A crowd gathers around a vintage lowrider-style car that is bouncing on its hydraulics in this still from “American Homeboy.” Original footage from the Barrio Expressions community access show that ran on Hayward, CA cable television from 1976-1985.
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Juan Espinoza / Courtesy Barrio Expressions
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Topline:
There are two ways that people look at “homeboy culture,” says filmmaker Brandon Loran Maxwell. “They look at it as either a meme, it's just a joke," or it's "'all these people are criminals and they're bad.’” Both interpretations are wrong.
Why it matters: His new documentary American Homeboy redefines the rich history of pachuco and cholo culture, set against the backdrop of the Chicano and Mexican American experience that gave rise to it, in L.A. and around the Southwest.It's now a global influence, inspiring fashion, music, tattoos, street art, and lowrider car clubs as far away as Japan.
The backstory: “You have this subculture that was refined over a century through different events, different world events, multiple wars,” said Loran Maxwell. “I wanted to explain how some of these events and some of these policies shaped this subculture.”
What's next: Screenings in Santa Ana, L.A. and Sacramento leading up to the release on the Chela TV subscription streaming app. “And then I'm gonna meet with some distributors and we'll see if there's any interest of taking it to a bigger audience.”
There are two ways that people look at what filmmaker Brandon Loran Maxwell calls “homeboy culture,” that of the pachucos, cholos, and lowriders who’ve long been a part of the L.A. fabric.
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New Documentary Looks At Origins Of Cholo And Pachuco Culture
“They look at it as either a meme, it's just a joke to them, and they don't have any understanding of the history behind those things,” he said. “Or they look at it like it's an abomination, like it's corrosive, and it's ‘all these people are criminals and they're bad.’”
Both interpretations are wrong, Loran Maxwell said.
“They're missing the bigger picture. And so I wanted to go into that bigger picture.”
That bigger picture led Loran Maxwell to spend the last three years producing American Homeboy, a new documentary that’s been screening in select cities. It comes to Santa Ana’s The Frida Cinema this Saturday, and to the Gardena Cinema in Gardena Oct. 12. Next month, the documentary is set to be on Chela TV, a new subscription streaming app dedicated to amplifying Chicano and Latino voices.
The movie combines interviews and archival footage to explore the rich history of pachuco and cholo culture, set against the backdrop of the Chicano and Mexican American experience that gave rise to it, in L.A. and around the Southwest.
"American Homeboy" director Brandon Loran Maxwell on Whittier Boulevard in East L.A.
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Brian Feinzimer
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LAist
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The film takes in historic events and policies that fueled Chicano youth counterculture: anti-Mexican racism after the Mexican-American war and the Mexican Revolution, discrimination during World War II (including L.A.’s 1943 Zoot Suit Riots), the Vietnam War and the Chicano civil rights movement.
In more recent decades, gangs, mass incarceration and prison culture also played a role in shaping a subculturethat has since risen to global influence. Cholo culture has inspired fashion, music, tattoos, street art and lowrider car clubs as far away as Japan.
“You have this subculture that was refined over a century through different events, different world events, multiple wars,” said Loran Maxwell. “I wanted to explain how some of these events and some of these policies shaped this subculture.”
The first-time director sifted through 50 hours of archival footage to make the film, and interviewed a dozen-plus experts — lifelong cholos, authors (including Luis Rodriguez (ofAlways Running fame), other filmmakers, lowriders, artists, academics, a former law enforcement officer, a full-body tattoo “collector” — several of them from Los Angeles, where cholo culture is inextricably tied to the city’s identity.
Loran Maxwell himself grew up Mexican American far from Los Angeles, on the outskirts of Portland, where as a teen he absorbed cholo culture imported from points south. He became involved in gang life, too — but as the film portrays, he said, cholo culture is much bigger than that.
“I was very conscientious of, you know, putting forward another gang movie,” he said. “I didn't want to do that, because this is different.”
Exploring Pachuco roots
The origins of pachuco and cholo culture go way back.
“The word ‘cholo,’ let's focus on that for a minute,” said James Vigil, a retired professor with UC Irvine’s School of Social Ecology, who was interviewed for the film. “That word stems from the 16th century, when the Spanish arrived.”
Vigil said the term was used derogatorily by the Spanish to refer to mestizo children born to Spanish and Indigenous parents, typically children born out of wedlock who were deemed outsiders.
“They had no roots, no family standings, no recognition to be absorbed into 'normal' society,” Vigil said. This sense of outsiderness endured and carried over to the U.S., as the Mexican American population grew in the early 20th century following the Mexican Revolution.
Pachuco culture, the early progenitor of cholo culture, with its Caló slang and baggy zoot suits inspired by the Black jazz scene, didn’t start in Los Angeles. It’s believed to have originated in the late 1930s in El Paso, Texas, migrating west with transplants to L.A., San Jose, San Diego and other Mexican American cultural hubs.
While pachuco and later cholo culture took root and flourished in other cities — notably San Jose, the original home of Lowrider Magazine — it holds a special place here in L.A.
“I think L.A. does it in its own way that's different than the rest of the Southwest,” Loran Maxwell said. “I think California has really embraced it and owned it and championed it, in a way that other states haven't, and continues to.”
Zoot suiters line up outside a local jail on their way to court after the 1943 Zoot Suit Riots, begun when sailors attacked pachucos in Los Angeles.
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Library of Congress
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Library of Congress
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Pachuco culture became popular among rebellious young Chicanos and Chicanas in 1940s L.A. It also gained notoriety: In 1942, several young L.A. pachucos were accused of murder, without sufficient evidence, in what is known as the Sleepy Lagoon case.
The following year, as anti-pachuco sentiment grew, American servicemen stormed East L.A. streets, assaulting, beating, and stripping the clothes off pachucos they encountered in what became known as the Zoot Suit Riots.
L.A. as 'motherland'
The film delves into this and other slices of L.A. Chicano history, like the lowrider car culture that became synonymous with Whittier Boulevard and other local cruising strips.
“I feel like L.A. is kind of the motherland of lowriding and Chicano culture,” said Sandy Avila, president of the Lady Lowrider car club, who is interviewed in the film.
Sandy Avila in the driver's seat of her 1984 Oldsmobile Cutlass Supreme, Simply Beautiful.
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Samanta Helou Hernandez
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Avila grew up in Pasadena with parents who didn’t consider themselves cholos but embraced the lowrider lifestyle. She remembers cruising Pasadena’s Old Town back when Colorado Boulevard was a popular spot.
Her mother would tell her about being harassed by police.
“She would say, ‘I hated taking out the Impalas, ‘cause I always got pulled over,’” Avila said.
Growing up, Avila also didn’t consider herself a chola, a term that at the time was associated with female gang members, she said. But she was drawn to the bigger scene nonetheless.
Sandy Avila of the Lady Lowrider car club in a still from "American Homeboy."
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Courtesy Brandon Loran Maxwell
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“For us Chicana girls, those were the guys you wanted to date,” she said. “That was what was in — that culture, that look, that style.”
‘From something bad, something good’
As pachuco culture gave way to cholo culture, that style evolved, giving way to uniforms of crisp khakis and white t-shirts, influenced by blue-collar workwear and the military. Influences from gang and prison life, including a distinctive tattoo style, began playing a bigger role in self-expression as well.
Also in the film is “Compton” David Oropeza, a self-described full-body tattoo “collector” who’s intimately familiar with the unique, highly detailed monochromatic Chicano tattoo style that cholo culture helped popularize.
“The prison system is where it really got its legs, you know, because you have nothing else better to do,” said Oropeza, who served as a co-producer on the documentaryTattoo Nation. “They would just practice and practice … the shading, the black and gray with the single needle. And the designs just got better and better and better.”
"Compton" David Oropeza with some of his tattoos; the face is tattooed onto his scalp.
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Michael Jaffe / Courtesy David Oropeza
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Oropeza, who got his first tattoo as a teenager, said those who wore them were once looked down upon; now, these prison-inspired tattoos are considered art.
“From something bad, something good came out of it,” he said.
Why make 'American Homeboy'?
For the filmmaker, American Homeboy grew out of a desire to tell Chicano stories in a deeper and more nuanced way than what Hollywood and mainstream media tend to put forth.
The DIY documentary is the first film produced by Chela Media, a small digital media company that he launched in 2020. It all started as a labor of love for the writer and essayist, whose day job was (and still is) in marketing as a video editor and copywriter.
“I wanted to talk about issues that related to culture and related to Latinos and Chicanos,” he said. So, “I went out and I raised some money and I launched my own little small company.”
First came The Daily Chela, a freelance-driven digital news and culture website.
“Really the goal was to like, just put forth different perspectives,” Loran Maxwell said. “‘Cause there's so many different personalities and perspectives within the Chicano community that aren't usually covered by the media.”
The Daily Chela recently led to Chela TV, the streaming app that will carry the documentary starting in October.
The film “was kind of our first major project,” said Loran Maxwell, who said he spent a grueling year pitching and competing for funding from venture capital startups until he gathered enough to produce the film.
To get around hefty fees charged by photo and video archive collections, he tracked down original photographers and videographers, pleading his case, cutting licensing deals. One such acquisition was footage from Barrio Expressions, a community access cable TV show that ran between the late 1970s and early 1980s in the East San Francisco Bay area.
Brandon Loran Maxwell as a teenager.
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Courtesy Brandon Loran Maxwell
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Chela Media
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Loran Maxwell said he contacted the city of San Jose, and “they told me that I needed to find the original filmmaker, and so I tracked him down and I found him in Oakland.”
In the end, “I think we had 20 terabytes of archival footage” from multiple sources, he said. Loran Maxwell edited the footage down himself and used AI technology to restore some of it.
There’s even some VHS footage that he shot himself back in the 1980s and '90s, he said, when he was a teenager in the Portland gang scene.
“Believe it or not,” he said, “I've always been into film.”
The documentary features original music with an oldies vibe, including from Bay Area artists Andre Cruz and Chris Lujan.
Why screenings are like 'a revival'
The plan had been simply to release American Homeboy on Chela TV in mid-September. Loran Maxwell said early on while producing the film, he had been in touch with a larger streaming service, but “they asked me if I'd remove the word Chicano from it — and I told them no, not gonna happen.”
The director crossing Whittier Blvd in East L.A.
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Brian Feinzimer
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LAist
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As he proceeded DIY,the trailer started drawing interest from theaters. Since last month there have been screenings in Los Angeles, San Francisco, San Diego and San Jose, as well as Tucson, Chicago, Albuquerque and Portland.
The director, left, with fellow filmmaker Kenneth Castillo, right, at a recent screening. Castillo is also in the film.
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Courtesy Brandon Loran Maxwell
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Chela Media
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This Saturday it will screen both in Santa Ana and Sacramento, before its planned final screening in Gardena next month.
Loran Maxwell said he’s been blown away by the reception from audience members.
“Every show has had a bunch of lowriders come out,” he said. “To be honest with you, it's felt more like a revival than a documentary screening.”
The plan now is to release the documentary on the Chela TV subscription streaming app by mid-October.
“And then I'm gonna meet with some distributors,” Loran Maxwell said, “and we'll see if there's any interest of taking it to a bigger audience.”
Two of California’s largest courts are testing an AI tool that can draft orders and produce research memos. Judges so far are using it primarily for civil cases, but documents obtained by CalMatters indicate the possibility of expanded applications in criminal cases, where people’s freedom and access to justice are on the line.
L.A. and Riverside counties: The Los Angeles County Superior Court began a pilot program in February to test a tool created by the company Learned Hand. Learned Hand uses a combination of language models from Anthropic, OpenAI and Google to act as an AI clerk for judges. In Riverside County, which has a $10,000 agreement with the company to test the program, civil and probate attorneys are primarily using the tool to draft research memos that help judges reach their decisions.
Why it matters: Use of AI in courts has been controversial because of the propensity of AI models to cite falsehoods and to produce sycophantic text. Models from major companies like Google and Anthropic can reduce critical thinking and brain activity, according to a 2025 MIT study. Language model hallucinations have already made it into the judicial system. Researcher Damien Charlotin has documented hundreds of instances of litigants, lawyers, and judges making mistakes when using AI to do their jobs including nearly 90 cases in state or federal courts based in California since August 2024. A majority of California's superior courts now have generative AI use policies.
Two of California’s largest courts are testing an AI tool that can draft orders and produce research memos.
Judges so far are using it primarily for civil cases, but documents obtained by CalMatters indicate the possibility of expanded applications in criminal cases, where people’s freedom and access to justice are on the line.
The Los Angeles County Superior Court began a pilot program in February to test a tool created by the company Learned Hand. Other courts may follow, according to Learned Hand founder and chief executive officer Shlomo Klapper.
Learned Hand uses a combination of language models from Anthropic, OpenAI and Google to act as an AI clerk for judges. The company says it tests for bias and accuracy, but it has not yet published results.
In Riverside County, which has a $10,000 agreement with the company to test the program, civil and probate attorneys are primarily using the tool to draft research memos that help judges reach their decisions. It’s typical for research attorneys to assist judges as they review cases.
Los Angeles County Superior Court has a roughly $314,000 contract that includes a roadmap to test the tool’s use in criminal, family and probate divisions. Officials would not describe in detail to CalMatters the criteria they’re using to evaluate whether use of the tool can safely expand to criminal and family courts, where the stakes are often much higher than in civil cases.
One judge who spoke to CalMatters on condition of anonymity due to judicial rules of conduct was alarmed when their colleagues at a recent luncheon said the technology could be used one day to evaluate appeals from people who believe their conviction or sentence was tainted by racial bias. California courts are handling a wave of those claims after lawmakers passed the Racial Justice Act in 2020.
“I think it is outrageous,” said the Los Angeles County Superior Court judge. “AI cannot and never will be able to replace human judgment in evaluating complex social dynamics. Ultimately, that will erode the public’s confidence in the competence and fairness of the judiciary.”
A majority of California's superior courts now have generative AI use policies, according to documents obtained by CalMatters via public records requests, which they were required to create by the state Judicial Council before using the technology. Roughly a dozen of the 51 courts that have responded to CalMatters’ requests said they are using AI-powered tools from LexisNexis, Thomson Reuters, and Microsoft’s Copilot.
Use of AI in courts has been controversial because of the propensity of AI models to cite falsehoods and to produce sycophantic text. Models from major companies like Google and Anthropic can reduce critical thinking and brain activity, according to a 2025 MIT study.
Language model hallucinations have already made it into the judicial system. Researcher Damien Charlotin has documented hundreds of instances of litigants, lawyers, and judges making mistakes when using AI to do their jobs including nearly 90 cases in state or federal courts based in California since August 2024.
Klapper, who previously worked as a clerk for a federal appeals court and for surveillance technology company Palantir, said the judiciary needs AI in order to reduce backlogs and increase efficiency.
“Could we hire more people?” he told CalMatters. “Maybe, but it’s not going to keep pace with the exponential increase that’s coming, nor is it going to be able to adequately solve the crisis of today. I think the only solution is to give every single judge and staff attorney their own AI clerk.”
Klapper said he’s aiming to combine the best parts of what human judges can do with the best parts of what machines bring to bear.
“I’m not saying all machines aren’t biased,” he said. “I’m not saying my machine isn’t even biased. I’m saying we can test it and people have tested it. And that is the benefit over humans.”
Generative AI use policies for the Los Angeles and Riverside County superior courts only require disclosure if a motion, decision, or other document is written entirely with generative AI.
Both courts refused to say whether plaintiffs are aware that the tool is being tested on their cases. In a statement to CalMatters, a spokesperson for the Los Angeles County Superior Court said testing is done on motions that have already been decided, separate from live case environments. However, the contract allows for testing on live cases.
“It is important to note that even with successful evaluation and thorough testing, the Court remains several months, if not years, away from implementing this type of tool,” said the spokesperson.
The contract allows the tool to be used for two critical motions in the criminal division: A motion to suppress, which is designed to determine what type of evidence the prosecution is allowed to present at trial, and motions for post conviction relief, which are filed by people who have already been convicted and want another shot at freedom.
That’s the “greatest concern” for Los Angeles County District Attorney Nathan Hochman. When he reviewed the contract, he referred to the motions as “two incredibly important motions in the criminal justice system.”
“When you’re dealing with someone’s liberty — as opposed to in the civil setting, which is everything other than liberty — the stakes couldn’t be higher,” said Hochman. “I don’t want to take the chance, particularly in a criminal case, that AI happens to get it wrong. And now someone’s constitutional rights have been infringed. Someone has gone to prison who shouldn’t have, or on the flip side, that somehow someone gets off.”
'An extremely perilous road'
In Los Angeles, some judges first heard about the new Learned Hand contract during a March presentation by Superior Court Judges Yvette Verastegui and Olivia Rosales. They lead the criminal branch and visit courthouses throughout the county as part of an annual roadshow, where they update judges on court operations, discuss workload and field questions. During a luncheon, Verastegui and Rosales said the tool could be used to assist with Racial Justice Act petitions in the future.
California’s Racial Justice Act allows people to challenge a criminal conviction or sentence that they believe was based upon racial bias. Petitions are filed directly to the court from people in state prison. If a case is found to have merit, the process includes appointing legal counsel, filing briefs and setting evidentiary hearings before a judge would decide whether to grant the petition.
That process could look different with a tool like Learned Hand. Verastegui and Rosales explained that, following an incarcerated person’s petition, the tool could generate tentative decisions for judges to consider in denying or advancing cases to the next stages, according to one judge who attended the luncheon.
“The concern, of course, that I have is that the courts will utilize that as a reference point and then get stuck to that initial analysis,” said the judge. “It’s an extremely perilous road to go down. Putting aside the inaccuracy, which will be a significant concern, it dehumanizes the whole process. It does not treat people as individuals with lived experiences. It essentially reimposes a one-size-fits-all style of justice.”
A second Los Angeles Superior Court judge who spoke with CalMatters on the condition of anonymity remembered the presentation and said they would not trust nor use the tool to summarize a Racial Justice Act petition.
Public defenders who spoke with CalMatters echoed those concerns.
Elizabeth Lashley-Haynes, a deputy public defender at the Los Angeles County Public Defender’s Office, said it would be “highly problematic and bordering on unethical” for a judge to use the tool to review Racial Justice Act petitions, which she described as “incredibly nuanced.”
“They’re like nothing else in the legal system that has ever really been done,” said Lashley-Haynes, who specializes in Racial Justice Act cases. “Words that are used in these cases that have racial undertones or racial meanings are way beyond the realm of anything that artificial intelligence could do.”
In interviews with CalMatters, Klapper and Los Angeles County Superior Court Executive Officer, David Slayton, denied that the court has any plans to use the tool for Racial Justice Act petitions. A spokesperson for the Los Angeles Superior Court later confirmed in an email to CalMatters that the contract permits the tool to be used in such a way “but that possibility has not commenced in any way.”
Klapper said if they were to build out a Racial Justice Act module, the tool would need to be evaluated for bias and co-developed with the court.
“The timing very fortuitous, right?” he said. “It’s a very fraught decision, I’m not going to lie…extremely high stakes — a scenario where I understand people might be very concerned. Especially with criminal, I have even more hesitancy, even more guardrails than normal about, because there are liberty interests at stake.”
Extending beyond civil cases
In Los Angeles, six superior court judges and their research attorneys are primarily using the Learned Hand tool to conduct research, summarize motions and assist in drafting tentative rulings, according to Slayton. He says the tool won’t move beyond the civil division “until the court leadership is comfortable.”
“The court is being very deliberate and careful about how we use technology like this,” he said. “So until we evaluate it and determine that it is effective in those areas, we will not extend it to other areas.”
Los Angeles County Superior Court's Hollywood Courthouse, in Los Angeles, on March 12, 2025. Photo by Jules Hotz for CalMatters The tool will be evaluated on a quarterly basis to determine its future application, Slayton said, but he did not specify what kind of evaluation that entails. In an email to CalMatters, a spokesperson later said that Learned Hand is evaluated “against the same substantive expectations applied to law clerks and research attorneys: accurate legal research, sound analysis, neutral and judge-ready writing, and reliable work product that supports judicial decision-making.”
Los Angeles County Superior Court Judge Samantha Jessner, who chairs the Judicial Technology Advisory Committee, said she was unaware of the possibility that the tool could eventually be used outside of the civil division until recently. Judges are not privy to contract negotiations due to certain ethical limitations, she said.
“I think we have a duty and obligation to explore whether or not there is a place for artificial intelligence in what we do as a judicial branch and that’s exactly what this pilot is intended to afford us the opportunity to do,” said Jessner.
Riverside County Superior Court signed an agreement with Learned Hand in February. In emails obtained by CalMatters, Klapper proposed to two Riverside County Superior Court executives, Jason Galkin and Sarah Hodgson, that the court use the tool for a common civil court motion and “then expand quickly once we earn our stripes.” He suggested that Hodgson assemble a list of motions and workflows “that generate the most pain,” citing examples that included the Racial Justice Act.
Roughly two weeks later, Hodgson described the most laborious motions “that want to drive us into retirement,” including discovery motions and attorney fee motions. For criminal cases, the court suggested that Klapper focus on “things with the largest paper records,” citing death penalty habeas petitions and parole revocation.
Since the pilot started, seven civil and probate attorneys have been granted access to the tool. Galkin, the chief executive officer of the Riverside County Superior Court, said they are “kicking the tires on the product” to see what tasks it can do. The tool is not being used to draft tentative rulings, he said.
“We don’t even know if expansion is likely so there is no set criteria for what expansion might look like or thresholds for that because right now, the core question is: Does this help staff and does it advance what they’re trying to do in their roles?” said Galkin.
As testing is underway, attorneys like Hochman say that use of AI is inevitable, but would be better suited for low-level, repetitive and routine tasks.
“It’s the analysis of the case itself, coupled with the conclusions that will be reached, that I’m very hesitant to trust AI at this point — in large part, because I don’t know all of the inputs that AI is using to make its decision. The only thing I’m 100% sure of is that AI didn’t go to law school,” said Hochman.
Cayla Mihalovich is a California Local News fellow.
Kevin Tidmarsh
is a producer for LAist, covering news and culture. He’s been an audio/web journalist for about a decade.
Published May 25, 2026 12:53 PM
One of the birds in the care of the Los Angeles Oiled Bird Care & Education Center.
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Courtesy UC Davis' Oiled Wildlife Care Network
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Topline:
The Oiled Wildlife Care Network said it has taken in 25 birds affected by an oil spill as of Sunday night. The pipe rupture Friday released more than 2,000 gallons of crude oil into an East Los Angeles neighborhood, affecting the Los Angeles River.
About the rescue: Trained responders have stabilized the birds and taken them to the Los Angeles Oiled Bird Care & Education Center for additional care. According to UC Davis’s Oiled Wildlife Care Network, the responders include UC Davis Weill School of Veterinary Medicine, the Aquarium of the Pacific in Long Beach, International Bird Rescue, and Huntington Beach’s Wetlands & Wildlife Care Center.
If you see oiled animals: Don't touch them. Instead, call the Oiled Wildlife Care Network’s hotline at 1 (877) 823-6926. The sooner you call it in, the better the animal’s chance of survival.
Why you shouldn’t handle them: The same reason the birds need to be rescued – touching oil and breathing in fumes is dangerous to animals (including humans). Instead, call the hotline and leave it to people with proper training.
Where you might see oiled wildlife: It’s more likely close to or downstream from East L.A., though the oil sheen reached as far down as Pacific Coast Highway in Long Beach. Oil-absorbing mechanisms kept it from reaching the ocean, and efforts to mitigate the spill appear to be working, the city of Long Beach said yesterday.
How the incident occurred: Crews drilling a fiber optic cable in East L.A. reportedly struck a 16-inch petroleum pipeline early Friday morning. See here for the backstory.
For people near the spill: Learn more about the health risks, and how to keep yourself safe from them, here.
Kyle Chrise contributed reporting.
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Three current California lawmakers are competing for seats on the Board of Equalization, the nation’s only elected tax board. They’re among some two dozen candidates on the ballot for its four elected positions, which are divided by geographic districts.
Why it matters: California’s Board of Equalization is a coveted spot once again for state lawmakers looking for a new gig almost a decade after then-Gov. Jerry Brown signed a law gutting the organization of any serious governing responsibility.
What else: The board has long been a launching pad to higher offices in California politics — Fiona Ma served on it before becoming state treasurer, as did Betty Yee and Malia Cohen before each being elected state controller.
The backstory: The agency itself is a throwback to the 19th Century. It’s rooted in an 1879 constitutional amendment that created it and charged it with “equalizing” county property tax assessments statewide.
Read on... for more about the race to join the board.
California’s Board of Equalization is a coveted spot once again for state lawmakers looking for a new gig almost a decade after then-Gov. Jerry Brown signed a law gutting the organization of any serious governing responsibility.
This year, three current state lawmakers are competing for seats on the nation’s only elected tax board. They’re among some two dozen candidates on the ballot for its four elected positions, which are divided by geographic districts.
The board has long been a launching pad to higher offices in California politics — Fiona Ma served on it before becoming state treasurer, as did Betty Yee and Malia Cohen before each being elected state controller.
The agency itself is a throwback to the 19th Century. It’s rooted in an 1879 constitutional amendment that created it and charged it with “equalizing” county property tax assessments statewide.
From that narrow mandate, it swelled to become a juggernaut that collected a third of the state’s tax revenue and provided a venue for people and businesses to contest their tax bills in front of the elected board. It survived numerous efforts by governors to kill it outright, including attempts by Pete Wilson and Arnold Schwarzenegger.
That is until 2017, when a cascade of allegations about board members misusing the office to promote themselves led to an authoritative state audit that lawmakers could not ignore.
Brown signed a law stripping the agency of any powers beyond what voters gave it in 1879 and created two new departments that report to the governor instead of the elected board: one to collect sales and use taxes and another to hear taxpayer appeals.
After that, Board of Equalization elections tended to be lower profile contests. Ted Gaines, a former Republican state lawmaker from the Sacramento area, won a seat. Former Democratic Assemblymember Sally Lieber is up for reelection on the board this year. The other members had experience in local politics instead of inside the Capitol.
“We’re lean but we’re not mean,” said Lieber, the incumbent for District 2, which includes 19 counties centered on the Bay Area. “I think the Board of Equalization is the right size in the system right now…I do really believe that the board has a role to play in being a forum for taxpayers to come forward to.”
This year voters will see more contentious elections for the tax board:
In District 1 representing inland California, Republican state Sen. Shannon Grove of Bakersfield has more than $900,000 in a campaign account and name recognition from her representing the San Joaquin Valley in the Legislature since 2010. Democrats are putting up a fight for the district. Fresno City Councilmember Nelson Esparza is running with the party’s support.
In District 2 representing coastal California north of Los Angeles, incumbent Lieber faces San Mateo Community College District Trustee John Pimentel. Lieber has the Democratic Party’s endorsement, but a number of Bay Area Democratic leaders are backing Pimentel, including state Treasurer Ma and San Jose Mayor Matt Mahan.
In District 3 representing the Los Angeles area, former Monterey Park City Councilmember Yvonne Yiu put up $760,000 of her own money and has about $1 million on hand. The race has another heavyweight in Assemblymember Mike Gipson, a Democrat from Gardena who has served in the Legislature since 2014.
District 4 representing the San Diego area has an especially crowded race with Democratic state Sen. Tom Umberg of Santa Ana, San Ysidro school board member Martín Arias, San Diego Unified School District board member Cody Peterson, and Denis Bilodeau, a Republican supported by San Diego Assemblymember Carl DeMaio’s Reform California organization.
A forum for California taxpayers
The board was always popular among taxpayer advocacy groups, who liked that it provided a forum to focus on tax issues in a capital where debates often center on labor and business.
“It’s a very useful elected body that answers to the voters,” said Susan Shelley, vice president of communications for the Howard Jarvis Taxpayers Association.
Some of this year’s candidates are thinking of ways to make the most of the agency.
Arias believes the board could do more to assist homeowners and potential homeowners. As a taxpayer advocate in the San Diego County Assessor’s Office, he says he works with the Board of Equalization every day and has a front seat to how the system works.
“I think there’s a bigger opportunity here to make the Board of Equalization the constitutional office that it is — that it should be,” he said. “There’s a clear opportunity here for us to start advocating at the state level for all of our taxpayers, including those that don’t speak English.”
Umberg said he’d like the board to have more investigative power and resources. Citing instances in which San Bernardino and Los Angeles assessors have been arrested on felony charges, he said he’s most interested in the board’s oversight of property tax assessors.
“Although it’s not a high-profile job, it’s a critically important job, especially when we’ve got so many revenue challenges in California,” Umberg said in an interview with CalMatters.
Questioning BOE’s relevance
Advocating for the board’s expansion has drawn criticism from former board members and employees. Yee, a board member from 2004 to 2014, has been vocal about abolishing the board entirely because she believes that its limited responsibilities could be easily transferred to another department or agency.
“I just really do question how this board continues to have relevance,” she told CalMatters. “I sometimes feel like the board is really doing a lot of work in search of finding problems to solve. …I know with each of the board members, they feel very strongly about being a taxpayer advocate. But frankly, every public official should be a taxpayer advocate. ”
Democrats stopped short of killing the agency entirely because they would have had to put that question to voters.
“They should have just chopped the head of the snake off and done away with the Board of Equalization altogether,” said Mark DeSio, a former communications director for the board. “They didn’t do that. They left enough of the cancer to grow back.”
He cooperated with the audit that revealed misspending at the agency that appeared intended to promote its elected members as well as another that showed widespread nepotism in its hiring practices. He then lost his job in the reorganization and filed a whistleblower retaliation lawsuit against the state.
DeSio believes lawmakers want seats on the Board of Equalization because it allows them to maintain a high profile until they can run for office again.
“That was the recipe for disaster a few years back,” he said. “Somebody better watch these guys. They’re not there for the policy. It’s for the exposure.”
Cayla Mihalovich is a California Local News fellow.
A man charges his car at an electric vehicle charging station in Burlingame.
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Martin do Nascimento
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CalMatters
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Topline:
Even as gas prices continued to rise across the United States, sales of electric vehicles fell in April. That is in contrast to strong growth elsewhere in the world, such as Europe. But American drivers are gravitating toward at least one more efficient powertrain: hybrids.
What's holding buyers back from EV's: Price remains the steepest barrier for most people, said Ivan Drury, director of insights at Edmunds. While electric vehicles can be less expensive to operate over the long-term — especially when gas prices are high — the upfront costs remain significant. f fuel prices fall, the advantage of an EV also shrinks. The average transaction price for an EV in April was $6,214 higher than for vehicles with internal combustion engines.
The lure of hybrids: The calculus is much simpler for hybrid vehicles, which utilize batteries that can improve fuel economy by 25 to 45 percent without needing to plug in. Overall, Edmunds data shows that sales of hybrids are up 20 percent year-over-year and nearly 50 percent since February, when the U.S.-Iran conflict began.
Even as gas prices continued to rise across the United States, sales of electric vehicles fell in April. That is in contrast to strong growth elsewhere in the world, such as Europe. But American drivers are gravitating toward at least one more efficient powertrain: hybrids.
Sales of new EVs fell roughly 18 percent from March to April, according to the latest data from Edmunds, an auto research firm. Another company, Cox Automotive, pegged the drop at closer to 6 percent. Either way, experts said it’s clear that high gas prices aren’t leading to a significant shift toward EVs.
“There was a lot of window shopping,” said Ivan Drury, director of insights at Edmunds, noting that searches for electrified vehicles on the company’s site were strong. “It did not translate to tire-kicking and purchases.”
Price remains the steepest barrier for most people, said Drury. While electric vehicles can be less expensive to operate over the long-term — especially when gas prices are high — the upfront costs remain significant. The average transaction price for an EV in April was $6,214 higher than for vehicles with internal combustion engines, Cox reported.
“It’s still a cost hurdle,” said Stephanie Brinley, a principal automotive analyst at S&P Global Mobility. “You don’t know how long it’s going to take to get that back.”
At Thursday’s average gas price of $4.56 per gallon, an EV buyer would have to drive more than 40,000 miles to make up the difference with a car that gets 30 mpg. Savings on maintenance, like oil changes, could accelerate that timeline, but factors such as higher insurance prices and having to install a home charger could make the payback period even longer. If fuel prices fall, the advantage of an EV also shrinks.
“It’s very difficult for people to wrap their head around, ‘Hey, if I spend this $55,000, I might over time save’,” said Drury. “It requires a bit more math than most people want to go through.”
The calculus is much simpler for hybrid vehicles, which utilize batteries that can improve fuel economy by 25 to 45 percent without needing to plug in. A Honda CR-V, for example, gets around 29 mpg while the hybrid version gets 37. More and more popular models are only available as hybrids, a strategy that Toyota has perhaps embraced most notably. Last year, it ditched the gas-only version of the Camry sedan. The 2026 RAV4 followed suit.
Overall, Edmunds data shows that sales of hybrids are up 20 percent year-over-year and nearly 50 percent since February, when the U.S.-Iran conflict began. Sales of gas-powered gas are up about 11 percent over those same two months.
“I think this is going to be a hybrid moment,” said Stephanie Valdez Streaty, director of industry insights at Cox Automotive. “There are a lot of options.”
Used EVs provided another somewhat bright spot, she said. The segment saw a 3 percent increase in sales from March to April and a price premium of only $1,096 over used internal combustion vehicles. Used EVs also sold faster than their used gas-powered counterparts. “They’re really selling efficiently,” said Valdez Streaty, who added that there should be a glut of EVs available throughout the year as leases end. “I don’t think the inventory will be an issue.”
With Iran maintaining its hold over the Strait of Hormuz and summer travel season looming, gas prices appear set to keep climbing — which would only make an EV more appealing. Other parts of the world have seen significant jumps in sales since the conflict began, with Europe experiencing a surge and China setting an export record in April, according to BloombergNEF.
In the United States, though, it seems that only people already in the market for EVs are making the leap. “Edge-case people,” as Brinley called them. Dramatic pump readings “might nudge them because they were already in that direction,” she said. “But what we’re unlikely to see is a shift in current [internal combustion car] owners just fundamentally making that change simply because of gas prices.”
