The Brief

This story was originally published by CalMatters. Sign up for their newsletters.

In the final few weeks of his last legislative session as California governor, Gavin Newsom is asking lawmakers to help reduce how much profit-making utility companies must pay out after wildfires.

His administration has for weeks floated to lawmakers a wide-ranging but still-vague package of bills to address the spiraling costs of wildfires that has made a slew of different interests unhappy.

Insurance companies have launched an ad campaign against what they call a potential “utility bailout,” that would leave them unable to recover from the power companies the costs of paying homeowners’ insurance claims. Attorneys representing fire survivors and other plaintiffs that sue utilities don’t want to see their fees reduced.

Wildfire survivors worry the governor’s proposal would prevent them from being made financially whole for suffering trauma. Local government leaders are demanding that they continue to be paid the full cost to rebuild incinerated infrastructure.

On the other side are the politically influential utilities, who have drawn fury for their equipment sparking several of the state’s most devastating wildfires.

The state’s three investor-owned utilities, Pacific Gas & Electric, Southern California Edison and San Diego Gas and Electric, aren’t in imminent financial danger and last year saw profits rise. But fire costs have contributed to Californians paying the second-highest electricity rates in the country, and lawmakers and Newsom’s office worry that if it becomes harder for utilities to borrow money those bills will continue to climb. The utilities together provide power for about three-quarters of the state.

Newsom and the lawmakers say utilities are held responsible for too much after a wildfire and that bad actors like hedge funds are taking advantage to get a cut. If another devastating wildfire triggers damages too high for a utility to pay, the potentially resulting bankruptcy would make it even harder for victims to collect.

“The status quo doesn’t work,” Newsom said at a press conference last week when asked whether his proposal is in the best interests of fire survivors. “And we're trying to balance all of those needs in a very familiar process that will unfold over the course of the next few months.”

CalMatters asked the governor’s office whether the timeline Newsom mentioned was correct, considering the legislative session ends in three weeks. A spokesperson said the governor meant “the next couple of months of the legislative session,” and did not respond to whether Newsom will call a special session to address the issue.

As he mulls a presidential run, Newsom has political incentive to push through a deal. Opponents from the right are eager to paint California as unaffordable and lurching through disasters; further rate hikes or the specter of a utility bankruptcy wouldn’t help. But backing the utilities also comes with risks: Anger at the companies remains fresh after Edison was last week found by Cal Fire and the Los Angeles County Fire Department to be responsible for the January 2025 Eaton Fire that killed 19 people in Altadena.

The chair of a key Assembly committee, Democratic Assemblymember Cottie Petrie-Norris, is generally on board with Newsom’s proposals, but lawmakers in the Senate appear less certain. Fire survivors are urging them to slow down and commit to a more public debate.

“You cannot be ‘there are some bad actors’ and therefore we will have a secret bill,” said Joy Chen, who leads a group of Los Angeles wildfire survivors. “Then your bill is the bad actor.”

A familiar fight

It’s a redux of a bitter fight that has bookended Newsom’s time as governor.

He stepped into his role in the wake of devastating wildfires that tore through Northern California in 2017 and 2018, several of which PG&E was found to have been responsible for.

The utility was in a bind: Under California law it was strictly liable for fires that were getting more severe, partly due to climate change, and regulators were no longer letting the companies pass damages onto customers in cases where they were found careless.

Facing mounting suits from victims and insurance companies, the company in 2019 declared bankruptcy. Newsom quickly signed legislation to help buffer utilities from those claims, drawing accusations of a bailout. The state created a $21 billion wildfire fund, paid for half by utility shareholders and half by customers through a $2.50 surcharge on their monthly electricity bills, to pay victims’ claims, provided the utilities follow stricter safety regulations.

The remaining structure of a building burned from the Eaton Fire in Altadena. Jan. 8, 2025.

(

Ted Soqui

/

CalMatters

)

Then in January 2025, during an intense windstorm, electricity arcing from a century-old out-of-service Edison tower in Southern California’s Eaton Canyon set dry brush ablaze. The resulting Eaton Fire, burning at the same time as the deadly Palisades Fire, claimed 19 lives and nearly 9,500 homes and other buildings. UCLA estimated losses at between $24 billion and 45 billion.

The state wildfire fund is expected to be drained once the costs of insurance claims, Edison’s multimillion-dollar voluntary settlements with survivors and numerous unsettled lawsuits are tallied. (Lawmakers extended the fund last year to address future fires, adding to electricity customers’ surcharges through 2045.) Profiteering hedge funds have sought to take advantage by buying up insurance claims.

Newsom’s goal is twofold: Limit who can make claims to the fund and limit how much they can get. In private briefings last week and a document outlining his package released Tuesday, his office said he would combine the cost reductions with bills to boost home hardening, help homeowners get off the state’s insurer-of-last-resort and re-enter the home insurance market, tie utility executive pay to safety and require shareholders to pay down customers’ rates for two summers.

Details of the package remain scant. The outline released Tuesday did not include proposed legislative language.

CalMatters contacted the state’s three major utility companies. San Diego Gas & Electric did not respond. PG&E and Edison referred questions to Nathan Click, spokesperson for the utilities’ campaign, which is called Wildfire Victims First and has been blanketing the state with ads telling Californians to urge their lawmakers to act.

Click, who is also a political spokesperson for Newsom, did not answer specific questions, including whether utilities are meeting directly with lawmakers. Instead, he shared statements from a handful of business groups and a powerful electrical workers’ union urging lawmakers to advocate for the proposed liability reduction.

In addition, the chief executives of PG&E and Edison have said they plan to take action to protect their shareholders if California lawmakers do not pass legislation to limit their fire liability. They did not specify what they planned to do.

Over the past four years PG&E, Edison and SDG&E collectively spent $5.2 million on California political campaigns, sponsored travel for lawmakers and donations to officials’ favored charities, according to CalMatters’ Digital Democracy database.

PG&E also has the fifth-highest spending on lobbying in the 2025-2026 legislative session and was the top spender from April through June. In the first half of this year, the three utilities reported spending nearly $7 million to influence Newsom’s administration, the Legislature and their regulators at the California Public Utilities Commission.

Limiting damages

Newsom suggests chipping away at utilities’ liabilities by limiting attorneys’ fees, reducing the amount of money local governments can recoup to rebuild burned infrastructure and curbing how much some victims can receive in damages.

His proposal would set up a state-administered “fast pay” program to prioritize wildfire fund payouts for survivors whose loved ones are killed, who are injured or whose properties are destroyed. To participate, claimants would likely need to give up their right to sue the utility — trading an often lengthy wait through litigation to get comprehensive damages in exchange for the relief of a quicker payout.

For other victims “in harm’s way,” the Tuesday outline suggests allowing up to $150,000 in damages.

Newsom’s office and Petrie-Norris, who generally supports the idea, said they do not intend to limit emotional distress claims for survivors they deem legitimate but those kinds of damages should be curbed for others.

“If you were part of a disaster no one’s going to say you can’t make a claim,” Petrie-Norris, an Irvine Democrat who chairs the Assembly utilities committee, said. “If you did not actually experience a disaster, what non-economic damages should you be entitled to?”

Petrie-Norris and Newsom are concerned about billboard attorneys who seek clients to file lawsuits against utilities and the wildfire fund; one study has found attorneys are likely to get 30% to 40% of victims’ payouts. Groups representing survivors and attorneys argue it’s not so clear who should count as a victim. Residents who lost no property and stayed in their homes miles away could still be harmed by smoke inhalation, for example.

Chen said she was “stunned” after she was briefed by the governor’s office last week and was told that only people who are evacuated and have their house burn down would be eligible for non-economic damages.

“Let’s say someone was out of town, but their house burned down so they didn’t evacuate,” she said. “But they lost everything, so they have to rebuild. So you won’t compensate them for pain and suffering?”

Newsom also wants to stop investors from buying claims and prioritize small business claimants over corporations, but his office has not explained how to accomplish that.

The proposed bill package has so incensed some wildfire victims that opponents of the plan have shrugged at arguments that some claimants are taking advantage of the Wildfire Fund.

“The utilities are finding a lot of creative ways to avoid responsibility. That’s it,” said Graham Knaus, chief executive of the California Association of Counties. “We should not be opening the door for them to escape accountability.”

Shifting costs

Another component of the outline released Tuesday could affect homeowners across the state. Newsom is proposing to limit — or eliminate entirely — insurance companies' right to recoup money from utilities when a utility-caused fire forces those insurers to pay out homeowners' claims.

The process is known as subrogation. The two powerful industries have been at odds over it for years.

Utilities and insurance already clashed in 2018 when utilities unsuccessfully backed a bill to loosen a unique California legal doctrine that holds power providers strictly liable for wildfire damages near their equipment even if they aren’t found responsible for the fire.

“We’re a well-resourced industry, but not like (the utilities),” Rex Frazier, president of the Personal Insurance Federation of California, recalled. “Their lobbying spend was just crazy.”

Denni Ritter, vice president for the American Property Casualty Insurance Association, said eliminating subrogation could impede the progress that has been made due to the regulations California adopted last year to address insurance availability problems.

“We’re at this precarious time,” Ritter said. Because the state now allows insurance companies to consider catastrophe modeling and reinsurance costs in pricing their premiums, some insurers have resumed writing new policies in California, and the number of policies in the last-resort FAIR Plan is growing at a slower rate, according to the state insurance department.

But if they can’t recover the costs of wildfire claims, Frazier and Ritter said insurance companies will raise premiums, which would affect homeowners even in areas with low fire risk.

“We don't understand how they're not embarrassed to suggest that the answer to their problem is to shift their costs over to other people,” Frazier said. “Why should a homeowners insurance customer in a dense urban environment have to pay considerably more?”

Sen. Ben Allen, the Democratic chair of the Senate utilities committee and a candidate for insurance commissioner, said he doesn’t want to make that tradeoff if the package doesn’t include other benefits for consumers or taxpayers.

Petrie-Norris said it could be worth it.

“If I can save you $2 on your utility bill and your insurance bill goes up by $1, that seems like a smart thing for us all to do,” she said. But we've got to make sure that's true and whether there are unintended consequences.”

Jeremia Kimelman and Digital Democracy engineer Andrew Chan contributed to this story.

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

The death of Jackie, the matriarch of Big Bear’s famous bald eagle nest, has quickly become international news.

People from around the world are mourning Jackie’s loss and remembering her as a fierce protector, a dedicated mother and the bird that inspired thousands to learn more about nature and wildlife.

Tributes are pouring in from individuals and organizations alike, including the San Bernardino County firefighters who kept watch over Jackie as she was waiting for rescue and the L.A. County officials who connected her with care.

TJ Fraser, a resident of Big Bear Valley’s unincorporated community of Fawnskin, described Jackie as a “neighbor” who was a “really important part of this community.”

Fraser said people were deeply pulling for Jackie’s recovery, but as fans come to terms with her death, he’s started to see more hope for the future of the nest and her longtime mate Shadow.

“I think that that's the real great lesson and the takeaway from this,” he said. “Nature adapts, nature always finds balance; that's how it works. And tomorrow is another day.”

State wildlife officials said Jackie’s remains will undergo a necropsy at the San Diego Zoo Wildlife Alliance before being transferred to the National Eagle Repository in Colorado.

The repository is a one-of-a-kind facility run by federal wildlife officials. It stores and distributes eagle remains to federally recognized Native American tribes for religious, cultural and ceremonial purposes.

Friends of Big Bear Valley, the nonprofit that launched the popular eagle livestream, said it does not have any input on how Jackie’s remains are handled.

Jackie's death earlier this week quickly became international news.

(

BBC, Associated Press, The Washington Post, Hindustan Times, Modern Ghana, CBC, People, San Bernardino Sun, Los Angeles Times, ABC 6

/

Makenna Cramer

)

Jackie’s stardom is a big deal

Fraser said his “phone blew up” when Jackie’s death was announced, and the instant reactions of sadness and shock were “overwhelming.”

“It really showed me how much that bird resonated with people around the country and around the world,” he said. “It was truly remarkable.”

But Jackie’s legacy will be intact forever, Fraser said, through the $10 million fundraiser that preserved acres of land near the feathered couple’s nest.

“What she was able to represent brought people to a place of, ‘We want to protect this for them,’” he said. “And that'll never go away.”

Melanie Stagnaro, a resident of L.A.’s Laurel Canyon neighborhood, has been watching Jackie and Shadow for about six years. She said she was stunned by the news of Jackie’s death, but not entirely surprised since Stagnaro thought something may have been wrong with her earlier in the season.

Stagnaro blamed her concerns about Jackie’s condition on the trials of motherhood, which is what helped draw her more into the livestream in recent years.

“I know there's so much more to her, but for me, it was identifying to her as a mom,” Stagnaro said, adding that her kids graduated high school and “left the nest” while Jackie and Shadow’s eaglets were learning to fly and do the same.

Jackie covered under a blanket of snow on Feb. 25, 2023.

(

Friends of Big Bear Valley

/

YouTube

)

Jackie and Shadow's eaglets during a feeding of fish in April 2025.

(

Friends of Big Bear Valley

/

YouTube

)

Jackie and Shadow welcomed a third egg on Feb. 24, 2026, after losing their first two.

(

Friends of Big Bear Valley

)

With Jackie gone, Stagnaro has started to turn her affection to Shadow, whom she described as a “stud” and a “great dad.”

“He is amazing too, and … I do hope there's another mate for him,” she said. “And I do hope they keep it at this nest, you know?”

State officials and orgs are still mourning

Jackie’s legacy extends beyond the individual impact to institutions and state leaders, including Gov. Gavin Newsom.

“California mourns Jackie, the Big Bear bald eagle who reminded us of the beauty and wonder of California’s wildlife, and our shared responsibility to protect the habitats that sustain it," Newsom said in a statement Tuesday.

Visit Big Bear said Jackie captured the hearts of the mountain community and so many beyond.

“We know you are with Sandy now, watching over Big Bear together,” the group said on social media. Sandy Steers, the late leader of Friends of Big Bear Valley, died in February.

The San Bernardino County Fire Protection District, which kept watch over Jackie while she was waiting for rescuers, said it was inspiring to see the community come together with compassion and concern for her well-being.

The Institute for Wildlife Studies, which helped bald eagles return to Southern California’s Channel Islands, said Jackie became a powerful symbol of resilience, beauty and the importance of protecting wildlife.

“While we mourn her passing, we also reflect with gratitude on the legacy she leaves behind,” the institute said on social media Tuesday. “May Jackie’s story continue to inspire compassion for wildlife, stewardship of natural places, and a commitment to protecting bald eagles and other wild species.”

Support ‘In honor of Jackie’

The Ojai Raptor Center, which gave Jackie intensive care for about three weeks, is still seeing a flood of donations after her death, according to its website.

Around 20,000 people have supported its bald eagle recovery campaign. Thousands of dollars were donated throughout Tuesday and Wednesday, along with messages like, “In honor of Jackie and all you did to save her,” and, “ALL OF YOU ARE HEROES for your dedication & tireless work for Jackie and every animal you care for."

Immigration and Customs Enforcement officers may soon be outfitted with gloves that can deliver painful electric shocks intended to gain compliance from combative individuals.

ICE plans to spend up to $20 million to purchase thousands of “conductive distraction and de-escalation devices” for officers and agents by March, according to a notice published Monday by the Department of Homeland Security.

The devices are known as the G.L.O.V.E., which stands for Generated Low Output Voltage Emitter, and are manufactured by Compliant Technologies LLC of Lexington, Kentucky. They have been used in recent years by some jails and police departments.

DHS said Tuesday that it was working on a response to an Associated Press inquiry and offered no immediate comment. Jeff Niklaus, the founder and chief executive of Compliant Technologies, wrote in an email, “Unfortunately, we are unable to speak on this subject.”

The notice said the solicitation for a no-bid contract could be published as early as Friday.

Civil rights advocates expressed alarm at the plan, saying ICE officers already face criticism for their use of force with little oversight or accountability while enforcing President Donald Trump’s immigration crackdown.

Compliant Technologies says the devices function as a normal pair of patrol gloves until officers press a switch to activate their electrical mode. The gloves must be applied directly to someone’s skin to deliver a pain stimulus that typically helps an officer gain compliance within seconds, according to the company.

“It’s immediate and sharp, and it will distract you. I call it like a bee sting,” said John Peters, president of the Institute for the Prevention of In-Custody Deaths, who is studying how the device has been used. “If the officer is getting any type of resistance from the person, this is certainly an effective tool.”

Peters said he believed ICE’s planned purchase would likely be the largest from the company to date. He said he could envision ICE officers using the gloves to help remove uncooperative subjects from cars and houses and in and out of detention facilities.

“For smaller officers or weaker officers or older officers, I think it has a great advantage” because it can produce faster takedowns and shorten confrontations, he said.

The manufacturer warns the device should not be used as punishment, against people merely exhibiting “verbal defiance or belligerence” or on high-risk populations such as children, pregnant women or elderly or disabled people.

Jenn Rolnick Borchetta, deputy project director on policing at the American Civil Liberties Union, said the public should have no confidence that ICE officers will use the devices appropriately. She questioned why the devices would be necessary for civil immigration enforcement and noted those getting shocked might have no advance warning.

“ICE spent the last year showing this country they are too quick to use force. Now they will be able to deploy electric shocks with the slight push of a button that maybe nobody else can see them do,” she said. “Introducing gloves that can so easily be used to deliver terrible pain in encounters is a recipe for harm to the public.”

Supporters say the devices are generally used in specific jail and transport situations, rather than broadly to patrol on the streets. They have been used to subdue violent suspects who are refusing to get into squad cars and inmates who are harming themselves and threatening officers, according to Compliant Technologies.

Peters said he expected the devices to be misused by a small number of employees, as with other policing technologies, but he said they are unlikely to cause injuries. He said it would be important for ICE to have robust policies and training in place.

To use the device, officers must complete a course and be recertified every two years, the manufacturer says.

Time is up for Orange County governments to add measures to the general election ballot. Here are some of the major ballot measure items headed to voters in November.

Costa Mesa 

Costa Mesa voters will be asked in November if business license taxes should be increased for some large businesses making more than $500,000 in annual revenue.

Currently, large businesses have a $200 limit for taxes to operate in the city. For example, big box stores like Home Depot and Target in Costa Mesa only pay $200 a year in business license taxes. The change, if approved, could increase that to as high as $15,000 based on gross income.

Small businesses — which the city defines as those with $500,000 or less in gross income — will not be affected.

Irvine

In Irvine, voters will be asked whether the city should switch the local election system to ranked-choice voting in 2028.

The system would allow voters to rank their candidates in order of preference instead of casting a vote for one candidate.

If approved, the change would only take effect if the costs stay below 0.23% of the city’s general fund. If the switch goes above that amount, the ranked-choice voting system could be delayed until a future election.

Orange

Orange is currently a general law city bound by state law and mandates. Voters will decide if Orange should become a charter city, joining other municipal governments such as Los Angeles, Santa Ana and Huntington Beach.

Charter cities still have to follow state and federal laws, but can establish their own rules on issues such as mayoral authority, term limits and financial management.

Voters in Orange will also decide on a one-cent sales tax increase that, if approved, would last for 13 years.

The city of Orange is looking at increasingly dire budget conditions. In the 2024 election, voters narrowly rejected a 10-year half-cent sales tax measure estimated to generate $20 million in annual revenue.

San Clemente

Residents of San Clemente got a sales tax initiative measure on the November ballot that proposes a 1% sales tax increase. If approved, the increase could generate about $15 million in revenue for local beach restoration and wildfire prevention.

Over the past few years, coastal erosion has shrunk portions of San Clemente beaches. To fix the problem, experts have turned to costly sand replenishment projects.

In 2024, voters rejected a 0.5% sales tax increase.

Santa Ana

Santa Ana’s 1.5% sales tax increase — called Measure X — is supposed to decrease in 2029 and then completely go away by 2039. Public officials have said the loss of Measure X could mean the city loses millions of dollars in revenue.

Santa Ana voters will decide in November whether to make the Measure X tax permanent.

The tax measure was approved by voters in 2018. Money from the tax has helped the city fund street maintenance, public safety, youth services and homelessness services.

Westminster 

Voters in Westminster will be asked if the transient occupancy tax, paid for by hotel and motel guests, should be increased to 12%. The hike is expected to generate about $452,000 in revenue for general services, including homelessness, park maintenance, and public safety.

Families within the Westminster School District will decide if the district could issue up to $128 million in bonds for school repairs and upgrades.

What didn’t make it to the ballot? 

In Anaheim, three ballot measures failed: One would have asked voters if a 3% tax should be added to entertainment tickets, like theme parks and sports venues. The City Council also chose not to move forward with a ballot item that would have taxed rideshare trips to and from Disneyland. And a rent control ballot item fizzled, with organizers saying signature-gathering had been suspended to focus on strengthening the ballot language.

A sales tax measure in Fullerton didn’t garner enough support with the City Council to make it to the November ballot. The proposal was a 0.5% sales tax to fix the city’s roads, but some council members expressed concern over whether the city could be trusted to actually use the funds toward the repairs.

What’s next? 

County election officials will begin sending vote-by-mail ballots to registered voters starting Oct. 5, according to the California Secretary of State’s office.

Los Angeles Mayor Karen Bass surprised some transit advocates during a speech at Union Station last month when she proclaimed she wants to develop a "long-term financial strategy and plan" to make public transit on L.A. Metro free for everyone.

The announcement was met with hesitant applause.

In a follow-up statement, the mayor’s office told LAist, “Going fare-free is important to reducing the financial burden on working Angelenos and making Los Angeles a more accessible, affordable city.”

The mayor’s office said Bass plans to introduce a motion to explore what further steps are needed to eliminate Metro fares. Her office did not provide answers to follow-up questions asking whether that motion would go before the Metro Board before or after the election in November, when Bass is running for reelection.

Bass’ announcement comes just a few years after Metro executives said free transit would cost more than $1 billion annually for the region. At the same time, the agency, which is facing mounting political pressure to strengthen fare enforcement, is pouring tens of millions of dollars into taller fare gates that are designed to make it harder for riders to skip out on paying.

Bass’ history on a fare-free Metro

Bass’ July speech, which she made to outline her priorities for her second tenure as Metro Board chair, isn’t the first time the mayor has signaled support for a fare-free transportation system.

When she campaigned for mayor in 2022, Bass told StreetsblogLA that she believes fareless transit “will give people the freedom of mobility with no barriers to entry.” She reiterated that she supports a move to a fareless Metro in a 2023 interview with the L.A. Times. 

Mariana Luna leads the fareless transit campaign for Strategic Actions for a Just Economy, or SAJE, which has long advocated for a fare-free Metro. Luna said Bass’ speech in July reaffirming support for fareless transit was unexpected, but exciting nonetheless.

“We would really love to see some sort of action and not just leave it as a promise during her campaign season,” Luna said.

On the other side is the rider advocacy group Enforce the Fares. Alex Davis, a Metro rider and member of the group, said going fare-free is the opposite direction the agency should be heading.

“It will distract and even set Metro back from tackling the stuff that will actually improve the lives of transit riders,” Davis said, adding that ensuring fares are collected can lead to improved service reliability and system safety.

Bass’ opponent in this year’s mayoral race, former ally and current L.A. City Councilmember Nithya Raman, does not include fareless transit as part of her publicly available transportation platform, which calls for Metro system expansion and service reliability improvements. Raman’s campaign did not respond to requests for comment about her thoughts on fareless transit.

Metro says fareless transit would cost region $1 billion

Though not a novel concept, support for free transit in L.A. County gained momentum during the pandemic, said Brian Taylor, a research professor of urban planning and public policy at UCLA.

“There was concern with contact between operators and passengers,” Taylor said. “So there was a public health aspect to it that led not to go fare-free, but actually to stop enforcing fare payment. That sort of revived the fare-free movement.”

Days after stay-at-home orders began in March 2020, Metro temporarily suspended bus fare collection and permitted rear-door entry to minimize contact between drivers and passengers.

In response to the financial challenges imposed by the pandemic, former Metro CEO Phil Washington assembled a task force that studied the possibility of a universally fareless transportation system.

In February 2021, when Washington announced he was stepping down, Metro touted his support of free transit for the county. 

A few months later, the idea didn’t seem so possible.

According to a September 2021 staff report, a fully fareless rail and bus network was estimated at the time to cost $1.1 billion annually for Metro and local transportation agencies that rely on the same TAP payment system.

Revenue from fares has decreased since the report was published. Last fiscal year, Metro brought in $175 million in fares, and the agency is projecting $25 million less in fare revenue this fiscal year. That’s compared to the $250 million Metro was, on average, collecting annually in pre-pandemic years, which the agency used to come up with its 2021 estimate.

The 2021 Metro report also detailed that a fareless system would require changes to how the state allocates transit funding, since state funding is dependent on local fare revenue.

In 2024, the Metro executive who oversaw the push toward fareless transit said the agency’s analysis was verified by an outside auditor.

“To be fiscally responsible, we can’t offer a completely fareless system,” Devon Deming, the deputy executive officer of fare programs, said at a July 2024 Metro Public Safety Advisory Committee meeting.

While a fully fareless approach never launched, the initiative resulted in providing K-12 and community college students free rides on Metro and fare capping, which establishes $5 as the maximum a rider pays per day.

It also resulted in making it easier for people to enroll in Metro’s assistance program for low-income riders, which offers 90 days of free rides after sign-up followed by 20 free rides per month.

Metro riders load their tap cards at Union Station in Los Angeles.

(

Samanta Helou Hernandez

/

LAist

)

Metro invests in stopping fare evasion

As Bass is pushing for a free system, Metro officials have been moving in the opposite direction by making it physically more difficult to catch a free train ride.

In response to customer feedback about improving fare compliance, Metro began installing taller faregates in 2025. The 7-foot-tall plexiglass, paddle-door gates are designed to be more difficult to jump over or duck under and are equipped with motion sensors. So far, they’ve been installed in 26 rail stations across the Metro system.

Metro spent more than $14.7 million installing the faregates in the last fiscal year and has budgeted $15.5 million to continue installing additional faregates throughout the system.

“We’ve seen a tremendous increase in the fares and the taps where these investments have been put in place,” Chief Bill Scott, who oversees Metro’s Department of Public Safety, said, referring to the statistics that the agency has shared with its board about the taller faregates.

The faregates were highlighted several times during Metro’s State of the Agency event in July, where the mayor announced her fare-free initiative.

Before Bass spoke, L.A. County Supervisor Kathryn Barger said the gates support a safer system.

“Our new faregates have significantly increased paid ridership while reducing reported issues,” said Barger, who is also first vice chair of the Metro Board. “There is a correlation.”

In a written follow-up statement to LAist, Barger said that any potential changes to Metro’s fare policy need to be weighed against the “important reality” that “fare enforcement and access control measures are associated with reductions in crime across the Metro system.”

Does it make sense to go fare-free?

According to Taylor, the UCLA professor, there’s a good economic case to be made for transit systems to go fareless when a large share of its riders are low-income and when the percentage of operating costs covered by fares falls below roughly 10%.

Both conditions are there for L.A. Metro, he said.

SAJE made a similar argument in a 2023 report.

Luna, the assistant director of organizing and advocacy for SAJE’s fareless transit campaign, said she hopes Bass will push to offer a pilot program that would make transit free for those who already qualify for the agency’s low-income assistance.

Making Metro free will negatively impact customer experience, group says

Last year, the rider advocacy group Enforce the Fares launched a campaign to push Metro to restore the number of fare checks transit security officers perform on trains and buses, saying that the physical fare infrastructure investments cannot scale to all parts of the system.

Fare enforcement is tied directly to safety, the group says. Following a surge in violent crime on the system in 2024, Metro reported to its board that 96% of those apprehended for committing a violent crime on the system between April 2023 and March 2024 did not pay fares.

According to the group’s accounting of Metro data, the agency's contracted law enforcement and security officers verified riders paid their fares hundreds of thousands of times per month between 2014 and 2018. That number plummeted to an average of 5,000 verifications per month in 2025.

There’s also been a drop in the amount of fares that pay for the day-to-day operations of the system. In fiscal year 2016, Metro could reinvest the fares it collected to pay for 22% of its operational expenses. In the latest fiscal year, that figure dropped to 6%, according to agency financial reports.

In a report to its board, Metro staff attributed this drop to the “expanding rail system and the declining fare revenues.”

Fare checks have increased in recent months. In May, Metro reported conducting more than 19,000 fare checks. 

Scott, with Metro’s Department of Public Safety, said Metro’s security officers conducted 20,000 fare checks in July and that “it’s trending that way in August.”

In a statement, Bass’ office said she does not support transit security officers performing fare checks and wants them focused on ensuring public safety.