The Brief

Fifty years ago, just after Thanksgiving of 1975, President Gerald Ford signed the Education for All Handicapped Children Act, the landmark law that created special education as it exists today, and guaranteed all children with disabilities the right to a "free appropriate public education."

Yet, "rather than celebrating progress, we face a crisis," warned a recent letter to Congress, signed by hundreds of disability, civil rights and education groups.

That crisis, according to the letter, is "the dismantling of the very infrastructure Congress created to ensure children with disabilities could reach their full potential."

The Trump administration has fired, or tried to fire, many of the federal staff at the U.S. Department of Education who manage and enforce federal disability law, though Education Secretary Linda McMahon has said federal funding for special education is not at risk.

In a November op-ed in USA Today, McMahon wrote that "returning education to the states does not mean the end of federal support for education. It simply means the end of a centralized bureaucracy micromanaging what should be a state-led responsibility."

But, in interviews with 40 parents, educators, disability-rights advocates, subject matter experts and Education Department staffers, NPR heard a growing fear: that the Trump administration's efforts to cut federal staff and oversight of special education could return the U.S. to a time, before 1975, when some schools denied access or services to children with disabilities.

What special education means to one mom and her daughter

Maggie Heilman's 14-year-old daughter, Brooklynn, has never known a world without the 50-year-old law later renamed the Individuals with Disabilities Education Act (IDEA).

Maggie Heilman and her daughter Brooklynn play checkers. Brooklynn loves games, painting her nails and listening to Taylor Swift.

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Katie Currid for NPR

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The family lives in a Kansas City suburb. Brooklynn, who has Down syndrome, loves hanging out with her sisters, playing basketball and listening to music "all day, and on the bus," Brooklyn says.

"And she dances all day," her mom adds.

"In circles," Brooklyn says. "Over and over."

The teen is now in eighth grade, has her own special education plan, thanks to IDEA, and loves her middle school. But sixth grade was difficult.

"I was having a hard time," Brooklynn says.

In October 2023, Heilman says, she got a call from Brooklynn's school that her daughter had become agitated after refusing a request to come to the classroom's reading table. Eventually, Heilman says, Brooklynn was secluded for 20 minutes in a padded room the size of a closet.

"That 20 minutes changed the trajectory of our lives," Heilman recalls. "I had a child who loved to sing and dance and communicate and hug, and, after that moment, she stopped talking."

Seclusion in school, as a practice, is allowed in many states — if students pose an immediate danger to themselves or others. However, the practice can also be traumatic.

Heilman says she told school staff she thought Brooklynn's seclusion was extreme. Through the winter, she said, the school turned to informal seclusion, separating Brooklynn in other physical spaces or school offices.

Brooklynn, center, loves playing Uno with her mom and sisters.

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As a result, Heilman says, Brooklynn repeatedly missed some of her traditional classes. "And we just saw our daughter's health — physically, mentally, emotionally — deteriorate."

Finally, Heilman asked that Brooklynn be transferred to a different middle school, where staff assured her they don't seclude students. Brooklynn's situation improved dramatically, but, worried for the students who came after Brooklynn, Heilman still requested a state-level investigation into her daughter's previous seclusion. The state did not find the district at fault.     

Heilman also filed a complaint with the U.S. Education Department's Office for Civil Rights (OCR), arguing that Brooklynn had been secluded unnecessarily and that, as a result, she was denied her right to a free, appropriate public education.

That complaint kickstarted a new ordeal for Heilman and her family.

Counting on a federal system as it's being dismantled

OCR is the fail-safe for families who believe their child's civil rights are being violated at school because of their disability. A family can submit a discrimination complaint, and one of OCR's attorneys will review it and, if justified, open an investigation — no need to hire an expensive lawyer or advocate.

OCR has investigated a Texas district for restraining students; a Maryland district for how it handled the bullying of a disabled student; and an Arizona district for forcing students with disabilities to end their school day earlier than general education students.

Department records show OCR began investigating Heilman's complaint in October 2024.

But Heilman says her assigned attorney was removed around the same time the Trump administration began a broad reduction-in-force. According to emails Heilman shared with NPR, her case was then assigned to a different attorney.

Heilman says she has heard nothing about the investigation since June, when this second OCR attorney assured her, in an email, that Brooklynn's case is "currently still in investigation."

Several OCR attorneys spoke with NPR on the condition of anonymity for fear of retribution by the Trump administration. Two of them said Heilman's second attorney worked in an OCR office that was gutted in October, in a second round of layoffs. Those fired workers have since been reinstated, but Heilman says she has heard nothing about her complaint.

Of the administration's decision to cut many attorneys who protect students' civil rights, Heilman says, "it's telling families with children like Brooklynn that their hurt doesn't matter."

Before special education, children with disabilities were "invisible"

Before 1975, children with disabilities were commonly denied access to public school classrooms.

"They were invisible," says Ed Martin, who helped write the landmark 1975 law. "They had been kept at home. Our goal was to end that."  

Ed Martin began his career as a young professor of speech therapy at the University of Alabama. He was invited to Washington, D.C., in the 1960s to work on disability issues.

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In 1970, U.S. public schools educated just 1 in 5 children with a disability, according to the Department of Education, and excluded nearly 1.8 million children.

Martin, now 94, says he organized hearings for parents to share their stories with lawmakers.

"There was one mother who told us a story about the school bus stopping at the foot of her driveway," Martin recalls, "and her daughter standing in the window crying, saying, 'Why can't I go with the other kids?'"

When Ford signed the new law, it cemented a bold idea: that students with disabilities have a right to an individualized, public education and that the U.S. government would help pay for it.

Margaret Spellings ran the Education Department under Republican President George W. Bush, and says special education isn't just about doing what the law requires — it's a public good.

"We're talking about a lot of kids who have abilities and disabilities that can be remediated, that can make them productive citizens," Spellings says, "and that is in our interest as a nation to have these students meet their full potential."

In fiscal year 2024, the law provided nearly $15 billion to help school districts pay for specialized classroom instruction and speech and physical therapy, among other services.  

Including its early intervention programs for infants and toddlers, IDEA helps more than 8 million children with disabilities in the U.S.

To manage and enforce not just IDEA but a cluster of federal disability laws, Congress placed a pair of offices inside the Department of Education. The Office for Special Education and Rehabilitative Services (OSERS), which includes the Office of Special Education Programs (OSEP), oversees special education under IDEA, providing guidance to states and directly to families. The other key office is OCR, the Office for Civil Rights. It does not enforce IDEA but investigates allegations of disability discrimination, which often overlap with family complaints that allege IDEA violations.

Since these offices were created, support for their mission — to help families, districts and states in their efforts to protect and educate children with disabilities — has transcended politics. Spellings says, "We have long had, for the last 50 years — until this year — huge bipartisan support and fealty to the law."

Until this year.

Devastating special education cuts 

According to court records, the Trump administration fired 121 of 135 employees at OSERS during the recent government shutdown.

"We can't, in our wildest imagination, understand how the secretary can fulfill her obligation under the law with so few staff," said Denise Marshall, head of the Council of Parent Attorneys and Advocates (COPAA).

Since those cuts, the 121 staffers have been reinstated as part of the deal to end the shutdown, though the administration could lay them off again after Jan. 30.

When NPR asked the Education Department if it planned to retain these staff beyond that date, the press office replied with a statement: "The Department has brought back staff that were impacted by the Schumer Shutdown. The Department will follow all applicable laws."

U.S. Education Secretary Linda McMahon during a television interview outside the White House. In an op-ed published in USA Today, McMahon wrote, "protecting students' civil rights is work that will never go away."

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Samuel Corum

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"This is a part of the process of making a smaller federal footprint and turning responsibilities over to states," says Jonathan Butcher, acting director for the Center for Education Policy at the conservative Heritage Foundation.

Heritage's Project 2025, created as a policy blueprint for a second Trump administration, calls for IDEA funding to be "converted into a no-strings formula block grant" to be sent directly to districts — that section's author, Lindsey Burke, now works at the Education Department.

In her op-ed, and previously, McMahon has reassured families that funding for students with disabilities "will continue indefinitely." It's the federal oversight she's cutting or moving.

But an OSERS staffer, who spoke on the condition of anonymity for fear of retribution, worries that, without federal support staff, "states don't have the systems or the staffing to do this."

Ed Martin, who helped write IDEA 50 years ago, says that, without enough staff, there's also no guarantee the money will be spent on the children who need it most: "The administration has decided that nobody needs to watch [the money]."

"The secretary's words are hollow"

The Trump administration has also made deep cuts to the Office for Civil Rights. In March, it moved to close seven of OCR's 12 regional offices and to fire 299 workers, leaving roughly half the staff the office had in January. This is when Maggie Heilman lost her first attorney.

In October, the administration attempted to fire another 137 staffers, including gutting the office investigating Heilman's complaint. This left 62 employees at OCR who had not received a termination notice — about 10% of the office's January headcount.

"I'm just shocked that they can destroy an entire unit of an organization that's created by statute," said R. Shep Melnick before some cuts were reversed. Melnick is a professor of American politics at Boston College who has been writing about OCR for decades.

As at OSERS, the employees who were fired in October have since been reinstated, but, again, there is no guarantee they will be allowed to stay beyond Jan. 30.

In a statement, the department's press secretary for legal affairs, Julie Hartman, told NPR: "We are rebuilding and refocusing OCR to enable the office to protect students and enforce the law."

Thousands of languishing civil rights complaints

Even as the administration has tried to cut OCR's enforcement attorneys, it has aggressively used the office to enforce new priorities, going after districts and colleges that support transgender students or embrace diversity, equity and inclusion.

In a statement, Hartman told NPR that OCR had "strayed" under Biden and that Trump "is reorienting OCR to what it's meant to be: a law enforcement agency, not a social-justice advocacy arm of the federal government."

Public data suggests a shift away from disability-related investigations.

Since Trump took office, OCR has reached resolution agreements in 73 cases involving alleged disability discrimination. Compare that to 2024, when OCR resolved 390, or 2017, the year Trump took office during his first term, when OCR reached agreements in more than 1,000 such cases.

In these agreements, school districts often commit to a host of fixes — such as launching a program to monitor the use of restraint and seclusion — that help not just the student at the center of the complaint but other students as well. Still, they require labor-intensive investigations into complaints like Maggie Heilman's, with attorneys conducting interviews and collecting documents.

After Brooklynn's first day at her new middle school, her mother, Maggie Heilman, remembers, "She was smiling. She said, 'Thank you, Mommy. I fit in. I love you.'"

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In her USA Today op-ed, McMahon said, in spite of the cuts to OCR, "protecting students' civil rights is work that will never go away."

To that, Marshall, of COPAA, replied: "Bullcrap. The secretary's words are hollow."

It is possible some of OCR's responsibilities could be shifted to other federal agencies, including the U.S. Department of Justice, says Kenneth Marcus, who ran OCR during the first Trump administration and founded the Louis D. Brandeis Center for Human Rights Under Law.

That doesn't appear to have happened yet, Marcus says. But if it does, he says, "it is entirely possible that this shift will leave us stronger when it comes to civil rights, but we will need to see the details."

Spellings, the former Republican education secretary, says that if the administration continues to focus its diminished resources on high-profile political fights, it will run the risk of failing the parents of disabled children even as it says it champions parents' rights in general: "I believe it when they say, 'Let's put parents in charge.' … OK, so what about the parents who want their options as described in [federal disability law]?"

What's next?

The endgame for the Trump administration, as the president and his education secretary have said repeatedly, is to close the U.S. Department of Education and move the federal jobs and funding streams it considers essential to other agencies.

On social media, McMahon and her staff have openly mocked the department, which she has said is "mostly a pass-through for funds that are best managed by the states."

The problem with that view, says Jacqueline Rodriguez of the National Center for Learning Disabilities, is that states need and often want support when it comes to special education. And that support comes from the hundreds of federal staff the administration has been trying to fire.

Without them, Rodriguez says, "we are concerned special education will cease to exist."

"I'm fearful," says one state director of special education, who spoke with NPR on the condition of anonymity out of concern the government would retaliate against that state. "I think it's good for states to know there's federal oversight and that they'll be held accountable. The concept of leaving special education up to states sounds great, but it's scary. What happens if one state decides to interpret the law one way, but another state disagrees and interprets it differently?"

Fifty years ago, Ed Martin helped write the law that made clear to all states and all public schools: Children with disabilities deserve better. The law, he says, was "an affirmation of the values of the country."

He hopes that's still true.

Edited by: Nicole Cohen
Visual design and development by: LA Johnson

Copyright 2025 NPR

California’s first-in-the-nation fast food council — created to give workers a voice on wages, safety and working conditions — has not met in over a year and has no chairperson.

Now the workers the council was built to protect, organized by the Service Employees International Union, are taking their concerns directly to the state, demanding that Gov. Gavin Newsom appoint a chairperson so the council can do its work, as required by law.

Luna Mondragon, who works at a Carl’s Jr. in Milpitas, told CalMatters through a translator that she started out as a cook but has done many other duties in her five years there. After she joined the fast food workers union, she said she began speaking up, especially when she started to experience aches and pains from her job. Since then, she said she has been retaliated against, including with fewer shifts.

“If we don’t have our health we can’t accomplish anything,” she said, her voice choked with emotion. “It’s so important for them to appoint a chair. We need the council.”

The council was created as part of a 2023 compromise that also set a $20 minimum wage for fast food workers. It has the power to set standards on wages, health, safety and working conditions — and to raise the minimum wage annually for hundreds of thousands of fast food workers at chains with 60 or more locations nationwide.

The council — composed of four members representing the businesses, four members representing labor and a chairperson who’s an “unaffiliated” member of the public — must, under state law, hold at least two meetings a year, though the law does not specify who should enforce this provision.

The council only held those meetings in 2024; last year it held two subcommittee meetings, the latest in February 2025. Shortly after, the council’s chairperson, Nick Hardeman, resigned when Newsom appointed him to a different state position. When reached by CalMatters, Hardeman said he did not want to speak on the record about a council he has not chaired in a while.

In 2022, the Legislature raised fast food workers’ minimum wage to $22 an hour. The industry fought back, gathering signatures to repeal the law. Workers across the state went on strike. In late 2023, the SEIU and the industry reached a last-minute compromise: Workers dropped a ballot fight in exchange for a $20 minimum wage and the establishment of the council. The SEIU-affiliated California Fast Food Workers Union launched the following year — lacking the collective bargaining rights of a traditional union but acting as an advocacy and membership group for workers.

Tara Gallegos, a spokesperson for the governor, would not answer questions about the council, instead referring CalMatters to the state’s Labor & Workforce Development Agency. Crystal Young, a spokesperson for the agency, confirmed that there is no chairperson and the council’s meetings are on hold. The council’s four-person staff continues to respond to inquiries and prepare for future meetings, she said.

On April 16, marking about two years since the council’s first meeting, workers delivered a 96-page book to the governor’s office, describing more than 100 complaints filed with CalOSHA, the state labor department and different city agencies since the council’s formation, alleging wage theft and poor working conditions. The union estimates there are about 630,000 fast food workers in the state, about 75% of whom are people of color and 20% of whom are immigrants.

“Employers feel newly empowered to threaten us with calling ICE when we ask questions about paid sick leave or [workers’ compensation] or report health and safety hazards,” Angelica Hernandez, a McDonald’s worker who is a member of the fast food council, said in the book.

Rich Reinis, a member of the council who represents employers and is a former franchise owner, said he has no knowledge of when meetings will resume and is waiting. In his view, the council should have been discussing “fire and ICE.” The phrase refers to the effects of last year’s L.A. County fires on the fast food industry and its workers, some of whom lost their homes, and what businesses and workers need to know about immigration enforcement.

Reinis also wants the council to order a study of the wage increase’s effects on prices and employment. Competing studies by UC Berkeley and UC Santa Cruz have reached opposite conclusions, and the question of affordability remains unresolved, he said.

A Los Angeles Times columnist who analyzed the competing studies concluded the debate over the wage's effects is likely to continue. Hernandez, the councilmember, rejected the industry's claims the wage increase has hurt business. “The sky didn’t fall on the California fast food industry,” she said.

The council is also required to submit a performance review to the Legislature every three years — a deadline approaching without a single full meeting in the past year. Before he resigned, Hardeman, the former chairperson, said it was hard for the council to reach decisions.

“The staff will have to write a report without having any meetings,” Reinis said. “How the hell are we supposed to do that?”

Chris Holden, the former California assemblymember who authored the law that raised the workers’ wages and created the council, told CalMatters the council was “groundbreaking” and “needs to address the challenges that were the genesis of the council in the first place.” He said he hopes the governor is doing his due diligence to identify a new chairperson.

“I want to tell [the governor] to finish the job he started,” Julieta Garcia, a cook at a Pizza Hut in Los Angeles, told CalMatters through a translator. “Leave a good legacy for this generation and the future generation, so you can be recognized as a leader who gave fast food workers a chance.”

Young, the Labor & Workforce Development Agency spokesperson who was speaking on the governor’s behalf, confirmed that Newsom’s office received the workers’ book.

The governor's office has not said when — or whether — Newsom plans to appoint a chairperson to the council.

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

Nearly 20 years after founding a successful environmental and safety consulting services company, Robin Thorne said she still gets checked for being a Black woman in the construction industry.

“I've had situations where people, they don't even make eye contact, and then the male has to step back to say, 'She's running the show,'" she said.

Robin Thorne (in pink jacket) founded DemoChicks to help women of color land jobs in construction industries.

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Courtesy DemoChicks

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Thorne runs CTI Environmental, a multi-million dollar company that was contracted by the Army Corps of Engineers to do debris removal after the L.A. fires.

She’s been an engineer for decades and knows fewer than one of four workers in architecture, construction and engineering industries who are women — and much fewer are women of color.

That proportion is low considering 47% of the U.S. labor force are women.

That's why she’s organized a “Women in STEM Signing Day” at Long Beach City College on Saturday, May 30. The event’s meant to create the type of excitement normally associated with young people signing up for college sports teams.

She wants younger women to tap into their drive to succeed

There were far fewer women in these jobs when Thorne was growing up in Philadelphia, but she didn’t let roadblocks, including those in her personal life — like being a single mom on public assistance — stop her.

DemoChicks helps give young women of color exposure to construction-related jobs.

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“When I thought about being an engineer, I didn't think about it being male-dominated. I just knew I wanted to be an engineer,” she said.

She added that some women do give up on similar dreams or fail to find the spark that allows them to see themselves doing these jobs. That’s why Thorne started DemoChicks seven years ago. She wants young women to see her and think “engineer,” as well as connect with women who are already working in these industries.

Mentorship, examples, and money

The organization is called DemoChicks because demolition is one of the jobs that keeps Thorne’s company busy. More women are entering architecture, construction and engineering jobs than before, but the percentage of women in each industry is still low:

15% in engineering
26% in architecture
11% in construction

These are mostly stable jobs with good entry-level wages, jobs such as safety coordinators, project managers, project engineers and construction managers.

Beyond giving teen girls IRL examples of women in construction industry jobs, DemoChicks supports their academic efforts, which often means helping them out meet college expenses. DemoChicks gave out $1,000 scholarships to eight women last year (35 applied).

A third generation Latina truck driver from South LA

One of those scholarship recipients in 2024 was Ana Terrazas. She recalled growing up in South L.A., not as a latch key kid, but as a truck cab kid.

Ana Terrazas as a teen at her mother's construction job. Terrazas now works for a large construction company as a project engineer.

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 ”My mother… was a truck driver,” Terrazas said, driving belly dump trailers on construction sites. Terrazas would help her mother change tires and lend a hand with any mechanical repairs. Her grandfather was a truck driver too.

“Since then I've always been obsessed with job sites, and also the superintendent, the one that would tell everybody where to go, how to do their job, and organize everything,” Terrazas said.

Two years ago she was working hard to finish her two majors — civil engineering and construction management — to earn her bachelor’s degree from Cal Poly Pomona. She applied for and was awarded a $1,500 scholarship from DemoChicks. That help, she said, had a big effect.

DemoChicks founder Robin Thorne, right, presents Ana Terrazas with a scholarship.

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“I didn't have to take as many hours of work to be able to focus more on my studies and also in my internship during that time,” Terrazas said.

The internship, at Swinerton, a nationwide construction company that's more than 100 years old, turned into full time work as a project engineer.

Terrazas paid it forward earlier this year, inviting Thorne and a dozen DemoChicks to a Swinerton work site during Women in Construction Week. She urged the women to tap into their drive to succeed and lean on people like her for help.

“As long as they're driven and this is what they want, there shouldn't be a reason for them to not be able to get a job here,” Terrazas said.

With LACMA’s new David Geffen Galleries just steps away, it may be easy to forget that we have the richest Ice Age fossil site on Earth right here with the La Brea Tar Pits.

But the museum and research facilities at the tar pits are also scheduled for a multimillion dollar renovation.

Built in 1977, the George C. Page Museum at the tar pits has a special place in the hearts of Angelenos who’ve ever taken a field trip to see its massive mastodon skeletons or dire wolf skulls. Or have maybe shed a tear at the sculptures of the mammoth family in distress in the Lake Pit out front.

All that stuff is staying, museum educator Kay Lai told LAist, but new interactive exhibits will allow visitors to better understand the science that’s happening in their own backyard.

A rendering of the new outdoor amphitheater at the La Brea Tar Pits.

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Courtesy the Natural History Museums of Los Angeles County

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The transformation

“This museum, as beloved as it is, definitely needs that refresh,” Lai said. “And I’m really excited for the next generation of kids that gets to grow up and make new memories here with this new space.”

Lai said the museum refresh will include a new focus on Zed — the 80% complete Columbian mammoth found here — and other notable animals they’ve unearthed over the decades. The mammoth’s bones will be reassembled and Zed will “stand tall for the first time since the Ice Age,” according to the museum’s website.

“We’re able to focus on the very first saber-toothed cat fossils that we’ve ever discovered ... As well as some of our Ice Age survivors ... like Pebbles the Puma ... Pebbles would have been the ancestor of some of the mountain lions that still live in Los Angeles today, including P-22 that passed away a couple years ago,” Lai said.

Then there’s the fish bowl: you know, the fossil lab with windows where you can watch researchers at work?

An even better fish bowl

“So we’ll still have the fish bowl, but it’s going to be much more interactive and there’ll be much more discussion of what’s going on inside the fossil lab,” said Regan Dunn, assistant deputy director and curator at the new Samuel Oschin Global Center for Ice Age Research.

A digital rendering of the new fish bowl at the Samuel Oschin Global Center for Ice Age Research.

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Courtesy the Natural History Museums of Los Angeles County

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Dunn explained that the area where they store their collections of fossils and other specimens is getting major updates too.

“Super valuable, millions of specimens, will be in upgraded systems where there’s climate control. There’ll be enclosed cabinets and be under much better maintenance. And also allow for much more research to happen,” she said.

The La Brea Tar Pits are still very much an active paleontological research site. Dunn said any time a hole goes in the ground in the Hancock Park area, a new discovery is made.

With new outdoor classrooms and a 1-kilometer pedestrian pathway that will take visitors past excavation sites, the idea is to make the research going on here more visible to the public.

Your last chance to visit the tar pits before its two-year transformation is July 6.

A digital rendering showing the aerial view of the updated La Brea Tar Pits grounds.

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Courtesy the Natural History Museums of Los Angeles County

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

In the face of the nation's highest gas prices, California lawmakers approved a bill to ease restrictions on E85 conversion kits — devices that let conventional gasoline cars run on a cheaper, mostly ethanol fuel blend.

Assembly Bill 2046, dubbed the “Access to Affordable Gas Act” by its author, Assemblymember Rhodesia Ransom, a Stockton Democrat, advanced through the Assembly on a 59-0 vote with no debate or opposition.

The measure is the latest example of Sacramento lawmakers scrambling to respond to gas costs that have soared amid the Iran-Israel war, which has rattled global oil markets and pushed California pump prices above $6 a gallon. It now heads to the California state Senate and would need Gov. Gavin Newsom’s approval before it becomes law.

“Californians consistently pay more at the pump than drivers from other states, and gas prices are once again climbing across the state,” Ransom said on the Assembly floor Thursday. “For commuters and working families, [the proposal] offers a practical way to save money.”

If approved in its current form, the measure would exempt manufacturers of E85 converter kits from an approval process by the state’s primary climate regulator, the California Air Resources Board, which requires companies to demonstrate the devices do not increase a vehicle's emissions. The bill would leave in place a separate federal certification process run by the Environmental Protection Agency.

“Members in Sacramento are looking for ways to try to reduce costs — or appear to reduce costs of driving — and so this is a way to do that,” said Aaron Smith, a UC Berkeley economist and fuels expert.

The converter kits, which cost between $800 to $1,250, according to a legislative analysis of the bill, would let drivers convert their cars to run on both gasoline and E85 fuel.

E85 is a blend of up to 85% ethanol and 15% gasoline; the share of ethanol typically is between 55% and 85%, said Smith, the Berkeley expert.

Jeff Wilkerson, government affairs manager for Pearson Fuels, the largest E85 fuel provider in the state and a bill supporter, said E85 — much of which is made from Midwest corn — is largely insulated from overseas oil shocks that drive California gas prices. The ethanol blend has sold for $2 or more less per gallon than gasoline during recent price spikes.

While E85 is typically priced lower than gasoline and can reduce petroleum dependence and carbon emissions, it delivers 20% to 30% fewer miles per gallon, according to the air board, meaning drivers only save money when E85 is priced at least 20% to 30% below gasoline.

About 1.3 million vehicles in California can currently use the fuel, which is sold at about 640 stations statewide — just 3% of the state’s more than 15,000 fuel pumps, according to the bill analysis.

Ransom said more E85 pumps would be built if the state loosened restrictions and encouraged demand for the fuel blend. She stressed that her bill would present E85 as an alternative.

“For some people, it may not be a wise choice, but at least now it’s going to be a choice,” she said.

Environmentally, the fuel is rated cleaner than regular gasoline by California's Low Carbon Fuel Standard. But that rating has critics. Smith, the Berkeley economist, said the benefits of ethanol are likely overstated. Official numbers likely understate emissions from land use as rising corn demand for ethanol pushes farmers to clear forested land.

The state’s own certification record offers a cautionary tale. Lindsay Buckley, a spokesperson for the board, said the agency has received only five applications from companies for E85 conversion kits since 2008 and that none has cleared the certification process, which is designed to ensure modified vehicles still meet their original emissions standards. Supporters of the proposal argue the board moves slowly and its regulations are burdensome.

But loosening that standard carries its own risk, cautioned Aaron Kurz, senior consultant on the Assembly Transportation Committee, especially now.

As the federal government has stripped scientific expertise from regulatory decisions, he wrote in his analysis, “this committee should consider if the state should cede authority over an inherently scientific process and set a precedent for transferring approval authority to the federal government.”