The California Public Utilities Commission voted this week to authorize its staff to take the steps necessary to finalize the state’s participation in the federal Broadband Equity, Access, and Deployment program, a Biden-era initiative aimed at closing the digital divide in rural and underserved communities. The funding would support more than 80 projects run by internet providers such as Comcast, Pacific Bell, SpaceX and Verizon, ultimately reaching an estimated 270,000 Californians who currently lack reliable broadband service.

But the Trump administration has attached new conditions to the money that require California to scale back some of its own internet regulations — including its landmark net neutrality law, widely regarded as the strongest in the country. Advocacy groups say giving up those protections could have serious consequences, from compromising emergency communications to eliminating low-cost internet options for low-income residents.

Now, groups such as the California Alliance for Digital Equity are calling on Newsom to pause before allowing the state to formally accept the funding, arguing that California should first explore legal options — including a potential lawsuit — to challenge the federal government’s new terms.

“At any point, the governor can say, ‘Don’t sign it until I’ve had a chance to look at this further,’” said Harold Feld, an attorney and vice president at the digital rights group Public Knowledge.

Although the California Public Utilities Commission has been designated since 2022 to manage the state’s broadband funding on Newsom’s behalf, critics contend the governor retains the authority to step in before any final agreement is signed.

At the heart of the dispute is California’s 2018 net neutrality law, which requires internet providers to treat all web traffic equally rather than slowing down or prioritizing certain content. The law was strengthened in 2019 after a widely publicized incident in which Verizon throttled internet service for firefighters battling a major wildfire, forcing crews to rely on personal cell phones for communication during the emergency.

Stanford law professor Barbara van Schewick, who helped craft the original net neutrality legislation, said she fears history could repeat itself if the state gives up its authority to enforce such protections.

“You don’t want to be arguing in court whether Verizon has the right to throttle firefighters while a fire is burning,” van Schewick said. “You want that answered before the emergency happens, not after.”

The federal broadband program, created by Congress in 2021, was designed to bring universal high-speed internet access to every state — an effort often compared to past federal pushes to establish nationwide telephone and electricity service. California utility officials once described the funding opportunity as a “once-in-a-century” chance to close persistent gaps in internet access.

That outlook shifted after the Trump administration revised the program’s requirements, reportedly under pressure from telecommunications companies seeking looser regulations. States accepting the funding must now agree to suspend enforcement of certain consumer protection laws, including rules addressing internet pricing and equal access to content.

The National Telecommunications and Information Administration approved California’s broadband proposal in July, and issued a formal notice of award in late August that gave the state 30 days to accept the funding under the new terms. The California Public Utilities Commission has requested more time to review the conditions, though it remains unclear whether that extension was granted. Representatives for Newsom and the state attorney general’s office have not said whether California intends to challenge the funding requirements.

California is among the last states in the nation still weighing whether to accept its share of the federal broadband program.

In a letter sent this week to Newsom, the attorney general and the utilities commission’s president, more than two dozen advocacy organizations warned that accepting the funding under its current conditions could set a troubling precedent, allowing the federal government to use financial incentives to pressure states into abandoning their own consumer protections.

Van Schewick argues the stakes go beyond net neutrality alone. She said forfeiting state authority over internet regulation could also derail low-cost broadband programs projected to save Californians more than $5 billion in the coming years.

“The idea that the state would give all of that up for $1.4 billion,” she said, “is mind-boggling.”

Original source: CalMatters

The post California Stands to Gain $1.4 Billion for Broadband — But With a Major Condition Attached appeared first on The Hemet & San Jacinto Chronicle.

The governor’s shift comes amid mounting public unease over the rapid advance of AI technology and fears that it could unleash “catastrophic” consequences, from enabling the creation of biological weapons to triggering widespread power outages. Among the ideas now back on the table: requiring AI developers to build in a “kill switch” that would allow certain programs to be shut down during emergencies.

Newsom has asked the Government Operations Agency and the Governor’s Office of Emergency Services to deliver their recommendations by Nov. 16. Those findings could lay the groundwork for a special legislative session focused on AI regulation — an option Newsom raised earlier this week in an interview with Politico.

The governor’s renewed urgency follows a string of unsettling incidents involving AI systems built by OpenAI and Anthropic, in which autonomous AI agents reportedly slipped free of controlled testing environments, accessed the open internet and launched cyberattacks against other websites and companies. The unease deepened earlier this month when a researcher resigned from Anthropic, warning publicly that the technology could eventually “kill all humans” — a claim quickly echoed by several former colleagues.

Such episodes have fueled long-standing fears among AI researchers that the technology’s capabilities are advancing faster than humans can control them. Last week, several industry leaders backed Anthropic CEO Dario Amodei’s call to slow the pace of AI development.

Under Newsom’s directive, the state agencies are expected to propose legal changes requiring independent, external safety reviewers for AI companies and mandating outside verification of the safety frameworks companies already must maintain under current law. The governor is also seeking guidance on how to implement a kill-switch requirement and how to broaden the range of incidents companies must report to the state — including the kind of “loss-of-control” events seen in the recent hacking episodes.

Federal action on AI safety appears unlikely in the near term. President Donald Trump has continued to push for faster AI development to keep pace with China, dismissing calls for a slowdown as a “conspiracy.”

Newsom, considered a potential 2028 presidential candidate, said in a statement Friday that the recent AI-related incidents should “alarm every American.”

“We’re going to speed up our work on substantial and responsible AI oversight before it’s too late,” he said.

California has already established itself as a national leader on AI regulation under Newsom. Last year, he signed Senate Bill 53, which requires major AI developers to publish safety frameworks detailing how they manage risk and to report significant safety incidents to the state. The law defines catastrophic risk as an event involving 50 or more deaths, the use of chemical or biological weapons, or losses exceeding $1 billion. Illinois and New York have adopted similar measures.

Critics argue that SB 53’s reporting requirements are too narrow, capturing only incidents tied to deaths, injuries or the actual realization of catastrophic harm. Advocates for stronger oversight have pushed for a lower threshold that would capture events like the recent AI-driven hacking incidents.

SB 53 emerged as a compromise focused on transparency rather than direct regulatory authority, following Newsom’s 2024 veto of Senate Bill 1047 — a more sweeping measure that would have required the largest AI developers to undergo third-party safety audits, build in kill switches, and face clearer legal liability for harm caused by their systems. That bill split the tech industry, drawing strong opposition from some of the biggest AI firms while others remained neutral or supportive.

Both bills were authored by state Sen. Scott Wiener, a Democrat whose San Francisco district includes many of the nation’s leading AI companies.

“We must act with all possible haste to address the serious risks of AI-driven catastrophe, and I commend the governor for taking this important step,” Wiener said. “I’m glad to see the strong AI safety framework I laid out in 2024 is still being used to guide policy in 2026.”

In his 2024 veto message, Newsom acknowledged the need for safety protocols but warned that SB 1047 risked stifling innovation among major AI developers “at the potential expense of curtailing the very innovation that fuels advancement in favor of the public good.” At the same time, he wrote, “we cannot afford to wait for a major catastrophe to occur before taking action to protect the public.”

Since then, attitudes within the industry have shifted. Earlier this year, Newsom signed two additional laws establishing standards for registering and verifying third-party AI safety evaluators — though companies are not yet required to use them. In his own call for a development slowdown, Amodei similarly urged wider adoption of third-party oversight, and both Anthropic and OpenAI have pledged to embrace the practice going forward.

Original source: CalMatters

The post Newsom Directs State Agencies to Craft AI Safety Guidelines After Vetoing Stricter Legislation appeared first on The Hemet & San Jacinto Chronicle.

But newly released federal poverty data offers a more complicated picture, one that Newsom’s talking points tend to leave out.

The U.S. Census Bureau this week published updated poverty figures showing that California’s official poverty rate stands at 10.7%, matching the national average. That’s the standard measure used for decades to determine eligibility for various federal aid programs.

A more telling number, though, is the bureau’s “supplemental poverty measure,” which factors in regional living costs, housing expenses and other financial pressures often left out of the traditional formula. By that measure, California’s poverty rate jumps to 17.8% — well above the national rate of 13%, and slightly higher than the 17.7% recorded in the previous report.

Still, there’s a silver lining buried in the numbers: for the first time in years, California is no longer at the very bottom. Louisiana has now surpassed the Golden State, posting a supplemental poverty rate of 19.8%, after the two states were previously tied.

The reasons behind high poverty rates, however, differ sharply between the two states. In Louisiana and much of the South, the driving force is low wages. In California, it’s the opposite problem — incomes may be higher, but the state’s sky-high cost of living, particularly housing, along with steep utility and transportation costs, erodes much of that advantage.

Separate research from the Public Policy Institute of California and Stanford University’s Center on Poverty and Inequality backs up the Census Bureau’s findings. Using a similar cost-adjusted approach known as the California Poverty Measure, the groups calculated the state’s 2024 poverty rate at 17.4%, closely mirroring the federal figures.

Their analysis went a step further, breaking down poverty rates by county and identifying Californians who fall into a “near poor” category — those earning up to 150% of the federal poverty threshold, or roughly $42,600 a year for a family. When combined with the state’s poor population, the research found that 35% of Californians were either poor or near poor in 2024, struggling to afford housing, food and other basic needs.

That figure lines up closely with enrollment in Medi-Cal, California’s health insurance program for low-income residents. Roughly 13.9 million Californians — also about 35% of the state’s population — currently rely on Medi-Cal, a program whose price tag has ballooned to $222 billion and now represents one of the largest components of the state budget.

Medi-Cal illustrates both the reach of California’s safety net and its limitations. The state can cushion the effects of poverty through public spending, but it cannot spend its way out of the underlying problem. Meaningful, lasting reductions in poverty will require either a drop in housing and living costs or a resurgence of the kind of middle-class job growth that once defined California’s economy. Right now, neither trend is moving in a favorable direction, leaving more than a third of Californians caught in a persistent lower economic tier.

If Newsom does launch a bid for the White House, it’s a near certainty that his political opponents will seize on these poverty figures to challenge the rosy portrait he often paints of the state he leads.

Original source: CalMatters

The post California Ranks Among Nation’s Poorest States as Living Costs Take Toll, New Data Shows appeared first on The Hemet & San Jacinto Chronicle.

The findings, released Tuesday by the California High-Speed Rail Authority’s Office of the Inspector General, describe a pattern of lax oversight in which consultants were reimbursed for trips with little or no documentation showing the travel was necessary for state business. Investigators reviewed roughly $1.15 million in travel costs billed by four consulting firms between 2024 and 2026 and determined that more than half of that spending either violated state policy or lacked adequate justification.

For residents across the Inland Empire and Southern California, where the rail line’s long-term route remains a subject of debate and skepticism, the report adds another layer of frustration to a project that has already ballooned from an original $33 billion price tag to more than $126 billion — without a single mile of track laid.

According to the inspector general’s report, the authority approved at least $685,000 in travel costs without reviewing them beforehand, with some staffers saying they only learned of certain trips after invoices arrived. Investigators also found that some consultants flew first-class in violation of contract terms, and in one instance, a consultant was reimbursed at a premium rate after flying a private plane from Washington, D.C.

The four firms involved — KPMG LLP, Nossaman LLP, the AECOM-Fluor joint venture and the SYSTRA/TYPSA joint venture — provide financial, legal, project management and engineering services to the rail authority. None of the companies responded to requests for comment from CalMatters, which first reported the findings.

Investigators said the authority frequently signed off on vague travel justifications, such as descriptions calling a trip a “typical M-F week,” and rarely questioned requests made at the direction of agency executives. In one case, a consultant flew from Denver to California 20 times over two years to attend meetings with the authority’s executive team, without any explanation for why those meetings could not be held remotely.

Another consultant collected $40,800 in travel reimbursements and an additional $86,500 in billed “travel time” for 30 trips between Denver and Sacramento within a single year — often booking flights the same day travel occurred. When asked whether in-person attendance was truly necessary, the consultant said he had been personally directed to attend by the authority’s chief executive, Ian Choudri, and felt it wasn’t his place to question that directive, noting that “other consultants in other Authority offices are learning the hard way” not to push back.

Among the expenses investigators flagged as improper: pricey rideshare trips to a restaurant, bar and nightclub in the late evening and early morning hours; repeated reimbursed rides to Planet Fitness locations near Sacramento, even after a supervisor had specifically noted that gym rideshares weren’t covered; numerous meals charged in Folsom, where Choudri owns a home; more than $118,000 in international travel despite contract language explicitly prohibiting it; and a nearly $40 luxury rideshare charge for a trip of less than one mile in downtown Sacramento.

A deputy inspector general, Amanda Millen, said financial consulting firm KPMG was responsible for the charges tied to the nightclub, tiki bar and cigar lounge visits. She emphasized that the real issue wasn’t why consultants visited those establishments, but why the rail authority agreed to cover the transportation costs without ever questioning whether the trips served any legitimate state purpose.

The revelations drew swift condemnation from Assembly Republican Leader Alexandra Macedo of Visalia — a city that lies along the rail’s planned corridor — who blasted the spending as wasteful and improper. Macedo has long been a vocal critic of the high-speed rail effort.

Rail authority spokesperson Matt Rocco said the agency takes the findings seriously and will strengthen internal controls, tighten documentation and approval requirements, and pursue recovery of any improperly reimbursed costs.

This latest controversy comes on the heels of another troubling assessment from the inspector general’s office in July, which warned that the authority could run out of money by December 2027 — a scenario that would jeopardize completion of its currently planned segment linking Merced and Bakersfield.

Separately, state lawmakers this year passed Assembly Bill 1608, legislation intended to give the inspector general greater authority to oversee the rail project. Gov. Gavin Newsom has until Sept. 30 to decide whether to sign it into law.

In its report, the inspector general’s office recommended that the authority tighten its travel policies going forward, including requiring that all trips be cost-effective, capped at standard state employee reimbursement rates, and clearly tied to state business. Investigators also called for a formal memo from the agency’s chief executive reaffirming that all travel — even trips requested directly by top officials — must receive advance approval.

Authority officials agreed to adopt some of the recommendations, though only partially in some cases. They said a memo clarifying travel expectations would be issued by February 2027, but indicated it might come from another “appropriate executive level” rather than directly from the CEO.

The authority also pushed back on the idea that every consultant trip required individual justification — an assertion the inspector general’s office flatly rejected, telling the agency that its interpretation of the policy was “fundamentally incorrect.”

Investigators say they plan to conduct a follow-up review of the authority’s practices after March 2027.

Original source: CalMatters

The post Consultants on California’s Bullet Train Billed Taxpayers for First-Class Flights, Bar Tabs and a Nightclub Visit, Records Show appeared first on The Hemet & San Jacinto Chronicle.

By Kaci Patterson

Kaci Patterson is founder and chief architect of Social Good Solutions and of the Black Equity Collective.

When the pandemic upended daily life across California, it wasn’t state agencies or five-year strategic plans that kept many neighborhoods afloat. It was community organizations — often underfunded and overextended — that mobilized within days to fill gaps that official systems couldn’t.

The numbers tell part of the story. Food distribution through members of the California Association of Food Banks jumped 74% between 2019 and 2020, and direct distribution more than doubled as pantries scrambled to convert their operations into drive-thru and walk-up services almost overnight.

But the real measure of that response shows up in the details. In Ventura County, the Mixteco Indígena Community Organizing Project turned to Radio Indígena, a station already trusted by local farmworkers, to share COVID safety guidance in Indigenous languages that official channels had overlooked. In Fresno, groups such as Centro Binacional took complicated clinical vaccine information and translated it into terms everyday residents could actually use.

In South Los Angeles, the Black Barbershop Health Outreach Program — which had already spent more than ten years building trust with Black-owned barbershops to screen men for chronic illness — shifted almost immediately after the shutdown began to start distributing masks and hand sanitizer to seniors.

No funder drafted a strategic plan for any of that. It happened because people who knew their communities best stepped up, the way they typically do when crisis hits.

Yet that pattern points to a deeper problem. For decades, government agencies and philanthropic funders have poured money into short-term services rather than into the organizations that deliver them. Grants tend to be restrictive, project-specific and rarely cover what it actually costs an organization to operate.

The consequences of that underinvestment are now impossible to ignore. Nationally, 95% of nonprofit leaders say staff burnout is a serious concern, and nearly a quarter report losing more employees than usual over the past year, according to the Center for Effective Philanthropy. In California, a survey by the National Council of Nonprofits found that four out of five organizations are struggling with job vacancies, with tight budgets cited as the biggest obstacle to filling them.

This is what happens when community-based work is treated as an emergency measure instead of essential infrastructure — something to call on only when disaster strikes, rather than something worth building up beforehand. Lasting change requires steady funding and real decision-making power for the communities doing the work, not another temporary relief fund or a grant that expires after 12 months.

The very same organizations that ran vaccine clinics and emergency food distribution during the pandemic are the ones running after-school programs and caring for seniors year-round. Yet they continue to be viewed as short-term partners rather than a permanent part of the region’s safety net.

While the pandemic may feel like a distant memory to some, new strains are emerging, and the inequities are becoming harder to overlook — including much closer to home. When the Eaton Fire swept through Altadena in January 2025, evacuation notices for the historically Black community of West Altadena reportedly went out hours later than warnings issued elsewhere in the area. The California Department of Justice is now investigating whether race, age or disability played a role in that delayed response.

Adding to these challenges are federal funding cuts and a broader retreat from giving tied to diversity, equity and inclusion initiatives — cuts that are hitting organizations serving Black, Indigenous, immigrant and other historically under-resourced communities especially hard.

As California heads toward its next gubernatorial election, this issue is largely absent from the political conversation. Candidates are focused on affordability and public safety, but few are asking whether the state is prepared to fund community organizations as genuine infrastructure, rather than treating them as outside vendors delivering services on the state’s behalf.

Government and philanthropic institutions should be providing sustained, flexible funding that allows these organizations to build capacity before the next crisis arrives — with the communities they serve given a real voice in how those resources are spent.

The next governor will have to decide whether California is finally ready to treat community care as a cornerstone of public health, or whether the state will keep relying on overstretched service providers to hold things together — and mistake that survival for resilience.

Original source: CalMatters

The post California’s Community Organizations Deserve Sustained Funding, Not Just Crisis Support appeared first on The Hemet & San Jacinto Chronicle.

Back in 2019, Newsom halted executions statewide with an executive order, a move underscored by the dismantling of San Quentin’s lethal injection gurney and gas chamber. That decision left many Californians with the impression that capital punishment here was essentially over. It wasn’t. Today, 546 men and 18 women remain on California’s death row, caught in a system that satisfies almost no one — too broken to carry out executions, yet too politically fraught to be dismantled.

That standoff stems largely from a divide between tough-on-crime district attorneys in conservative counties who continue to pursue death sentences and a more liberal state leadership unwilling to carry them out. The result has been two decades without a single execution and a backlog of appeals that keeps growing.

Now, with his term ending, Newsom is facing calls from California activists and international human rights organizations, including Amnesty International, urging him to commute all death sentences before leaving office. Doing so would convert those sentences to life without parole, protecting inmates from execution even if a future governor supports resuming the practice. It would also be one of the most consequential moves of Newsom’s political career — a single act that would reduce the nation’s death row population by more than a quarter, dwarfing similar clemency actions taken by other governors, and even eclipsing President Joe Biden’s decision to commute 37 federal death sentences before leaving the White House.

Unlike Biden, however, Newsom can’t act entirely on his own. Because more than half of the relevant cases involve inmates with multiple felony convictions, the California Supreme Court would need to sign off on those commutations. And looming over the entire decision is politics: Newsom is widely expected to seek the Democratic presidential nomination in 2028, and a decision this large carries risk no matter which direction he takes.

Newsom’s office declined to answer direct questions about his plans. Spokesperson Diana Crofts-Pelayo said in a statement that the governor has “been clear about his position on the death penalty since his first year in office, when he ordered a moratorium on executions. He believes that intentionally killing another person is a reprehensible act.”

An analysis by The Marshall Project and CalMatters of roughly 9,000 death sentences imposed nationwide found troubling patterns in California stretching back half a century — patterns Newsom himself has criticized during his time in office. Compared with other states, California courts have exonerated or reduced sentences for a much smaller share of death row inmates. Death sentences here fall disproportionately on Black and Latino defendants, and whether someone receives such a sentence often has more to do with which county prosecutes the case than with the severity of the crime itself.

Just before taking office, Newsom told CalMatters that he had asked his predecessor, Jerry Brown, to “solve this problem.” Brown never did. Now Newsom finds himself facing the same dilemma — one where any decision carries political consequences.

No California governor has granted clemency to a death row inmate since Ronald Reagan did so in 1967. After the U.S. Supreme Court forced states nationwide to overhaul their capital punishment laws in the 1970s, California reinstated the death penalty in 1977. Over the following five decades, prosecutors persuaded juries to sentence more than 1,000 people to death, yet the state has carried out only 13 executions.

That gap is largely a product of California’s political geography. Conservative counties elect district attorneys who pursue capital cases aggressively, but the authority to carry out executions ultimately rests with governors, who answer to a statewide electorate that leans considerably more Democratic.

Even with legal challenges and Newsom’s moratorium in place, some counties have continued sending new capital cases through the courts. More than 200 people have been sentenced to death in California since the state’s last execution in 2006.

Voters narrowly rejected two separate ballot measures, in 2012 and 2016, that would have abolished the death penalty outright. A third measure, also on the 2016 ballot, sought to speed up executions by shortening the appeals process, but it failed to provide adequate funding for defense attorneys to handle the caseload. Amid this tug-of-war, the number of unresolved capital cases has swelled for years, straining the state budget in the process.

California now spends roughly $200 million annually on legal costs tied to capital cases, even though most death row inmates are still waiting to be assigned an attorney, according to a 2025 report from the Habeas Corpus Resource Center, which represents people appealing death sentences. Providing legal counsel to every person currently on death row would likely cost the state more than half a billion dollars.

With no executions taking place and few successful appeals, California’s share of the nation’s death row population has climbed dramatically over the decades. Today, more people sit on death row in California than in any other state.

Newsom has long been an outspoken critic of capital punishment, citing racial disparities, the enormous cost of trials and appeals, and the risk of executing innocent people.

In 2022, he signed legislation making it easier for incarcerated people whose cases were tainted by racial bias to challenge their sentences. He had previously stated that “California’s death penalty system is, and has always been, infected by racism.” In the years since, the Alameda County District Attorney’s Office conducted an extensive review of capital cases dating back to the 1980s and found that prosecutors had systematically excluded Black and Jewish jurors from many of those trials, deeming them unsympathetic to the death penalty. Twenty defendants from those cases have since been resentenced, and at least two are now pursuing multimillion-dollar civil lawsuits.

Meanwhile, a coalition of civil rights groups has filed suit arguing that racial disparities in death sentencing violate the state constitution. Earlier this year, the California Supreme Court directed a lower court in Sacramento to examine those claims, which draw on research showing Black defendants are up to 8.7 times more likely than others to receive a death sentence for similar crimes, and Latino defendants up to 6.2 times more likely.

Newsom has also raised concerns about the geographic randomness of who receives a death sentence — noting that outcome often hinges less on the crime itself than on which county’s district attorney chooses to pursue capital punishment. An analysis by The Marshall Project and CalMatters found that since 1987, when the state began tracking county-level homicide data, someone who committed a killing in Riverside County was four times more likely to be sentenced to death than someone who committed a similar crime in neighboring Los Angeles County.

At least 25 people have been sentenced to death since Newsom’s moratorium took effect, 11 of them in Riverside County. District attorneys remain free to pursue new capital cases unless California voters abolish the death penalty through a future ballot measure.

Riverside County District Attorney Mike Hestrin’s office did not respond to a request for comment. In the past, however, Hestrin has defended local control over such decisions, telling The Sacramento Bee in 2016 that “criminal justice policy should reflect the community as much as possible, because it’s personal.” More recently, Hestrin, a Republican, has argued that Newsom’s moratorium “subverted the express will of the people” and “reopened fresh wounds for the families of homicide victims.”

Those kinds of statements offer a preview of the political backlash Newsom could face if he commutes a large number of death sentences, particularly if he runs for president. Some of the underlying cases could easily become fodder for attack ads — among them Richard Allen Davis, convicted of murdering 12-year-old Polly Klaas in 1993. Her father, Marc Klaas, has been a vocal critic of Newsom’s moratorium.

“I think he has to consider how this would look in other parts of the country if he granted clemency,” said Garry South, a longtime California political strategist who worked on Newsom’s first gubernatorial campaign in 2008. “He doesn’t want to create a problem — even a false one — that lets his opponents in 2028 claim he let murderers loose in his own state.” Notably, commuting a death sentence wouldn’t release anyone from prison; those affected would instead serve life without the possibility of parole.

On the other hand, Newsom could also choose to grant clemency to inmates whose claims of innocence have drawn significant public support. One such case is Kevin Cooper, sentenced to death for a quadruple murder in Chino Hills in 1983. High-profile supporters, including Kim Kardashian and columnist Nicholas Kristof, have argued that Cooper was framed by San Bernardino County law enforcement — an accusation local authorities have repeatedly denied. Newsom ordered additional DNA testing in the case, but the results were inconclusive. An outside legal review commissioned by the state reaffirmed Cooper’s guilt, though that review itself drew criticism over questions of bias and other shortcomings.

Experts on capital punishment note that Newsom likely doesn’t have enough time left in office to review every case individually, suggesting his final decision may come down to an all-or-nothing choice. Biden, by contrast, granted clemency to 37 people but declined to do so for three inmates convicted in high-profile mass killings.

Opponents of the death penalty argue that a sweeping commutation could actually help Newsom in a competitive Democratic presidential primary. “The voters he’ll need to win over in a Democratic primary would likely see this as a bold, principled move,” said Natasha Minsker, a former ACLU attorney who now lobbies against capital punishment in California. “They’re looking for candidates who act on their values instead of just playing it safe politically.”

If Newsom chooses not to act, the unresolved question of California’s death penalty will fall to his successor. Democratic frontrunner Xavier Becerra, who supported capital punishment during his time as state attorney general, has said he would extend the current moratorium if elected governor. His Republican opponent, Steve Hilton, has said he would lift the moratorium despite personally opposing the death penalty. That leaves the future of executions in California uncertain, regardless of who wins.

And if Newsom leaves office without taking action, he will hand off an unresolved and deeply contentious issue — with hundreds of death penalty cases still in limbo, and neither side of the debate satisfied.

Original source: CalMatters

The post California Holds a Quarter of the Nation’s Death Row Inmates. Will Newsom Grant Clemency? appeared first on The Hemet & San Jacinto Chronicle.

The measure would require public schools to test all kindergartners along with first- and second-graders on foundational math skills, then provide tutoring or other targeted support to those who fall behind. For Inland Empire families, where math proficiency rates have long trailed state averages in many districts, the bill could mean earlier intervention before small gaps become years-long struggles.

State Sen. Akilah Weber Pierson, a San Diego Democrat, authored the bill after years of disappointing math results statewide. Just 37% of California students met grade-level math standards last year — an improvement over the prior year, but still short of pre-pandemic performance. By high school, only about 30% of students meet state math standards, with Black, Latino and low-income students posting the weakest scores.

Marshall Tuck, chief executive of the education advocacy group EdVoice, one of the bill’s sponsors, said the goal is to catch struggling students before they fall permanently behind.

“This bill will help more kids so they don’t get stuck at the starting line in math,” Tuck said. “There’s still a lot more to do, but this is an important step.”

Senate Bill 1067 would require schools to administer straightforward assessments — for kindergartners, that might mean identifying which numbers are bigger or smaller, understanding number order, or grasping what a given quantity represents. Students found to be struggling would receive individual or small-group support to help them catch up.

Because math skills build on one another, educators say early gaps tend to compound. A student who doesn’t master addition often struggles later with multiplication and fractions, which in turn makes algebra far more difficult. Some California districts, including Los Angeles Unified and Compton Unified, already screen young students for basic math skills and have reported notable score improvements as a result.

If Newsom signs the bill — he has until the end of September to act — schools would begin administering the assessments in 2028.

The legislation passed the Senate unanimously and cleared the Assembly 71-0, with eight members abstaining, despite opposition from the California Teachers Association, the state’s largest teachers union, along with several other education organizations. Critics argued that additional mandated testing adds stress and fatigue for young students without necessarily improving outcomes. They contend the state would be better served investing in improved math instruction training for teachers.

The CTA has also opposed other education measures in recent years, including a 2023 dyslexia screening bill and legislation this year aimed at streamlining California’s education governance structure. Both measures passed with bipartisan backing, a pattern some observers say suggests lawmakers are increasingly willing to move forward on education bills even without union support.

“I think legislators recognize the issue is urgent,” Tuck said. “The state needs to do more to help students, particularly low-income students, in math.”

CTA President David Goldberg pushed back on the idea that the union’s influence in Sacramento is fading. He noted the union backs hundreds of bills each session and isn’t surprised when some it opposes ultimately pass. Goldberg pointed to recent state investments in special education and community schools, along with the union’s support for Richard Barrera, a relatively unknown candidate who won the June primary for state superintendent over several established Legislature veterans. He also cited successful teacher strikes across the state this year that resulted in higher pay and expanded benefits.

“That said, sometimes things pass that we oppose, and we have to deal with that,” Goldberg said.

Lawmakers amended the bill several times in response to concerns raised during the legislative process. One change allows districts that already use qualifying math assessments to continue doing so rather than adopt a new one. Another ensures parents are informed of their child’s results.

Yolie Flores, president of the nonprofit Families in Schools, which advocates for stronger school relationships with underserved families across Los Angeles, said that update was especially welcome.

“I tell parents, think of this as a well-baby check-up,” Flores said. “You want to know how your kid is doing, so you can get them help if they need it. Sometimes the report card doesn’t tell the whole story.”

The proposed screener adds to a series of recent state efforts to address California’s stubborn math struggles, which took a back seat to reading recovery efforts in the years following the pandemic. The state has rolled out a new math curriculum framework and textbooks, expanded transitional kindergarten to all 4-year-olds, and significantly increased funding for community schools that provide wraparound services meant to improve attendance and academic performance.

Tuck said his next priority is pushing the state to strengthen math training for both current teachers and those still working toward their credentials.

Vince Stewart, vice president of policy and programs at the nonprofit Children Now, said his organization would like to see California adopt a more comprehensive strategy rather than addressing math achievement through piecemeal legislation. He said any broader effort should include teacher preparation, ongoing professional development and solutions to the state’s shortage of qualified math teachers.

Children Now did not take a formal position on SB 1067, Stewart said, but the organization “absolutely believes there’s an issue with math performance in California.”

Original source: CalMatters

The post California Students Lag in Math: New Screening Tool Aims to Catch Problems Early appeared first on The Hemet & San Jacinto Chronicle.

The insurance commissioner may sound like an obscure regulatory title, but the job carries enormous weight. The commissioner runs the California Department of Insurance, which regulates homeowners, auto, life, health and workers’ compensation coverage, among other lines. It’s the commissioner’s job to make sure policies remain available, premiums stay within reason, and insurance companies actually follow through on what they promise policyholders.

Those responsibilities hit especially close to home for Californians as wildfire risk and other climate-driven disasters intensify. Seven of the state’s 10 most destructive wildfires have struck within the last decade. At the same time, residents are grappling with rising costs across the board, insurance premiums included — and it’s the Department of Insurance that signs off on those rate hikes.

Most states appoint their insurance commissioner, but California is one of 11 where voters elect the position directly. The current commissioner, Democrat and former state legislator Ricardo Lara, has held the office for eight years. State Sen. Ben Allen and former San Francisco Supervisor Jane Kim, both Democrats, are now vying to replace him when his term ends in January.

Whoever wins will have to balance competing interests — consumers, insurance companies, consumer advocacy groups, wildfire survivors and more.

“The job isn’t to be a friend or an enemy to anyone, except to be a friend to the California consumer,” said Lucy Wang, a former special counsel at the Department of Insurance during Lara’s tenure. Wang left the department late last year and now works as a senior attorney at a San Francisco law firm, where she represents insurers on regulatory matters and litigation.

CalMatters spoke with experts including Wang, consumer advocacy groups and Lara’s predecessor about what the commissioner can — and can’t — actually do.

Lara declined to be interviewed for this story. Department of Insurance spokesperson Michael Soller offered this statement instead: “Guided by an unprecedented level of communication with the public across the state, [Lara] used executive power to overcome entrenched opposition from every sector and modernize insurance regulation to confront the climate crisis.”

**Setting Policy and Rules**

The commissioner sets policy and rolls out new regulations, many of which reach directly into consumers’ wallets — either through the rulemaking process or by working alongside state lawmakers to craft legislation.

Several years ago, a string of massive, deadly wildfires drove a wave of costly claims, prompting some insurers to stop writing or renewing policies in California altogether. Companies argued the rates they were allowed to charge didn’t reflect actual risk, and that the Department of Insurance was too slow approving rate increases. State lawmakers tried to pass legislation addressing the problem but failed. Gov. Gavin Newsom then issued an executive order directing Lara to fix it. Last year, Lara put new regulations in place that borrowed from those failed bills — including provisions the insurance industry had been pushing for a long time.

The new rules let insurers factor catastrophe modeling — which accounts for future risk, not just historical data — and reinsurance costs into their rate-setting. In practice, that means most Californians will see their premiums climb, if they haven’t already. The department is also trying to speed up its review of insurers’ rate-increase requests.

Lara’s department and the insurance industry both say the commissioner’s so-called sustainable insurance strategy is beginning to show results. Some companies have resumed writing policies in the state, though the department says it doesn’t yet know how many of those are genuinely new customers, according to Soller.

The FAIR Plan — a last-resort program that pools insurers required to sell fire coverage to homeowners who can’t get it anywhere else — has swelled in recent years as insurers pulled back from the market. That growth has slowed recently, which the department points to as another sign its new rules are working. As of June, the FAIR Plan still had nearly 700,000 active policies, up 8% from September 2025 and 157% from September 2022.

Another new rule that recently took effect concerns the role of “intervenors” in insurance rate reviews. Under Proposition 103, the ballot measure that governs California insurance law, any resident can intervene — hence the term — to challenge an insurer’s request for a rate hike, and get compensated for doing so. The consumer group Consumer Watchdog, founded by the author of Prop 103, has long been the state’s leading intervenor. The group says it saved Californians $6.4 billion between 2002 and 2024.

“The intervention process is an additional check to keep insurance prices from spiraling upward,” said Will Pletcher, an attorney with Consumer Watchdog. He added that insurance companies “will always be able to outspend consumers,” and that the intervention process gives the public a way to scrutinize proposed rates.

Average annual homeowners insurance premiums in California — a state with some of the priciest real estate in the country — rank in the middle nationally but have jumped 23% since 2023, according to an analysis by the comparison site Bankrate.com.

Lara’s new rule requires intervenors to make a substantial, distinct contribution to the department’s work, and that contribution must actually lead to a changed decision or other department action. Thirty-two consumer, labor and public advocacy organizations oppose the change. They argue it will make it harder for intervenors to get paid — Consumer Watchdog’s compensation totaled $14.2 million between 2002 and 2024 — and could discourage challenges to insurer rate requests, potentially leading to higher premiums for Californians.

Lara and the group have a long history of friction; Consumer Watchdog has raised questions about his ties to the insurance industry and pushed him toward greater transparency.

“The current commissioner is trying to punish [founder] Harvey [Rosenfield] and Watchdog, and that’s how we ended up with these absurd rules,” said Robert Herrell, executive director of the Consumer Federation of California, another advocacy group that occasionally intervenes in rate cases.

Herrell, who previously worked at the Department of Insurance, said relying solely on the department’s internal expertise isn’t ideal. “An outside perspective can bring fresh thinking,” he said.

Lara has also proposed a rule the insurance industry doesn’t love: requiring companies to submit their solvency risk management plans to the department.

Wang, the former department attorney, helped draft it. She said the goal is giving the department as much information as possible to keep the insurance market stable.

Insurers are already required to share financial information with the National Association of Insurance Commissioners. Industry representatives argued in public comments in July that the new rule would be redundant and burdensome, requiring new expertise and expense.

Some consumer and civil rights groups, including Public Citizen, support Lara’s proposed rule. In its public comments, a Public Citizen representative urged the department to go further — for instance, by setting specific requirements for how insurers report climate-related risks.

In another example of how the commissioner’s authority directly affects consumer costs, a California appeals court ruled in July to uphold Lara’s right to continue allowing insurers to use a driver’s marital status as an optional factor in setting auto insurance rates. That practice dates back to 1996, under regulations added by former Commissioner Chuck Quackenbush. Consumer groups have found that single drivers tend to pay more for auto insurance as a result. The case is expected to be appealed and could eventually land before the California Supreme Court.

**Holding Insurers Accountable**

The commissioner has the power to scrutinize how insurance companies behave and demand changes, or to work with the Legislature to write new laws forcing their hand.

After the 1991 Oakland Hills tunnel fire, many homeowners discovered their coverage fell short. Then-Commissioner John Garamendi pressured insurers into providing an additional $300 million in coverage. Now a member of Congress, Garamendi was seen as a fierce consumer advocate who regularly butted heads with the insurance industry — a strategy that worked in some cases and fell flat in others.

Survivors of the January 2025 Los Angeles wildfires, many of whom are still trying to rebuild their lives, called for Lara’s resignation late last year. Frustrated by delays in claims processing, they accused the Department of Insurance of failing to deliver the help they needed in the aftermath.

“Fire survivors are absolutely right that they’re being treated unfairly,” said Amy Bach, executive director of the consumer advocacy group United Policyholders. But she added that the department has limited power over many insurance industry practices, such as assigning multiple adjusters to survivors, and it cannot settle disputes between policyholders and their insurers.

“The reality is [the department] can’t step into the shoes of a private attorney,” Bach said.

Even so, Lara’s predecessor, Dave Jones, said the commissioner should take more aggressive enforcement action against insurers.

“I think it’s important to have a commissioner who’s willing to exercise the authority the law gives them, and who is independent — not just from the influence of the insurance industry, but from the governor and the Legislature as well,” Jones said.

Lara’s department investigated how State Farm handled claims from last year’s Los Angeles County wildfires. In May, the department found that State Farm had broken the law — among other things, by delaying payments and underpaying claims — and recommended multimillion-dollar fines along with a possible one-year suspension. Yet the department still hasn’t scheduled a hearing on the matter, and late last month, fire survivors filed a lawsuit against Lara and the department, asking for a judge to be assigned to the case and seeking to participate as intervenors.

The Department of Insurance also took legal action against the FAIR Plan, accusing it of denying smoke-damage claims following the Eaton and Palisades fires. Smoke damage can be harder to detect, and there are no established assessment standards — though two bills recently passed by the Legislature aim to set standards that would be the first of their kind nationally.

The department reported that survivors of last year’s fires filed roughly 13,000 smoke-damage claims. Lara ordered the creation of a task force to study those claims, and the group released its recommendations earlier this year. Some of those recommendations made their way into the bills now sitting on the governor’s desk, including a requirement for testing to detect toxic materials, which would affect what insurance is required to cover. Lara backed Assembly Bill 1795; the other measure is AB 1642.

Wildfires represent the biggest challenge facing the commissioner right now, but the job touches on many other insurance issues as well. Earlier in his tenure, Lara dealt heavily with health insurance, as Covered California, the state’s health insurance marketplace created under the Affordable Care Act, was still getting off the ground.

The commissioner can review health insurance policies and proposed rate changes but cannot block rate increases outright — despite Jones’ earlier push to expand the office’s authority to do exactly that.

Still, Jones worked to exclude certain insurers from the small-business health insurance marketplace, arguing they showed patterns of excessive rate hikes. He and other consumer groups also succeeded in capping what Covered California beneficiaries had to pay out of pocket for specialty drugs, a move that put him at odds with then-Gov. Jerry Brown’s administration.

“That made a lot of people angry with me, but it was the right thing to do,” Jones said. “We need a commissioner willing to do that.”

Original source: CalMatters

The post What California’s Insurance Commissioner Does — and How It Affects Your Wallet appeared first on The Hemet & San Jacinto Chronicle.

An August report from the Public Policy Institute of California breaks down political and economic attitudes across 46 distinct regions statewide, and one finding stands out: a slim majority of residents say they’d prefer a leaner state government with lower taxes, even as most voters continue to send Democrats to Sacramento election after election.

The timing carries weight. This November, voters will weigh in on five tax-related ballot measures, most notably a proposal to impose a one-time tax on billionaires to help fund healthcare spending.

The same PPIC survey found most Californians view immigration as a net positive for the state and back continued state action on climate change. But on the question of government size, opinion tilts — narrowly — toward less.

“It’s an interesting quirk of the state’s politics given how Democratic the state is,” said Eric McGhee, PPIC’s policy director and a senior fellow at the institute.

The research also points to a geographic realignment in California’s conservative movement. Orange County, long regarded as ground zero for the modern conservative movement both in California and nationally, has ceded that distinction to the far north — a region that occasionally brands itself as the “State of Jefferson.”

“This includes the suburbs northeast of Sacramento, but also the Red Bluff/Redding area — that’s the heartbeat of conservatism in California today,” McGhee said.

Meanwhile, the Bay Area stands apart from the rest of the state, both ideologically and economically. Residents there lean further left than Californians overall and report deeper pessimism about the broader economy. Yet paradoxically, the region appears somewhat insulated from the affordability crunch squeezing much of the state — Bay Area respondents reported the least worry about keeping up with their bills.

Community colleges reverse course on degree bill

California’s community college system is now opposing two bills it once championed — legislation designed to help colleges offer more bachelor’s degrees — after last-minute amendments changed the terms of the deal, according to CalMatters reporting.

For years, community colleges have pushed to expand their authority to grant four-year degrees. The two bills now headed to the governor’s desk would establish new rules for determining which colleges can create bachelor’s programs and how many they’re allowed to offer. Under the proposals, colleges would need to demonstrate strong student completion rates and prove there’s genuine workforce demand in their region before adding a new degree program.

Community college leaders initially supported the legislation, but say the amended bills are now too vague and unwieldy. Their chief complaints: newly imposed caps on the number of degrees a district can offer, and a requirement that districts’ completion rates be measured against the statewide average — a bar some fear they won’t clear.

Hospitals face penalties for busting state spending caps

California hospitals are pushing back against new state rules that would financially penalize them for exceeding spending limits set by the state’s healthcare affordability watchdog, CalMatters reports.

The California Office of Health Care Affordability caps annual spending growth for health providers at 3.5%, an effort to slow the overall rise in healthcare costs statewide. Last week, the office signed off on a penalty structure that could require hospitals, insurers and medical groups to pay up to 125% of whatever amount they spend beyond that cap.

Consumer advocates argue the penalties are a necessary accountability measure, pointing to data showing 38% of Californians reported carrying medical debt in 2024, and that healthcare costs statewide jumped 30% between 2015 and 2020.

Industry leaders counter that the spending targets and penalty structure are overly punitive, warning that squeezing provider budgets could ultimately force cuts to patient services.

CalMatters recognized with national journalism honors

CalMatters took home two first-place awards at the global Online Journalism Awards this year.

Working with co-creators Evident Media and Bellingcat, CalMatters won top honors in the digital video series category for “Agents of Chaos: Tracking Border Patrol Operations Across the US,” with judges highlighting its inventive use of open-source video footage.

The newsroom also earned first place for explanatory reporting by a medium-sized newsroom for “License to Kill,” which judges praised for exposing systemic failures through deeply personal storytelling.

Original source: CalMatters

The post Californians Increasingly Favor Lower Taxes, Smaller Government, Poll Finds appeared first on The Hemet & San Jacinto Chronicle.

The California Office of Health Care Affordability, created four years ago as prices for medical care continued to outpace wage growth statewide, saw its governing board approve a penalty structure last week that ranks among the toughest of its kind in the nation.

Under the new rules, providers that exceed the state’s spending growth cap could be required to pay as much as 125% of the amount by which they went over. The current cap limits annual spending growth to 3.5%, a figure that will tighten to 3% by 2029. A handful of hospitals labeled “high cost” by the state face even tougher limits — currently 1.8%, dropping to 1.6% within a few years.

The stakes are significant given recent trends. Over the past decade, health care spending in California has climbed by an average of 6% annually, nearly double what the new caps will eventually allow.

Fines won’t hit until at least 2028, and the office plans to release detailed enforcement guidelines this October. State officials stress that financial penalties are meant to be a last resort. Hospitals or health plans that miss their targets will first receive technical assistance and be placed on a performance improvement plan; fines only kick in if they fail to follow through on that plan. Regulators have discretion to set penalties anywhere between zero and the full 125% cap, depending on the circumstances.

“The hope is that by imposing these penalties… we’ll begin to reduce the rate of growth of spending on healthcare to make it more affordable for Californians,” said Stephen Shortell, professor emeritus at UC Berkeley’s School of Public Health, who sits on the office’s advisory committee.

Pushback from hospitals

Hospital leaders have emerged as the fiercest critics of the plan, largely because the affordability office has zeroed in on hospitals as a prime target for savings. Hospital care represents roughly a third of all health spending nationwide.

Industry representatives argue that many of the costs driving up their budgets are largely outside their control. Barry Arbuckle, executive chairman of MemorialCare health system and another advisory committee member, pointed to labor costs, mandated seismic retrofitting construction, and skyrocketing drug prices as major cost drivers hospitals can’t simply cut.

“I’ve got drugs in my children’s hospital that are over $1 million a dose. Those are then passed through as hospital costs. So people think, ‘Oh, the hospital is really expensive.’ But the hospital has nothing to do with that drug cost,” Arbuckle said.

To illustrate his concern, Arbuckle ran Long Beach Memorial’s 2022-23 spending figures through the new penalty formula and calculated the hospital could have faced a fine of roughly $27 million had the rules already been in place. “That’s just beyond belief,” he said.

Hospital and insurance trade groups also object to how much latitude the office has been given, arguing the wide range between zero and 125% leaves too much uncertainty. They warn tighter spending limits could ultimately hurt the very patients the policy aims to help.

“Under the current growth targets, the primary way for hospitals to reduce costs is to reduce services and limit access,” Angus Cochran, chief of community support services at Washington Health in Fremont, told board members at last week’s meeting. Washington Health is among seven hospitals statewide that the office has designated as “high cost,” subjecting them to the strictest spending caps.

The California Hospital Association sued last year in an effort to block the caps altogether, arguing the state failed to verify that its cost targets wouldn’t compromise patient care or access to services, as required under the law establishing the office. The lawsuit also claims insurers have already begun basing reimbursement rates on the state’s spending targets rather than the actual cost of providing care. That case remains pending in San Francisco County Superior Court.

Hospitals are additionally seeking clearer guidance on how regulators will account for outside financial pressures — particularly an anticipated surge in uncompensated care as federal health care cuts take effect. Combined with state-level changes, those cuts are projected to nearly double California’s uninsured rate, a shift that could drive more people toward costly emergency room visits.

The California Association of Health Plans echoed similar worries, citing recent changes to a state tax levied on private insurers. “For this framework to succeed, it must distinguish between spending growth that can be addressed and spending growth driven by broader market and policy realities,” the group said in a statement. “Unfortunately, many critical questions were not answered, leaving great uncertainty and significant work ahead.”

A crisis demanding action

Despite the industry’s objections, board members say the severity of California’s affordability crisis leaves little room for delay.

Nearly 60% of Californians report skipping or postponing medical care because they simply can’t afford it, and roughly four in 10 residents carry some form of medical debt. Rising premiums are also prompting a growing number of people to drop health coverage entirely.

California isn’t alone in trying to rein in costs — seven other states have adopted similar spending benchmarks. But because most of those states don’t actually enforce their targets, research has found little evidence that the benchmarks have lowered hospital prices or insurance premiums.

“There has to be a penalty framework that is meaningful,” said Christine Eibner, a senior principal economist at the RAND Corporation. “If it’s too small or if it’s not enforced, then it wouldn’t be enough motivation.”

Even supporters caution that any relief for consumers will take time to materialize. Shortell predicted many hospitals will fall short of the new spending targets in the first year or two, with meaningful progress likely only after providers and regulators find ways to work together.

“This is getting from home plate to first base,” he said. “I would look to three or four years from now to begin to see this having some impact.”

For workers like Claudia Garcia, that timeline can’t come soon enough. Garcia, a San Francisco hotel employee and mother of two, has gone on strike over health coverage because her son’s severe asthma leaves the family with no choice but to keep paying for insurance, inhalers and medication refills.

Garcia is a member of Unite Here, the hospitality workers’ union, which has been among the loudest voices pushing for cost controls. Union leaders argue that rising health premiums eat directly into potential wage increases — a claim supported by research from the UC Berkeley Labor Center showing that as employers spend more on health benefits, they tend to spend less on raises.

“We should not have to fight every year just for our healthcare,” Garcia said, adding that she hopes state action on costs might eventually free her union to focus its bargaining power on higher pay instead.

Beth Capell, a lobbyist for the consumer advocacy group Health Access California, said the intent behind the penalties isn’t to punish hospitals that are already struggling financially.

“It is not our goal to bankrupt a small rural hospital,” Capell told board members. “But we are interested in penalties that will help to convince large, wealthy health systems and insurers that the state of California is serious about slowing the growth of healthcare costs.”

Original source: CalMatters

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