The Brief

All this week, we’ve been shining a flashlight on some hair raising history and haunts from across the Southland for our Spooky L.A. series.

For our final installment on this Hallow’s Eve, we take a look at one of L.A.'s most notorious cold cases, the brutal murder of Elizabeth Short, better known as the Black Dahlia murder.

Kim Cooper of Esotouric L.A. leads crime tours across the city, and one of them takes thrill seekers down the same block where the body of Short was found in 1947. She tells us the story of the Black Dahlia.

Who was the Black Dahlia?

Short was in her early 20s when she came to Southern California. Cooper likens her to a transient, having bounced from place to place before finally landing in Long Beach.

Cooper said that one of her friends nicknamed her the Black Dahlia after a motion picture called Blue Dahlia that was released in 1946.

“Just as a funny little lark, her friend said, 'Oh, Beth, you’re like the Black Dahlia with your curly hair, and flowers behind your ear, and those dark clothes you always wear,” Cooper said.

A murder mystery

Nearly 80 years later, Elizabeth Short's murder remains unsolved. Short was found by Betty Bersinger while out for a walk with her child in Leimert Park on Jan. 15, 1947. Instead of taking a main street, the duo went down a quiet, smaller street when Bersinger spotted something in the weeds up ahead. The closer she got, she realized what she was seeing was a body and quickly picked up her child and ran.

Part of what keeps people intrigued is the way Short's body was found.

“She was cut in half and not just cut in half but posed with the body a bit apart,” Cooper said.

The condition of her body led puzzled investigators to believe that perhaps someone with medical knowledge — or a butcher — could have been responsible. Police looked into several people, but, Cooper said, they overlooked a surgeon who lived a block away from Short.

When Cooper takes guests on the Black Dahlia tour, they begin at 39th Street and Norton Avenue and walk down the long block to the murder site. They stop at a fire hydrant, just 50 feet from where Short's body was found.

“Standing there, looking up, when the day is clear, you can actually see the Hollywood sign. And Hollywood is where this person in life, Elizabeth Short, spent so much of her time frolicking. She never was anywhere near there except in that moment of death. It's a heavy place,” Cooper said.

Cooper said she pauses right there for a moment with the tour group.

“She was one of us," Cooper said. "She almost had a chance to grow and live and be happy here. The least we can do is respect her and show a little love.”

Why the Black Dahlia case is so compelling

We asked Cooper why the case is still so compelling after all these years.

“Her story gives us a window into what life was like for these sort of transient butterfly characters who were just flitting around the edges of the wartime world,” Cooper said.

Of the few things that are known about the Black Dahlia, one is that she lost someone she loved during war.

But another reason her story resonates with us now, is that her situation is not unlike one that Angelenos continue to experience — a housing shortage.

“There was an incredible housing crisis, which was a huge part of Beth's short story,” Cooper said. “And I think that empathy, familiarity, and a sense of what if is something that people hold when they hear about this case.”

Cooper added that without journalists, we would not know who the Black Dahlia was. They investigated her like the police did and told her story. The tragic irony is, however, we would not have known who she was, if it wasn’t for her death.

With that thought, we hope you enjoyed this mini series of Spooky L.A. history. Let us know if you would like for us to continue this series next Halloween. Stay safe and happy Halloween!

The Trump administration is proposing changes to what it calls "unnecessary and unworkable" Biden-era environmental rules designed to cut pollution from heavy-duty vehicles, including buses and large trucks.

The proposal — part of a series of deregulatory actions by the Trump administration that have rolled back emissions standards for new vehicles — includes changes that are welcomed by trucking organizations and denounced by environmental groups.

Specifically, the proposal from the Environmental Protection Agency would scale back and postpone two provisions designed to make sure emissions-reducing technology keeps working while a vehicle is in use; one related to warranties, and another related to the useful life of emissions technology.

Additionally, the current set of rules requires truck engines to automatically operate at reduced power if their emissions reduction systems aren't working, which truckers and other heavy-duty vehicle operators have called disruptive. The EPA proposes getting rid of that requirement altogether and replacing it with an alert to drivers.

According to the EPA's analysis, the changes would save the trucking industry between $4,130 and $6,152 per diesel engine affected. Compared to the current emissions rules, the change would increase ozone-forming nitrogen oxide pollution from heavy duty trucks by 4.2% in 2030 and by 11.6% by 2055.

The EPA did not model the resulting effect on air quality or human health, but noted that the modifications would likely reduce the benefits of prior rules changes in 2023.

The proposal is now open for a period of public comment.

"If finalized, these changes will help manufacturers keep improving their vehicles without being forced to rush products to market before they're ready," EPA administrator Lee Zeldin said in a statement, adding that the rules changes "will ease real burdens for operators."

Kelly Loeffler, who heads the U.S. Small Business Administration, wrote that the rules change would alleviate "burdensome diesel regulations on behalf of farmers, truckers, and small business owners who were crushed by unworkable environmental activist demands that became costly mandates."

The American Trucking Associations had called for changes to the rules, writing in February that the Biden-era policies would require "a premature rollout of commercial motor vehicles with unproven engine technologies onto our highways." The group specifically asked the agency to allow truck manufacturers to pay penalties instead of comply with the rules, as long as they were working on developing compliant engines, an option the EPA included in the proposal.

Environmental groups criticized the proposed changes, citing concerns about the health hazards of emissions. "Clean truck standards save lives," Katherine García, director of the Sierra Club's Clean Transportation for All campaign, wrote in a statement emailed to NPR. "Weakening them would mean more toxic pollution in the air and more families paying the price with their health.

The Environmental Defense Fund noted that while heavy trucks make up only 5% of vehicles on U.S. roads, they are the largest source of "pollutants that cause asthma attacks, bronchitis, heart attacks, strokes and preventable deaths," and argued that truck manufacturers are already capable of meeting the Biden-era rules.

Copyright 2026 NPR

Kaiser Permanente nurses who answer advice and triage calls say their duty of care for patients is being increasingly threatened by workplace surveillance.

Seven current and former nurses told CalMatters that those who spend more than 15 minutes on a call with a patient routinely face criticism from Kaiser management or get called into performance evaluation meetings. Call time, they said, factors into monthly performance scores they receive.

In addition to tracking call length, they said Kaiser uses software that tries to predict on a daily basis whether they’re being unproductive or failing to answer calls quickly. Artificial intelligence systems have also been used to rate their empathy and tone of voice.

Their comments come as the California Nurses Association begins negotiating a new contract with Kaiser this month with AI a likely issue. Kaiser nurses went on strike against AI for one day in March and picketed against AI last fall. The CNA is bargaining for 25,000 nurses, including 1,000 in call centers.

At the same time, California lawmakers are considering several bills regulating AI in the workplace, including one that would protect from retaliation doctors and nurses who override automated care recommendations.

Kaiser defended its use of AI, saying it deploys the technology with patient safety in mind and does not use “average handle time” to assess performance.

Kaiser Permanente is the largest private employer in California, providing healthcare services to more than 9 million people in the state and to 3 million other Americans. That means the company’s use of artificial intelligence could set important precedents for managing workers with AI. It could also have a big impact on patient care, providing an early example of how the healthcare sector balances cost-cutting automation with human presence or touch.

Raquel Alvarez Sanchez, a Kaiser Permanente advice nurse in Vallejo since 2010, said she was on a call with a patient who was suicidal last year that took more than an hour because she had to wait for police to arrive before hanging up. She tried to make the man feel cared for, even though she was cognizant that staying on the call that long would throw off her average call time for weeks and could lead to questions from management. Sanchez, a union steward, said she’s accompanied colleagues to performance evaluation meetings, where they were found to have done everything right on a call — except staying on the line for more than 15 minutes. She said she hasn’t seen nurses get fired for doing that, but she fears that continued pressure can lead nurses to quit or retire early.

“I think at some point all of the nurses have been talked to about their average handle time,” she said. “The only thing I can think of is they’re doing it for profit.”

Another nurse who spoke with CalMatters on condition of anonymity due to fear of retribution described how that surveillance affected a call with a patient last year. Initially she thought her patient, an elderly woman who just received a terminal cancer diagnosis, was suicidal, but quickly came to understand that she was in shock and really needed somebody to talk to.

The nurse wanted to take time to show compassion or comfort to the woman, who acts as a caretaker for her daughter, but she stopped herself out of fear it would hurt her monthly performance score and lead to a reprimand from her manager. She became a nurse to provide people with compassionate care, but “I had to ask myself: Am I going to get disciplined for going off script or saying more than what is necessary?”

Kaiser Permanente says its performance evaluations help improve patient outcomes. A company spokesperson said, “Kaiser Permanente does not use Average Handle Time to assess agent performance or enforce call time metrics. Any tools used in contact center settings support our quality assurance efforts and have human review and oversight.” In a statement provided to CalMatters, spokesperson Vincent Staupe added that Kaiser uses AI responsibly, with human oversight, and by “prioritizing patient safety, privacy, and equity,” but he said, “As a large organization, we do not share specific information about internal technology systems for security and operational reasons.”

Is technology putting patients at risk?

It’s not clear how patient care is affected by algorithmic management, nor is the impact of limiting the length of triage and advice calls on patients. Kaiser call center nurses can’t say for certain whether the pressures they face results in adverse outcomes for patients because their contact with patients ends after they hang up the phone. A 2024 public records request by CalMatters to the California Department of Managed Health Care found no complaints by patients against Kaiser related to call times. But nurses insist the risk to patient safety and quality of care is real.

Consumer Watchdog patient advocate Michele Ramos said many Kaiser patients begin their care on the advice line. They later complain to her, mostly about things that happen in Kaiser facilities, but “I can see now where a lot of the problems” start, given the call constraints nurses are under.

Ramos said the time pressures may fit a broader pattern at Kaiser of putting costs over quality. The health giant was hit with a record fine, $50 million, as part of a settlement over findings from the California Department of Managed Health Care that it delayed behavioral health appointments beyond statutory limits and too often moved patients into group rather than individual therapy. Kaiser also settled with the U.S. Department of Labor after investigations into its substance use and mental health services. Kaiser faced criticism in 2002 for paying bonuses to call center workers who aren’t nurses for keeping calls short, though call center nurses who spoke with CalMatters said they encountered no such practices today.

“Kaiser’s been known through the years to manage dollars over managing care, and I think this would be a contributor to that, which is only going to fail patients,” Ramos added.

Nurses said they are pressured to stay under 15 minutes even for the sorts of calls that often take more time, like diagnosing a patient with multiple symptoms, chronic illnesses, new parents in need of advice and assurance, people who desire extended health education, or people who are overwhelmed after receiving life-altering news who could use some compassion. Nurses say calls that involve interpreters often take 30 minutes or more. About four in 10 Californians speak a language other than English and half of them do not speak English well, according to a state environmental health agency.

“The amount of time that Kaiser is giving us to complete a call is sometimes not safe,” said one nurse, who asked to remain anonymous due to fear of retaliation.

“People can get hurt,” said Charlotte Capulong, who has worked in nurse call centers for 22 years and helped organize Kaiser nurses against the AI tone-of-voice tool. Capulong said nurses felt harassed by managers in meetings she attended as a union rep, even if they successfully carried out all other duties of their jobs except completing calls within 15 minutes.

“You aren’t calling Comcast. We’re dealing with life here,” she said.

Nurses are instructed to stick to a script on phone calls and give no more than two to three pieces of advice, Capulong and other nurses said, which means they may sometimes need to decide whether to withhold advice or face a performance evaluation hearing.

The nurses say artificial intelligence could make the surveillance nurses encounter on the job worse.

In summer 2024, Kaiser began testing an AI tool that attempts to assess empathy and tone in the voices of nurses and patients, according to nurses who spoke with CalMatters. In response, nurses circulated and signed a petition in favor of the right to patient privacy, more transparency, and the right to exercise their professional judgement and encouraged management to involve nurse’s input and feedback. The signature campaign used the same tag line that nurses used at protests outside San Francisco hospitals earlier that year: “Trust nurses, not AI. The AI tests ended in November 2024, but union representatives were told that managers may bring the program back in the future.

Nurses reported feeling harassed by existing surveillance, “and that was intensified when they said we’re going to use AI to evaluate our calls and grade us,” said Sanchez.

Another nurse speaking on condition of anonymity said “AI did not understand our job and would grade us wrong all the time.”

A Kaiser spokesperson declined to respond to questions about the AI tool or answer questions about the use of AI and other automated systems in the company’s call centers and healthcare facilities, including for evaluating nurse performance or whether patients were informed about the use of AI to evaluate their empathy and tone.

Nurses also said they get little time between calls even if that call involves speaking with a patient who is suicidal, experiencing a mental health episode, or near death. In years past, nurses got around 10 minutes to finish writing notes in a patient’s chart or collect themselves after a particularly tough call. Today they say they typically get 30 seconds or less when lines are busy, although more at slow times, like late at night, or if they get a manager’s permission after a particularly challenging call. The overall pace they say, can lead to mistakes like missing important cues into a patient’s wellbeing.

CNA reps declined to talk about specific provisions they intend to seek related to AI ahead of their talks with Kaiser this summer.

How surveillance and AI shape nursing

Critics say excessive workplace monitoring can lead to lower morale as employees feel less trusted and autonomous, relegated to being no more than algorithm monitors. UC Berkeley Labor Center Technology and Work Program director Annette Bernhardt has warned that algorithmic management can turn people into fleshy robots, echoing complaints from an Amazon factory worker who CalMatters interviewed last year. A 2023 academic survey of call centers in four developed countries found that using AI for management or monitoring left workers with less time between calls and more likely to feel emotionally drained by their work. Nearly half of respondents said that AI tools made their jobs more stressful. A prior study by the same researchers, Virginia Dolleghast of Cornell University and Sean O’Brady of McMaster University found that performance monitoring leads to higher rates of emotional exhaustion.

Dolleghast, who has studied the impact of surveillance technology on call center workers for more than a decade, said what Kaiser call center nurses are experiencing is part of a broader trend: Across different industries, persistent surveillance is increasing stress levels for workers who are resolving complex, emotionally-charged issues.

“Stress and burnout can lead to more mistakes across a range of areas, and in the healthcare setting that is much higher risk because you’re dealing with people’s lives and their health,” she said.

The converse can be true: Workers who are given more discretion to decide the pace and timing of their work experience higher levels of job satisfaction and less absenteeism.

Nurses nationwide are more frequently encountering artificial intelligence and similar software systems in the workplace. Half of more than 2,000 nurses who responded to a 2024 survey by the National Nurses United union said their employer uses algorithmic systems to analyze health records. Such systems can do things like determine how fragile a patient is or predict how many hours of care they will need. Two-thirds of the surveyed nurses said their own assessments had at some point disagreed with a computer-generated prediction. Six out of 10 respondents said they don’t trust their employer to prioritize patient safety when using AI.

Pa Vue has worked as a nurse in call centers for the better part of the past decade. She said she and other Kaiser nurses routinely have conversations with managers about call efficiency and receive evaluation scores once a month. She recalls having a score reduced for repeating advice to a patient that she worried had unusual symptoms and possible heart issues.

As a union representative in some performance meetings, Vue has seen managers raise efficiency questions about calls they deem too long. She’s also seen nurses receive lower performance scores if they go against software recommendations based on their professional opinion or make an appointment for a patient without consulting a doctor.

She believes that efficiency aims accelerated by technology can hinder a nurse’s ability to focus and reduce the quality of care that patients pay for.

“I’m not against the use of AI as long as it’s beneficial to the patient but in this particular use [empathy and tone monitoring] it’s to increase productivity and improve efficiency and cut costs. Kaiser is forgetting we aren’t just a call center for customer support, we’re nurses, and we’re there to take care of patients,” she said.

As AI improves and businesses push workers to use it, unions are, in turn, increasingly demanding that employers address issues raised by AI when bargaining for new contracts. Surveillance technology has become a common way for managers to collect data about workers in a number of industries, used for everything from improving safety to hunting for ways to increase profit gains or train AI to do a job.

At Kaiser, AI is a key issue not only among nurses but also for mental health workers, 2,400 of whom are in contract negotiations in Northern California with Kaiser Permanente. Kaiser therapists have said they are concerned about use of therapy session transcripts to train AI models and about the health-care giant using AI to take their jobs. National Union of Healthcare Workers spokesperson Matt Artz told CalMatters contract negotiations are ongoing.

How Kaiser uses AI

Kaiser Permanente is exploring or using AI in many parts of the healthcare experience far beyond nurse call centers. Kaiser uses AI to identify patients in hospitals at risk of adverse events by evaluating data on their electronic health records. An AI system called Preventus is used to determine when to discharge patients. Doctors and therapists use Abridge to record interactions and translate speech to text during in-person visits with patients instead of taking notes. Remote monitoring with AI for patients that need extra care has been tested at Kaiser Permanente facilities in the Bay Area, according to nurses who encountered the technology in the course of doing their jobs.

National Nurses United and CNA President Cathy Kennedy sees the use of AI to detect nurse empathy as part of a long series of steps by Kaiser to limit their autonomy and make them more efficient. She believes AI threatens to automate and fragment the work that nurses do, and companies developing and deploying AI systems should establish that those systems are effective and equitable before deploying them.

Notification of new tech deployments is part of the nurse union’s contract with Kaiser but sometimes nurses don’t receive notification, CNA says. So union leaders are attempting to track the number of AI models in use at Kaiser Permanente, advising its members to inform them when they encounter new tech. This paves the way for CNA to push back as it did with the empathy and tone AI last summer or as it did when it stopped a pilot program that would have replaced nurses that sit at the bedside of confused patients with cameras.

Debru Carthan, a Kaiser radiologist, is on the front line of worker-management fights over AI at the company. A member of Service Employees International Union, she is also part of the Coalition of Kaiser Permanente Unions, where she sits on a committee to discuss use of AI and emerging technology at Kaiser. The coalition also has a “see something, say something,” campaign for frontline workers to report when they notice AI deployments; the coalition says that too often management quietly implements AI into workflows without notice or worker input. She worries that the AI tone detector used on advice nurses could discriminate against nurses from different cultures and has come to believe that the use of AI in healthcare generally has more to do with money and corporate greed than patient care.

California lawmakers have responded to worker AI concerns both inside and outside the healthcare sector. They tried and failed last year to address how AI impacts workers like call center nurses. Assembly Bill 1018 and Senate Bill 7, two bills endorsed by the CNA, would have required employers to inform workers before using automated systems on the job to do things like promote or discipline workers or evaluate job performance, but Gov. Gavin Newsom vetoed SB 7, and, facing strong opposition from companies including Kaiser Permanente, AB 1018 failed to pass for the third consecutive year.

Earlier this year, lawmakers reintroduced a new version of Senate Bill 7, now called Senate Bill 947. Another bill would prohibit employers using AI to predict the emotional state of their employees. Yet another bill would protect doctors and nurses from retaliation if they override recommendations generated by an automated system and require healthcare providers to supply employees with an inventory of automated systems once a year. Kaiser declined to share a comprehensive list of AI systems in use when asked by CalMatters.

Altogether CNA and the affiliated California Labor Federation support roughly half a dozen bills to regulate use of AI in the workplace. Calling AI a central issue in the next presidential election, members of the California Labor Federation and labor leaders from Democratic primary states held a press conference in Sacramento earlier this year to say that if Newsom wants to become president then he needs to pass laws protecting workers from AI. “It’s an ongoing fight, and it’s a fight well worth having,” Kennedy said. “Whenever there are other unions in discussion about artificial intelligence we are in solidarity with them.”

The nurse that withheld compassion to a terminal cancer patient she thought was suicidal said she believes monitoring and scoring systems turn nurses into automatons that check boxes.

“I used to use humor as a way to help patients heal, and I don’t feel comfortable doing that here because I know the calls are being recorded. You can always tell when a patient appreciates the humor or your personal compassion, but I don’t feel like call centers have tolerance for that because that’s not part of the script,” she said. “That really takes away from the whole point of being a nurse and what patients come to know from nurses.”

This story was reported with contributions from Lam Thuy Vo and Ana Ibarra.

The Legislature wants to make putting on a California police or firefighter uniform more lucrative.

Three bills are moving forward that would either raise pay for state firefighters or boost retirement benefits for public safety personnel.

Their supporters say the measures are meant to compensate people who risk their lives for others and who by the nature of their jobs are exposed to career-shortening hazards. The proposals are sailing through the Legislature with bipartisan support and overwhelming majorities of lawmakers voting for them.

“Every day has a cost, and it's one that we pay with our lives,” Darrell Roberts, president of the union California Professional Firefighters said at a recent hearing where he spoke in favor of a bill that would let public safety employees retire at 55, two years earlier than currently allowed. “This job is physically and mentally demanding in the extreme and asking us to work until 57 is pushing us not just to our limit but beyond it.”

The proposals carry significant price tags and could potentially drive up annual spending by hundreds of millions of dollars. They could also swell the state’s long-term liabilities by billions of dollars. That could make them a tough sell to Gov. Gavin Newsom given that the state anticipates deficits in the near future.

The two retirement bills in particular are rekindling memories of California’s pension crisis in the Great Recession, when major funds lost tens of billions of dollars. At the time, taxpayer advocates drew attention to sweetened benefits that former Gov. Gray Davis signed into law just a few years before the crash, when the stock market was booming.

Marcia Fritz, an accountant and longtime Californmia pension watchdog, said the current push to expand public safety retirement benefits is similar to the law Davis signed. During Davis’ tenure, California’s pension funds were flush from a soaring stock market fueled by tech companies, and lawmakers believed the good run would continue.

Today, the two largest pension funds — CalPERS and CalSTRS — have not fully recovered from their recession losses. But they have been beating their earnings targets, thanks in part to a stock market again propelled by the tech sector.

To Fritz, the lawmakers advancing the bill are “drinking the Kool Aid that the markets are never going to go down,” she said. “We’re the ones paying for it with reduced services.”

California scaled back benefits for workers hired after 2012 when former Gov. Jerry Brown signed a law that compelled employees to work longer before earning a full pension and required them to kick in more money to fund their own pensions.

CalPERS has estimated that Brown’s pension reform saved government agencies $4 billion in its first 10 years and projected it would reduce their expenses by another $24 billion over the next decade.

To taxpayer advocates like Fritz, that’s a sign tthe law is working and should continue as is. To the public safety unions, that means the government agencies have capacity to increase benefits without fully unwinding Brown’s law.

The bills moving forward would:

• Allow public safety employees to retire at age 55 rather than 57. Assembly Bill 1383 also would allow unions to negotiate more generous retirement formulas that would give public safety employees up to 3% of their income for each year in uniform. And it would boost the cap on annual pensionable earnings by almost $60,000 to $249,000 a year. 
• Create a new deferred retirement program for California Highway Patrol officers and Cal Fire firefighters. AB 1054 is meant to give officers and firefighters an incentive to keep working later in their careers by allowing them to accumulate money that they could cash out in a single lump sum check when they retire.
• Increase Cal Fire firefighters’ pay by recommending a new formula for their raises. AB 2129 would encourage the governor’s office to bring their compensation closer to — but not necessarily equal to — the average of what 20 local fire departments pay. 

How much do they cost?

The bill that would allow police and firefighters to retire earlier carries the biggest potential cost, requiring an additional $282 million in annual contributions to the California Public Employees’ Retirement system and increasing its long-term liabilities by $4.8 billion.

Its price tag would increase if cities, counties and other local government agencies agree to offer more generous pension formulas to police and firefighters, as the bill would allow. If that happens, CalPERS estimates it would cost an additional $353 million in annual contributions and further swell the fund’s long-term debt.

Those estimates do not account for the 20 county-run pension systems that are separate from CalPERS.

The potential costs are one reason California cities and counties oppose the measure. “We do definitely support strong retirement benefits, but those benefits must remain sustainable and fiscally responsible for our local agencies,” Johnnie Pina, a lobbyist for the League of California Cities, said at a recent Senate hearing.

It’s less clear what the other two measures will cost.

Supporters of the bill that would give CHP officers and Cal Fire firefighters access to an alternate retirement investment program during their last five years of service say it is intended to be cost neutral, although similar plans offered by cities and counties have driven up expenses. The bill requires CalPERS to assess the program every five years, which union representatives say would allow lawmakers to make adjustments if they see unintended drawbacks.

The measure that would nudge Newsom to raise pay for Cal Fire firefighters has an uncertain cost because it’s written in a way that would allow flexibility for the governor’s office.

It encourages the governor to bargain “in good faith” toward bringing Cal Fire compensation closer to what local governments pay, but does not mandate it. A 2023 state compensation survey found that local fire departments pay firefighters between 11% and 29% more than Cal Fire.

"Instead of being the lowest paid, we will inevitably be somewhere in the middle" if the bill becomes law, firefighter union lobbyist Terry McHale told lawmakers at a hearing earlier this year.

Last year, Newsom rejected a similar measure that was more explicit in demanding an increase in Cal Fire pay. Newsom wrote in a veto message that it would “create significant cost pressures for the state and circumvent the collective bargaining process.” Officials estimate it would have cost between $373 million and $609 million in its first year.

Cal Fire’s firefighter union essentially wants what only one other group of state workers has: Raises based on what other government agencies pay. CHP officers receive annual raises based on what several other large California police departments pay; every other state worker union has to negotiate compensation with the governor.

Gov. Gavin Newsom addresses the media during a press conference unveiling his revised 2026-27 budget proposal at the Capitol Annex Swing Space in Sacramento on May 14, 2026.

(

Miguel Gutierrez Jr.

/

CalMatters

)

What will Newsom do?

All three measures face a major obstacle later this month in the Senate Appropriations Committee, which has the power to sideline bills over cost concerns. If they clear that committee, the bills have a good chance of reaching Newsom’s desk.

At the most recent hearing, lawmakers said increasing incentives to recruit and retain first responders was so important that they’d cut other programs to make room for the additional spending. They commended emergency personnel who rushed to a chemical spill in Orange County in May not knowing if the danger would harm them.

“I still get goosebumps for these firefighters and their families that had to know that they're that they're they were putting their lives online to save that explosion from happening, which they actually end up doing,” Sen. Tony Strickland, a Republican representing Huntington Beach, said at the hearing.

“You can't put a price tag on that,” he said.

The unions have also been a steady presence in the Capitol throughout Newsom’s tenure. Firefighter unions have contributed $6.2 million to lawmakers and legislative campaigns since 2019 and the law enforcement organization known as PORAC has spent $4.5 million over that time, according to CalMatters Digital Democracy database.

They’ve also been reliable allies to Newsom. California Professional Firefighters and the California Correctional Peace Officers Association were two of the largest donors in helping the governor defeat a 2021 recall campaign.

But the unions’ support for Newsom and other lawmakers doesn’t guarantee that he’ll sign the bills. Newsom was mayor of San Francisco during the Great Recession, and he backed a successful ballot measure that required city employees to put more of their own money toward their pensions.

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

It might not feel like it, but Southern California is in for a slight cooldown this weekend before the heat comes back.

The National Weather Service says temperatures today will drop a degree or two. At the beaches, the daily highs will range from 74 to 80 degrees. For the inland coast, expect max temperatures to reach 87 to 93 degrees. Inland areas of Orange County will see temperatures from 79 to 87 degrees.

Meanwhile, L.A. County valleys will stay below 100 degrees today with highs expected to reach 89 to 99 degrees. Over in the Inland Empire, we're going to see temperatures range from 91 to 100 degrees.

In Coachella Valley, temperatures will be about 3 degrees cooler with highs from 110 to 115 degrees. And in the Antelope Valley, expect highs from 99 to 108 degrees, and 93 to 98 degrees for the cooler hills.

Looking ahead to the weekend, daily highs for the valley communities are expected to max out in the lower to mid-90s. Coachella Valley will also see temperatures drop a few more degrees. Come Monday, temperatures will begin to warm up again.

Need a place to get out of the heat?

You can find cooling centers via the following links:

• L.A. County
• Orange County
• San Bernardino County
• Riverside County