The Brief

Across California’s public university systems, students, faculty and staff are learning and working in aging academic buildings where air conditioning, roofs, plumbing and electrical systems are either deteriorating or not functional. Every year, maintenance costs for University of California and California State University campuses total a combined $1.5 billion.

But those repairs don’t always get made. The unpredictable nature of the state’s budget means there isn’t always enough money to make all the necessary fixes. State revenue has been sporadic, with hundreds of millions some years and no money in others. Gov. Gavin Newsom’s proposed 2025-26 budget does not include any money for repairs, known as deferred maintenance, or other infrastructure projects.

Absent a long-term funding plan, the deferred maintenance backlog has grown to an estimated $9.1 billion for the University of California and $8.3 billion for Cal State University as of the 2023-24 school year, driven by aging buildings and increasing costs for labor and parts.

Given the size of the backlog, in 2023 the state Legislature’s budget advisory office urged lawmakers and system leaders to create a long-term funding solution for maintenance. Without those fixes, students and employees have had to endure extreme indoor heat, electrical and plumbing problems, and failing, outdated roofs.

State funding has been sporadic

The state’s public university systems are some of the largest in the nation, both in terms of enrollment and physical size. The UC operates 63 million square feet of academic space across 10 campuses and the Cal State system spans 43 million square feet across 23 campuses. Large physical systems come with large price tags to maintain them, especially as campus infrastructure ages. A majority of both systems' buildings are over 30 years old, according to the Legislative Analyst's Office.

Each year the UC and Cal State systems provide the Legislature with a five-year plan of proposed building improvement projects with cost estimates. This year, one proposed project includes replacing Santa Clara Hall at Sacramento State. Built in the 1960s, the building houses the engineering laboratory and has HVAC, electrical and telecommunications infrastructure that have “exceeded their useful life,” according to the California State University’s five-year plan.

While both university systems have robust tracking to quantify the size and cost of their maintenance backlogs, it's harder to track the amount they spend on deferred maintenance projects. That’s because a building project, like Santa Clara Hall, may include replacement of old or faulty components in addition to other improvements or renovations, like making a building safer during an earthquake. What also complicates matters is the various sources of funding the systems tap to pay for expensive projects.

Noah Galbraith with Students Against Tuition Hikes shows fallen and bulging ceiling tiles inside of King Hall across from the a Pan-African studies office at Cal State LA on Feb. 29, 2024.

(

Brian Feinzimer

/

LAist

)

At the campus level, administrators can choose to use a portion of their base budget or reserves saved from previous budget allocations to fund repairs to academic buildings, though some campuses spend “little, if any, ongoing funds” on such replacements, according to the Legislative Analyst's Office.

In 2013 and 2014, respectively, state legislation granted the UC and CSU systems the ability to issue their own bonds to finance large projects, like entire building renovations or replacements. The systems then pay back the debt from those bonds using their general budget allocation. From 2013 to 2023, the UC financed about $1.1 billion in projects using university issued bonds and Cal State financed roughly $1.8 billion in projects through its own bonds from 2014 to 2023, according to data reviewed by the Legislative Analyst's Office. In addition to financing, both UC and Cal State can use revenue from system investments to pay for building improvements.

But the amount that the campuses and systems have been spending on replacements has not kept pace with the growth of the maintenance backlog. “To have the ongoing funding, to any degree, any amount — the restoration of that would be a significant plus towards working down this inventory,” said Ron Kalich, the director of Facilities and Asset Management for UC.

State support has been sporadic in recent years, largely influenced by the overall state budget conditions. Since 2015, the state has provided $689 million to UC and $784 million to Cal State to fund deferred maintenance projects in addition to making seismic safety and energy efficiency updates. Nearly half of that money came from the 2021-22 budget. That year each system received $325 million. Other years have been more lean. Newsom’s proposed 2025-26 budget has no allocation for deferred maintenance, nor was there any this year or last year.

We have not seen any designated facility deferred maintenance related funding from the state for a few years now, which has exacerbated critical issues as our campus continues to age,” said Mark Zakhour, Cal State Long Beach associate vice president of the building services division.

The Legislative Analyst's Office recommends the Legislature work with UC and Cal State to develop a plan to provide ongoing funds for future deferred maintenance repairs based on the size of each system’s needs. In the meantime, the Legislature is reviewing a newly introduced bill to put a bond before voters in 2026 that would fund repairs for both systems.

Students and faculty await fixes across the state

In the meantime, students and faculty are in buildings with broken or dilapidated equipment. At Fresno State around 62% of campus buildings are over 60 years old, according to Lisa Bell, Fresno State’s public information officer. Faith Van Hoven, a fourth-year philosophy major, says the air conditioning is so outdated it can’t keep up with the heat. She remembers sitting down during her ethics in criminal justice course on a day when the temperature reached triple digits. She looked up at the ceiling fan as it rotated but felt no reprieve.

“When it gets to be 110 [degrees] here, it can be really, really hot, and there's not always accommodations that are made for students and for the faculty,” Van Hoven said.

She’s tried to push through the heat with a small, personal fan that does little to cool the air. Students like Frederick Lisitsa, a fourth-year double major in philosophy and psychology at Fresno State, choose to avoid the indoor heat altogether.

“I do not stay in that class. I'm like, ‘I will do the homework, but I'm gonna go home,’” he said.

Rats, heat and cold have kept Carolynn Patten, a professor of neurobiology at the UC Davis School of Medicine, and her team from safely conducting research with recovering stroke patients. Her lab is housed within the 86-year-old Hickey Gymnasium building.

“The building is so old and the HVAC system is so decrepit that without exaggeration, in the winter, it will get so cold that we will be working indoors in outdoor jackets, hats, gloves,” Patten said.

The Janss Steps and Dickson Plaza are featured in this aerial view.

(

UCLA

/

Alan Nyiri

)

During hotter weather, extreme indoor heat isn’t just uncomfortable for her students and research participants. It affects her temperature-sensitive research equipment. “The temperatures in the room get to a point that they're really out of the operating range for my equipment. And so now I have $2 million of equipment in there that is being compromised just because we can't create the right environment,” Patten said.

Rats have also chewed the cables that power her equipment, leading her to cancel experiments and halt her research. Patten explained that due to the constant delays, her research partner said he will stop payments because he’s not getting timely data.

“The reason we haven't delivered data is we couldn't do experiments,” said Patten. “I will, in no way, do anything that will compromise patient safety. It wasn't safe to do experiments because the rats had damaged their equipment, and now it's going to have an impact on funding my research.”

How maintenance backlogs grow on campus

UC officials say ignoring small fixes can lead to costly repairs down the road. “If you don't do the proper preventive maintenance, you shorten the life cycle of these things, so then they become deferred maintenance,” said Clint Lord, associate vice chancellor of facilities at UC Davis.

That’s part of the reason why money is allocated for operations and maintenance in the budget for any new building project. Money is allocated per square feet to pay for ongoing upkeep of the building. But the cost to eventually replace building components is not included in those building budgets, which is part of the reason why backlogs have grown so large. When something needs replacing every couple of decades there’s no pot of money set aside specifically to pay the replacement costs.

“When the state started funding academic facilities, they missed one key component,” said Shawn Holland, chief of Facilities Operations at Cal State. “What they never considered was, ‘What does it cost to renew that building 20 years later?’”

That’s not the case for all buildings on campus, though. Buildings that generate revenue, like parking structures or dormitories, do have money allocated by square footage to pay for forecasted replacement costs over time. Making that process uniform with academic buildings is one way the state can begin budgeting for the costs of academic buildings that will need new equipment or upkeep in the future, Holland said.

That change wouldn’t impact the current backlog, however. Campuses leaving deferred maintenance projects unfixed can also put a university’s mission in jeopardy, said Matt Gudorf, assistant vice chancellor of facilities at UC Irvine. Emergencies caused by infrastructure failure can displace students, faculty and staff and strain campus operating budgets.

“Now we are impacting people's ability to go to class, to go to their office, to do research,” Gudorf said. “It not only costs facilities more money, but you're disrupting the whole mission of the university, and that's a huge issue.”

Leaving items on the backlog can also make the replacement more expensive as inflation drives up pricing for parts and workers who are qualified to make updates. Inflation has been “the biggest driver in cost increases” of the deferred maintenance backlog at UC, according to Kalich.

Exploring alternative funding

In 2023, the Legislative Analyst's Office proposed that the university systems and lawmakers develop a long-term funding model that would provide universities an ongoing percentage of the value of their deferred maintenance backlog to help bring it down over time. University officials and legislators haven’t done that though lawmakers are looking at ways to increase funding outside of the systems’ budget allocations.

Assemblymember David Alvarez, a Democrat from Chula Vista whose district includes San Diego State University, introduced AB 48 to put a bond measure on the 2026 ballot to raise billions of dollars for UC and Cal State to address their growing maintenance backlogs. The bill doesn’t have a dollar amount yet, said Alvarez, who sits on the Assembly Education committee.

“We have to go back and really explain to the voters why this [bond] is important and why we should invest in higher education facilities,” Alvarez said.

A cyclist rides through campus at Cal State Long Beach on July 25, 2022.

(

Pablo Unzueta

/

CalMatters

)

The last time UC and Cal State received money from a statewide bond initiative was in 2006, when voters approved $3.1 billion for community colleges, UC and Cal State campuses to address infrastructure needs.

In 2020, voters rejected Proposition 13, the largest school bond proposal in state history, which would have provided the UC and Cal State $2 billion each to fund infrastructure projects and repairs in addition to $11 billion for K-12 schools and the California community colleges.

Lawmakers included UC and Cal State in an early version of Proposition 2, a school bond measure approved last November, but the university systems were eventually left out to limit the amount of bond money voters were asked to approve. At the UC, where total capital needs are expected to grow to $30.7 billion by 2030, system leaders said they were disappointed to be left off the state bond despite 18 months of lobbying the Legislature.

“Going forward, UC will be exploring other options to address our construction, renewal and deferred maintenance needs,” wrote UC spokesperson Heather Hanson via email.

Cal State trustee Jack McGrory said being left out of the bond was “upside down” at a board meeting in September and urged the board to figure out a plan to secure desperately needed state funding. The deferred maintenance backlog at Cal State is expected to increase by $397 million annually due to inflation and aging facilities, according to Steve Relyea, Cal State’s executive vice chancellor and chief financial officer.

“We've got to figure out some different strategy, some alternative for this, because our buildings are in really bad shape,” McGrory said.

Mercy Sosa and Victoria Mejicanos are fellows with the College Journalism Network, a collaboration between CalMatters and student journalists from across California. CalMatters higher education coverage is supported by a grant from the College Futures Foundation.

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

A bipartisan majority in the Republican-led House voted on Wednesday to end the war with Iran, the clearest rebuke yet of President Donald Trump's handling of the conflict and the subsequent economic fallout.

The war powers resolution passed by a vote of 215 to 208, with four Republicans joining Democrats in support.

The resolution had originally been set for a vote two weeks ago, but Republican leaders sent House members home early for a May recess when it appeared the largely Democratic-backed measure had enough Republican votes for passage. However, the extended break didn't shift GOP support to kill the measure.

Ahead of the vote, House Speaker Mike Johnson, R-La., defended Trump's decision to attack Iran.

"Remember … Iran declared war on us 47 years ago. They chant 'death to America.' The president is trying to keep the people safe," Johnson told reporters.

The vote is mostly symbolic. Democrats, despite multiple attempts, have been unable to pass a war powers resolution through the Republican-led Senate. Even if the measure passed in Congress, it would almost certainly be vetoed by President Trump, whose administration has questioned the constitutionality of the War Powers Act.

Still, Senate Democrats have been inching closer. Last month, they won support on a procedural measure to set up a war powers vote after a handful of Republicans broke ranks to join them. A final vote has yet to be scheduled.

The administration has furiously pushed against the effort in both the House and Senate. Wednesday's vote signals his support for the war may be slipping even among some members of his own party.

Now more than 90 days into the conflict, some Republicans have expressed frustration that the war does not appear to have a clear end in sight. Talks to end the war have yet to gain clear traction, casting doubt on a fragile ceasefire. Just hours before the vote, Iran and the U.S. traded strikes in the Persian Gulf.

The conflict began on Feb 28 with strikes by U.S. and Israeli forces on Iran. Under the 1973 War Powers Act, the president has 60 days to end hostilities if there has been no congressional authorization – though he is able to seek a 30-day extension. The same law also gives Congress the ability to end hostilities by voting on a resolution to end military action, subject to presidential veto.

The top Democrat on the House Foreign Affairs Committee, Rep. Gregory Meeks, D-N.Y., warned ahead of the May recess when the vote was delayed that the plan was sure to pass.

"Let's be clear: Republicans pulled this vote because they knew they were going to lose it," Meeks said. "They know this war is a political and strategic disaster."
Copyright 2026 NPR

Electric vehicles offer many opportunities to save money: on gas, on oil changes, on engine maintenance. But, it turns out, insurance isn’t one of them. In fact, the latest data shows that EVs typically cost $3,159 per year to insure — nearly $1,000 more than gas-powered cars. It’s an added burden that could make the payback period on EVs significantly longer.

On average, the insurance gap between electric and internal combustion engine, or ICE, vehicles was 42%, according to a report released by the insurance-comparison marketplace Insurify. But it varies drastically by state and model. The most expensive locale was Washington, D.C., where coverage cost $6,394 versus $4,124 for ICE cars. Maine was the cheapest at $1,476, just $184 more than a conventional car. The difference was most pronounced in Rhode Island, which has a 73% spread.

Generally speaking, luxury brands like Tesla, Mercedes-Benz, and Audi are particularly expensive to insure, with premiums on many models topping $4,000. Volvo, Chevrolet, Ford, and Hyundai offer cars at the lower end of the spectrum. Insurify wouldn’t disclose which insurers had the most expensive rates, but did say Lemonade, Root, and GEICO offered the most affordable EV coverage.

“Insurers were charging those higher premiums to balance their risks,” said Julia Taliesin, an economic analyst and insurance agent at Insurify, who wrote the report. It is based on more than 235 million quotes in Insurify’s proprietary database. Seven states — Alaska, Hawai‘i, North Dakota, New Hampshire, South Dakota, Vermont, and Wyoming — are excluded due to lower quoting volume. But high insurance expenses means it can take more driving before an EV pays for itself through lower fuel and operating costs. Even if electricity were free and gas stays at $4 per gallon it translates to at least 5,800 more miles a year compared to a car that gets 25 mpg.

A primary reason for the disparity is that EVs cost more to fix.

“We do see that there is a delta in the cost of repair for electric vehicles compared to ICE,” said Ryan Mandell, a vice president of strategy and market intelligence at Mitchell, a company which provides data and software related to car repairs. He pegs the difference at about 15%, noting that batteries are relatively expensive to fix and for mechanics to work around and that EVs have complicated electronics. But there are more fundamental factors as well, like the lack of an engine.

Mandell gave the Ford F-150 as an example. From 2022 to 2025 an electric version of the pickup truck, called the Lightning, was available alongside gas-only and hybrid versions. When Mitchell subjected the gasoline and EV models to a front-end crash test the engine in the traditional model actually absorbed quite a bit of the impact. Because it doesn’t have that additional structure, Ford designed the Lightning with additional reinforcement that cost around 30% more to fix.

“The Lightning had more crash parts on the front of the vehicle,” said Mandell. He also noted that Ford requires removing the battery before doing any work, which increases labor costs. “It adds up.”

Repair costs, however, are not the only factor insurers consider. Insurify’s data showed insurance rates for the two trucks are roughly the same, which Taliesin said suggests driver demographics and behavior play a role, too. “One of the most significant is personal driving history and credit history,” she said. Given the Lightning’s much higher cost, the credit scores of owners could potentially be higher. And Insurify’s data shows that the ticket and accident rates for Lightning drivers are about half that of traditional F-150s.

“Factors like climate risk, vehicle theft rates, population density, insurance regulation, repair infrastructure, and EV adoption levels contribute to regional cost differences,” the Insurify report stated. In several states it cited climate-driven extreme weather, such as hurricanes and flooding, as drivers of high costs.

This EV insurance story isn’t unique to the United States. In 2024, BloombergNEF found about the same spread in the United Kingdom and Germany. France saw double the disparity. Overall, though, American EV owners still paid 87% more for insurance than Europeans.

“Several model-specific factors have driven the wider cost gaps in the large and SUV segments,” said Aleksandra O’Donovan, head of electrified transport at BloombergNEF, pointing to the Tesla Model Y as a particularly extreme example. “[The U.S. price] is nearly triple the insurance rate for the same vehicle in Germany.”

From 2023 to 2025, the EV insurance gap in the U.S. grew from 29% to 49%. But this year, it came down slightly, which Taliesin said is among a few good signs for EV drivers. Another is that the disparity among cars made in the last two years was only 18 percent — compared 42% across all years.

That drop is partly because auto insurance prices fell across the board in the last year. But Taliesin also said that ICE cars are catching up to EVs in terms of how complicated and expensive they are to fix. The cost of EV batteries is also trending downward, too. As EV sales have grown, there is more data for companies to base their prices on and more incentive for them to court EV owners.

”We’ve been seeing a ton of insurance-shopping behavior as insurers have been dropping their rates to compete for business,” said Taliesin, who is bullish for consumers. “That’s definitely a welcome reprieve.”

This article originally appeared in Grist at https://grist.org/transportation/the-hidden-cost-of-owning-an-ev-expensive-insurance/.

Grist is a nonprofit, independent media organization dedicated to telling stories of climate solutions and a just future. Learn more at Grist.org