The Brief

Los Angeles County’s unhoused population declined slightly for the second year in a row, according to authorities responsible for the region’s annual point-in-time homeless count.

Results of the 2025 event, released Monday, show homelessness dropped by 3.4% in the city of L.A. and by 4% countywide, according to the Los Angeles Homeless Services Authority, or LAHSA. That includes the number of people in shelters and those sleeping outdoors.

Last year, LAHSA reported smaller declines over the previous year in both the city and county — 2.2% and less than 1% (.27%), respectively.

Prior to that, the numbers had been trending upward since 2018.

LAHSA said several factors contributed to the reductions, including the clearing of encampments throughout the region, and nearly 28,000 people being placed into permanent housing last year — a record high.

Mayor Karen Bass speaks at a press conference before LAHSA's annual homeless count at El Rio Community School on Feb. 18, 2025 in Los Angeles.

(

Carlin Stiehl

/

LAist

)

“These results aren’t just data points — they represent thousands of human beings who are now inside, and neighborhoods that are beginning to heal,” L.A. Mayor Karen Bass said in a statement. “This Point in Time Count makes one thing clear: change is possible when we refuse to accept encampments as normal and refuse to leave people behind.”

Va Lecia Adams Kellum, CEO of LAHSA, said during a news conference Monday that the lower numbers of unsheltered unhoused people are a direct result of the city and county’s work with clearing encampments.

“ Over the last two years, our leaders came together to bring people inside, and their efforts have paid off,” she said.

" We've made real progress toward ending homelessness, and we cannot let that momentum falter now," she continued. "The dear people on our streets are relying on us, and we must continue to focus on bringing them inside."

Elected officials react 

Most city and county officials are cautiously optimistic about L.A.’s homeless count data, but they say the numbers of people experiencing homelessness are unacceptably high.

“Nobody should see these results and think our job is done,” said L.A. City Councilmember Katy Yaroslavsky. “We’re still in a crisis, but for the first time in a long time, we’re seeing the tide start to turn. We’ve learned a lot over the past few years about what it takes to resolve encampments and get people housed for good."

“This proves that when we focus resources on the things that work, we get results,” she continued. “Now we need to double down and do it faster.”

L.A. County Supervisor Lindsey Horvath said the region needs to make more investments toward solving the crisis.

"At this pace, it would take three centuries to end homelessness in Los Angeles County,” she told LAist in a statement.

L.A. City Council members noted there were some doubts about the accuracy of the data. A recent report by the RAND Corporation suggested LAHSA had systemically undercounted homelessness in some parts of the city during last year’s count in January 2024. Last month, LAist reported that LAHSA removed more volunteer observations when reconciling data in 2024 than they had in previous years.

L.A. Councilmember John Lee, who represents the Northwest San Fernando Valley, told LAist there are questions about how the homeless count numbers are validated and ultimately reported.

“When there’s this much at stake, accuracy matters and we can’t afford to make decisions based on data that may not reflect what’s actually happening on the ground,” he said in a statement. “Until we have a more reliable and consistent system of reporting, it’s difficult to fully trust that the numbers we’re seeing are telling the whole story.”

LAHSA and city leaders say the data may not always reflect the reality of every block or every street, but it remains a useful estimate of homelessness throughout the region. And that estimate is trending downward.

L.A. Council President Marqueece Harris-Dawson said the city’s efforts are working.

“I find it interesting that the folks who question the numbers this year did not have the same energy when the numbers were trending upwards, no one interrogated that data,” Harris-Dawson said in a statement. “Detractors root for failure.”

Councilmember Nithya Raman, chair of the city’s Housing and Homelessness Committee, told LAist the results reflect the reality she’s seen experienced in her district, which includes parts of Silver Lake and the San Fernando Valley.

“ The reality is that the count — if it is imperfect — is imperfect in the same way each year, and it is really meant to be a tracker of our progress over time,” Raman said.

She continued:  “I'm really encouraged by the progress that we're making after years of increases, sometimes double digit increases.”

Los Angeles Mayor Karen Bass at a news conference from the Los Angeles Homeless Services Authority’s Welcome Navigation Center.

(

Vitus Larrieu

/

LAist

)

Reaction from nonprofit leaders

Officials within the organizations that support unhoused Angelenos were pleased with the numbers but acknowledged the challenges ahead, particularly the loss of federal money that pays for housing vouchers and other services.

Peter Laugharn, president of the nonprofit Conrad N. Hilton Foundation, said systemic problems are still forcing people onto the streets.

“ Unaffordable housing is still a leading cause of first-time homelessness, and decades of economic and racial inequities continue to shape who is the most vulnerable,” he said.

Katie Hill, CEO of Union Station Homeless Services, said was concerned that the end of COVID-era federal programs, like emergency housing vouchers, would make her organization’s work more difficult.

“ The resources that made [the decline in homelessness] possible are drying up or being reduced and, in the next couple of years, we will see it's not going to be the same trend,” she told LAist. “ We need to prepare ourselves as a region, as a community to have to pick up the pieces and expect that there will be more homelessness.”

Stephanie Klasky-Gamer, president of LA Family Housing, agreed.

“ Without that type of investment, as we saw in ‘25 and in ‘24, I fear that we're going to shift from this positive trend in the years ahead,” she told LAist.

More on the results 

In February, LAHSA and its volunteers counted more than 43,500 unhoused people in the city of L.A. and more than 72,000 in the county during this year’s annual tally. Those totals include people in shelters and on the streets.

The vast majority of unhoused people in the city of L.A. are living on the street rather than in homeless shelters.

For the second year in a row, that population decreased substantially. It fell by 7.9% this year, LAHSA said, and by 17.5% over the past two years. (There were 26,972 unsheltered people living in the city in February, down from 32,680 two years ago.)

Meanwhile, the number of people in the city of L.A. living in “interim housing,” or shelter, increased 4.7%. This year, LAHSA counted 16,727 people in the city of L.A. living in shelters, motel rooms and tiny homes. That’s up from 15,977 last year.

This year, the count showed fewer people living in tents and other makeshift shelters in the city of L.A. There were 13.5% fewer vehicles and tents used as shelter compared to the previous year.

The agency credits efforts like the city’s Inside Safe and county’s Pathway Home programs for moving people off of the streets. Both programs clear encampments and offer people temporary shelter with a path to possible permanent housing.

More permanent housing became available last year, LAHSA said. There were about 2,960 new apartments provided in 2024. But that was far short of an estimated 485,000 affordable homes needed.

Why the count is important

The U.S. Department of Housing and Urban Development, or HUD, requires local governments to conduct a full census of the region’s unhoused population every other year.

L.A. County has been doing a count annually since 2015, except in 2021 when it was canceled because of the COVID-19 pandemic.

LAHSA’s annual count is the largest of its kind in the country and involves coordinating thousands of volunteers who go out in groups over three nights to tally people and dwellings in more than 3,000 census subtracts.

The annual point-in-time count is typically held in late January, but this year’s count was postponed a month because of the wildfires, which were still burning in the Palisades and Altadena at the time.

LAHSA officials said they made that decision to avoid jeopardizing the safety of volunteers or the accuracy of the count, as many people were displaced from their homes or normal routines. Several wildfire-impacted areas were counted by special teams of LAHSA employees, rather than volunteers.

The delay helped depress volunteer turnout this year, LAHSA and public officials said. About 10% fewer people signed up compared with last year’s count. Some who registered this year did not show up after LAHSA moved the count back by a few weeks.

But officials at the agency said they do not believe the disaster affected the quality of the data.

This was the first year 100% of the data from the count was entered digitally, through the Esri app, and signed off by the people doing the counting, according to LAHSA. Last year, problems with the app and shifting policies for reconciling data collected through the app and data collected on paper forms led to questions about accuracy.

LAHSA representatives said the methodology for gathering the date hasn’t changed, but the tools have. Authorities said the agency is committed to producing the most accurate homeless count possible.

For the first time, LAHSA released preliminary raw data for this year’s homeless count in March, much earlier than in previous counts. The move came a week before the L.A. County Board of Supervisors was scheduled to vote on whether to pull funding from the regional agency.

LAHSA spokesperson Paul Rubenstein told the agency’s commissioners in April that it was important for stakeholders to have the early data “as they were considering significant shifts to the system.”

“Last year was not a statistical anomaly,” Rubenstein said. “The path we were on was getting us where we wanted to go.”

Adams Kellum celebrated the early results at the time.

“When I first came to LAHSA, I publicly stated that we wanted to reduce unsheltered homelessness within three years.

“We’ve done it in two.”

Criticism of LAHSA

Federal Judge David O. Carter, who is currently overseeing a major legal settlement on homelessness, said he saw the release of unverified numbers from the count as “political gamesmanship.”

“My view is that they're in a political battle for their lives right now,” Carter said.

Times have been tough for LAHSA in recent years. The agency faced fierce criticism after a county audit last year and a March report commissioned by Carter, both of which found the agency had failed to properly track spending and hold vendors accountable.

Those findings prompted the L.A. County Board of Supervisors to vote in April to shift hundreds of millions in taxpayer funding for homeless services away from LAHSA and create a new county homelessness department to eventually administer the funds itself.

The city is weighing a similar move.

Days after the county pulled out of LAHSA, Adams Kellum announced her resignation as CEO. Adams Kellum, a Bass ally, has led the organization since 2023.

Even though LAHSA’s role is being reduced, the agency remains tasked with overseeing the annual homeless count. However, Adams Kellum told the agency’s commissioners last month LAHSA may not have enough funding to do a proper count next year, because of city of L.A. budget cuts and the recent county funding decision.

“We anticipate that the current allocations will not provide enough funding for LAHSA to conduct an unsheltered count in 2026,” she said.

Stay up to date with our Politics newsletter, sent weekly.

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.

(

Genaro Molina

/

Los Angeles Times via Getty Images

)

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.

(

Miguel Gutierrez Jr.

/

CalMatters

)

“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.

California is considering prohibiting the fabrication and installation of artificial-stone countertops — effectively banning the products — in response to an epidemic of the fatal lung disease silicosis among workers who cut, grind and polish countertop slabs before they are fitted into homes and businesses.

Silicosis is caused by the inhalation of pulverized silica, one of the most common minerals on earth. Public Health Watch, LAist and Univision were the first to disclose a silicosis cluster among Southern California countertop fabrication workers in December 2022. A year later, the California Occupational Safety and Health Standards Board adopted an emergency temporary standard that required the employers of such workers — most of whom are young, immigrant men — to suppress toxic silica dust with water and take other protective measures. That standard became permanent in December 2024.

Five months after the initial stories were released by Public Health Watch and its media partners, the California Department of Public Health had confirmed 69 cases of silicosis statewide. As of April 8, that number had grown to 542, with 29 deaths. More than half of these cases — 279 — came from Los Angeles County.

What is silica?

The silica that threatens the fabricators’ lungs comes from quartz, which is crushed and mixed with resins and pigments to make artificial stone — also known as engineered stone — a cheaper, more versatile alternative to natural stone like granite or marble. The ingredients are poured into molds, a process that allows for mass production of countertop slabs.

When a slab is cut, ground or polished in preparation for installation, a pestilent powder is released into the air and drawn into workers’ lungs, where it collects and causes slow suffocation. There is no cure for silicosis; the only procedure that can buy some victims time is a double-lung transplant, which is expensive, cumbersome and rarely prolongs life beyond 10 years.

Why is California considering banning engineered stone?

The Occupational Safety and Health Standards Board is scheduled to take video testimony from fabrication workers suffering from silicosis at its meeting Thursday in Santa Rosa. It is not expected to vote on a ban, however, any sooner than its May 21 meeting in Los Angeles.

Should California choose to ban engineered stone, it would be the first state to do so. Australia banned the material in 2024 after experiencing a silicosis outbreak that claimed an estimated 1,000 victims.

The standards board is required to respond to a petition submitted in December by the Western Occupational and Environmental Medical Association, a nonprofit that represents more than 600 physicians and other health experts in seven states. In that petition, the association asked the board to “prohibit all fabrication and installation tasks ... on engineered stone that contains more than 1% crystalline silica. This action is necessary in light of the continuing epidemic of silicosis that is causing disease and death among California fabrication workers ...” Engineered-stone countertops typically contain more than 90% crystalline silica, the most common and dangerous form of the mineral; another form, amorphous silica, is not believed to pose serious health risks.

Lawyers representing hundreds of sick workers and their families in litigation against countertop manufacturers say engineered stone cannot be handled safely.

“Artificial stone is too toxic to be safely fabricated,” said Raphael Metzger, who practices in Long Beach and won a $52.4 million jury verdict — the nation’s first — against 34 manufacturers in August 2024. “Every week I meet with about a half-dozen fabricators, many of whom have silicosis.”

“The silicosis crisis is not a failure of rules — it’s a failure of a product,” said James Nevin, based in Novato, California. The medical association’s “proposed ban works because it removes that hazard at its source. Every jurisdiction that has reduced disease has done so by eliminating crystalline silica artificial stone itself — not by pretending it can be used safely.”

Countertop manufacturers are not standing by quietly. In a March 27 letter to the standards board, Cosentino North America, part of Spain’s Cosentino Group, said, “Effective [workplace safety] standards already exist, but there are non-compliant fabrication shop owners that do not implement them and put their workers at risk.” With “the correct controls in place,” the company said, “engineered stone can be fabricated safely.”

Cal/OSHA enforces silica rule

California’s silica rule is enforced by the state’s Division of Occupational Safety and Health, known as Cal/OSHA. In a statement to Public Health Watch, a Cal/OSHA spokesperson said the agency had opened more than 140 inspections of fabrication shops since the emergency temporary standard took effect in December 2023. Those inspections unearthed more than 580 violations, the spokesperson said.

In a presentation to the standards board at its March meeting, Eric Berg, Cal/OSHA’s deputy chief for health, research and standards, said the agency had assessed a total of $1.8 million in penalties against fabrication shop owners alleged to have violated the silica rule. Stop-work orders were issued to 26 shops where dry-cutting of artificial stone — a prohibited practice — or inadequate respiratory-protection measures were observed, Berg said.

Last year, Cal/OSHA estimated that the state had 920 fabrication shops, employing some 4,600 workers.

It's unclear which way the standards board will go when the proposed ban comes up for a vote. In a February 27 letter, Chairman Joseph M. Alioto Jr. urged district attorneys in the seven counties that account for nearly 95% of the silicosis cases in California to pursue criminal charges against violators.

“Please do not be misled by the misdemeanor classification of [silica violations],” Alioto wrote. “These are no ordinary misdemeanor cases, as the science bears out. Dry-cutting on its own will result in serious injury in a majority of cases. That means that every successful misdemeanor you prosecute will shutter a violating employer and save workers’ lives.”

The medical association on whose petition the board must rule, however, argued that “education and enforcement alone will not be sufficient to curtail the escalating occupational health emergency caused by” engineered stone.

After Australia banned the material, alternatives with the same “quality, look and feel” but free of crystalline silica took its place, the petition says. If the standards board follows Australia’s lead, “it is highly likely that these safer products will be made immediately available in the California market, without significant economic consequences for fabrication businesses and their workers.”

Jim Morris is executive director and editor-in-chief of Public Health Watch, a nonprofit investigative news organization.