The Brief

As she runs for re-election, L.A. City Attorney Hydee Feldstein Soto faces turmoil and claims of unethical behavior from career prosecutors in her office who have accused her of favoring political donors in criminal cases and questioned her administrative decisions and demeanor.

The allegations have been laid out in emails and a memo obtained by LAist, as well as a sworn declaration to a court.

In emails to colleagues earlier this year, two supervising prosecutors questioned the city attorney’s directive to drop a price gouging case against a major campaign donor. One claimed it’s part of a pattern by Feldstein Soto.

“This latest instruction now to dismiss an active case fully supported by the evidence showing not just probable cause, but a high likelihood of conviction by a jury at trial is improper and unethical,” wrote Dennis Kong, who leads the unit handling price gouging prosecutions, in a Feb. 3 email to colleagues. “Especially in light of the fact that we have confirmed that the parties involved are campaign donors."

Kong did not respond to requests for comment. Office policy prohibits him and almost all other City Attorney staff from speaking to the media.

In interviews with LAist, Feldstein Soto denied ever allowing money or personal relationships to affect her decisions.

“That’s not how I roll,” she said. Instead, Feldstein Soto said her decisions were based on a policy she put in place to follow the Constitution.

In the memo, sent to higher-ups in the office in December, a different group of supervising prosecutors pushed back on Feldstein Soto’s decision to delete criminal case data that’s more than 10 years old.

Feldstein Soto told LAist deleting the older data was a prudent step to make sure sensitive information from older criminal cases — which is confidential under state law — doesn’t fall into the wrong hands. Her office later said the older data will be kept on a physical backup, with prosecutors' access restricted. It’s unclear whether that’s been followed through on.

While Feldstein Soto has dealt with these criticisms from career staff, a whistleblower retaliation lawsuit from a different, former senior prosecutor — alleging misconduct by Feldstein Soto — has been working its way through the courts.

Among other things, that case — filed by the former chief of the prosecutions branch under Feldstein Soto — alleges the city attorney illegally ordered prosecutors to drop a case in order to help her friend and a major donor. The plaintiff, Michelle McGinnis, alleges she was fired in retaliation for opposing and disclosing unlawful actions by Feldstein Soto. The city attorney and the city’s lawyers in the suit have denied the claims, saying Feldstein Soto disciplined her for legitimate reasons.

A judge has allowed that lawsuit to proceed, finding the city’s evidence “falls far short” of proving Feldstein Soto had legitimate reasons to discipline McGinnis.

From the evidence, the ruling states, “a reasonable trier of fact could conclude plaintiff’s protected activity was a contributing factor in defendant’s adverse employment actions against her.”

L.A. Mayor Karen Bass and six of the 15 L.A. City Council members have endorsed Feldstein Soto in her bid for re-election in June. She lost the endorsement of the main LAPD officers’ union over the handling of a massive data breach that exposed confidential files about officers. The police union and county District Attorney Nathan Hochman are endorsing a challenger.

Feldstein Soto told LAist the pushback from the criminal branch of her office is in response to her efforts to reform the City Attorney’s Office.

“I came into this office under a cloud of corruption. Twenty percent of our City Council [members] were indicted or in jail. Six lawyers in this office were under investigation,” Feldstein Soto said. “I was elected to change the status quo. I’m still doing that. And people who benefited under the old status quo have a different agenda.”

Wildfire price gouging case

In the wake of last year’s devastating wildfires, the City Attorney’s Office has filed four criminal cases alleging price gouging, which makes it illegal to spike prices more than 10% during an emergency.

In February, Feldstein Soto directed prosecutors to drop two of those cases.

Scott Marcus, the city attorney’s criminal branch chief, informed prosecutors about that decision in a Feb. 3 email.

Feldstein Soto, he wrote, was concerned the defendants did not receive cease and desist letters before the charges, did not think there was enough evidence to charge people who manage the company and did not believe the cases were an appropriate use of the office’s “limited resources.”

Marcus wrote that Feldstein Soto agreed with his suggestion to dismiss the cases after they “verify that any victim of illegal price increases received restitution and was made whole.”

Kong, a supervising attorney in the criminal branch, responded via email that the order was “improper and unethical” because the case was strong and one of the defendants had donated to Feldstein Soto’s campaign.

“It is safe to say that a pattern has now emerged of the City Attorney's personal interest in protecting her donors,” Kong wrote. “We cannot have that.”

The case Kong was referring to involves the Paddock Riding Club in Atwater Village. In December, prosecutors at the City Attorney’s Office charged PCAM LLC, which does business as the riding club, and three members of the family that runs the business with “price gouging animal boarding services.”

Publicly available court records do not detail the allegations against the riding club, but the company was accused on social media of more than tripling its normal boarding prices to evacuees of the Eaton Fire. The Paddock Riding Club apologized after online backlash and said it was working to rectify the situation.

The City Attorney’s Office confirmed that one person paid the riding club about $1,900 at the higher rate and was later refunded.

The lead individual defendant’s first and last name, birthdate and address corresponds with Alex Chaves Sr., who stewards the property and lives there, according to the Paddock’s website. When reached for comment, his son — also named Alex Chaves — told LAist that the Paddock is “my dad’s place.” Karen Richardson, a spokesperson for the city attorney, said Feldstein Soto’s office does not know if the father or son is the defendant.

Chaves Sr. and defense attorneys in the case have not responded to requests for comment.

Campaign finance records show Chaves Sr., his wife, son Alex Chaves and daughter-in-law each gave maximum-allowed campaign contributions to Feldstein Soto on the same day in December 2024, totaling $7,200.

Around the time they filed the Paddock case in early December, prosecutors also filed price gouging charges against another horse boarding business — Gibson Ranch in Sunland — and its owner. Feldstein Soto told prosecutors to also drop that case when she ordered the Paddock case dropped.

The Gibson Ranch defendants do not show up as donating to Feldstein Soto in campaign contribution searches.

That case was dismissed this month. Their defense attorney, Greg Yacoubian, said the price gouging law did not apply in the Gibson Ranch case because it compared prices charged by a new owner with those from the previous owner at that location. (The price gouging law is specific to a particular person or business selling, or offering to sell, something for a price that’s over 10% higher than they charged just before a declared emergency.)

The arraignment hearing for the Paddock case has been postponed twice since Feldstein Soto’s early February directive to dismiss it, and is now scheduled for June 18.

“We have not moved to dismiss because the Office is confirming the evidence in the case in accordance with appropriate practice, policies, and procedures,” said a city attorney spokesperson.

Scott Marcus, chief of the city attorney’s criminal branch, at a Feb. 26 court hearing in the Paddock case, where he told the judge the arraignment was being postponed.

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Nick Gerda

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LAist

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Feldstein Soto called claims of favoritism “nonsense,” telling LAist she knew who the Paddock defendants were but not whether they donated to her campaign.

She said she wanted to dismiss the two price gouging cases because prosecutors failed to follow a policy she put in place in 2023 — to only prosecute company leaders for the actions of their business if they were actively involved in committing the act or failed to fix the problem after being put on notice they could face charges.

A spokesperson for Feldstein Soto’s administration said the City Attorney’s Office has sent warning letters to almost all of the roughly 1,100 potential price gouging defendants from the wildfires as a way to achieve “compliance and restitution without having to file criminal or even civil charges.”

The goal of regulatory prosecutions, she said, “is to achieve compliance and to get restitution for the victims.”

In follow-up emails forwarded to colleagues who advise on ethics compliance, Kong and another supervising prosecutor in his unit expressed alarm at Feldstein Soto’s directive. Kong called the Paddock case "righteous" and described an “ethical conundrum.”

“I do not want to place our supervisors, our line deputies, or myself in a position where they will be compromised in any shape or form or worse, an accessory to unethical conduct,” Kong wrote. He also noted the law does not require warning letters before filing price gouging charges.

[Click here to read the emails.]

The McGinnis declaration

In a sworn court declaration last year, McGinnis — the former criminal branch chief ousted by Feldstein Soto — alleged a range of ethics violations by the city attorney.

Among them, McGinnis wrote that Feldstein Soto told prosecutors to dismiss a building safety prosecution where the defense attorney was a friend whose wife was a maximum donor to her campaign. That case — against Zenith Insurance and its then-CEO Kari Lynn Van Gundy — alleged 14 criminal violations of building safety laws, including around fire safety and exit doors. Court records show Feldstein Soto’s office dropped the charges against Van Gundy in January 2024, followed by dropping the case against the company in September 2024.

Campaign finance records corroborate the donation described in the allegations. Defense attorney Ben Reznik’s wife gave a maximum campaign contribution to the city attorney in 2022, per campaign filings. Feldstein Soto said she knows Reznik’s wife through social circles.

The city attorney “simply wanted her donor/friend’s case dismissed,” McGinnis wrote in her court declaration, which was filed as part of her whistleblower retaliation lawsuit.

The city attorney denied friendships or donations have ever had anything to do with her decisions.

“ I've prosecuted tons of cases,” Feldstein Soto said. “I've filed cross complaints against all kinds of people, including donors who have called me up spitting and yelling, OK?”

Reznik told LAist that Feldstein Soto’s recommendation was to dismiss only the charges against the then-CEO — Van Gundy — but not against the company itself. The CEO “had no clue” about the building matters that the case was about, he said.

“There was absolutely no basis to name the individual [CEO] of the company” as a defendant, Reznik said. The case, he said, was about “very minor infractions” regarding building codes like fire doors, some of which he said did not apply to the building in question.

After fixing the issues that were cited and getting clearance from the fire department, the charges against the company were dismissed, Reznik said.

In another case, McGinnis wrote, Feldstein Soto pressed hard — “without evidence” — to McGinnis and LAPD leaders for charges to be filed against an activist she thought had protested outside the home of another major donor. In that case, McGinnis wrote that LAPD commanders demanded a meeting with city attorney managers to object to Feldstein Soto’s pressure. The city attorney says she later declined to file charges.

Feldstein Soto’s office says that allegation has “no truth.” As for the alleged meeting with LAPD leadership, her spokesperson said: “We have no knowledge of how the meeting came about and what happened at the meeting.”

“In no uncertain terms, the City Attorney did not and would not pressure a client on any issue,” added the spokesperson. (In addition to overseeing the city’s prosecutors, the city attorney is the top lawyer representing and advising city officials about their official duties.)

Following the judge’s ruling that the city’s evidence “falls far short” of proving Feldstein Soto disciplined McGinnis for legitimate reasons, the lawsuit is scheduled to go to trial in early 2027.

Data deletion memo

In December, three senior prosecutors in the City Attorney’s Office wrote a memo objecting to what they described as a plan to “purge all data” older than 10 years from the office’s text-only database of criminal case details, known as the Criminal Case Management System, or CCMS, as it migrates to a new system.

City attorney policy has been to destroy physical paper records of criminal cases, while the database of case information has been kept for decades, except for specific types of cases where deletion is required by law.

The memo was from three supervising prosecutors: Stacey Anthony, who directly supervises about three dozen criminal prosecutors, and two of her deputies.

They warned that deleting the data would harm victims and defendants because it’s often the only remaining source of crucial information.

“In many instances it would result in a miscarriage of justice,” states the Dec. 12 memo, a copy of which was obtained by LAist.

They wrote that the older data is used daily for a variety of crucial tasks — including strengthening rape and murder cases, evaluating the history of criminal defendants, generating letters for employment and immigration purposes that no charges were filed against an arrested person, and vetting criminal histories for police officers and others seeking licenses, credentials and firearm permits.

The supervising prosecutors wrote that it’s crucial that the older information be made readily accessible to prosecutors on a daily basis. The info is used for up to 50 requests per day to their part of the criminal branch alone, according to the memo.

[Click here to read the memo.]

Feldstein Soto and her office spokesperson initially confirmed the plan to delete the data altogether.

“I wanted to purge everything older than three years…but 10 years seems to be the consensus for how long we need to keep anything,” Feldstein Soto told LAist in December.

Feldstein Soto said deleting the data was a prudent step to make sure information doesn’t fall into the wrong hands. Her office said it does not have any evidence the database has been misused.

She said she’s looked in the database just once, looking up herself and seeing information about an old DUI case against her, which she pleaded to reckless driving.

“This came up in my last campaign. It was all over the place,” said Feldstein Soto.

During her 2022 campaign, information about her 1997 DUI case was posted on social media by an advocacy group. The post shows a public printout from the court summarizing the charges, without the kinds of detailed info that would be in the office database.

In January, a spokesperson for Feldstein Soto’s office said the plan is to keep the older case data on an encrypted hard drive that will be more restrictive for prosecutors to access. She and her spokespeople have not answered questions in recent weeks about whether case data has already been deleted, nor whether they’ve developed the specific policies for prosecutors’ access.

Feldstein Soto told LAist she had to learn quickly about criminal law after being elected in late 2022 as the top elected boss above the city’s prosecutors.

“You realize, I had no criminal [law] background. So this was all learning on the job,” she said. Her experience before being elected was in bankruptcy and corporate law.

“It was baptism by fire,” she said, “to start in this office without a criminal background.”

This story first appeared on Long Beach Post.

When a school suddenly loses its name, what should the new one represent? At the Long Beach campus formerly known as César Chávez Elementary, students and parents had a clear-eyed answer: It should represent them.

Long Beach Unified is kicking off an official renaming process for the school, and at Thursday’s back-to-school night families came ready with their suggestions.

Sea Lion Elementary (a nod to the school’s mascot) and Long Beach Elementary have proven popular choices among students, according to one Chávez teacher. 

Many suggestions from parents converged around themes of unity, community and place. Dimarrie Price, who has three daughters at Chávez, suggested “Third Street Elementary” while Elicia Duran, whose daughter is in second grade, suggested “Golden Elementary,” each inspired by the streets bordering the school. 

Other parents said they hoped a new name could emphasize inclusion and togetherness. Johanna O. suggested Our School, and S. Kennedy — who asked not to have their full names printed — proposed The Family School. “It’s important to unify people by utilizing words that connect people,” Kennedy said.  

Long Beach Unified removed the school’s original name after revelations surfaced in March that Chávez had sexually abused girls and women. Since then, the school community has been using makeshift monikers and DIY-ing their school spirit wear to avoid invoking the labor activist.

“We just say ‘school,’” said Chávez parent Natalia Bermudez, an approach other parents said they’ve adopted in the vacuum of a new name. At back-to-school night, Laura Martinez sported a T-shirt adorned with patches that obscured Chávez’s name. New apparel featuring Sea Lion Scholars was also available.

A 2019 event celebrated Cesar Chavez Day at Cesar Chavez Elementary School.

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Bill Alkofe

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Long Beach Post

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Calls for LBUSD to adopt a new name have mounted as other schools, parks and monuments named for the political activist have had their names taken down. In the last six months, the district has removed murals depicting Chávez, unveiled new art and removed signs with the school’s name, priming the campus and community for a new identity. 

In the meantime, parents have been talking to their kids about the upcoming change, attempting to tailor the message to young children. 

Martinez’s daughter, a current Chávez student, heard about her school in the news, prompting Martinez to explain the situation. “There’s people in this world that do good things that are for good causes, but do bad things to people,” she said she told her daughter. “Just because they’ve done something right doesn’t make them a good person inside.”

Some Chávez parents explained that once more information had surfaced, they could no longer honor Chávez as they had previously — and that they had a responsibility to course correct. “We find out things and we do our best to correct what we can control,” Elicia Duran said she told her second grader. 

Now, the school community is being invited into the district’s process, and on Thursday, students and parents began submitting their suggestions

Though the district nomination form says that proposed names may fall into one of three categories — place, idea or person — one parent shied away from selecting a person’s name in case negative information comes to light in the future, she said. 

She said she wished the renaming process had occurred over the summer. Now, she said she hopes the process is completed by the end of the school year so that her fifth-grade daughter’s promotion certificate will say “anything but Chávez.” 

Proposed school names will be accepted through Friday, Sept. 25, and students, families, staff and members of the school community can submit names through an online Google form, at a community meeting on Wednesday, Sept. 23, or in the Chávez front office, according to a letter from the school’s principal, Brenda Ocampo, to the Chávez community. 

After that, the submissions will be reviewed and narrowed by an advisory committee, including parent representatives and Lucy Salazar, the director of engagement for LBUSD. On November 4, “a recommended school name will be brought forward for consideration by the LBUSD Board of Education,” according to another letter from Ocampo. 

“It’s been healing for us,” Ocampo said of the renaming process.

This story first appeared on The LA Local.

From the outside, the Gothic architecture of Masjid At-Thohir does not immediately announce itself as a neighborhood mosque.

The white facade, arched windows and steep roofline are now home to an Islamic community of Indonesians in Pico Union. 

For years, Indonesian Muslims in Southern California gathered at the Indonesian Consulate on Wilshire Boulevard for prayer. The congregation transformed a diplomatic space into a temporary spiritual refuge. The arrangement worked, but there was always a longing for home. 

“The idea is you want to have a space where you belong, be someone who is regular, and have a safe space. Those are things where you can grow as an individual,” said Honest Qashidi, 33, who serves as the resident Imam at Masjid At-Thohir. 

Women pray inside the mosque.

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Avidha Raha

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The LA Local

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For Indonesian Muslims living across Los Angeles, it has become a kind of third space somewhere between the private world of home and the demands of work and public life. 

That distinction matters in Los Angeles, where the Indonesian community is substantial but geographically dispersed. Unlike communities with a concentrated ethnic neighborhood, Indonesian Angelenos do not have a single “Indonesia Town” around which daily life revolves, Qashidi said. The mosque on Kenmore Avenue is that constant for the community.

“For the elders, it’s where they find their nostalgia. It’s a home away from home. But folks that grew up here, and trying to make sense of what it means to belong in a place; that is the aim of what I am trying to do in this space,” Qashidi said. 

A gift to a father and community

Built in 1920, the building once served as the place of worship for the Los Angeles Samoan Community Christian church.

When that congregation left the neighborhood, the church’s pastor negotiated a deal in 2017 to sell the building to the Indonesia Muslim Foundation, the nonprofit group that coordinates activities in Los Angeles for the Indonesian Muslim community.

The nonprofit purchased the building for approximately $1.8 million, according to Qashidi.

Today, the historic structure is home to what many Indonesian Muslims in Los Angeles had long been missing: a mosque of their own.

A devotee praying from the Quran in the almost empty hall after the main prayer is over.

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Avidha Raha

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The LA Local

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Qashidi said, “The pastor wanted this space, if it were to be passed down, it would still stay a space of worship.”

The sale and conversion of the building was made possible by Indonesian billionaire Garibaldi Thohir, former CEO of Alamtri Resources Indonesia, one of the world’s top coal exporters. Garibaldi studied at USC and his brother, Erick Thohir, was also educated in Southern California.

The doors at the mosque officially opened in March 2022 after several delays due to the COVID-19 pandemic. The mosque was named “At-Thohir” to honor their late father, Mochamad Thohir.

 “When we were studying in Los Angeles around 2015–2016, my father often visited,” Garibaldi said at the mosque’s opening, according to reporting from Indonesian media. “When he was going to Friday prayers, he often complained about the lack of a mosque nearby owned by the Indonesian community. That’s why we promised to make it happen.” 

‘I will make food every single Friday’

Calling At-Thohir simply a mosque misses the spectrum of events inside. Located not too far from Pico Boulevard, the mosque shares the neighborhood with other religious institutions like the Sae Han Korean Church and the Pico Union Shalom Ministries. 

Food is a big part of the social life, turning prayer gatherings into opportunities to linger over familiar flavors. Every Friday, after the prayer, lunch is served in the backyard. Home-cooked Indonesian food items like bakwan, satay, soto ayam, perkedel, tahu kuning, telur balado and tempeh. 

Lola Kamelia, left, Resy Ismail, Raninta Nailah and Lily Yulani serve lunch on a Friday after prayer.

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Avidha Raha

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The LA Local

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Lily Yulani, 53, one of the women who helps with food every week, joked about her teenage son’s pronunciation of perkedel, a simple mashed potato patty dish. 

“My son cannot pronounce P-E-R-K-E-D-E-L yet, so he calls it C-R-O-C-O-D-I-L-E,” Yulani giggled. 

Resy Ismail, 65, the woman in charge of serving and preparing food on Fridays, said that much of the food is donated, but she will not let that stop her from giving back to the community. 

“Whether there is a donation or not, I will make food every single Friday,” Ismail said. 

Ismail is a rantang chef and brings the food from her home in stacked, metal containers. She is proud to serve the community and initiated the meal system in the mosque and continues to coordinate with whoever wants to contribute to the weekly food distribution. Together, they bring different home-cooked items to put together a meal for the visitors at the mosque. 

Imam Qashidi said that in a multicultural setting food becomes a gateway to culture. Born and raised in Los Angeles, he attended high school in Jakarta, Indonesia, completed his undergraduate degree in Egypt and is currently pursuing a degree in Islamic Studies from Bayan Islamic Graduate School.

“When you are in America, and you grew up with whatever background you have, the starting point is just food,” Qashidi said. 

The lunch is served to the guests at the mosque.

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Avidha Raha

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The LA Local

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Third space

Apart from food being the most visible marker of community within the diaspora, there are regular Islamic studies classes on weekends taught by Qashidi. There are also workshops on calligraphy, immigration rights, digital literacy and Canva. 

Additionally, there are also dance and music classes that do not happen inside the mosque, but in the adjoining auditorium.

People can enroll in a traditional plate dance, or musical performances like Angklung and the Bedug, a large drum traditionally associated with communities in Indonesia.

Raninta Nailah, 13, a Pico Union resident and food distribution volunteer, tries to come to the mosque whenever she’s not in school. 

“It’s very close to my community and I feel safe,” Nailah said. “I come to Saturday school here for social studies and I feel good because I have been learning new stuff.”

Gov. Gavin Newsom vetoed a bill that would have required more polluting facilities built near homes and schools to undergo environmental review — a decision that keeps in place looser rules he championed to speed up development in California.

The bill authored by Sen. Catherine Blakespear, a Democrat from Encinitas, responded to fears raised by a chemical incident in Orange County that led to evacuation orders for 50,000 people.

It would have narrowed an exemption of the California Environmental Quality Act that covers a broad swath of advanced manufacturing sites. Only facilities handling the final stages of production would have kept the exemption.

In his veto letter on Friday, Newsom said Senate Bill 954 would have effectively repealed the advanced manufacturing exemption.

“Protecting communities and strengthening California’s advanced manufacturing economy are not mutually exclusive goals,” he said. “The exemption was designed to advance both and should be given a meaningful opportunity to work.”

Newsom added that if problems arise, the Legislature should address them through targeted changes “not by preemptively rolling back our progress.”

Blakespear in a statement said she’s disappointed by the veto and will raise the issue again next year.

She pointed to the near disaster GKN Aerospace in Garden Grove as an illustration of the danger.

“We should not have to wait for another emergency before recognizing that sweeping – and rushed – exemptions from environmental review need reasonable guardrails,” she said. “Protecting communities and workers is not an impediment to economic growth – it is part of responsible growth.”

Roots in last year's budget fight

The veto is a setback for legislators who advocated for fixing last year’s major overhaul of the state’s landmark environmental law, which Newsom had a heavy hand in shaping and pushed through by threatening to withhold budget funds if lawmakers refused to act.

Lawmakers went along with the overhaul, but expressed concerns about an unprecedented, broad exemption for polluting manufacturing sites from strip mines to clean energy projects.

Environmental advocates said the bill would have still allowed for manufacturing developments, with guardrails to protect communities.

“It's really unfortunate that we have to wait until something bad happens before we make an adjustment,” said Kim Delfino, a lobbyist for environmental justice groups. “A foundation of environmental law is the precautionary principle: that we try to protect instead of waiting for something bad to happen. This is flipping it on its head.”

Asha Sharma, deputy director at Sierra Club California, said California is losing “an important opportunity to protect communities that are once again being asked to bear the risks of industrial development without the safeguards and public participation they deserve.” .

Business and industry groups, including the Bay Area Council and the California Manufacturers & Technology Association, opposed the bill and praised Newsom’s veto, arguing it would stunt economic development.

“From autonomous vehicles and clean energy systems to revolutionary medical devices and digital technologies, advanced manufacturing is building the future and creating the good-paying, high-skilled jobs that California desperately needs,” said Libby Schaaf, chief executive of the Bay Area Council.  

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

A high-profile fight between California Attorney General Rob Bonta and Paramount Skydance resolved Monday with a settlement that clears a path for the company to continue with its planned acquisition of another century-old studio, Warner Bros. Discovery.

The deal comes after Paramount threatened to leave the state over an antitrust lawsuit led by Bonta and attorneys general from 11 other states that sought to block the $111 billion merger.

Paramount Chief Executive David Ellison reportedly told senior leaders of the company “clearly we’re not wanted here,” during a meeting in August. However, California has taken several steps since the 2000s to retain studios like Paramount.

The fight was the latest chapter in the battle for Hollywood, which has been a priority for California lawmakers and the last three governors.

Here are some ways the state has tried to keep its storied industry:

• Program 1.0: In 2009, in response to other states beginning to offer financial incentives for motion picture production, Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger signed the state’s first California Film and Television Production Tax Credit. The program allocated $100 million per year to eligible film and TV production companies through 2017.

• Program 2.0: In 2014, lawmakers approved Assembly Bill 1839, which Gov. Jerry Brown signed into law, creating a new version of the Film and Television Production Tax Credit program and more than tripling the credits to $330 million annually through 2020.

• 2018 expansion: In 2018, Brown again authorized an extension of the program for another five years, through 2025. Following the COVID-19 pandemic that shut down productions, Gov. Gavin Newsom boosted the credit temporarily to $420 million annually.

• 2025 increase: Hollywood was struggling following the “quadruple-whammy” of the COVID-19 pandemic, a writers strike, deadly wildfires and growing production incentives from other states that lured movies out of California. In response, lawmakers increased the yearly credit in 2025 to $750 million per year until 2030. Newsom championed the boost, saying the industry was “on life support.”

• This year, when the film and television production tax credit clashed with an initiative to cap corporate tax breaks, lawmakers carved independent film producers out of the groups subject to a new cap.

• In July, Democratic Assembly Speaker Robert Rivas of Salinas created the “Select Committee on Growing and Retaining the Creative Economy in California” to, in part, keep film and television production in the state.

• On Saturday, Newsom signed Assembly Bill 2319 by Burbank Democrat Nick Schultz to create a new tax credit for post-production work, including editing and visual effects.

Assemblymember Rick Chavez Zbur, a Democrat representing Hollywood, said he was delighted a deal was reached to keep Paramount in California, but that the state needs to do more to retain the industry. Zbur is chair of the state’s new Assembly committee focused on keeping film production in California.

“Now that other states are realizing what important, family-sustaining jobs these are, they're competing very aggressively for these jobs,” he said.

Zbur said the committee will explore new state incentives during its first meeting, which he expects will take place in October in Los Angeles.

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