The Brief

A measure to repeal a controversial rule allowing a committee of residents to approve or deny children’s books for Huntington Beach’s public libraries has gathered enough signatures to qualify for the ballot.

But will it?

The Orange County Registrar of Voters informed the city earlier this month that they had finished counting and verifying signatures.

Now the city has a decision to make, likely at their next City Council meeting on Jan. 21. They can outright repeal the committee, called a “community parent-guardian review board,” or put it to voters, which could happen this coming spring. A public vote could also get pushed to the 2026 general election.

What is the review board?

The Huntington Beach City Council voted in late 2023 to establish a parent-guardian review board to review children’s books for the city’s public libraries and weed out ones they determine to have sexual content or references. The examples of sexual content and references given in the ordinance are “textual or graphic content including sex, sexual organs, sex acts, relationships of sexual nature, or sexual relations in any form.”

Under the ordinance, each City Council member can appoint three people to the board.

Supporters, led by Councilmember Gracey Van Der Mark, have said the review board will ensure that books chosen for the city’s five public libraries reflect local values and protect children from age-inappropriate content.

Critics of the review board have said it will allow a small group of hand-picked residents to ban public library books based on vague criteria. The ordinance establishing the board says members are to review books based on their determination of whether they meet “community standards,” defined as “whether books are acceptable for children’s access, including books that may contain sexual content or sexual references,” including depictions of or references to sexual organs.

Based on this definition, librarians earlier this year identified books about puberty and the menstrual cycle that are intended for teens and moved the titles to an upper shelf in the library’s adult section.

What critics say

Opponents of the review board said the job of curating books for the library should be left to professional librarians — and they mounted a petition drive to get the board repealed.

The state also passed a law, dubbed the “Freedom to Read Act,” which explicitly confronts Huntington Beach’s new library rules. Among other things, the law prohibits cities from banning public library books because they contain sexual content unless that content meets the long-standing definition of obscene set by the Supreme Court.

Meanwhile, more than a year after the City Council voted to establish the review board, it’s still not up and running.

Jennifer Carey, a spokesperson for Huntington Beach, told LAist city officials were still determining how to work the parent-guardian review board into the existing process for procuring library books.

The children's section of the Huntington Beach Central Library: A review board could soon decide what titles get included here.

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Jill Replogle

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LAist

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Will residents get to vote?

The Orange County Registrar of Voters informed the city in a letter dated Dec. 10 that opponents had gathered enough signatures to qualify the measure for the ballot — a minimum of 13,247 (signature gatherers collected a total of 17,034). The registrar said an invoice to the city for nearly $50,000, the cost to verify the signatures, would follow.

Under state law, the city must now decide whether to repeal the board outright, or put it to voters. It can also order a report on the ordinance before making a decision.

If it gets put on the ballot, that could happen in a special election this coming spring, or it could appear on the November 2026 general election ballot.

The City Council is expected to take up the issue at their first meeting of the new year, scheduled for Jan. 21.

Deciding the ballot measure

State law also requires cities to take up any citizen-led measure that qualifies for the ballot at the first regular city council meeting after signature verification. Huntington Beach had a council meeting on Dec. 17, a week after it got the results from the registrar, but did not discuss or vote on the matter.

Carey, the city spokesperson, told LAist the council would not discuss the measure until its first meeting of the new year in late January. Michael Gates, the city attorney, said that’s because the city clerk, who’s the city’s election official, was still evaluating the results. “The first opportunity for this to be presented to Council is January, if requirements are met,” he wrote in an email.

Why that timing matters

Cathey Ryder, who headed up the signature gathering campaign, told LAist she wasn’t informed the measure had qualified for the ballot until several days after O.C. Registrar Bob Page reported his signature verification results to the city — and after LAist reported that the measure had qualified.

Ryder said she suspected the city’s delay in voting on whether and when to put the repeal measure on the ballot might be purposeful. “We feel like some of this has been strategic on the city’s part,” she said.

For example, she said, the city could decide to hold an expensive, stand-alone special election on the library measure if the statutory window closes for putting the measure on the same ballot as the upcoming election to fill the seat of former state Sen. Janet Nguyen, who is replacing Andrew Do on the O.C. Board of Supervisors. “And of course they would use that against us,” Ryder said of the high cost to hold a stand-alone election.

The primary election to fill Nguyen’s seat is scheduled for Feb. 25 and the general election for April 29.

Ryder is also behind a separate proposed ballot measure that would prohibit the city from outsourcing library services to any private company. That measure is still awaiting signature verification by the O.C. Registrar of Voters.

Fredrich Woocher, an L.A.-based election lawyer, said it's not uncommon for interested parties to try and game the timing of ballot measures and special elections.

“Various games get played with these things all the time,” he said.

The Trump administration says it’s planning to freeze about $10 billion in federal support for needy families in California and four other Democrat-run states, as the president announced an investigation into unspecified fraud in California.

The plans come on the heels of the Trump administration announcing a freeze on all federal payments for child care in Minnesota, citing fraud allegations against daycare centers in the state.

The state’s Democrat governor, Tim Walz — who ran for vice president against Donald Trump’s ticket in 2024 — announced Monday he was dropping out of running for reelection. He pointed to fraud against the state, saying it’s a real issue while alleging Trump and his allies were “seeking to take advantage of the crisis.”

On Monday, the New York Post reported that the administration was expanding the funding freeze to include California and three other Democrat-led states, in addition to Minnesota. Unnamed federal officials cited “concerns that the benefits were fraudulently funneled to non-citizens,” The Post reported.

Early Tuesday, President Trump alleged that corruption in California is worse than Minnesota and announced an investigation.

“California, under Governor Gavin Newscum, is more corrupt than Minnesota, if that’s possible??? The Fraud Investigation of California has begun. Thank you for your attention to this matter! PRESIDENT DONALD J. TRUMP,” the president wrote on his social media platform Truth Social.

He did not specify what alleged fraud was being examined in the Golden State.

LAist has reached out to the White House to ask what the president’s fraud concerns are in California and to request an interview with the president.

“For too long, Democrat-led states and governors have been complicit in allowing massive amounts of fraud to occur under their watch,” said an emailed statement from Andrew Nixon, a spokesperson for U.S. Department of Health and Human Services, which administers the federal childcare funds.

“Under the Trump administration, we are ensuring that federal taxpayer dollars are being used for legitimate purposes. We will ensure these states are following the law and protecting hard-earned taxpayer money.”

Gov. Gavin Newsom’s press office disputed Trump’s claim on social media, arguing that since taking office, the governor has blocked $125 billion in fraud and arrested “criminal parasites leaching off of taxpayers.”

Criminal fraud cases in CA appear to be rare for this program

Defrauding federally funded programs is a crime — and one LAist has investigated, leading to one of the largest such criminal cases in recent years against a California elected official, which surrounded meal funds.

When it comes to the federal childcare funds that are being frozen, the dollar amount of fraud alleged in criminal cases appears to be a tiny fraction of the overall program’s spending in California.

A search of thousands of news releases by all four federal prosecutor offices in California, going back more than a decade, found a total of one criminal case where the press releases referenced childcare benefits.

That case, brought in 2023, alleged four men stole $3.7 million in federal childcare benefits through fraudulent requests to a San Diego organization that distributed the funds. All four pleaded guilty, with one defendant sentenced to 27 months in prison and others sentenced to other terms, according to authorities.

It appears to be equivalent to one one-hundredth of 1% of all the childcare funding California has received over the past decade-plus covered by the prosecution press release search.

Potential impact on California families

The plans call for California, Minnesota, New York, Illinois and Colorado to lose about $7 billion in cash assistance for households with children, almost $2.4 billion to care for children of working parents, and about $870 million for social services grants that mostly benefit children at risk, according to unnamed federal officials speaking to the New York Times and New York Post.

In the largest category of funding, California receives $3.7 billion per year. The program is known as Temporary Assistance for Needy Families, or TANF.

 ”It's very clear that a freeze of those funds would be very damaging to the children, families, and providers of California,” said Stacy Lee, who oversees early childhood initiatives "at Children Now, an advocacy group for children in California.

 ”It is a significant portion of our funds and will impact families and children and providers across the whole state,” she added. “It would be devastating, in no uncertain terms.”

About 270,000 people are served by the TANF program in L.A. County — about 200,000 of whom are children, according to the county Department of Public Social Services.

“Any pause in funding for their cash benefits – which average $1000/month - would be devastating to these families,” said DPSS chief of staff Nick Ippolito.

Ippolito said the department has a robust fraud prevention and 170-person investigations team, and takes allegations “very seriously.”

It remains to be seen whether the funding freeze will end up in court. The state, as well as major cities and counties in California, has sued to ask judges to halt funding freezes or new requirements placed by the Trump administration. L.A. city officials say they’ve had success with that, including shielding more than $600 million in federal grant funding to the city last year.

A union representing California childcare workers said the funding freeze would harm low-income families.

“These threats need to be called out for what they are: direct threats on working families of all backgrounds who rely on access to quality, affordable child care in their communities to go to work every day supporting, and growing our economy,” said Max Arias, chairperson for the Child Care Providers United, which says it represents more than 70,000 child care workers across the state who care for kids in their homes.

“Funding freezes, even when intended to be temporary, will be devastating — resulting in families losing access to care and working parents facing the devastating choice of keeping their children safe or paying their bills.”

Federal officials planned to send letters to the affected states Monday about the planned funding pauses, the New York Post reported. As of 3 p.m. Tuesday, state officials said they haven’t gotten any official notification of the funding freeze plans.

“The California Department of Social Services administers child care programs that help working families afford safe, reliable care for their children — so parents can go to work, support their families, and contribute to their communities,” said a statement from California Department of Social Services spokesperson Jason Montiel.

“These funds are critical for working families across California. We take fraud seriously, and CDSS has received no information from the federal government indicating any freeze, pause, or suspension of federal child care funding.”

Housing officials in the city of Los Angeles say a pandemic-era voucher program is set to run out of money later this year, putting thousands of renters at risk of homelessness.

The federal Emergency Housing Voucher program was launched in 2021 as a way to get vulnerable people off the streets and into housing during the COVID-19 crisis. The city of L.A. received more than 3,300 of the vouchers.

With federal funding now running out, the city is preparing to wind down the program. On Monday the city’s housing authority said it had told 2,760 tenant households and 1,700 landlords that unless new funding is found, vouchers will expire by November or December of this year.

“We are providing this notice nearly a year in advance because our families deserve the respect of time to prepare, but this is not a notice of resignation,” said L.A. Housing Authority President Lourdes Castro Ramírez said in a news release. “We are exhausting every avenue — at the local, state and federal levels — to bridge this funding gap.”

The Housing Authority said each household using a voucher had an average of 1.58 members. That puts more than 4,000 Angelenos at risk of losing their housing later this year.

Homelessness progress could be reversed

Congress originally intended the program to continue through 2030, but last year, the Trump administration announced funding would end sooner. The program’s demise risks reversing L.A.’s reported progress at stemming the rise of homelessness.

After years of steady increases, the city has registered slight reductions in the number of people experiencing homelessness for the past two years. In 2023, the region’s homeless services authority reported 46,260 people experiencing homelessness in the city of L.A. By 2025, that number had fallen to 43,695.

The accuracy of those official counts has been questioned by local researchers, but elected officials have cheered the numbers as a sign that the tide is turning in addressing one of L.A.’s most vexing problems.

With thousands of renters now at risk of losing a key resource helping them afford the city’s high rents, sharp increases in homelessness could be on the horizon, said Mike Feuer, a senior policy advisor with the Inner City Law Center.

“They're going to fall into homelessness, and they're going to increase L.A.'s homeless population by almost 10%,” Feuer said. “Those are the implications of what the Trump administration is doing.”

Voucher holders have low incomes; many have kids

According to L.A.’s Housing Authority, about 1-in-4 voucher holders has children and 1-in-5 is elderly. And about 40% are disabled. These households have an average income of less than $14,000 per year, and they receive an average of $1,789 per month in rental subsidy while paying about $350 out of their own pockets.

The loss of federal funding for Emergency Housing Vouchers is distinct from the issues facing renters using Housing Choice Vouchers, another federally funded program often referred to as Section 8. Existing vouchers in the Section 8 program have continued to be funded, but federal funding reductions have caused city officials to cut the amount of rent new vouchers in that program can cover by 10%.

L.A. Housing Authority officials said they have dedicated staff reaching out to tenants to explore other housing resources that might keep them housed after the vouchers expire.

Manuel Villagomez, an attorney with the Legal Aid Foundation of Los Angeles specializing in subsidized housing, said with city and state budgets strapped, tenant advocates are not counting on California to find alternative funding sources to continue the program.

“It seems like it's a tragedy in the making,” Villagomez said. “We're preparing for the worst.”