Today, I am incarcerated at San Quentin for a gun-related crime. I serve as the chairman of Arms Down, the first gun offender rehabilitation program of its kind, developed inside prison to address gun violence through accountability, education and healing. I also serve as a program co-lead for Back to the Start, a nonprofit organization that helps incarcerated participants to process their childhood experiences and advocate for upstream solutions to break the cycle of intergenerational trauma and incarceration.

Over years of facilitating these programs, I have found one truth impossible to ignore: Nearly every person I have worked with who committed a gun offense had first experienced firearm-related trauma. Many witnessed shootings as children. Some lost parents, siblings or friends to homicide. Others grew up in neighborhoods where hearing gunfire was normalized, without being old enough to comprehend the danger. Trauma created wounds that, left untreated, began to fester and developed into destructive behaviors and unhealthy coping strategies to survive — strategies that were amplified through pain and tragedy.

I am fully accountable for my actions. These decisions forever changed my life and harmed others. Looking back, I recognize that the untreated trauma I carried contributed to my impulsive decisions. I often wonder how different my path would have been if someone had offered me counseling and support as a youth.

This is why Assembly Bill 2247, the Trauma, Healing and Resilience Investment for Victimized and Exposed Youth Act, known as the Thrive Act, matters.

As part of my amends to victims, I have an obligation to break cycles of gun violence, and that is what AB 2247 would do. This legislation would expand access to trauma recovery and support services for young survivors of gun violence. Specifically, it would provide funding for youth survivors and witnesses of gun violence; they would receive free, timely mental health and counseling services.

Annually, around 44,000 people die because of firearm-related injuries across the United States, up from 35,000 since the 1990s. In Alameda County, gun violence is the leading cause of death for young Black males. Suicide rates by firearm have doubled for Latino youth between 2014 and 2023. On average, every day, seven people between the ages of 1 and 17 die because of firearms.

These are not just numbers. These are people whose deaths leave behind children, siblings and communities shattered by their loss. It’s about time we did more through policy to address this epidemic affecting our state and nation. AB 2247 reaches children before they become statistics, before they become defendants, before another family loses a loved one and before another community experiences another shooting.

Public safety requires prevention, not only punishment. Too often, California responds only after someone has become a victim or an offender. AB 2247 recognizes that there is another path. When children who survive gun violence receive timely trauma care, they can begin to heal rather than to carry unaddressed trauma into adulthood. That is not just victim services — it’s crime prevention.

I have seen the power of that healing firsthand through Arms Down and Back to the Start. I have watched men cry for the first time in decades as they wrote about childhood trauma they had buried. I have participated in healing conversations between people who once believed violence was their only way to communicate. There are ways to interrupt the cycle, and we do not have to wait until more lives are damaged before we act.

Assemblymember Sade Elhawary, author of the Thrive Act, is championing legislation that gets at the root of the problem. This is the kind of support I wish had been available to me as a young person — and to so many of the men I have worked alongside. We cannot change our past, but we can work together to change what happens to the next generation through prevention and healing. If we wait until after more shots are fired, it is too late.

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The Dove Fire, burning in the Central Sierra foothills near Sonora, forced road closures and evacuations of hundreds of homes last weekend, shaking Californians out of what had otherwise been a relatively calm summer for wildfires. Cal Fire investigators believe the blaze was sparked by a reckless 30-year-old man.

John Buckley, a former U.S. Forest Service firefighter who now leads the Central Sierra Environmental Resource Center, said he wasn’t shocked when the fire erupted. Driving through the region earlier that day, he had already warned his wife that the vegetation looked primed to ignite.

“We drive back, and they’re burning over at the city of Sonora,” Buckley recalled. “The fuels are now quite primed for burning, and they’re only going to get drier.”

Crews have since gained control of the 226-acre fire, but forecasters are warning of dangerously high temperatures in the days ahead — and new scientific research suggests that heat waves and wildfire activity are closely linked across the American West.

It’s still early in California’s fire year, and experts caution against drawing sweeping conclusions. Yet the state’s numbers stand out compared to the destruction unfolding elsewhere. Wildfires have scorched millions of acres this year in Oregon, Canada and parts of Europe, while California has recorded roughly 4,030 fires burning just over 208,000 acres — well below the five-year average of about 5,300 fires and 300,000 acres burned by this point in the season, according to Cal Fire data.

Even so, Cal Fire Battalion Chief David Acuña said he steers clear of calling the season “quiet.”

“There is a superstition that when you use words like ‘quiet, slow, bored’ in the fire station, that just means that you’re about to get hit with an amazingly busy shift,” Acuña said.

John Abatzoglou, a climatology professor at UC Merced, said California has largely benefited from favorable weather patterns this year, despite a thin snowpack and an unusually hot March. That streak of good fortune, he said, is about to be tested.

“Now, of course, we have a heat wave on our doorstep,” Abatzoglou said.

National Weather Service offices throughout the state are forecasting a sharp rise in temperatures beginning later this week. The Los Angeles/Oxnard office said conditions are expected to turn “dangerously hot” by Friday.

That pairing of extreme heat and fire risk is a familiar pattern across the West, according to a study Abatzoglou co-authored, published in the journal Science Advances and led by researcher Dmitri Kalashnikov. The study found that nearly half of all wildfire acreage burned during warm-season months between 2001 and 2024 occurred during or immediately following a heat wave, particularly in forested regions.

Heat waves — defined as three or more consecutive days with temperatures in the top 10% for the season — currently account for only about 15% or less of the warm season. But climate change is driving their frequency upward, researchers say.

Abatzoglou pointed to several reasons heat and fire go hand in hand. Prolonged heat dries out vegetation, making it more flammable. It also raises nighttime temperatures, which earlier research has linked to more intense overnight fire behavior — eliminating a key window firefighters typically rely on to gain ground. Heat waves can also set the stage for lightning strikes, which have ignited some of the largest fires in California history.

“And then it’s off to the races in terms of fire activity,” Abatzoglou said.

He emphasized that not every heat wave will trigger a fire surge — an ignition still has to occur at the right place and time. But Acuña urged residents to avoid providing that spark. That means avoiding yard work, especially mowing, during the hottest parts of the day or when a red flag warning is in effect, securing tow chains so they don’t drag and throw sparks on pavement, and never parking a hot vehicle on dry grass.

Following the Dove Fire, California requested and received federal emergency assistance within hours. However, a separate and more prolonged dispute between state and federal officials continues over wildfire recovery funding, including hundreds of millions of dollars tied to last year’s devastating Los Angeles fires. Gov. Gavin Newsom said in May that FEMA had yet to release those funds.

As for what the rest of the fire season might bring, Acuña said he’s just as reluctant to make predictions as he is to use the word “quiet.”

“It depends on what the weather brings us,” he said. “If it brings us hot, windy, red flag warning conditions, then that could certainly be a problem. If it brings us rain, well, that brings us a totally different concern. We are ready to respond.”

Original source: CalMatters

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CalMatters partnered with Agência Pública, Brazil’s first nonprofit investigative newsroom, to examine how child online safety laws have developed in California relative to both federal efforts in Washington and a sweeping new law in Brazil known as the ECA Digital. Reporters Maria Martha Bruno of Pública and Colin Lecher of CalMatters collaborated on the analysis, which found that Brazil’s law, passed this year despite heavy resistance from tech companies, offers some features California lawmakers might want to consider.

Among them: giving parents more detailed, or “granular,” control over specific features within social media platforms, rather than blanket restrictions. That could mean separately limiting things like autoplay video or direct messaging capabilities, rather than an all-or-nothing approach.

But according to experts who spoke with CalMatters, the more instructive lesson from Brazil’s experience may be about what to avoid — namely, the outsized influence tech companies can have on the legislative process.

“Our system is uniquely vulnerable to the power of that money,” said Ed Howard of the University of San Diego.

That warning carries weight as California lawmakers and Gov. Gavin Newsom weigh new legislation this year aimed at regulating children’s interactions with chatbots and curbing the addictive design of social media feeds — proposals likely to draw intense lobbying from the tech industry.

Read the full comparison at calmatters.org.

CalMatters is hosting a free public event Aug. 5 in Riverside focused on how California can prepare its workforce for the future. CalMatters reporter Adam Echelman will moderate a panel of education, health and workforce leaders. Registration is available through Eventbrite.

CalMatters and inewsource are also partnering for an Aug. 13 event in San Ysidro addressing the ongoing Tijuana River contamination crisis, which continues to affect communities on both sides of the U.S.-Mexico border.

In other news, California college instructors are rethinking how to teach students about labor icon César Chávez following a New York Times investigation earlier this year that detailed allegations Chávez sexually abused and assaulted women connected to the United Farm Workers. In the aftermath, several California colleges swiftly removed his name and likeness from campus buildings, statues and memorials.

Alina Mendez, a professor of Chicano and Latin American studies at Fresno State, said she’s adjusting her lesson plans to spotlight lesser-known local labor leaders instead of centering Chávez alone. Still, she and her students agreed his story should remain part of the curriculum — with accountability built in.

“There’s this collective grief … of ‘If César Chávez is no longer our hero, then who do we look up to?'” Mendez said. “That’s why I’ve been insisting that we look at our local communities. Let’s look around us and see other people who very much sacrificed a lot of time, a lot of resources, a lot of sweat, to make those successes possible.”

Meanwhile, newly surfaced evidence shows federal immigration agents used racially charged slurs — including the derogatory term “tonk” — while identifying targets during immigration sweeps across Los Angeles last year. The term, long used pejoratively by Border Patrol agents, is reportedly derived from the sound made when a flashlight strikes a person’s head.

The American Civil Liberties Union cited the language this week in an ongoing lawsuit challenging the legality of the raids, arguing agents engaged in racial profiling against Latino residents through what the suit describes as “suspicionless and discriminatory” stops. The filing, which includes body camera footage and agent statements, could complicate the administration’s defense before the U.S. Supreme Court, where officials have argued agents relied on specific intelligence rather than race when making stops.

In a separate development, the California Supreme Court issued a ruling upholding existing limits on how much public employees can add to their pension calculations through cashed-out vacation time.

And in commentary, Joy Chen, executive director of Every Fire Survivor’s Network, argues that Gov. Newsom is quietly negotiating a bailout for utility companies rather than prioritizing wildfire victims — even as Southern California Edison’s profits more than tripled in 2025.

Original source: CalMatters

The post Lessons from Brazil: How California Could Rethink Kids’ Tech Use appeared first on The Hemet & San Jacinto Chronicle.

That gap is now drawing renewed attention as lawmakers in Sacramento weigh additional restrictions, including a potential ban on “addictive” social media feeds for teens under 16 and new limits on AI chatbots following a string of troubling incidents involving young users.

Concerns over rising rates of teen anxiety, depression and suicide — trends researchers have repeatedly linked to heavy social media use — pushed California to act well before Congress found any consensus on the issue.

“California, everything there is changing and changing fairly dramatically within the last just four years,” said Ed Howard, senior policy advocate with the Children’s Advocacy Institute at the University of San Diego.

The state’s push began in earnest with the California Consumer Privacy Act of 2018, which required parental consent before companies could collect data from children under 13 — mirroring the federal Children’s Online Privacy Protection Act, or COPPA — but went further by requiring teens ages 13 to 16 to consent themselves before their data could be gathered.

In 2022, lawmakers passed the California Age-Appropriate Design Code Act, which forces companies to estimate the ages of their users and default to the strongest privacy settings for anyone believed to be a minor. The law also cracks down on “dark patterns” — design tricks that nudge users, particularly children, toward choices that may not be in their best interest.

“If there’s a product that’s likely to be accessed by children, it has to be, by design and by default, safe for them,” said Assemblymember Buffy Wicks, an Oakland Democrat who helped write the measure.

Wicks also authored a follow-up law requiring devices to include an age “signal” that businesses can use to estimate a user’s age. It’s considered one of the toughest requirements of its kind in the country, though a series of legal challenges from the tech industry have blunted some of its provisions.

Meanwhile, the Protecting Our Kids from Social Media Addiction Act of 2024 bars platforms from showing minors algorithm-driven “addictive” feeds without parental permission and restricts when companies can send notifications to teenagers. That law, set to take effect in 2027, has already withstood court challenges.

More recently, California has turned its attention to artificial intelligence. Lawmakers passed legislation requiring mental health safeguards for AI chatbots after a series of disturbing cases involving teenagers, including the death of Adam Raine, a California teen who died by suicide after months of conversations with ChatGPT about his despair.

Raine’s mother, Maria, testified before the state Senate’s Privacy, Digital Technologies and Consumer Protection Committee, describing how the chatbot morphed from “a homework helper” into “a confidant, then a suicide coach.”

Under the new law, AI chatbots must disclose that they are not human, and companies are required to take reasonable steps to shield children from graphic content. Additional bills under consideration would require AI companies to conduct annual assessments of potential mental health risks to young users and give parents more control over how their kids interact with chatbots.

By contrast, Congress has struggled for years to pass comprehensive federal protections. The Kids Internet and Digital Safety Act, currently under consideration, would extend COPPA protections to everyone under 18 and ban targeted advertising aimed at children and teens — but the bill faces criticism from both child-safety advocates, who say it doesn’t go far enough, and civil liberties groups concerned about free speech. Its prospects in a divided Congress remain uncertain.

Still, for all its progress, California’s protections pale in comparison to some international frameworks. Brazil, for instance, passed its ECA Digital law this year despite heavy lobbying from tech companies. The law bans behavioral advertising aimed at children, mandates default privacy protections and parental supervision tools, and prohibits addictive design features such as autoplay and infinite scroll for young users.

Wicks said she has looked to international examples, including the United Kingdom’s Age-Appropriate Design Code, which inspired California’s own version.

“We steal good ideas when we see them from other places,” she said.

Mariana Olaizola Rosenblat, a policy advisor at the NYU Stern Center for Business and Human Rights who studies global privacy law, said California and Brazil’s regulations already share significant common ground — but constitutional differences limit how far the U.S. can go.

“I think there’s quite a bit of overlap, but where they diverge is mostly because of specific constitutional features of the U.S. legal system,” she said, noting that the First Amendment has repeatedly been used by tech companies to challenge laws restricting algorithmic content.

Texas Tech University researcher Marina Petric argues that this reliance on U.S.-style free speech protections amounts to what she calls “First Amendment fundamentalism,” one that other countries aren’t bound to follow. “The U.S. narrative has been embedded into the architecture of digital platforms as though it were a universal standard,” she said.

Even so, Olaizola Rosenblat believes certain elements of Brazil’s law — such as mandatory parental supervision tools — could be adapted for use in the U.S. without running afoul of constitutional protections.

Beyond legal hurdles, both she and Howard point to a more practical obstacle: the sheer financial power of the tech industry.

“The thing that is, by a wide margin, the biggest reason, is the power of money in our system and the fact that our system is uniquely vulnerable to the power of that money,” Howard said.

According to a CalMatters analysis, tech companies poured more than $39 million into political spending and lobbying in California in 2025 alone, much of it aimed at fighting regulation of AI and cryptocurrency. Meta alone contributed $150,000 to the California Democratic Party and funneled $20 million into a new political action committee, saying the money was meant to “help elect state political candidates in California — no matter their party affiliation — that support and defend the American tech industry.”

“I think the main problem is the tech lobby, which is very successful in the U.S. and maybe not as successful in other jurisdictions like Brazil,” Olaizola Rosenblat said. “Because they know that the most threatening thing to them would be a federal law in the U.S.”

For Howard, the calculus is simple: tech firms have little incentive to embrace stronger privacy protections voluntarily.

“When it comes to privacy, every business has a financial stake in there being very little privacy,” he said.

Original source: CalMatters

The post Brazil Cracks Down on Kids’ Social Media Access — California Lags Behind appeared first on The Hemet & San Jacinto Chronicle.

The California Supreme Court ruling stems from a case involving a small dollar amount — roughly one week’s pay for a retired Ventura County attorney — but the outcome carries much larger financial implications for public agencies and taxpayers across the state, including throughout the Inland Empire, where county governments manage their own retirement systems.

At issue was a provision of former Gov. Jerry Brown’s 2013 pension overhaul, a law designed to rein in retirement costs after California’s public pension funds were battered first by the dot-com collapse and then the Great Recession. Brown’s legislation cracked down on so-called pension spiking, including the practice of cashing out large blocks of unused vacation to inflate a worker’s final pension calculation.

The law allows retiring employees to count only the vacation hours they’re permitted to cash out “each 12-month period” toward their pension formula. The dispute that reached the state’s high court was over what exactly that phrase means.

The case centered on Leroy Smith, a former Ventura County counsel who structured his final year of employment to run from October 2019 to October 2020, allowing him to cash out 240 hours of accrued leave during that span. His employment contract, however, limited him to cashing out just 200 hours in a calendar year. The Ventura County Employees’ Retirement System refused to count the extra 40 hours toward his pension benefit.

Smith, along with other retirees and two public safety employee unions representing sheriff’s deputies and attorneys, argued that Brown’s law never explicitly mentioned a “calendar year” and instead used broader language about a 12-month period — meaning employees should be able to time cashouts across any 12-month stretch, not just Jan. 1 through Dec. 31.

A state appellate court rejected that argument two years ago, and the unions took their fight to the California Supreme Court. In their briefs, attorneys for the retirees contended that if lawmakers had intended to restrict cashouts strictly to the calendar year, they would have used that precise term.

The Supreme Court disagreed, ruling that the law’s reference to a 12-month period aligns with the common understanding of a calendar year and reflects the intent behind Brown’s broader pension reform effort. Justices acknowledged that Smith was only seeking credit for an additional 40 hours, but they warned that allowing employees to “straddle” calendar years could let some workers effectively double the amount of vacation cashout applied to their pension calculations — a outcome the court said lawmakers likely never intended.

The ruling reinforces earlier decisions upholding other components of Brown’s 2013 pension law, which also required public employees to work longer before qualifying for full retirement benefits and increased how much they must contribute from their paychecks toward their pensions.

The decision applies specifically to county-run retirement systems, such as those serving employees in Ventura, San Bernardino and other counties that operate independently from the state’s two major pension funds — CalPERS and CalSTRS.

A coalition of county pension systems had urged the court to uphold the calendar-year interpretation, warning that a different outcome would force them to unwind and recalculate benefits for many retirees, creating significant administrative costs. In their filing, they argued there was no justification for injecting that kind of uncertainty and expense into the system.

With the ruling now final, county retirement systems across California — including those serving public employees throughout the Inland Empire — can continue applying the calendar-year standard when calculating how vacation cashouts factor into retirement benefits, closing the door on what could have become a significantly more costly practice for local governments and the taxpayers who fund them.

Original source: CalMatters

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Attorney General Rob Bonta announced Thursday that California has joined 24 other Democratic-led states in a lawsuit challenging fresh conditions placed on U.S. Department of Homeland Security grants — funding that helps states prepare for and respond to disasters such as wildfires and earthquakes.

The suit, filed in federal court in Rhode Island, targets a set of new requirements tied largely to elections. Among them: a mandate that states use a federal system to verify voters’ citizenship, a requirement to rely on hand-marked paper ballots, and a directive to conduct post-election audits. The rules would also require states to cooperate with federal immigration enforcement efforts and would give federal agencies broad discretion to cut off funding if states fall out of line.

At stake is money from programs like the Homeland Security Grant Program, created by Congress after the Sept. 11 attacks to help states guard against terrorism and other major threats, including cyberattacks. California receives roughly $150 million a year through that program alone.

Bonta argued that the administration is treating public safety funding as leverage rather than a guaranteed resource already approved by Congress.

“Instead of ensuring these critical resources reach the communities that need them, Trump is attempting to use this funding as leverage to force states to adopt his preferred political agenda,” Bonta said during a press conference.

According to the lawsuit, states that don’t comply with the new election-related conditions risk losing at least 20% of their Homeland Security Grant Program funding — and potentially all of it.

The push comes as the Trump administration has intensified calls for stricter election procedures, including voter ID requirements, ahead of the November midterms, citing concerns about voter fraud. Democratic officials, however, argue these measures are less about security and more about limiting turnout among certain voter groups.

FEMA pushed back on the lawsuit in a statement, describing it as “partisan pushback” from Democratic officials who oppose what the agency called “common-sense measures designed to protect election security and safeguard the integrity of American democracy.” The agency added that “election security is national security” and that the new requirements are meant to “preserve election integrity.”

This isn’t the first time California and its allies have fought the administration over these grants. Twice last year, the administration attempted to withhold the same funding as part of its push to compel states to assist with immigration enforcement. Both times, courts sided with California and the coalition of states challenging the move.

In one of those rulings, U.S. District Judge Mary McElroy — a Trump appointee — wrote that conditioning essential funding on “what appear to be Defendants’ political whims is unconscionable and, at least here, unlawful.”

The latest filing marks the 79th lawsuit California has brought against the Trump administration since it returned to office.

Original source: CalMatters

The post California Sues Trump Administration Over Disaster Aid Rules Tied to Election Policies appeared first on The Hemet & San Jacinto Chronicle.

As wildfire risk grows alongside a warming climate, understanding how the insurance market actually works matters more than ever. Whether a family can rebuild after a disaster — or a neighborhood can recover at all — often hinges on the health of that market. And insurance shapes daily life well beyond catastrophe: where people can afford to live, how communities take shape, whether commuters can legally get behind the wheel.

With voters set to choose a new state insurance commissioner in November, it’s worth separating fact from fiction on some of the most persistent misconceptions about insurance in California.

Myth: Only homeowners and the wealthy need to worry about insurance troubles.

Fact: Nearly everyone has a stake in this, including renters, landlords, small business owners and anyone who gets behind the wheel.

Roughly 44% of Californians rent rather than own, according to U.S. Census figures. But landlords have absorbed rising insurance costs of their own, and some have told CalMatters they’ve passed those expenses on to tenants through higher rent.

California doesn’t require renters to carry their own insurance policies, though some landlords do. Still, consumer advocates urge tenants to get coverage anyway, since it can mean the difference between recovering quickly after a fire and being left with nothing.

The squeeze extends to affordable housing providers as well, threatening the supply of low-cost units the state desperately needs. Some nonprofit housing operators say mainstream insurers have pulled back from covering commercial and multifamily properties, forcing them toward “non-admitted” insurers — companies not licensed or backstopped by the state. Others have dipped into reserve funds to keep up with premium hikes, unable to pass those costs to tenants because affordable-housing rules cap what they can charge.

“If organizations have to come out of pocket to cover premiums, it’s just not sustainable,” said Erich Nakano, director of special projects for the Little Tokyo Service Center, a Los Angeles nonprofit that owns more than 1,000 affordable units across the region.

Auto insurance isn’t spared either — California ranks among the priciest states in the country for car coverage, according to industry data, driven partly by climate-related disaster risk and the rising cost of vehicle repairs. And unlike homeowners without a mortgage or renters who can opt out of coverage, every driver in the state is legally obligated to carry auto insurance.

Myth: California’s insurance mess is entirely the fault of state lawmakers and regulators.

Fact: States across the country are grappling with soaring costs and vanishing coverage as climate-driven disasters — hurricanes in Florida, tornadoes in Texas — grow more frequent and destructive.

Proposition 103, the 1988 ballot measure that governs California’s insurance regulation, often takes the blame from critics who argue the state over-regulates the industry and should loosen its grip on the free market.

But that argument doesn’t hold up well when you look elsewhere. Florida, which regulates far more loosely, has the highest average homeowners insurance premiums in the nation, according to the Insurance Information Institute, an industry trade group. California, by contrast, sits somewhere in the middle nationally — in part because Prop. 103 requires state approval before insurers can raise rates.

Frustration over slow claims processing and denials has landed squarely on Insurance Commissioner Ricardo Lara, whose term ends this year. Survivors of last year’s deadly Los Angeles County fires have called for his resignation, blaming him for the industry’s shortcomings.

But insurance experts caution there’s no quick fix. “[Fire survivors] have the right to be angry about the impact of industry trends on them,” said Amy Bach, executive director of the consumer advocacy group United Policyholders. Still, she noted, the insurance commissioner’s authority over how insurers operate — including staffing decisions on claims — is limited by law.

That said, Lara’s department did find that State Farm, California’s largest insurer, violated state law in how it handled claims from the L.A.-area fires. A hearing before an administrative law judge, not yet scheduled, will determine what penalties, if any, the department’s findings will trigger.

Myth: Insurance companies are struggling financially.

Fact: The industry posted record profits last year, and executive pay hasn’t suffered either.

When insurers began pulling back from the California market a few years ago, they argued that state regulators were too slow to approve the rate increases needed to keep pace with growing wildfire risk. In response, Lara introduced new rules meant to speed up rate reviews and let insurers factor in catastrophe modeling and reinsurance costs when setting prices — changes that have contributed to rising premiums statewide, mirroring trends nationally.

Even so, the industry had a banner year. U.S. insurers collected $68.7 billion in premiums last year, up sharply from $25.3 billion in 2024, according to the National Association of Insurance Commissioners. Insurers’ overall financial reserves swelled to a record $1.27 trillion, according to an analysis by the consumer advocacy group Public Citizen.

Much of that windfall came from lower nationwide losses tied to extreme weather compared to the year before — the major exception being the Los Angeles-area fires, which caused roughly $37.5 billion in damage and were described by regulators as among “the costliest fires in world history.”

Meanwhile, executives at the country’s 10 largest insurance companies collected a combined $134 million in compensation in 2024, Public Citizen found. A separate analysis by the Consumer Federation of America showed that CEO pay rose in step with rising auto and home insurance premiums that same year.

Myth: The FAIR Plan is a state-run insurance program.

Fact: It’s actually operated by a consortium of private insurance companies that do business in California.

The FAIR Plan exists by law to provide fire insurance to property owners who can’t get coverage anywhere else. Every insurer licensed to sell policies in California is required to participate, and the plan’s board is staffed by industry representatives. Its inner workings remain largely hidden from public view. The state’s insurance department has taken legal action against the FAIR Plan multiple times, most recently over allegations that it denied legitimate smoke-damage claims stemming from the L.A. fires.

As of March, the FAIR Plan carried more than 684,000 policies — nearly 663,000 residential and over 21,000 commercial — a jump of more than 152% since 2023.

Growth in enrollment has slowed somewhat since late last year, but the sheer volume of policies underscores a market that remains far from stable. FAIR Plan customers, notably, often end up paying more for less: The plan covers fire damage only, meaning policyholders must still purchase separate coverage for everything else.

Original source: CalMatters

The post Setting the Record Straight: Common Insurance Myths California Homeowners Should Know appeared first on The Hemet & San Jacinto Chronicle.

After state officials declared, under a 2023 transparency law, that California government agencies were not using any “high-risk” automated decision-making systems, it has now come out that at least six such systems are, in fact, in use. These tools help determine outcomes that can profoundly affect people’s lives — from whether a family qualifies for cash aid to whether someone can access housing assistance or necessary medical care.

For those who have followed the rollout of Assembly Bill 302, the revelation is hardly shocking. The law, signed three years ago, directs the California Department of Technology to compile an annual inventory of high-risk automated systems used or proposed by state agencies. Last year, after the department’s first report claimed no such systems existed, a public records request turned up remarkably thin evidence to support that conclusion — a single spreadsheet listing every agency with the word “no” typed next to a column asking whether automated decision systems were in use. There was no indication that state officials had dug any deeper.

This year, a handful of agencies finally acknowledged using high-risk systems after being interviewed by the technology department. But that shift only highlights a deeper flaw in the law: AB 302 relies entirely on state agencies to police and report on themselves, with no independent verification process and no consequences if they fail to disclose accurately.

Compounding the problem is a lack of clarity over which systems even qualify as “high risk” in the first place. The law broadly defines such systems as those that replace or assist human judgment in decisions with significant legal consequences — including those affecting housing, education, employment, credit, health care and the criminal justice system. Yet tools already known to shape major outcomes for Californians were left out of the state’s accounting. Among them is the Uniformity Assessment System, which has been tied to reduced In-Home Supportive Services hours for people with disabilities, and the Risk Segmentation, Stratification and Tier model used to predict health risks and service usage among Medi-Cal recipients.

This pattern isn’t unique to California. Similar transparency measures have stumbled elsewhere. In New York, the Public Oversight of Surveillance Technology Act was intended to give residents insight into the New York Police Department’s use of surveillance tools. But watchdog groups and the city’s own inspector general have found that the NYPD routinely exploits vague legal language to avoid real scrutiny — including its use of unsettling robotic devices for policing.

Community oversight laws governing police surveillance technology across the country have run into similar walls. Because law enforcement agencies typically control how their own tools are described, such laws can end up reinforcing favorable narratives rather than fostering genuine accountability. As University of Washington law professor Ryan Calo has noted, this dynamic can cause lawmakers to focus narrowly on whatever technology is presented to them, rather than grappling with the broader implications of automated decision-making.

Perhaps the deeper issue is philosophical rather than procedural. Transparency-focused laws like AB 302 start from an assumption that government agencies should be allowed to adopt automated systems in the first place — then build costly bureaucratic apparatus to monitor their use after the fact. Rather than serving as a check on these tools, such frameworks often end up normalizing and entrenching their presence within government operations.

If California is serious about reining in high-risk uses of artificial intelligence by state agencies, transparency alone won’t cut it. AB 302 represented a well-intentioned but ultimately insufficient first step. It’s time for state lawmakers to move beyond disclosure requirements and pursue real safeguards that protect Californians from unchecked automated decision-making.

Original source: CalMatters

The post California’s AI Transparency Law for State Agencies Was Doomed From the Start appeared first on The Hemet & San Jacinto Chronicle.

The decision comes as another punishing heat wave grips much of the state, underscoring the real-world stakes of the debate. In rural areas, losing electricity can also mean losing access to water, since many wells rely on electric pumps. In cities, going without air conditioning or fans during a prolonged hot spell can pose serious health risks, and in extreme cases, prove fatal.

More than a year ago, the California Public Utilities Commission determined that existing safeguards against shutoffs during extreme heat were inadequate and directed the state’s largest utilities to come up with stronger rules. But when those companies submitted their proposal in December, regulators found it did little to change the status quo.

In a unanimous 4-0 vote Thursday, commissioners rejected the utilities’ plan, saying it failed to provide “sufficient health protections for customers.” The panel had originally set May 1 as the deadline for new rules to take effect. When utilities missed that deadline, consumer advocates filed emergency motions demanding action.

With the latest heat wave bearing down on California, the commission responded by lowering the temperature threshold at which utilities must halt shutoffs for unpaid bills, from 100 degrees to 90 degrees. Regulators also ordered utilities to adopt a more precise, region-specific heat standard within six months.

The fight over how to define dangerous heat dates back two years, to what was recorded as California’s hottest July on record. During that scorching stretch, the consumer advocacy group The Utility Reform Network asked the commission to reconsider its definition of extreme heat, arguing in an emergency petition that heat kills more people directly than any other weather-related hazard.

Existing rules already barred utilities from shutting off residential power over nonpayment when forecasts called for temperatures above 100 degrees within a 72-hour window. But advocates argued that a single statewide threshold ignored how differently Californians experience heat depending on where they live.

Regulators declined to treat the request as an emergency at the time, but did direct utilities to develop a revised threshold in coordination with consumer advocates and other stakeholders.

Utilities responded by proposing to use CalHeatScore, a newly developed state tool that rates heat risk by ZIP code on a scale of 0 to 4, drawing on local health data and historical impacts, along with factors such as proximity to cooling centers and the presence of children and older residents, who tend to be more vulnerable to extreme heat.

The sticking point: utilities wanted the shutoff protection to kick in only at Level 3 on that scale, a higher bar than advocates sought, and wanted to keep the 100-degree threshold as a backup whenever the index data wasn’t available. Consumer groups pushed back, calling for protections to begin at the lower Level 2 and for a backup threshold of 90 degrees instead.

Utilities said they couldn’t meet the original deadline because the CalHeatScore data system, managed by the state’s Office of Environmental Health Hazard Assessment, wasn’t yet ready to support their compliance. Advocates countered that utilities offered little justification for insisting on keeping the higher 100-degree cutoff.

By May, with utilities still lagging, The Utility Reform Network joined forces with the San Diego-based Utility Consumers’ Action Network, the National Consumer Law Center and the Center for Accessible Technology to formally ask the commission to step in.

This week, regulators sided decisively with consumer advocates, rejecting the utilities’ approach as essentially unchanged from prior practice. The commission’s resolution noted that the extreme-heat threshold already sits below 100 degrees in 41 of California’s 58 counties.

A 90-degree day might be unremarkable in dry inland cities such as Bakersfield or Fresno, but that same temperature can pose unusual danger in coastal or mountain communities, where fewer homes have air conditioning and residents are less acclimated to heat. In San Francisco, for instance, extreme heat is defined as anything above 85 degrees. In Del Norte County, in the state’s far northwest corner, the threshold is any temperature above 76.8 degrees, according to the commission.

“A single temperature threshold is needed to better protect residents in areas of the state that are not accustomed to high temperatures,” the commission wrote in its ruling.

Although utilities had pushed for narrower protections, company representatives now say they intend to comply fully with the stricter standard. Last December, the state’s major private electric providers jointly argued that expanding protections to cover lower heat-index levels would trigger shutoffs too frequently, increase unpaid customer debt and add costs without a corresponding health benefit. In a January filing, according to a PG&E spokesperson, the companies described the 90-degree threshold as overly broad.

These protections apply only to shutoffs triggered by nonpayment. They do not prevent outages caused by equipment failures, wildfire prevention shutoffs or other emergencies. Still, advocates say the safeguards matter enormously for vulnerable households.

“When a home loses power, it can set off a cascade of problems for tenants,” said Jason Zeller, an attorney with the Utility Consumers’ Action Network. “Without electricity, tenants can face eviction, and if they have children, they can even risk losing custody.”

Ahead of Thursday’s vote, all three major utilities said they were prepared to fall in line with the commission’s new standards. Southern California Edison said the resolution would strengthen protections during extreme heat events and that it was ready to revise its disconnection policies. San Diego Gas & Electric said it supported the added safety measures and would implement whatever final requirements the commission adopted.

“At PG&E, service disconnection is always a last resort, used only after multiple attempts to reach customers and offer payment plans and assistance programs,” said company spokesperson Adrienne Moore. Region-specific rules are expected to be finalized within six months.

The commission’s independent Public Advocates Office had pushed for stronger protections throughout the process, formally opposing the utilities’ original plan. Office director Linda Serizawa said the vote would give consumers protection “that kicks in when they need it most.”

Original source: CalMatters

The post California Limits Utility Shutoffs as Dangerous Heat Wave Grips the State appeared first on The Hemet & San Jacinto Chronicle.

The California Public Utilities Commission voted Thursday to drop the shutoff-protection trigger from 100 degrees to 90 degrees, rejecting a competing proposal favored by utility companies. That plan would have set a higher cutoff tied to CalHeatScore, a newly developed state index that rates heat risk by ZIP code, while keeping the 100-degree threshold as a fallback in areas without index data.

Consumer advocates had pushed hard for the lower threshold, arguing that a wider safety net is especially critical for residents in rural communities, where a power outage can also mean losing access to water pumps and air conditioning or fans needed to stay safe during dangerous heat.

For Inland Empire and Southern California residents, where summer temperatures regularly climb into the 90s and above, the rule change means more days when utilities cannot legally disconnect service over unpaid bills, giving vulnerable households additional protection during the hottest stretches of the year.

The commission’s decision comes as state leaders continue to grapple with the broader effects of extreme heat, including on the youngest Californians. Two new state laws targeting school heat safety underscore the same concern that is driving utility policy: protecting people, especially those with fewer resources, from the physical toll of rising temperatures.

Earlier this week, Gov. Gavin Newsom signed legislation directing the state board of education to consider adding heat-illness education to school curricula. The law does not require schools to act, but backers say it lays important groundwork. Assemblymember Tom Lackey, a Palmdale Republican who authored the bill, said the measure “promotes awareness and prevention” and arms students with “the knowledge to protect themselves” when temperatures spike.

A separate law passed in 2024 required school districts statewide to have heat-safety plans in place by July 1 of this year. Those plans must outline alternatives to outdoor activities, such as moving practices or recess indoors, when extreme heat hits. The July 1 deadline marked a key milestone for districts working to formalize their response to increasingly common heat events.

Still, critics note that neither law comes with dedicated funding, meaning schools are not required to invest in the kind of physical upgrades, such as improved air conditioning systems or added shade structures, that many advocates say are ultimately necessary to keep students safe as heat waves intensify.

Together, the utility shutoff rules and the new school heat laws reflect a broader shift in how California is confronting climate-driven heat risk, treating it not just as a summer inconvenience but as a public health and safety issue that touches everything from utility bills to the school day.

Original source: CalMatters

The post Utilities Must Limit Power Shutoffs During Extreme Heat Under New Rules appeared first on The Hemet & San Jacinto Chronicle.