The Brief

California has nearly two million homes with rooftop solar — a major success. But that scale-up has largely left out nearly half of Californians who rent.

In Los Angeles, that number is even higher: more than 60% of people rent, according to 2021 data from the Southern California Association of Governments.

Now the California Public Utilities Commission is set to vote on Thursday on a proposal that could significantly cut current incentives for apartments, businesses and schools to put solar on their rooftops.

What does the proposal say?

The proposal changes the rules around “Virtual Net Energy Metering,” or VNEM, and “Net Energy Metering Aggregation,” or NEMA. The programs as they currently stand allow properties with multiple electric meters — such as apartments, schools, strip malls, etc. — to get paid back for the amount of excess electricity they generate on their properties and sell back to the utility grid, thus making solar more affordable for a wider array of people and businesses.

While the newly revised proposal still allows this credit for apartment residents, though at a lower compensation rate, it excludes energy use in apartment common spaces, such as shared laundry, outdoor lighting, gyms, and electric vehicle charging stations. Solar advocates and rental industry associations argue that makes apartment owners even less likely to install solar because the savings don’t pencil out.

Putting more solar panels on rooftops can help offset the need for utility-scale solar fields, but experts say both are necessary to generate the amount of electricity needed for a cleaner energy future.

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Patrick T. Fallon

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For schools, the proposal not only reduces the compensation for the excess electricity they send back to the grid we all rely on, but also requires them to pay the full retail price for the electricity they consume, even during the day when using the power from their solar panels.

The proposed changes don't apply to qualifying low-income apartments.

“We need to sprint, and we're throwing up these barriers to actually building renewable energy, while at the same time patting ourselves on the back like we're climate change heroes,” said Bernadette del Chiaro, executive director of the solar trade organization the California Solar and Storage Association.

She said a similar cut to rooftop solar incentives for single-family homes last year has already led to a steep drop off in the solar market — 80% year over year by her organization’s calculations. The L.A. Times reported that the nation’s largest solar installer, Sunrun, laid off 1,000 people since the policy change.

Investor-owned utilities including Southern California Edison argue the change is needed to avoid what they call a “cost shift” — that apartment dwellers and businesses without solar are bearing the burden of higher electricity rates and fixed costs, while those with solar disproportionately save on those costs under the current rules. They also say the complexity of accurately crediting multifamily properties is another challenge and added cost because it’s difficult to understand who is using how much solar energy and when in a multi-family or multi-business building.

Last year, California cut incentives for installing solar on single-family homes. Now the state is proposing cutting incentives for buildings such as apartments and schools.

“At SCE, we want to make sure that customers are paying a fair price for power,” said Jeff Monford, a spokesperson for the utility. “We believe that the incentives for producers of energy via solar are no longer needed to establish that industry like they were in the past. As we move forward into the clean energy future, we think it's time to reduce those subsidies and not introduce more of them, especially because the cost of power has such a disproportionate effect on customers who are not able to participate in solar generation.”

A renter’s perspective

Sean Draper rents an apartment in Simi Valley and has worked in the solar industry for the last seven years. He’s kept a close eye on solar decisions made by the state. He wants to talk to his landlord about installing solar, but worries the proposed changes to current policy make it unrealistic.

“I feel like it is going to be, as I try to engage in that conversation with ownership here, a bit of an uphill battle,” Draper said.

While he said leaving the credit for residents is a step in the right direction, the lack of inclusion for similar credits in shared spaces in apartments, such as EV chargers, doesn’t make it cost-effective for apartment owners.

“Gas where I am is up to $5, $6 dollars a gallon and we're all feeling the pinch,” he said. “I'm currently contemplating purchasing an electric vehicle and without that access to low cost energy, it’s just becoming rapidly less and less practical.”

He also has concerns for his friends with small businesses, because the credit would only apply to residential tenants in rental properties, not commercial tenants.

“I think that the only thing that makes sense is to continue to allow onsite netting of power for all tenants, commercial and residential,” Draper said. “I think the proposed rule for residential strikes a really good balance between providing benefits to residential tenants who are – many of us – living paycheck to paycheck, but also provides a small amount of relief to the utilities in terms of them being able to provide less compensation for the [power] generation.”

More than that, he said more solar is needed for a healthier planet. He worries this rule change will set California further back on its clean energy goals.

“I've got kids,” he said. “The world they live in hinges on us making the right decisions now.”

What schools say 

With already extremely tight margins, school districts across the state have raised alarm bells about the effects of the proposed decision. They’re particularly concerned about the changes that would require them to pay the full retail price for electricity, even when using their own energy generated onsite.

Solar panels on the top of Playa Vista Elementary School.

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“These unfair practices help utility companies and hurt students,” L.A. Unified School District wrote in a statement posted to X, formerly known as Twitter. “Rising energy costs will make it harder for Los Angeles Unified [to] reach its climate goals, and these costs will come out of our classroom, hurting our ability to reduce emissions, electrify our schools, and invest [in] safe and healthy learning environments for our children.”

Schools are being mandated by state law to electrify school buses and add solar panels, among other things. Solar installation costs come out of their facilities budgets, but the state doesn’t have an ongoing funding source for school bonds that power those budgets — that’s why we see school bond measures on our ballots every few years.

Solar panels in a parking lot outside South East High School, an L.A. Unified School District campus in South Gate. (Photo courtesy of LAUSD)

At the same time, to receive financial benefits under the new proposal, schools would need to install battery storage for each meter — batteries are still expensive and new technology that would require modernizing meters on their campuses. But the state only provides funding for modernization every 25 years, said Nancy Chaires Espinoza, executive director of advocacy group the School Energy Coalition.

“California’s over 10,000 schools are critical to the state’s ability to meet its clean energy goals,” Espinoza wrote in an email to LAist. “We are excited to be a part of this transition. We simply ask that new mandates be feasible for us to implement and adequately financed to avoid further depleting our resources for educating students.”

A federal judge has now granted Paramount’s settlement agreement with 12 states that sued over the company’s takeover of Warner Bros. Discovery, allowing the companies to soon close their $81 billion mega merger.

In a Wednesday order, U.S. District Judge Araceli Martínez-Olguín ruled that the proposed consent decree was a “fair, reasonable, and good faith approach to address the competitive harms” alleged by the states’ lawsuit. Paramount previously called the antitrust challenge the last hurdle ahead of closing its Warner merger, and signaled that it aims to close its Warner acquisition as soon as early October.

Shortly after Martínez-Olguín’s ruling on Wednesday afternoon, the company announced that Ynon Kreiz — current chief executive at toy giant Mattel — will join Paramount on Oct. 5 and serve as co-CEO alongside David Ellison of the combined company.

A Paramount-Warner marriage will bring together two of Hollywood’s last five legacy studios. HBO Max, a library full of titles including “Harry Potter” and cable networks such as CNN will also find themselves under the same roof with CBS, the likes of the “Top Gun” franchise and the Paramount+ streaming service.

Top prosecutors from 12 states — led by California Attorney General Rob Bonta — sued in July with an initial goal of blocking the merger altogether. They alleged a Paramount-Warner combo would “extinguish competition” and lead to fewer choices for consumers, particularly movie theatergoers and cable customers.

Last week, the states agreed to settle these claims through new commitments from Paramount, including pledges to increase film production in the U.S. over the next five years, commit millions of dollars to a fund aimed at supporting workers displaced by the merger and establish new editorial monitoring of CNN and CBS.

When announcing the deal on Sept. 21, Bonta said the settlement was about “protecting people’s careers, the lives they’ve built here in California, the livelihoods their families rely on,” while maintaining it was not a vote of support for the merger.

Many critics of the tie-up, however, quickly decried the deal as capitulating to corporate pressure and said the proposed terms were too weak. Martínez-Olguín didn’t greenlight the terms right away — maintaining at a hearing on Thursday that the court isn’t merely a “rubber stamp” on a settlement of this kind and that she, like many others, still had questions.

The judge granted outside critics of the settlement — including members of the Block The Merger coalition and the League of United Latin American Citizens — a brief window to share their opposition with the court through amicus briefs. She also instructed Paramount and the settling states to respond to a letter from Democratic Sen. Cory Booker, who called for a more thorough review of the deal.

By Wednesday’s order, however, she concluded that the hopes for settlement terms to go further “do not rise to the level of legal violations upon which the Court can reject the parties’ negotiated resolution.”

The Block the Merger coalition on Wednesday maintained the settlement was a “toothless” deal.

“Allowing the Paramount Skydance-Warner Bros. Discovery merger to move forward with no meaningful structural remedies will cost jobs, mute creativity, weaken independent journalism, and damage our First Amendment rights,” Block the Merger said in a statement. But, the coalition added, “if there is one discernible benefit to the approval of this corporate takeover, it’s that people are now wide awake and paying attention –- and their anger is not going to fade away.”

The Writers Guild of America, which had filed its own suit shortly after the states in July, also reached a settlement agreement with Paramount last week — concluding that it couldn’t continue its legal fight alone.

This story first appeared on The LA Local.

Inglewood is staring down the barrel of a $30.8 million budget deficit next year, the city’s largest in at least two decades, but officials said locals don’t need to be worried. 

Inglewood’s budget ballooned after SoFi Stadium opened in 2020. City officials roughly doubled their spending from the general fund — the pot of money that pays for basic services from police to parks. 

Revenue also boomed in the first few years after the stadium’s opening, but since then hasn’t quite kept up with what’s been spent. 

City officials downplayed the projected deficit last week, saying in reports and presentations that reserves of more than $150 million will cover the gap this year and that they expect increased tax and other revenues to help take care of the problem in the future.  Mayor James Butts said locals have no reason to worry, and that the city’s reserves have enabled officials to be ambitious in their planning. 

Whether they have to dip into those savings at all depends on how locals vote for a ballot measure on Nov. 3. Officials predict Measure AT could wipe out the deficit entirely by bringing in as much as $45 million to $50 million extra in taxes on tickets to major events.

But_, if Inglewood continues to spend more than it takes in over the coming years and pulls too much out of its reserves, city officials could be pushed to lay off staff and cut funding for services, as they did during a fiscal crisis 15 years ago.

The City Council approved the budget proposal in a 4-0 vote at its Tuesday meeting. Councilmember Eloy Morales Jr. was absent.

Here’s a breakdown of Inglewood’s budget

Inglewood’s annual general fund revenue has grown by about $100 million over the last 10 years, driven in large part by increased property taxes and admissions tax.

But that growth has plateaued over the last five years, while expenditures continued to grow. The city plans to spend $279 million out of its general fund this year, more than double its annual spending prior to 2020.

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The city’s total budget is $675 million. It includes the general fund as well as special funds that pay for things like major construction projects and affordable housing.

Police take the largest bite out of Inglewood’s general fund, followed by the public works and parks departments.

Outside the general fund, the city has also budgeted $239 million for capital projects.

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The LA Local

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Some of Inglewood’s largest sources of general fund revenue are property tax, sales tax and admissions tax. 

Property tax revenue has grown by leaps and bounds over the last five years, according to budget documents, but admissions tax and sales tax haven’t matched the growth.

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Officials hope city reserves and a ballot measure will fill the deficit

Inglewood has had budget issues before. The deficit approached $18 million in 2010, just before Mayor James Butts was elected, while reserves fell to around $11 million.

This time around, officials say Inglewood has over $150 million in reserves. 

Butts said those reserves have allowed the city to take an aggressive approach to improving streets, traffic lights and other city infrastructure.

“We put the money there because we want the city to be rehabilitated,” Butts said.

Pulling from reserves, though, isn’t something a city can do indefinitely. City Manager Louis Atwell wrote in a budget report that staff expect tax revenue to keep increasing and new developments to give the city an additional boost. With staff keeping an eye on operating costs, Atwell wrote, those revenues would narrow the city’s budget gap down the line. 

This year’s election could also come into play. The two city ballot measures voters will see — AT and BB — are the product of a larger battle between the city and its stadiums over billboard advertisements and the development deal that brought SoFi Stadium to Inglewood.

Either measure could have a substantial effect on the city’s books. 

Inglewood currently pulls in a 10% tax on SoFi Stadium tickets, but with an annual ceiling on how much the city can get. Measure AT, backed by billboard company WOW Media, would remove the cap and add a new 2.5% tax for the Intuit Dome.

Officials estimated it would bring in between $45 million and $50 million extra annually, more than enough to cover the city’s current deficit. Atwell cautioned, though, that the figures aren’t guaranteed and could depend on economic conditions, the timing of the measure’s roll-out and other factors. 

On the flip side, officials said Measure BB could curtail billboard fees and ratchet the deficit up to almost $39 million. 

The initiative would ban most commercial advertising on the large video billboards that have cropped up along the city’s main roads. Measure BB would cut off a revenue stream that, according to past budget documents, has brought the city between $3 million and $7.5 million. 

City officials itemized how much Inglewood made from billboards in each of the last 10 years, but did not do so in this year’s budget. 

The ballot measures are just a few items on a packed Inglewood ballot that includes elections for mayor, two city council members and three Board of Education trustees. 

International politics moved front and center in the Los Angeles mayor’s race Tuesday night, with the candidates offering differing views on how to describe what’s happening in Gaza.

Incumbent Mayor Karen Bass and challenger City Councilmember Nithya Raman answered questions separately at a forum sponsored by the Jewish Federation of Los Angeles at the Skirball Cultural Center in the Sepulveda Pass. The candidates were interviewed back-to-back on stage by moderator Alex Cohen.

The forum was designed to address the concerns of Jewish Angelenos.

Raman was asked about her use of the term “genocide” and whether it is appropriate to describe Israel’s attacks on Gaza.

L.A. City Councilmember Nithya Raman, right, on stage with moderator Alex Cohen at the Skirball Cultural Center during a mayoral forum on Tuesday, September 29, 2026.

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Jeff Rowe

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“I used it because other experts have used it to describe what’s happening,” she said. “And I used it because I felt compelled to speak out about issues that we saw, the images that we saw, the targeting of hospitals, the deaths of children.”

Bass had a different response from her opponent when asked whether she believes the term applies in Gaza.

“When I think of foreign affairs, especially conflicts, my focus is on how they impact the city of L.A. — no, I don’t,” Bass responded.

L.A. Mayor Karen Bass answers questions at a mayoral candidates forum held at the Skirball Cultural Center.

The Gaza Health Ministry estimates 74,000 Palestinians have died in the war, including many children and noncombatants.

The war started on October 7, 2023, when Hamas-led militants launched a surprise attack on Israel, killing around 1,200 people and kidnapping 251.

Genocide is an international crime defined by the United Nations as any act committed with the specific intent to destroy, in whole or in part, a national, ethnic, racial or religious group.

The U.S. government and Israel vehemently deny genocide is going on in Gaza. Many other countries and human rights organizations disagree, saying it is genocide.

Candidates differ on Israel boycott

The two also split on the boycott, divestment and sanctions movement against Israel.

Raman called it “a legitimate form of peaceful protest” against Israel over its treatment of the Palestinians, prompting loud boos from some in the crowd.

“I support people’s right to protest,” she said. “And I will fight for that right even when I don’t agree with protesters, or when I agree with protesters.”

Raman is a member of the Democratic Socialists of America, which supports the boycott and divestment of Israel.

Bass said she would oppose any effort to enact sanctions against Israel.

Cohen also asked Raman about her appearance with Hasan Piker, a left-wing Twitch streamer and outspoken critic of Israel.

Raman said she disagreed with some of Piker’s views, saying it’s important for elected officials “to go speak to them even when you disagree.”

Raman said she has been an outspoken critic of antisemitism and was the first L.A. elected official to denounce the 2023 attack on Israel.

National polls on Gaza

The divergence in views between Bass and Raman represents a larger shift in the Democratic Party over Israel.

A new AP-NORC poll found erosion of support for the longtime U.S. ally, with rising opposition from Democrats.

About one-third of U.S. adults — including roughly half of Democrats — believe that Israel has committed genocide against Palestinians during the war in Gaza, according to The Associated Press. About 2 in 10 Americans say Israel has not, and the rest, about half, don’t know enough to say.

A similar share, 30%, of Jewish adults say Israel has committed genocide, although about half, 49%, say it has not.

“40 hours, $2M+ AI credits, solve an open problem.”

So read the splashy announcement for the “Mathathon” at the California Institute of Technology in Pasadena. Dozens of teams would work to solve vexing math problems with the help of artificial intelligence as part of “the first hackathon ever devoted to research level mathematics,” according to the early September post. AI juggernauts Anthropic and OpenAI were set to sponsor the two-day competition.

The backlash came swiftly. Critics objected not only to using AI to tackle open problems, but also to the involvement of AI companies whose models and research practices they have criticized.

Within days, current and former Caltech mathematicians published an open letter calling on the undergraduate organizers to suspend the event. The Mathathon, they argued, would only fuel the creation of “slop mathematics” and serve as public relations for the companies.

Instead of canceling the event, Caltech student organizers responded as any mathematician would — they tried to solve the problem.

The undergraduates redesigned the competition. Instead of trying to solve open mathematical problems, teams will now aim to develop alternative proofs for existing, yet unsatisfying solutions. The November event will also no longer be sponsored by the companies that develop proprietary AI models.

“We came to the decision that we want to put up an event that unites the math community, rather than divides it,” Brian Zhao, one of the Mathathon organizers and a junior studying applied mathematics at Caltech, told EdSource.

The controversy over the Mathathon event laid bare the growing tensions unfolding in the mathematics community over what role AI should play in advancing the field.

AI has already helped to solve elusive math problems. OpenAI announced this month that it used an internal AI model “significantly more capable” than the latest publicly available models to solve one of the remaining six Millennium Prize Problems. But mathematicians have warned about AI’s negative impact on mathematics students, and criticized these companies’ approach to solving high-profile problems.

“To put it bluntly, AI companies are engaging in research misconduct,” wrote the authors of the open letter, which gained the signatures of 2,038 academics as of this week.

‘That’s not the culture of mathematics’

Earlier this summer, Zhao and his roommate came up with their idea of a fun weekend: lock themselves in a basement and try to solve math problems for 40 hours straight. He was inspired by hackathon-style competitions in which programmers and designers compete to build hardware or software under deadline.

The idea of using AI to try to solve open math problems was two-fold. With mathematics undergoing one of the biggest changes in decades because of AI, the Caltech undergrads wanted to organize an event to experiment with AI and better understand how the field may evolve by the time they start graduate school.

Also, the students hoped that advertising the event with flashy statements — like suggesting teams would have access to $2 million in AI credits — would attract high-profile professors as judges and big lab sponsors.

“What is the role of a mathematician when AI can solve conjectures faster?” Mathathon organizers initially asked on the event’s website.

The AI-infused premise of Mathathon drew the ire of current and former Caltech mathematicians.

“I found it pretty outrageous, taking $2 million worth of sponsorships from OpenAI and Anthropic (and) partnering with these companies that have been, in my opinion, and many other mathematicians’ opinion, very disrespectful to our field,” said Yujin Kim, a postdoctoral fellow in Princeton University’s math department.

Kim had been critical of OpenAI’s approach to solving elusive mathematics problems in viral social media videos. The companies’ sponsorship of the event “felt like aligning with the empire,” Kim said.

“I can’t imagine [the Mathathon] would go any way other than just essentially button pressing and prompting,” Kim said. “That’s not the culture of mathematics. That’s not how we operate.”

After the backlash, OpenAI pulled its support from the event.

“We recognize that the rapid progress of AI in mathematics is disruptive,” Dan Roberts, OpenAI’s research lead, said in a social media post after the open letter was published. A spokesperson for Anthropic declined to comment.

The updated Mathathon competition will allow participants to use AI, but highly encourage them to use open-source tools that can be modified by the public instead of proprietary models run by private entities like OpenAI.

“We are proud of all of our students for the passion, drive, and maturity they have shown throughout this development,” Caltech spokesperson Emily Velasco said in a statement. “The spirit of open inquiry is central to the scientific process, and we hope to see a continued exchange of ideas as the math community charts its course forward.”

Zhao said he and his fellow organizers are determined to move forward with hosting the event. He said organizers hope the Mathathon will allow students to discover ways to use the technology responsibly, and build a bridge between AI developers and the math community.

AI can act like a shortcut to solving math problems

AI has conjured much debate in the math community, some of which has been overdue, said Dimitri Shlyakhtenko, a UCLA math professor who has followed Mathathon developments but did not sign the open letter.

From the outside, it may look like AI is upending the field by solving high-profile problems that have stumped mathematicians for decades. But the reality is more nuanced, Shlyakhtenko said.

“It is very rare that some result in mathematics is obtained out of nothing,” he said. “It usually builds on a mountain of other works that happen, and usually there’s a community of people that care about a particular set of problems.”

Mathematics problems aren’t about the destination of finding a solution, he said. Rather, mathematicians develop new techniques and understandings along the journey to solve a problem. He likened it to hiking to a waterfall. The end goal is to see the waterfall, but the things you discover along the journey are also quite interesting and of value.

With AI, he said that “what we’re seeing right now is that it is sometimes possible to take a kind of a direct shortcut.”

Some mathematicians worry that using AI to solve problems robs training opportunities from younger mathematicians.

Training problems provide opportunities for graduate students to learn skills and approaches to mathematics, but “if those just get solved, then the motivation to do it is kind of gone, right?” Shlyakhtenko said.

Over the past several months, as the Mathathon drama unfolded, Zhao said he has learned two important lessons: Be ambitious and be humble.

Maintaining the lofty goal of the event — of trying to help unravel the thorny debate of AI’s role in mathematics — has helped the team persist in the face of challenges, Zhao said. He added that it also developed the event into something more than just a fun, competitive weekend. The conversations with mathematicians around the world about the event have also taught him to be wary of flashy statements.

“If we just present ourselves honestly as undergrads who are curious about AI, we actually attract more sympathy,” Zhao said. “We actually attract more mathematicians who are willing to help us.”