Want to know how students at your child’s school district are performing five or even 10 years down the line?

On Tuesday, California released a new tool that aims to make that question — and many others — much easier to answer. Known as the Cradle to Career Data System, these new “dashboards” consolidate data from roughly 3.5 million high school graduates in California, showing where they enrolled in college, what kinds of degrees they earned, and the wages they made four years after receiving a college diploma or certificate.

For years, parents and researchers alike have complained that accessing education data is unnecessarily hard — with information spread out across various websites, drop-down menus and graphics. A new data system was a key priority for the Newsom administration, though it faced months of delays, in part because of data privacy concerns.

“We have people who’ve been calling for this (data system) for 10 years, for 20 years,” said Mary Ann Bates, executive director of the Cradle to Career Data System. “The effort the state is making now to bring this together is so that students, families, educators and policymakers can have this information at their fingertips.”

Some other states, such as Kentucky, have already pioneered better approaches, creating a single, understandable website that houses data from the state’s K-12, college and workforce providers. In 2019, California allocated more than $24 million so it could catch up.

Limitations of the New Tool

But today’s data tool represents just a fraction of the state’s education and workforce data. It only looks at students who attend one of California’s public colleges and universities and it only looks at students who graduate from a public high school. One tool by the California Department of Education shows that among 2015 California public high school graduates who headed to college, 15% went to a private or out-of-state college or university within 16 months.

Bates said her team will eventually update these public dashboards to include information about students who attend private or out-of-state colleges and who don’t graduate high school.

As part of this data system, the state has also promised to release other data, including information about early childhood education and teachers’ training and retention. Bates’ team initially said the teacher training information would be available by June 2024, but it remains in limbo. She said that tool would be released “soon,” though she did not specify a date.

How Useful Is It?

Although the Cradle to Career Data System is presenting information in new ways, the information itself isn’t new. California has already developed similar tools, but none so widely accessible to the public or incorporating data from so many different schools and state agencies.

The state Education Department already allowed users to download data and sort college-going rates by school or district, although it’s unlikely most parents would spend the time to download the spreadsheet and try to understand all the column names. One strength of the system is its ease of use — the tool displays key data visually and intuitively.

But each data system may use slightly different numbers. For example, the department uses DataQuest, which has a broader definition of what it means to “graduate” high school. The Cradle to Career Data System looks only at traditional graduates and not people who receive a GED, said Ryan Estrellado, the Cradle to Career system’s director of data programs.

The nonprofit Educational Results Partnership operated one of the many predecessors to the Cradle to Career Data System, and president Alex Barrios said he’s skeptical that the state’s new tool is a real improvement.

“If the dashboard doesn’t start the cohort at 9th grade, then the dashboard is useless,” wrote Barrios in a text to CalMatters. Just over 88% of students who started as ninth graders finished high school five years later, according to 2024 state data, but for certain groups, such as African American or Native American students, the graduation rates were lower.

Without information about high school dropouts, the new tool makes it look like students attend college at higher rates than they actually do, he said. It’s called the Cradle to Career Data System, he added, not the “the High School Graduation to College Data System.” In the previous tool that Barrios helped operate, known as Cal-PASS Plus, researchers could look not just at high school graduates but also at all students who enrolled in 9th grade.

Bates said the Cradle to Career Data System is only as powerful as the data that schools and agencies share. This current data uses information from the past 10 years, which is only enough time to measure the long-term college and career outcomes of high school graduates, she said, adding that other data, such as information about the long-term fates of younger students, will be added as it’s available.

Although the data lacks certain features, it may still lead to powerful findings: One of the new data dashboards shows that community college students who receive a certificate earn more than those who receive an associate degree— even though certificate programs typically take much less time to complete.

The Cradle to Career Data System is “a neutral source of information,” said Bates. “Our office is not going to weigh in on specific policies or interpret the why.”

CalMatters higher education reporter Mikhail Zinshteyn contributed to this story.

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

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Fed up with decades of powerful railroads corrupting the state board that was supposed to regulate them, California voters created the modern Public Utilities Commission in 1911. Now, some 114 years later, Californians have reached their limit with the cozy cronyism between the commission and the private utilities it is required to keep in check.

That voter initiative in the early 20th century made the commission the primary protector of California’s families and businesses against rapacious or unsafe electric and gas utilities. California statutes are filled with requirements that the utilities commission ensures that each cost to provide electricity and gas to customers is both necessary, as well “just and reasonably” priced.

As President Franklin D. Roosevelt put it during a 1932 campaign stop in Oregon, state utility commissions have a “delegated authority and duty to act as the agent of the public themselves; that it is not a mere arbitrator as between the people and the public utilities, but was created for the purpose of seeing that the public utilities do two things: first, give adequate service; second, charge reasonable rates.”

“This means,” he continued, “when that duty is properly exercised, positive and active protection of the people against private greed!”

Commission Loses Its Way

Today, Californians are again faced with what FDR called “a systematic, subtle, deliberate and unprincipled campaign of misinformation, of propaganda, … lies and falsehoods” — bought and paid for by private utilities, he remarked.

More than a century later, California’s utilities commission has lost its way. Over the past 10 years, each and every time California’s private utility companies have wanted more of our money, the state’s appointed commissioners have willingly agreed.

Between 2019 and 2023, average residential electricity rates increased 47%, outpacing inflation, the Legislative Analyst’s Office noted in a January report. Last year alone, the commission approved six increases for PG&E, while it raked in record-breaking profits.

California’s utilities commission is neglecting its primary responsibility. The companies claim that they know best what money and programs they need in order to provide gas and electric service to their customers. They ask us to trust them to spend customer money wisely, without suffocating their businesses with regulatory bureaucrats standing over their shoulders, second-guessing every dollar spent. The CPUC has increasingly obliged, allowing the utilities to choose for themselves what they will spend money on or decide how much they will charge for electric and gas service — gold-plating profit potential without sticking to job one: safe and reliable service at a reasonable cost.

Ignoring Oversight and Audits

Over and over again, the utilities ask and the commission gives them whatever they want. In the past three years the CPUC has created a pernicious practice of “interim” rate increases, handing the utilities billions of dollars more without even having to list or provide any detail for the specific costs they presented for payment.

These interim rate decisions abrogate the CPUC’s fundamental role to dig into the utilities’ cost proposals, figure out what we actually should pay for safe service, and reject the expensive baubles and trinkets Californians shouldn’t be on the hook for.

The commission also ignored independent audits of the utilities’ wildfire spending. In 2021, California’s big three utilities either could not account for or diverted $240 million, $700 million and $1.5 billion in money the CPUC had already allowed the companies to collect for programs they proposed, planned and profited off. The audits urged commissioners to withhold money for additional wildfire prevention projects until the utilities could explain what they spent the initial funding on.

Read More: Californians pay billions for power companies’ wildfire prevention efforts. Are they cost-effective?

That didn’t happen. Both PG&E and Southern California Edison were given the vast majority of what they asked for in new funding, without any true up or requirement that they explain how they spent the previous tranche of public dollars.

Highest Rates in the Nation

So it’s not surprising that California families now face the second-highest utility rates in the nation, and California businesses own the dubious prize of paying the highest business rates in the country.

What’s surprising is why, for so long, we have tolerated the commission’s abdication of its central duty: To protect us while making sure that needed and reasonable investments are made to keep the lights on. When will we require our elected officials to stop the gravy train and make the state utilities commission do its job?

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

About the Author

Loretta Lynch served as president of the California Public Utilities Commission from 2000 through 2002 and as a commissioner until January 2005.

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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 Over a Century Later, California May Need Another Revolt Against Its Utility Companies appeared first on GV Wire.

Last week, Gov. Gavin Newsom and Attorney General Rob Bonta filed a lawsuit challenging the legality of President Donald Trump’s broad imposition of tariffs on imported goods.

“President Trump’s unlawful tariffs are wreaking chaos on California families, businesses, and our economy, driving up prices and threatening jobs,” Newsom said in a statement.

The tariffs could have all of those negative impacts, but California’s economy was already sluggish.

As Gabe Petek, the Legislature’s budget analyst, said in a January response to Newsom’s state revenue forecast, “These gains are not tied to improvements in the state’s broader economy, which has been lackluster, with elevated unemployment, a stagnant job market outside of government and healthcare, and sluggish consumer spending.”

California has more than a million unemployed workers and its unemployment rate is tied for second-highest among the states.

Key Industries Facing Headwinds

“Jobs growth remains concentrated in government and government supported health care and social services while other private industries in total continue to shed jobs,” according to the Center for Jobs and the Economy, an arm of the California Business Roundtable trade group.

Virtually every major segment of California’s economy has been facing stiff headwinds in recent years, but the only one enjoying political notice has been Southern California’s film industry, which is seeing other states and nations lure production away with lower costs and subsidies.

“Those business decisions have considerable consequences for the industry’s thousands of middle-class workers: the camera operators, set decorators and lighting technicians who make movies and television happen,” the New York Times reported.

Newsom and the Legislature are planning a major increase in state subsidies to keep production in California, but it may be too little and too late.

Tech Sector Troubles

Meanwhile, “The substantial loss of technology jobs in the Bay Area so far this year is a huge shock to the Bay Area economy and labor market,” Scott Anderson, chief economist with BMO Capital Markets, recently told the East Bay Times. “The technology job loss trend has been in place for some time now, but the deterioration in the first two months of the year is concerning.”

Tariffs could hit Southern California’s most important economic driver — the twin ports of Long Beach and Los Angeles and the warehouse complexes in the region’s interior — especially hard. But this sector was already facing rising costs that undercut its competitiveness.

The Goods Movement Alliance, a coalition of business groups, is backing Newsom’s challenge to tariffs, but also cites the state’s policies, industrial electricity rates twice the national average and high gasoline and diesel fuel prices as negative factors, as well as new pollution controls on ships and anti-warehousing legislation.

California’s largest-in-the-nation agricultural industry, including its famous winemaking sector, is also shrinking, largely due to uncertain water supplies, labor shortages and the same high costs for electricity and fuel that the logistics industry faces.

The Public Policy Institute of California has estimated that, “even in the best-case scenario, some 500,000 acres may need to be fallowed in the San Joaquin Valley” due to restrictions on pumping irrigation water from underground aquifers.

Government Sector Also Strained

Finally, even though government has been California’s foremost employment driver — including government-financed medical services — in recent years, it is also facing bleak times. The state budget is mired in what fiscal experts call a “structural deficit” and virtually every major city, some counties and large school districts are in the same pickle. Los Angeles and San Francisco are particularly plagued after several years of of overspending and their leaders, such as Los Angeles Mayor Karen Bass, are warning that layoffs may be inevitable.

Trump’s tariffs might make things worse, but California’s economic woes predate Trump. Much of it was self-inflicted.

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

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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.

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Wickey Two Hands sat at the defense table on a recent Thursday morning, holding in his lap the red baseball cap he’d doffed out of respect for the judge.

The 77-year-old homeless man was supposed to be the first person tried in court under an ordinance Fresno passed last year making it a crime to camp in all public places. Over the past six months, he’d spent hours in a courtroom, arriving early for each hearing. He’d packed up and moved his campsite multiple times, trying to find out-of-the-way spots where he could avoid getting arrested again.

But instead of sending Two Hands’ case before a jury, the judge — on the day trial was supposed to begin — dismissed all charges. The reason? The city waited too long to prosecute.

Two Hands’ case shines a spotlight on a contradiction seen around the state in recent months. California cities are passing ordinances left and right that allow police to arrest or cite unhoused people for camping on their streets and sidewalks, or in their parks. Police are making arrests. But when it comes to prosecuting, trying or sentencing people for violating these ordinances, some cities haven’t been able to follow through. In many cases, prosecutors aren’t filing charges. If people are charged, their cases often are dismissed quickly. Two Hands’ case was a rarity for how close it came to trial. But in the end, it too was thrown out.

That has some wondering: what’s the point of arresting people at all?

Related Story: Fresno’s Anti-Camping Ordinance Goes into Effect. City Says It Will ...

A Bellwether Case Dismissed

Two Hands’ case was set to be a bellwether to see if Fresno’s camping ban — under which police have made several hundred arrests already — would hold up before a jury. The city and county — as well as Two Hands’ lawyer, activists and even local journalists — invested a considerable amount of resources in the case before it was ultimately dismissed last week without a trial or any public hearings on its merits.

“They wasted a lot of time and money pursuing this case,” said Ron Hochbaum, a law professor at the University of the Pacific who specializes in homelessness and poverty law. “When you think about all the people who were involved, from police to the city attorney’s office to judges and court clerks and so on. That’s probably hundreds of hours of work and thousands of dollars wasted. And that money would be better spent by simply offering Mr. Two Hands housing without arresting him.”

Resources Expended

CalMatters analyzed the resources that went into prosecuting Two Hands’ case:

At 8:40 a.m. on Oct. 14, 2024, two Fresno police officers came across Two Hands and his belongings on the side of the road and arrested him for camping in a public place and illegally possessing a shopping cart.

Over the next six months, Two Hands attended four hearings in three different courtrooms. Before each hearing, he dropped off his belongings at a friend’s house and then caught the bus to the downtown Fresno courthouse, sometimes arriving as much as an hour early so he didn’t miss anything. After court, an advocate sometimes drove him back to his campsite. On April 10, the day his trial was supposed to begin, he missed work to attend court, skipping his scheduled shift at a wrecking yard and with it, his chance to earn money for food and other necessities for the day.

City and county resources also went into each hearing. Public funds paid for the presence of a judge, a bailiff and staff from the city attorney’s office. The city brought on outside law firm Manning Kass to help prosecute the case.

Kevin Little, a private attorney who specializes in civil rights litigation, signed on to defend Two Hands pro bono. Little estimates he spent between 100 and 150 hours on Two Hands’ case. He had two additional staff members helping him, and they put in another 50 to 100 hours. The week the case was supposed to go to trial, Little said he spent a couple nights working in his office until 3 a.m.

“They wasted a lot of time and money pursuing this case.”

Ron Hochbaum, law professor, University of the Pacific

Another attorney, Patience Milrod, was also in court on April 10. She was there to represent Pablo Orihuela, a Fresnoland journalist who had been covering Two Hands’ case and received a subpoena to testify on behalf of the prosecution. Attorney Karl Olson was standing by to contest a subpoena issued to Fresno Bee reporter Thaddeus Miller, according to the Bee.

In addition to Orihuela and Miller, journalists from CalMatters and ABC30 were there to cover the trial.

About two-dozen activists and local community members also showed up at the courthouse — some arriving as early as 7 a.m. despite work and childcare obligations — to support Two Hands on the day his trial was set to start. Activist Wes White drove two-and-a-half hours from Salinas to be there.

After all that, Judge Brian Alvarez dismissed the case. He found that the trial should have started by March 6, and going past that date would violate Two Hands’ right to a speedy trial. Two Hands’ supporters filed out of the courtroom and filled the hallway, cheering, until a bailiff asked them to keep it down.

“I’m really shocked by how much money and resources they put into this,” said advocate Dez Martinez, who recently helped Two Hands get into a shelter. “There was so much money used in this so they can make a point because they don’t want to lose a case. It just bothers me that they used that (many resources) and finances into punishing Wickey instead of doing what I did: sit down and talk to him, figure out why does he not want to go inside.”

The trial originally was set to start Feb. 20, but the city asked for a delay, which was granted by Judge Carlos Cabrera. Judge Alvarez appeared to disagree with that ruling.

The city blamed Two Hands’ team for the case getting thrown out. The defense’s subpoena request forced the city to review an extensive amount of documents, which took extra time, Deputy City Attorney Daniel Cisneros told the court. The city also had tried to prevent the case from going to trial by offering Two Hands a plea deal, which it said would come with a shelter bed. Two Hands declined, instead opting to try to clear his name through a trial.

“The City’s position is to continue to offer plea deals to defendants who accept housing and services offered by the City,” the city attorney’s office said in an emailed statement from Noemi Schwartz. “It is unfortunate that this defendant declined the services and housing offered by City at a congregate shelter at Travel Inn and will likely end up back on the streets without shelter and assistance.”

A Pattern Across California

Fresno’s new camping ordinance went into effect in September, making it a misdemeanor to sit, lie, sleep or camp in a public place. But most people arrested aren’t prosecuted, and even fewer come close to a trial. Fresno police made 322 arrests under that ordinance from October 2024 through January 2025. During that time, the city attorney’s office filed charges in just 132 camping cases. The defendant failed to show up in court in more than half of the cases in which charges were filed. Only one other case, in addition to Two Hands’, was listed as headed toward trial.

It’s a similar situation in other cities, from the Bay Area to Southern California. Police in Los Angeles made 238 camping arrests last year, and the city attorney’s office declined to file charges in two-thirds of those cases. In San Francisco, nearly four in five illegal lodging arrests made since August 2024 have not resulted in charges, according to the San Francisco Chronicle.

“Cities and district attorneys aren’t interested in prosecuting the cases because they know they don’t have enough room in jail and prisons to incarcerate everyone who is experiencing homelessness,” Hochbaum said. And they know slapping someone with a fine won’t stop them from sleeping outside, he said.

Instead, he said, many cities are using the threat of arrest to force unhoused people to move when they want to clear an encampment.

For the time being, Two Hands is sleeping inside after five years on the street. Martinez said she got him a 90-day stay at a city-run shelter — with no help from the city attorney’s office.

“(It’s) a pretty good day in my life,” Two Hands said outside the courthouse, after his case was dismissed. “77 seasons I’ve been here, you know, I think I deserve it.”

While Two Hands was hesitant to accept a shelter bed at first, Martinez said after spending months talking to him, getting to know him and showing up at his side to his court dates, she won his trust. She promised to keep fighting to get Two Hands into permanent housing, sign him up for Social Security, help him access health care, and get him whatever else he needs.

“It’s not that he wants to stay outside,” Martinez said. “He’s tired. He doesn’t want to die on the sidewalk. He didn’t want to be given something and have it be taken away.”

Fresno still has yet to try anyone for sleeping outside, but that could change. Little is representing another unhoused man who was arrested for camping — and plans on bringing that case to trial.

“I hope the message the city gets,” Little said, “is leave the unhoused alone. Help them and don’t prosecute them. But if you are going to choose unfortunately to prosecute these cases, then you better come ready, because we’re not backing down.”

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

The post What Happens After a Homeless Person Is Arrested for Camping? Often, Not Much appeared first on GV Wire.

Facing the continued collapse of Chinook salmon, officials today shut down California’s commercial salmon fishing season for an unprecedented third year in a row.

Under the decision by an interstate fisheries agency, recreational salmon fishing will be allowed in California for only brief windows of time this spring. This will be the first year that any sportfishing of Chinook has been allowed since 2022.

Tuesday’s decision by the Pacific Fishery Management Council means that no salmon caught off California can be sold to retail consumers and restaurants for at least another year. In Oregon and Washington, commercial salmon fishing will remain open, although limited.

“From a salmon standpoint, it’s an environmental disaster. For the fishing industry, it’s a human tragedy, and it’s also an economic disaster,” said Scott Artis, executive director of the Golden State Salmon Association, an industry organization that has lobbied for river restoration and improved hatchery programs.

The decline of California’s salmon follows decades of deteriorating conditions in the waterways where the fish spawn each year, including the Sacramento and Klamath rivers.

California’s salmon are an ecological icon and a valued source of food for Native American tribes. The shutdown also has an economic toll: It has already put hundreds of commercial fishers and sportfishing boat operators out of work and affected thousands of people in communities and industries reliant on processing, selling and serving locally caught salmon.

California’s commercial fishery has never been closed for three years in a row before.

Some experts fear the conditions in California have been so poor for so long that Chinook may never rebound to fishable levels. Others remain hopeful for major recovery if the amounts of water diverted to farms and cities are reduced and wetlands kept dry by flood-control levees are restored.

This year’s recreational season includes several brief windows for fishing, including a weekend in June and another in July, or a quota of 7,000 fish.

Jared Davis, owner and operator of the Salty Lady in Sausalito, one of dozens of party boats that take paying customers fishing, thinks it’s likely that this quota will be met on the first open weekend for recreational fishing, scheduled for June 7-8.

“Obviously, the pressure is going to be intense, so everybody and their mother is going to be out on the water on those days,” he said. “When they hit that quota, it’s done.”

One member of the fishery council, Corey Ridings, voted against the proposed regulations after saying she was concerned that the first weekend would overshoot the 7,000-fish quota.

Davis said such a miniscule recreational season won’t help boat owners like him recover from past closures, though it will carry symbolic meaning.

“It might give California anglers a glimmer of hope and keep them from selling all their rods and buying golf clubs,” he said.

Sarah Bates, a commercial fisher based at San Francisco’s Fisherman’s Wharf, said the ongoing closure has stripped many boat owners of most of their income.

“It continues to be devastating,” she said. “Salmon has been the cornerstone of many of our ports for a long time.”

She said the shutdown also has trickle-down effects on a range of businesses that support the salmon fishery, such as fuel services, grocery stores and dockside ice machines.

“We’re also seeing a sort of a third wave … the general seafood market for local products has tanked,” such as rockfish and halibut. She said that many buyers are turning to farmed and wild salmon delivered from other regions instead.

Davis noted that federal emergency relief funds promised for the 2023 closure still have not arrived. “Nobody has seen a dime,” he said.

Fewer returning salmon

Before the Gold Rush, several million Chinook spawned annually in the river systems of the Central Valley and the state’s northern coast. Through much of the 20th century, California’s salmon fishery formed the economic backbone of coastal fishing ports, with fishers using hook and line pulling in millions of pounds in good years.

But in 2024, just 99,274 fall-run Chinook — the most commercially viable of the Central Valley’s four subpopulations — returned to the Sacramento River and its tributaries, substantially lower than the numbers in 2023. In 2022, fewer than 70,000 returned, one of the lowest estimates ever.

About 40,000 returned to the San Joaquin River. Fewer than 30,000 Chinook reached their spawning grounds in the Klamath River system, where the Hoopa, Yurok and Karuk tribes rely on the fish in years of abundance.

The decline of California’s salmon stems from nearly two centuries of damage inflicted on the rivers where salmon spend the first and final stages of their lives. Gold mining, logging and dam construction devastated watersheds. Levees constrained rivers, turning them into relatively sterile channels of fast-moving water while converting floodplains and wetlands into irrigated farmland.

Today, many of these impacts persist, along with water diversions, reduced flows and elevated river temperatures that frequently spell death for fertilized eggs and juvenile fish.

The future of California salmon is murky

Peter Moyle, a UC Davis fish biologist and professor emeritus, said recovery of self-sustaining populations may be possible in some tributaries of the Sacramento River.

“There are some opportunities for at least keeping runs going in parts of the Central Valley, but getting naturally spawning fish back in large numbers, I just can’t see it happening,” he said.

Jacob Katz, a biologist with the group California Trout, holds out hope for a future of flourishing Sacramento River Chinook. “We could have vibrant fall-run populations in a decade,” he said.

That will require major habitat restoration involving dam removals, reconstruction of levee systems to revive wetlands and floodplains, and reduced water diversions for agriculture — all measures fraught with cost, regulatory constraints, and controversy.

State recovery efforts

State officials, recognizing the risk of extinction, have promoted salmon recovery as a policy goal for years. In early 2024, the Newsom administration released its California Salmon Strategy for a Hotter, Drier Future, a 37-page catalogue of proposed actions to mitigate environmental impacts and restore flows and habitat, all in the face of climate change.

California Department of Fish and Wildlife Director Charlton H. Bonham said the decision to allow limited recreational fishing “brings hope. We know, however, that this news brings little relief” to the industry.

He said salmon “are still recovering from severe drought and other climate challenges and have not yet benefitted from our consecutive years of wet winters and other actions taken to boost populations.”

However, Artis of Golden State Salmon Association said while the state’s salmon strategy includes some important items, it leaves out equally critical steps, such as protecting minimum flows for fish. He said salmon are threatened by proposed water projects endorsed by the Newsom administration.

“It fails to include some of the upcoming salmon-killing projects that the governor is pushing like Sites Reservoir and the Delta tunnel, and it ignores the fact that the Voluntary Agreements are designed to allow massive diversions of water,” he said.

Experts agree that an important key to rebuilding salmon runs is increasing the frequency and duration of shallow flooding in riverside riparian areas, or even fallow rice paddies — a program Katz has helped develop through his career.

On such seasonal floodplains, a shallow layer of water can help trigger an explosion of photosynthesis and food production, ultimately providing nutrition for juvenile salmon as they migrate out of the river system each spring.

Through meetings with farmers, urban water agencies and government officials, Rene Henery, California science director with Trout Unlimited, has helped draft an ambitious salmon recovery plan dubbed “Reorienting to Recovery.” Featuring habitat restoration, carefully managed harvests and generously enhanced river flows — especially in dry years — this framework, Henery said, could rebuild diminished Central Valley Chinook runs to more than 1.6 million adult fish per year over a 20-year period.

He said adversaries — often farmers and environmentalists — must shift from traditional feuds over water to more collaborative programs of restoring productive watersheds while maintaining productive agriculture.

As the recovery needle for Chinook moves in the wrong direction, Katz said deliberate action is urgent.

“We’re balanced on the edge of losing these populations,” he said. “We have to go big now. We have no other option.”

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

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Efforts to implement some legislation fell short during last year’s legislative session amid a bitter split within the Legislative Black Caucus over slow progress. This year, Gov. Gavin Newsom is widely seen as shifting politically to the right following a string of nationwide victories for President Donald Trump and his fellow Republicans.

Still, the Black Caucus says it isn’t backing down from its push for equity and reparative justice legislation in 2025. But the group is not using the word “reparations” to describe its collection of 16 bills, partly because the legislation does not require cash payments as restitution for slavery. That’s a change from last year, when the group’s incremental approach led to a clash with advocates.

The slate includes second tries at measures that failed last year, such as establishing a new state agency to help implement and fund equity legislation and removing language from the state constitution that allows prison administrators to force people to work under threat of disciplinary consequences.

While a majority of Californians have said they support an official apology for the state’s role in supporting slavery, the idea of direct cash reparations is unpopular — a 2023 poll by UC Berkeley’s Institute of Governmental Studies showed Californians opposing payments by a 2-to-1 margin.
CalMatters’ reparations calculator, based on economic modeling in the task force’s report, estimates that an eligible Black resident who has lived seven decades in California could be owed up to $1.2 million.

Denise Amos of CalMatters contributed reporting to this explainer.

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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 California Department of Motor Vehicles 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.

The DMV 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.

We reviewed vehicular manslaughter cases in California from 2019 through early 2024 to understand how the state handles dangerous drivers.

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.

Here are the key takeaways from our investigation:

1. The DMV Misses — or Ignores — Patterns of Reckless Behavior on the Roads That Persist for Years, Failing to Stop Dangerous Drivers Before They Kill.

The state system that targets motorists who rack up tickets is designed to catch clusters of reckless behavior, not long-term patterns.

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.

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.

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

2. Nearly 40% of Drivers Charged With Vehicular Manslaughter Since 2019 Have a Valid License, According to DMV Records.

That’s about 1,000 out of 2,600 drivers for whom we obtained DMV reports, drivers like Joshua Daugherty.

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.

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 hit a dirt embankment and went airborne, the SUV flipping onto its roof. A 16-year-old girl riding in the back died.

He was convicted of vehicular manslaughter in both cases. The DMV suspended his license after his conviction for killing Kazmark. But it wasn’t enough to keep him off the road. Before he could report to jail, two months after the conviction, police caught him driving on a suspended license.

The DMV reissued Daugherty a license in July 2024.

3. The DMV Often Takes No Action Against Drivers Convicted of Killing Someone on the Road.

State law requires the agency to strip motorists of their driving privileges for three years after a felony vehicular manslaughter conviction. But there is no such requirement for most misdemeanor vehicular manslaughter convictions. It’s up to the DMV whether to do anything.

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.

That includes truck driver Ramon Pacheco, who 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.

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

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.

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.”

4. The DMV Issued Licenses to 150 Drivers Less Than a Year After They Allegedly Killed Someone on the Road.

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

5. Nearly 400 of the Drivers Charged With Killing Someone Got a Ticket or Were in Another Collision — or Both — After Their Fatal Crash.

That’s about 15% of the drivers for whom we got the DMV reports. While the reports don’t indicate whether a driver was at fault in a crash, the records do suggest many drivers continue to drive dangerously even after killing someone on the road.

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.

6. Hundreds of Drivers Have Vehicular Manslaughter or Related Convictions That Don’t Appear in DMV Records.

The apparent error means some drivers who should have had their driving privileges suspended instead show up in DMV records as having a valid license.

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.

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

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

The manslaughter conviction — like hundreds of others we found — isn’t listed on Cook’s driving record. The DMV issued Cook his current driver’s license just a month after the conviction, agency records show. Less than two weeks after that, he got a ticket for disobeying a traffic signal.

“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,” said Melinda Aiello, chief deputy district attorney in Yolo County. “You killed somebody. I’d think there might be some license implications.”

7. The DMV Denied Our Request to Discuss Our Findings With Director Steve Gordon.

Gordon instead issued a brief statement: “The modernization of our systems, including the launch of the Driver Safety Portal, reflects our ongoing commitment to enhancing accountability and transparency while continually refining our processes to ensure California’s roads are safer for everyone.”

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.

Orrock said the DMV couldn’t comment on individual drivers. But he and agency officials did explain what happens after a deadly collision, a process that’s separate from any statutorily required suspensions following a conviction.

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.”

This is the first story 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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The California Coastal Commission fined an oil company a record $18 million last week for repeatedly defying orders to stop work on a corroded pipeline in Santa Barbara County that caused a major oil spill nearly a decade ago.

The vote sets the stage for a potentially high-stakes test of the state’s power to police oil development along the coast. The onshore pipeline in Gaviota gushed more than 100,000 gallons of crude oil onto coastal land and ocean waters, shutting down fisheries, closing beaches and harming marine life and coastal habitats in 2015.

Sable Offshore Corp., a Houston-based company, purchased the pipeline from the previous owners, Exxon Mobil, last year, and is seeking to restart the Santa Ynez offshore oil operation.

The Coastal Commission said Sable has done something no alleged violator has ever done before: ignore the agency’s multiple cease-and-desist orders and continue its work.

“Our orders were valid and legally issued, and Sable’s refusal to comply is a refusal to follow the law,” said Commissioner Meagan Harmon, who also is a member of the Santa Barbara City Council. “Their refusal, in a very real sense, is a subversion of the will of the people of the state of California.”

Company Defies Orders

The company argued it can proceed using the pipeline’s original county permit issued in the 1980s. In February, Sable sued the Coastal Commission saying the state is unlawfully halting the company’s repair and maintenance work.

Public Outcry

At a 5-hour public hearing in Santa Barbara today, more than 100 speakers lined up, many of them urging the commission to penalize Sable and stop its work. Some invoked memories of the 2015 Refugio Oil Spill as well as the massive 1969 Santa Barbara oil spill caused by a blowout on a Union Oil drilling rig. Public outrage over that spill helped shape the environmental movement, led to the first Earth Day and contributed to the enactment of many national environmental laws.

“I’ve never taken how special this area is for granted,” said Santa Barbara County resident Carol Millar. “As a kid, I was traumatized by the ’69 oil spill, and in 2015, I had to watch my own kids go through the same trauma.”

Steve Rusch, Sable’s vice president of environmental and governmental affairs, said the commission was overreaching because of the spill caused by the previous owners.

“We are proud of our good-paying, skilled jobs that our project has brought to the region,” he told commissioners. “It’s not about the 2015 Refugio oil spill. It’s not about the restart of the pipeline …it’s not about the future of oil production or fossil fuel in California.”

In repairing the former, corroded pipelines, the company is seeking to restart production of the Santa Ynez oil operation, which includes three offshore rigs, according to an investor presentation by the company. Operations stopped after the 2015 spill.

Sable had been excavating around the former pipelines and placing cement bags on the seafloor below its oil and water pipelines.

The Coastal Commission’s fine levied against Sable is the highest ever levied against a company, according to a commission spokesperson. The commission voted to lower the $18 million fine to potentially just under $15 million if Sable complies with the state’s orders and applies for a coastal development permit.

In addition to the penalty, the commissioners voted to order Sable to cease its work and restore land and offshore areas, including replanting vegetation and erosion control, where the unauthorized work occurred.

Commission Details Violations

Beginning last year, commission staff charged the company with multiple violations of coastal laws, including unpermitted construction and excavation using heavy equipment along the 14-mile oil pipeline on the Gaviota Coast, including in waters offshore.

The enforcement division of the commission said Sable undertook major work at multiple locations without securing the required coastal development permits.

The company dug large pits, cleared vegetation, graded and widened roads, placed cement and sandbags in ocean waters and drained water sources, among other damage, according to a staff presentation. Commission staff said these actions went beyond routine maintenance and amounted to a full rebuild of the pipeline.

Coastal Commission officials emphasized that the work posed serious risks to the environment, including wetlands and other sensitive habitats, potentially harming protected species, including western pond turtles and steelhead.

“The timing of the implemented development is particularly problematic, as much of this development has been during bird nesting season, as well as red-legged frog breeding season and Southern Steelhead migratory spawning season,” said Stephanie Cook, an attorney with the commission. “This work has a high potential to adversely impact these habitat areas.”

The staff said it spent months trying to get Sable to cooperate but the company provided incomplete or misleading information.

Rusch, in a statement issued after the hearing, said the company is conducting routine pipeline repair and maintenance, and said the actions were allowed under old permits issued by Santa Barbara County. The work is taking place in areas already affected by previous construction and use, and the company says the state cannot override the county’s interpretation of its permits.

“Sable is dedicated to restarting project operations in a safe and efficient manner,” Rusch said in the statement. “No California business should be forced to go through a protracted and arbitrary permitting process when it already has valid permits for the work it performed.”

However, the validity of the county permit for the pipeline is in dispute. The Santa Barbara County Board of Supervisors in a February vote did not approve transferring the county permit to Sable, the new owner. The vote was 2-2, with one member abstaining because the pipeline runs through her property. County officials are still trying to decide their next step.

One concern of county officials is whether Sable has the financial ability and adequate insurance to handle a major oil spill.

The pipeline dispute comes as the Trump administration moves to boost domestic oil and gas production while sidelining efforts to develop wind and solar.

Several workers who said they were affiliated with the company spoke out in support along with others who said the company would boost the local economy.

Evelyn Lynn, director of operations at Aspen Helicopters in Oxnard, said she supported Sable’s efforts because it would give her company a boost.

“If they’re not allowed to start their efforts again, this will have huge collateral damage to all of our local businesses, and also to our company in particular, and all of our local people who live here,” Lynn said. “All of our employees are required to live in California. They are all local, and they are all affected.”

The Coastal Commission’s permits are not the only step the company has to take to operate the pipeline. Multiple state agencies regulate pipelines, including the California Department of Fish and Wildlife’s Office of Oil Spill and Prevention Response and the Office of the State Fire Marshal.

Environmental groups have called for a full environmental review of the pipeline under the California Environmental Quality Act.

National environmental organizations such as the Center for Biological Diversity have weighed in, along with local advocates, to support the Coastal Commission. A group born out of the original Santa Barbara oil spill — the Environmental Defense Center — opposes the project and efforts to restart drilling. The Surfrider Foundation also launched a “Don’t Enable Sable” campaign, and several beachgoers spoke out against the project.

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

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The spiraling cost of housing in California has affected virtually every facet of life.

California has the nation’s largest unsheltered homeless population and among the highest rates of cost-burdened renters and overcrowded homes.

One reason for the seemingly endless upward trajectory of rents is how expensive it is to build new apartments in California. Those costs are a major contributor to “break-even rents,” or what must be charged for a project to be financially feasible.

Comparing Costs Across States

I recently led a study that compared total apartment development costs in California to those in Colorado and Texas. The average apartment in Texas costs roughly $150,000 to produce; in California, building the same apartment costs around $430,000, or 2.8 times more. Colorado occupies a middle ground, with an average cost of around $240,000 per unit.

For publicly subsidized, affordable apartments — a sector that California has spent billions on in recent years — the gap is even worse. These cost over four times as much as affordable apartment units in Colorado and Texas.

There’s no single factor driving these huge differences. Land costs in California are over three times the Texas average. “Hard costs,” or those related to improving the land and constructing buildings, are 2.2 times those in Texas. California’s “soft costs,” which include financing, architectural and engineering fees, and development fees charged by local governments, are 3.8 times the Texas average.

Breaking Down California’s High Costs

There are some unavoidable California-specific costs, like ensuring buildings are resilient to shaking from earthquakes. But the truly lifesaving seismic requirements explain only around 6% of hard-cost differences, the study estimated. The state’s strict energy efficiency requirements add around 7%.

California’s high cost of living may drive up the price of labor, but we found that construction wage differences explain only 6% to 10% of hard-cost differences for market-rate apartments. However, for publicly subsidized apartment projects, which are often mandated to pay union-level wages, labor expenses explain as much as 20% to 35% of the total difference in costs between California and Texas.

“Soft costs” in California are a major culprit. California property developers pay remarkably high fees for architectural and engineering services — triple the average cost in Texas. It’s five times as much or more if you’re building publicly funded, affordable apartments in the Los Angeles and San Francisco metro areas.

Seismic engineering requirements play a role. The bigger factor are complex and burdensome design requirements for affordable housing. These are dictated by state and local funding sources, and have little to do with habitability or safety but contribute substantially to these astonishing differences.

Development fees to local governments make up the largest soft-cost difference in California. Such fees, which were the subject of a 2024 U.S. Supreme Court case, average around $30,000 per unit. In Texas, the average is about $800. (Again, Colorado occupies a middle ground at around $12,000.)

In San Diego, for example, these fees on average eat up 14% of total development costs per apartment.

The Biggest Culprit: Time

But the biggest thing driving up California apartment costs? Time.

A privately financed apartment building that takes just over two years to produce from start to finish in Texas would take over four years in California. It takes twice as long to gain project approvals and the construction timeline is 1.5 times longer.

That means land costs must be carried for longer, equipment and labor are on jobsites longer, and that loans are taken out for a longer term, and so on.

Most of the differences that the study uncovered stem from policy choices made by state and local governments. Many are legacies of the so-called “slow growth movement” in California, which has shaped housing production since the 1980s.

Those efforts worked. Population growth in the state went negative for a few years after 2020, due primarily to the high cost of housing. Even more recently, California’s growth was half the numbers seen in Texas and Florida, with younger and higher earners disproportionately leaving.

These departures have dire implications for the state’s fiscal future and political influence nationally. California recently lost a congressional seat for the first time in its history. If current national population trends hold, it could lose four or five seats in 2030.

The California Legislature has become increasingly focused on reducing the cost of living, but meeting this goal requires substantial progress on lowering housing costs. New proposals to exempt urban infill housing production from state environmental law and a package of permitting reforms are steps in that direction.

Will policymakers also take lessons from Texas and Colorado’s cheaper housing methods? That remains to be seen. But the future of California may well hinge on it.

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

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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.

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