When a judge ruled recently that a controversial state housing law did not apply to a handful of southern California cities, Julie Testa saw it as an invitation.

The late April opinion from Los Angeles County Judge Curtis Kin held that a 2021 state law letting homeowners split up their houses into as many as four separate units regardless of local zoning restrictions had no effect in Redondo Beach, Carson, Torrance, Whittier or Del Mar. The reason: The five SoCal jurisdictions are “charter cities” — jurisdictions with their own municipal constitutions that grant them extra independence from state law.

Testa, the vice mayor of Pleasanton, wanted what Redondo Beach was having. She wanted to turn her bedroom community east of San Francisco Bay into a charter city.

“The state Legislature has declared war on our cities,” said Testa. “We think that this is a turning of that tide.”

Since first winning local office in 2020, Testa has spent much of her short political career chafing against the spate of new state housing laws that force local governments to automatically approve apartment buildings, duplexes and backyard cottages. She cobbled together a loose group of like-minded politicians under the banner of the California Alliance of Local Electeds. A few days after Kin’s ruling, the group’s weekly Zoom meeting saw near record turnout, she said.

Now Pleasanton is one of at least three California cities, all San Francisco Bay Area suburbs, that have taken the first step toward adopting a charter since the April ruling. Testa and three of her four city council colleagues instructed city staff to look into making the transition in mid-May. City councils in nearby Brentwood and the hyper-affluent Silicon Valley suburb of Atherton followed suit this month.

“We must do what we can do to defend our constitutional right to local control.”
— Julie Testa, vice mayor of Pleasanton

Becoming a charter city — as roughly 120 of California’s 482 cities have done over the course of the state’s history — requires local voter approval. Before that, city officials have to actually write a charter, a comprehensive, technical governing document that covers everything from local election procedure to the dos and don’ts of municipal debt management. The three cities are probably kicking off that lengthy process too late for this November’s election, meaning that voters in the three cities won’t weigh in until at least 2026 — if at all.

“We will see a lot of irreversible consequences in that period of time, so I am disappointed, but I do believe that we must do what we can do to defend our constitutional right to local control,” said Testa.

Jovita Mendoza, the Brentwood council member who is pushing the charter effort in her city, said housing policy isn’t her sole motivation. Charter cities have more flexibility over contracting and purchasing policies, election procedures and taxation. But the recent ruling out of Los Angeles “definitely helped” provide fresh inspiration.

Brentwood’s council voted unanimously to begin the process last Tuesday. At a late evening hearing on the subject, Planning Commissioner Rod Flohr endorsed the idea.

“Most of the public is still kind of unaware of how restricted we’ve become, almost to the point where it feels sometimes like the planning commission and city council can’t really do anything anymore,” he said. “This may be our only avenue to…keep working to make Brentwood the jewel of east county.”

Gov. Gavin Newsom’s administration has ordered local governments to plan for an additional 2.5 million new homes through the end of the decade in an effort to bring down prices and rents. That’s part of a broader political shift in Sacramento as the governor, the attorney general and the Legislature have more aggressively promoted more housing, even over the objections of local elected officials and residents.

Mendoza in Brentwood was one of the chief proponents of a proposed statewide ballot initiative that would have allowed local governments to override state land use laws. The measure failed to gather enough signatures for this year’s election.

The April ruling opened up a new potential strategy. “If the charter cities win on appeal, I think you’re going to see it happening more and more,” she said.

On housing, the tie often goes to the state

Many legal experts are skeptical that the ruling will hold — and if it does, whether that would be the death blow to state land use authority that many local control advocates hope it will be.

“If I were looking to become a charter city in order to avoid (the state’s duplex law), I would not waste my time,” said UC Davis law professor Darien Shanske. “This decision will be overturned.”

Since the 1880s, California cities have come in two distinct flavors: “General law” cities, which have to govern themselves under rules set forth by the state Legislature, and charter cities, which the state constitution grants autonomy when it comes to “municipal affairs.”

Unhelpfully, the constitution doesn’t actually specify what those “municipal affairs” are. That makes the precise scope of a charter city’s political autonomy from the state an uncertain and moving target that courts have had to address on a case-by-case basis.

New homes under construction in Pleasanton on June 16, 2024. The city of Pleasanton has voted to explore the possibility of becoming a charter city. Photo by Loren Elliott for CalMatters

As state lawmakers have unleashed a raft of pro-construction bills over the last decade, the courts have typically allowed them to apply to charter and general law cities alike.

“The courts generally have not been very receptive to charter city arguments given the housing crisis,” said Barbara Kautz, a land use attorney who regularly represents cities and counties.

Kautz’s law firm, Goldfarb & Lipman, has represented Pleasanton, Brentwood and Atherton, but is not doing so in their current quests to become charter cities.

The April ruling is a notable exception to the trend. But it’s also an exceedingly narrow one and not something on which to hang a legal revolution in land use policy, said Kautz. “As a long term strategy to avoid (state housing law), I just don’t know if it would have any effect,” she said.

What the ruling does — and doesn’t — say

California courts have generally let the Legislature steamroll local authorities, even in charter cities, if state lawmakers can prove that they are addressing a matter of “statewide concern” and that the bill they’re passing is narrowly tailored to address that concern.

The 2021 law itself specifies that the “statewide concern” in question is to ensure “access to affordable housing.”

Unfortunately for the state, “affordable housing” has multiple definitions. Affordable housing might refer to units that are legally required to be reserved for people making under a certain income with regulated rents or prices, sometimes called “deed-restricted affordable housing.” Or the term can simply refer to housing that’s cheap.

“If I were looking to become a charter city in order to avoid (the state’s duplex law), I would not waste my time.”
— Darien Shanske, law professor at UC Davis

In his ruling, Kin concluded that the Legislature, in laying out its “statewide concern,” must have meant “affordable” in the first, deed-restricted sense. Because letting homeowners split their houses into duplexes “has, at best, an attenuated connection to affordable housing,” he wrote, the law wasn’t written narrowly enough to advance its stated goal and therefore doesn’t have the authority to trample over the rights of charter cities.

In short, the ruling dings the state duplex law because it didn’t justify its intent with the right term. UC Davis’ Shanske referred to the ruling jokingly as a “Simon didn’t say” legal test.

Kin has yet to submit a final judgment, which will clarify whether the ruling applies to just the five cities that sued or to every one of the more than 100 charter cities across California.

What the ruling doesn’t say is that charter cities are exempt from the duplex law because the state fundamentally lacks the authority to regulate how homes can be divided up. Nor does it say that charter cities are exempt from state housing requirements in general, which would have been at odds with a slew of recent court rulings.

Chris Elmendorf, one of Shanske’s colleagues at UC Davis School of Law who regularly opines on housing policy on social media, called Kin’s conclusion “a weird, narrow decision that turns on a lawyerly sleight of hand.”

A residential street in Pleasanton on June 16, 2024. The city of Pleasanton has voted to explore the possibility of becoming a charter city. Photo by Loren Elliott for CalMatters

Even some of those who welcomed the ruling as a victory for local control were tempered in their enthusiasm, if only because the ruling seems to invite the Legislature to simply fix its wording with another bill. San Diego Democratic Sen. Toni Atkins, who authored four-unit housing law, is working on a bill this year, Senate Bill 450, which aims to make it harder for local governments to obstruct the earlier duplex law by delaying approvals or imposing costly or unworkable size, design and setback requirements. An analysis last year by the UC Berkeley Terner Center found that the duplex law had resulted in precious little new housing, partially as a result of such restrictions.

Asked whether Atkins plans to respond to Kin’s ruling with a legislative fix, the senator’s spokesperson, Meredith McNamee, said in a statement that the senator believes “some legislative clean-up” would improve the implementation of the law she wrote.

The California Justice Department, which represented the state in the Redondo Beach case, has already filed a notice of appeal.

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CalMatters.org is a nonprofit, nonpartisan media venture explaining California policies and politics.

Under the blistering Sacramento sun outside the Capitol last week, advocates for Black, Latino and Asian communities spoke about the importance of diversifying California’s voters.

That’s why they’re part of a coalition of dozens of organizations backing a bill to automatically register people to vote at the Department of Motor Vehicles. “We must ensure that every eligible citizen … can exercise our rights to vote with as few barriers as possible,” said Sydney Fang, policy director at the advocacy group AAPI-Force.

The bill aims to capture the state’s 4.7 million residents who are unregistered but eligible to vote — and who are predominantly Black, Latino, Asian or younger.

“That is 4.7 million Californians whose voices are not being heard,” Sen. Monique Limón, the bill’s author, said at the small rally at the Capitol.“It is unacceptable that working-class communities of color continue to be systematically left out of access to political power,” the Santa Barbara Democrat added in a statement after the rally. “We must take the necessary steps to ensure that California’s diverse population becomes a diverse electorate that truly represents the power of our state.”

In the 2022 general election, close to 27 million people were eligible to vote in California. About 22 million were registered, and about half voted.

The proposal is the latest effort to try to expand California’s “motor voter law,” which directed the DMV beginning in 2018 to register people to vote when they apply for a license or ID or change their address — if they indicate they’re eligible and unless they opt out. The bill proposes registering everyone who is eligible without prompting, and informing them later with a postcard.

But the bill, revived from last year, has drawn concern from groups that support expanding voter access, including the League of Women Voters of California, the American Civil Liberties Union of Northern California and NALEO, a nonprofit group focused on Latino civic engagement.

They say registering to vote should be voluntary — and they don’t see the bill as an effective way to increase voter diversity.

“This is a solution looking for a problem,” said Rosalind Gold, chief public policy officer for NALEO Educational Fund. “Right now, California should not be spending its scarce resources on something that is not going to have any kind of negligible impact on strengthening our democracy, and in fact, could have some harmful consequences.”

The proposal is scheduled to be heard in the Assembly’s elections committee on June 26.

The bill would take effect for the 2026 election for governor and other statewide offices — or when the Secretary of State certifies a system to make sure the DMV can sort out who isn’t eligible to register, including those who are undocumented but get special licenses.

The Secretary of State, despite commenting on previous election-related legislation, declined comment on the bill to CalMatters.

Eric McGhee, senior fellow at the Public Policy Institute of California, said lawmakers should consider whether their goals are to get people’s names into the system and worry later about turning them into regular voters, or whether they want to focus on registering those who are most ready to vote.

“It doesn’t do anything, by itself, to turn them into voters and make sure that they vote,” he said. “It just removes registration as a hurdle.”

How past registration changes fared

Twenty-five states have a form of “automatic” voter registration at state agencies. California is one of 14 states with a system that prompts you to choose, according to the National Conference of State Legislatures, while another 11 have the kind of system Limón is proposing.

Since California’s “motor voter” law rolled out, registration among the state’s eligible voters has gone up from 75% to 83% in January 2024. Researchers attribute more than half of that increase to the new system.

But making voting easier doesn’t necessarily lead to higher voter turnout, according to Charles Stewart, director of the MIT Election Data and Science Lab.

And California’s current system didn’t boost registration among all the underrepresented groups the current bill aims to help, according to a March analysis by the Public Policy Institute of California. While new registrations increased among Asian voters and those under 35, it didn’t for Latino and Black Californians.

The system has been effective at allowing existing voters to update their addresses rather than adding new voters, according to the report — though that wasn’t the goal of easier registration.

“While all groups have seen gains, registration policy changes have not always improved equity in the way that might have been expected,” the report concluded. “Given that Latino and Black residents and young people participate in elections at lower rates, gains in registration needed to be larger than those of older or white Californians in order to correct these past imbalances.”

But Neal Ubriani, policy and research director for the Institute for Responsive Government, argues that automatically registering people will increase political participation, building on California mailing ballots to all registered voters. Limon’s office confirmed the bill was based on research from the institute, which has pushed for what it calls the “SAVR” bill (Secure Automatic Voter Registration) in 11 other states.

Ubriani is also a member of California’s Motor Voter Task Force, though it has not discussed the bill or automatic voter registration.

“If somebody’s not registered to vote, they’re kind of invisible to grassroots groups, to campaigns, to election officials,” he said. “They can’t reach out to them … They can’t teach them about the issues that are on the ballot. They can’t give them the kind of outreach that might get them excited about maybe a local candidate, or a state Senate race, or even president.”

But the ACLU says people should have the right to decide whether to register, or not.

While the organization is committed to reducing barriers to voting, specifically for underrepresented groups, “we’re also concerned about other issues like privacy, and First Amendment rights, and associational rights — and so we have to consider all of those together,” said Brittany Stonesifer, an attorney with the ACLU of Northern California’s Democracy & Civic Engagement Program.

Stonesifer also said it’s important for people to actively engage in the voting process — “to make meaningful choices that represent their decisions on the ballot.”

Voters cast their ballots on Super Tuesday at City Hall in San Francisco on March 5, 2024. Photo by Juliana Yamada for CalMatters.

The groups who oppose the bill also say automatic registration could make it more difficult for voters if they want to change their political party, especially to vote in presidential primaries, or if they want voting materials in a language different from what they use at the DMV.

Ubriani took issue with the idea that the system deprives people of a choice.

“This process is just turning voting as much as possible into a one-step process to say, we know you’re eligible, we’ve made voter registration as easy as possible for you, if you want to participate, that’s up to you,” he said.

Will ineligible voters get registered?

Both supporters and opponents of the bill say that it’s extremely rare for ineligible people to get on the voter list.

Still, state government’s track record on technology is spotty at best: When California’s current system started at DMV offices in 2018, about 23,000 people were registered with errors — including 1,600 people who hadn’t intended to register, including some non-citizens. Others had incorrect information added to their registrations, such as party preferences. The registrations were canceled by the Secretary of State, the Associated Press reported.

It’s a crime to register to vote, or to vote, when you’re not eligible, such as not having citizenship or not having voting rights restored after a felony conviction. Proponents of the bill say that shifting the burden of erroneous registrations to the state would protect people who might accidentally register under the current system and thus unintentionally break the law.

But opponents say there isn’t enough evidence of that problem. And, according to Stonesifer, the bill could put noncitizens at risk of being deported, losing their legal status or being denied citizenship.

Under current law, if someone registers and they’re not eligible, there are some legal protections in place.

But if someone gets a ballot in the mail because they were registered automatically and sends it back, that person will have voted illegally, she said.

Carol Jasmine Varro votes with her son, Lance Robin Chavez, by her side at the Martin Luther King Jr. Community Center in National City on March 5, 2024. Photo by Adriana Heldiz, CalMatters

And while the motor voter system had a bumpy roll-out, it now works effectively, the ACLU says.

The DMV is already overhauling its software system, a project that is scheduled to finish in 2027. That, along with the lack of clear roadmap on how the DMV would sort out those who are eligible, could set the agency up for failure if the state adopted automatic registration, Stonesifer said.

“It creates a much more complicated system than we currently have and puts the responsibility in the hands of the DMV, which doesn’t have the best track record for getting that right,” she said.

Limón, however, said the current bill learns from the 2018 rollout at the DMV. “We know where the technology and where the challenges were,” she said.

How much would automatic registration cost?

It’s unclear how much the bill will cost the state or counties, but Limón acknowledges that with the projected state budget deficit, any bill with additional cost is going to have an uphill battle.

The bill’s opponents say there are more effective ways to increase political participation among underrepresented communities, such as permanent funding into voter outreach.

Gold said a worthwhile investment to engage more Latino voters would be to fund community-based organizations as “trusted messengers” who can explain how to vote, what the issues are and why they matter.

NALEO supports expanding the current program to allow people to register to vote when they apply for benefit programs such as Covered California or CalWORKS, which might better target people from underrepresented communities. Seven states have passed laws since 2019 to allow registration at Medicaid offices, but they’re on hold as officials await guidance from the Biden administration, which has expressed concerns about confidentiality, NPR reports.

Limón said that while some have suggested waiting before making more changes to voter registration, others — including labor organizer Dolores Huerta, who spoke at last week’s rally — have been trying to expand voter rights for decades and say the time to act is now.

“You’ve got to begin this work, and you’ve got to do it so that eventually we get to a place where everybody that is eligible has that opportunity,” Limón said.

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CalMatters.org is a nonprofit, nonpartisan media venture explaining California policies and politics.

William (Bill) Laidlaw
August 24, 1935 — June 2, 2024
Son, Brother, Husband, Dad, Grandpa, Uncle.

Bill was born in Fresno to James and Susan Laidlaw. Bill was one of seven children, three brothers and three sisters. The family eventually moved north to Humboldt County. Bill attended Orick Elementary School and graduated from Arcata Elementary School. Bill enlisted in the US Army with one of his best friends, Ed Walker. Bill and Ed chose the Infantry, specifically the 11th Airbourne as a paratrooper, because it paid more.

He spent time in Fort Campbell, Kentucky and Munich, Germany jumping from perfectly good planes all over the globe. Bill was honorably discharged just short of becoming a master Jumper after four years, and returned to Humboldt County, marrying his sweetheart, Marlene. Together they grew a family of two children, all the neighborhood kids and multiple dogs and cats.

Bill had a short stint with the California Department of Forestry, worked in sawmills and eventually found his calling, truck driving. In his career, Bill hauled lumber, produce and food service products. Bill took great pride in his profession, was a very hard worker, and in my opinion, had the best work ethic of anyone. Upon his “retirement” (which he never really did) they traveled with their fifth wheel travel trailer around the US, occasionally with their grandchildren, including Alaska twice. Together, Bill and Marlene were Camp Hosts in Yosemite (Hodgson Meadows) for a number of years, shared their love of salmon fishing and picked an occasional abalone with family. They volunteered for the Cancer Society, created handmade toys for needy children at Christmas and ran the clock for Eureka High football at Albee Stadium. They attended and supported their children and grandchildren’s sports endeavors faithfully.

Bill “used it all up” and lived life to its fullest. The shoes he left behind can never be filled. Bill and Marlene were married for over fifty years until Marlene passed. They are together again, now forever.

Bill is survived by his sister, Florine; children, Kim (Kenny) and Ed (Theresa); grandchildren Jenn (Ryan) and Tori (Riley); aunt, Roberta; brother in-law Bob; sisters-in law, Roxanne and Sue; nephew Robby; and nieces Crystal, Tina and Cara.

Preceded by parents, Jim and Sue; wife, Marlene; brothers, James (Bud), Robert (Bob) and Albert (Shorty); sisters, Mary Jane and Suzanne; grandson Will; niece Lori Ann; and favorite brother in-law, Don.

Dad chose not to have any services. His hope is for everyone to wish him good luck fishing when you are at the ocean or give the universal “Honk your airhorn” sign to a truck driver in his memory.

Dear Reader:

I am asking on behalf of many pedestrians and cyclists, if you are able, to please remove the blackberries, bikes, cars, bushes and other stuff that is moveable out of the path of travel in front of your home, business, government or municipal building, park or other place where people walk or bike. The very narrow strips of land designated for pedestrians and cyclists are often unusable and/or dangerous due to the variety of stuff in the way.

People of all ages and abilities will appreciate your consideration when walking or biking in front of your home or business. And, you, your family members, and friends might also enjoy and appreciate the safety of an unobstructed path should you decide to stroll or roll about town.

Now, just for fun, let us discuss protrusions and obstructions — the easy version, not the technical one.

Protrusions are objects such as tree limbs or blackberry bushes that stick out into the path of travel and are roughly between 18” and 8’. Protrusions are difficult to detect by someone who is blind or low vision using a white cane because the cane basically only gives information about what is at ground level. Also, many sighted folks consciously render themselves oblivious by walking about in highly distracted states, looking at phones and other devices, or it is dark, or for whatever reason aren’t watching where they’re going. So, they too can easily smack into a bush, tree limb, guy wire or other object that protrudes into the path of travel. This often hurts and pain, as you know, is painful.

Obstructions are generally at ground level and are directly in the path of travel, cars, sandwich boards, some outdoor seating areas, phone poles, mailboxes, fire hydrants, bikes, basically anything that is directly in the walkway.

We have an aging infrastructure in our fabulous land and in many cases, obstructions were built directly into the middle of the path by design. Yikes! In such cases we know they cannot be easily removed. However, if there are items you can move, trim, generally maintain, please do so.

Thanks from many of us who walk and bike around town,

Peggy Martinez,
Board member, Coalition for Responsible Priorities, CRTP

Ed. note: In the event you find the following a bit confusing, as we did, Humboldt Bay Fire public information officer Talia Flores tells us that her organization’s initial intelligence was that the fire was in the Vance Hotel.

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Press release from Humboldt Bay Fire:

On 6/15/2024 at 8:07pm Humboldt Bay Fire responded to a reported alarm system sounding at 511 2nd Street in Eureka. Humboldt Bay Fire responded with one unit code two to investigate.

Upon arrival Truck 8181’s crew found a four-story residential structure over a commercial structure with no smoke or flames visible. A bystander informed the crew of multiple sprinkler activations at the restaurant at 511 2nd St. After the crew made entry into the occupancy they located two flowing sprinkler heads with light smoke throughout the structure. The crew secured the sprinklers and shut off the water to the building. A small fire was located in the kitchen and extinguished. There was minimal fire spread to the wall above the sink. However, the sprinkler system prevented the fire from getting out of control and spreading further.

The cause of the fire was determined to be accidental. There were no civilian or Firefighter injuries and the total value of the property is approximately $1,050,000 with saved value approximately $1,045,000.

Humboldt Bay Fire would like to remind everyone that sprinkler systems significantly reduce fire damage, and if you have a system installed maintain it as recommended by the servicing company.

Within the next week and change, Democrats who control the Legislature and fellow Democrat Gov. Gavin Newsom will need to reconcile their competing budget plans for higher education in California, with huge implications for student financial aid and the short-term fiscal health of the state’s public universities.

At issue is the 2024-25 state budget that begins July 1 and the multibillion-dollar projected deficits California faces. Lawmakers and the governor are in the final, secretive sprint of the annual process to craft the state government’s spending plan.

The Legislature fulfilled its constitutional duty last Thursday by passing its budget plan. That started the clock for Newsom and lawmakers to reach a compromise for the final 2024-25 budget by late June.

And on higher education, they’re far apart in key ways — differences that first emerged in January, when budget season publicly kicked off with Newsom’s first proposal for 2024-25.

“As depressed as I was in January, and as bad as some of the cuts still are that are included in this budget, in education I think we’ve been able to step ahead with this budget,” said John Laird, a senator and Democrat from Santa Cruz who is chair of the budget subcommittee on education, at a hearing on the Legislature’s budget last week.

How much for Middle Class Scholarship?

Newsom’s last public spending proposal, released in May, would permanently gut the Middle Class Scholarship to just $100 million annually — a serious blow to California’s dreams of supersizing college financial aid so that no university student would need to take out student loans.

The Legislature countered last week with a stark “nope,” instead keeping a past-year’s promise to grow the program to $926 million in 2024-25 and the following year.

The dueling proposals would either slash how much each of the roughly 300,000 student recipients who attend University of California and California State University would receive — or make debt-free college a closer reality.

Under the governor’s plan, average awards would drop from between $2,500 and $2,800 to just over $300. If the Legislature gets its way, average awards would range from $3,100 for UC students to $3,600 for Cal State students.

The cuts would likely mean more college loans for students, an official with the governor’s Department of Finance said at a hearing last month.

The Legislature’s plan “significantly brings back the Middle Class Scholarship, right at the time that parents and students are making decisions about what colleges to go to and whether they have the financial resources to go to certain public higher education institutions in California,” Laird said at the budget hearing last week.

Will Cal Grants help more students?

The Legislature also seeks to partially expand the Cal Grant, the state’s marquee financial aid program, for the 2025-26 budget year. If the plan is approved, another 21,000 students would receive the grant for the first time. About 400,000 students receive it currently.

Newsom in May formally rejected any expansion of the Cal Grant, citing California’s colossal fiscal hole. But legislative budget leaders have been adamant about rolling out the Cal Grant to more students despite the state’s difficult finances to make good on years of aggressive advocacy from lawmakers.

The cost would be $47 million in one-time funding to ensure current students receiving the Cal Grant under the current rules would remain in the program.

If the plan becomes law, about 11,000 more community college students would get the grant in 2025-26, which would appear as a cash award of about $1,650 and then cover tuition at a UC or Cal State if the student transfers. Cal Grants are valid for four years of full-time enrollment. The number of new recipients would grow with each subsequent year.

This is a lower number of new recipients, and smaller price tag, than what’s in the original Cal Grant expansion plan. That’s because the partial roll-out would keep the current 2.0 GPA requirement for community college student eligibility while the original would have removed it.

Still, under this new proposal, students would be able to re-establish eligibility by taking fewer classes through a special program — 12 units instead of the current 16 — and earning a 2.0 GPA. The number of units a student would need to rehabilitate their GPA would drop to nine units in 2026-27 and six units in 2027-28. The plan calls for no GPA requirement by 2028-29.

These details were confirmed by the office of Asssemblymember David Alvarez, a Chula Vista Democrat who is chairperson of the Assembly’s budget subcommittee on education.

The rule changes would mean 9,000 new recipients at Cal State in 2025-26, according to information the state’s financial aid agency, the California Student Aid Commission, shared with CalMatters.

Also, about 7,300 new students would get extra cash award for those with dependent children. Current recipients get $6,000, but new recipients would receive $3,000 in the first year. The award for new recipients would grow by $1,000 each year until hitting $6,000.

However, UC would see about 1,300 fewer students receiving the Cal Grant in 2025-26 than current projections show — the result of the lowering the income ceiling for who is eligible. UC’s share of low-income students has declined in the past decade — a source of worry for some lawmakers.

Advocates pushing for Cal Grant expansion, including student associations from UC, Cal State and community colleges, wrote to lawmakers that they are pleased with the proposal. “We respect that the cost may be too great during this budget cycle, so we agree that a phase-in as you have proposed is the right step,” the letter read.

If approved, these details would appear in a separate “trailer bill” sometime in late June or early July.

What’s the bottom line for UC, CSU?

Newsom’s plan imposes cuts and delays funding for UC and CSU in 2024-25 and then restores funding in 2025-26 — but by much less than what lawmakers and the governor promised last year.

Newsom’s funding plan has numerous moving parts, but would basically see Cal State receive $75 million less in 2024-25, then bounce up by $171 million the next year, and leap by another $265 million by 2026-27. That would increase Cal State’s main state support to $5.35 billion. But Cal State faces numerous budget challenges, including a deficit as high as $831 million in the next two years.

The legislative plan would switch the order of fiscal hurt by proposing to grow the UC and CSU budgets in 2024-25 and apply cuts — if the budget deficit still calls for it — in 2025-26. The logic is that another year of additional state aid, even if it’s less than what the systems were promised last year, provides them a year to prepare for the budgetary scythe.

Newsom’s plan imposes cuts and delays funding for UC and CSU in 2024-25 and then restores funding in 2025-26 — but by much less than what lawmakers and the governor promised last year.

Less funding for the UC and Cal State would mean larger class sizes and more faculty and staff positions that go unfilled. That would limit student services, and, for Cal State, likely result in more academic programs getting the ax.

Under both plans, though, the UC and Cal State systems would see more funding by the third year. For Cal State, that’s a jump from $4.99 billion in 2023-24 to $5.35 billion in 2026-27. And for UC, that’d mean state support growing from $4.74 billion now to $5.18 billion in 2026-27.

And both plans want to continue the recent trend of paying the systems to enroll more California residents — a note of sweet relief for students in the state eager to enter some of the most selective public universities in the country.

Laird said that “inflation, deferred maintenance, salary contracts, it is a challenge, but this really is an excellent step forward in a tough budget.”

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CalMatters.org is a nonprofit, nonpartisan media venture explaining California policies and politics.

California’s nonprofits have been dragged into a bitter legislative battle with some of the state’s most powerful labor organizations over local government contracts with non-union workers.

Democratic Assemblymember Liz Ortega took a shot at the chief executives of the nearly 190 nonprofits that wrote in to oppose her legislation, Assembly Bill 2557, that would add new disclosure requirements for private organizations — many of them nonprofits — that do work for local governments under contract.

“Looking at several of the executives who signed the nonprofit opposition letter, it was brought to my attention that many of them make upwards of over $200,000 per year,” Ortega, a former Alameda County union official, told the Senate’s Local Government Committee last week. “Some make even more than $300,000, while many of their staff are in line for services that we provide in the nonprofit sector.”

It was the latest salvo in a big-money lobbying fight between labor unions and local governments over the hiring of private contractors that perform services for the state’s 4,800 counties, cities, special districts and schools.

Local governments rely on contractors to perform a wide range of services paid with taxpayer funds. Contractors run animal shelters and after-school programs. They provide health care in local jails as well as homeless, legal aid and immigration services. Contractors cut fire breaks around rural communities, perform engineering services for public works projects, build affordable housing and fix government computer systems.

Unions have long demanded cities and counties hire their dues-paying members to do government work. They say the outsourcing to contractors erodes middle-class jobs, and they cite concerns about misuse of taxpayer funds. This has led to clashes with local officials who argue contractors help keep down costs for taxpayers as they provide vital services for communities across California, particularly during an ongoing local government labor shortage.

Despite the tensions, Geoff Green, who heads the California Association of Nonprofits, said he was still surprised by Ortega’s attack that kicked off the start of last week’s committee hearing.

He said his member organizations strive to get local government contracts that pay nonprofit workers as much as what union members make. He didn’t dispute the executive salary ranges, which Ortega’s office told CalMatters had been pulled from the tax forms of eight large nonprofits that opposed her bill. But Green called it a “non-starter argument” for her to attack the pay of the people running “some of the most successful nonprofit organizations that serve millions of Californians.”“It really impugns the sector, the whole nonprofit sector, and insults those who work in it and lead it,” Green told CalMatters.

Unions highly influential in California politics

There are few groups more influential in state politics than unions in California, despite only representing one-sixth of the state’s workforce.

As CalMatters reported, they regularly get their way on bills at higher rates than other prolific lobbying groups, due in part to the massive amounts of money they spend on state politics. Unions have donated at least $22 million to sitting legislators’ campaigns since 2020, according to the Digital Democracy database.

Fast-food workers and SEIU members march at the Capitol to deliver postcards and petitions to Gov. Gavin Newsom on May 31, 2022. Photo by Fred Greaves for CalMatters

The California Labor Federation, which has donated at least $729,600 to campaigns since 2020, is “a proud co-sponsor” of Ortega’s bill. So is the American Federation of State, County and Municipal Employees, which has donated at least $1.8 million. Service Employees International Union, which has donated at least $2.7 million, is another cosponsor.

Ivan Fernández, a California Labor Federation lobbyist, told the Senate committee last week that contracting out instead of hiring union members has led to a decline in middle class jobs, particularly for women and workers of color.

“Previously viewed as the backbone of the middle class, public sector jobs provided community members with long-term, sustainable employment,” he said. “Today, many simply do not have these opportunities due to local governments choosing to utilize a quick, contracted workforce.”

Local governments are prohibited from spending taxpayer money on political campaigns. But they’re no slouches when it comes to lobbying, though they tend to get their way less often on bills than unions do.The League of California Cities, which opposed Ortega’s bill, is one of the top lobbying spenders in California. The group reported to the Secretary of State it spent nearly $2.6 million since January 2023 on lobbying. The California State Association of Counties (CSAC) spent $1.1 million.

“CSAC opposes AB 2557 quite simply because it will harm our ability to care for the 39 million Californians your chamber and our boards mutually serve,” the association’s president, San Luis Obispo County Supervisor Bruce Gibson, told the senate committee.

Bill watered down in Senate

Ortega is one of at least six lawmakers who are former union officials or who have close ties to the labor movement. She was secretary-treasurer of the Alameda Labor Council and statewide political director for the University of California’s largest employee union, AFSCME Local 3299. Since winning her first election in 2022, she’s authored several union-sponsored bills.

Her latest bill would have originally put more requirements on contractors than the version California’s 40 state senators are now considering.

The version of the bill that passed the Assembly this spring would have required local government contractors to pay for regular audits of their own job performance, and it would have required that names of contractors and their employees — as well as their compensation and benefits — be publicly disclosed.

After local government, business and nonprofit lobbying groups complained that the requirements were wildly impractical, expensive and burdensome, the bill was amended last week in the Senate to remove the self-auditing requirements and the public naming of private-sector employees.

The new version would require that contracts be posted on local government websites and that unions be informed of new contracts and changes in existing ones. Now, only the number of contracted employees, their job classes and salaries would be made public.

Ortega told the Senate committee last week the measure is intended to improve transparency and accountability.“As lawmakers, we have the right to know what our taxpayers’ monies are going for and making sure that the results that we’re looking for are achieved,” she said.

Asked why the measure was necessary, her office provided CalMatters with a list of nine recent news stories that detailed problems with local governments’ contracts with nonprofits. They included an article about a San Francisco nonprofit accused of spending around $80,000 of taxpayer funds on luxury gift boxes, limo rides and a Lake Tahoe trip; and another that detailed how a nonprofit mismanaged Sacramento County funds.

Lone Democrat casts ‘no’ vote

The original version of Ortega’s bill sailed through the Assembly earlier this year without any of the chamber’s 62 Democrats voting “no.”

However, 11 Democratic lawmakers — most of them former local elected officials — didn’t vote on the bill when it was on the Assembly floor last month. As CalMatters reported, not voting counts the same as voting “no,” and lawmakers regularly don’t vote on controversial bills to avoid angering influential groups such as unions.

When the bill passed the Senate’s local government committee last week, Sen. Steve Glazer, the former mayor of Orinda, became the lone Democrat in the Legislature to cast a “no” vote so far on the proposal.

Sen. Steve Glazer gives an interview at CalMatters in Sacramento on May 3, 2022. Photo by Martin do Nascimento, CalMatters

Glazer is one of the few Democrats in the Legislature who regularly sides against unions on legislation.

For instance, he’s aligned with the California Labor Federation with its position on bills just 54% of the time, according to Digital Democracy. The four other Democratic senators on the local government committee — Nancy Skinner, Aisha Wahab, Scott Weiner and María Elena Durazo — align with the federation between 83% and 97% of the time.

Glazer, who is stepping down at the end of this year, told CalMatters he voted against Ortega’s bill because it creates “an added burden” on local governments, and he “didn’t see the justification for what they claimed was the purpose of the measure.”

Despite his group’s opposition, Green, the nonprofit association CEO, said it doesn’t mean nonprofits are out to take jobs from local government union members.

“We are not in competition with public-sector workers,” he said. “That is the bottom line.”

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Editor’s note: CalMatters is a member of the California Association of Nonprofits and its newsroom staff recently voted to join a union that’s affiliated with the California Labor Federation.

CalMatters.org is a nonprofit, nonpartisan media venture explaining California policies and politics.