The Brief

The year 2025 is shaping up to be a confusing one for Californians unlucky enough to buy a new or used car that turns out to be a clunker.

Starting Jan. 1, car buyers who purchase a faulty vehicle will have to navigate a new version of California’s “lemon law” that for five decades has given consumers the right to demand car companies fix or replace defective vehicles they sell.

That is, unless lawmakers quickly pass a law that allows some of the car companies to opt out of the new requirements.

The confusion stems from a law Gov. Gavin Newsom reluctantly signed in late September, after the bill was hastily jammed through the Legislature in the waning days of the session following secret negotiations between lobbyists.
Newsom said it was important to address the problem of California’s courts getting clogged with lemon law cases, even as critics said the bill significantly watered down consumer protections.

But Newsom said he signed it only after lawmakers said they’d introduce legislation next year to make the reforms voluntary for automakers.

Lawmakers have already introduced legislation that they say meets Newsom’s demands. It’s now anyone’s guess how long it will take the bill to make it through the Senate and the Assembly and get Newsom’s signature. Meanwhile, portions of the new lemon law take effect Jan. 1; others in April.

Adding to the confusion, a month after Newsom signed the new lemon bill, Assembly Bill 1755, the California Supreme Court ruled that the state’s lemon law doesn’t require manufacturers to honor a car’s warranty when it’s re-sold as a used vehicle. Before the Supreme Court’s ruling, courts had interpreted the lemon law to require manufacturers to replace or repair a defective used car or truck if the clunker was sold within the window of its original new-vehicle warranty.

The justices said that if Californians have a problem with how they’ve interpreted the statute, state lawmakers are welcome to write a new bill.

“Those arguments are best directed to the Legislature, which remains free to amend the definition of ‘new motor vehicle’ to include used vehicles with a balance remaining on the manufacturer’s new car warranty,” the court wrote in its Oct. 31 opinion. At least one lawmaker has suggested to CalMatters he and his colleagues could take the court up on that suggestion.

As the Legislature sorts this out, Rosemary Shahan of Consumers for Auto Reliability and Safety said car buyers next year are going to have a tough time figuring out what to do if they drive a lemon off the lot.

“It’s going to be really confusing for consumers,” she said.

Lemon law cases clog California courts

California’s lemon law defines a “lemon” vehicle as one that has serious warranty defects that the manufacturer can’t fix, even after multiple attempts. The lemon law applies only to disputes involving the manufacturer’s new vehicle warranty.

If the manufacturer or dealer is unable to repair a serious warranty defect in a vehicle after what the law says is a “reasonable” number of attempts, the manufacturer must either replace it or refund its purchase price, whichever the customer prefers, according to the California Department of Consumer Affairs.

Disputes can be resolved through arbitration or in court if a consumer sues. The new lemon law was a compromise between U.S. automakers, consumer attorneys and judges who came together to address a growing backlog of lemon law cases in the state’s courts.

The number of such cases in California courts climbed from nearly 15,000 in 2022 to more than 22,000 last year. In Los Angeles County, nearly 10% of all civil filings are now lemon law cases.

Proponents argue the bill Newsom signed will speed up the process of getting consumers a working vehicle, while setting new procedural rules for the litigation process that will ease the burden on courts.

But Shahan and other critics argue the changes will primarily benefit U.S. car companies, since they’re the ones most commonly sued under the state’s lemon law at the expense of consumers. Foreign car companies largely opposed the measure.

Shahan says the statistics on lemon law cases show why U.S automakers wanted the rule changed. U.S. car companies have a significantly higher number of lemon law cases in California than their foreign counterparts.

It’s also why, if lawmakers pass the bill Newsom wants, the foreign companies are likely to choose to abide by the original version of the lemon law.

In the meantime, until lawmakers pass the pending legislation, buyers who purchase any defective new vehicle will have less time to sue, and they’ll get less money from rebates, according to Shahan and other critics.

The new rules also shrink the period they can use the lemon law to just six years instead of the entire life of a vehicle’s warranty, which can last longer, Shahan said.

And because of the Supreme Court’s ruling that said new vehicle warranties do not cover the car once it’s resold used, plaintiffs such as Mariana Alvarado Rodriguez are now feeling the squeeze.

Court ruling impacts used lemon vehicle disputes

In 2021, Alvarado Rodriguez, a seasonal farmworker who lives in Tulare County, purchased a 2018 GMC Sierra 1500 with 40,002 miles from a Fresno County car dealer for $25,000, according to court records.

Almost immediately after she drove it off the lot, she said the truck started having mechanical problems that she claims should have been covered under the vehicle’s warranties. But she said the car’s maker, General Motors, refused to honor them.

“I kept making payments,” she said in Spanish. “Then … I finally decided to get an attorney and told the dealership, ‘That truck, it just doesn’t work.’ ”

A Fresno County judge tossed her lawsuit a year later after the Fourth District Court of Appeal ruled in a separate case that warranties that would apply to new cars don’t carry over if the vehicle is sold again. The Supreme Court affirmed that judgment.

Alvarado Rodriguez said she still doesn’t have reliable transportation for when she returns to work this spring in the fruit-packing sheds.

“The process has been so long,” she said. “It’s really, really affected me.”

Democratic Sen. Tom Umberg of Santa Ana is one of the authors of the new lemon law reforms slated to take effect next year. He also co-wrote the new legislation in December to address Newsom’s concerns. For now, it doesn’t address the Supreme Court’s ruling that impacted used vehicle warranty claims like Alvarado Rodriguez’s.

He said lawmakers will likely take that issue up as well when they reconvene after the holidays.

“I would expect that there would be further conversation,” he said. “At least it’s my point of view that you don’t want consumers to be hoodwinked.”

Head Start centers in Southern California say they’re operating as usual despite the Trump administration proposing a vast overhaul to the early education program.

The administration last week proposed stripping many of Head Start’s regulations, saying it would provide more local flexibility. Advocates fear it could gut many of the features of the program, which goes beyond early education services.

For now, providers and advocates say parents should continue to enroll their children.

“Head Start programs will remain open. We will continue to offer services as currently designed. And that won't change until all of this is ultimately resolved,” said Luis Bautista, executive director of early learning at the Los Angeles County Office of Education, which serves around 7,000 children in Head Start through local organizations.

The proposed rule will now undergo a 60-day public comment period.

“We want to make sure that everyone is involved in raising their voice and providing feedback,” Bautista said.

After the public comment period closes, the federal government is expected to analyze the comments before moving forward.

Bautista and others said it’s possible that if some changes go through, there could be litigation that also puts off implementation.

 ”A lot of times I think people feel because something is proposed, it will just happen, but that is not the case,” said Stacy Lee, who oversees early childhood initiatives at Children Now, an advocacy group for children in California.

“They do have to take public feedback into consideration, and it is documented as part of the process,” Lee said.

The proposed rule marks the latest effort by the Trump administration to reshape the federally-funded program. Previously, the administration tried to eliminate funding for Head Start in an early draft budget before restoring the money.

The administration also tried to ban undocumented children from attending, an effort that's been tied up in court.

The city of Long Beach has proposed cutting library hours and laying off librarians to help balance its budget. In response, educators, the local library foundation and union leaders are pushing back, saying the city can’t afford to lose a vital service for kids and families.

Under the budget proposal, five of the city’s 12 libraries — Bay Shore, Burnett, El Dorado, Harte and Michelle Obama — would drop from six days of service back to five, losing their Monday hours just a few years after those hours were added. (The city’s other libraries were already closed on Mondays, and all are closed Sundays.)

On an average Monday, those branches see a total of more than 1,000 visitors, according to city data.

“In a city the size of Long Beach, and with our population, we could be seeing a 2027 where there are no libraries open on Monday. I think that’s pretty crazy,” said Kristen Hernandez with the Long Beach Public Library Foundation. The nonprofit, which raises money for the local library system, is gathering signatures on a petition protesting the cuts. As of Friday, it had more than 1,800 signatures.

Changes to the city library system are a sliver of the cuts unveiled last week by Long Beach City Manager Tom Modica as part of a citywide winnowing in programs and services to close next year’s expected $58 million deficit.

Beyond cuts to programs and facility hours, Modica proposed laying off more than 260 city workers and cutting more than 200 additional vacant positions — about 4% of the city’s roughly 6,000-person workforce.

The proposed library cuts

Local libraries would lose 14 positions, 11 of them currently filled, including five library clerks, four library assistants, a vacant general librarian position at the Billie Jean King Main Library, and a mental health associate who serves as the library’s teen specialist. The plan also cuts funding for library pages who stock books and funding for security services, as well as nearly all print and digital newspaper subscriptions.

The combined cuts would save the department a little more than $1.4 million.

Elizabeth Cespuglio, a librarian at Billie Jean King Library, said that the library assistants at risk of being cut are responsible for planning and running workshops and programs at the branches, pulling materials, tracking which books and genres are most in demand and staffing the information desk. Clerks handle check-outs, check-ins and library cards, while pages keep the shelves organized.

Perhaps most at risk, Cespuglio said, is the library’s mental health associate, Jasmin Flores, who spends her days building rapport with teens in need. Losing that specialist, she said, leaves her “quite fearful” for the patrons and staff alike, since the library’s other social worker focuses on unhoused adults and doesn’t have the time and energy to build the same relationships with youth.

Each day, Flores is the calming face for more than a dozen kids. Many of them are in and out of homelessness; some have been in juvenile detention. Others are LGBTQIA and struggle to find friends; others struggle to find food. She’s already told some that she may not be showing up anymore. It’s a difficult conversation, she said, having to console others for the loss of her job.

“It honestly breaks my heart that I probably will not be in that position anymore,” she said.

Flores’ main worry is that some of them will stop showing up. “We’ve built that rapport, and it hasn’t been easy to build,” she said. “It’s taken a while to get there, and I just hate to see all that go to waste.”

Librarians say they’re already stretched thin

The real problem, Cespuglio said, is that libraries are losing funding even as they’re increasingly in demand — more than 2,800 patrons visit daily across Long Beach’s 12 branches, an 8% rise since last year. The number of programs offered has increased by 50% in the past year, with more than 1,000 adult participants.

Annually, city libraries have continually climbed in foot traffic since the onset of the pandemic, though averages are still lower than in 2018 and 2019.

Branches have been understaffed for more than a decade, Cespuglio said, at least since the last time the city announced library layoffs in 2012.

“There’s still an expectation on the system for us to be doing all of these things and continue the same level of service as we’ve done,” she said. “Cutting those hours, or those Mondays, not only does it impact the public’s access to the library all over the city, but it has these other ramifications in the rest of the five days that the rest of us are working.”

The looming cuts have created an “undercurrent of anxiety” among staff who still don’t know which of them may lose their jobs, according to Cespuglio. Her own position is not at risk, but her partner’s is, and she said the possibility of losing half her household income is real. She said that rent in Long Beach has outpaced her pay raises for the 12 years she’s lived and worked in the city.

The bigger budget picture

The library cuts are part of a far larger fiscal reckoning for Long Beach.

The proposed layoffs stretch across more than a dozen departments and offices, hitting fire, police, homeless services, parks and libraries alike, as the city grapples with rising personnel costs, mounting legal payouts, the loss of federal grants and a local economic slowdown that has weighed on tax revenue.

City officials have said the strategy of previous years — pulling from cash reserves to delay layoffs — is no longer sustainable; the city drained tens of millions of dollars from its reserves, including its emergency fund, just to close out the current fiscal year.

Sashi Muralidharan, a labor representative with the city’s largest union, IAM Local 1930, said they will “fight for every job,” even as labor negotiations — which coincide with the budget talks — are looking grim.

Eighty percent of the positions proposed to be cut are represented by IAM, including 209 filled positions.

“Anything that does result in a layoff, we will be bargaining over those impacts to make sure that we lessen the negative impacts,” Muralidharan said.

At a Long Beach City Council meeting this week, nurses, union shop stewards, library staff and other city workers turned out to protest the cuts, arguing they would bring greater ramifications to the public’s quality of life and further enervate its remaining staff, pushing them to look for work elsewhere.

Nate Kim, a city nurse and negotiator with IAM Local 1930, told the council that while his own position had been renewed, many of his colleagues had not been so fortunate. “Many have been laid off already,” he added. Emily Quest, a resident who uses the library’s free craftspace, begged council members through tears not to cut the hours or the staff who run it.

Mayor Rex Richardson has proposed restoring 70 of the positions slated for elimination and said the city remains on track for its first structural budget surplus by 2028, even as another deficit, projected at $27.3 million, looms for the following year.

The City Council is expected to hold public hearings on the budget through the summer before a final vote in late September. You can find a schedule of hearings to attend here or fill out an online survey to share your priorities with the City Council, which must debate and pass the budget by Oct. 1.

This story first appeared on The LA Local.

Two months after an oil spill shut down streets in East Los Angeles and disrupted businesses along the Cesar E. Chavez Avenue corridor, many owners are still waiting for reimbursement.

The May spill forced street closures after crews punctured an underground pipeline, sending more than 25,000 gallons of crude oil onto nearby streets and into storm drains. Along the commercial corridor, owners of restaurants, barbershops and bike shops had to cancel appointments, delay deliveries or close their doors for a week as cleanup crews worked in the area.

What the spill cost businesses

In the days following the spill, a survey of nearly 50 businesses near the intersection of East Cesar E. Chavez and Eastern avenues found a 70% to 75% loss in revenue, according to Kelly LoBianco, director of the LA County Department of Economic Opportunity.

“You know how the barbershop gets on a Friday. … We lost a lot of business that week,” said Barber Avila, owner of Brooklyn Lab Barbershop. Avila preferred not to share his first name for this story.

For the past month, Avila has been working with LA County and pipeline operator Pacific Pipeline System (PPS) to submit documents – including tax records, sales reports and expenses – to show how the spill affected his business and file a claim for reimbursement.

Avila said his claim was approved this week and he is now awaiting payment.

Reimbursement has been slow

Many other businesses are seeking reimbursement from PPS, but the process has been slow, LoBianco said.

As of Tuesday, 19 businesses had filed claims. Only one had been approved, while three others were close to approval, LoBianco said. She did not have details on the amount reimbursed.

Veronica Ramos, co-owner of Ramos Industries, a commercial and residential glass and aluminum contractor, said she was reimbursed by PPS a week after submitting a claim. The spill caused contracted jobs to be canceled and deliveries to be rescheduled for a fee because trucks could not access the shop.

Ramos said her business had a bookkeeper who was able to quickly gather the required documents but she worries her neighbors may struggle to provide the needed records for a claim.

A PPS spokesperson said claims are still being accepted and processed. A third-party claims administrator has been helping businesses with the filing process in English and Spanish, the company said.

“We understand how important a timely resolution is for those affected and remain committed to working through each claim as efficiently as possible,” PPS said.

Cleanup could stretch into 2027

What lies ahead are months of soil testing and excavation to remove contaminated soil from the site of the spill, which county officials say could continue into January 2027. Neither Avila nor Ramos knew about the remaining work and worried about how additional street closures could affect their business again.

“It’s good to keep it in mind,” Ramos said.

Was your business affected by the oil spill?

Anyone who believes they were impacted by the oil spill can still contact the PPS claims line at 1-877-817-5465 to be connected to a third-party administrator who can guide them through the process in English and Spanish, PPS said. There is currently no deadline to submit a claim.

The Department of Economic Opportunity’s Office of Small Business (OSB) is continuing to provide guidance on claim preparation, documentation requirements, and submission for affected businesses. To book a one-on-one appointment, businesses can:

• Call OSB at (844) 432-4900,
• Visit OSB’s East LA Entrepreneurship Center located at 4716 E. Cesar E. Chavez Ave., or; 
• Email osb@opportunity.lacounty.gov. 

All impacted businesses seeking assistance should indicate that their request is related to the East LA oil spill.

How to avoid scams:

Rafael Carbajal, director of the LA County Department of Consumer and Business Affairs (DCBA) said bad actors may prey upon communities during environmental disasters like the oil spill including contractors and legal services providers.

Carbajal said the DCBA office is helping residents verify contractors, legal services providers and is providing information on their website on how to recognize scams.

Residents who have concerns or questions can call the DCBA hotline at (800) 593-8222.

Composer Charles-Henri Avelange has wanted to find a way to honor firefighters with music since the 9/11 attacks.

Last month, that longtime dream started to take shape when over 85 orchestral musicians working in Hollywood gathered at a Sony Pictures Studio soundstage to record the “Fireman's Prayer.”

The poem, written by Alvin William “Smokey” Linn, was inspired by an apartment fire in 1958 in which three children died. It’s something every firefighter learns to recite.

Not long after moving to the U.S., Avelange found the Fireman’s Prayer inscribed on the wall of a firehouse in 2006 — and began singing a melody.

Avelange asked the firefighters whether the piece was already set to music. “Because to me, this is not just a prayer, it's an anthem,” he said.

Twenty-four hours later, he had written the first draft of the anthem.

Charles-Henri Avelange.

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Slava Pedan

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Courtesy The Fireman's Prayer project

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A $100,000 vision, and no idea how to pull it off 

Avelange’s vision was to have 200 to 250 musicians, including a children's choir, full adult choir, full orchestra and a 56-piece drum and bagpipe corps for the recording, which costs nearly $100,000. All proceeds from the song would go to firefighters.

 “Everybody who knows me eventually always heard about the Fireman's Prayer,” he said. “I have no idea how or when it will get done.”

Composer Charles-Henri Avelange has set the poem, The Fireman's Prayer, to music.

(

Slava Pedan

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The Fireman's Prayer project

)

Then the January 2025  fires hit Los Angeles. Avelange and his wife found themselves just blocks from a Palisades Fire evacuation zone. They could see the firefighters protecting homes on their street.

“My wife, Jennifer … looked at me and she said, ‘Well, if this is not a sign, Charles, this thing is needed. It is really time.’”

Thanks to private donations, Avelange recorded with the Los Angeles Children’s Choir and the Los Angeles Master Chorale in May. He is still fundraising to record  the Pipes and Drums of California Professional Firefighters performing.

Last month, he was joined by Grammy-winning conductor Grant Gershon and many of Hollywood’s best musicians — some are survivors of the Eaton and Palisades fires — to record the orchestral portion of an anthem he had heard only as digital samples for nearly 20 years.

Joining them in the audience were members of the firefighting community.

 “When I heard them playing, it sounded exactly the way it's supposed to and actually even better,” he said. “It was quite a magical moment.”