The Brief

Following government warnings about the dangers of being in a war zone, California universities and colleges have safely evacuated their students who were attending study abroad programs in Israel. The future of those programs for the rest of the school year remains uncertain.

The U.S. State Department recently has categorized Israel as a Level 3 travel risk, which urges U.S. citizens to “reconsider” their travel and presence in the country “due to terrorism and civil unrest” in the aftermath of the Hamas attack on Israel and Israel’s current retaliations in Gaza. The Level 3 ranking and family concerns were enough for the University of California and the California State University systems to take action. Level 4, the worst potential ranking, is an outright travel ban.

UC’s Education Abroad Program (UCEAP) reported that its students at the Hebrew University in Jerusalem have left Israel and are all safe. However, UC declined to say how many students were involved and where they are now. Mandatory travel insurance covered the evacuation expenses.

“We can confirm that students on UCEAP-sponsored programs are safe and have departed Israel. It’s our policy, following best practices on travel safety abroad, not to disclose the number of students in a given location or their specific location during emergency or urgent location changes,” Jennifer Monroe, UCEAP’s Director of Marketing, Communications, and Engagement, said in an email to EdSource.

The students are now taking online or hybrid courses in connection with Hebrew University, she said. And UCEAP “continues to evaluate the safety and security conditions at the program location and region to determine if in-person programming can continue,” Monroe added.

The California State University reported that a Chico State student in an internship in Israel has returned to California. Another student, from the CSU Northridge campus, was about to leave home to start a program at the University of Haifa but did not depart because of the situation there.

“We will be suspending our program and not sending anyone there, said Jaishankar Raman, director of CSU’s International Programs. “We are waiting until we see how the situation unfolds for the spring and we will await what the State Department advises us.” The Northridge student was offered a spot in other overseas programs but declined. He “decided not going anywhere now would be better and to assess the situation in the spring,” Raman said.

Three years ago, universities in California and across the U.S. canceled overseas studies programs as the pandemic took its toll worldwide. It took more than a year for some programs to reopen and then some other nations with higher Covid rates remained off limits for a while longer.

Many U.S. institutions are suspending programs to Israel for the time being and pausing plans for future programs, according to a statement from Caroline Donovan-White, an official with NAFSA: Association of International Educators, a Washington, D.C.-based organization that encourages and supports study abroad and exchange programs. Institutions rely on their existing risk management resources and tools like the State Department travel advisories to guide them in times like this, she explained. (NAFSA was founded as and used to be known as the National Association of Foreign Student Advisers.).

“The pausing of programs happens from time to time for many reasons and universities have plans and policies in place for those situations. Our members tell us they are in close contact with their students studying all over the world–not just in the Middle East–as they may feel especially vulnerable and isolated from their support network right now, particularly those of Jewish and Muslim faiths,” Donovan-White said.

The University of Southern California offers studies at the Hebrew University of Jerusalem and at The Interdisciplinary Center (IDC), Herzliya in the Tel Aviv area (also known as Reichman University). But USC said that since no student had signed up this fall, no special action was needed.

“USC does not have any students studying in Israel during this fall semester. The university will not be offering study abroad programs in Israel this upcoming spring semester and is closely monitoring the situation in the area,” Anthony Bailey, Vice President for Global and Online Initiatives & Dean, USC Bovard College, said in a statement to EdSource.

Stanford University said it has no programs in Israel.

The Olympic and Paralympic Games will cost billions of dollars to put on, and lucrative contracts will be up for grabs to provide things like cleaning services, construction, catering, and IT services for the month-long spectacle.

L.A. public officials want that money to stay local, but many of them say a new procurement plan released by Olympic organizing committee LA28 could end up leaving out businesses in the city of Los Angeles.

"You could have a scenario where no L.A. business does any business with LA28," Council President Marqueece Harris-Dawson said at a council committee meeting Tuesday.

That's a problem for the city, which is the official Olympic host and the financial backstop for the Games. City Council members say business owners in the city should benefit the most from the money flowing into the Games. The Olympic contracts are worth up to $4 billion in total, according to LA28.

The dispute is yet another sign that the relationship between city government and the private organizers of the 2028 Olympics is fraying. In recent months, the two sides have clashed over an overdue agreement about what services the city will provide for the Olympic Games, and the city's potential financial exposure.

LA28's plans for Olympic contracts raises the perennial question about the coming Olympic Games: who in the city will actually benefit from the mega-event that will take over the region in the summer of 2028. It also indicates the limits of the city's ability to influence LA28's decision-making.

John Reamer, who leads the city's contracts department, said Tuesday that his staff did not review the procurement plan before it was released, and questioned if the relationship between the city and LA28 was a true "partnership."

"[I believed] that LA28 would allow us to give input, and they would take that input, and we would discuss that input and we would agree upon that input and it would be part of the plan," he said.

City officials want more commitments for L.A. businesses

LA28 says it's aiming to keep 75% of its spending in the Greater L.A. area, and put 25% towards small businesses. The report says it will prioritize "hyperlocal" businesses in the city of L.A., but makes no explicit promises. Instead, it identifies "local" as anywhere in L.A., Orange, Riverside, San Bernardino and Ventura counties.

At a council committee meeting on the Olympics Tuesday, multiple members criticized that plan as too broad — pushing LA28 to instead make guarantees to businesses in the city of L.A.

" Los Angeles stands alone in terms of its commitment, its investment and the amount of risk that we're bearing," Harris-Dawson told LAist. "We think every possible avenue ought to be pursued to make sure you leave the people whole, if not better, off, than they were before this started."

LA28 CEO Reynold Hoover told the council Tuesday that LA28 would give L.A. city businesses preferential treatment when awarding contracts.

"When all else is equal between two competing suppliers, we will prioritize City of L.A. suppliers," he said.

Hoover said that focusing exclusively on businesses in the city of L.A. would limit competition for those contracts — and that he wouldn't commit to a plan that would limit LA28's ability to secure the best contract that would be financially responsible.

"If I focus solely, first and foremost, on the city of L.A. for small business, then I am artificially reducing the pool of competition, placing greater risk on the city taxpayers and placing greater risk on the backstop of the city of L.A.," Hoover said.

Council president Harris-Dawson pushed back.

"We'd rather you pay nominally more to a business in the city, than to save $25," Harris-Dawson said. "If you just go for a straight, 'We want the cheapest person in the five-county area,' I can tell you already, you're going to be using a bunch of businesses where the land is cheap and there's no regulation."

Councilmember Hugo Soto-Martinez echoed those concerns, saying that the minimum wage and cost of living in L.A. are higher — meaning that businesses in Los Angeles may charge more.

"The city of L.A. is the financial back-stop to everything that you are doing. And I don't think that has resonated or permeated through you or this whole board that I just frankly don't trust" he said. "We have to go to our constituents and say that we are fighting for them to make sure that they're going to get as much business as they can out of this event."

Millions on the line for the city

The dispute over opportunities for local businesses represents one of many areas where the city and LA28 are at odds.

An important agreement that will dictate which services the city of Los Angeles will provide and how it will be reimbursed is more than six months late. Last week, city councilmember Monica Rodriguez penned a public letter warning Hoover that the Olympics could "bankrupt" the city if that agreement doesn't include adequate protections for the city.

The major concern is who will pay security costs for the Olympics, including LAPD overtime.

The federal government has allocated one billion dollars to security costs for the mega-event, and has put the Secret Service in charge of security planning. Despite those plans, city officials are concerned about who will be left with the bag if the federal funding doesn't come through, or if it doesn't cover all of the city's security costs.

Rodriguez warned that if it isn't changed, the current draft agreement could leave L.A. vulnerable to spending hundreds of millions even if LA28 turns a profit.

Expensive ticket prices are also a sore spot for the city council. Olympics tickets cost up to $5,500 and the cheap $28 tickets went fast in the locals-only pre-sale. Every ticket included a 24% service fee.

Councilmember Katy Yaroslavsky asked Tuesday how much of the service fee would be going to LA28 — a figure that Hoover said he didn't know.

"The tickets are not affordable," she said. "A dollar, which would have actually helped us do some of the things that we know we need to do to get ourselves ready as a city for the Olympics, feels like a drop in the bucket compared to a 24% surcharge."

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A key tool of the U.S. spy community will expire this month without action from Congress. The government says the intel gathered through the provision — Section 702 of the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act, or FISA 702 — underpins a majority of the articles in the president's daily intelligence briefing and is a key asset in international counterterrorism and the fight against trafficking.

But a number of lawmakers, both Republicans and Democrats, are concerned that FISA 702 allows for the federal government to spy on the communications of American citizens without a warrant, violating their constitutional right to privacy.

The looming fight to bolster the law's civil liberties protections is likely to be bruising — and the provision's advocates claim it could jeopardize national security.

What is Section 702 of the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act?

Section 702 of FISA empowers U.S. intelligence agencies to collect and review the electronic communications of foreign nationals located outside the United States without obtaining individual court orders.

Sometimes, foreign nationals communicate with people in the United States, leading to incidental collection of Americans' communications.

The Office of the Director of National Intelligence says the government uses the information collected through the program to protect the U.S. and its allies from foreign adversaries — including terrorists and spies — as well as to inform cybersecurity efforts.

"No one denies the immense intelligence value of Section 702," Stewart Baker, former National Security Agency general counsel, told Congress in January.

"The U.S. government recently credited the program with helping to disrupt several terrorist attacks here and abroad, identify the Chinese origins of imported fentanyl precursors, respond to ransomware attacks on U.S. companies, identify Chinese hackers' intrusions into a network used by a key U.S. transportation hub, and disrupt foreign government efforts to carry out kidnappings, assassinations, and espionage on U.S. soil. Those examples just scratch the surface," Baker said.

Why is Congress debating this now?

The program's 2024 authorization is set to expire on April 20 — unless Congress votes to renew it. Congress has always attached an expiration date to Section 702, which makes its renewal a recurring fight on Capitol Hill.

Civil liberties-minded legislators of both parties have long been concerned that Section 702 enables illegal, warrantless surveillance of American citizens by the federal government. And unlike most issues in contemporary politics, the issue doesn't break cleanly along party lines.

Prominent critics include Sen. Mike Lee, R-Utah, Sen. Ron Wyden, D-Ore., and Rep. Warren Davidson, R-Ohio.

But, with a change in administration since the last renewal battle, some lawmakers have switched sides.

Rep. Darrell Issa, R-Calif., who previously voted against the renewal because of its lack of a warrant requirement to query information about Americans, told The Hill he thought reforms to the program were working.

Rep. Jamie Raskin, D-Md., is working to rally his colleagues against a renewal — after voting for it in 2024.

President Trump supports an extension with no changes to the program.

"When used properly, FISA is an effective tool to keep Americans safe. For these reasons, I have called for a clean 18-month extension," Trump wrote in a March post on Truth Social. "With the ongoing successful Military activities against the Terrorist Iranian Regime, it is more important than ever that we remain vigilant, PROTECT our Homeland, Troops, and Diplomats stationed abroad, and maintain our ability to quickly stop bad actors seeking to cause harm to our People and our Country."

That position is a major shift for Trump, who railed against the program in the past. Ahead of the last renewal vote in April 2024, during the Biden administration, Trump posted "KILL FISA, IT WAS ILLEGALLY USED AGAINST ME, AND MANY OTHERS."

How is the information actually collected?

A special court, the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Court (FISC), issues a blanket authorization each year that allows the government to collect information about any targets who fall within certain categories proposed by the attorney general and director of national intelligence.

The National Security Agency, National Counterterrorism Center, Central Intelligence Agency and FBI obtain that information directly from the U.S. companies that facilitate electronic communication such as email, social media or cellphone service.

The National Security Agency also collects communications "as they cross the backbone of the internet with the compelled assistance of companies that maintain those networks."

What role does Section 702 play in the landscape of American intelligence gathering?

A massive amount of information is collected under Section 702 authority: There were 349,823 surveillance targets in 2025, up from about 246,000 in 2022. Targets could each have many records collected — think about the number of emails that hit your inbox each day — leading to a giant database of information.

In 2023, 60% of the president's daily brief items — a daily summary of pressing national security issues prepared for the most senior administration officials — contained Section 702 information, according to a government release.

It is also used extensively to combat weapons and drug trafficking — 70% of the CIA's illicit synthetic drug disruptions in 2023 stemmed from FISA 702 data, the document said.

Can the government search for Americans' information inside the trove of information it has collected under Section 702?

Yes, under certain parameters that have been gradually narrowed over the nearly two-decade lifespan of the legislation.

Here are some of the reasons the government says it might search for Americans, as included in a public report from the Office of the Director of National Intelligence (ODNI):

• "Using the name of a U.S. person hostage to cull through communications of the terrorist network that kidnapped her to pinpoint her location and condition;
• Using the email address of a U.S. victim of a cyber-attack to quickly identify the scope of malicious cyber activities and to warn the U.S. person of the actual or pending intrusion;
• Using the name of a government employee that has been approached by foreign spies to detect foreign espionage networks and identify other potential victims; and
• Using the name of a government official who will be traveling to identify any threats to the official by terrorists or other foreign adversaries."

Does the government need specific permission from a court to search for an American's information?

No, the government does not need — and has resisted reforms that would require — a targeted court order to search for an American's information in corpus of material gathered under Section 702 authority.

Intelligence community and FBI advocates argue that a requirement to obtain a court order to query an American's information would be overly burdensome.

"I am especially concerned about one frequently discussed proposal, which would require the government to obtain a warrant or court order from a judge before personnel could conduct a 'U.S. person query' of information previously obtained through use of Section 702," then-FBI Director Christopher Wray told Congress in 2023, amid the last reauthorization fight.

"A warrant requirement would amount to a de facto ban, because query applications either would not meet the legal standard to win court approval; or because, when the standard could be met, it would be so only after the expenditure of scarce resources, the submission and review of a lengthy legal filing, and the passage of significant time — which, in the world of rapidly evolving threats, the government often does not have. That would be a significant blow to the FBI," Wray said.

What do civil liberties and privacy advocates say about the legislation?

Privacy advocates say that, as written, the FISA statute allows the government to spy on the communications of Americans and others in the U.S. without the permission of a court, in contravention of the privacy guarantees in the Fourth Amendment.

"The FBI — and every other agency that receives Section 702 data — routinely goes searching through that data for the express purpose of finding and using Americans' communications," according to Elizabeth Goitein, senior director of the Brennan Center's Liberty and National Security Program. "The government conducts literally thousands of these backdoor searches every year."

Lawmakers in support of reforming Section 702 share her concern.

"The Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act is supposed to be about surveilling foreigners overseas. That way the government doesn't need a warrant," Sen. Wyden told The Lever. "But because so many of these targets are going to be talking to Americans, Americans get swept up in these searches, and that's what I want to have some checks and balances on."

Rep. Tim Burchett, a Tennessee Republican, said in a video that his concerns stem from past privacy violations from the government: "The system was abused and they spied on thousands of Americans, violated the Fourth Amendment of the Constitution — and, well, it was a horrible situation."

Has Section 702 information been improperly used to surveil American citizens?

Yes, the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Court characterized the FBI's violations as "persistent and widespread" in a 2022 court document that recertified the 702 program.

Documented abuses, detailed in congressionally mandated transparency reports from the Office of the Director of National Intelligence, include warrantless searches for a U.S. senator, journalists and political commentators, 6,800 Social Security numbers, 19,000 donors to a congressional campaign and an FBI employee's family member, who the employee's mother suspected of having an extramarital affair. Anti-surveillance advocacy group Demand Progress put together a detailed timeline of major violations by the FBI and intelligence agencies, as identified by the FISC.

What are the current restrictions on queries for Americans' information by federal law enforcement?

FBI agents must receive annual training on FISA and are generally prohibited from searching for information about people in the U.S. if the sole goal of the search is to investigate general criminal activity, rather than find foreign intelligence information, and those searches need approval from a supervisor or an attorney.

More senior approval is required when searching for information connected to U.S. political or media figures. Moreover, information from queries cannot be used without court authorization to conduct criminal investigations of people in the U.S., unless the charges pertain to national security, death, kidnapping, serious bodily injury, or a handful of other serious crimes.

According to disclosures from the bureau, the number of searches for Americans has declined dramatically in recent years — from 119,383 queries from December 2021 to November 2022 to 7,413 queries in the same 2024-2025 window. Civil liberties advocates note that the full scale of searches can't be known — an October 2025 Justice Department watchdog report noted that a now-shuttered tool allowed untracked searches.
Copyright 2026 NPR

Progressive California Democrats, who have long fought and failed to raise taxes on the rich, are renewing their push this year in light of a specific threat: The seismic federal cuts to Medi-Cal, the state’s health care program for the poor.

President Donald Trump’s H.R.1, signed into law last July, is estimated to strip tens of billions a year in state Medi-Cal funding and cause 2 million low-income residents to lose coverage. It has prompted progressive lawmakers and health care advocates to call for higher taxes on corporations or billionaires to keep those at risk of losing benefits on the program.

“We know that you are not responsible for these awful cuts, but now the responsibility does lie in your hands,” Judy Mark, executive director of Disability Voices United, an advocacy group for people with disabilities and their families, told state lawmakers at a January rally. “You have the power to increase our revenue so that we don’t have to make such devastating cuts.”

Progressive lawmakers have introduced at least two proposals to tax corporations, including one that would direct funds toward Medi-Cal. Separately, health care advocates are backing a controversial ballot measure to tax billionaire wealth to replace lost federal dollars.

There’s one glaring problem: Any solution to backfill the Medi-Cal funding could add to the state’s already gigantic structural budget deficit, not reduce it.

The deficit could reach $30 billion in future years — so large that the state is already struggling just to sustain the reduced level of care under H.R.1, let alone paying the federal government’s share.

Backfilling the Medi-Cal cuts would make the gap larger, said Keely Martin Bosler, former state finance director with more than two decades of experience in state fiscal policy. To “maintain the same insured level of coverage, those costs are on top of the deficits that exist, and so that would be significant.”

California, in its fourth consecutive year projecting a deficit, will likely see bigger shortfalls in future years as spending continues to outpace revenue. Even if the state spends nothing to backfill federal cuts, the deficit could reach $22 billion in fiscal year 2027-28, according to Gov. Gavin Newsom’s January budget proposal.

Democratic lawmakers, who already cut certain Medi-Cal benefits and froze new undocumented adult enrollment last year to close a $12 billion budget hole, acknowledge that the state should now combine sustainable revenue increases with ongoing program cuts to address the sizable deficit as recommended by the nonpartisan Legislative Analyst’s Office.

Yet it’s likely that no meaningful revenue increases will materialize this year.

The Fair Games Coalition, made up of community leaders, labor organizations and advocates, announce the launch of the Overpaid CEO Tax Initiative in West Hollywood on Jan. 14, 2026.

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Genaro Molina

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Newsom, in his last year as governor, has opposed any wealth tax over concerns that it would drive high-income earners out of California and dampen the tax base. Passing any tax increases would also require a two-thirds vote in each legislative chamber, a high bar even with a Democratic supermajority.

“I don’t think anything is going to happen this year,” said Senate Revenue and Taxation Committee Chair Jerry McNerney, a Stockton Democrat. “So why look at options that are doomed to fail in the first place?”

A $44 billion problem

The state is constitutionally required to direct roughly 50 cents of each dollar in excess general fund revenue toward K-14 education and reserves. That means the state would need roughly $44 billion in new revenue annually to close a $22 billion budget hole.

Existing legislative proposals don’t come close to raising that much.

Progressive Democrats are consolidating behind a pair of tax proposals, including one that would close the “water’s edge” loophole, which allows multinational corporations that opt in to only pay taxes on income made within borders of California. That allows companies to establish subsidiaries offshore to avoid paying taxes on their profits, said bill author Assemblymember Damon Connolly, a San Rafael Democrat.

Connolly told CalMatters his bill would raise $3 to $4 billion annually. But the revenue could swing, and corporations could still find new ways to reduce their California taxes, according to an LAO evaluation of different tax options.

Acknowledging that the amount wouldn’t close the entire structural deficit, Connolly said it’s “a step in the right direction.”

“It’s only one part of the equation. It’s certainly the time to look at potential revenue solutions but also obviously roll up our sleeves and take a hard look at the budget,” Connolly said. He did not specify which areas he’d consider cutting, saying only that protecting health care is where state lawmakers should “draw the line.”

Another bill by Assembly Health Committee Chair Mia Bonta, an Oakland Democrat, would require businesses whose workers rely on Medi-Cal and food stamps to contribute to a fund to “prevent loss of or to restore” health care coverage under H.R.1. There are no details yet on how much the charge would be.

And there’s the 2026 California Billionaire Tax Act proposed by the SEIU-United Healthcare Workers West, which would apply a 5%, one-time tax on billionaires’ wealth and use most of the revenue to backfill federal health care cuts. The initiative would establish a special fund that would exempt the revenue from constitutionally required deposits into education and savings.

Supporters estimate it would generate $100 billion over five years. SEIU-UHW spokesperson Suzanne Jimenez told CalMatters that it would allow the state to temporarily continue providing Medi-Cal coverage at the same level while giving state leaders time to figure out how best to sustain it.

But even if voters approve the tax measure, critics say the funds could get locked up in court from lawsuits by billionaire taxpayers or by education groups, who might argue it skirts the state’s constitutional requirements to benefit schools. And it’s unclear how the state would sustain the funding after the money runs out: An LAO analysis estimates that the measure could drive away billionaires and reduce income tax revenue the state could collect in future years.

“The first step is to pass the billionaire tax so that we have five years to work on that plan. And then, right after Election Day, we will be ready to work with the next governor to figure out a long-term solution,” Jimenez said.

Taxing the rich frenzy faces an uphill battle

While they might do little to address the state’s structural deficit, proposals to tax the rich shrewdly tap into the public anxiety with “rather extraordinary disparity in the distribution of income and wealth,” said Kirk Stark, a professor of tax law and policy at UCLA.

“I think that targeting the rich is understandable, but I don’t think that it’s really the kind of policy that can be expected to durably address very long-term structural fiscal imbalance,” he said.

More than 60% of California’s likely voters support higher taxes on the state’s wealthiest to help with the state’s budget deficit, according to a February survey by the Public Policy Institute of California.

The sentiment especially speaks to progressives, who have made fighting income inequality a core belief. But even the popular idea faces an uphill climb: Some Democrats contend that raising taxes on the state’s highest earners risks driving them away, especially since the state heavily relies on their income tax.

Janitors, nurses, teachers and labor organizers rally at the state Capitol in Sacramento to launch UnRig California on March 11, 2026. The initiative is a multiyear campaign aimed at reforming the state’s economy and tax code.

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Miguel Gutierrez Jr.

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“The wealthiest Californians are also the most mobile Californians,” said former Assembly Budget Chair Phil Ting, a San Francisco Democrat. “They could easily decide to go domicile in some other parts of the country.”

It also could deter businesses and billionaires from moving to California. “Does it signal that California is not a friendly, accommodating jurisdiction for people who want to amass billions upon billions of dollars of wealth?” Stark said.

Other ideas to address the state’s budget needs more systemically could pose even bigger political risks, especially as the state’s revenue is booming thanks to an AI-driven economy.

Stark said the state should examine its three primary revenue sources: income tax, sales tax and property tax. Since taxing income could dampen the incentive to work, and sales tax could discourage consumption, the state’s property tax — capped at 1% of the property value by Proposition 13 in 1978 — “jumps out as a tax reform that needs to happen in California,” he said.

“Not something that’s going to be just a one-time hit on the elite, but a fundamental, structural reconsideration of how the state of California taxes the value of land and structures.”

But any proposal to reform Prop. 13 would likely ignite a fierce political battle, just like the patchwork of ballot initiatives over the past half-century to amend Prop. 13 by carving out tax breaks or loopholes to hike taxes.

It’s even harder now with affordability being top of mind for Californians, Ting said.

“People are very cost-sensitive because they feel that their groceries are going up, their gas is going up, rent is going up, it’s a very difficult time to introduce even further costs in taxes to middle-class Californians.”

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

A nonprofit organization created by the California State Library to improve childhood literacy has spent more than $1 million in taxpayer money but has yet to put a single book in the hands of a child.

Lawmakers grilled State Librarian Greg Lucas and other officials about the organization’s spending in a contentious three-hour hearing April 7, with one lawmaker saying it raises “serious questions.”

Lucas, however, blamed the shortcomings on the fact that legislators themselves pulled the organization's funding prematurely. After the hearing, he told CalMatters in a statement that “every taxpayer dollar spent on this program is fully accounted for.”

In total, lawmakers allocated $70 million in 2022 to improve children’s love of reading with the intent of giving some of the money to Dolly Parton’s Imagination Library and some of it to a local organization.

The California-based Strong Reader Partnership was formed by the state library as the local partner, and it was originally set to receive $19 million. But in 2024, with very little of the money spent, lawmakers redirected the money to the Dollywood Foundation, which oversees Parton’s Imagination Library. Ultimately, the project has been able to meet many of its goals, the Dollywood Foundation told legislators this year. In all, it has served more than 160,000 children in California and distributed nearly 3 million books. The foundation is administering the program but not donating any money toward the project.

Although the $1 million spent by the Strong Reader Partnership is small, relative to the total project budget, Sen. Sasha Renée Pérez, a Pasadena Democrat, and Sen. Shannon Grove, a Bakersfield Republican, said in the hearing that it’s their job to ensure it was still spent correctly, especially since the money was designated for children.

In the hearing, Pérez and Grove questioned the Strong Reader Partnership’s finances, repeatedly stating that its accounting practices and business activities were ineffective, negligent or potentially in violation of its state contract. Grove pressed Lucas about why he created a separate nonprofit instead of giving the money directly to the Dollywood Foundation, even though she herself required the state library to do so.

In 2022 Grove authored the law that created the program. The bill required “the State Librarian to coordinate with a nonprofit entity, as specified, that is organized solely to promote and encourage reading by the children of the state.” The Dollywood Foundation, which is national and based in Tennessee, was not eligible to be that nonprofit entity.

When CalMatters asked Grove why she is criticizing the state library’s formation of a nonprofit when her bill required it, she responded by email but didn’t answer the question. Instead, she reiterated her criticisms of the Strong Reader Partnership, saying that its money was “squandered away without putting books in kids’ hands.”

Letters to lawmakers 

State lawmakers first questioned the Imagination Library project in 2024, when budget officials, faced with closing a nearly $50 billion state deficit, told lawmakers that most of the money for the program remained unspent nearly two years after its launch. That year, the governor signed a bill keeping the money intact but requiring 90% of it go directly to the Dollywood Foundation instead of the Strong Reader Partnership or any local nonprofit. The foundation did not respond to CalMatters’ questions about its relationship with the Strong Reader Partnership.

Sonya Harris, executive director of the Strong Reader Partnership at the time, spoke out against that 2024 bill and said she sent letters to legislators opposing it.

Lawmakers said speaking about the bill was a violation of her contract. “You're attempting to influence legislation when it's explicitly stated that you are not supposed to use state taxpayer dollars to do so. Do you agree?” asked Pérez during the April 7 hearing. Harris didn’t answer the question.

Also during the hearing, Pérez repeatedly questioned the organization’s financial management, referencing instances when checks bounced, reports were not completed or documents arrived months after lawmakers had requested them. “As far as I can see here, there (were) no local partnerships that you all established in order to facilitate this program over a two-year period,” she said. “We are not able to understand what you did with these dollars and that’s the whole purpose of this hearing.”

Contracting with nonprofits comes with risks

The roughly $1 million in state funds that went to the Strong Reader Partnership is less than a thousandth of 1% of the state’s total spending, but that’s not the point, Pérez said

“Comments have been made about the amount of money that this is, and that it might be small relative to the budget,” she said before closing out the hearing. “But for me, as a public servant, I take this very seriously. We need to ensure that when we're making a commitment to provide something as simple as books to children, that we're actually delivering on that commitment.”

State and local lawmakers routinely sign contracts and grant money to businesses, including many nonprofit organizations, to enact public services or programs. In the process, taxpayers “lose transparency,” said Susan Shelley, vice president of communications for the Howard Jarvis Taxpayer Association, a group that opposes higher taxes. “Why is the state government or the local government turning them over to nonprofits instead of having their massive bureaucracies handle these things where someone is accountable?”

Shelley said the responsibility lies both with the nonprofits and the Legislature, especially in this instance, because Grove’s bill required the California State Library to work with a local nonprofit.

Normally, the Howard Jarvis Taxpayer Association is strongly aligned with Grove. Last year, the organization gave her an A+ based on her voting record on tax-related issues.

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