The Brief

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At the request of Gov. Gavin Newsom, a nonprofit paid former Los Angeles Mayor Antonio Villaraigosa more than $380,000 to advise the governor for about 10 months on how to overhaul California’s approach to major infrastructure projects.

Touting his new infrastructure czar back in 2022, Newsom framed the partnership as a way to save taxpayers money. But California Forward, a nonprofit focused on economic development that was tasked with overseeing Villaraigosa’s work, could not cover the cost alone. As the project stretched on and initial costs more than doubled, California Forward turned to corporate donors to fill the gap — funders that have not been publicly disclosed until now.

Elected officials in California can solicit contributions, known as behested payments, to outside entities for a governmental or charitable purpose. Under state law, Newsom had to disclose that he asked California Forward to pay Villaraigosa.

But that disclosure requirement did not extend to California Forward, whose donors ultimately included organizations with an interest in state infrastructure projects. The nonprofit provided a list when CalMatters requested it, but the information was not otherwise available and is still not on any public disclosure forms.

California Forward said it raised $118,800 from a dozen donors to pay Villaraigosa’s salary and for events and travel for the project, including $30,000 from the Port of San Diego, $17,500 from SoCalGas and $10,000 each from Doordash, Disney, Southern California Edison, AT&T and the California Communications Association.

Many questions remain about why the Newsom administration took this approach, how the financial arrangement with Villaraigosa and California Forward came together, and if this approach upholds the spirit of disclosure rules for behested payments.

Sean McMorris of California Common Cause, a nonprofit that advocates for government in the public interest, compared California Forward’s role to a “clearinghouse” that allowed special interests to pay for the project without the usual disclosures that would have been required if Newsom had asked the organizations for the funding himself.

“It’s a loophole in the behested payment law,” McMorris said, “because it’s relevant information that the public and the press have a right to know.”

Newsom's office won't answer questions

The governor’s office, representatives from the nonprofit and Villaraigosa all praise the project as a win for California, which led the state to streamline construction of multibillion-dollar infrastructure projects.

But the governor’s office declined to make anyone available to speak with CalMatters about the project and refused to answer a list of questions, including:

• Where did the idea come from to hire Villaraigosa? The governor’s office refused to answer. 
• Was anyone else considered for the role? The governor’s office refused to answer. 
• Why did the governor feel that someone within the Newsom administration could not perform the same function? The governor’s office refused to answer. 
• How did they settle on an outside funder to pay Villaraigosa? The governor’s office refused to answer. 

Villaraigosa is now a candidate for governor pledging to “jumpstart” home, energy and transportation construction in California. His stint as infrastructure adviser is his most significant public service since he left the Los Angeles mayor’s office in 2013.

In an interview, Villaraigosa said he has no qualms about how much he earned for the position: $35,000 per month, plus expenses, to travel from the Oregon border to the Mexico border meeting with stakeholders and then produce a report with recommendations for speeding up infrastructure development.

Though he did not stop his other consulting work through the global firm Actum during that period, Villaraigosa said his role as infrastructure adviser was close to full-time and “pretty much took a front seat.”

By the time he stepped down 10 and a half months later, California had a glossy report and five new laws on the books, and Villaragoisa had earned $381,820 for his work. That’s more than California Forward paid its chief executive officer that year, tax filings show, and nearly $160,000 more than the governor’s own state salary.

“I think it was a huge return on investment for the state. And that’s what they offered,” Villaraigosa said. “I know I can say that California Forward and the governor’s office felt like I went above and beyond.”

How the deal came about

In the wake of the passage of the federal infrastructure bill in late 2021, the Newsom administration was looking to maximize California’s access to an expected $550 billion in newly authorized spending over the next few years.

So in August 2022, the governor brought on Villaraigosa to “design strategies to advance the State’s priorities and interests,” “serve as the key State liaison for local elected officials interested in federal infrastructure funding,” “provide input for and assist in development of messages” and “maintain regular contact” with federal policymakers, among other duties, according to a memo prepared that September by Newsom’s then-chief of staff Jim DeBoo.

It’s not entirely unusual for Newsom to turn to outside consultants for state government projects. In 2020, he notably convened a star-studded task force of business leaders, led by the former hedge fund manager and presidential candidate Tom Steyer, during the early days of the coronavirus pandemic to help guide his reopening strategy. The participants were not compensated.

But the Villaraigosa appointment raised eyebrows because Newsom was pulling a former political rival into his orbit. They had faced off during the 2018 gubernatorial primary, where Villaraigosa finished third, which Newsom alluded to during a joint press conference announcing his role.

“I remember running against this guy saying, the one thing I can’t run against is how effective he was on drawing down federal funding as mayor of Los Angeles,” Newsom said.

Former Los Angeles Mayor Antonio Villaraigosa speaks during a gubernatorial candidates’ event hosted by the California Federation of Labor Unions, AFL-CIO and the State Building and Construction Trades Council at the Sheraton Grand Hotel in Sacramento on May 12, 2025.

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Villaraigosa was also notably not formally joining the Newsom administration or volunteering his time. Rather, he would be paid for his work, at the governor’s request, by California Forward.

Villaraigosa said he was approached about the infrastructure adviser position by DeBoo — who once served as chief legislative representative in his mayoral office — after the governor’s office had gone through a number of other people. Villaraigosa said he was told that all states had somebody to coordinate their relationship with the federal government on infrastructure and he had the best experience to guide California. DeBoo did not return multiple calls and emails requesting an interview.

Despite his contentious relationship with Newsom during the 2018 gubernatorial campaign, Villaraigosa immediately accepted the job.

“We both had a dream. We wanted to be governor. But it wasn’t personal,” Villaraigosa said. “We had a long relationship.”

He said he was not surprised to be asked, because of his past accomplishments on infrastructure projects in Los Angeles, which had even led him to be considered for transportation secretary in President Barack Obama’s second term.

Villaraigosa said the governor’s office offered to pay him and he agreed, without much negotiation over his fee. The compensation was always going to come from an outside group, he said, which Villaraigosa preferred, because being employed by the state would have involved too much bureaucracy.

“I didn’t want those complications,” he said. He did not elaborate further.

'That's where the ick factor sets in'

California Forward is best known for its annual economic summit bringing together California elected officials and civic leaders, which has featured Newsom as a speaker nearly every year since he became governor.

Villaraigosa led “stakeholder engagement” and gave “strategic advice” to the nonprofit as he worked on the infrastructure project, according to details from the financial records filed with the state.

Former California Forward CEO Micah Weinberg called the arrangement a “fantastic success,” with Villaraigosa’s recommendations leading to new laws to speed up the construction of green infrastructure in the state.

“In an era of people questioning government expenditures, this is just about one of the best deals that the government has ever gotten, because it didn’t cost the government and the California taxpayers anything at all,” Weinberg said.

California Forward’s fundraising and other revenue dropped by nearly two-thirds, to about $2.7 million, during the 2022-23 fiscal year, its federal income tax filing shows. Still, the nonprofit paid Villaraigosa more than Weinberg — who made $303,214 in that period — pulling from its reserves to cover most of the former mayor’s salary.

Both the governor’s office and California Forward said Newsom had no role in soliciting corporate donors for the project, meaning there was no legal obligation to report the fundraising to the state.

Taxpayers consequently had less insight into who was paying for a project with significant implications for the future of major public works in the state.

Weinberg defended the financial arrangement for creating a separation between California Forward’s fiscal sponsors and the final recommendations. He said Villaraigosa did not know which donors were funding the project and there was no quid pro quo.

“It was an initiative that was paid for by a nonprofit organization that has hundreds of supporters, which I think is a better way of doing this,” he said.

But McMorris, the transparency, ethics, and accountability program manager for California Common Cause, argues that this is an “ethically suspect” way of using behested payments, because it buries the true sources of funding.

“It looks better politically if an innocuous nonprofit is giving the money,” he said, even though it’s really special interest groups that are paying. “They don’t even have to report that they’re giving money to the third party. That’s where the ick factor sets in.”

McMorris said it’s important for the government to use taxpayer money for its priorities, because it holds elected officials accountable to do things that they believe are defensible to their voters.

“This is what taxpayer money is for,” he said. “I don’t understand this idea that we’re just going to outsource government to the private sector, because now you introduce all this conflict of interest and the possibility for conflict of interest, which then results in the end result potentially being tainted.”

Gov. Gavin Newsom holds a press conference at a Home Depot in San Jose to sign retail crime legislation into law on Aug. 16, 2024.

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'He helped set the tone for the conversations'

During his year as Newsom’s infrastructure adviser, Villaraigosa participated in more than 180 meetings, tours, roundtables, events, calls, and Zooms for the infrastructure report, his spokesperson said. That included a trip to Washington, D.C. in September 2023, after he was no longer being paid for his work, to meet with congressional leaders such as then-House Speaker Kevin McCarthy and California’s Democratic delegation about infrastructure funding.

Villaraigosa consulted with former advisers from Los Angeles, who volunteered their insights for the project, and got the Boston Consulting Group to help write the final report pro bono.

But he was primarily assisted by California Forward staffers, including Ismael Herrera, who joined Villaraigosa on a statewide listening tour throughout the final months of 2022, coordinating with the governor’s office about who to invite to the sessions and taking notes. Herrera said the project consumed about half his work time during that period, traveling to rural communities with Villaraigosa, then sitting for hourslong listening sessions, plus making site visits and doing prep work.

Those conversations — which also focused on the impacts of infrastructure projects for the workforce and the environment — involved public transportation agencies, local and regional government officials, water districts, universities and community colleges, community organizations and nonprofits, faith-based and environmental justice groups, labor unions and more, Herrera said.

“I thought (Villaraigosa’s) involvement was very valuable and he put a lot of time and effort into this,” Herrera said. “He helped set the tone for the conversations, and also did a lot of listening, a lot answering questions that people had.”

The governor’s office said the listening sessions were not considered open meetings subject to California’s public records laws.

The recommendations ultimately informed a package of bills, introduced by Newsom in May 2023, aimed at speeding up construction of big infrastructure projects by streamlining the state approval process. After facing pushback from environmental groups, a version of the package passed the Legislature about a month later.

“I was given great latitude,” Villaraigosa said. “Obviously these were recommendations. I was doing this on behalf of the governor. But the governor and his staff made almost no changes to our proposals.”

The governor’s office cited Senate Bill 149 — which sets a 270-day limit for wrapping up environmental lawsuits for water, energy, transportation and semiconductor projects that are certified by the governor — as the most significant change.

Since then, four projects have received certification for this expedited review, including Sites Reservoir, a controversial plan to build the state’s first new reservoir in more than 50 years in Colusa County.

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

Twenty years ago, a Los Angeles DJ put out an album that asked a question nobody had quite answered yet: Could the turntable be a lead instrument?

Not just a tool, but the thing carrying the whole record?

Lucas McFadden, also known as Cut Chemist, said “yes.”

His debut solo album, The Audience’s Listening, dropped in 2006 after years of work, sample clearances and a clean break from the group that made him famous. He was a founding member of Jurassic 5, and before that, Ozomatli.

Two decades later, he's been revisiting that record in a series called Expert of None. It’s an intimate show at Only the Wild Ones in Venice, where he traces the records that shaped him right up to this album. The final installment of the series is scheduled for August 2.

“It's a record that I periodically revisit throughout my life just to kind of see where I've been and to know where I need to go next,” McFadden said. “I always like to do something different from what I've done before. This is the year where I really go back and trace the steps of the building blocks that made that record and who I was as an artist leading up to that.”

The art of mixing

Few fans know the behind-the-scenes work it takes for DJs and producers to track down sounds and then get the permission to use them. McFadden said finding and presenting music are two very different processes.

“I feel like a matchmaker, so to speak, because no one else would take things which are from completely opposite ends of the globe and put them together in the same composition,” McFadden said. “Then, you have to track down the artist to ask their permission. It's very interesting and rewarding when they say yes.”

McFadden walked away from the success of Jurassic 5 to devote his time to a solo career. He said the change gave him increased freedom but also increased pressure.

“It was very scary to leave something so successful and really at its peak to do something where I was responsible for both the failures and the successes on my own,” McFadden said. “I couldn't share that blame with anybody. It was all on me. So, I remember putting a lot of pressure on myself, because I was the one in the spotlight. Then the successes were twice as sweet in that regard as well.”

The result was his debut, The Audience’s Listening, which McFadden says is very much an L.A. record.

“I was raised on L.A. radio,” McFadden said.  "Being from here and being in groups like Ozomatli and Jurassic 5, I feel like those two groups couldn't exist anywhere else. They are such a byproduct of the city, coming from places like The Good Life in South Central. L.A. is such a melting pot, and I feel like my life in music is the same reflection of that as well.”

Revisiting the past to create the present

McFadden has been tracing the records that led to The Audience’s Listening during his "Expert of None" events at Only the Wild Ones in Venice. The immersive listening residency explores musical discovery and crate digging culture, revealing the records and influences that shaped the album.

“It's been incredible,” McFadden said. “There's so many things about my life that I didn't realize until I sat down and thought about them in the context of discovering music.”

McFadden says his younger self would be very pleased with the legacy of The Audience’s Listening.

“People still regard it as an album that’s important to them for the DJ culture,” McFadden said. “When it came out in the mid-2000s, DJs were kind of fading away, at least turntablists were. Another type of DJ was emerging, which was a laptop DJ. That opened the door for a lot of people that in some cases probably shouldn't be DJs, but wouldn't if this technology didn't exist. So, it was a very confusing time to put out a DJ turntablist record. I feel like I did well, and after 20 years of thinking about it and living in that world, I'm happy where it stands.”

Tickets for Cut Chemist’s Aug. 2 event at Only the Wild Ones are currently sold out, but fans can join a waiting list.

LOS ANGELES (AP) — A judge ruled Monday that there is enough evidence to put singer D4vd on trial in the killing and dismemberment of 14-year-old Celeste Rivas Hernandez after, authorities said, she had threatened to expose their relationship and crater his career.

Los Angeles Judge Charlaine Olmedo decided the evidence prosecutors presented at a preliminary hearing that spanned five days provided probable cause for a trial on charges of murder, continuous sexual abuse of a child under the age of 14 and unlawful mutilation of human remains.

“The people have met their burden on all counts,” Olmedo said. She ordered that Burke continue to be held without bail.

D4vd, the 21-year-old singer born David Burke whose career was steeply rising before the allegations emerged, has pleaded not guilty. He showed no emotion when the judge issued her ruling. Defense lawyers declined to comment outside court after the ruling.

Olmedo emphasized that the probable cause standard for a preliminary hearing like this is much lower than the threshold at trial. However, prosecutors asserted the evidence was overwhelming.

“Based on the mountains of evidence presented,” Deputy District Attorney Beth Silverman said, “all of the allegations have been proved way beyond the standard required.”

Los Angeles District Attorney Nathan Hochman said outside court that prosecutors are still weighing whether to seek the death penalty. Burke is to be arraigned Aug. 31.

Prosecutors on Monday wrapped up their case by giving a moment-by-moment account of Rivas Hernandez’s last night, showing that after a stream of text messages with Burke, her phone went permanently silent when she arrived at his home.

As she neared his Hollywood home shortly after 10 a.m. on April 23, 2025, in an Uber he had sent to pick her up, she sent her final text: “girly pop i’m almost there open ur door if ur home.”

Prosecutors allege Burke stabbed her to death when she came through the door.

The night before, the two argued via text about his relationship with a woman. She sent him an angry and profane text saying she will tell her dad so many lies about him and “i will end ur career and ur life.”

Prosecutors said that Burke met Rivas Hernandez when she was 11, began sexually abusing her when she was 13 and he was 18, stabbed her to death when she threatened to report him and ruin his career, and cut up her body in his garage with chain saws.

Prosecutors said they have records showing Burke ordered chain saws and wading pools that he used to dismember her body in his garage, and that her DNA was found there on blood stains discovered when police served a search warrant.

They said he then drove around for weeks and even months with the body in the trunk. Her decomposing body was found in the Tesla registered to Burke that was towed from the Hollywood Hills in September, a little more than four months later.

Prosecutors said the car was parked around the corner from his house, and surveillance video will show he was the last person to drive it.

Defense argues there’s insufficient evidence for murder

After the final witness on Monday, the defense argued that the evidence was insufficient and the murder charge should be dismissed.

“There’s no evidence that Mr. Burke harbored a deliberate intent to kill Miss Hernandez,” said Burke’s attorney, Marilyn Bednarski.

She said the communications between Burke and Rivas Hernandez showed “no threat, no evidence of a history of violence” and that he had “the opposite of homicidal malice” toward her.

She argued that a medical examiner ruling that her death was a homicide from two puncture wounds was too vague and inconclusive to be evidence of murder. The defense did not directly give an alternative theory on how she died and isn’t required to.

The defense showed several other texts from Rivas Hernandez threatening him about their relationship, and saying she would go to Burke’s mother, talk to his friends and “leak” information about them.

Under questioning from defense attorney Blair Berk, Farrell said he saw no indication that she ever threatened to go to police or pursue any legal action against him.

The defense also established that she had asked seven times to come to see him in the days before her death, and he reluctantly agreed only after she demanded it, and that she had threatened to kill Burke and to mutilate him.

The defense argued that all of the malice had come from her.

Silverman told the judge that “the defense tried numerous times throughout these proceedings to dirty up the victim” despite her being a child.

The detective also said under questioning from Berk that the parents of both Burke and Rivas Hernandez knew about their relationship, that he had attended church with members of her family and that her parents had given their consent for her to go to London with him for a week.

Prosecution alleges D4vd immediately began covering up the killing

After her phone went silent, Burke sent her several other messages that night asking where she was, and expressing concern. Prosecutors allege those messages were sent as cover after he had killed her.

Prosecutors allege Burke dismembered the body in his garage. A police analyst testified earlier in the hearing that samples pulled from apparent blood stains there matched her DNA.

Her body was found in a Tesla registered to him nearly five months later.

Detective documents sexual abuse

In earlier testimony, Farrell recounted dozens of sexually explicit photos of Burke and Rivas Hernandez and years of text messages that described the same things, along with conversations that indicated she had gotten an abortion in 2024 at 13 after he got her pregnant.

Farrell described the photos that could not be shown in court, material so graphic that it left Rivas Hernandez’s mother in tears and prompted both parents to leave the courtroom on Friday. They were back in court Monday.

D4vd’s career was reaching new heights at time of killing

D4vd (pronounced “David”) became an online musical phenomenon as a teen with a blend of indie rock, R&B and lo-fi pop. He had huge followings on TikTok, Soundcloud and Spotify, where his top songs, including his 2022 breakthrough “Romantic Homicide,” have more than a billion plays.

In 2024 he played the Coachella music festival and released his first full-length album, “Withered,” two days after authorities say Rivas Hernandez was killed.