Garcia was convicted in 2011 for his role in the shooting death of 18-year-old Arturo Bello, who was walking along a rural Orosi road.

Related Story: Three Children Test Positive for Cocaine in Tulare County, Couple Arrested

Prosecutors said Garcia and three fellow gang members were searching for rivals when they spotted Bello wearing a blue shirt — gang-affiliated attire. After stopping their car, a co-defendant exited and opened fire, killing the teen and injuring another.

Garcia admitted he knew his associate was armed and that the group was actively looking for rival gang members, the DA’s office said.

Related Story: Tulare County Man Arrested After Firing at Deputies During Eviction Attempt

A jury found him guilty of second-degree murder, conspiracy, and gang-related firearm enhancements.

He was originally sentenced to 50 years to life in prison. That sentence was later reduced to 40 years to life due to a trial error regarding jury instructions.

Since his conviction, Garcia has unsuccessfully petitioned three times for re-sentencing. Newsom took no action when Garcia filed for clemency in 2023.

Related Story: Tulare County Man Found Guilty in Violent 2020 Sexual Assault

“With the swipe of a pen, the governor voided the decision of the jury and the multiple decisions of Tulare County judges, jurists who presided where the crime took place, heard witness testimony, and understood the impact to the community,” said District Attorney Tim Ward.

“The defendant is only one third of the way into a 40 year-to-life sentence for a cold-blooded violent crime. By his own admission, he and his co-defendants went looking to inflict violence that evening in 2009. They were literally hunting other human beings.”

Garcia is housed at the California Substance Abuse Treatment Facility in Corcoran. He is now immediately eligible for a parole hearing and potential release.

Anyone wishing to contact the state Board of Parole to address Garcia’s release can do so at this link.

You can view all of the governor’s recent pardon letters at this link.
—

Connect with Anthony W. Haddad on social media. Got a tip? Send an email. 

The post Newsom Commutes Sentence in 2009 Tulare County Gang Killing appeared first on GV Wire.

Fresno Unified Board President Valerie Davis previously told GV Wire they would likely select the new superintendent Wednesday. After GV Wire published the names of applicants Friday, district spokesperson Nikki Henry said those candidates were not finalists and that the board would announce the finalist or finalists Wednesday.

In addition, GV Wire reported last week based on interviews with multiple sources that interim Superintendent Misty Her will succeed Bob Nelson as superintendent.

However, one thing is clear: Board members will not conduct a public forum of the top candidates even though community members and leaders are calling for that very thing.

Many executive search firms say getting good school superintendents requires keeping the names of candidates, sometimes even finalists, confidential.

Diego Arambula, vice chair of the CSU Board of Trustees and vice president of the Carnegie Foundation for the Advancement of Teaching, has done numerous superintendent searches. He wasn’t surprised that the board decided to keep the search closed.

“Most districts that I’ve had a chance to watch go through this have had a closed search because otherwise they just fear they’re going to get no great external candidates,” Arambula said. “You either find someone who’s either currently out of a job and so isn’t worried about it, or you just lose people who might be great candidates.”

But community leaders say an open search process is essential given the board’s past desire to keep the superintendent search behind closed doors.

Retired Fresno County Judge Robert Oliver has served on several selection committees, including the search for a Fresno State president. He described the process as “unclear and confusing.” He said the public should be able to expect a thorough search with a list of finalists.

“We’re just looking for a selection of a person who hopefully will bring a new life and a new day to the unified school district challenge,” Oliver said. “This is a 74,000-or-so student, 10,000-or-so employee organization. I think it’s fair to say, without being overly critical, that the current leadership has not succeeded in making the necessary change to improve the standing of the students in the district.”

Related Story: Trustees Select Fresno Unified’s New Superintendent. Was ‘the ...

Community Didn’t Ask For an Open Forum: FUSD

In Texas, most districts don’t share names until they’ve found a lone finalist, said Susan Enfield, former superintendent of Washoe County School District in Reno and current executive director of The Network of Distinguished Educators.

Washington State districts typically release the names of the final two or three candidates once trustees have decided.

“Confidentiality is quite common as part of the search process for superintendents— mainly because sometimes those individuals applying are sitting leaders. That said, the process varies from district to district and state to state,” Enfield said.

In Texas, most districts don’t share names until they’ve found a lone finalist, Enfield said. Washington State districts typically release the names of the final two or three candidates once trustees have decided.

However, more and more, districts are opening up their search processes, including open forums with finalists. So much so that every one of the outside finalists applying to become Fresno Unified’s new superintendent has participated in one elsewhere — either taking questions from board members or from the community before getting the job.

Henry said the public had a chance to ask for a public forum but never did.

“The board brought the superintendent search timeline to open session for comment and feedback multiple times,” Henry said. “This was never brought about as a request by the public. The board will stick to the search plans they transparently voted on in open session.”

But the record shows that Fresno Teachers Association President Manuel Bonilla talked about the importance of open search — including an open forum — several times going back at least to April 2024. That’s when a majority of trustees wanted to keep the search internal.

Many community leaders GV Wire spoke with say that with Fresno Unified’s failing student outcomes an open search is essential. Bonilla said it gives the public confidence that their choice was indeed the best.

“(Trustees) had an opportunity to regain trust in the community and to their employees by going through a very transparent process,” Bonilla said. “Because they didn’t, now it leaves a lingering process and it leaves a lingering doubt in the selection of Misty (Her). And that’s not fair to her, it’s not fair to the district, to its employees.”

Open Forum Best Serves the Community: District Employees

Bonilla wrote in an email to trustees on behalf of Fresno Teachers Association in April 2024 that by not being transparent and inclusive, the board opens the door to accusations of backroom deals and political maneuvering.

“They must commit to opening the search to all qualified applicants and provide a public forum for finalists to present their vision for our district,” Bonilla wrote.

During public meetings that year, multiple community members, including Bonilla, called on trustees to conduct an open forum. Those calls came with applause from the crowd.

“You have to have a process, and a process where those people that are going to be the top two, top three, come back to the community and meet with us and answer some difficult questions. The same problems come up over and over,” said community activist Gloria Hernandez on April 3, 2024.

Employees with Fresno Unified in an question-and-answer forum specifically asked for a community forum. One said the board can’t hide behind confidentiality and then say they’re being transparent.

Henry told them trustees chose not to do a public forum because it could scare away candidates.

“We decided to prioritize a confidential hiring process to ensure we received the most highly qualified candidates out there,” Henry wrote in that email. “Many potential candidates would be current superintendents or executives at other school districts who might not consider applying for the job if there were a public town hall before they were hired.”

All of District’s Outside Finalists Did Public Forums Previously

In 2022, when Calvert County Public Schools in Maryland held its superintendent search, the district held community meetings where the public could hear from candidates directly, ABC 7 reported. That included its current superintendent, Andraé Townsel, who is applying to be Fresno Unified’s superintendent.

Townsel earlier this year also participated in an open forum in Milwaukee Public Schools, according to ABC News WISN.

In December 2024, current Fresno Unified superintendent candidate Thomas Ahart took part in “a marathon of public forums,” according to the Albuquerque Journal. Ahart is a former superintendent of Des Moines Public Schools, where he served for more than 10 years.

Gustavo Balderas answered questions from the public when he applied to be the superintendent in Oregon’s Edmonds School District in 2020, according to community news site MLT News.

San Diego Unified — the state’s second largest district — took a transparent approach when it searched for a superintendent in 2021-2022. The school board created an advisory committee that held open meetings. The names of the finalists were publicly released, and the district hosted a town hall at which the community could ask questions.

And State Center Community College District trustees recently chose to use an open search process when selecting a new president of Fresno City College. The same approach was used in 2022 after college president Carole Goldsmith was elevated to district chancellor.

Both Clovis Unified and Central Unified held closed searches. Central Unified may do an open search in its upcoming superintendent search, said board trustee Naindeep Singh Chann.

Long Beach Unified, a district very similar to Fresno, kept its search internal. Arambula said the public was largely OK with that because that district has been successful in advancing student outcomes. Arambula said Fresno Unified is not at a place where it could justify keeping its search internal.

“I don’t think anyone can or should look at the results in Fresno Unified and say ‘we’re knocking it out of the park,'” Arambula said. “We have a long way to go to get to really serving our students in the way they truly deserve.”

A Good Search Firm Should Bring Strong Candidates: Arambula

Large districts such as San Diego or Miami have their own pull, Arambula said. Fresno, however, with its billion-dollar budget and 71,000 students, should draw out quality candidates.

“Fresno Unified should be a really attractive position to many internal and external candidates,” Arambula said. “There are huge opportunities for growth because they haven’t yet cracked the code on academic achievement. There is strong funding with the Local Control Funding Formula. Fresno is a great city; very livable. A good search firm could really pitch this place to build a great pool of candidates”

But given Fresno Unified’s challenges, they need a superintendent who will stay a long time and not use the district as a “waystop.”

In addition, trustees shouldn’t discount candidates based on the size of their previous districts, Arambula said.

Davis previously told GV Wire that “size and success matters.” Two of Fresno Unified’s candidates come from districts exceeding 30,000 students. To Arambula, districts at that size have the same level of complexity.

“It’s roughly the same amount of complexity, you’re still managing through multiple layers, you still have dozens of schools,” Arambula said.

‘Profound and Dramatic Improvements Are Required At All Levels’: FUSD Board Policy

Fresno Unified’s first board policy says “profound and dramatic improvements are required at all levels of the Fresno Unified School District.” Oliver said the board has not followed through on this.

The district consistently ranks toward the bottom for reading and math in California and nationwide, according to education data.

“By definition, if they are needing to make dramatic and substantial change for improvement, you would be well advised to look outside of the C-suite that has been unable to enact that substantial and necessary platform for improvement,” Oliver said.

GV Wire Senior Reporter David Taub contributed to this story.

The post Secret Search or Meet the Finalists? Debate Rages as Fresno Nears Its Superintendent Pick appeared first on GV Wire.

But now Torres and other California solar customers who bought or leased systems under NEM 1.0 or NEM 2.0 contracts could lose those financial benefits after 10 years instead of 20 under an Assembly bill proposed by Lisa Calderon, a Southern California Democrat who previously worked for Southern California Edison’s parent company.

Assembly Bill 942 would shorten the contract times for homeowners and eliminate the carryover of NEM contracts when homes with solar systems are sold. It also would impact government agencies such as school districts that have invested in solar systems.

Fresno Unified’s solar provider, Forefront, estimates that the district’s energy savings could be slashed by as much as 75% under AB 942, district spokeswoman AJ Kato said.

Although AB 942 would trim the net metering contract from 20 years to 10, the district’s agreement with Forefront would remain fixed for the entire 20 years, Kato said. If PG&E pays the district less for energy generated by Forefront’s solar panels, “utility bills will increase creating a scenario where having solar may cost FUSD more in energy costs than not having solar,” she said.

Violating a Guarantee

Before customers either lease or buy solar systems, they are provided a guide prepared by the California Public Utilities Commission that says the 20-year NEM contracts are guaranteed, said Brad Heavner, executive director of the California Solar and Storage Association.

“They actually have to sign a piece of paper saying we’ve given them this solar consumer guide before they sign the contract,” he said. “It’s a PUC document, and it says that NEM is guaranteed for 20 years. It uses that word, guaranteed. And so customers are seeing that before they make the final decision to invest in solar or to sign a long-term lease. And for the state government to go back on its guarantee would be immensely unfair.”

Violating that guarantee would be “unprecedented,” Heavner said. “I’m getting calls from all around the country asking if this is real because other states are scratching their heads about California making this change.”

Opponents Plan Protest, Council Considers Resolution

Opposition to the bill has been gearing up statewide. Opponents are planning a “noisy” protest at Calderon’s City of Industry office on Wednesday.

The Fresno City Council will consider a resolution at Thursday’s meeting in opposition to AB 942, noting that it would force residents who “in good faith” signed up for solar system installation under a more favorable compensation arrangement to have to shift to a less favorable arrangement.

AB 942 would impact school districts that have used facilities money to install or lease solar systems, basing their calculations on the NEM 1.0 or NEM 2.0 compensations, said Nancy Chaires Espinoza, executive director of the School Energy Coalition.

If AB 942 becomes law, school districts would need to redirect revenues to cover energy costs instead of devoting dollars into classrooms, which would directly impact students, she said.

Changing the rules also could lead to a loss of public faith in government and in the ability of school districts to invest public funds, Chaires Espinoza said.

Other Energy Bills Pending

AB 942 appears to be the outlier of a number of bills introduced in the current legislative session. The majority appear to be aimed at reining in the skyrocketing cost of electricity for customers of investor-owned utilities like Pacific Gas & Electric and Southern Cal Edison.

Senate Bill 322 would link and limit rate increases to the consumer price index and would put restrictions on power shut-offs for customers unable to pay their bills. Assembly Bill 1167 would prevent utility companies from including lobbying, promotional advertising, and similar expenses from being passed along to ratepayers.

Lawmakers are finally recognizing their responsibility to control utility costs, Heavner said.

“I think something meaningful is going to pass to reform utilities and to check their runaway spending,” he said. “Finally, the Legislature is fed up enough about the regulators failing to contain utility spending that they are likely to act on something meaningful this year.”

Bill Would ‘Penalize’ Homeowners

Ramon Torres said he hopes legislators will realize how harmful AB 942 would be to Californians such as himself and reject it.

Torres, 57, lost his job as a finance director at a dealership in December. He’s a veteran and is working on a medical retirement, so his income will be fixed and limited moving forward. And he still has to keep the lights and air-conditioning on at his home, where he lives with his wife and their two teenage sons.

“I don’t think it’s fair for people that have already purchased (solar panels). You’re penalizing them for trying to help protect the environment. Instead of being rewarded, now we’re going to get added charges. … So basically, it’s a punishment for going solar, instead of rewarding us consumers,” he said.

The post Outrage Grows to Assembly Bill That Would Slash Solar Contract Benefits appeared first on GV Wire.

The only way that happens is when we force Fresno Unified to finally get its act together and provide our community’s children with the quality of education they need and deserve.

Sadly, Fresno Unified — which has some of the nation’s worst test scores, especially for black and brown kids — is up to its old tricks. Not only did the trustees shroud a promised national search for a new superintendent in secrecy, but they’re also ready to promote an insider, Misty Her, to the top job.

There are no rational reasons for this appointment other than politics and an insidious need to protect the district’s bloated bureaucracy. I understand why a board would want to keep an insider: you can control that person much easier, and you know they won’t be replacing the existing executive staff that trustees have established relationships with.

To our community’s shame, the trustees are passing on three highly qualified outside candidates with proven records of success as superintendents. One was the 2020 National Superintendent of the Year.

Related Story: The Superintendent Search Document FUSD Does Not Want You to See

How Much Longer Must Fresno’s Children Wait?

How much longer are we going to sacrifice our children’s and our community’s future on the altar of political ambition by trustees like Keshia Thomas and Elizabeth Jonasson Rosas, both city council seekers?

How much longer are we going to bow to the highly paid Fresno Unified bureaucrats who fear an outsider will show them to the door because of their incompetence and indifference?

Misty Her has been the interim superintendent for a year without moving the needle on student learning or improving chaotic operations. The district remains mired in special ed challenges, an abundance of litigation, and a culture of retaliation.

In addition, she long has been part of the district’s failing team. It is very difficult and costly, not to mention disruptive for students, to remove a superintendent. Bob Nelson was superintendent for eight years with no demonstrable improvement in outcomes and would still be there today if he had not accepted a teaching position at Fresno State.

Related Story: Trustees Select Fresno Unified’s New Superintendent. Was ‘the ...

We need a leader with the expertise and backbone to do right by students. I am not sure Misty Her wants to be that person, because if she did, she would have already made many changes to her cabinet and the hiring process.

Central Unified recently let its superintendent go and brought in a proven winner, Eimear O’Brien, as the interim. In just one month, she is setting high standards and making sure that every employee does their job with urgency and in the best interests of students!

I’ll wrap up with a call to action: Show up at the Fresno Unified board meeting downtown on Wednesday at 4:30 pm and voice your opinion. If you can’t attend, email the trustees with your thoughts.

Let’s not sentence Fresno’s next generation to lives of poverty and despair, as we have done so many times before.

 

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(Video: FTA President Manuel Bonilla sharing his insights on the superintendent search and FTA’s offer to host a public forum featuring the final candidates.)

About the Author

Darius Assemi of Fresno is a builder and philanthropist. He is the president/CEO of Granville Homes and publisher of the award-winning GV Wire.

Make Your Voice Heard

GV Wire encourages vigorous debate from people and organizations on local, state, and national issues. Submit your op-ed to bmcewen@gvwire.com for consideration.

The post Will Fresno Unified Sacrifice Another Generation of Students? The Choice Is Ours appeared first on GV Wire.

After more than a decade being exiled from the governor’s office in California, Republicans are eyeing growing voter frustration with the dominant liberal politics of the state as a launching pad for a comeback next year.

Though lacking the statewide profiles of a deluge of Democratic contenders, a pair of GOP hopefuls with devoted conservative followings has jumped into the open 2026 gubernatorial race in recent months, hoping to persuade voters that only a radical shakeup can fix California’s problems.

“I don’t think there’s any other way of describing California today, other than the sick man of America,” said Steve Hilton, a former Fox News host and onetime political adviser to British Prime Minister David Cameron who officially announced his candidacy on Monday. “It’s just undeniable that we’re in a terrible, terrible mess in California and we have to change direction.”

Hilton is kicking off his campaign today with an event in Huntington Beach, the city that has remade itself over the past few years into the bulwark of conservative resistance in California. He follows Riverside County Sheriff Chad Bianco, a hero of the right for defying state mandates during the COVID pandemic, who entered the race to succeed termed-out Gov. Gavin Newsom in February.

Both believe that voters have grown sick of a generation of one-party Democratic rule in Sacramento and are banking on appeals to cut taxes and regulations — which they blame for making California unaffordable — to reach across traditional partisan lines.

“We are being led down a path of complete government control and socialism,” Bianco said in an interview. “This is no longer Democrat versus Republican. We’re at a point where it’s sane versus insane.”

But conservative candidates face a steep climb in a state that has not elected a Republican to statewide office since Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger won a second term in 2006.

California Democratic Party Chairperson Rusty Hicks said the gubernatorial race is about more than just who can deliver for Californians. Voters know the governor has a powerful platform to stand up to the Trump administration and they won’t want a Republican in a role that is also critical to the future of the rest of the country and the whole world, he said.

“I certainly applaud them for continuing to try,” Hicks said. “But time and time again, we see California voters see their policies for what they are, which is not in line with the values of Californians.”

Slashing Taxes and Regulations

More than 20 people have already filed a statement of intention to run for governor in the 2026 primary as Republicans — though few will be serious candidates and some may never qualify for the ballot at all, which requires paying a filing fee or submitting thousands of signatures from registered voters.

Only two, including Bianco, have reported raising any money for their campaigns so far. While the first fundraising report of 2025 is not due until the end of July, major donations are filed with the state on a rolling basis.

Leo Zacky, a poultry farm heir and perennial candidate who received 1.3% of the vote in the 2022 gubernatorial primary and 0.1% in the 2021 recall election, seeded his campaign last month with $50,000 of his own money.

Meanwhile, since launching his campaign in February, Bianco has reported more than $380,000 in major contributions — enough to solidify himself as an early frontrunner for conservative voters, but a far cry from the millions that some Democratic contenders have already raised.

That leaves an opening for Hilton, 55, a native of the United Kingdom who moved to California in 2012 with his wife, a public relations executive for tech companies. Hilton has a built-in audience from hosting the weekly commentary program “The Next Revolution” on Fox News from 2017 to 2023, and Silicon Valley connections that could provide the money he needs to spread his message more broadly.

Hilton said his campaign will focus on practical solutions to rebuild a “ladder of opportunity,” so that every Californian can have a great job and a great home — though many of them are ideas that the Democratic supermajority in the Legislature is unlikely to ever support.

He would eliminate the state income tax for Californians below an unspecified income level. He wants to boost housing development by simplifying building codes, ending lawsuits under the infamous California Environmental Quality Act, and promoting construction of single-family homes. He believes the state needs mandatory phonics education and more accountability for teachers based on test scores to improve student achievement.

Though he has had a long career in politics, Hilton has never held elected office himself, which he argues is an asset.

“I would ask people, how good are the machine politicians in Sacramento who are involved in this one-party rule? How is that working?” Hilton said.

Bianco, 57, was a longtime sheriff’s deputy in Riverside County who ran for sheriff in 2018 out of frustration with what he called a “pro-criminal” approach to public safety in California. During his two terms as chief law enforcement officer of Riverside County, he has been a controversial but locally popular figure, refusing to enforce Newsom’s COVID lockdown orders or apologize for his brief affiliation with the far-right Oath Keepers militia.

He said he’s now running for governor because, like many Californians, he is tired of how the government has failed a state that people otherwise love. Many of his priorities align with Hilton’s: Bianco would like to completely abolish the state income tax, get rid of laws that he said are driving farmers and ranchers out of business, and leave environmental regulation to the federal government.

And echoing the Trump administration’s Department of Government Efficiency initiative, Bianco said he wants to eliminate wasteful spending such as the high-speed rail project and multibillion-dollar programs that have not reduced homelessness.

“The number one job of government is public safety,” Bianco said. “All the rest of it is fluff.”

The Anti-Trump Bump

California Republicans have been jubilant since the November election, when they flipped three seats in the state Legislature as President Donald Trump increased his vote share in nearly every county. At a party convention in Sacramento last month, they strategized over how to build on the momentum by leaning into issues such as affordability and crime that appear to be helping them gain ground, particularly among Latino voters.

“That tells us that Californians, on the local level and when it comes to the laws that are being passed in Sacramento, they’re looking to Republicans,” Corrine Rankin, the newly elected chairperson of the California Republican Party, said in an interview. “They’re rejecting the failures that are coming out of the Capitol by the Democrats.”

In a February survey by the Public Policy Institute of California, only 48% of likely voters said the state is going in the right direction, compared to 51% who said it’s going in the wrong direction — underwater, albeit the highest approval in two years.

To win the governorship next year, Rankin said the state GOP would eventually unite behind a candidate who can help Californians understand how that dissatisfaction is driven by what Democrats in charge of the state are doing.

“We need change here in California. Californians expect change and we’re positioned to deliver,” she said.

But the modest advances of the last election belie a GOP that is still far from competitive in California. Trump only received about 38% of the vote, losing to Democratic nominee Kamala Harris by more than 20 percentage points, and Republicans lost three U.S. House seats.

The 2026 midterms, in which Democratic anger at the Trump administration could produce an even more liberal electorate, will be a difficult political environment for the California GOP to snap a statewide shutout that dates back to 2010. In 2022, no Republican candidate for statewide office came within 10 percentage points of victory, and most lost by about twice that margin.

Andrew Acosta, a Democratic political consultant who is not working on the governor’s race, said there are substantive problems in California for serious conservatives to campaign on. “The Republicans have a lot of fodder if they did it the right way,” he said.

But candidates so closely tied to Trump are unlikely to overcome the deep anti-Trump sentiment in the electorate and win the governorship next year, Acosta added. “There’s zero chance of these Republicans.”

Both Hilton and Bianco are vocal Trump supporters. Hilton’s campaign even references the MAGA movement with a “make California golden again” slogan, and he rolled out an endorsement on the first day from Vivek Ramaswamy, one of the architects of Trump’s DOGE initiative.

Though some Democratic candidates are already tapping into the fury at Trump to fuel their campaigns, Hilton said the focus is misplaced.

“None of that helps a single person in California,” he said. “These are real issues. So if Democrat candidates want to deflect from that and become national political commentators, then good luck with that.”

Bianco said Democrats have done “outstanding psychological warfare” for decades convincing people that Republicans cannot win in California, which has suppressed conservative participation in elections. But things have finally gotten so bad, he said, that those frustrated voters will turn out next year and elect a Republican governor.

“We can’t blame Donald Trump. Donald Trump doesn’t have anything to do with California and the laws that have been passed in the past 20 years,” he said. “I believe that the majority of people, of hard-working Californians, have conservative leanings.”

This article was originally published by CalMatters under the Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-NoDerivatives license.

The post Fox News Host? A Sheriff? Is There a Republican Who Can Finally Win Statewide in CA Again? appeared first on GV Wire.

Lobbying groups spent more than half a billion dollars to influence the state government in 2024, the most ever, according to a CalMatters analysis of data recently filed with the secretary of state. Lobbying by Google, oil companies and utilities in the third quarter appeared to drive the sharp spike in spending.

Companies and organizations reported roughly $540 million in lobbying expenses to push their point of view to California officials, including legislators, on hundreds of bills between January and December of last year — and that’s up by more than 10% from $485 million in 2023.

Perhaps that isn’t so surprising in a state with a full-time Legislature and one of the largest economies in the world, said Francesco Trebbi, an economics professor at UC Berkeley who studies political influence and lobbying.

“Half a billion is kind of normal,” he said. “If California is about 14% of U.S. GDP and federal lobbying is about $4 billion, $500 million is about 13% of that. So it would be in line with the size of the California economy.”

Thomas Holyoke, a professor of political science at Fresno State University, said that the spending increase might reflect not only corporations’ desire for more influence but also the growing influence of California policy itself.

As long as California maintains its prominence, “more and more interest groups and lobbyists are going to take what Sacramento does very, very seriously,” he said.

Major Players Driving the Lobbying Boom

The Western States Petroleum Association reported more than $17.3 million dollars in advocacy costs over the year, more than $10 million of which was spent last summer, and more than double the total bill of the previous year.

The organization took public positions on 18 bills last session and got its desired outcome two-thirds of the time, according to a CalMatters analysis of data from Digital Democracy, our platform to track state lawmakers and legislation.

In part, the trade group’s spending more than doubled because of increased proposed regulations on oil and gas, including a special session focused on gas prices.

The largest non-oil spender was PacifiCorp, which reported spending more than $13.4 million to influence California officials last year, 30 times the yearly average for the company over the last two decades. The investor-owned utility lobbied for a rate hike but didn’t take a public position on any bills in 2024.

Pacific Gas & Electric, one of the largest utilities in the state, reported nearly $3.6 million on lobbying last year. Over the two-year legislative session, the company took a public position on 45 bills and also got its way on roughly two-thirds of them, or 31 bills.

Google doesn’t usually spend much on state-level lobbying efforts but spent more in 2024 than the last 20 years combined.

The company reported one of the largest totals for state advocacy last year, driven primarily by a spending spree in the third quarter of the year when the tech giant was fighting a media bill and AI regulations. The company got its way in both cases.

Much of its advocacy went through the Computer & Communications Industry Association, which reported spending nearly $7.4 million, $7 million of which came from the Mountain View behemoth.

Only two labor groups spent more than $1 million on lobbying last year: the Service Employees International Union and the California Teachers Association.

SEIU reported spending nearly $3.4 million and the California Teachers Association, another powerful union in the state, spent more than $3.1 million. Both unions took public positions on hundreds of bills and got their way nearly 70% of the time.

This article was originally published on CalMatters and was republished under the Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-NoDerivatives license.

The post Special Interests Pour More Than Half a Billion Into CA Lobbying appeared first on GV Wire.

In 2020, the American Association of School Administrators named Gustavo Balderas as the national superintendent of the year for his work with Eugene School District. That year, he also won Oregon Superintendent of the Year. Balderas’ first superintendent position was with the San Joaquin Valley’s Madera Unified.

Balderas did not respond to a request for comment from GV Wire.

In 2020, Balderas participated in an open candidate forum when he applied to become superintendent of Oregon’s Edmonds School District. He said in that forum that he prided himself on increasing graduation rates of Latino students and students in poverty.

Graduation rates for Latino students and children in poverty increased by 19% and 23% for students in special programs during his tenure.

“The one thing that I’m really proud of is the work that we’ve done in Eugene the last few years,” Balderas said, according to Washington news site MLT News. “We been able to close the opportunity gap. Our graduation rates have increased by 14 percentage points because of the systems we’ve put in.”

Related Story: Trustees Select Fresno Unified’s New Superintendent. Was ‘the ...

Trustees Prioritizing Candidates from Large Districts

GV Wire learned the names of the four finalists — including Balderas and Fresno Unified interim superintendent Misty Her — in the district’s superintendent search. The others were Thomas Ahart, a former longtime superintendent of Des Moines (Iowa) Public Schools, and Andraé Townsel, superintendent of Calvert County Public Schools in Maryland.

Multiple sources confirmed to GV Wire that trustees have begun negotiations to hire Her. However, Fresno Unified spokesperson Nikki Henry rebutted that, saying that a selection cannot be made until the board takes action via a vote. Henry also said it was inaccurate to call anyone a “finalist.”

And, trustee Keshia Thomas said on Alexan Balekian’s “Sunday Conversation” on KMJ radio that there were no negotiations with Her “at the moment.”

In that same appearance, Thomas acknowledged the district’s academic failures, saying “We have not been student driven. We have not been outcomes driven. We’ve been messy, and that’s the real truth.”

Editor’s Note: In the chart below showing academic achievement for students in the finalists’ districts, the year 2019 was chosen because those results reflect performance before the COVID pandemic, which resulted in learning loss across the country. The 2024 results are the latest available. 

Fresno Unified board president Valerie Davis said the decision on the next superintendent would likely be announced at trustees meeting on Wednesday, April 23. She said in an email to GV Wire they are prioritizing candidates from large school districts. Davis did not respond to follow-up questions.

“Leading the third largest district in the state requires someone who has worked successfully in a very large district,” Davis wrote in the email. “For everything that has been coming out of your GV Wire, I don’t think anyone has ever thought of the most obvious qualification. Size and success matters.”

Board members and community members previously stated they want someone who understands the diversity of the Central Valley.

There is no salary range listed in job posting for FUSD’s superintendent, but Nelson made $426,757 in pay and $99,066 in benefits in 2023, according to Transparent California.

Related Story: Why Fresno Unified Tried to Keep Superintendent Search Secret

Trustees Want Confidentiality. Others Seek Transparency

Board members and district administration stressed confidentiality of applicants despite search firm McPherson & Jacobson LLC telling board members on Feb. 12 that once candidates are finalists “there’s no holding back.”

“Once you’re a finalist, there’s no holding back,” Ben Johnson, spokesperson for McPherson told the board in that meeting. “You’ve put yourself out there, you’ve said you’ve got to be able to contact all people to be able to give an assessment, good and deserving about your candidacy.”

However, Johnson recently told GV Wire that the finalists’ names shouldn’t have become public.

Of note: Fresno Unified required former Superintendent Bob Nelson to disclose if he ever became a finalist for employment outside the district.

Community members and Fresno Unified employees have called for an open forum since it was announced the district needed a replacement for Nelson, who retired last summer.

In a districtwide notice to employees, one teacher said a community forum would ensure transparency.

“Respectfully, the board can’t hide behind ‘confidentiality’ in the process and then say they’re being transparent and ensuring the community’s concerns have been brought into consideration,” one teacher said on FUSD’s forum board. “How are we supposed to believe that? There’s no accountability.”

National Superintendent of the Year Is Son Of Mexican Immigrants

Balderas is the current superintendent for Beaverton School District, which enrolls 37,459 students across 54 schools in a Portland suburb.

The first-generation son of Mexican immigrants, Balderas often emphasizes learning for students in poverty, especially those overcoming language barriers, according to news articles and podcasts.

“I understand firsthand some of the barriers that students face in Beaverton schools — those in poverty and those navigating a new language and culture. These experiences will help me connect with students and families and help identify ways to meet the needs of our students furthest from educational justice,” Balderas told KGW8 in 2022, when he was selected for the superintendent at Beaverton.

Balderas was superintendent at Madera Unified from 2011 to 2013.

Since 2011, he has been superintendent of five school districts.

Iowa Superintendent Focuses on Equity, Balanced Budget

Former superintendent Thomas Ahart spent 14 years at Des Moines Public Schools, which is Iowa’s largest school district and had 31,000 students at the time. He served as superintendent for 10 years.

The Des Moines Register reported that the Des Moines school board decided not to extend his contract past 2023. Ahart left one year ahead of his contract end date.

Ahart did not respond to a request for comment.

In his letter of resignation, Ahart stressed his focus on equity. About 76% of students at Des Moines schools receive free or reduced lunch. Students there speak 83 languages and come from 109 nations, he said.

“We implemented standards-based grading, redrew district boundaries, made every school a school of choice, increased enrollment in Advanced Placement courses, and dramatically shifted the composition of the student body attending Central Campus and Central Academy,” Ahart said in his letter.

In his tenure, all of the district’s 40 portable classrooms became permanent, he pointed out in his letter. He also kept the district’s budget balanced.

Ahart has been a consultant with the Council on Great City Schools for the past 10 years, focusing on improving student outcomes. Fresno Unified is a member of Great City Schools, which brings together 78 of nation’s largest urban public school systems in a coalition dedicated to the improvement of education for children in the inner cities. It is headquartered in Washington, D.C.

Calvert County Public Schools Has Highest Literacy Rate in Maryland

Another finalist for FUSD’s top position, Andraé Townsel, started as superintendent of Calvert County Public Schools in Maryland in July 2022. Townsel recently applied for superintendent of Milwaukee Public Schools, where he was a finalist.

In a public forum, the Howard University graduate talked about his literacy plans and how Calvert County — enrolling 15,461 students — has the highest literacy scores in the state, according to Milwaukee Neighborhood News Service.

Townsel said the district achieved that rate because of “attention to detail and investment in the science of reading.”

In contrast, Fresno Unified is significantly behind other Valley and California school districts in literacy, as well as math.

Fresno Unified Interim Focuses on Attendance, Narrows Goals

Whereas Fresno Unified had nearly 170 educational goals last year, Her — the only finalist who hasn’t been a superintendent — told GV Wire said she wanted to focus on four major goals.

“We have to be great at a few things. And I think what the board has allowed us to do for the first time in Fresno Unified is to go from very big to now, very narrow,” said Her.

Here is a look at the district four major initiatives:

— 1st-graders proficient in literacy will increase from 48% in June 2024 to 80% by June 2030.

— Students graduating from high school college and career-ready will rise from 43% in June 2024 to 64% by June 2030.

— 3rd- through 8th-grade students more than one year behind in English Language Arts and who make more than one year’s growth will increase from 10% in June 2024 to 50% by June 2030.

— The district will track 6th-, 8th-, and 12th-grade students for Portrait of a Learner competencies with a percentage goal set soon for June 2030.

Before being appointed interim superintendent, Her served as deputy superintendent for Nelson.

As interim leader, she has taken steps to reduce the number of students who are chronically absent. Students who are chronically absent struggle to learn, and their repeated absences result in the loss of state funding.

Related Story: Has Fresno Unified Finally Planted the Flag for an Academic Revolution?

“We have to be great at a few things. And I think what the board has allowed us to do for the first time in Fresno Unified is to go from very big to now, very narrow,” said Her.

The post Fresno Unified Trustees Passed Over a National Superintendent of the Year appeared first on GV Wire.

Related Story: Fresno Joins Global Protest Against Donald Trump and Elon Musk

The demonstration is organized under the “Hands Off!” banner, which calls for the protection of key social programs and policies.

The flyer reads, “No Kings in Fresno. Remove. Reverse. Reclaim.”

Support for the event has grown on the Fresno subreddit, where several commenters said they are creating protest signs and preparing to attend.

Fresno Joined Global Protest Earlier in April

The demonstration follows a global wave of “Hands Off!” protests that took place on April 5, aimed at opposing the influence of public figures like Trump and Elon Musk on social programs and government policies.

Thousands gathered in cities around the world, including in Central Valley communities such as Fresno, Hanford and Visalia.

In Fresno, more than a thousand demonstrators lined the streets near Shaw and Fresno avenues, chanting and criticizing efforts to roll back Medicare, Medicaid, Social Security and protections for marginalized communities.

—

Connect with Anthony W. Haddad on social media. Got a tip? Send an email. 

The post Protest Planned in Clovis Targets the Trump Administration appeared first on GV Wire.

While WrestleMania has always been the spotlight of the WWE year, it was the third edition in 1987 that put the body slam on its wrestling industry rivals. Veteran writer and historian Keith Elliot Greenberg looks back at how the WWF — as it was known then — won the wrestling war in his new book “Bigger! Better! Badder! WrestleMania III and the Year it All Changed.”

At the Pontiac Silverdome, Hulk Hogan body-slammed Andre the Giant to victory in a legendary match that remains the most famous in pro wrestling history.

“The fact that they sold out an NFL stadium was something inconceivable to the public, including the wrestling public,” Greenberg said in a phone interview with Off the Bottom Rope.

While the stories of WWF’s ascension to pro wrestling dominance, the Hulk-Andre match, and the myths behind WrestleMania III have been explored by other historians and documentaries, Greenberg talks to several WWF executives who shared the story of not only the event, but the years of buildup. He also talked to heads of rival promotions.

Despite knowing Greenberg, who asked him to participate, former WWF/WWE chairman Vince McMahon declined to be interviewed for the book.

Not long after the success of WrestleMania III, several smaller regional wrestling promotions closed. The company that eventually became World Championship Wrestling survived, but only until  the WWF bought them out in 2001 — officially ending the wrestling war.

A Weeklong Spectacular Comparable to the Super Bowl

Greenberg has covered wrestling for more than 40 years for several publications, including the official WWF Magazine. He’s written several wrestling books and often appears as the historian on WWE documentaries.

WrestleMania used to be just a one-day spectacular. Now, it is a weeklong celebration of all things wrestling, comparable to the Super Bowl. Cities bid and pay a site fee for the spectacular.

Fans will descend from around the world, stay at hotels, attend several official WWE events such as the Hall of Fame, the WWE World exhibit, and other wrestling cards. Even The Undertaker is holding a one-man act.

“It is a true pilgrimage for wrestling fans who come from around the globe. None of that would exist without WrestleMania III. WrestleMania III sent a message that this was something on par with the Super Bowl and the World Cup,” Greenberg said.

Greenberg said he’s attended most WrestleManias, covering for various publications. But, he can’t even receive a media credential this year, writing for UK-based Inside the Ropes. He said the WWE received more than a thousand media credentials.

“People who don’t even follow wrestling week-to-week want to be at WrestleMania because it is a destination to be. That is why there will be celebrities at WrestleMania. They want to be seen there,” Greenberg said.

The Attendance Myth

The WWF claimed that 93,173 fans jammed into the Pontiac Silverdome in 1987, shattering the world indoor attendance record. That number has been debated, analyzed and examined ever since. Greenberg dedicates a chapter into whether that number is accurate or WWF myth-making.

“It’s an eternal debate. I interviewed executives who are responsible for making sure those seats were filled. They adhere religiously to 93,173,” Greenberg said. “There are some question marks there.”

More likely, 78,000 paid to attend, but the mythical number also includes anybody in the building — wrestlers, ticket takers, and even those who snuck into the building.

“That’s a lot of people going to professional wrestling, when you consider that up until that point professional wrestling was considered low-brow entertainment,” Greenberg said.

The true number may never be known.

“It doesn’t really matter. The number itself is part of mythology, you could make a biblical analogy; Was every animal really on Noah’s Ark?” Greenberg said.

WrestleMania 41

WrestleMania 41 takes place Saturday and Sunday at Allegiant Stadium near Las Vegas, home of the Raiders. Similar to when Hulk Hogan took on the newly villainous Andre the Giant, this year’s main event features hero Cody Rhodes defending the Universal WWE championship against new bad guy John Cena on Sunday.

A triple threat match highlights Saturday’s card, with the most dominant wrestler in the last decade Roman Reigns facing CM Punk and Seth Rollins.

Ticket reseller StubHub lists $269 as the lowest price for a single ticket Sunday, in the third deck.

Among the other sanctioned WWE events for the week include the regular Friday Night SmackDown and Monday Night Raw at the T-Mobile Arena; the Hall of Fame at the Fontainebleau; shows for NXT, the WWE’s development territory; The Undertaker’s show; and even a Sunday morning “The Roast of WrestleMania.”

Several other wrestling promotions use the week to hold dozens of events in and around Las Vegas. And, for those who can’t get a ticket to the stadium, several hotel/casinos are hosting watch parties.

Former NFL star Rob Gronkowski, who is known to dabble in the ring himself, is hosting a pool party, where tickets remain for $89.99.

The post How WrestleMania Came to Rival the Super Bowl and World Cup appeared first on GV Wire.

This story was originally published by CalMatters. Sign up for their newsletters.

Court research by Robert Lewis, Lauren Hepler, Anat Rubin, Sergio Olmos, Cayla Mihalovich, Ese Olumhense, Ko Bragg, Andrew Donohue and Jenna Peterson

Ivan Dimov was convicted of reckless driving in 2013, after fleeing police in Washington state while his passenger allegedly dumped heroin out the window. Before that, he got six DUIs in California over a six-year period. None of that would keep him off the road.

The California Department of Motor Vehicles reissued him a driver’s license in 2017. The next year, on Christmas Eve, he drove drunk again, running stop signs and a traffic light in midtown Sacramento, going more than 80 mph, court records show. He T-boned another car, killing a 28-year-old man who was going home to feed the cat before heading to his mom’s for the holiday.

Kostas Linardos had 17 tickets — including for speeding, reckless driving and street racing — and had been in four collisions. Then, in November 2022, he gunned his Ram 2500 truck as he entered a Placer County highway and slammed into the back of a disabled sedan, killing a toddler, court records show. He’s now facing felony manslaughter charges.

In December of last year, while that case was open, the DMV renewed his driver’s license.

Ervin Wyatt’s history behind the wheel spreads across two pages of a recent court filing: Fleeing police. Fleeing police again. Running a red light. Causing a traffic collision. Driving without a license, four times. A dozen speeding tickets.

Yet the DMV issued him a license in 2019. Wyatt promptly got three more speeding tickets, court records show. Prosecutors say he was speeding again in 2023 when he lost control and crashed into oncoming traffic, killing three women. He’s now facing murder charges in Stanislaus County.

DMV Routinely Allows Dangerous Drivers on the Road

The California Department of Motor Vehicles routinely allows drivers like these — with horrifying histories of dangerous driving, including DUIs, crashes and numerous tickets — to continue to operate on our roadways, a CalMatters investigation has found. Too often they go on to kill. Many keep driving even after they kill. Some go on to kill again.

With state lawmakers grappling with how to address the death toll on our roads, CalMatters wanted to understand how California handles dangerous drivers. We first asked the district attorneys for all 58 counties to provide us with a list of their vehicular manslaughter cases from 2019 through early last year. Every county but Santa Cruz provided the information.

Because California has no centralized court system and records aren’t online, we then traveled to courthouses up and down the state to read through tens of thousands of pages of files. Once we had defendants’ names and other information, we were able to get DMV driver reports for more than 2,600 of the defendants, providing details on their recent collisions, citations and license status.

The court records and driving histories reveal a state so concerned with people having access to motor vehicles for work and life that it allows deadly drivers to share our roads despite the cost. Officials may call driving a privilege, but they treat it as a right — often failing to take drivers’ licenses even after they kill someone on the road.

We found nearly 40% of the drivers charged with vehicular manslaughter since 2019 have a valid license.

That includes a driver with two separate convictions for vehicular manslaughter, for crashes that killed a 16-year-old girl in 2009 and a 25-year-old woman in 2020. In July of last year, the DMV issued him a driver’s license.

The agency gave licenses to nearly 150 people less than a year after they allegedly killed someone on the road, we found. And while the agency has since suspended some of those, often after a conviction, the majority remain valid. In Santa Clara County, a man prosecutors charged with manslaughter got his current license just a month and a half after the collision that killed a mother of three young children.

And many drivers accused of causing roadway deaths don’t appear to have stopped driving recklessly. Records show that nearly 400 got a ticket or were in another crash — or both — after their deadly collisions.

A commercial driver drove his semi truck on the wrong side of the road into oncoming traffic, killing a motorcyclist in Kern County in 2021. Less than a year later, he still had a valid license when he barreled his semi into slow-moving traffic, hitting four vehicles and killing a woman in Fresno County, records show. Another man, sentenced to nine years in prison for killing two women while driving drunk, got his privileges restored by the DMV after being paroled, only to drive high on meth in Riverside and weave head-on into another car, killing a woman.

“It is somewhat shocking to see how much you can get away with and still be a licensed driver in the state of California,” Placer County District Attorney Morgan Gire said. “I don’t think anyone fully understands what you need to do behind the wheel to lose your driving privilege.”

Almost as interesting as the information in the drivers’ DMV records is what’s not there.

Hundreds of drivers’ DMV records simply don’t list convictions for manslaughter or another crime related to a fatal crash, we found. The apparent error means some drivers who should have their driving privileges suspended instead show up in DMV records as having a valid license.

The cases we reviewed cut across demographics and geography. Defendants include farmworkers and a farm owner. They include off-duty police officers and people with lengthy rap sheets, drivers who killed in a fit of rage and others whose recklessness took the lives of those they loved most — high school sweethearts, siblings, children. The tragedies span this vast state. From twisty two-lane mountain roads near the Oregon border to the dusty scrubland touching Mexico. From the crowded streets of San Francisco to the highways of the Inland Empire. From Gold Country, to timber country, to Silicon Valley, to the almond capital of the world. So much death. More people than are killed by guns.

Dangerous drivers are able to stay on the roads for many reasons. The state system that targets motorists who rack up tickets is designed to catch clusters of reckless behavior, not long-term patterns. And while there are laws requiring the DMV to suspend a driver’s license for certain crimes, like DUIs, there is no such requirement for many vehicular manslaughter convictions.

DMV Director Doesn’t Talk to CalMatters

It’s often up to the DMV whether to act. Routinely it doesn’t.

The DMV declined to make its director, Steve Gordon — who has been in charge since Gov. Gavin Newsom appointed him in 2019 — available for an interview to discuss our findings.

Chris Orrock, a DMV spokesperson, said the agency follows the law when issuing licenses. “We use our authority as mandated and as necessary,” he said.

Even when the DMV does take away motorists’ driving privileges, state officials, law enforcement and the courts are often unable or unwilling to keep them off the road. We found cases where drivers racked up numerous tickets while driving on a suspended license and faced little more than fines before eventually causing a fatal crash, even though authorities could have sent them to jail.

Taking away someone’s driving privilege is no small decision. It can consign a family to poverty, affecting job prospects, child care and medical decisions.

Still, the stakes couldn’t be higher. More than 20,000 people died on the roads of California from 2019 to early 2024.

Kowana Strong thinks part of the problem is that lawmakers and regulators are too quick to treat fatal crashes as an unfortunate fact of life, as opposed to something they can address.

Her son Melvin Strong III — who went by his middle name, Kwaun — was finishing college and planning to start a master’s program in kinesiology when he was killed by Dimov, the driver with six prior DUI convictions. Kwaun was a bright and innocent young man, she said, just starting his life.

“It’s just another accident as far as they’re concerned,” Kowana Strong said.

Holes in the DMV’s Point System

Young people think they’re invincible. It’s the old who know how unfair life is, Jerrod Tejeda said.

His daughter Cassi Tejeda was just 22. She was months from graduating from Chico State with a bachelor’s degree in history and a plan to be a teacher. Outgoing and athletic, she wanted to travel, see the world and make her own life.

She had a girlfriend who was visiting. Courtney Kendall was 24 and a student at Louisiana State University.

On a Sunday afternoon in January 2022, a Volvo SUV topping speeds of 75 mph ran a red light and smashed into their Jeep, court records show. The collision killed them both.

“The most difficult part besides the incident is every day that goes by you’re always wondering what if. What would they be doing today?” Jerrod Tejeda said. “Would they be married? Would they have developed into the career that they chose? Where would she be living?”

Tanya Kendall lamented not being there to protect her daughter, hold her hand or say goodbye.

“Instead, I was left with the unbearable task of choosing what outfit she would be buried in. Buried, Your Honor. Not the gown she would wear to her graduation from LSU — the one she will never attend,” the mother wrote in a letter to a Butte County judge, adding that she and her husband stood in their daughter’s place, accepting her diploma.

Such pain was preventable.

The driver of the Volvo, Matthew Moen, had a blood alcohol level more than three times the legal limit, according to court filings. And it wasn’t his first time drinking and driving. Moen was caught driving drunk in Oregon in 2016. He never completed the requirements of a diversion program and had an outstanding warrant at the time of the fatal crash, the Butte County district attorney’s office said. In January 2020, he was convicted of DUI in Nevada County for driving with a blood alcohol level more than twice the legal limit, given a couple weeks in jail and put on probation for three years.

His license was valid at the time of the fatal 2022 crash, records show.

Across the country, states grapple with how to effectively spot and punish drivers who could be a danger on the road. Often they rely on a basic point system, with drivers accruing points for various types of traffic violations and thresholds for when the state will take away a motorist’s driving privileges. But like many, California has such high limits that drivers with a pattern of reckless behavior can avoid punishment.

The state suspends a driver’s license for accumulating four points in a year, six points in two years or eight points in three years. What does it take to get that many points? Using a cellphone while driving is zero points. A speeding ticket is a point. Vehicular manslaughter is two points.

Between March 2017 and March 2022, Trevor Cook received two citations for running red lights, got two speeding tickets and was deemed responsible for two collisions, including one in which someone was injured, court records show. (A third red-light ticket was dismissed.) At-fault collisions add a point to a driver’s license, according to the DMV. But the incidents were spaced out enough that none resulted in a suspension.

So Cook had a valid license on April 14, 2022, just a month after his last speeding ticket, when he blew through a Yolo County stop sign at more than 100 mph.

At that exact moment, Prajal Bista passed through the intersection, on his way to work after dinner and a movie with his wife, according to details of the crash that prosecutors included in court filings. Bista was driving the speed limit and on track to make it to work 30 minutes early.

The force of the collision nearly split Bista’s Honda Civic in half. Investigators determined Bista had been wearing his seat belt, but the crash tore it apart. They found his body 75 feet from the intersection.

On March 28, 2024, Cook pleaded no contest to felony vehicular manslaughter.

Just a month later, on April 30, the DMV issued Cook his current driver’s license, agency records show. Less than two weeks after that, he got a ticket for disobeying a traffic signal.

Melinda Aiello, chief deputy district attorney in Yolo County, said her office didn’t know anything about the new license or the red-light ticket until contacted by CalMatters. What’s more, the manslaughter conviction — like hundreds of others we found — isn’t listed on Cook’s driving record.

Cook’s license was still listed as valid in California DMV records as of early 2025. But for now, he’s off the roadways: Last summer, Cook started serving time in state prison.

“It’s stunning to me that eight months later his license is still showing as valid and the conviction for killing someone while driving is not reflected in his driving record,” Aiello said. “You killed somebody. I’d think there might be some license implications.”

Orrock, the DMV spokesperson, said he couldn’t speak directly to why so many convictions are missing. But, he said, “we acknowledge that the process and coordination between the judicial system and the DMV must continually evolve to address any gaps that have been identified. And we’re looking into that.”

Kill Someone, Get Your license Back

There are laws requiring the DMV to suspend a driver’s license for various convictions. A first DUI conviction, for example, is a 6-to-10-month suspension. Felony vehicular manslaughter is a three-year loss of driving privileges. The agency isn’t necessarily required to give a license back if its driver safety branch deems a motorist too dangerous to drive, agency officials said.

But CalMatters found the agency regularly gives drivers their licenses back as soon as the legally required period ends. And once crashes, tickets and suspensions fall off a driver’s record after a few years, it’s often as if the motorist’s record is wiped clean. So even if the driver gets in trouble again, the agency often treats any future crashes and traffic violations as isolated incidents, not as part of a longer pattern of reckless driving.

Perhaps that’s why Joshua Daugherty is licensed to drive in California.

In July 2020, Daugherty drifted onto the highway shoulder while driving near Mammoth Lakes, overcorrected to the left and lost control, court filings show. His Toyota Tacoma cut across the lane into oncoming traffic, where an SUV broadsided it. Daugherty’s girlfriend, 25-year-old Krystal Kazmark, died. Police noted that Daugherty’s eyes were red and watery and his speech was slurred when they arrived. He told officers that he’d smoked “a couple of bowls” of marijuana earlier in the day, according to records filed in court.

Kazmark’s mother was devastated. Like other victim relatives we spoke to for this story, Mary Kazmark tried as best she could to summarize a life into a few words — an impossible task. Her daughter liked to sing, travel, cook, draw, snow-ski, water-ski, wakeboard, hike, read, entertain friends and plan parties. She was a responsible kid, her mother said, always the designated driver with her friends. She oversaw guest reservations at one of the Mammoth Lakes lodges.

Mary Kazmark said she tracked down Daugherty on the phone a few days after the crash.

“He just said, ‘I can’t believe this happened again.’ And I was like, ‘What do you mean?’”

She eventually learned it wasn’t the first time Daugherty’s driving had killed.

In August 2009, in a strikingly similar incident, Daugherty was speeding along a Riverside County highway when his Ford Expedition drifted onto the shoulder. Witnesses told police he veered back to the left, lost control, hit a dirt embankment and went airborne, the SUV flipping onto its roof. A 16-year-old girl riding in the back died. Daugherty was convicted of misdemeanor vehicular manslaughter. He was sentenced to 180 days in custody and three years’ probation, according to a summary of the case filed in court.

Because of the earlier manslaughter conviction, police recommended he be charged with murder for the death of Krystal Kazmark. But the Mono County district attorney’s office charged him with a mere misdemeanor.

Felony charges typically require a prosecutor to prove “gross negligence.” A prosecutor in another county described the difference between a felony and a misdemeanor this way: A felony is one in which you tell the average person the facts and they say, “Wow, that’s really dangerous.” A misdemeanor is one which they say, “That’s dumb but I’ve probably done it.”

The Mono County district attorney’s office refused to comment on the case, because the prosecutor and the elected DA at the time have both since retired. The office did provide a prepared statement explaining the charging decision. “It was determined that there was not a substantial likelihood of conviction at trial,” it said.

Daugherty pleaded guilty and was convicted in January 2023. He was sentenced to a year in jail. The DMV suspended his driving privileges after the fatal 2020 crash, a DMV report shows. But losing his license wasn’t enough to keep Daugherty off the road, records show.

Two months after his conviction for killing Kazmark, before he reported to jail, police caught him driving on a suspended license.

Still, the DMV reissued Daugherty a license in July 2024.

To recap: That’s two convictions for two dead young women, plus a conviction for driving on a suspended license, and the California DMV says Daugherty can still share the road with you.

“It’s so sad. You make a mistake and then you don’t learn from it and then you cause another person to lose their life,” Mary Kazmark said. “It’s unbelievable that he can continue to drive.”

Orrock said the DMV couldn’t comment on individual drivers.

When law enforcement reports a fatal crash, the agency’s driver safety branch flags all drivers who might be at fault. It then looks into the collision and decides whether the agency should suspend those motorists’ driving privileges. If the driver contests the action, there’s a hearing that could include witness testimony. Suspensions are open-ended. Drivers need to ask for their license back, and agency personnel decide whether the suspension should end or continue. These discretionary suspensions typically last for about a year.

And while officials said the DMV can continue a suspension if they think a driver poses a danger, Orrock said they need to give drivers an opportunity to get their license back. He said there’s no process in the state “to permanently revoke a license.”

Get Your license Back, Get in Trouble Again

Roughly 400 drivers accused of causing a fatal crash since 2019 received a ticket, got in another collision or did both after the date they allegedly killed someone on the road. (The reports don’t show whether the drivers were found at fault, only that they were involved in an accident.) That’s about 15% of the drivers for whom we could get DMV reports.

Drivers like William Beasley.

From 2011 to 2016, Beasley collected five speeding tickets and a citation for running a red light in Sacramento County, court records show. Then around 9 a.m. on a sunny Tuesday in October 2019, he killed a man.

William and Deborah Hester were crossing the street to go to a dentist appointment at a veterans facility when Beasley’s silver pickup sped toward them. They thought they would make it across. But the truck didn’t stop. At the last minute, William Hester shoved his wife out of the way. She heard the truck smash into her husband’s body and screamed, according to court records.

Beasley still didn’t stop. He fled the area and tried to hide his truck. Investigators used nearby cameras and license plate readers to track him down days later. Beasley admitted to being in a collision.

He later pleaded no contest in Sacramento to hit-and-run and misdemeanor vehicular manslaughter. A probation report in the case revealed Beasley was nearly blind in his left eye.

“Mr. Hester is with me every moment of my life,” Beasley said in an interview. “I took away a father, a grandfather, a husband, and they consider me a murderer. That’s not who I am.”

“My accident with Mr. Hester was just that, an accident. Nothing more,” he said, adding that he worked as a courier for years and sometimes got speeding tickets because he was rushing.

In May 2020, the DMV took away his driving privileges.

In November 2022, Beasley got his license back — “because I could and I needed to,” he said, adding that people deserve second chances, particularly for accidents.

Almost immediately — less than three weeks after getting his license — he was in another collision, his DMV report shows. In early 2024, he got in yet another. His license was suspended when his car insurance was canceled, records show.

“It makes no sense to me that they would give him a license and give him the opportunity to hurt someone else,” said Loriann Hester Page, William Hester’s daughter.

Her father’s death broke the family, she said. He drove a tank in the Army, played guitar in a band, liked to ride horses.

“My dad was such a wonderful, kind man,” she said. “He would always walk in a room and wanted to make everyone smile.”

Beasley said he doesn’t plan to drive again.

“I am 75 years old,” he said. “I am blind in one eye. I have had a situation where a man was killed, he lost his life. I am not going to repeat that situation at all.”

Still on the Road, License Not Suspended

The DMV does have the ability to act quickly. In some cases, it suspended a driver’s license shortly after a fatal crash. However, we found numerous cases in which the DMV did nothing for months or years, often not until a criminal conviction.

In July 2021, truck driver Baljit Singh drove his semi on the wrong side of the road into oncoming traffic, killing a motorcyclist in Kern County, court records show. There are no suspensions listed on his DMV record during that time, even though the agency has the discretion to suspend someone’s license without a conviction.

Less than a year later, as his case wound its way through the slow-moving court system, Singh plowed his semi into the back of a car in Fresno County, killing a woman, records show. He ultimately pleaded no contest to felony vehicular manslaughter in Kern County. He pleaded no contest to misdemeanor vehicular manslaughter in Fresno for the second fatal crash. The DMV finally took away his driving privileges in February of last year.

Prosecutors say Jadon Mendez was speeding in December 2021 in Santa Clara County when he lost control and caused a crash that killed a mother of three young children. A few weeks later he got a speeding ticket. And yet, the DMV issued him his current driver’s license on Jan. 27, 2022 — 49 days after the fatal crash.

There were no suspensions listed on his DMV record as of early this year, even though Mendez was charged with manslaughter in May 2022. The judge in his case ordered him not to drive, as a condition of his release. But such court orders don’t necessarily show up on a driver’s DMV record.

That might be why he didn’t get in more trouble in December 2022 when he got a speeding ticket in Alameda County. Prosecutors didn’t know about that ticket until CalMatters asked about it, said Angela Bernhard, assistant DA in the Santa Clara County district attorney’s office.

Mendez’s manslaughter case is still open, and his license is still listed as valid.

When asked about the Mendez case and others, Orrock acknowledged that while there’s a DMV process for deciding when to revoke or suspend a license, “sometimes the process takes a while to happen.”

When the DMV Doesn’t Act at All

In many cases, the DMV doesn’t take action even after a conviction.

In May 2022, a semi driver named Ramon Pacheco made a U-turn in front of an oncoming motorcycle, killing 29-year-old Dominic Lopez-Toney, who was finishing his rotations to be a doctor.

Court records show Pacheco had gotten in trouble behind the wheel before. He had been arrested for DUI in 2009, caused a collision in 2013 and got a ticket in 2016 for making an unsafe turn. It wasn’t enough to keep him off the road.

Neither was killing a man.

Months after San Joaquin prosecutors charged Pacheco with vehicular manslaughter, he got into another collision for which he was also deemed most at fault.

As the case dragged on, Lopez-Toney’s large but tight-knit family wrote dozens of letters to the court, pleading for justice. Dorothy Toney wrote that, more than a year since her grandson’s death, she was still haunted by images of his “mangled and broken body” and the gruesome details in the police report. “Somedays,” she wrote, “I wish I had been there to gently hold his hands” and “tell him how much I loved him.”

The letters are full of shock and outrage that the driver had faced so few consequences. “Allowing this truck driver to continue driving and engaging in civilian activities with only a mere consequence of probation is appalling,” wrote Lynelle Sigona, the victim’s aunt.

Pacheco ultimately pleaded no contest to misdemeanor manslaughter and received probation. His DMV record as of Feb. 11 indicates his driving privileges were never suspended; his commercial driver’s license is valid.

Pacheco’s defense attorney, Gil Somera, said his client isn’t a reckless driver. His prior incidents are relatively minimal, he said, given the fact that “truck drivers drive thousands and thousands of miles a year.” Pacheco needed to turn around and didn’t think there was another place he could do so, since he was approaching a residential area, Somera added.

Pacheco wasn’t being “inattentive or reckless,” Somera said. “And it’s unfortunate and sad and tragic this young man died because of this decision he made to make a U-turn.”

In the wake of the tragedy, Lopez-Toney’s mother has become an advocate for truck safety.

“Road safety and truck safety is not a priority right now with our legislators, with our government,” Nora Lopez said. “Changing our mindset, our attitudes, our culture on the roads is not impossible.”

In an interview at her Castro Valley home, she talked about her only child. He was smart and caring, liked snowboarding and animals, loved food. On vacations they would take cooking classes together, Lopez said. He studied molecular and cell biology at UC Berkeley and was almost done with medical school.

She still has the dry-erase whiteboards in his old room. One is filled with his small and neat study notes; another has what appears to be a to-do list. There’s a note that says “Surgery: 600.” Lopez said that’s when he was due to start his surgical rotation in a San Joaquin hospital, just a couple of days after he died.

She said he just wanted to help people and serve the Native American community as a doctor, a future that a driver snatched away.

“It’s because of a man’s recklessness and carelessness — no regard for humanity,” she said.

While felony manslaughter is an automatic three-year loss of driving privileges, a misdemeanor typically carries no such penalty. It’s discretionary — it’s up to the DMV to decide whether to do anything. And the man who killed Lopez-Toney is far from alone in facing no apparent punishment from the DMV.

We found nearly 200 drivers with a valid license whose DMV record shows a conviction for misdemeanor vehicular manslaughter but for whom there is no suspension listed.

When shown a copy of Pacheco’s current driving report, Lopez sat in silence for several seconds.

“Does this make sense to you? It makes no sense to me,” she said. “With his record, how does he still have a license?”

‘Are We Going to Put That Loaded Gun Back in Their hands?’

Research on dangerous drivers appears to be thin and largely outdated.

Liza Lutzker, a researcher at UC Berkeley’s Safe Transportation Research and Education Center, said much of the focus in the traffic safety world is on creating better design and infrastructure, so people who make honest mistakes don’t end up killing someone.

“I think that the issues of these reckless drivers are a separate and complex problem,” Lutzker said. “The system we have clearly is not working. And people are paying with their lives for it.”

Jeffrey Michael, who researches roadway safety issues at Johns Hopkins University and spent three decades working at the National Highway Traffic Safety Administration, said he understands officials might be hesitant to impose harsher penalties more broadly, “for fear of the unintended consequences.”

“We live in a society where driving is really essential,” he said. But he said the findings show the agency needs more scrutiny and analysis of who is on the roads.

“These are not unresolvable problems,” he said.

Leah Shahum, executive director of the Vision Zero Network, a nonprofit promoting safe streets, said sometimes officials prioritize preserving people’s ability to drive rather than ensuring safety.

“We don’t all have the right to drive,” Shahum said. “We have the responsibility to drive safely and ensure we don’t hurt others.” She added that many people need to drive in this car-centric state. “That does not mean there can be a license to kill.”

“If we know somebody has a history of dangerous behavior,” she said, “are we going to put that loaded gun back in their hands?”

The gun metaphor was common in the thousands of vehicular manslaughter cases we looked at across California. One prosecutor described dangerous behavior behind the wheel as akin to firing a gun into a crowd.

In letters to the court, surviving relatives and friends described the hole left behind, writing about an empty seat at a high school graduation, a photo cutout taken without fail to home baseball games.

It’s a void one young man tried to explain to authorities — the sudden, violent, blink-of-an-eye moment where life forever changes. For him, it was at 6:45 p.m. on Feb. 27, 2020, on Lone Tree Way in the Bay Area city of Antioch.

Two brothers, ages 11 and 15, were going to meet their dad at a Burger King. They crossed to the median and then waited for a break in the traffic before continuing to the other side. The older one made it across, according to court documents. His younger brother stepped into the street just as a driver gunned his car to 75 miles an hour — 30 over the speed limit.

The older boy watched as his younger brother “just disappeared.”

This is the first piece in a series about how California lets dangerous drivers stay on the road. Sign up for our License to Kill newsletter to be notified when the next story comes out, and to get more behind-the-scenes information from our reporting. 

This article was originally published on CalMatters and was republished under the Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-NoDerivatives license.

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