The Brief

Now through April 9, about five dozen Cal State Long Beach students will provide free income tax preparation.

Clients have the option of getting support in person or online. Some prefer to sit alongside student volunteers as they make their way through their paperwork. Other clients drop off their documents, then come back for their returns after class.

The service is open to people who earned $67,000 or less in 2024, and geared at students, people over 65, nonresidents and people with limited English proficiency.

Though the students are volunteers, this operation is far from beginner, said Sudha Krishnan, the accountancy department chair and faculty supervisor. “These guys have to be experts,” she said.

Cal State Long Beach’s IRS-administered Volunteer Income Tax Assistance (VITA) program requires students to undergo multiple days of training. They’re also required to pass at least four exams.

Due to their training, Krishnan said, the volunteers are well-versed in the types of deductions that might be available to students and other clients.

“They know the right questions to ask,” she said.

Because the campus is very diverse, she added, students are able to provide support in multiple languages, including Hindi, Khmer, Mandarin, Spanish and Tagalog.

How does the program keep my tax information safe?

Marvin Madamba, a senior accounting major, volunteered with VITA last year and helped file about 40 tax returns. This year, he’s back as a co-coordinator — a volunteer with prior knowledge who helps ensure everything on the tax forms is up to snuff. Every shift has 2 to 4 coordinators.

During the review process, “we go from the top to bottom,” Madamba added. “Our role is to reduce the amount of time a client has to spend filing taxes. We don't want them to come back.”

Sara Nava, a first-time volunteer, has helped more than 20 people file their tax returns this season.

When Nava completed the first return, she was a bit nervous. “I didn't want to get anything incorrect,” she said.

Nava appreciates having experienced reviewers on site and was pleased to report that the vast majority of her clients are getting refunds.

“Some of them are surprised that their refunds are so high,” Nava said. “But we always make sure the refund is correct. [The co-coordinators] verify our work. We don't just complete the return and move on.”

The VITA program is located in the computer lab of Cal State Long Beach's College of Business.

(

Julia Barajas

/

LAist

)

To keep personal data secure, volunteers are barred from preparing returns on their personal laptops.

“We provide Chromebooks, and we have computers in the lab. And those are the only two places where they can file the returns,” Krishnan said.

Every night, all returns are automatically deleted from those computers. The volunteers also shred copies of any documents.

Every tax season, she added, an IRS liaison audits the site.

How the program helps students make decisions about their future 

The student volunteers partake in VITA as part of a course that helps them work toward completing the required hours to become a Certified Public Accountant.

Through this experiential learning, Krishnan said, students also develop soft skills — such as how to tactfully deliver bad news when a refund is less than expected.

Doris Huang, a co-coordinator who graduates in May, said the hands-on part of the course was more fulfilling than most other lecture-based classes.

Currently, she helps prepare at least 30 returns per week. That number is likely to skyrocket in the coming days, she said, as the traditional April 15 deadline approaches. (People who live or have a business in L.A. County have until Oct. 15 to file their tax returns due to the recent wildfires.)

Huang said she and the volunteers see a good mix of clients, including recent alumni who had a positive experience with VITA when they were undergrads. Clients are encouraged to make an appointment, but the program also welcomes walk-ins. She and the other volunteers complete most tax returns in under two hours.

“A big question for students is always: ‘Do you want to go into tax or audit accounting?’” Madamba said. “The VITA experience made the decision clear for me.”

“I've never seen a student go: ‘I don't mind taxes,’” Krishnan said. “They either decide they really love taxes, or they hate them.”

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

Angela Chang says the sticker shock never gets easier. Clients call her Southern California health insurance brokerage in disbelief, asking how much their insurance costs will jump again.

A hospital bill would hurt far worse, she tells them. But Chang, chief strategy officer at KCAL Insurance, also knows there's only so much left in people's pockets, especially with food and gas prices rising too.

In hard times, people want reassurance, Chang said. “I think that the general public would like to see our next governor … find a way for Californians to be able to remain covered affordably,” she said.

Nearly two in three Californians worry about unexpected medical bills, and six in 10 report they or a family member skipped care due to cost, according to a California Health Care Foundation survey. As Californians drown in medical debt and worry about losing coverage, the two candidates running for governor have given voters little indication of how they’d help.

Democrat Xavier Becerra says he wants everyone to be insured, but hasn’t spelled out how he’d pay for it. Republican Steve Hilton wants to overhaul the system, but can’t say how much it’ll cost or save consumers and the state.

Becerra has pitched himself as California’s next “healthcare governor” but did not make himself available for an interview for this story. He has also repeatedly refused appeals from the media and consumer interest groups to lay out substantive policy positions. As a result, much of what we know about his plan is drawn from his campaign's own published materials rather than any direct response to questions. Becerra instead sticks to broad talking points — working toward universal coverage, prioritizing primary care, eliminating “administrative waste” — without offering much detail about how they’ll happen.

Hilton unveiled his own plan, the "Working Class Healthcare Guarantee," only last week — proposing greater price transparency alongside plans that likely would flounder in the state’s Democratic-controlled Legislature, including replacing part of Medi-Cal, the insurance program for low-income people, with personal health spending accounts.

Gubernatorial candidate Steve Hilton speaks to a crowd of supporters at his watch party at The Waterfront Beach Resort in Huntington Beach on June 2, 2026.

(

Jules Hotz

/

CalMatters

)

“They (voters) want a clear vision for how you're going to help,” said Rachel Linn Gish, with the consumer advocacy group Health Access California, describing what she heard this summer at a series of healthcare affordability town halls in communities with particularly high health costs, including Santa Barbara, Salinas and Gilroy.

The stakes are urgent. California workers pay some of the highest premiums in the country, and many will see another spike during this fall’s open enrollment. Meanwhile millions of people who get free and low-cost care through Medi-Cal are expected to lose coverage as major federal rule changes go into effect on Jan. 1, regardless of who succeeds Gov. Gavin Newsom.

“Healthcare almost has to be like one of the first things that you [the governor] are tackling,” Gish said.

Becerra’s record

Becerra likes to tout his wins — as California’s attorney general he helped defend the Affordable Care Act against federal lawsuits. He also secured a major antitrust settlement against Sutter Health, which his office accused of using its market power to drive up prices.

But with greater experience comes greater expectations. Advocates and health researchers say they’d like to hear Becerra talk more specifically about how he’d tackle one of the key drivers of surging health costs: hospital prices. That’s one thing they’ll be watching for when Becerra and Hilton debate Wednesday on CNN.

“There's plenty of blame to go around” for expensive healthcare, said Miranda Dietz, director of the Health Care Program at the UC Berkeley Labor Center. But hospital costs make up the largest share of premium spending – about 40 cents of every premium dollar.

“To fix the underlying cause of the affordability problem, I think is going to take really sustained effort and continued focus,” Dietz said.

Becerra’s policy agenda promises to “center affordability in every decision.” In it he says he’ll work closely with employers and other health purchasers to figure out ways to bring down premiums and out-of-pocket costs. He promotes ideas such as prioritizing screenings and primary care to keep people away from more expensive emergency care that results in larger bills. He also wants to expand on Newsom-era programs to bring down the cost of popular but expensive prescription drugs.

Perhaps his boldest promise is to continue covering every Californian affected by budget cuts and changes to Medicaid brought on by the federal spending plan that Congress passed last year. Becerra has not explained how he would pay to keep people covered. The price is steep: State officials project the federal health cuts could cost California up to $30 billion annually.

In August, when asked by reporters how he could promise continued coverage at such a high price tag, Becerra said: “Because I know how much we misspend in the health system, and because you and I know that we can't leave people without healthcare, because if we do, not only will they get sicker, but it will cost you and me as taxpayers even more when they finally do access care.”

Some of that money may come from his promises to crack down on fraud and abuse in the Medi-Cal program through a special task force. But it’s unclear how soon that work would result in savings and how much — the same vagueness advocates are criticizing elsewhere in his agenda.

Becerra’s campaign has raised over $33 million, including major contributions from the healthcare industry. A health insurer (Blue Shield of California), a clinic system (AltaMed), a drug manufacturer (Genentech), several physician associations, and individual hospital executives have each donated the maximum $78,400 to Becerra’s campaign, according to CalMatters analysis of campaign finance data. Four branches of a group that lobbies for nursing homes have donated $313,000 combined.

Political strategists say the industry’s backing of Becerra is expected. The latest Berkeley IGS Poll shows the Democrat receiving 58% of the support from likely voters and Hilton receiving 33%.

Hilton’s campaign has raised more than $21 million, but campaign finance records show no significant organized contributions from the healthcare industry.

Hilton’s ‘healthcare guarantee’

Hilton crafted his plan, he says, in response to what he hears from voters. “I call it the Working Class Healthcare Guarantee because those are the people who are really, really screwed by what's going on right now,” he told CalMatters.

Among his ideas, Hilton wants hospitals, physician offices, and pharmacies to show patients prices before providing nonemergency care. Some of that information is already gathered today, but Hilton says he will put together one website where patients and employers can make comparisons.

For California’s lowest-income earners, Hilton is proposing replacing part of their Medi-Cal coverage with health spending accounts of $8,000 to $10,000 a year. He’d keep people’s regular coverage in place for emergency care.

That is a substantial proposal attached to a very large population: roughly a third of Californians — more than 13 million people — are enrolled in Medi-Cal. Asked how much this would cost or save the state, Hilton couldn't say. He framed the goal instead as giving people more control in choosing their doctors and reducing bureaucracy in the program.

Some states, like Arkansas, have experimented with health spending accounts. Arkansas officials found the program administratively burdensome and discontinued it.

Hilton also wants to reduce the number of people who rely on Medi-Cal, in part by making the individual marketplace, or Covered California, more affordable. He’d do that by establishing what’s known as a “reinsurance” program — insurance for insurers — that would help pay for the most expensive claims and keep those costs from driving up premiums for everybody else. It’s an idea Vice President J.D. Vance has also previously promoted.

States such as Alaska have reported some success in keeping premium increases down. But researchers have also found that premium savings weren’t always significant enough to make a difference for consumers.

One of the few ideas where Becerra and Hilton overlap is in their support for making and negotiating lower cost medications. Through its CalRx program – a signature Newsom program – California has started to distribute $55 insulin. It also distributes albuterol inhalers and naloxone.

Hilton says expanding on that program is a good idea. “I think we should do more of it.”

Whether any of this reaches voters

Political strategists say how much detail either candidate provides may matter less than party affiliation come November. Becerra's lead over Hilton, 25 points in the most recent Berkeley IGS survey, has widened.

"Someone like Hilton could have some amazing policy positions, but he still has a lot of problems just because of the atmospherics of being a Republican in a Democratic state," said Andrew Acosta, a Democratic political strategist.

As the frontrunner, Becerra may feel less pressure to provide more details about his policy agenda, Acosta said. Instead, he can point to Washington. "The beauty of the world we live in for Democrats is they can just point to Donald Trump and say, 'Look at all the chaos he's caused.' It is a little bit of a get-out-of-jail-free card for Becerra."

That dynamic is exactly what worries advocates like Gish, who say vagueness shouldn't be cost-free for either candidate given how many Californians are struggling right now. Both campaigns' unanswered questions will need real answers well before either man is sworn in.

“Let's be clear and honest as Californians about what we want and what we value,” Gish said. “We need to make policy decisions that actually help people now.”

Supported by the California Health Care Foundation (CHCF), which works to ensure that people have access to the care they need, when they need it, at a price they can afford. Visit www.chcf.org to learn more.

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

Let’s hope that by the time you’re reading this, the waters are calm as ever and the streets are bone dry.

If not, Long Beach might as well be called Short Beach.

After waves supercharged by Hurricane Marie battered a series of beachside homes, tore up a city boardwalk and ripped away enough sand to reveal a decades-old bulkhead, Long Beach is looking at spending roughly $3 million to stabilize the Peninsula, with a much larger price tag looming.

In a memo released Friday, city Public Works Director Joshua Hickman lays out the damage plainly:

• About 200 feet of boardwalk decking and support beams need to be replaced.
• Roughly 1,000 feet of bulkhead needs new top caps.
• And another 450 feet of bulkhead planks have to be restored.

That repair work alone is expected to cost about $1.5 million, funded through the city’s Tidelands Emergency Reserve, with crews aiming to finish by November.

With the city entering a super El Niño season, Hickman recommends the city spend another $230,000 moving 50,000 to 100,000 cubic yards of sand into place, ahead of an $11.4 million dredging project in the Alamitos Bay entrance channel that, starting next month, will pump about 415,000 cubic yards of sand onto the Peninsula, potentially widening the beach by up to 250 feet. Originally not expected to be done until early next year, the city is pushing to have it done by the end of November.

To get all of that moving at once, the city is asking the council to release $3 million from its $10.3 million emergency reserve, with more funding requests expected as the response continues.

But those repairs are dwarfed by what engineers say is needed to keep the Peninsula beach above water and habitable going forward. What gets approved, however, will depend on the damage done by storms.

The possibilities

From five plans optioned by the city’s contracted design firm, Moffatt & Nichol, the city wants to advance a $6.8 million plan for designing and permitting a rock revetment — a wall of boulders that would sit behind the beach as a backup, built only if the sand washes away again. Only $1 million in design money is currently covered.

Coastal engineers hired after the storm evaluated five versions of a rock or sheet-pile barrier, ranging from $1.5 million for a simple sheet-pile wall to nearly $9.5 million for a full engineered rock revetment built to withstand a 100-year storm. Every option trades something away — beach space, permitting speed, or the boardwalk’s historic look — for protection, and the firm’s bottom-line advice was to move sand now while permitting the rock wall to sit ready.

That boardwalk is not easily replaceable, even setting aside the money. Built in the 1920s, at 9 feet wide and 3,600 feet long, it’s the last wooden boardwalk in Los Angeles County.

When hurricane-charged waves hit, city crews responded with thousands of sandbags and 16-hour shifts of bulldozers building berms that washed away as they went up. The total cost of that emergency response is still being tallied, but officials expect it will easily clear $1 million.

Not a new problem

It’s also important to remember that past efforts to combat sand loss have come and gone.

Three million cubic yards of sand brought in the 1940s were gone by the ’80s; 100,000 cubic yards added in 1979; a failed plan in 1980 to bring a mix of imported river sand and birdseye gravel; 145,000 cubic yards across dumpings from 1991 to 1993 between 55th Place and the Belmont Shore Pier; 200,000 cubic yards of sand from 55th to 72nd place in 1996; installation of artificial reef (made of polyester bags) in 1991 and separately, artificial kelp installed through the 1980s; emergency additions in 1992, 1993 and 1994. All of it either washed away or simply didn’t work, and the reef was eventually pulled out.

The road ahead

Today, the city’s baseline defense is a maintenance routine — bulldozers and dump trucks moving sand from the western side, where it currently piles up, back to the winnowing eastern flank, five days a week, at a cost of $1 million to $1.5 million a year — that adds no new sand to the system at all.

And the timing couldn’t be any more swell. Long Beach sits smack in the middle of the Eastern Pacific hurricane season, which runs from mid-May through November, when southerly swells charged by storms off Mexico and Baja California are most likely to find the one gap in the city’s usually sheltered coastline. Marie found it two weeks ago, sending waves 10 feet high that battered the Peninsula, toppling sand-berms and sending enough water ashore to force the evacuation of about 20 homes.

Now forecasters are warning of a strong El Niño winter, and both the city and state have declared emergencies that allowed them to open their pocketbooks much quicker and easier.

Eventually, officials say it may cost $150 million to $350 million for a full habitat and shoreline restoration of the Peninsula — funded partly by state mitigation credits — as the kind of project that would take massive amounts of approvals and planning and likely some delays. The City Council for now has approved $30,000 to look into it further.

It’s a decision that might not sit well with many, at a time when gas is inching north of $6 a gallon, personal budgets must now accommodate rain gear and extra supplies and a time when the city’s own budget has gone belly up, forcing layoffs and ends to popular programs.

But the consequence of doing nothing, of surrendering stretches of beach to the sea, attacks the city’s very name.

California lawmakers are cracking down on expensive concert experiences by targeting “ghost tickets” — so called because the person selling access to the show doesn’t actually own the ticket yet. It’s an issue that has stumped regulators who are combating deceptive e-commerce fueled by artificial intelligence.

Gov. Gavin Newsom on Sunday signed a bipartisan bill meant to rein in that market by banning the sale of tickets that are not yet owned by the people who advertise them and prohibiting the use of software to manipulate a venue’s purchasing restrictions.

“Buying a ticket shouldn’t come with hidden risks or unfair practices,” he wrote on social media after signing the measure, Assembly Bill 1349.

The bill requires ticket resellers to “implement reasonable measures” to prevent speculative tickets. Sellers found in violation could face misdemeanor charges and penalties.

The bill’s author, Assemblymember Isaac Bryan, cited an incident in which he and his friend searched for tickets for a concert at the Hollywood Bowl. The tickets listed online were expensive and were posted before actual tickets went on sale.

“Many fans buy these tickets not knowing that they are listed at a price greater than they would actually be when they eventually go on sale,” said the Culver City Democrat during a June hearing. “In the worst instances, fans never actually acquire the ticket that they paid for, leaving our small venues in California ultimately on the hook.”

What the major vendors are saying

The measure changed dramatically in the final days of the legislative session and Newsom in a signing statement asked lawmakers to revisit it because it may exempt marketplaces that he suggested should be regulated. He did not name them, but critics of the law pointed to Stubhub as a platform that appeared to be exempt from the law.

Initially, the bill moved forward with support from Live Nation, the entertainment behemoth that owns Ticketmaster. In a January statement, the company argued “no one should be able to scam fans by listing tickets they don’t have”.

Live Nation’s backing of the bill fueled skepticism from critics, who feared it would ultimately help the company squash its competitors.

Ticket reseller Stubhub lobbied heavily against the bill, spending $4.4 million in the two-year legislative session to influence the measure and several others.

In a surprise, Stubhub supported the final version of the bill, which is less favorable to Live Nation. Live Nation has not yet responded to a request for comment about the law from CalMatters.

The National Independent Venue Association, which supported the original version of the bill, argues the version Newsom signed creates liabilities for music venues and festivals while exempting Stubhub. Its leaders worry that independent venues and event promoters will break the law if they sell presale, VIP or waitlisted tickets.

It opposed the final version of the bill and urged Newsom to veto it.

AB 1349 “puts the small businesses and nonprofits that put on shows every night at risk,” Stephen Parker, the association’s executive director, said in a written statement after lawmakers passed the bill.

The association also argued that the amendments protects ticket resellers, such as StubHub, by exempting resale marketplaces from being classified as speculative ticket sellers, “even though every speculative sale happens on their platforms.”

Where things stand now

Newsom in his signing statement wrote, “While there may be good reasons for exempting certain sellers from the bill’s provisions, such a carve-out deserves further discussion, and I encourage the author to work with stakeholders to refine this policy.”

The Legislature had also considered another related bill that would have put a 10% markup cap on resale tickets. But it stalled in August in the Senate Appropriations Committee.

CalMatters Deputy Editor Adam Ashton contributed to this story.

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

This story first appeared first on LA Local.

Cory Joseph still remembers the last day he rolled across the rink at Word on Wheels. 

The beloved skating rink shuttered in 2021 as part of a downward trend in places where you can groove on four wheels under luminescent disco balls and hot tunes. 

“I also was at Skate Land in Northridge on its last day, and I went to Skate Depot in Cerritos on its last day,” Joseph told The LA Local. 

The closing of these skate hubs struck a nerve for Joseph, who grew up in San Diego and is the son of two professional skaters — Maureen Joseph and Timothy Carter — from the disco skating heyday in the 1970s and 1980s. 

It’s no wonder he felt a desire to open the Sunshine Skate Center in Inglewood to fill this void. His journey to open Sunshine, named after his parents’ old skating team, took three long years of hurdles and obstacles until finally opened on Sept. 4, 2025. 

A year of serving Inglewood

Cory Joseph still remembers the last day he rolled across the rink at Word on Wheels.

(

Jennifer Stavros

/

The LA Local

)

The rink celebrated its one-year anniversary this month.

 “Skating for a lot of people is their therapy. It’s their way that they cope with things. It’s the way that they navigate through things,” Joseph said, adding that he understood how these places once served as third spaces for Black L.A.

“I think it’s more than just skating,” he said. “I really understand skating as a place for community.”

Cory Joseph still remembers the last day he rolled across the rink at Word on Wheels.

(

Jennifer Stavros

/

The LA Local

)

On a Friday night this past summer, Joseph’s ethos was seen in action. 

Looking around the rink, the range of skaters varied widely in ability — from folks dance-skating to rolling backward, along with beginners using tools to help them on their first journey on wheels. Some were there with their families. Others were there with their friends. Spectators were delighted as they watched from outside the rink and the surrounding seating. 

The unapologetic free flow of joy was palpable. Joseph said that when he sees the impact on Inglewood’s youngest residents, the three years it took him to open the rink feels worth it.

“You have a lot of kids that are not physically active,” he explained. “We’re able to engage kids [to] have them off their phones for certain periods of time when they’re skating.”