The Brief

Around California this summer, low-income and first-generation students are staying in college dorms for the first time. High schoolers are camping beside the Klamath River. Undergraduates are presenting research at a symposium for budding scholars in Long Beach.

All are part of federally funded TRIO programs — like Upward Bound and McNair Scholars — based on California campuses, from rural Columbia College neighboring Yosemite National Park to private four-year institutions in Los Angeles like the University of Southern California. TRIO reaches children as young as middle school, preparing them to enroll in college and providing mentorship, academic advice and research opportunities when they do. In California, the programs served over 100,000 participants in the 2023-24 academic year.

“I really don’t think I could have made it through City College [of San Francisco] without them,” said Ekaterini Stamatakos, 22, a psychology major and TRIO student who earned an associate degree and then transferred to UCLA, where she will start her junior year this year. “I think these kinds of programs really go beyond whatever they might say on their profiles or the paragraphs that they have on their webpages — it really does make such an impact on students’ lives.”

But hanging over TRIO programs like Talent Search and Student Support Services is a Trump administration proposal to eliminate them. If Congress enacts that plan, all TRIO Student Support Services — such as tutoring in reading, help with college applications and workshops in financial literacy — would be defunded starting in fiscal year 2026. Their funding is uncertain until Congress finalizes the appropriations bill later this year.

TRIO, whose name derives from an original group of three programs but now includes eight, has largely prevailed in past funding battles. With an annual budget now exceeding $1 billion, it continues to garner significant bipartisan support. But a White House budget request released in the spring argues that TRIO programs, rooted in 1960s anti-poverty policy, are now “a relic of the past.”

“Today, the pendulum has swung and access to college is not the obstacle it was for students of limited means,” the budget request says. Colleges “should be using their own resources to engage with K-12 schools in their communities to recruit students, and then once those students are on campus, aid in their success through to graduation.”

The threat has mobilized TRIO supporters to redouble a public awareness campaign aimed at persuading lawmakers to maintain the programs. In California, there were about 450 TRIO programs in the 2023-24 academic year, an EdSource analysis of federal data shows, with most of that funding flowing to programs housed at more than 100 colleges and universities.

The proposal to sever funding for TRIO comes as the Trump administration has notched a U.S. Supreme Court victory that clears the way for mass layoffs at the U.S. Department of Education. This month, California joined a coalition of states suing for the release of $6.8 billion in federal school funding that has been frozen by the federal government. Since January, the White House has enacted or attempted a host of other changes affecting areas like financial aid and how the federal government interprets civil rights law.

TRIO programs based on California campuses like Sonoma State University, Cal Poly Pomona and UC Davis eachreceive millions of dollars annually and are funded to serve thousands of participants per campus, the analysis shows. Smaller TRIO programs, many at community colleges, may work with dozens or hundreds of students on a budget of less than $300,000.

At Cal Poly Humboldt, high school students and rising college freshmen this summer read an August Wilson play before venturing on a field trip to see it performed live at the Oregon Shakespeare Festival. At Cal Poly Pomona, peer coaches prepare presentations for fellow students on such topics as artificial intelligence and summer internships. At Columbia College, a community college 50 miles northeast of Modesto, a TRIO director said she’s worked with everyone from 14-year-olds in dual enrollment programs to 72-year-olds advancing toward master’s degrees.

Decades of consensus meets partisan divides

Studies generally suggest TRIO has a positive effect on academic outcomes, such as enrolling in college or completing a degree. Supporters also tout the success of alumni — some of whom have gone on to become lawmakers, astronauts, and in many cases, leaders of local TRIO programs themselves — as evidence of a positive impact on families and communities.

“I have alumni whose kids are now in college and thriving, or have graduated college,” said Rafael Topete, who leads the TRIO Student Support Services Program at Cal State Long Beach.

But this is not the first time TRIO programs have faced Republican-led challenges. Under President Ronald Reagan, TRIO advocates blocked an attempt to halve the program’s budget. Bipartisan support again thwarted a bid to eliminate TRIO funding during the Clinton administration.

TRIO’s critics point to a U.S. Department of Education-sponsored 2009 study finding that Upward Bound did not have a statistically significant impact on overall postsecondary enrollment. (The Council for Opportunity in Education, which advocates for TRIO and other college access programs, later sponsored a rebuttal study, which found Upward Bound had a strong positive impact on students.)

Two recent U.S. Government Accountability Office reports argue that the federal Department of Education could improve how it evaluates TRIO. The department has said further steps to verify data depend on the agency having adequate staff.

Educational Talent Search and Cal-SOAP students at Cal State Long Beach attend a workshop to help rising seniors get ready for college applications and financial aid.

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Courtesy of Jesus Maldonado

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Education Secretary Linda McMahon this spring resurrected such accountability arguments to justify defunding the programs. “I just think that we aren’t able to see the effectiveness across the board that we would normally look to see with our federal spending,” McMahon said at a June budget hearing.

People who work for TRIO programs object to those criticisms. In interviews, many named by memory the metrics they report as a condition of receiving federal funding, like high school graduation rates and college enrollment statistics. “Every year, we report data to verify we are doing what we said we would do,” said Kathy Kailikole, who has had a 30-year career in TRIO programs and currently works at San Diego State University.

There are signs that TRIO remains a point of agreement in a Congress more often divided along party lines. Federal funding for TRIO has climbed from $838 million in 2014 to almost $1.2 billion in 2023. And of the 130 members in the Congressional TRIO Caucus, 26 are Republicans. U.S. Sen. Susan Collins of Maine and U.S. Rep. Mike Simpsonof Idaho are among the Republicans who have vocally questioned cuts to TRIO.

Today’s bitter ideological divides may test that consensus.

In May, three Upward Bound grantees outside California received notice from the Department of Education that their funding would not be continued due to conflicts with Trump administration priorities, said Kimberly Jones, president of the Council for Opportunity in Education.

A copy of one such cancellation letter provided to EdSource by Jones said the grants “violate the letter or purpose of Federal civil rights law; conflict with the Department’s policy of prioritizing merit, fairness, and excellence in education; undermine the well-being of the students these programs are intended to help; or constitute an inappropriate use of federal funds.”

Overcoming distance and doubt in rural California

Jen Dyke directs the Upward Bound program at Cal Poly Humboldt where, years ago, she was once a student. Today, she travels hundreds of miles to recruit students from rural Hayfork, South Fork and Hoopa. It’s a region where rural schools often contend with high teacher turnover rates, low math test scores and an uncertain economic outlook, Dyke and her colleagues said.

“Timber is already gone. Fishing is already gone. Tourism is now something that is not super strong because of wildfires,” Dyke said during a lull in Upward Bound’s summer academy, which brings 27 high school-age students on campus to take classes and live in dorms. “So these areas that we serve are, once again, facing dismal futures if we also cut TRIO.”

Cal Poly Humboldt’s TRIO initiatives are among dozens of TRIO programs in California — and more than 500 in the U.S. — that reach participants in predominantly rural communities and remote towns, an EdSource review of federal data found.

Rose Sita Francia, who directs another Cal Poly Humboldt TRIO program called Talent Search, tries to expose students as early as sixth grade to careers that give them a reason to consider postsecondary education. The first step, she said, is to put college on the map for them — literally.

“Many students don’t know where Arcata is, where Cal Poly Humboldt is located,” she said. “And so we have teachers ask us regularly, ‘Will you show us some geography of college-going, and will you talk to us about trade school options as well?’”

Associate degree students at Columbia College tour a Humboldt County forest while on a trip to visit Sonoma State University and Cal Poly Humboldt on Sept. 17, 2024.

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Courtesy of Anneka Rogers Whitmer

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Anneka Rogers Whitmer oversees TRIO programs housed at Columbia College, more than an hour’s drive from the two nearest four-year universities, Stanislaus State University and UC Merced. The college’s Educational Opportunity Center serves more than 1,000 people across five counties with just two staff members, who visit places like prisons and social service agencies. The TRIO staff have had to overcome distrust of college degrees, Whitmer said, by offering advice on how to apply for financial aid and where to find vocational training.

“We’re an education desert, no doubt,” she said, “but we just have to think more creatively about how we’re going to reach the folks.”

‘It’s easy for students to get lost or discouraged’

The program Ghislaine Maze coordinates at City College of San Francisco may be called the TRIO Writing Success Project, but it does much more than provide writing workshops and embedded tutors in English classes.

Ekaterini “Kat” Stamatakos and Ghislaine Maze pose for a photo at the City College of San Francisco commencement ceremony in May 2025.

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Courtesy of Ghislaine Maze

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“So many students are trying to figure things out on their own, on the fly, with just a few hours on campus,” said Maze, whose program is funded to serve 310 students on a budget of roughly $485,000 a year. “It’s easy for students to get lost or discouraged.”

Tight campus budgets may leave other academic advisers on campus so overbooked that students struggle to get appointments, she said. A trusted TRIO mentor can help navigate financial aid and plan a student’s academic schedule. “That’s where a program like ours kind of fits in,” Maze said.

Before Ekaterini Stamatakos got to City College, she attended four high schools. She thinks she must have missed hundreds of days of school in that time, a consequence of housing instability. She struggled academically, but finished at a credit recovery school.

Stamatakos, who goes by Kat, was retaking an English class at City College when a tutor from the TRIO Writing Success Project explained that it provided feedback on writing assignments, mentorship and a place to hang out at the library, complete with snacks. “This is perfect,” Stamatakos thought. “I’m just going to basically live there.”

With assistance from a writing tutor, Stamatakos earned an ‘A’ in the course. “I don’t think I ever imagined that I would get an ‘A’ after my years of failing classes,” she said.

EdSource is an independent nonprofit organization that provides analysis on key education issues facing California and the nation. LAist republishes articles from EdSource with permission.

Immigration courts inside the Justice Department are drastically accelerating immigrants' hearings and bunching them together with the goal of issuing more deportation orders.

The new and unprecedented tactic was shared with NPR by immigration attorneys and the American Immigration Lawyers Association, a trade association that tracks trends in these courts.

Immigrants are now being scheduled for massive master calendar hearings — or "mega masters" — that include 100 or more people at a time. That's up from two or three dozen people at a time, which had been typical before for a first hearing. For many immigrants, this is their first appearance in court to try to make their case to be able to stay in the U.S.

Attorneys say these new hearings largely target people without lawyers representing them. Those who show up late, or not at all, are receiving removal orders, further truncating the already-limited due process available to immigrants.

"The major concern is that [since] this is going to be a group of people without attorneys, that they're not going to have gotten proper notice," said Vanessa Dojaquez-Torres, practicing policy counsel at AILA, adding that courts often lack enough seats for hearings with so many people at once. "So it's almost like they are being designed to increase" how many people get deportation orders automatically, she said.

The Executive Office for Immigration Review, the agency that runs the immigration courts at the DOJ, did not respond to a request for comment on this new strategy.

Lawyers said the practice had started in the Chicago, Boston and Chelmsford, Mass., courts and is soon to start in the Dallas Immigration Court.

The effort comes as President Donald Trump seeks to deport a million people a year — much higher than the 600,000 people the administration deported in 2025. Trump has also complained about the backlogs of millions of cases inside immigration courts, pointing to courts as an obstacle to rapid deportation.

No notice, overwhelmed courthouses

When someone does not appear for their scheduled hearing, even by mistake, the judge can issue an official removal order that allows immigration officers to detain and deport the person. That's been happening a lot more often under this Trump administration, an NPR analysis found last year, with fewer people showing up in court for fear of being detained.

Dojaquez-Torres and other immigration attorneys who spoke to NPR worry that immigrants, especially those without a lawyer, may not know that their hearing dates had been rescheduled for a sooner date, leaving them vulnerable to deportation.

She added that in some cases, little to no notice is being issued by the government by mail or electronically to immigrants or their lawyers, meaning those not regularly checking their online accounts could miss any changes.

These "mega masters" are made up of people whose original hearings were scheduled for 2027, 2028 or 2029.

"They're anticipating that the majority will not show up and they'll just be able to say that they completed X number of cases because they'll be in absentia orders of removal," said one Texas-based immigration attorney. The attorney spoke to NPR on the condition of anonymity out of fear of reprisals for their ability to practice in Texas courts.

The attorney noted that if people do show up to the massive hearings, it could overwhelm court staff and judges and overcrowd courtrooms.

In some cases, attorneys said their clients may benefit from cases getting scheduled sooner, even if it increases pressure and creates sudden legal filing deadlines. However, most people in immigration court do not have a lawyer and are unlikely to see these benefits.

DOJ begins to staff up to take on cases

This is not the first time the agency has pushed to streamline cases under Trump's second term.

EOIR has also moved to quickly prioritize cases of people from specific nationalities, including Somalis, Syrians and Iranians. And, cases of juvenile immigrants are also being pushed up, their lawyers say.

The strategy of hosting mega masters comes as the DOJ announced its largest-ever class of new immigration judges. Last week, the agency onboarded 77 judges and five temporary military lawyers serving as judges. The agency has boasted hiring 153 immigration judges this fiscal year, the most in any year.

"The Trump administration is committed to reestablishing an immigration judge corps that is dedicated to restoring the rule to the law in our nation's immigration system," Acting Attorney General Todd Blanche said in a statement.

The rapid hirings come after EOIR lost about a quarter of its immigration judges last year, with more than 100 of them fired. And even as more judges were hired last week, several more were fired the same day, including in courts in New York and California.

An NPR analysis last year found that judges with backgrounds in representing immigrant clients were more likely to be fired compared to those who only had prior experience working at the Department of Homeland Security.

Copyright 2026 NPR

Two of California’s largest courts are testing an AI tool that can draft orders and produce research memos.

Judges so far are using it primarily for civil cases, but documents obtained by CalMatters indicate the possibility of expanded applications in criminal cases, where people’s freedom and access to justice are on the line.

The Los Angeles County Superior Court began a pilot program in February to test a tool created by the company Learned Hand. Other courts may follow, according to Learned Hand founder and chief executive officer Shlomo Klapper.

Learned Hand uses a combination of language models from Anthropic, OpenAI and Google to act as an AI clerk for judges. The company says it tests for bias and accuracy, but it has not yet published results.

In Riverside County, which has a $10,000 agreement with the company to test the program, civil and probate attorneys are primarily using the tool to draft research memos that help judges reach their decisions. It’s typical for research attorneys to assist judges as they review cases.

Los Angeles County Superior Court has a roughly $314,000 contract that includes a roadmap to test the tool’s use in criminal, family and probate divisions. Officials would not describe in detail to CalMatters the criteria they’re using to evaluate whether use of the tool can safely expand to criminal and family courts, where the stakes are often much higher than in civil cases.

One judge who spoke to CalMatters on condition of anonymity due to judicial rules of conduct was alarmed when their colleagues at a recent luncheon said the technology could be used one day to evaluate appeals from people who believe their conviction or sentence was tainted by racial bias. California courts are handling a wave of those claims after lawmakers passed the Racial Justice Act in 2020.

“I think it is outrageous,” said the Los Angeles County Superior Court judge. “AI cannot and never will be able to replace human judgment in evaluating complex social dynamics. Ultimately, that will erode the public’s confidence in the competence and fairness of the judiciary.”

A majority of California's superior courts now have generative AI use policies, according to documents obtained by CalMatters via public records requests, which they were required to create by the state Judicial Council before using the technology. Roughly a dozen of the 51 courts that have responded to CalMatters’ requests said they are using AI-powered tools from LexisNexis, Thomson Reuters, and Microsoft’s Copilot.

Use of AI in courts has been controversial because of the propensity of AI models to cite falsehoods and to produce sycophantic text. Models from major companies like Google and Anthropic can reduce critical thinking and brain activity, according to a 2025 MIT study.

Language model hallucinations have already made it into the judicial system. Researcher Damien Charlotin has documented hundreds of instances of litigants, lawyers, and judges making mistakes when using AI to do their jobs including nearly 90 cases in state or federal courts based in California since August 2024.

Last fall, a Los Angeles-based lawyer received a historic $10,000 fine for citing cases that don’t exist, and earlier this month the Sacramento Bee reported that use of AI led to errors in four cases handled by prosecutors in Nevada County. Most of these cases involve lawyers or people who are representing themselves in court, but UCLA Law School professors predict that more judges will make AI-fueled mistakes in the future. In recent months, the U.S. Senate investigated federal judges in Mississippi and New Jersey for drafting decisions with generative AI that had serious factual errors.

Klapper, who previously worked as a clerk for a federal appeals court and for surveillance technology company Palantir, said the judiciary needs AI in order to reduce backlogs and increase efficiency.

“Could we hire more people?” he told CalMatters. “Maybe, but it’s not going to keep pace with the exponential increase that’s coming, nor is it going to be able to adequately solve the crisis of today. I think the only solution is to give every single judge and staff attorney their own AI clerk.”

Klapper said he’s aiming to combine the best parts of what human judges can do with the best parts of what machines bring to bear.

“I’m not saying all machines aren’t biased,” he said. “I’m not saying my machine isn’t even biased. I’m saying we can test it and people have tested it. And that is the benefit over humans.”

Generative AI use policies for the Los Angeles and Riverside County superior courts only require disclosure if a motion, decision, or other document is written entirely with generative AI.

Both courts refused to say whether plaintiffs are aware that the tool is being tested on their cases. In a statement to CalMatters, a spokesperson for the Los Angeles County Superior Court said testing is done on motions that have already been decided, separate from live case environments. However, the contract allows for testing on live cases.

“It is important to note that even with successful evaluation and thorough testing, the Court remains several months, if not years, away from implementing this type of tool,” said the spokesperson.

The contract allows the tool to be used for two critical motions in the criminal division: A motion to suppress, which is designed to determine what type of evidence the prosecution is allowed to present at trial, and motions for post conviction relief, which are filed by people who have already been convicted and want another shot at freedom.

That’s the “greatest concern” for Los Angeles County District Attorney Nathan Hochman. When he reviewed the contract, he referred to the motions as “two incredibly important motions in the criminal justice system.”

“When you’re dealing with someone’s liberty — as opposed to in the civil setting, which is everything other than liberty — the stakes couldn’t be higher,” said Hochman. “I don’t want to take the chance, particularly in a criminal case, that AI happens to get it wrong. And now someone’s constitutional rights have been infringed. Someone has gone to prison who shouldn’t have, or on the flip side, that somehow someone gets off.”

'An extremely perilous road'

In Los Angeles, some judges first heard about the new Learned Hand contract during a March presentation by Superior Court Judges Yvette Verastegui and Olivia Rosales. They lead the criminal branch and visit courthouses throughout the county as part of an annual roadshow, where they update judges on court operations, discuss workload and field questions. During a luncheon, Verastegui and Rosales said the tool could be used to assist with Racial Justice Act petitions in the future.

California’s Racial Justice Act allows people to challenge a criminal conviction or sentence that they believe was based upon racial bias. Petitions are filed directly to the court from people in state prison. If a case is found to have merit, the process includes appointing legal counsel, filing briefs and setting evidentiary hearings before a judge would decide whether to grant the petition.

That process could look different with a tool like Learned Hand. Verastegui and Rosales explained that, following an incarcerated person’s petition, the tool could generate tentative decisions for judges to consider in denying or advancing cases to the next stages, according to one judge who attended the luncheon.

“The concern, of course, that I have is that the courts will utilize that as a reference point and then get stuck to that initial analysis,” said the judge. “It’s an extremely perilous road to go down. Putting aside the inaccuracy, which will be a significant concern, it dehumanizes the whole process. It does not treat people as individuals with lived experiences. It essentially reimposes a one-size-fits-all style of justice.”

A second Los Angeles Superior Court judge who spoke with CalMatters on the condition of anonymity remembered the presentation and said they would not trust nor use the tool to summarize a Racial Justice Act petition.

AI can replicate or intensify patterns contained in the data used to make a model, including human biases. Large language models have a history of demonstrating race and gender bias, an analysis of predictive policing tech used by LAPD found racial bias, and an analysis of the risk assessment algorithm COMPAS found that it is more likely to label Black people as at risk of committing crimes after incarceration than white people with a similar record.

Public defenders who spoke with CalMatters echoed those concerns.

Elizabeth Lashley-Haynes, a deputy public defender at the Los Angeles County Public Defender’s Office, said it would be “highly problematic and bordering on unethical” for a judge to use the tool to review Racial Justice Act petitions, which she described as “incredibly nuanced.”

“They’re like nothing else in the legal system that has ever really been done,” said Lashley-Haynes, who specializes in Racial Justice Act cases. “Words that are used in these cases that have racial undertones or racial meanings are way beyond the realm of anything that artificial intelligence could do.”

In interviews with CalMatters, Klapper and Los Angeles County Superior Court Executive Officer, David Slayton, denied that the court has any plans to use the tool for Racial Justice Act petitions. A spokesperson for the Los Angeles Superior Court later confirmed in an email to CalMatters that the contract permits the tool to be used in such a way “but that possibility has not commenced in any way.”

Klapper said if they were to build out a Racial Justice Act module, the tool would need to be evaluated for bias and co-developed with the court.

“The timing very fortuitous, right?” he said. “It’s a very fraught decision, I’m not going to lie…extremely high stakes — a scenario where I understand people might be very concerned. Especially with criminal, I have even more hesitancy, even more guardrails than normal about, because there are liberty interests at stake.”

Extending beyond civil cases

In Los Angeles, six superior court judges and their research attorneys are primarily using the Learned Hand tool to conduct research, summarize motions and assist in drafting tentative rulings, according to Slayton. He says the tool won’t move beyond the civil division “until the court leadership is comfortable.”

“The court is being very deliberate and careful about how we use technology like this,” he said. “So until we evaluate it and determine that it is effective in those areas, we will not extend it to other areas.”

Los Angeles County Superior Court's Hollywood Courthouse, in Los Angeles, on March 12, 2025. Photo by Jules Hotz for CalMatters The tool will be evaluated on a quarterly basis to determine its future application, Slayton said, but he did not specify what kind of evaluation that entails. In an email to CalMatters, a spokesperson later said that Learned Hand is evaluated “against the same substantive expectations applied to law clerks and research attorneys: accurate legal research, sound analysis, neutral and judge-ready writing, and reliable work product that supports judicial decision-making.”

Los Angeles County Superior Court Judge Samantha Jessner, who chairs the Judicial Technology Advisory Committee, said she was unaware of the possibility that the tool could eventually be used outside of the civil division until recently. Judges are not privy to contract negotiations due to certain ethical limitations, she said.

“I think we have a duty and obligation to explore whether or not there is a place for artificial intelligence in what we do as a judicial branch and that’s exactly what this pilot is intended to afford us the opportunity to do,” said Jessner.

Riverside County Superior Court signed an agreement with Learned Hand in February. In emails obtained by CalMatters, Klapper proposed to two Riverside County Superior Court executives, Jason Galkin and Sarah Hodgson, that the court use the tool for a common civil court motion and “then expand quickly once we earn our stripes.” He suggested that Hodgson assemble a list of motions and workflows “that generate the most pain,” citing examples that included the Racial Justice Act.

Roughly two weeks later, Hodgson described the most laborious motions “that want to drive us into retirement,” including discovery motions and attorney fee motions. For criminal cases, the court suggested that Klapper focus on “things with the largest paper records,” citing death penalty habeas petitions and parole revocation.

Since the pilot started, seven civil and probate attorneys have been granted access to the tool. Galkin, the chief executive officer of the Riverside County Superior Court, said they are “kicking the tires on the product” to see what tasks it can do. The tool is not being used to draft tentative rulings, he said.

“We don’t even know if expansion is likely so there is no set criteria for what expansion might look like or thresholds for that because right now, the core question is: Does this help staff and does it advance what they’re trying to do in their roles?” said Galkin.

As testing is underway, attorneys like Hochman say that use of AI is inevitable, but would be better suited for low-level, repetitive and routine tasks.

“It’s the analysis of the case itself, coupled with the conclusions that will be reached, that I’m very hesitant to trust AI at this point — in large part, because I don’t know all of the inputs that AI is using to make its decision. The only thing I’m 100% sure of is that AI didn’t go to law school,” said Hochman.

Cayla Mihalovich is a California Local News fellow.

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

California’s Board of Equalization is a coveted spot once again for state lawmakers looking for a new gig almost a decade after then-Gov. Jerry Brown signed a law gutting the organization of any serious governing responsibility.

This year, three current state lawmakers are competing for seats on the nation’s only elected tax board. They’re among some two dozen candidates on the ballot for its four elected positions, which are divided by geographic districts.

The board has long been a launching pad to higher offices in California politics — Fiona Ma served on it before becoming state treasurer, as did Betty Yee and Malia Cohen before each being elected state controller.

The agency itself is a throwback to the 19th Century. It’s rooted in an 1879 constitutional amendment that created it and charged it with “equalizing” county property tax assessments statewide.

From that narrow mandate, it swelled to become a juggernaut that collected a third of the state’s tax revenue and provided a venue for people and businesses to contest their tax bills in front of the elected board. It survived numerous efforts by governors to kill it outright, including attempts by Pete Wilson and Arnold Schwarzenegger.

That is until 2017, when a cascade of allegations about board members misusing the office to promote themselves led to an authoritative state audit that lawmakers could not ignore.

Brown signed a law stripping the agency of any powers beyond what voters gave it in 1879 and created two new departments that report to the governor instead of the elected board: one to collect sales and use taxes and another to hear taxpayer appeals.

After that, Board of Equalization elections tended to be lower profile contests. Ted Gaines, a former Republican state lawmaker from the Sacramento area, won a seat. Former Democratic Assemblymember Sally Lieber is up for reelection on the board this year. The other members had experience in local politics instead of inside the Capitol.

“We’re lean but we’re not mean,” said Lieber, the incumbent for District 2, which includes 19 counties centered on the Bay Area. “I think the Board of Equalization is the right size in the system right now…I do really believe that the board has a role to play in being a forum for taxpayers to come forward to.”

This year voters will see more contentious elections for the tax board:

• In District 1 representing inland California, Republican state Sen. Shannon Grove of Bakersfield has more than $900,000 in a campaign account and name recognition from her representing the San Joaquin Valley in the Legislature since 2010. Democrats are putting up a fight for the district. Fresno City Councilmember Nelson Esparza is running with the party’s support.
• In District 2 representing coastal California north of Los Angeles, incumbent Lieber faces San Mateo Community College District Trustee John Pimentel. Lieber has the Democratic Party’s endorsement, but a number of Bay Area Democratic leaders are backing Pimentel, including state Treasurer Ma and San Jose Mayor Matt Mahan.
• In District 3 representing the Los Angeles area, former Monterey Park City Councilmember Yvonne Yiu put up $760,000 of her own money and has about $1 million on hand. The race has another heavyweight in Assemblymember Mike Gipson, a Democrat from Gardena who has served in the Legislature since 2014. 
• District 4 representing the San Diego area has an especially crowded race with Democratic state Sen. Tom Umberg of Santa Ana, San Ysidro school board member Martín Arias, San Diego Unified School District board member Cody Peterson, and Denis Bilodeau, a Republican supported by San Diego Assemblymember Carl DeMaio’s Reform California organization.

A forum for California taxpayers

The board was always popular among taxpayer advocacy groups, who liked that it provided a forum to focus on tax issues in a capital where debates often center on labor and business.

“It’s a very useful elected body that answers to the voters,” said Susan Shelley, vice president of communications for the Howard Jarvis Taxpayers Association.

Some of this year’s candidates are thinking of ways to make the most of the agency.

Arias believes the board could do more to assist homeowners and potential homeowners. As a taxpayer advocate in the San Diego County Assessor’s Office, he says he works with the Board of Equalization every day and has a front seat to how the system works.

“I think there’s a bigger opportunity here to make the Board of Equalization the constitutional office that it is — that it should be,” he said. “There’s a clear opportunity here for us to start advocating at the state level for all of our taxpayers, including those that don’t speak English.”

Umberg said he’d like the board to have more investigative power and resources. Citing instances in which San Bernardino and Los Angeles assessors have been arrested on felony charges, he said he’s most interested in the board’s oversight of property tax assessors.

“Although it’s not a high-profile job, it’s a critically important job, especially when we’ve got so many revenue challenges in California,” Umberg said in an interview with CalMatters.

Questioning BOE’s relevance

Advocating for the board’s expansion has drawn criticism from former board members and employees. Yee, a board member from 2004 to 2014, has been vocal about abolishing the board entirely because she believes that its limited responsibilities could be easily transferred to another department or agency.

“I just really do question how this board continues to have relevance,” she told CalMatters. “I sometimes feel like the board is really doing a lot of work in search of finding problems to solve. …I know with each of the board members, they feel very strongly about being a taxpayer advocate. But frankly, every public official should be a taxpayer advocate. ”

Democrats stopped short of killing the agency entirely because they would have had to put that question to voters.

“They should have just chopped the head of the snake off and done away with the Board of Equalization altogether,” said Mark DeSio, a former communications director for the board. “They didn’t do that. They left enough of the cancer to grow back.”

He cooperated with the audit that revealed misspending at the agency that appeared intended to promote its elected members as well as another that showed widespread nepotism in its hiring practices. He then lost his job in the reorganization and filed a whistleblower retaliation lawsuit against the state.

DeSio believes lawmakers want seats on the Board of Equalization because it allows them to maintain a high profile until they can run for office again.

“That was the recipe for disaster a few years back,” he said. “Somebody better watch these guys. They’re not there for the policy. It’s for the exposure.”

Cayla Mihalovich is a California Local News fellow.

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