The Brief

In the race for oversight over California’s budget, the two main contenders are an incumbent with three years of experience and a challenger who is set on exposing fraudulent and wasteful spending.

Malia Cohen: The incumbent

Democrat Malia Cohen has served as controller (AKA California’s chief accountant) since 2023, and has raised more than $1.2 million for the race to keep her seat. She oversees spending for a state with a budget of nearly $350 billion and one of the world’s largest economies. It’s her job to make sure the state spends wisely and efficiently.

As the governor and the Legislature hash out a budget deal for this year, Cohen has urged caution, saying higher-than-expected spending “reinforces the need for restraint.”

Cohen also has improved the state’s ability to deliver a key financial report that was chronically late for years. Cohen made up the backlog by releasing four reports in two years, and she told CalMatters that the upcoming report (called the Annual Comprehensive Financial Report) will almost be on time — late a mere two months, compared to the years others were delayed.

While running for office in 2022, Cohen told CalMatters she planned to scrutinize the state’s homelessness spending and take a critical look at the Employment Development Department and the Department of Motor Vehicles. A 2024 report by the state auditor found that California fails to adequately track its homelessness spending.

Cohen did not meet those campaign promises. She said that’s because the state auditor had already looked at those agencies. Instead of duplicating that work, she decided to focus on improving some internal functions of the state’s financial arm. She’s in the midst of ongoing efforts to modernize FI$Cal — the IT system that manages the state’s finances — and the system that pays state employees.

“The bottom line is that I do believe that Californians deserve to know where their money is going,” she said. “So that’s what I'm working to do.”

Herb Morgan: The challenger

Cohen’s main challenger, Republican Herb Morgan, has promised to pick up the slack he says his opponent has dropped. Like Cohen promised in 2022, Morgan said if elected, he will carefully scrutinize the state’s spending on homelessness. He wants to create a system where every time a state-funded nonprofit pays for anything, that transaction goes into a state database. Then, he said, he’ll use AI to monitor those purchases and flag anything suspicious.

As an example of how state spending can be transparently tracked, a public dashboard on his website logs his campaign donations in real time. He’s raised $367,000 as of the end of April.

Morgan acknowledged he’s an outlier as a Republican running in a state historically dominated by Democrats. But he believes voters will look at both candidates’ qualifications instead of voting along party lines.

“I don't care where you are on the social spectrum, 99% of us are fiscally responsible,” he said. “It doesn’t mean cutting spending. It doesn't mean defunding. It just means being responsible with our money. And that, I think, appeals to all political ideologies."

Also running is Meghann Adams, a Peace and Freedom Party candidate. A school bus driver who lives in San Francisco's Tenderloin neighborhood, she is president of her union and manages its finances. If elected, Adams promised to expose corporate landlords that drive up rent prices, analyze the cost of imposing a single-payer Medi-Cal system and divest state investments from companies that support Israel’s war against Gaza.

She’s raised $16,000 as of the end of April.

• Read about the third candidate on the ballot Meghann Adams

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

Community college students who make use of CalFresh benefits during their freshman year are more likely to stay on track academically and return for a second year, according to a new working paper from the California Policy Lab and UC Berkeley’s Center for Studies in Higher Education.

CalFresh, known federally as the Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program (SNAP), provides monthly food benefits to low-income individuals and families in California. The program enables them to buy food with an Electronic Benefit Transfer card.

The research finds that community college students who had CalFresh benefits throughout their first year were more likely to complete a full-time course load, consisting of 30 or more credits. These students were also more likely to enroll the next year, compared to similar students who were also eligible for benefits but did not receive them.

“The key message is that basic needs matter and food assistance in particular can help college students to do better in school,” said co-author Igor Chirikov, a senior researcher at the Center for Studies in Higher Education.

How comparing students with similar backgrounds led to more precise findings

For the study, Chirikov and his colleague, Jesse Rothstein — a public policy, higher education and economics professor at UC Berkeley — linked administrative data from all California community colleges. They also incorporated financial aid records and data on students’ monthly participation in CalFresh.

The researchers compared students who were alike in key ways, including income, family background and prior participation in CalFresh. The students differed in whether they continued to receive benefits consistently during their first year of college. The researchers also examined whether students completed at least 30 credits in their first year and whether they returned to school for a second year. Both are indicators that students “are on track to completion,” Chirikov said.

“While it intuitively makes sense that when students have enough to eat and are less financially strained, their academic outcomes would improve, this study lets us measure that effect much more precisely,” Rothstein said in a news release. “By comparing students with similar backgrounds and financial circumstances, we’re able to isolate the role that food support plays in improving student outcomes, marking an important step forward in understanding how safety-net programs support student success.”

How does CalFresh help students?

According to Chirikov and Rothstein’s research:

• Students who received CalFresh benefits were more likely to complete a full-time course load during their first year of college (a 5% increase) than comparable, eligible students who did not receive CalFresh.   

• CalFresh raises persistence in college. Students who received the benefits were more likely to re-enroll for a second year of college (a 4% percent increase). 

• For students whose goal is to earn an associate’s degree or to transfer, CalFresh’s impact on credit completion was slightly larger (+1.8 percentage points).

Chirikov noted that while these gains may seem modest, the food assistance program averages about $860 per student. In contrast, many traditional student success interventions can cost thousands of dollars per student.

“These may sound like very small numbers, but in [California’s] large community college system— the largest community college system in the country — even small percentage point gains . . . can affect thousands of students over the years,” he said.

What challenges does CalFresh face?

The findings come on the heels of President Donald Trump signing the “One Big Beautiful Bill Act” into law last summer. This legislation will reduce SNAP funding by approximately $186 billion over 10 years — a 20% cut that marks the largest reduction in the program’s history, according to Sara Bleich, a public health policy professor at the Harvard Kennedy School of Government. Key changes include the loss of eligibility for thousands of lawfully present immigrants.

When Gavin Newsom ran for California governor in 2018, his support for a state-run single-payer healthcare system was considered a risky move and earned him hefty labor endorsements.

Today, leading Democrats in the wide-open race to succeed Newsom have embraced single-payer as a political necessity, an answer to voters fed up with rising premiums and other spiraling healthcare costs.

But with no clear front-runner, they are sparring among themselves in debates and political ads over who is most committed to a government-run model. No candidate has outlined how California would fund comprehensive health coverage for its 40 million residents, leaving voters unable to discern which candidate has a concrete plan for the nation’s most populous state.

Healthcare and political experts said the concept of single-payer has shifted from progressive pipe dream a decade ago to today’s mainstream talking points in a state where Democrats outnumber Republicans nearly 2 to 1. Democrats have pledged the model as the best way to lower costs in an attempt to woo voters worried about affordability as ballots arrive for the June 2 primary. The top two Republicans, meanwhile, have dismissed government-run healthcare as a “disaster” and “socialism.”

“In many ways, single-payer healthcare has become a progressive litmus test,” said Larry Levitt, a former White House policy adviser and a healthcare expert at KFF, a health information nonprofit that includes KFF Health News.

Few voters fully understand the term single-payer, let alone expect the next governor to achieve it, Levitt said. Rather, he added, the term has become more of a signal to voters about a candidate’s approach to healthcare reform.

Xavier Becerra, the former U.S. Health and Human Services secretary, who for decades backed single-payer healthcare in Congress, has come under criticism from opponents for a nuanced but clear shift away from single-payer. It came after Becerra secured an endorsement from the California Medical Association, a powerful group representing doctors and a longtime opponent of single-payer healthcare bills in California.

At a May 5 debate put on by CNN, Becerra declared his support for “Medicare for All,” a proposal for a federally run system that’s been stalled for years, but he declined to say whether he’d pursue a California-led effort. He said his immediate focus would be on mitigating the drastic federal cuts expected to hit low-income and disabled enrollees in Medi-Cal, the state’s Medicaid program, which covers more than a third of residents.

Becerra is counting on voters not to distinguish between the often-confused terms single-payer, Medicare for All, and universal coverage, noting during the debate that “Californians don’t care what you call it, so long as they have affordable healthcare.”

“A lot of people aren’t clear what single-payer is, and they need a metaphor to understand it,” said Celinda Lake, a Democratic strategist and one of the lead pollsters for former President Joe Biden’s 2020 campaign.

Billionaire activist Tom Steyer, who’s touted his self-funding as a signal he can’t be bought, has emerged as the race’s most vocal advocate of single-payer after opposing it during a short-lived 2020 presidential bid.

As governor, Steyer has said, he would pass legislation backed by the California Nurses Association that has failed to come to fruition under Newsom’s tenure. Pressed on how he would cover the estimated $731.4 billion cost, Steyer told KFF Health News that “God is going to be in the details.”

At a forum last year, former U.S. Rep. Katie Porter said she didn’t believe achieving such a system was realistic in the near term, but the Orange County Democrat later told party delegates that she would “deliver single-payer.” Former Los Angeles Mayor Antonio Villaraigosa and San Jose Mayor Matt Mahan, Democrats who are trailing their competitors in the polls, don’t support single-payer. The top two vote-getters — regardless of party — advance to the November general election.

Some of the most seasoned politicians have failed to deliver single-payer. Newsom, who campaigned on the promise of being a “healthcare governor,” dialed back his ambitions upon taking office, choosing instead to pursue “universal access” to health coverage under a series of Medi-Cal expansions and efforts to contain healthcare spending.

The campaign bus for billionaire activist Tom Steyer, who has made single-payer healthcare a central pillar of his run for governor, in downtown Oakland, California. In 2020, Steyer ran for president opposing single-payer healthcare.

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Christine Mai-Duc

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KFF Health News

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Vermont, which remains the only state to pass a single-payer healthcare law, reversed course when leaders there couldn’t identify a funding source.

To enact single-payer, California would need permission from the federal government to redirect billions of dollars from Medicaid, Medicare, and other funding that currently flows to the system — approval not likely to come from the Trump administration.

More than half of adults nationally say healthcare costs will have a major impact on whom they vote for in November, according an April KFF poll.

Danielle Cendejas, a Los Angeles-based Democratic consultant who works with state legislative candidates, said single-payer healthcare increasingly appears on candidate questionnaires from small-business advocates as well as hyperlocal Democratic clubs, in state legislative races and national union endorsements.

What most California voters want to hear, Cendejas said, is how candidates plan to give them more immediate relief from higher premiums, expensive drug costs, and long waits to access care.

The high price tag doesn’t faze Jennifer Easton, a 63-year-old Democrat from Oakland, who said other countries with similar models have proved they can lower costs. She said she supports a single-payer health system because it’s clear to her that Americans have reached the limits of working within the existing system. But she isn’t expecting any of the current candidates to succeed in implementing one, and she hasn’t decided whom to support.

“No one can in four years,” she said. Seeing a candidate enthusiastically support the concept gives her a good idea of their philosophy. “It is, if we’re lucky, a 20-year, 25-year plan.”

Rob Stutzman, a Republican political consultant who advised former Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger, said while Americans may be supportive of single-payer in polls, focus groups suggest that approval drops quickly when voters realize it could mean losing their current doctor or insurance plan.

At the CNN debate, Steve Hilton, the Republican candidate President Donald Trump has endorsed, said Californians would end up with subpar patient care and “taxes sky high to pay for it,” like in his native United Kingdom.

Instead, Hilton suggested the state stop providing “free healthcare for illegal immigrants who shouldn't even be in the country in the first place.”

All but one Cal State campus have Native American remains and cultural items that federal and state laws require them to return to tribes. In many cases, the process has been slow.

Though the size of their collections varies, campuses like Cal Poly Humboldt and San Francisco State have made progress in returning human remains and cultural items, with Sacramento State having returned most of its Native collections. But others, like Cal Poly Pomona, have yet to see much progress and Cal State Bakersfield has not made any returns.

The Cal State system holds the remains of more than 2,000 Native Americans and more than 1.57 million artifacts, according to the most recent list of the system's collections. Another 500,000 collections of items are still in storage awaiting proper tribal review to be cataloged.

Campus officials say they are working diligently to follow legal mandates to return items to tribes, but the road can be long and arduous.

Last February, members of the Konkow Valley Band of Maidu tribe reburied three ancestors whose remains had been held at Sacramento State since 1963. The Lake Concow Campground donated 10.7 acres of land to the tribe within their traditional territory in Northern California, where they were able to perform the reburials.

“During the process it’s a very, very heavy feeling,” said Matthew Williford Sr., the tribal chairperson and cultural resource director. “But when you receive the remains back, you feel lighter. It doesn’t feel like so much weight.”

If collections stay in storage, for Williford, it's as if "nobody knows that we were ever around."

"It's important for us to get that back, because we believe that those items still have spirit," he said. "They need to come back to the people."

Federal and state Native American Graves Protection and Repatriation laws require agencies and institutions with Native American remains and cultural items, such as the ancestors’ remains from Williford’s tribe, be returned to tribes. While there was not a deadline for when collections had to be returned, federal law required campuses to complete an inventory of their collections by 1995.

“La Memoria de la Tierra,” a mural by Judith Baca on the north side of Ackerman Union at UCLA in Los Angeles, on Nov. 9, 2022.

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Pablo Unzueta

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for CalMatters

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As of February 2025, Sacramento State had repatriated 89% of the human remains and 68% of the cultural items on their campus. That means control of the collections has been legally transferred to a culturally affiliated tribe, but collections may remain physically held by the campus if requested by the tribe. The figure also does not include what the campus holds for other state or federal agencies.

“Some tribes want us to hold on to collections, in which case we might do a held trust agreement, where we just are saying, 'We’re holding this for you until you’re ready to take it for repatriation,'” said Sarah Eckhardt, Sacramento State’s repatriation coordinator.

Eckhardt has been the repatriation coordinator for more than six years, overseeing the university's compliance with repatriation laws and policies. Eckhardt shared that the campus has a good relationship with local tribes, to whom the majority of their collections belong, allowing them to repatriate the collections effectively.

The amount of cultural items at Sacramento State decreased significantly from about 30,000 in 2024 to about 6,000 in 2025.

Why it's hard to return Native artifacts

To move forward with repatriation, universities have to contact potential culturally affiliated tribes, based on geographic location or historical evidence, for consultation. Then, tribes can submit a request for repatriation.

While the process can be slow, multiple tribal leaders said that the campuses are supportive and are up against federal and state rules that complicate returns for non-federally recognized tribes. There are also times of confusion over who exactly has authority to make those returns.

Sacramento State reported an increase in their collection of human remains from 171 in 2024 to 223 in 2025, which Eckhardt said was due to some confusion over who manages them.

“There were several collections that we thought were the responsibility of another agency, that they denied responsibility for and so we accepted responsibility for that,” said Eckhardt.

Near the end of 2024, 32 boxes containing three human remains and cultural items previously held at Sacramento State were returned to Williford's state-recognized tribe. But since they are not federally-recognized, federal law meant they'd have to partner with a federal tribe to claim the collections on their behalf, and also have local tribes sign off on the handover, said Williford. That process took about six months after a notice was published to the federal registrar, which informs other tribes in case any want to rebut the claim. To him, that was a quick timeframe.

“At least they’re trying… I think they need to up their game on helping nonfederal tribes with federal repatriation,” said Williford.

San Jose State has run into a similar situation. The university has returned all the remains belonging to federally recognized tribes, but still possesses remains affiliated with non-federally recognized tribes, posing the biggest challenge, according to Alisha Marie Ragland, the campus’ repatriation coordinator. As of December 2025, San Jose State reported having 514 human remains and more than 5,000 collections of stored items waiting to be reviewed.

“SJSU will continue to work with tribes to find appropriate and respectful means of sending the Ancestors home,” said Ragland via email.

So, why do some campuses struggle to make returns under their care?

“Repatriation can take years. Just for what we consider one artifact potentially could take up to a couple years,” said David Silva, the repatriation coordinator at Cal State Bakersfield.

Cal State Bakersfield is still in the process of consulting with tribes to determine what the boxes under their care contain, he said.

“There’s no direct timeline for our tribal partners to have to conduct consultation,” said Silva. “The only timeline is really when we start to submit notices or when we complete that inventory verification.”

A sign displayed behind glass at California State University, Long Beach, on Dec. 14, 2023.

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Jules Hotz

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for CalMatters

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Curtis Alcantar is a member of the Tejon Indian tribe and a tribal representative for the NAGPRA committee at the Bakersfield campus, working with Silva. Alcantar said he has had a good experience working with the university and other Cal State campuses and that he believes the system is moving in a positive direction.

Before, Bakersfield housed items in five different rooms spread throughout campus, creating a hassle for tribal members. They recently moved to a new building on campus, allowing tribes easier access to review collections.

When he first started helping with tribal consultations, Alcantar was troubled by how many Native American remains and cultural items were still in possession of museums and universities. Universities acquired Native remains and items through excavations and research often from anthropology and archeology disciplines. Some collections were acquired through donations.

At the time, it was difficult for him to understand how much Native American collections museums and universities still held and were refusing to give back, said Alcantar. But now, he says that people are more open minded and willing to repatriate.

The process does take a lot of research and time, he added. For him, the most helpful tool Cal State has provided is the campus collections map, making it easier to find which campuses have collections from Kern County, his home base. According to the map, eight different Cal State campuses have collections from Kern County and Cal State Bakersfield has collections from 18 California counties.

“The fulfilling part for me is seeing the objects go back home, watching the ancestors just finally get their journey back home,” said Alcantar.

Cal Poly Humboldt has repatriated about 39% of the 23,889 cultural items initially in its possession, according to figures provided by Megan Watson, the campus' NAGPRA coordinator. San Francisco State has repatriated roughly 36% of its original 44,000 collections of stored items, according to Robert King, the campus’ director of communications. The campus has about 250 remains, a number that hasn't budged much in recent years. Since November, it has returned two remains with about 260 collections of items, the official said.

Cal State updates list of Native collections

Cal State's updated list was released in December after, for the first time, all Cal State campuses completed an inventory review.

Sonoma State has more than 1.52 million cultural items, by far the highest count in the system. Meanwhile, Cal State Fullerton holds the most remains with 534 individuals counted, and San Diego State has the highest collections of stored items awaiting tribal review, totaling more than 426,000.

One reason for Sonoma State's high count is that it has a large facility to house those collections under proper care, said Samantha Cypret, a member of the Mountain Maidu tribe and executive director of the office of tribal relations for the Cal State Chancellor’s Office, which oversees NAGPRA compliance. Campuses with large anthropology or archeology departments also tend to have larger collections, she added.

Multiple members of Sonoma State’s NAGPRA team were contacted for comment. Some declined an interview while others did not respond.

Cal State revamps how it returns remains — with some delays

In November 2025, Cal State launched a systemwide NAGPRA policy providing campuses with a consistent approach for repatriations. The move came in response to Assembly Bill 389 – a 2023 amendment to the 2001 state NAGPRA Act – and a critical Cal State audit. The assembly bill required the Chancellor's Office to adopt a systemwide policy and committee, and that committees form at each campus.

Cypret said that the policy took time to enact after the audit was issued and the Assembly Bill passed because they wanted to make sure they were letting tribal voices take the lead, learning about what tribes wanted to see included in the policy.

“We also really wanted to make sure that we were centering tribal voices in the development, in the implementation of this policy, so we held over 30 tribal outreach sessions in about the year and a half that this policy took to create,” said Cypret.

The new system policy outlines responsibilities of each campus, such as employing a full-time repatriation coordinator, conducting ongoing surveys of holdings and forbidding the use of collections for teaching and research. Cal State allocated $3.7 million for campuses with Native American collections for the fiscal year 2025-2026 to support the costs of staffing repatriation coordinators, reburial costs, reimbursing tribes for travel costs, and other expenses related to repatriation.

The University of California system and community colleges also have Native American collections on their campuses. An audit of the University of California published in April 2025 determined that the system lacked urgency and accountability.

Williford said that his tribe has made formal requests to receive two woven baskets from UC Berkeley that are part of his tribe's dogwood collection. For him, helping return collections for his tribe has helped him feel connected to his dad who passed away in 2015. He said his dad was part of a “lost generation” that knew who they were but didn’t have a lot of cultural information. But today, the tribe's elders find meaning when returns are made.

“To see an elder’s eyes light up like a child’s, it’s something special,” said Williford.

Cal State will review its systemwide policy again in November 2026 after tribal consultations.

Brittany Oceguera is a contributor with the College Journalism Network, a collaboration between CalMatters and student journalists from across California. CalMatters higher education coverage is supported by a grant from the College Futures Foundation.

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