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Local governments account for about 10% of total spending on lobbying state lawmakers and agencies. Often, they’re seeking state money. Sometimes, they’re trying to get a say on specific bills.
How much: According to a CalMatters analysis, local governments, water districts and transit agencies have spent nearly $24 million on lobbying the state this year, accounting for about 10% of the more than $233 million total.
Read on ... to follow the money.
The tiny Central Valley city of Farmersville reported lobbying on a contentious caste discrimination bill, even though it doesn’t have a large South Asian population. San Mateo County lobbied the state budget, plus one specific bill this session, focused on student meals, at the request of its health department. Rosemead in Los Angeles County lobbied on a stalled youth tackle football bill, at the urging of one city councilmember.
These are some of the more unusual and curious examples of one way business gets done at the state Capitol — local governments using taxpayers’ money to lobby the Legislature and state agencies, sometimes for more tax money.
According to a CalMatters analysis, local governments, water districts and transit agencies have spent nearly $24 million on lobbying the state this year, accounting for about 10% of the more than $233 million total.
Industry groups and special interests spend much more on lobbying. For instance, while the Hawaiian Gardens Casino and Chevron are the biggest lobbying spenders, at more than $5 million each, the city of Los Angeles ranked 23rd at about $1 million, just behind Vernon, a 328-person, scandal-plagued industrial city in Los Angeles County, which spent about the same but reported lobbying on “no legislation or administrative actions.”
Not all local government agencies lobby the state, but those that do tend to want to influence policies such as crime, land use, housing or water. They also seek more money from the state budget: This legislative session, cities and counties sought millions for homelessness programs, while public transit agencies wanted help covering operating costs.
And some national research shows the lobbying pays off — cities that do receive between 7% and 9% more per person in state funding than those that don’t.
Despite the benefits to some local governments and their taxpayers, the lobbying process isn’t fully transparent. There are no disclosure requirements for why a city lobbies on a particular bill or what position it’s taking. There are also no statewide rules for soliciting input from residents before deciding what bill or issue on which to lobby.
State lawmakers are already supposed to look out for the needs of the cities they represent. But because legislators might have multiple cities in their district, or a city might be split among several districts, many municipalities still lobby to communicate their needs.
“California has some of the highest city lobbying rates of any state in the country,” said Julia Payson, an assistant professor of political science at UCLA who has studied municipal lobbying across the U.S.
But “it’s not an outlier by any means,” Payson said, especially given how much state money is at stake. According to the state Department of Finance, about 80% of California’s budget, including federal money the state distributes, is spent on local assistance — $362 billion of $466 billion total in all funds in 2022-23.
But by influencing how much local agencies get from the state, Payson’s research indicates this lobbying could perpetuate revenue gaps among local governments.
That city governments lobby for the attention of officials who already represent them is “puzzling,” according to research co-authored by Jaclyn Kettler, an associate political science professor at Boise State University. She noted that there’s been at least one effort, in Texas, to ban the use of taxpayer money for lobbying the state government.
“We have in the United States, the federal system of government, meaning we have multiple levels of elected officials in many areas,” she said. “We were like, this is really curious that these governments are needing to hire representation when they already have elected officials.”
The Howard Jarvis Taxpayers Association keeps an eye on the use of public funds for political advocacy. “I think most taxpayers would be very disappointed to learn the extent to which their taxpayers are being spent in Sacramento to lobby for higher taxes,” the group’s president, Jon Coupal, told CalMatters on Wednesday.
Local governments can take a few paths to advocacy in the state Capitol, though some employ a mixed approach. They can dispatch their elected and appointed leaders to Sacramento, hire their own in-house lobbyists, or they can join coalitions such as the League of California Cities, which spent about $3 million lobbying last session, or the California State Association of Counties, which spent $1.4 million.
There has “always been a push-pull between what is deemed a municipal responsibility and what is an issue of statewide concern,” Jason Rhine, the league’s interim advocacy director, wrote in an email.
Rhine said the group ends up tracking about two-thirds of all bills introduced, and that its policy experts monitor each bill and its potential impact. The league’s lobbying priorities are “informed entirely by our members and our board,” he said.
Or local governments can hire lobbying firms, which can be especially helpful for smaller cities to keep track of the many bills that go through the Legislature. For Tulare, a smaller, more conservative city in the Central Valley, lobbyists help give it more of a voice in the Democratic super-majority state Legislature, said City Manager Marc Mondell. It has spent nearly $32,000 this year.
“The large policy issues in any state are typically driven by the party that's in control, and by the largest metropolitan areas — so the Los Angeleses, the San Franciscos, the Sacramentos,” he said. “A 70,000-person city like Tulare is not going to have much of a voice. So one of the ways you try to amplify that voice is by having a lobbyist.”
So far in 2023, the city of Los Angeles reported spending more than $1 million on lobbying, though that doesn’t include lobbying by some departments such as the city attorney. San Francisco Mayor London Breed’s office reported spending $184,000 on lobbyists, though the Board of Supervisors reported no spending. That may reflect that two of the current legislators representing San Francisco were recently supervisors. Sacramento reported more than $450,000.
Some local officials believe that hiring lobbyists gives them more detailed input on bills in a way that just issuing a position statement doesn’t.
“They can not only speak intelligently on the issues, but, if they have an opportunity, they can also reiterate a position that we may have taken on a piece of legislation and just sort of remind our legislators that we need their help, and we're watching their voting record,” said Joe Calabrigo, town manager in Danville in the East Bay.
Some cities lobby specifically on bills authored by lawmakers who represent their districts, at times at their prompting, if the issues fit their framework. Danville backed Assemblymember Rebecca Bauer-Kahan’s bills on mental health, such as the 988 suicide and crisis lifeline bill signed into law last year.
“If we expect the Assemblymember to hear us if we have issues or concerns with any bill, we also want to be there to back her up when she's doing something that we think is positive,” he said. “When you have that kind of a working relationship back and forth with your legislators, it's a two-way street.”
Still, if their leaders already have good working relationships with legislators, a city may want to avoid the expense of hiring lobbyists. “It’s kind of like a gamble … it’s going to work better in some years than others,” Payson said.
The full picture of what local governments lobby on isn’t known because they’re only required to file reports with the Secretary of State’s office each quarter when they have contracted with a lobbying firm. Cities also have to report salaries of in-house lobbyists who spend at least one-third of their time directly advocating for regulation or legislation.
And aside from which bills were lobbied on the most and how much was spent, the filings that are required don’t offer a very clear picture — including whether the cities support or oppose the bills.
Take Senate Bill 403, the caste discrimination bill by Sen. Aisha Wahab, a Democrat from Fremont. According to the reports, the bill is being lobbied on by the Central Valley cities of Farmersville, Kingsburg, Reedley, Tulare, Turlock and Soledad, as well as Morro Bay on the Central Coast.
All seven cities are clients of Townsend Public Affairs, a self-described top 10 lobbying firm that represents about 70 local agencies.
Asked why they had chosen to lobby on the caste bill — among other bills on their Townsend list that included land use, water protections and government operations — officials in four cities that responded did not know. They checked, and reported back the same information: If the city asks about a bill and what its impacts might be, that gets reported.
But that’s counter to instructions from the state’s Fair Political Practices Commission, which states that lobbyist employers must report “the legislative bills and state agency administrative actions which you ‘actively’ influenced or attempted to influence, or your lobbyist or any lobbying firm with which you contract ‘actively’ influenced or attempted to influence on your behalf during the calendar quarter.”
The instructions explicitly define what “actively’ lobbied” means, and say not to list bills “which are only being watched or monitored, or those which you have not attempted to influence during the reporting period.”
Townsend did not respond to repeated requests for comment. On its website, it promises a “comprehensive approach” of tracking bills, building relationships with legislators and agency officials and developing a strategy. “Without a strong presence and legislative agenda in Sacramento, it is difficult to make your voice heard,” the firm says.
But the caste discrimination bill isn’t the only one that seemed outside a local government's purview and priorities:
The state’s Franchise Tax Board, which is responsible for some oversight of lobbying spending, has fallen short on enforcement of auditing lobbying reports. The board has said it needs more staff to keep up and is seeking more money.
The lack of audits is problematic, said Richard Miadich, chairperson of the Fair Political Practices Commission, which enforces laws governing campaign finance and lobbying.
Transparency carries additional weight when it’s local governments and agencies doing the lobbying with taxpayer money, he said.
“These local governments feel compelled to do it because of the complexity of the issues that are being considered by the state Legislature.… So it's not surprising that they are leveraging the expertise of both in-house and outside lobbying firms to try and have their voice be heard in the legislature,” Miadich said.
“So I don't think there's anything inherently wrong with what they're doing. I think as long as they're being transparent about it and being accurate in what they're doing … that is the most important thing from our standpoint.”
According to Miadich, issues like typos might be addressed with a warning letter to keep better records. Other violations that indicate an agency is trying to hide something would be sent to the commission’s enforcement division.
The Political Reform Act of 1974 gives cities, counties and other districts the authority to lobby the state and federal governments and individual lawmakers and officials on behalf of their constituents, but there is no statewide rule on how they disclose what they lobby on to residents, or if they have to collect any public comments.
That means the process varies by city. Some just report lobbying activity on their forms filed with the Secretary of State each quarter, while others adopt a legislative agenda each year that they discuss and vote on in a public meeting, then lobby throughout the year on bills that fit the adopted criteria. Some post legislative and lobbying activity on their websites, and might also discuss bills at public meetings.
A 70,000-person city like Tulare is not going to have much of a voice. So one of the ways you try to amplify that voice is by having a lobbyist.
Officials from Tulare and Danville said that they don’t typically see a lot of engagement from the public on state bills.
That was far from the case on July 18 in Cupertino, though, when the City Council spent the majority of a five-hour meeting, including 90 minutes of public comment, on whether the city should take a position on the caste bill.
Despite most council members opposing the bill during the debate, they opted to pass a broader resolution that pledged to “vigorously oppose any law that could, intentionally or unintentionally, result in racial or ethnic profiling, violations of civil rights, or stigmatizing any segment of our society.”
Tina Kapoor, Cupertino’s deputy city manager, said the goal was to provide a platform for community members, whether or not it impacts the bill’s fate.
“In Cupertino, we really do pride ourselves on engagement and transparency,” she said. “We strive for that.”
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Huntington Beach nonprofit Bolsa Chica Conservancy is fundraising to replace equipment damaged in recent coastal flooding. It's anticipating the need for more repairs, as the flooding forecast around Thanksgiving and Christmas could be even worse.
What was damaged: Bolsa Chica Conservancy’s executive director, Carissa Macias, said that despite its efforts, a pump used for its aquarium shorted out due to water damage and needed to be replaced. (The aquarium houses a tide pool, various fish species and a shark.) The conservancy has since replaced the pump and taken measures to protect the surviving equipment.
Future risk: The organization’s Interpretive Center, which hosts its aquarium and exhibits about the region’s ecology, is in a modular trailer-style building. “The threat that we are concerned about is that if we get enough water flow underneath the buildings and saturating the soil underneath the buildings, that it's going to compromise the stability of the buildings,” Macias said. Regardless of whether that happens, Macias said she expects supplies will be needed to divert floodwater and make more repairs.
Why it matters: Current forecasts show that high tides in late November could be up to 7 feet — higher than those seen in October, without taking into account other factors that could make the tides even higher. Macias said that traditionally, their buildings haven’t been affected by coastal flooding other than water getting into some parking spaces.
About the organization: The Bolsa Chica Conservancy is an educational nonprofit that aims to protect over 1,300 acres of coastal habitat that offer up-close views of some 200 species of birds. The conservancy offers free programming to teach people about wetlands of Southern California, nearly two-thirds of which have been lost to development and parking.
How to support: The conservancy said it may need volunteers in the weeks ahead, but the best way to help is by donating, which you can do here.
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Dan Shimell, an attorney and a new face to local politics, is Santa Ana’s next mayor after an unexpected win against incumbent Valerie Amezcua.
Why it matters: Aside from Shimell, progressives Sandra de Anda and Isuri S. Ramos are also projected to win City Council seats, deepening the Santa Ana City Council’s progressive bench.
Read on … for what this race says about Santa Ana politics.
Dan Shimell, an attorney and a new face in local politics, is Santa Ana’s next mayor after a shocking win against incumbent Valerie Amezcua. His win has become one of the most surprising upsets in Orange County’s general election and marks a shift for a city that previously elected its first Latina mayor.
Amezcua congratulated Shimell on social media late Monday night after the last round of election results nearly doubled Shimell’s lead. As of Tuesday night, Shimell held a 5-point lead over Amezcua. Amezcua did not respond to LAist’s requests for comment.
“It has been the honor of my life to serve the people of Santa Ana,” Amezcua said in a post. “Together, we have accomplished great things. We invested in our neighborhoods, expanded opportunity for families, and strengthened the services that make Santa Ana home. Our work was never about one person. It was about all of us moving this community forward.”
Aside from Shimell, progressives Sandra de Anda and Isuri S. Ramos are also projected to win City Council seats, deepening the Santa Ana City Council’s progressive bench.
A flashpoint in Amezcua’s re-election campaign was during the U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement raids that rattled much of Southern California, including Santa Ana, Orange County’s only sanctuary city. The raids sparked protests that drew a heavy law enforcement response from Santa Ana police, including rubber bullets and tear gas.
In Amezcua’s first public response, she accused protesters of inciting chaos and violence. She later walked back her comments in a city statement, saying most protesters were demonstrating peacefully and that she did not support the raids.
Shimell told LAist he thinks Santa Ana voters, especially young and first-time voters, went to the polls to vote for those who can't.
“Those who have been or might in the future be impacted by immigration policy and enforcement,” Shimell added. “Taking a bold stance on immigration and police accountability seemed to resonate with voters I spoke with, and stood in stark contrast to the [police]-backed candidates who remained largely silent on those issues.”
Orange County Supervisor Vicente Sarmiento served as mayor of the city from 2020 to 2022, and his current district includes Santa Ana. Sarmiento told LAist that the results were surprising but reflected the change voters want to see in their elected officials.
“I think the underlying message is that money and establishment conventional politics no longer is the formula to success in a campaign in the city,” Sarmiento said. “It's really the influence of people and voters over money. That's really the theme here.”
Santa Ana City Councilmember Thai Viet Phan told LAist that the race results were somewhat surprising — but spoke to a larger trend.
“[In] the election results throughout the country … you saw a very leftward shift, with not just candidates but also just how voters voted,” Phan said. “I think that was reflected here in Santa Ana on the council.”
Shimell raised about $28,500 in his campaign for mayor. Amezcua raised more than $75,000 and received more than $200,000 in outside support — more than half of that came from the Santa Ana Police Officers Association.
Mike Moodian, a public policy professor at Chapman University, told LAist that in many ways, the races capture the zeitgeist of Santa Ana.
“Here we saw that there was a police union-backed group, and there was a resistance to that,” Moodian said. “People might have seen the incumbent mayor as part of a police union-backed establishment."
He explained that voters may have looked at Shimell as a fresh face who can represent more people and that the city is experiencing a deeper progressive shift.
“I find the residents of Santa Ana tend to be much more involved and engaged in local politics than most other cities in Orange County. So you also have a well-informed, engaged citizenry that showed up, and the voices were heard in Santa Ana,” Moodian said.
Moodian said Amezcua may have lost support from some voters because they were unsatisfied with her response to immigration enforcement.
Ballots are still being counted. The OC Registrar of Voters posts updates every day, except Sundays, at 5 p.m. Election results will be certified by Dec. 3. You can find updates on key measures and other races here.
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South Asians, especially those in the Little Bangladesh ethnic enclave, are celebrating Nithya Raman’s election as mayor of Los Angeles.
Invisible constituents: Nazmul Chaudhry, the owner of Deshi Food, a restaurant and grocery store in Little Bangladesh, says they are happy for Raman’s election because no other mayoral candidate has spent time in the historic ethnic enclave the way she did this fall. Mayor-elect Raman is of Indian descent and an immigrant. When she takes office, she will be the first South Asian mayor of Los Angeles.
Overlooked concerns: For seven years, Chaudhry has been trying to get a city official’s attention to fix the cracked sidewalk in front of his store. Nothing has been done about it. He hopes Raman will finally get it done.
Shift away from identity politics: Raman’s Indian background was a feature of her campaign, but it was “not the central thesis,” said Sara Sadhwani, associate professor of politics at Pomona College. “ When the economy is bad, identity slips away as the top issue on someone's mind,” she said.
For seven years, Nazmul Chaudhry has been trying to get the city of Los Angeles to fix a broken sidewalk in front of his store.
Chaudhry owns Deshi Food, a restaurant and grocery store in Little Bangladesh. Before I could even begin our interview, he led me to the front of his store to show me the sidewalk that pedestrians sidestep and electric scooter riders slow down around.
He said he’s tried to get the attention of city officials, but nothing has been done.
He’s hoping that will soon change. He said then-candidate Nithya Raman spent time in the historic enclave just north of Koreatown this fall, talking with community members about their problems. For the first time since he moved to the United States in 1989, Chaudhry is excited about a mayoral election.
“Everybody's happy because we've never seen anyone [come] like that directly to us,” Chaudhry said.
Mayor-elect Raman is of Indian descent and an immigrant. When she takes office, she will be the first South Asian mayor of Los Angeles. Chaudhry is proud of that distinction. But what means more to him is that Raman spent time walking the streets of Little Bangladesh, visiting businesses and speaking to community members about their concerns. Chaudhry said that, because of that, he asked all his customers and family members to vote for Raman. At dinner parties, Chaudhry said, Bengalis would share how they were excited to vote for Raman in this election.
In the Little Bangladesh area, vote returns to date show Raman with a 2-to-1 margin over Mayor Karen Bass.
"Hopefully she's gonna take care of the city," Chaudhry said.
His business has been hit hard after federal immigration raids ramped up in Southern California. People are afraid to leave their homes for fear of being taken by U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement. And for those who do come to his store, he said, they are met with increased prices because of tariffs imposed by President Donald Trump's administration on imported goods.
"Everybody's suffering actually these days," Chaudhry said. “If you see, Nov. 3 is a huge change because people [are] fed up."
Chaudhry also said city services don’t do a good job keeping the streets clean. So he takes it upon himself to pick up trash in front of his shop.
A few weeks before Election Day, Raman posted a social media video from Little Bangladesh addressing the trash along the street.
His relatives in New York told Chaudhry that New York City Mayor Zohran Mamdani, also of Indian descent, has “changed the whole city.” He’s hoping for some of that change in Los Angeles when Raman takes office in December.
While Raman’s Indian background was a feature of her campaign, it was “not the central thesis,” said Sara Sadhwani, an associate professor of politics at Pomona College and a senior researcher with AAPI Data.
In 2020, when Kamala Harris, also of Indian descent, was running for vice president, Sadhwani said, she conducted research on Indian Americans who wanted to see more representation in politics. In 2024, some of them turned away from Harris.
“When the economy is bad, identity slips away as the top issue on someone's mind,” she said.
Identity politics, Sadhwani said, was important in 2008 when the nation elected the first Black president, Barack Obama.
“ We're ushering in a new political generation of millennials and Gen Z; diversity is just expected at this point amongst a vast majority of Americans,” she said, highlighting how at the last census more people identified as multiracial.
Nationally too, Sadhwani said, thec ountry is seeing a shift. South Asians have gone from “model minority” to “governing minority.”
”The old script was that for Indian Americans, for South Asians, that being that quiet professional is what success meant,” she said. “When we look at Raman and also Mamdani, they're fighting for executive power in very visible, very messy city politics, and they won not by following the rules, but they won by challenging the status quo.”
That idea resonates with Faizah Malik, managing attorney for housing justice at Public Counsel and a former L.A. City Council candidate.
“When we were growing up, our parents said, ‘Just keep your head down, go to school, get educated, make a nice life for your family, and that's it,’” she said. “Politics was not really part of the conversation, but I think what we're seeing is that we can run for office, we can win by being our full selves.”
This is an exciting time, she said, for “South Asian political empowerment,” with Raman set to join Mamdani in leading the country’s two largest cities.
Malik said that, as a housing advocate, she cares about Raman’s fight “to build more housing around the city that people can afford, her fight to keep renters in their homes, to prevent homelessness, her fight to try and really solve our homelessness crisis but also be efficient with our public dollars.”
Nikita Chaudhry, an actor and political organizer, wants to see Raman revitalize L.A.’s film industry, “to call the city the home of Hollywood again.”
“Having that kind of representation and knowing that it exists is really exciting because I think and hope it will activate South Asian Americans of all ages to get more involved in their communities,” Chaudhry said.
Raman's and Mamdani’s victories were years in the making, Chaudhry said: from organizing in their communities to holding other elected positions to engaging voters who are otherwise ignored by elected officials. And she hopes that it will inspire other South Asians to become more involved in their communities.
“If you're feeling activated, if you're feeling excited, that's great," she said. "Take that energy and the time and the skills and the specificity of what fires you up towards your local organization, towards your neighborhood, towards your community.”
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As the race to represent L.A.’s Council District 9 remains too close to call, candidate Estuardo Mazariegos’ campaign has accused the campaign of Jose Ugarte, the front-runner, of potential ballot tampering.
The allegations: The Mazariegos campaign made the accusations Monday, saying it had filed a complaint with the Los Angeles County Registrar-Recorder/County Clerk. They alleged that representatives for the Ugarte campaign had collected voters’ ballots to drop off without signing the appropriate line identifying the individual who returned the ballot.
What happens now: Mike Sanchez, a spokesperson for the L.A. County Registrar-Recorder/County Clerk, said his office had forwarded the news release to the District Attorney for review.
What election law says: Sanchez pointed to the California Elections Code, which says that a “ballot shall not be disqualified solely because the person authorized to return it did not provide on the identification envelope their name or signature.” Under California law, a voter can authorize another person to return their mail-in ballot — an approach also called ballot harvesting.
Read on…for the Ugarte campaign’s response.
As the race to represent L.A.’s Council District 9 remains too close to call, candidate Estuardo Mazariegos’ campaign has accused the campaign of Jose Ugarte, the front-runner, of potential ballot tampering.
The Mazariegos campaign made the accusations Monday, saying it had filed a complaint with the Los Angeles County Registrar-Recorder/County Clerk. In a press release, the campaign alleged that representatives for the Ugarte campaign had collected voters’ ballots to drop off without signing the appropriate line identifying the individual who returned the ballot.
In one case, Mazariegos’ team accused Ugarte campaigners of filling out a ballot on a voter’s behalf without her knowledge of who she was voting for.
“Taking people’s ballots, filling them out, and not following legal voter assistance guidelines in a district that has faced so much disenfranchisement is disgusting,” Mazariegos said in a statement.
Mike Sanchez, a spokesperson for the L.A. County Registrar-Recorder/County Clerk, said his office had forwarded the news release to the district attorney for review. He also pointed to the California Elections Code, which says that a “ballot shall not be disqualified solely because the person authorized to return it did not provide on the identification envelope their name or signature.”
Under California law, a voter can authorize another person to return their mail-in ballot — an approach also called ballot harvesting.
Justin Levitt, a professor of constitutional law at Loyola Marymount University, told AirTalk Tuesday that there is no legal limit on the number of ballots an individual can turn in on others’ behalf, so long as they aren’t being compensated per ballot returned.
“Even if there were some sort of administrative wrongdoing, as long as there's no indication of fraud with the ballot itself, those ballots will all be counted,” he said.
Levitt said, however, that signing a ballot and then handing it to someone else to fill out would be illegal.
“ To the extent that there are allegations now that the DA may investigate, I suspect that's what they'll be focusing on,” Levitt continued.
The Mazariegos campaign also sent a collection of photos to the press, including one of a campaigner, USC student Amir King, returning a stack of ballots at a ballot drop box.
Ugarte’s campaign responded to the accusations by pointing to a post by King on Instagram in which he accused the Mazariegos campaign of bullying him and making false claims about him.
“Why is he attacking me? For participating in our democracy, as is my right under California state law and for helping others participate in democracy, as is their right under California state law,” King said in the post.
As of Tuesday morning, just under 300 ballots separate Ugarte and Mazariegos, with 44,000 ballots left to count in L.A. County. It’s not clear how many ballots in Council District 9 are left to count.
