the money, and instead she took bribes,” Essayli said.

In response, Special Service for Groups issued a statement saying it has cooperated with federal investigators “to ensure that any responsible individuals are held accountable” and has since tightened its internal compliance procedures.

Soofer, whose arrest was first announced in January, has agreed to plead guilty to wire fraud and money laundering charges. In his plea agreement, he admitted to orchestrating the bribery arrangement and confessed to pocketing at least $2 million in public funds for personal use and for businesses unrelated to homeless services. He has agreed to forfeit that money to the federal government. Investigators had initially alleged Soofer diverted a far larger sum — upward of $10 million.

An earlier investigation revealed that LAHSA continued renewing multimillion-dollar contracts with Soofer’s organization even after its own internal compliance reviewers had flagged the nonprofit as “high-risk,” citing irregularities such as billing for services despite reporting zero enrolled clients.

The third person charged, Donye Mitchell, led the nonprofit Big Blue Umbrella. Prosecutors say Mitchell misrepresented his qualifications to secure a $1.2 million county grant, then used a portion of the roughly $315,000 he received for personal expenses — including bail following a domestic violence arrest and purchases of video games.

Essayli noted that Mitchell is “a convicted fraudster, by the way.” Court records show he was previously convicted in 2011 of defrauding California’s unemployment insurance system and was ordered in 2012 to repay the state $6 million. Despite that history, a county vendor awarded him the grant in question in 2024 — more than a decade after his fraud conviction.

Attorneys for Young and Malone did not immediately respond to requests for comment. It was not immediately clear who is representing Mitchell, whose arrest was disclosed after Wednesday’s press briefing.

Los Angeles County District Attorney Nathan Hochman joined Essayli in criticizing what both described as a systemic breakdown in financial oversight of homeless services spending. Hochman pointed to a court-ordered audit released in 2025 that found city officials failed to adequately track $2.3 billion in homelessness funding, largely because the city outsourced much of that responsibility to LAHSA — an agency the audit found had failed to collect reliable data on its vendors or hold them accountable for performance.

“We have not seen the results you would expect for billions of dollars being spent,” Hochman said.

He added that Wednesday’s announcement marks only the start of a broader crackdown, telling reporters that prosecutors expect to bring “many more” cases in the months ahead.

Original source: CalMatters

The post $1 Million in Homeless Aid Diverted to Nightclub, New LA Fraud Charges Allege appeared first on The Hemet & San Jacinto Chronicle.

Assembly Bill 1267, authored by Assemblymember Gail Pellerin, D-Santa Cruz, cleared the Legislature in August with overwhelming bipartisan support. It now sits on Gov. Gavin Newsom’s desk, awaiting his signature before a Sept. 30 deadline. If signed, California would join the vast majority of states that have already set a minimum marriage age, leaving only New Mexico and Mississippi without one.

The bill’s path to passage was anything but straightforward. For years, efforts to ban child marriage in California have collapsed under opposition from the American Civil Liberties Union and Planned Parenthood — two organizations with deep ties to Democratic politics and significant sway at the Capitol.

Both groups have historically argued that restricting marriage for minors would infringe on young people’s rights to make their own decisions, including about reproductive health and bodily autonomy. The ACLU has contended that marriage offers minors a legal path to emancipation, while Planned Parenthood has framed the issue as one of personal choice.

Critics, however, say those arguments ignore the reality facing thousands of California children. According to Unchained at Last, a nonprofit that tracks and campaigns against child marriage, roughly 9,000 minors marry in California each year, the overwhelming majority of them girls wed to adult men. Because the state’s age of consent is 18, advocates argue that these marriages effectively legalize relationships that would otherwise be considered statutory rape.

This year, lawmakers took an unusual route to get the bill moving. Pellerin used a legislative maneuver known as a “gut and amend,” stripping the language from an unrelated bill and replacing it with the child marriage ban after the normal bill-introduction deadline had passed. Advocates say the timing was deliberate — an effort to keep the proposal off Planned Parenthood’s radar until it was too late for the organization to mount effective opposition.

The strategy appears to have worked. While the ACLU again registered its opposition, no lobbyist showed up to defend minors’ right to marry during this year’s committee hearings. Planned Parenthood, meanwhile, took a “neutral” stance, declining to formally support or oppose the measure.

“We need to be clear that girls, no matter how mature they may seem, are still girls,” Pellerin said in an interview. “Girls don’t have freedom without protection.”

Neither organization agreed to make anyone available for an interview with CalMatters. In a June letter outlining its opposition, the ACLU wrote that “prohibiting marriage for all minors would represent a departure from California’s longstanding commitment to respecting minors’ ability to make important personal decisions for themselves, particularly in matters of reproductive autonomy.” The ACLU’s press office declined to answer further questions about its position.

Planned Parenthood spokesperson Shelby McMichael said in an emailed statement that the organization evaluates legislation on a bill-by-bill basis each session. “Given the funding cuts to Planned Parenthood health centers last year, we chose to prioritize issues related to the Trump administration and the ongoing attacks from congressional Republicans on health care,” she wrote.

Planned Parenthood’s influence in Sacramento is substantial. The organization has donated at least $2.7 million to Democratic lawmakers since 2002, according to CalMatters’ Digital Democracy database, and it operates more than 100 clinics statewide. The group also publishes an annual legislative scorecard tracking how often lawmakers vote in line with its positions — in 2025, nearly every Democrat scored 100%.

That influence became even more pronounced after President Donald Trump moved to cut federal funding to Planned Parenthood clinics, pushing the organization to rely more heavily on state support. In February, California lawmakers approved $140 million in emergency funding to help offset those federal losses.

The current fight echoes a similar battle two years ago, when Assemblymember Cottie Petrie-Norris, D-Irvine, introduced a nearly identical measure, Assembly Bill 2924. That bill never received a hearing. Assemblymember Ash Kalra, D-San Jose, who chairs the Assembly Judiciary Committee, told advocates at the time that Planned Parenthood needed to drop its opposition before he would allow a vote. Kalra said he was also concerned the bill could jeopardize minors’ abortion rights, even though California voters had already enshrined abortion rights into the state constitution in 2022 — two years before that bill was introduced.

“I think that was certainly one of the factors,” Kalra said of Planned Parenthood’s opposition and the bill’s failure to advance. “Planned Parenthood’s voice matters on this issue, and on other matters that come before us at the Capitol.”

The pattern dates back further. In 2017, then-state Sen. Jerry Hill introduced similar legislation after learning that a 13-year-old girl in his district had been engaged to a 38-year-old man from another country. “I thought, who could possibly oppose this? Who could say this is wrong?” Hill recalled. Instead, his proposal ran into fierce debate over cultural differences, adolescent autonomy and bodily rights.

Then-Assemblymember Lorena González, a labor-aligned Democrat who chaired the Assembly Appropriations Committee at the time, told Hill she would block the bill unless it were amended to lower the marriage age to 16 or 17 rather than banning marriage for minors outright. The legislation was eventually watered down into the law still in effect today, which allows minors to marry with parental and judicial consent but sets no minimum age.

Hill blames special interest groups for repeatedly derailing reform efforts. “These interest groups in Sacramento are very powerful. They have a lot of influence over what passes in the Legislature,” he said. “Politics trumps policy about 80% of the time.”

González remembers it differently. While she acknowledges blocking an outright ban, she said she doesn’t recall Planned Parenthood weighing in or factoring into her decision. Instead, she said her hesitation stemmed from experiences in her own district, where some Latino families encouraged pregnant teenage girls to marry the child’s father if he was close to their age. “I had girls tell me this was the best option for them,” González said, adding that the age gap between spouses seemed to matter more than the marriage itself. At the time, she said, an outright ban felt “classist.”

For survivors like Sara Tasneem, the state’s decades of inaction carried lasting consequences. Tasneem said she was forced into marriage at 15 with a 28-year-old man as part of arrangements made within a Northern California Sufi group her father belonged to. After her father learned she was dating a classmate, he arranged the marriage instead. “I was handed off to a complete stranger I had just met,” she said. She left school, was repeatedly raped, and said she felt trapped because, as a minor, she could not hire a divorce attorney. Tasneem said she had two children with her abuser before leaving him in 2003 at age 23, taking her children with her. She later became an advocate for ending child marriage nationwide.

Momentum for reform grew last November after a New York Times opinion piece singled out the ACLU and Planned Parenthood for helping block anti-child-marriage legislation in California, even as Republican-led states such as Arkansas and Louisiana enacted stricter age requirements.

Fraidy Reiss, executive director of Unchained at Last, was herself forced into marriage at 19 within an Orthodox Jewish community in New York. She said California’s long delay in addressing the issue is frustrating, but progress is still progress.

“Should this have happened a decade ago? Yes, it should have,” Reiss said. “But at least we’re here now.”

Original source: CalMatters

The post California Bill Would Ban Child Marriage, but Some Civil Rights Groups Are Pushing Back appeared first on The Hemet & San Jacinto Chronicle.

The ruling, made public this week, stems from body-camera footage, sworn statements and internal text messages gathered during litigation over immigration sweeps that rattled Los Angeles neighborhoods in the summer of 2025. U.S. District Judge Maame Ewusi-Mensah Frimpong upheld an earlier preliminary order finding that Border Patrol and ICE agents cannot simply take someone into custody — even someone suspected of being in the country illegally — without first assessing whether that person is likely to flee before a warrant could be obtained.

“This court finds sufficient evidence that defendants have a continuing policy and practice of making warrantless arrests in violation of the requirement to conduct a flight-risk analysis,” Frimpong wrote.

Federal law allows immigration officers to make warrantless arrests only when they have reasonable grounds to believe a person is in the country unlawfully and is likely to escape before a warrant can be secured. Attorneys representing immigrant rights groups argued that agents routinely skipped that step altogether, instead detaining people first and sorting out their legal status later.

“This ruling is one of the most significant decisions to date in the community’s fight to end the federal government’s cruel and unlawful practice of snatching people off the street and tearing families apart,” said Mayra Joachin, senior staff attorney with the ACLU Foundation of Southern California.

The Department of Homeland Security defended its agents’ conduct, saying in a statement that ICE has legal authority to make arrests under federal statute, using “reasonable suspicion” to investigate immigration status and probable cause to justify detentions in line with the Fourth Amendment. The agency noted that the U.S. Supreme Court has previously sided with it on similar enforcement questions.

The case grew out of a lawsuit filed last year by the ACLU and a coalition of advocacy organizations against the Department of Homeland Security, following a series of high-profile raids across Los Angeles led by former Border Patrol official Gregory Bovino. DHS attorneys have said those specific operations ended in February, but the broader deportation push under President Donald Trump has only accelerated since then. Nationally, arrests hit their highest point of Trump’s second term in July, with nearly 50,000 detentions recorded, according to the Deportation Data Project. In California, arrests were up more than 15% compared with the same period a year earlier.

One case at the center of the ruling involved a man identified in court records only by his initials, AT, who was detained outside a car wash in Los Angeles on a scorching August day. Body-camera footage shows a Border Patrol agent running up behind him as he stood near a Mazda with a rag and spray bottle in hand. Within seconds, the agent grabbed him by the collar of his Handy J Car Wash shirt.

“Hey, sir, let’s go,” the agent said in Spanish. Confused, the man asked where they were going and told the agent he had documentation. He was handcuffed within ten seconds and driven away in an unmarked Dodge Charger to an ICE processing facility, leaving his cleaning supplies behind on the hood of the car. He was fingerprinted and released later that day once officials realized he was a lawful permanent resident.

The arresting agent’s report claimed AT made “a couple of quick movements” suggesting he might flee — a claim not supported by the body-camera video. The agent also wrote that when asked about his citizenship, AT answered “United States” but appeared “confused and unsure of his answer, similar to people I have arrested previously.” Court records show the agent never attempted to check identification or ask basic background questions before handcuffing him — the kind of assessment federal law requires before a warrantless arrest can be made.

At the same car wash that day, another worker was detained by a different agent. That agent’s report noted the man had complied with instructions, yet later justified the arrest by claiming the man had “disobeyed the agent’s orders” — a contradiction that judges and attorneys pointed to as evidence of the pattern advocates have described. In legal filings, attorneys said roughly 80% of the arrest reports they reviewed either lacked any real flight-risk analysis or relied on boilerplate language that didn’t match the footage.

Frimpong specifically cited that car wash arrest in her ruling, noting stark differences between the government’s written justification and what the video actually showed. She wrote that although agents claimed the worker, identified as EGG, was likely to flee based on alleged “flight from law enforcement,” the footage showed him standing in the same spot throughout the encounter, working, until an agent called him over. “Contrary to the government’s written flight-risk analysis,” the judge wrote, “he did not flee.”

In that same recording, a supervising agent tells the worker, “We’re going to take you in and check that everything is fine. If everything checks out, we’ll let you go” — a comment attorneys say reveals how these operations actually functioned: arrest first, verify later.

Other footage submitted in the case appears to show agents disregarding earlier immigration court decisions altogether. In one clip from September, an agent asks a colleague whether they are still detaining people who already have scheduled immigration court hearings — a circumstance that typically signals a person has already been screened and found not to be a flight risk. Another agent responds, “I don’t care if you have a court date coming up, you’re a custody redetermination case,” indicating that agents were overriding prior judicial findings.

Attorneys representing the detained workers argued that even individuals already moving through the immigration court system, previously released on the presumption that they weren’t flight risks, were being swept up again. Agency policy requires Border Patrol officers to ask about identification, address and other flight-risk indicators before making an arrest, but plaintiffs say body-camera footage repeatedly shows agents skipping that step.

In one August 2025 raid captured on video, Border Patrol agents jumped out of a Penske rental truck to detain people in a Home Depot parking lot in Los Angeles. According to court records, an agent arrested a man identified as Tijerino-Garmendia after writing in his report that the man “stated he did not have any identification indicating his identity or address.” Footage reviewed by attorneys shows the agent never actually asked him those questions.

Similar rulings barring warrantless arrests have been issued by federal judges in Oregon, Colorado and Washington, D.C., though in at least two of those cases, courts later found that agents continued the practice despite the orders.

In the Los Angeles case, Frimpong directed agents to document the “specific and particularized facts” supporting probable cause that a person was likely to flee before a warrant could be obtained. She declined, however, to require agents to document community ties — such as employment, housing or family connections — when flight risk could be shown through other means. She also declined to require documentation of encounters where agents speak with someone but do not make an arrest.

The federal government asked for a two-week delay before the order took effect while it considered an appeal. Frimpong denied that request, stating that the government could not reasonably claim harm from being ordered simply to follow the law.

Original source: CalMatters

The post Judge Rules Immigration Agents Must Halt Warrantless Arrests appeared first on The Hemet & San Jacinto Chronicle.

The CalPERS board approved a $1.15 million performance bonus for Frost, a sizable jump from the $766,000 incentive she received the previous year. Combined with a newly approved base salary of $641,000 — up from $601,000 — Frost’s total pay package now exceeds $1.7 million.

The raise comes as CalPERS continues to post strong investment gains and enjoys a rare stretch of steady leadership. Frost took the helm of the fund in 2016, a time when CalPERS held assets covering only about 65% of what it owed retirees, a lingering scar from the 2008 financial crisis. Since then, the fund has required government employers to increase contributions toward their workers’ retirement benefits, and it has now strung together three consecutive years of investment returns that outpaced targets.

Last year alone, CalPERS reported a 14.8% return, more than double its long-term goal. As of June 30, the fund’s portfolio was valued at $637.1 billion, enough to cover about 85% of its long-term obligations to members — a marked improvement from where things stood when Frost arrived.

CalPERS Board President Theresa Taylor praised Frost’s leadership in a statement, calling her “a CEO on top of her game” who is “delivering excellent results for CalPERS members.”

Not everyone on the 13-member board agreed. Board member Mulissa Willette and a representative for state Controller Malia Cohen cast dissenting votes. Deborah Gallegos, speaking on Cohen’s behalf, told the board during Wednesday’s meeting that the pay package failed to reflect the full range of opinions among board members and ignored California’s current budget challenges.

“The views of the board members with dissenting views were dismissed,” Gallegos said. “I cannot stand behind a motion which does not equitably take into consideration all relevant factors, particularly in light of the current structural deficit in California.”

The bonus also drew criticism from several retirees affiliated with the Retired Public Employees Association, a group led by former CalPERS board member Margaret Brown, who addressed the board directly.

“There is something fundamentally wrong when public service compensation begins looking like Wall Street compensation,” Brown said.

Despite the record bonus, Frost remains far from the top earner among California’s two major public pension systems. Chief investment officers at both CalPERS and the California State Teachers’ Retirement System typically out-earn their agencies’ chief executives. CalPERS Chief Investment Officer Stephen Gilmore brought home $2.2 million in total compensation last year, while his CalSTRS counterpart, Scott Chan, earned $1.4 million, according to figures from the State Controller’s Office.

Frost’s bonus tends to draw early attention each year simply because of scheduling — CalPERS board meetings fall earlier in the calendar than those at CalSTRS, which does not disclose its own executive bonuses until November.

Frost’s time leading CalPERS has not been without turbulence. Between 2019 and 2024, the fund churned through three different chief investment officers, the executive responsible for shaping CalPERS’ investment strategy toward its 6.8% annual return target. That instability ended when Gilmore was hired in 2024, bringing a measure of continuity to the fund’s top investment post.

Original source: CalMatters

The post CalPERS Chief Executive Earns First Seven-Figure Bonus as Pension Fund’s Strong Returns Continue appeared first on The Hemet & San Jacinto Chronicle.

A new investigation from CalMatters examines how the law is playing out in courtrooms and jails across the state, and finds that even supporters of the measure acknowledge significant gaps in the system meant to help people struggling with addiction.

San Jose Mayor Matt Mahan, who backed the proposition, said the state has yet to deliver on its end of the deal. “People are waiting and dying on the streets for lack of a proper treatment system,” Mahan said. “The fundamental problem remains, which is that the state has refused to take ownership of building a robust treatment system that is going to serve the needs of people.”

Under Proposition 36, certain drug possession and theft offenses that were previously misdemeanors can now be charged as a “treatment-mandated felony.” Defendants facing those charges are given a choice: enter treatment or face prison time. But the law leaves it up to individual counties to decide how long that treatment period should last, and the resulting patchwork varies wildly. In Ventura County, treatment programs run about three months. In San Luis Obispo County, participants may be required to stay in the system for up to two years before their charges are dismissed.

That inconsistency can have real consequences for people trying to rebuild their lives. Aaron Kasper, who completed a three-month residential treatment program in Sonoma County after being accused of possessing fentanyl, expected his case to be resolved once he finished. Instead, he spent the rest of a court-mandated year undergoing random drug tests, attending court hearings, outpatient sessions and self-help meetings.

Because Kasper had entered a plea deal, he knew a felony on his record would make finding a job difficult. He lived off his savings and held off on his job search until just two weeks before his yearlong obligation ended.

“I tried to make the best of a horrible situation,” Kasper said.

The findings raise fresh questions about whether California’s approach to addressing addiction through the criminal justice system is delivering the outcomes voters were promised, or simply shifting the burden onto defendants navigating an inconsistent and, at times, unforgiving process.

CalMatters is partnering with the University of California, Riverside’s School of Public Policy for a public conversation on Sept. 24 in Riverside about the news organization’s investigation into the Riverside County Sheriff’s Department’s seizure of mail ballots and what it could mean for future elections. Details and registration are available through CalMatters’ events page.

In other statewide news, a once-reliably conservative congressional district in Northern California has become one of the most closely watched U.S. House races in the country, with healthcare policy taking center stage. Dr. Richard Pan, a pediatrician and former state senator known for his advocacy of childhood vaccines, is challenging Rep. Kevin Kiley, a two-term incumbent who left the Republican Party to run as an independent. Pan supports universal health coverage and argues that changes to Medicaid under the Trump administration are driving up costs for Californians. Kiley opposes vaccine mandates and single-payer healthcare, placing blame instead on state lawmakers in Sacramento for the high cost of living.

The district, which covers portions of Yolo, Sacramento and Placer counties, has drawn heightened attention after redistricting split Placer County into three left-leaning districts. Julann Brown, chair of the Placer County Democratic Party, said the change has reenergized local political engagement. “Now we have three winnable Democratic seats,” she said. “We’ve become relevant in a way that we didn’t expect.”

Meanwhile, legislation banning child marriage in California is now sitting on Gov. Gavin Newsom’s desk after nearly ten years of failed attempts to pass similar measures. Under current law, anyone under 18 can marry with parental and judicial consent, and roughly 9,000 minors are married in California each year, the vast majority of them girls marrying adult men. Critics argue the practice effectively legalizes relationships that would otherwise be considered statutory rape. Previous bills stalled amid opposition from groups such as the ACLU and Planned Parenthood, which have said marriage can provide minors with legal protections, including paths to emancipation. Supporters of this year’s bill believe political shifts, including federal funding cuts targeting organizations like Planned Parenthood, may reduce resistance to the measure.

In immigration news, a federal judge has ruled that immigration enforcement agents likely violated the Constitution by making warrantless arrests without first assessing whether individuals posed a flight risk. The decision marks a victory for immigration advocates suing to halt the practice.

In commentary, CalMatters columnist Dan Walters criticizes state leaders for withholding billions in education funding while continuing to spend heavily on pet projects and travel. Contributor Jim Newton argues that Los Angeles mayoral candidates are too focused on whether to fire the police chief, rather than examining how to properly evaluate the department’s performance. And author Kevin Waite reflects on the legacy of Biddy Mason, the formerly enslaved woman who built a real estate empire and helped shape Los Angeles into the city it is today.

Original source: CalMatters

The post California’s Tough New Crime Law Cracks Down on Offenders — But Drug Treatment Funding Is Nowhere to Be Found appeared first on The Hemet & San Jacinto Chronicle.

Dr. Richard Pan, a pediatrician and former state senator known for authoring some of California’s toughest childhood vaccination laws, is challenging Rep. Kevin Kiley, a two-term Republican-turned-independent, for the newly reconfigured 6th Congressional District, which now stretches across parts of Yolo, Sacramento and Placer counties. Their contest is emerging as one of the more closely watched matchups in the state, with control of a narrowly split House potentially hanging in the balance.

The two men could hardly be more different on healthcare policy. Pan has spent much of his career pushing for expanded vaccination requirements and broader coverage, including his vote to extend Medi-Cal to immigrants without legal status. Kiley, a Placer County native who ran unsuccessfully in the 2021 recall effort against Gov. Gavin Newsom, has built his political identity in part on opposition to pandemic-era mandates and government-run healthcare expansions.

The debate arrives as affordability concerns are surging among California voters. Health insurance premiums are set to climb more than 10% in many parts of the state next year, and the ranks of the uninsured are expected to grow as well. A recent survey from the Public Policy Institute of California found that seven in ten residents are unhappy with the cost of healthcare, while two-thirds of likely voters believe the federal government should ensure all Americans have access to care.

“We often talk about gas prices and grocery prices, but Californians right now are just as worried about the cost of healthcare,” said Mark Baldassare, the survey director at PPIC.

Much of that anxiety traces back to the sweeping federal law passed under President Donald Trump last year, which enacted the largest changes to Medicaid since the Affordable Care Act took effect. Only about a quarter of California adults approved of the measure in an earlier PPIC poll. The law is projected to cut federal Medicaid spending by nearly $1 trillion over the next decade, largely through new work requirements and shorter eligibility windows — changes expected to push millions of people off the rolls nationally and cost California billions of dollars a year.

“There’s a lot of this that ends up becoming part of the Trump agenda, and it’s hard to untangle,” said Sacramento-based Democratic strategist Andrew Acosta, noting that many House races this cycle are essentially referendums on policies enacted during the first two years of Trump’s second term.

Community health advocates say the stakes are high. Anna Marshall, deputy director of federal policy for the California Primary Care Association, said Medicaid expansion under the Affordable Care Act transformed rural and underserved communities by allowing clinics to grow and add services like behavioral health. California now has more than double the number of community clinics it had before the ACA took effect. Her organization opposed the recent federal law but has not weighed in on the Pan-Kiley race.

State officials estimate roughly 2.2 million Californians will lose health coverage in the coming years — most falling off Medi-Cal, with hundreds of thousands more priced out of the Covered California exchange as premiums rise.

Given California’s new congressional map, which gives registered Democrats a nine-point registration advantage in the district, some might assume the race is a foregone conclusion. But Acosta said he still views it as competitive, given both candidates’ long track records in public life.

“Candidates have to defend their record, and these are two candidates with a lengthy record,” he said.

Pan has become something of a lightning rod over the years for his advocacy on vaccines. He authored California’s stringent school vaccination requirements following a 2010 whooping cough outbreak that killed nine infants and a 2014 measles outbreak — traced to Disneyland — that spread across several states and into Canada and Mexico. His stance has drawn intense backlash from anti-vaccine activists, including one incident in which he was physically shoved on a downtown Sacramento street and another in which protesters threw menstrual blood onto lawmakers from the Capitol gallery.

Kiley, by contrast, has staked out a reputation as a fierce critic of pandemic-era restrictions, arguing that California’s COVID-19 vaccine mandates and prolonged school closures damaged public trust in vaccines and inadvertently drove down childhood immunization rates by keeping kids away from in-person medical visits tied to school enrollment.

Matt Fleming, a conservative columnist and district resident who once served as a legislative staffer alongside Kiley in the Assembly, said he expects a genuinely competitive race, pointing to Kiley’s strong name recognition and independent streak.

“I don’t really see Richard Pan as someone who is going to blaze a trail and be an independent voice, even as a Democrat,” Fleming said. “Kevin Kiley is not a rubber stamp for Trump or Mike Johnson.”

In fact, Kiley told the news outlet Semafor this week that he intends to stop caucusing with Republicans altogether if reelected — a move that would require House rules changes to preserve committee assignments for lawmakers who caucus with neither party.

On the substance of federal health policy, Kiley — who voted for the Trump-backed law — disputes the characterization that Medicaid was cut, arguing that overall spending continues to rise due to increasing healthcare costs even as enrollment drops. Critics, including Pan, argue that pushing people off the program functionally amounts to a cut regardless of overall spending totals.

Kiley does say Congress erred in allowing enhanced ACA subsidies to expire, which contributed to sharp premium increases this year — California’s typical Covered California plan now runs about $570 a month, with statewide rates rising another 9.9% on average in 2027. He co-authored a bipartisan bill with Democratic Rep. Sam Liccardo of San Jose seeking a two-year extension of the subsidies, though the effort stalled in Congress. He faults leadership in both parties for the impasse.

“It’s a very clear case study in how the brokenness of Congress is directly costing Americans in many ways,” Kiley said.

On that point, the two candidates find rare agreement — both support restoring the subsidies, with Pan arguing that California’s middle class is especially exposed to rising costs since many residents earn too much to qualify for assistance but still feel squeezed by higher premiums.

Where they diverge is on who bears responsibility. Pan, who serves on the state’s healthcare affordability oversight board, points to federal policy shifts under Trump as the primary driver of rising costs. Kiley instead blames state lawmakers in Sacramento, singling out a newly passed tax on health insurers — meant to help offset federal Medicaid cuts — that is projected to add roughly $100 a year to premiums per person. Kiley and fellow Republicans have asked federal regulators to block the tax from taking effect.

Pan counters that without the new revenue, “costs will start to show up in premiums anyway,” arguing that hospitals and clinics will pass along the expense of treating a growing uninsured population to commercial insurers. Economists are divided on how much of that cost actually gets shifted, though some estimates put the added burden at around $100 per person annually — with most agreeing hospitals absorb the majority of unpaid care costs.

Pan also defended his vote to extend Medi-Cal eligibility to immigrants without legal status, acknowledging the state has struggled with the program’s price tag — now exceeding $10 billion a year — but arguing government assistance shouldn’t be denied to those who qualify because of budget concerns.

“We have to ultimately recognize that we’re trying to respond to what the Trump administration, the Republican Congress, including Kevin Kiley, voted for,” Pan said.

Locally, Democrats say last year’s redistricting — which split Placer County into three Democratic-leaning districts — has energized the party in a region long dominated by Republicans.

“Now we have three winnable Democratic seats,” said Julann Brown, chair of the Placer County Democratic Party. “We’ve become relevant in a way that we didn’t expect.”

Brown said her party has endorsed Pan and is focused on defeating Kiley, whom she describes as a reliable vote for the Trump-aligned wing of the GOP despite his shift away from the Republican Party label. The Placer County Republican Party, which has endorsed Kiley, did not respond to requests for comment.

Brown said healthcare resonates strongly with rural voters in the district, many of whom already travel long distances for basic medical care and fear further service cuts if clinics and hospitals lose funding. She recalled her own family’s experience during the 2008 recession, when her husband lost his job and, with it, their health coverage — two years before the Affordable Care Act expanded options for families like hers. At the time, their children qualified for a special assistance program while she and her husband went without insurance.

“My family had a choice between making our house payment and having health coverage,” Brown said. “That’s where we’re headed again.”

Original source: CalMatters

The post Vaccine Mandate Advocate Challenges Party-Switching Conservative in Bid to Flip Seat appeared first on The Hemet & San Jacinto Chronicle.

For years, efforts to ban child marriage in California have stalled in Sacramento — not because of resistance from conservative lawmakers, but because of pushback from the ACLU and Planned Parenthood, organizations closely aligned with the Democratic supermajority that controls the Legislature. Now, after nearly a decade of failed attempts, a bill banning marriage before age 18 sits on Governor Gavin Newsom’s desk, awaiting his signature or veto by September 30.

Under current California law, a minor can marry with the consent of a parent and a judge, regardless of age. Only two other states, New Mexico and Mississippi, similarly have no minimum marriage age. According to the advocacy group Unchained at Last, roughly 9,000 children are married in California each year, the overwhelming majority of them girls wedding adult men. Because the state’s age of consent for sexual activity is 18, critics argue these marriages effectively legalize relationships that would otherwise be considered statutory rape.

The path to this year’s bill, Assembly Bill 1267, began quietly in March, when a group of Democratic lawmakers started laying the groundwork to finally push a ban through — this time working to keep Planned Parenthood from blocking it before it even reached a hearing.

Assemblymember Gail Pellerin of Santa Cruz introduced the measure using a legislative maneuver known as a “gut-and-amend,” swapping the language of an unrelated bill after the normal bill-introduction deadline had passed. Advocates say the timing was intentional — an effort to sidestep the kind of early opposition that has doomed similar bills in the past.

This time, the strategy worked. While the ACLU again formally opposed the bill, no lobbyists showed up to argue against it during summer committee hearings, and Planned Parenthood declined to take a position, staying neutral. The bill passed with near-unanimous support in August.

“We need to make it clear that girls, despite their perceived maturity, are children,” Pellerin said. “Children don’t have unprotected freedom.”

The ACLU has argued for years that restricting marriage among minors would strip young people of an important form of legal independence, including access to emancipation and reproductive health decisions made without parental involvement. In a letter opposing the bill in June, the organization wrote that banning marriage for all minors “is a departure from California’s longstanding commitment to honoring minors’ ability to make important personal decisions for themselves, particularly in the realm of reproductive autonomy.”

An ACLU spokesperson declined to answer further questions or make anyone available for an interview.

Planned Parenthood, for its part, said it evaluates legislation on a case-by-case basis each session. A spokesperson said that given ongoing threats to defund Planned Parenthood health centers under the Trump administration, the organization chose to focus its political capital elsewhere this year rather than fight the marriage bill.

Planned Parenthood’s influence in California politics is substantial. The organization has donated more than $2.7 million to state lawmakers since 2002, according to CalMatters’ Digital Democracy database, and nearly every Democrat in the Legislature earned a 100% rating on the group’s 2025 legislative scorecard.

That influence proved decisive two years ago, when Irvine Assemblymember Cottie Petrie-Norris introduced a similar ban. Assemblymember Ash Kalra, who chairs the Assembly Judiciary Committee, told advocates at the time that Planned Parenthood’s opposition needed to be resolved before the bill could even get a hearing. Kalra said he was concerned that banning marriage for minors could complicate their access to abortion services, and he ultimately never scheduled the bill for a vote.

“Planned Parenthood’s voice matters in that, and in other issues that come before us in the Capitol,” Kalra said in a recent interview, acknowledging the group’s opposition played a role in his decision.

The pattern dates back further. In 2017, then-state Senator Jerry Hill introduced a bill to ban child marriage outright after learning that a 13-year-old girl in his district had become engaged to a 38-year-old man. Hill said he was stunned when the proposal drew opposition rather than broad support.

“I thought, ‘Who could oppose that? Who could say that it was wrong?'” Hill recalled. Instead, the bill became entangled in a larger debate over cultural norms, youth autonomy and reproductive rights. Then-Assemblymember Lorena Gonzalez, who chaired the Appropriations Committee, refused to advance an outright ban, insisting instead on amendments that preserved marriage rights for 16- and 17-year-olds. That compromise became the law still in effect today.

Gonzalez, now removed from the Legislature, disputes that Planned Parenthood factored into her decision. She said her reluctance stemmed from cases she saw in her own district, where pregnant teenage girls sometimes chose to marry partners close to their own age rather than face other pressures. To her, an outright ban felt like it unfairly targeted families making difficult personal choices.

For survivors like Sara Tasneem, the state’s decades-long inaction had lasting consequences. Tasneem said she was forced into marriage at 15 to a 28-year-old man as part of an arrangement orchestrated by her father, who she said belonged to a Northern California religious group. She said she endured years of abuse and could not seek legal help to leave the marriage until she turned 18, since minors cannot retain an attorney on their own. She eventually left the marriage in 2003, at age 23, taking her two children with her.

Tasneem has since become an advocate for ending child marriage nationwide, work she says stems directly from feeling powerless as a teenager with no legal recourse.

National scrutiny of California’s law intensified last November, when a New York Times opinion piece singled out the ACLU and Planned Parenthood for their roles in blocking similar legislation, noting that even Republican-led states like Arkansas and Louisiana had already tightened their marriage laws.

Fraidy Reiss, executive director of Unchained at Last and herself a survivor of forced marriage at 19 in a New York Orthodox Jewish community, said she is hopeful Newsom will sign the bill despite the long delay in getting it this far.

“Should it have happened a decade earlier? Yes, it should have,” Reiss said. “But at least we’re here now.”

Original source: CalMatters

The post California Seeks to Ban Child Marriage, But Faces Pushback From Civil Rights Groups appeared first on The Hemet & San Jacinto Chronicle.

Earlier this month, the Los Angeles City Council voted to rename Pershing Square in honor of Biddy Mason, a woman who escaped slavery, walked nearly 3,000 miles across the American West, and went on to become one of the wealthiest and most generous figures in early Los Angeles. As the author of the first full-length scholarly biography of Mason, I see this decision as long overdue — not just a tribute to one remarkable woman, but a reckoning with a chapter of California history that too often gets left out of the story.

Mason was born into slavery in Georgia in 1818. Over the following decades she was forced to migrate first to Mississippi, then to Utah, and finally, in 1851, to the slaveholding outpost of San Bernardino. She made almost the entire journey on foot — roughly 6 million steps in total. She was among hundreds of enslaved Black people brought into California by Southern settlers during that era, despite the state’s constitutional prohibition on slavery.

In San Bernardino, Mason continued laboring under bondage, working her enslaver’s wheat fields, tending his cattle, and delivering babies throughout the settlement — services for which her enslaver collected the fees. Enslaved people who tried to sue for their freedom in California courts almost always lost. Mason’s case, however, was different.

In January 1856, Mason and her legal allies finally got their case before a judge, Benjamin Hayes, a former slaveholder himself who had previously written sympathetically about the bond between “master and slave.” California law barred Mason from testifying against a white person in open court, but Hayes agreed to interview her privately — a legal workaround of the era. Her testimony was enough. Hayes declared Mason, her three daughters, and 10 other enslaved women and children free, in what stands as the largest single legal emancipation in the history of the American West.

Freedom, however, did not bring wealth right away. Mason initially worked as a domestic servant, earning barely enough to get by. Her fortunes changed when Dr. John S. Griffin, one of the few physicians in Los Angeles at the time, hired her as a nurse and midwife, work she had learned during her years in bondage. She would go on to deliver hundreds of babies in the city, including children born to some of its most influential families.

With her earnings, Mason began investing in Los Angeles real estate, starting with a parcel along Spring Street between 3rd and 4th streets. After fire destroyed the buildings she had constructed there, she rebuilt, eventually turning the site — known as the “Mason Block” — into one of the most desirable commercial properties in the city. By the standards of her era, she had become the equivalent of a multi-millionaire.

Research for my biography also uncovered a second major property Mason purchased in 1868, a plot bordered by Olive, Grand, 6th and 7th streets — the very land where Pershing Square now sits. Members of her extended family owned additional nearby parcels along Olive Street, meaning the blocks surrounding today’s square were, for a time, largely Black-owned ground.

Still, Mason’s legacy is defined less by what she accumulated than by what she gave away. In 1869, she helped found the First African Methodist Episcopal Church of Los Angeles, the first Black church in Southern California, which today counts nearly 20,000 members. She also helped fund the city’s first school for Black children. In part because of her efforts, Los Angeles had, by the early 1900s, the highest rate of Black homeownership of any city in the country.

Her charity extended well beyond the Black community. She visited prisoners, sheltered migrants, and helped flood victims of every background during the devastating Los Angeles floods of 1884. She provided medical care to Indigenous workers at a time when many Angelenos treated Native people with contempt, and she rented commercial space to Chinese business owners when other landlords refused to do the same.

Despite all this, Mason’s name faded from public memory for more than a hundred years. Today, her legacy survives largely through an 82-foot concrete memorial wall designed by artist Sheila Levrant de Bretteville, installed at the site of her former Spring Street homestead. I visit the memorial regularly, and I rarely see anyone else there. Tucked away from street view, it has become something of a symbol for Mason’s broader story — inspiring, yet largely unseen.

Renaming Pershing Square will not diminish that quieter memorial, as some critics have argued. If anything, it should draw more attention to it. Together, the two sites — one downtown square bearing her name, and one hidden wall marking her homestead — can finally make visible the footprint of early Black Los Angeles and the woman who helped build it.

Original source: CalMatters

The post Bridget “Biddy” Mason: The Formerly Enslaved Woman Whose Legacy Helped Shape Black Los Angeles appeared first on The Hemet & San Jacinto Chronicle.