The Brief

Assemblymember Sabrina Cervantes, a Democrat from Corona who is running for state Senate, missed about two-thirds of her votes this year — 1,647 of 2,510 voting opportunities she had— based on her committee assignments and floor sessions.

In most cases, the missed votes came from two “excused” absences during busy times of the year — once for a death in her family, and once due to illness after attending the Democratic National Convention in August, according to her staff.

Six other legislators missed more than a quarter of their votes this year, most involving excused absences for illness or family matters, according to an analysis of voting data from CalMatters’ Digital Democracy.

When it comes to voting on bills, however, the California Legislature does not distinguish between a lawmaker who is absent — excused or not — and a legislator who is present but does not vote. They all count the same as a legislator who casts a “no” vote, but they are categorized as: “No Vote Recorded” or NVR.

Sean McMorris, a program manager for California Common Cause, said the lack of transparency around absences versus abstentions can feed distrust.

“I think people are naturally skeptical about politics and politicians, so when you have things like this … it just reinforces that narrative,” he said. “Unfortunately, whether there’s ill intent or not, that’s probably what the public is going to assume.”

In a Legislature with a supermajority of Democrats who almost always vote “yes,” there are few close votes where an individual will sway the outcome. But Digital Democracy data shows 45 bills that died in the current two-year legislative session because NVRs were counted as “no.” And at certain times, such as during the Democratic National Convention when 21 legislators missed votes during a busy week, legislators say it can make a difference.

Assembly Speaker Robert Rivas and Senate President Pro Tem Mike McGuire both declined interviews with CalMatters to discuss concerns about the way absences or abstentions are recorded and counted. But others suggested the rules might be changed.

“Anything that can be part of a conversation that helps with transparency and boldness of disclosure for the viewing public, I think is certainly appropriate,” said Assemblymember Chris Holden, a Democrat from Pasadena.

Lorena Gonzalez, a former Assemblymember who now heads the California Labor Federation, said the lack of clarity around why people didn’t vote can make it difficult for her group to rank legislators based on its priorities.

Cervantes, for instance, earned a 100% score from the federation in 2023, but missed eight votes on 12 of the group’s priority bills this year. Gonzalez said she has no doubt about Cervantes’ support of labor.

But for others, Gonzalez said the uncertainty can require going to each legislator to confirm where they stand: “Abstain, absent, truly absent, excused absence, unexcused absence, and just sitting at your frickin’ desk and choosing not to vote …. I don’t think there’s any transparency for constituents.”

Legislative policies for votes and absences in other states are not tracked, but there are some with differences.

In Colorado, for example, absent members’ votes are recorded separately from those abstaining, but they still count as “no” votes. And in Hawaii, there’s an option to vote as “yes with reservations,” which counts as a yes vote.

Behind the no-vote rates

While California’s Legislature is in session for about seven months each year, most important votes on bills happen around a few key deadlines: the “house of origin” deadline in late spring, when a bill must pass from the chamber where it was introduced, and the last week of the session before the Legislature adjourns in August or September. During those times, legislators can be asked to cast more than 200 votes in a single day.

It explains why Cervantes missed more votes than any other legislator, but she ranked fourth in the number of days she was absent. Assemblymember Megan Dahle, a Republican from Redding, was absent for 88 days due to a stroke she suffered in January, more than twice as many absences as Cervantes. But Cervantes missed 441 more votes than Dahle.

This year, there were seven legislators who missed more than a quarter of their opportunities to vote, a number that depends on their committee assignments. Most were absent for medical reasons. The seven legislators — four Democrats and three Republicans — all serve in the Assembly:

• Dahle was out from January to early June recovering from her stroke. She missed 1,206 votes, or 54% of voting opportunities. 
• Visalia Republican Devon Mathis was out 55 days from April to July due to a “severe” hand injury for which he was briefly hospitalized, according to his office. But he did do some work in his district during the absence. He missed 1,389 votes, or 56%. 
• Hayward Democrat Liz Ortega was out for 10 days during the last two weeks of the session due to gallbladder surgery. She missed 893 votes, or 36%.
• Holden missed 529 votes when he was excused for four days in May due to the illness of a family member. He missed a total of 704 votes this year, or 28%. 
• Arleta Democrat Luz Rivas missed 367 votes when she was out due to COVID for four days in May. She missed a total of 661 votes this year, or 29%.
• Assemblymember Bill Essayli, a Republican from Corona, missed 777 voting opportunities, or 30%. 

CalMatters contacted all seven legislative offices, but all except Essayli declined interviews and additional details for this story.

Legislators are not allowed to vote remotely — a policy that garnered national attention in 2020 when Assemblymember Buffy Wicks, a Democrat from Oakland, brought her then-newborn to the Capitol after being denied a remote option. Absent legislators are also not permitted to have a staff member or another legislator vote on their behalf.

The rules also say there is no difference between an absence or an “excused” absence when it comes to legislation and how that legislator’s non-vote is recorded. If an Assemblymember requests an “excused” absence from the speaker’s office, however, they can continue to collect their per diem of $214 per day. The per diem, provided in addition to each legislator’s $128,215 annual salary, is intended to pay for travel and lodging expenses in Sacramento when the Legislature is in session – which is usually Monday to Thursday.

The only public record of an excused absence is recorded in the “Daily Journal” published in print and PDF by the clerk’s office in each chamber. The Senate and Assembly clerk’s offices declined to provide a complete record of this year’s excused absences, so CalMatters examined all of the daily journals for 2024.

If legislators are out for personal business or fail to request an excused absence, they waive their right to a per diem.

Personal business this year included a trip to Chicago for 21 lawmakers to attend the Democratic National Convention — seven senators, and 14 Assemblymembers — which fell during the second-to-last-week of the session. Members skipped the first couple of days of the convention, arriving ahead of Vice President Kamala Harris’ acceptance speech Thursday so they would only miss two days of voting.

Still, on those two days, each senator missed 68 votes, and each Assemblymember 53.

Sen. Dave Cortese, a Democrat from Campbell, said those absences may have made a difference for a controversial bill about criminal sentences that he was struggling to pass after it was rejected earlier in the year. If the missing legislators were present, he said there might have been more consideration given to amendments he added to resolve the concerns.

No-votes as political tools

Not all of the legislators who missed the most votes were absent. Essayli missed 30% of his vote opportunities because, in some cases, he said he declines to vote even when he’s present “as a form of social politeness” to avoid upsetting a bill author.

In general, though, he said he also doesn’t think every bill merits a “yes” or “no” vote.

“It’s not practical to sit there and record a vote on necessarily every single bill when most of them are not of consequence,” he said.

McMorris, from Common Cause, said not voting is understandable if a member doesn’t agree with a bill, but wants to stay in good standing with colleagues — “because they’re going to be voting on your bills, too,” he said. Some lawmakers may also abstain because they are waiting to see amendments to a bill.

“But if you’re looking at it purely from a constituent’s perspective, members of the public are probably wondering, why don’t you just vote based on your principles, your values and the wants and needs of your constituents? Because that’s what we put you in there to do.”

Assemblymember Corey Jackson, a Democrat from Moreno Valley, agrees.

Jackson, who abstained in about 2.5% of his votes, said a clear “yes” or “no” vote is needed to solve the challenges California faces on homelessness, gas prices and cost of living issues — regardless of whether that might upset lobbyists or colleagues.

“The reason why many times that these issues aren’t being addressed is because we’re afraid to make people upset,” he said. “In order to solve the toughest issues, you’re going to make people be upset, whether you vote for it or against it. But we have to solve these issues.”

A divided Los Angeles Unified School District Board voted 4-3 Tuesday to issue preliminary layoff notices to more than 3,000 employees, as part of a reduction-in-force plan to reduce the budget after several years of spending more money than it brings in.

Even as California is poised to fund schools at record-high levels, Los Angeles Unified and other districts have grappled with increased costs. For example, LAUSD hired more staff to support students during the pandemic, and now the federal relief dollars that initially funded those positions are gone.

For the past two years, the district has relied on reserves to backfill a multi-billion-dollar deficit. The district projects a deficit of $877 million next school year, about 14% of the 2026-2027 budget.

Who’s being cut?

LAUSD staff estimate the proposed cuts impact less than 1% of the district’s more than 83,000 member workforce.

Notices would go out to:

• 2,600 certificated and classified contract management employees and certificated administrators. 
• 657 central office and centrally funded classified positions. More than a third of these are IT technicians, by far the largest group.
• The plan also calls for reduced hours and pay for several dozen positions.

District leaders have emphasized that an employee who receives a RIF notice will not necessarily be cut.

What's next?

The reduction in force vote is the first step in a monthslong process that could result in layoffs for a still-to-be-determined number of positions because impacted employees may be moved to other positions. Staff said the board would vote to finalize any un-rescinded layoff notices in May or June.

This is a developing story and will be updated.

About 15% of California households lack access to high-speed internet, according to the latest report from UC Riverside. Researchers pointed to affordability as one of the biggest barriers to closing the persistent digital divide.

Edward Helderop, associate director at UCR’s Center for Geospatial Sciences and report author, told LAist that the findings weren't surprising.

“A lot of American households and California households don't have high-speed internet available at home,” Helderop said. “It's sort of just an unfortunate reality that that's the case for the state of California.”

What does the report say? 

Nearly one in seven households in California doesn’t have reliable internet access, according to the report. The biggest barrier continues to be affordability. Even in urban areas, like Los Angeles, where broadband internet is more widely available, the average monthly cost can range from $70 to $80 per month.

But in rural areas, broadband internet is still widely unavailable because of a lack of infrastructure investments from private companies. Only two-thirds of rural households have broadband access at home.

“This digital divide represents not just a technological failure, but a profound barrier to economic opportunity, educational advancement, and civic participation that undermines California’s potential for shared prosperity,” the report states.

Experts also call for mandatory broadband data transparency — internet providers should be required to publicly disclose their service speeds, pricing, reliability metrics and coverage areas.

“Private telecom companies administering the service, they're under no obligation to maintain publicly available data sets in the same way that you might get with other utilities,” Helderop said. “There are issues with the fact that the advertised speeds don't really match up with the actual speeds that people experience at home.”

Researchers also recommend that broadband providers be regulated as utilities, like water and power, monitoring rates, quality and service obligations.

“When we regulate something like a utility, it comes with a few regulations that we take for granted,” Helderop said. “Something like a universal service obligation, in which the utility … their primary motive is to provide universal service, so to provide the service to every household in California.”

As a public utility, officials could ensure that providers are offering the same type of service to every household in the state, as well as regulate rates.

Why it matters 

Norma Fernandez, CEO at Everyone On, said access to affordable, high-speed internet is a basic necessity.

"Still, too many families, particularly those in under-resourced communities, predominantly of color, are still left out,” Fernandez said. “Expanding reliable connectivity means addressing affordability, investing in community-centered solutions, and ensuring that digital access is part of every policy conversation."

Digital equity advocates say they see the need from local families every day, but available data doesn’t reflect that.

“On the maps, families appear to live in ‘connected’ neighborhoods, but in reality, they still can’t afford to get online because the monopoly provider’s plans are unaffordable,” Natalie Gonzalez, director at Digital Equity Los Angeles. “The provider-reported broadband maps don’t match what residents experience on the ground, and that gap has real consequences.”

In L.A., for example, hundreds of thousands of households lack reliable internet, but only a fraction qualify for public funding because available data says they’re already served, Gonzalez added.

“Public investment alone doesn’t guarantee equity if the underlying data is flawed,” Gonzalez said. “When the only data regulators have come from the providers themselves, the providers end up defining reality. Communities are then forced to prove they’re disconnected, without access to the same information the companies use to claim coverage.”

Cristal Mojica, digital equity expert at the Michelson Center for Public Policy, said pricing data is intentionally obscured.

“It makes it harder for people to shop around between internet plans,” Mojica told LAist. “It makes it really challenging for our state legislators to be effective and make effective decisions around affordability when they have to try to dig around for that information themselves.”

What’s next? 

California has already invested $6 billion for broadband –called the “Middle-Mile” project –through Senate Bill 156. The 2021 law is the largest state investment in broadband in U.S. history to get more people online.

Helderop explained that broadband investments are typically made possible through grants or loans to private telecom companies, making the state’s investment critical.

“It's the first time that any state, or any government in the United States, is taking it upon themselves to build and then own the infrastructure at the end of it,” Helderop said. “I would say that's probably the primary reason that we don't have universal broadband available to households in the United States right now.”

When completed, the “Middle-Mile” project will open markets to new providers and reduce monopolies, Helderop added.

Playboy founder Hugh Hefner’s widow, Crystal Hefner, is raising the alarm over her late husband’s foundation collecting about 3,000 of his personal scrapbooks and his diary, which she says contain thousands of nude images of women, some of whom might have been minors at the time the photos were taken.

In a press conference Tuesday, Hefner and her attorney, Gloria Allred, announced they’ve filed regulatory complaints with California and Illinois attorneys general, asking them to investigate the foundation’s handling of the scrapbooks. The complaints were filed to both attorneys general because the foundation is registered to do business in California but incorporated in Illinois.

“I believe they include women and possibly girls who never agreed to lifelong possession of their naked images and who have no transparency into where their photos are, how they’re being stored or what will happen to them next,” Hefner said.

She added the diary includes names of women he slept with, notes of sexual acts and other explicit details.

Hefner said she was asked to resign from her position as CEO and president of the Hugh M. Hefner Foundation on Monday after raising concerns about the materials. She said after she declined to resign, she was removed from her role.

She said she was told the scrapbooks may be in a storage facility in California. Allred says they were informed that the foundation plans to digitize them, but it’s unclear what it plans to do with them.

“This is not archival preservation. This is not history. This is control. I am deeply worried about these images getting out,” Hefner said. “Artificial intelligence, deepfakes, digital scanning, online marketplaces and data breaches means that once images leave secure custody, the harm is irreversible. A single security failure could devastate thousands of lives.”

In addition to asking for an investigation into the foundation’s handling of the materials, it also asks the attorneys general to take appropriate actions to secure those images.

LAist has reached out to the Hugh M. Hefner Foundation for comment.