Topline:
Southern California Edison recently released its payout plan for survivors of the Eaton Fire. As fire survivors navigate their recovery and decide if the program makes sense for them, LAist put together a guide to answer some of the most common questions.
The backstory: We spoke to several lawyers and insurance experts, listened to two town hall meetings and asked Edison questions directly.
Read on ... to get into the details of the compensation program.
Southern California Edison recently released its payout plan for survivors of the Eaton Fire. As fire survivors navigate their recovery and decide if the program makes sense for them, LAist put together this guide to answer some of the most common questions.
We spoke to several lawyers and insurance experts, listened to two town hall meetings and asked Edison questions directly.
Edison said this program can help fill “the gap,” shorthand for the difference between how much survivors get from insurance or otherwise have to rebuild and how much rebuilding actually costs. The program is meant to cover what insurance doesn’t, not to make survivors whole.
Lawyers told LAist the program is likely to pay out less money than litigation, though it could make sense for uninsured or severely underinsured survivors who don’t have the funds or desire to wait through a longer legal process.
Ultimately, experts emphasized, the decision on how to move forward is deeply personal and unique to each survivor’s circumstance.
At a recent town hall, Edison Chief Executive Pedro Pizarro said more than 380 claims already have been submitted, with more than 180 in progress. Most survivors who have submitted so far have not used a lawyer, he said.
Edison plans to host more town halls about its compensation program. Check the bottom of this page for the latest dates when they're available.
If you need assistance with submitting a claim, here's how to reach Edison representatives:
Find more details about the program on the company's frequently asked questions page.
Southern California Edison has never provided such a program, and this one is unique among compensation programs in California, which have been carried out by one of the other three major investor-owned utilities, Pacific Gas & Electric, after the 2015 Butte, 2017 North Bay and 2018 Camp fires.
The 2017 and 2018 fires led to PG&E declaring bankruptcy, and the compensation program was administered via a trust. The program, which still is paying out survivors years later, has faced allegations of slow, low payouts and high overhead costs. That funding was limited due to the utility’s bankruptcy, so payouts were capped.
Edison says its program has no cap on payouts. Because the Edison program does not operate through a trust and the utility is not expected to declare bankruptcy, it’s hard to directly compare the programs, experts told LAist.
Edison told LAist the first $1 billion of claims will be paid via the utility’s ratepayer-funded insurance. If claims exceed that amount, the company will seek reimbursement through the state’s Wildfire Fund, which was established in 2019 after the 2017 Thomas Fire in Santa Barbara and Ventura counties.
“The program is structured to minimize financial impact to the company while providing meaningful support to those affected,” said Edison spokesperson Gabriela Ornelas in an email to LAist.
State officials warned earlier this year that that $21 billion fund could be drained by costs associated with the Eaton Fire, which are estimated to be as high as $45 billion. In October, Gov. Gavin Newsom signed a bill to expand the fund by $18 billion. The fund had been initially paid for by the utilities’ equity and shareholder earnings, but the new law could allow Southern California Edison to shift billions of dollars of Eaton Fire costs to its customers.
Earlier this year, the state approved a rate hike to help Edison cover the ongoing costs from past fires. And the utility is seeking further rate hikes to pay for wildfire mitigation and to cover “reasonable costs of its operations, facilities [and] infrastructure.”
Edison will accept claims from homeowners, renters and businesses affected by the Eaton Fire within an identified zone.
Property damage will have to be documented in Cal Fire’s Damage Inspection data. Properties within the fire perimeter (designated "Zone 1") and slightly beyond ("Zone 2) are eligible. You can see a detailed map of eligibility when you start a claim. (You can save your progress on the Edison website, so you don’t have to complete everything in one sitting.)
Claims will cover total or partial structure losses, commercial property loss, business interruption, homes with non-burn damage (such as smoke, soot or ash), physical injuries and deaths.
Survivors who already sold their properties are also eligible for the program (more on that below). Hedge funds and insurance companies are not eligible.
The program will accept applications until Nov. 30, 2026.
Zone 1 includes the original fire perimeter and is extended about 400 feet beyond it.
Zone 2 covers more properties, based on their proximity to the smoke plume, other destroyed structures and the fire’s origin, according to Edison.
There are a few elements of the program that will vary, depending on which zone your property is in. For example, no extra documentation is needed for properties in Zone 1 to receive the flat payment of $10,000 for landscaping damage.
The company says it is using a model developed by economic consulting firm Compass Lexecon, with methodology independently analyzed by RAND, to determine a property’s value and how much to pay out.
The RAND analysis states that about 20% of estimates are expected to be off by more than $200 per square foot, with about half of those errors being overestimates and half being underestimates.
“In general, the model tends to underestimate pre-fire value for … homes at the luxury, or high end, of the local market,” the report states. “It tends to overestimate value for homes … at the low end of the market or in below-average structural condition.”
You can find examples of calculations at the “View Sample Offers” tab on this page.
Pizarro said at a recent town hall that Edison’s team may add examples to the page as questions continue to arise. Below are direct links to some examples:
A single claim is required per household, and there are two paths for a payout: “fast pay” and “detailed review.” Every survivor is required to start with the “fast pay” option.
Edison’s “fast pay” option will provide an offer within 90 days of an applicant submitting a "substantially complete” claim. If the survivor accepts the offer, payment will be made within 30 days.
If survivors don’t feel the first offer is fair, they can choose to have a “detailed review,” which requires more steps and documentation and can take up to nine months for a payment offer. There’s no guarantee that offer will be higher. If you don’t like the "detailed review" offer, you can still accept the initial "fast pay" offer.
If survivors use an attorney to apply for Edison’s payout program, which is not required, they will receive an offer for additional compensation equal to 10% of their net damages to help cover that cost.
An insurance expert LAist spoke with recommended survivors speak with a lawyer before deciding on the claim, and ask them about establishing a “special needs trust,” which can protect survivors who rely on public assistance from losing that assistance with the payout or even insurance reimbursement.
Edison has identified three categories: economic, non-economic, and what the company is calling a “direct claim premium.”
Economic loss includes costs associated with property damage, personal property, loss of use, business disruption, business interruption, physical injury and death. Find the details for economic loss calculations on page 16 of the plan.
Non-economic loss includes fixed payments to survivors for the emotional trauma of the fire, as well as compensation for those injured in the fire or to the heirs of someone who died. Find the details for non-economic loss on page 24 of the plan.
The “direct claim premium” is a fixed amount added on top of the offer. Find the details of the direct claim premiums on page 25 of the plan.
Non-economic damages, the direct claim premium, and the 10% increase to help cover attorney fees will not be included in the insurance deduction. Non-economic damage offers also won’t change if a survivor chooses to go with the detailed review after receiving their fast pay offer.
A survivor’s entire insurance policy, regardless if they have received an insurance payment, will be subtracted from the economic losses portion of Edison’s offer, but not the non-economic, “direct claims premium,” or the attorney compensation.
Insurance companies may seek reimbursement for their costs from Edison through a process called “subrogation.” Edison has already agreed to pay one undisclosed insurance company 52 cents on the dollar for claims related to the Eaton Fire.
The offers through Edison’s program are nonnegotiable, but survivors can ask for reconsideration within 14 days of the offer, which triggers the detailed review process.
Accepting a payout will include agreeing not to sue Edison, the company said.
Instead of accepting a payout, survivors can pursue a lawsuit against Edison. Survivors can continue their litigation at the same time as applying for the payout program.
The first set of lawsuits against SoCal Edison are not set to go to trial until early 2027, though some may be settled before then.
Lawyers told LAist there are a lot of questions about the payout timeline, though they acknowledged it will almost certainly be faster than litigation.
For example, Edison determines if a claim is “substantially complete” before accepting it and launching the 90-day timeline. Furthermore, survivors have to go through that "fast pay" track, even if they have unusual circumstances and will likely require the "detailed review" track, which Edison says will take up to nine months.
Meanwhile, the first set of Eaton Fire lawsuits are not set to go to trial until early 2027, though some could be settled before then.
At a recent webinar, Edison representatives said the plan includes three and a half years of temporary housing for single family homeowners with a destroyed residence. (See pages 18 through 21 of the plan.)
For renters, the temporary housing assistance adds up to three months of pre-fire rent. (See pages 21 through 23 of the plan.)
In this instance, according to Edison representatives, the Compass Lexecon model would use your sale price plus the pre-fire value estimate. Appraisal documentation will only be considered in the detailed review process.
Pizarro said people who apply quickly could be paid out before the end of the year, avoiding a change in federal tax policy next year.
“We have a team ready to process offers as quickly as possible, in large part, being mindful of that potential tax deadline, unless the government changes that,” Pizarro said at a town hall last week.
He said he expects the first offers to be made soon.
The Internal Revenue Service does have specific tax reporting requirements for settlement payments, and there’s a deadline coming very soon.
The Federal Disaster Tax Relief Act, signed into law by former President Joe Biden at the end of last year to provide tax relief for victims of major disasters, expires at the end of 2025.
Non-reportable payments include:
Unless Congress passes an extension, more types of payments will become taxable in 2026.
Reportable payments, after 2026:
California, however, extended its tax protections for disaster survivors through 2030. Experts told LAist it’s still not clear if the Edison program falls under those regulations.
However, Manoj Viswanathan, a law professor at UC Law San Francisco, said it seems “very likely” that Edison’s compensation program would qualify under that California law because fire victims are giving up their rights to sue, similar to a settlement. Other law and tax experts LAist spoke to agreed the wording of California’s tax relief law likely would cover Edison’s program.
U.S Sen. Alex Padilla of California has proposed making the payments exempt from taxes.
Topline:
Although California lawmakers recently passed a suite of laws intended to bring transparency to the development of new data centers, local communities across the state are signaling that disclosure isn’t enough.
Why it matters: California currently ranks third among U.S. states in overall data center density, according to independent trackers like the US Data Center Map, with the state home to 366 of such facilities that are either fully operational, under construction, or moving through the planning process. Local elected officials are proposing data center moratoriums to slow that momentum — if not stop it in its tracks.
What it looks like across California: In the first half of October alone, Oakland’s city council unanimously approved a 45-day moratorium on new approvals, making it the first city in Alameda County and the fourth in the Bay Area to adopt such a measure. San Francisco approved a similar moratorium this month, while the Los Angeles County Board of Supervisors postponed a vote to permanently ban large-scale data centers, often called hyperscale facilities, on unincorporated land after receiving an overwhelming volume of public feedback. In Santa Clara, city officials considered a moratorium vote, and are moving forward with new rules to govern data center development, including more stringent water and air pollution regulations. Alhambra residents will vote on a moratorium measure in the November election.
Read on... for more on what this means for cities, the state, and data centers.
Although California lawmakers recently passed a suite of laws intended to bring transparency to the development of new data centers, local communities across the state are signaling that disclosure isn't enough.
California currently ranks third among U.S. states in overall data center density, according to independent trackers like the US Data Center Map, with the state home to 366 of such facilities that are either fully operational, under construction, or moving through the planning process. Local elected officials are proposing data center moratoriums to slow that momentum — if not stop it in its tracks.
“This is very much a unifying issue.”
In the first half of October alone, Oakland’s city council unanimously approved a 45-day moratorium on new approvals, making it the first city in Alameda County and the fourth in the Bay Area to adopt such a measure. San Francisco approved a similar moratorium this month, while the Los Angeles County Board of Supervisors postponed a vote to permanently ban large-scale data centers, often called hyperscale facilities, on unincorporated land after receiving an overwhelming volume of public feedback. In Santa Clara, city officials considered a moratorium vote, and are moving forward with new rules to govern data center development, including more stringent water and air pollution regulations. Alhambra residents will vote on a moratorium measure in the November election.
Across California, at least 26 resolutions, moratoriums, or bans on data center development have been passed or proposed since June, according to the D.C.-based non-governmental organization Food & Water Watch, which tracks similar proposals nationwide.
The escalating pushback underscores a widening gap between state-level regulation and municipal action. While Gov. Gavin Newsom last month signed into law seven new measures that focus primarily on disclosure requirements, environmental impact studies, and grid protection, grassroots groups and city councils are moving fast to halt construction entirely.
"I have a hard time remembering something that caught fire the way the opposition to data centers has," said Nicole Ghio, California Director at Food & Water Watch. "Local municipalities have been able to respond quicker to the grassroots wave of opposition of people saying, 'Hold on, let's press pause. Let's actually figure out what we're doing before we commit to this huge change.'"
Opponents say these energy-hungry facilities strain power grids, potentially deplete water supplies and pollute the air, and contribute to broader economic anxieties around AI-driven job elimination. The anti-data-center movement cuts across party lines; conservative group Humans First, for example, finished its nationwide Data Center Revolt tour this month with three stops in California, joining a chorus of figures on the left who call for local control as well as additional environmental and consumer protections.
"This is very much a unifying issue," Ghio noted, adding that residents are alarmed by potential rate hikes and environmental degradation. "This is not a future that I think a lot of people want. I mean, it's a great future if you're a tech billionaire. It's not a great future if you're a regular American."
Industry proponents, however, argue that halting infrastructure development risks eroding critical national interests. Doug Kelly, CEO of the policy advocacy coalition American Edge Project, framed the current buildout as an essential infrastructure race.
"Artificial intelligence and the data centers that power it, this is the next foundational block of infrastructure that America is building out," Kelly said, comparing it to historical investments in railroads and highways.
Kelly acknowledged that past developments lacked sufficient community input, leading to local friction. To address these fears without stopping construction, his organization promotes an "AI Community Compact" — an agreement offering local guarantees to protect ratepayers from cost spikes, safeguard resources, and promise early transparency.
"So, communities can decide whether they want data centers there or not, but they shouldn't just blanket ban them because then you lose all your negotiating power,” Kelly said. “You're literally saying ‘we want this billion-dollar investment to go somewhere else, anywhere but here.’"
Yet for local advocates, piecemeal guarantees and disclosure laws fall short of addressing the underlying risk. Advocates point to a one-year pause on hyperscale data centers that New York’s governor ordered in July as a roadmap, hoping state legislators will eventually follow local leaders' lead.
As cities continue to draft temporary freezes and outright bans, the tension between local community control and global technological dominance remains unresolved. State transparency laws may have opened the books on data center growth, but local opponents are making it clear that seeing the plans isn't the same as approving them.
This article was originally published on CalMatters and was republished under the Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-NoDerivatives license.
Topline:
Tom Skerritt, the Emmy-winning actor who embodied a solid, wry authority figure, whether as a flight instructor in “Top Gun,” a tough-but-fair sheriff on TV’s “Picket Fences” or the doomed captain of “Alien,” has died. He was 93. Skerritt died Wednesday of natural causes, his family said in a statement. “While the world knew Tom through his remarkable acting career, we knew him for his humor, curiosity, wisdom, generosity and the love he brought into our lives. He cared deeply about imagination, creativity, storytelling, service, veterans, the natural world and helping others find and share their own voices,” the statement said.
A look back: Skerritt was twice nominated for an Emmy — both for “Picket Fences,” winning outstanding lead actor in a drama series in 1993. Other career highlights include playing the patient husband of Shirley MacLaine in “Turning Point,” Sally Field’s husband in “Steel Magnolias” and a scheming opportunist who stands in the way of Jodie Foster’s attempt to communicate with extraterrestrial life in “Contact.” “A writer once described me as a character actor locked in a leading man’s body, and I’ve always loved that. It’s a nice compliment. I’ve been able to walk the line between television and features,” he told the Seattle Post-Intelligencer in 1997.
His backstory: Skerritt grew up in a middle-class Detroit family, his father a small businessman and his mother a housewife. He had two brothers; a sister died as a child. He spent four years in the Air Force, attended Wayne State University and then switched to the University of California, Los Angeles, to study filmmaking, inspired by a viewing of “Citizen Kane.”
Tom Skerritt, the Emmy-winning actor who embodied a solid, wry authority figure, whether as a flight instructor in “Top Gun,” a tough-but-fair sheriff on TV’s “Picket Fences” or the doomed captain of “Alien,” has died. He was 93.
Skerritt died Wednesday of natural causes, his family said in a statement. “While the world knew Tom through his remarkable acting career, we knew him for his humor, curiosity, wisdom, generosity and the love he brought into our lives. He cared deeply about imagination, creativity, storytelling, service, veterans, the natural world and helping others find and share their own voices,” the statement said.
Skerritt was twice nominated for an Emmy — both for “Picket Fences,” winning outstanding lead actor in a drama series in 1993. Other career highlights include playing the patient husband of Shirley MacLaine in “Turning Point,” Sally Field’s husband in “Steel Magnolias” and a scheming opportunist who stands in the way of Jodie Foster’s attempt to communicate with extraterrestrial life in “Contact.”
“A writer once described me as a character actor locked in a leading man’s body, and I’ve always loved that. It’s a nice compliment. I’ve been able to walk the line between television and features,” he told the Seattle Post-Intelligencer in 1997.
Onstage, he was the narrator in “Our Town” at Seattle’s Intiman Theatre in 2004 and made his Broadway debut in 2013 in an adaptation of John Grisham’s “A Time to Kill,” in which The Associated Press wrote he “nicely pulls off a charming disgraced and drunken lawyer.”
Skerritt grew up in a middle-class Detroit family, his father a small businessman and his mother a housewife. He had two brothers; a sister died as a child.
He spent four years in the Air Force, attended Wayne State University and then switched to the University of California, Los Angeles, to study filmmaking, inspired by a viewing of “Citizen Kane.”
His performance in a Los Angeles theater production of “The Rainmaker” led to his first film role — a supporting role as a sergeant in the 1962 scrappy, $250,000 independent Korean War film “War Hunt.” The movie marked the debuts of Skerritt, Robert Redford, Sydney Pollack and Francis Ford Coppola.
Redford and Skerritt were vying for the same lead role, with the former winning out. Years later, Redford, now directing, paid Skerritt back with compound interest in “A River Runs Through It,” handing him the plum role of the stern Rev. John Maclean, a minister whose governing passions are his faith and fly-fishing. The New York Times was impressed by his “halting, thoughtful manner.”
Redford, who died last year, became a lifelong friend. “There was such a deep connection we made with each other that it matured into a level-headed friendship,” Redford told the Seattle Times in 2007. “His values were close to mine, and he kept his integrity.”
After “War Hunt,” however, Skerritt still struggled for screen time, landing a small role in “M.A.S.H.” and “Thieves Like Us” for Robert Altman, and doing a bit part as a motorcycle cop in “Harold and Maude” for Hal Ashby.
Things changed with “The Turning Point,” which earned him a National Board of Review win. Then came “Alien,” with Skerritt playing the beleaguered and doomed captain of the ship Nostromo, crouched in a dark, claustrophobic duct, hunting the alien with a sputtering flamethrower. He told the Seattle Times that what appealed to him in the script was that the lead actor disappeared and “the woman becomes the hero. I really like that idea.”
Things shifted again after that, including a memorable role as Tom Cruise’s instructor in the landmark “Top Gun”: “Gentlemen, you are the top 1% of all Naval aviators. The elite. The best of the best. We’ll make you better,” he told the students. “This school is about combat. There are no points for second place.”
Skerritt achieved perhaps his best notices as the kindly sheriff in “Picket Fences,” a comedy created by David E. Kelley that won 14 Emmy Awards — one for Skerritt — and a Golden Globe over its four-year run from 1992 to 1996.
Skerritt co-starred opposite Kathy Baker, playing his doctor wife in the community of Rome, Wisconsin, a place with bizarre happenings, like having a robber leaving a trail of frogs or the pope becoming the primary witness to a murder.
“It was written by the best writer on television,” he told the A.V. Club in 2019. “That was the magic and brilliance of it. Because I wasn’t trying to do a series, but then they said Kathy Baker was going to do it, and I thought, ‘She’s fabulous — what do they want me for?’”
Also on the small screen, Skerritt played William Walker on ABC’s “Brothers and Sisters,” Jimmy Ford on TNT’s “Leverage” and he had the recurring character Evan Drake on “Cheers.” He starred in the Hallmark movie “What the Deaf Man Heard,” co-starring Matthew Modine, Judith Ivey and James Earl Jones. He also modeled for Guess jeans.
Directing and writing — his initial dream — had been overtaken by a career in front of the camera, though he managed to direct and star in the 1997 television movie “Divided by Hate.”
“Things happen,” he told The Ottawa Citizen in 1992. “You get hired for a film and the roles kept coming for me. I kept telling myself that if I stuck with acting it would be a really good training for what the problems are in directing. Then the family came along and I had to support them. The years flew by and there was a time when I said I would give up acting and really try to get into directing. But it hasn’t worked out that way and I have no regrets.”
He is survived by his third wife, Julie Tokashiki, and five children.
Topline:
Before he heads out the door, Gov. Gavin Newsom must decide whether California will join 31 states in a new multibillion-dollar school choice program, funded by private donations, that President Donald Trump included last year in his One Big Beautiful Bill.
Why now: Like most Democratic governors, Newsom hasn’t signaled whether he’ll opt in to the law that advocates promise will greatly increase full or partial scholarships to private and religious schools, while potentially paying for auxiliary services in public schools, like tutoring.
The backstory: The law’s intentionally broad, unrestricted language has made it contentious, with contrasting scenarios for how the Federal Scholarship Tax Credit program, also called the Education Freedom Tax Credit, will play out. Under the program, an individual taxpayer can donate up to $1,700 annually to a qualifying grant-making organization, up to $3,400 for couples, and then receive a federal tax credit that lowers their taxes by the full amount. The nonprofit “scholarship-granting organizations” then combine individuals’ donations and distribute the money to school districts or to eligible families for private schools.
Before he heads out the door, Gov. Gavin Newsom must decide whether California will join 31 states in a new multibillion-dollar school choice program, funded by private donations, that President Donald Trump included last year in his One Big Beautiful Bill.
Like most Democratic governors, Newsom hasn’t signaled whether he’ll opt in to the law that advocates promise will greatly increase full or partial scholarships to private and religious schools, while potentially paying for auxiliary services in public schools, like tutoring.
The law’s intentionally broad, unrestricted language has made it contentious, with contrasting scenarios for how the Federal Scholarship Tax Credit program, also called the Education Freedom Tax Credit, will play out.
Under the program, an individual taxpayer can donate up to $1,700 annually to a qualifying grant-making organization, up to $3,400 for couples, and then receive a federal tax credit that lowers their taxes by the full amount. The nonprofit “scholarship-granting organizations” then combine individuals’ donations and distribute the money to school districts or to eligible families for private schools.
Advocates say federal tax credits will boost tuition assistance for families in voucher states, while introducing school choice in states like California, which bans using state funding for private and religious schools.
Although it was not their main intent, Republicans included public schools in the law. One nonpartisan analyst, Marguerite Roza, director of the Edunomics Lab at Georgetown University, predicts that public schools will eventually become the biggest beneficiary, once they figure out how to tap into it.
“Given that anyone and everyone can donate without it costing them, it’s like a cost-free donation. We think the average taxpayer is going to lean toward donating to a [grant maker] that serves public schools.”
But opponents argue the program is a tactic to undermine public schools, which are already facing declining enrollments in blue states that have historically opposed voucher-like programs. One critic characterized the program as “a Trojan horse designed to bring the chaos of privatization into Democratic strongholds.”
Others say the program will primarily subsidize existing private school parents, not help low-income families trapped in their neighborhood schools. And the law’s free-market focus, its lack of oversight and failure to require civil rights protections will reinforce inequities and lead to abuse.
“The FSTC will become the largest source of waste, fraud and abuse we’ve seen in education — and most of it will be legal,” wrote Jon Valant, the director of Brown Center on Education Policy at Brookings.
Valant and other critics blame Congress for tying governors’ hands. Under the law, governors cannot add accountability provisions or favor some scholarship-granting organizations, called SGOs, over others, such as those that give to public schools. Once they opt in and submit a list of all SGOs, their job is done.
SGOs must check students’ income eligibility and audit the money, but they’re not required to monitor programs or keep school achievement records.
Thomas Toch, founding director of FutureEd, an independent education policy institute at Georgetown University, said Congress should have learned from the No Child Left Behind Act of 2001. The law provided billions of dollars for parents in low-performing schools to obtain tutoring from contractors who were often unvetted, inexperienced and unmonitored. The Education Department’s inspector general found widespread fraud, falsified records, conflicts of interest and deceptive marketing.
“Sounds familiar,” Toch said.
Governors can’t tell the SGOs which students to serve, but SGOs can determine where to funnel dollars — to a public or private school, an elementary or high school, only to parochial school students or for specific programs. They’ll determine the scholarship amounts and the public school programs they’ll support.
There will be a wide universe of students to serve.
Students in families earning up to 300% of an area’s median income will be eligible — more than $400,000 in some wealthy Californian cities. Some donors may give to SGOs committed to services and scholarships for low-income children, but others may not.
The American Federation for Children, a proponent of the tax credit, projects that 51.7 million children — 90% of the total public and private school students — will be eligible for the benefits.
Based on an analysis of donors to a similar tax credit program in Ohio, Brookings predicts that more tax-credit program money will end up in wealthy communities. “We expect the FSTC to become a regressive funding source, even where those funds go to public school students.”
Lance Christensen, who has drafted school choice proposals as vice president of tax policy and government relations for the conservative California Policy Center, says the Brookings analysis is “shortsighted.” If 100,000 people — not even 1% of California’s 17 million income tax filers — donated $1,700, it would generate $170 million, he said. That amount would rise to $1.7 billion if one million taxpayers — only 6% of the state total — gave the maximum.
“You’re talking about real money that could impact the way that parents legitimately think about their kids’ education,” Christensen said. “We have a lot of kids right now that are stuck in a system that doesn’t work for them and hasn’t worked for them for a long time, and the parents are just really frustrated.”
The Treasury Department and the IRS estimate that, by 2030, more than 11 million taxpayers will contribute $26 billion for scholarships and other grants.
So far, New York Gov. Kathy Hochul and Colorado Gov. Jared Polis are the only Democratic governors among the 31 participating states to opt in. (Virginia joined before Democratic Gov. Abigail Spanberger took office.) This year’s opt-in deadline is Jan. 1.
Two Californians who hope for different reasons that Newsom will sign on are Rachel Elginsmith and Evan Marwell.
Elginsmith is chief executive of the BASIC Fund in Oakland, the state’s largest nonsectarian SGO. Since its founding in 1998, it has distributed $200 million in partial scholarships for 30,000 students, from preschool to eighth grade attending 266 Catholic and nonreligious schools in the Bay Area.
The BASIC Fund would be well positioned to capitalize on the tax-credit by expanding its base of donors. “It would be more money, more kids, bigger scholarships — more of what we’re doing. It would be exciting,” she said.
Marwell, a San Francisco nonprofit entrepreneur, founded EducationSuperHighway, which helped districts plan and fund high-speed internet during the pandemic, and then co-founded Ignite Reading, an online tutoring for the early grades. His new mission: rechartering the EducationSuperHighway into a national SGO that will compete for taxpayers who want to choose first grade tutoring in reading for their tax credit donation.
Marwell said he has reached out to 45 governors, and expects that Democratic states will opt in. They will see the success of Colorado and New York, he said, and “they will start to hear from voters, ‘Why the heck are you not allowing our kids to get these scholarships that we’re contributing to?’ ”
Newsom will get grief whether he opts in or out. The National Education Association and teachers unions in California will thrash him if he signs on. “Taxpayer dollars should go to public schools open to all students, not private schools that can pick and choose their students,” the NEA said in a press release.
If he doesn’t opt in, he’ll be criticized for denying low-income families money to close the achievement gap, while forcing California taxpayers to give to out-of-state SGOs. As New York Gov. Hochul said in her Oct. 9 announcement, “I’m not going to leave money on the table when it could help our kids.”
There is a third option — do nothing, citing fatal flaws in the tax credit program’s design. That’s the advice of Rachel Cantor, director of education policy at the Progressive Policy Institute.
“If I was advising a Democratic governor, I would say, ‘No, don’t opt in. Expand public school choice in your state so that people do have choices. But this is a risky way to do it if your goal is to improve educational quality and open opportunity for people who don’t have it.’ ”
Gov. Gavin Newsom must decide whether California will join 31 other states in participating in President Donald Trump’s school choice program. Here is how the program works:
July 4, 2025: President Trump signs the One Big Beautiful Bill that includes the Education Freedom Tax Credit, also known as the Federal Scholarship Tax Credit.
Oct. 1, 2026: U.S. Treasury Departmentreleases draft regulations for the Federal Scholarship Tax Credit (FSTC) program; 60-day public comment period begins.
Dec. 15, 2026: The Treasury Department will host a public hearing at the IRS building in Washington, D.C.
Dec. 31, 2026: Deadline for states to submit their participation in the FSTC.
Jan. 1, 2027: Individual taxpayers can begin donating contributions to eligible SGOs.
Feb. 15, 2027: Deadline for states to submit their list of eligible scholarship-granting organizations to the IRS.
EdSource is an independent nonprofit organization that provides analysis on key education issues facing California and the nation. LAist republishes articles from EdSource with permission.
Topline:
A federal judge on Thursday ordered President Donald Trump to sit for a deposition in his $10 billion defamation lawsuit against the BBC by Dec. 11.
Why now: The order from U.S. Magistrate Judge Enjoliqué Lett came as lawyers for the British broadcaster complained that Trump had delayed his appearance. Charles Tobin, attorney for the BBC, said that with two months left in the discovery period, “we still haven’t been able to depose the plaintiff.” He noted there was an agreed-upon date of Oct. 16, but that Trump had canceled it for a “matter of national importance.” Tobin said the Republican president was in fact campaigning in Georgia that day. “He was participating in party politics and prioritized that over sitting for the deposition,” Tobin said.
The backstory: Trump, who has often avoided depositions, filed his lawsuit against the BBC last December. He accused the publicly funded broadcaster of defamation as well as deceptive and unfair trade practices related to a documentary, “Trump: A Second Chance.” The BBC acknowledged that filmmakers spliced together quotes from different sections of the speech Trump delivered to his supporters on Jan. 6, 2021, before the storming of the U.S. Capitol, to make it seem he was directly urging violence. The broadcaster apologized over the editing, and the head of the BBC and its top news executive both resigned. But the BBC has denied Trump’s claims that it defamed him.
What's next: Lett said Trump must sit for a deposition by Dec. 11, or face sanctions up to dismissal of his lawsuit -– unless the discovery period was extended past Dec. 18.
A federal judge on Thursday ordered President Donald Trump to sit for a deposition in his $10 billion defamation lawsuit against the BBC by Dec. 11.
The order from U.S. Magistrate Judge Enjoliqué Lett came as lawyers for the British broadcaster complained that Trump had delayed his appearance. Charles Tobin, attorney for the BBC, said that with two months left in the discovery period, “we still haven’t been able to depose the plaintiff.”
He noted there was an agreed-upon date of Oct. 16, but that Trump had canceled it for a “matter of national importance.” Tobin said the Republican president was in fact campaigning in Georgia that day. “He was participating in party politics and prioritized that over sitting for the deposition,” Tobin said.
Lett said Trump must sit for a deposition by Dec. 11, or face sanctions up to dismissal of his lawsuit -– unless the discovery period was extended past Dec. 18.
Discovery, where lawyers for both sides exchange documents and other evidence, is scheduled to end Dec. 18, and the BBC’s attorneys want to make sure they have Trump’s deposition before that deadline. Lett said only the presiding judge assigned to the case can alter the trial schedule, and the defense said it would be open to scheduling the deposition at a later time if the trial schedule was also moved back.
Trump, who has often avoided depositions, filed his lawsuit against the BBC last December. He accused the publicly funded broadcaster of defamation as well as deceptive and unfair trade practices related to a documentary, “Trump: A Second Chance.”
The BBC acknowledged that filmmakers spliced together quotes from different sections of the speech Trump delivered to his supporters on Jan. 6, 2021, before the storming of the U.S. Capitol, to make it seem he was directly urging violence. The broadcaster apologized over the editing, and the head of the BBC and its top news executive both resigned. But the BBC has denied Trump’s claims that it defamed him.
Trump’s lawyers say Jack Smith lacks ‘personal knowledge’ of issues in the case
To bolster its defense, the broadcaster subpoenaed former special counsel Jack Smith earlier this month. Trump’s lawyers argued, in a joint filing asking for a hearing on the matter, that there was no good reason for Smith, who is not a party to the case, to appear.
Tobin, the BBC lawyer, told the judge Thursday that Smith has not objected to being deposed for this case, meaning the only objection is coming from Trump. Tobin said the BBC is not trying to relitigate the events of Jan. 6, but that Smith is one of the leading experts in what happened that day, and his deposition could lead the BBC to evidence that could help their case.
“We can argue later on whether his testimony is admissible,” Tobin said, “but we are entitled to that deposition.”
Trump’s lawyer, Alejandro Brito, said Smith has no personal knowledge of Trump’s Jan. 6 speech or Trump’s state of mind when he gave it. All of Smith’s knowledge about the case is secondhand, Brito argued, and the special counsel’s report, along with Smith’s testimony before Congress, is all public and available to the BBC’s attorneys, he said.
There was no immediate ruling with the hearing expected to resume in the afternoon after a lunch break.
Judge says the BBC can see membership records for Mar-a-Lago
Turning to the damages issue, the judge agreed that the BBC should be allowed to see records for the total number of applications for membership at Trump’s Mar-a-Lago resort in Florida from Jan. 6, 2020, through Jan. 6, 2026, as well as the total cost of membership and initiation fees for new applicants.
Tobin said one aspect of any defamation case is showing actual damages, and the popularity of Mar-a-Lago is a significant indicator of Trump’s reputation. The BBC’s lawyer described the private club as “a place where he exhibits his reputation in front of people who are important to him.”
Brito argued that Trump does not actually run Mar-a-Lago, and that his reputation is not associated with the club.
