How a gym, a farmers market and MMA fighters landed millions in Newsom’s last budget

$29 million to renovate a gym at a Santa Barbara college in Senate President Pro Tem Monique Limón’s district.

$13 million for a farmers market and food innovation hub in wealthy Marin County, where Gov. Gavin Newsom lives.

$3 million to renovate the San Jose Giants’ minor league baseball stadium in Santa Clara County.

California lawmakers doled out $1.3 billion in handouts for their legislative districts with almost zero public scrutiny or input during an annual budgeting process that allows legislators and the governor to hand-pick funding recipients in private.

The money, often known as earmarks or “pork-barrel projects,” is commonplace in California and elsewhere, even in years when the state faces huge budget deficits. The practice allows lawmakers to tout their accomplishments and woo voters.

The earmark process is so secretive that few know why some projects make the cut and others don’t, raising equity and transparency concerns, even among lawmakers. Critics argue that it allows elected officials to play favorites.

“(It) is done all behind closed doors,” said Julie Baker, CEO of California for the Arts. “It is somewhat inequitable … to have a grant making process that everyone’s competing over and then have a process that’s non-transparent.”

Here’s how earmarks work: The leaders in the California Assembly and Senate, both Democrats, allow their colleagues to submit private wish-lists for funds with a suggested spending cap the leaders set. Then billions of dollars for hundreds of projects suddenly appear in a bill heard just days before lawmakers leave for the year, leaving little time for the public to weigh in. Lawmakers don’t put their names on the earmarks, making it hard to identify who requested what.

This year, Limón loosely capped Senate Democrats’ requests at $5 million each, said Sen. Dave Cortese, a San Jose Democrat who secured $6.5 million for his district. Lawmakers do not share their funding requests with each other, he said — at least not before they take credit for them in press releases or ribbon-cutting ceremonies.

“It's a confidential process between each office and leadership,” he told CalMatters.

But even he bemoaned the opaque nature of it.

“Why couldn’t we do this process a little earlier and get our requests into subcommittees so the public could just see what’s going on?” Cortese said. “There’s nothing to be ashamed of here.”

‘Why did I spend all that time and energy?’

The vast majority of the funding goes to urban counties such as Los Angeles and San Francisco, which are represented by powerful Democrats, and to other pet projects in Democratic leaders’ districts. Areas that are represented by Republicans typically get little to nothing.

This year, 17 counties, mostly lower population rural counties represented by Republicans, did not appear to receive any earmark funding.

“The leadership decides the major portions of the budget,” said Sen. Roger Niello, a Roseville Republican and vice chair of the Senate budget committee. “That is frustrating, but it is the system that we have.”

CalMatters compiled the earmarks in the budget measure Assembly Bill 113 and used Digital Democracy’s Find your legislators tool to determine which county and legislative district each project falls in.

More than $550 million — 42% of all earmarks identified by CalMatters — went to non-governmental organizations, mostly nonprofits, according to the analysis. It includes at least $93 million for arts projects, museums and murals, as well as funding for immigration services, land conservation and housing and homelessness.

The rest went to city and county governments for infrastructure including parks, community pools, wildfire mitigation and road repairs.

CalMatters reached out to Newsom, Limón, Assembly Speaker Robert Rivas and more than 20 other lawmakers to ask for a list of their funding requests. Few provided them.

Newsom, Rivas and Limón declined to answer questions about specific projects but told CalMatters in general statements that they are proud of the earmarks.

In a statement, Newsom spokesperson Tara Gallegos said the funding in this year’s budget will “make a lasting, meaningful difference in communities across California.”

“From supporting our natural resources, and improving recreation centers to strengthening the arts and expanding food access, these additional investments reflect a continued commitment to building stronger, healthier, and more vibrant communities for all Californians,” the statement read.

Proponents of earmarks say they empower state lawmakers to prioritize projects with urgent needs in their districts instead of funneling the money through lengthy grant applications. The earmarks are also just a sliver of the state’s $352 billion budget, they noted.

“My message to (state agencies) is, ‘You guys take the other 99.9% and leave this fraction of a percent to us,’” Cortese said. “I’ll help target some real need in these districts that you are never going to see in an office in Sacramento.”

Lawmakers gather on the Assembly floor during the final days of session at the state Capitol in Sacramento on Aug. 31, 2026.

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Fred Greaves

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CalMatters

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But critics bashed state leaders for finding $1.3 billion for earmarks when the state has struggled to backfill major federal cuts to healthcare. State leaders this year relied on windfall revenue from an AI-driven economic boom, some tax increases and suspending payments to schools and state reserves to balance the budget and delay deep healthcare cuts to next year.

“They’ve said, ‘Look … there's no extra money to spend,’ and then a half billion dollars comes out in the last 48 hours of the session,” said Geoff Green, CEO of CalNonprofits, which represents thousands of nonprofits statewide. “For entities that were working through what we considered normal processes through the entirety of the session, to then see this come out at the last second, it feels like, well, why did I spend all that time and energy?”

Susan Shelley, vice president of communications at the Howard Jarvis Taxpayers Association, accused lawmakers of handing money out to their supporters at the last moment.

“From a taxpayer perspective, we don’t have the money for this,” Shelley said.

Dance troupes, museums and MMA fighters

The biggest allocation this year was $125 million to help buy and transform a defunct Alameda County horse track into a public park — a Newsom priority. Assembly Appropriations Committee Chair Buffy Wicks and Senate Housing Committee Chair Jesse Arreguín, both Oakland Democrats, championed the funding.

Some earmarks benefited groups with wealthy backers. The state gave $25 million to the Innovative Genomics Institute, a UC Berkeley-based genome engineering research facility in Wicks and Arreguín’s districts whose funders include the Chan Zuckerberg Initiative, the Li Ka Shing Foundation and the United States Department of Defense.

Other earmarks include:

• $20 million to help build a facility for the Jewish Family and Children’s Services Holocaust Center in San Francisco, which is backed by dozens of foundations and endowment funds. Executive director Anita Friedman said the endowments only fund roughly 2% of its budget.
• $15 million to renovate the police and firefighters memorials in Sacramento’s Capital Park
• $1 million for the state’s retirement fund for mixed martial arts fighters, currently funded through ticket and vanity plate sales.

Another $86 million went to arts projects, museums and dance troupes — more than 40% of them in San Francisco.

That includes $3 million to the ODC Dance Company, whose founder Brenda Way was inducted into the California Hall of Fame by Newsom and first partner Jennifer Siebel Newsom; $2.8 million to the Center for the Art of Translation backed by Bloomberg Philanthropies and the Hawthornden Foundation; and $400,000 to the San Francisco Mime Troupe.

It’s unclear who advocated for those earmarks. Democratic San Francisco Assemblymember Matt Haney said he did not request any of them. Sen. Scott Wiener and Assemblymember Catherine Stefani, both San Francisco Democrats, did not respond to requests for comment from CalMatters.

Green, of CalNonprofit, said he worries the money is not reaching those with the most acute needs, but those with the best relationships with lawmakers.

“The capacity of a large, well-staffed institute to access resources is just a completely different universe than a smaller, volunteer, community-based organization in some more rural parts of the state,” he said, adding that the recipients appear to be “folks who have relationships already.”

Relationships matter

Relationships do matter to Cortese. Among the projects he requested funding for, only one — Ashes to Beauty, which received $750,000 — is relatively new to him. He said he’s known the other nonprofits he sought funding for dating to his days as a San Jose city councilmember in the 2000s.

“If some new group came along and they seemed hopeful … but I didn’t know of them very well, I hadn’t seen their work too much in the community, I’m probably not going to entrust them with $1 million or $800,000,” he said. “It’s not a matter of any kind of favoritism.”

Cortese said his office keeps a long list of requests for funding and considers which groups are “lifting up the greater good of the community.”

Cortese asked for and received $2.1 million for First-Tee Silicon Valley, which teaches golf and leadership to high-risk kids in marginalized neighborhoods; $2.6 million to environmental nonprofit Our City Forest; and $1 million for Amigos de Guadalupe, an immigration services nonprofit.

Several earmarks went to nonprofits with ties to the governor. The Redwood High School Foundation, which funds Newsom’s high school alma mater, received $4 million for a “capital project.” Another $250,000 went to Kiss the Ground, a regenerative agriculture nonprofit whose 2020 documentary featured Newsom.

A total of $3.86 million went to the Alliance for Community Empowerment, a Los Angeles nonprofit that serves trauma and poverty survivors. Its founder, Michelle Miranda, sat on a board of community advisers to Assemblymember Jesse Gabriel, an Encino Democrat who chairs the budget committee.

Gabriel’s spokesperson Alicia Isaacs-Lee did not address specific projects but said Assembly Democrats fought for “smart, targeted, one-time investments” in healthcare, food banks, legal service providers, fire departments and nonprofits.

Homeless shelter City of Refuge Sacramento received $1.8 million to open two more homes to serve children, co-founder Rachelle Ditmore told CalMatters. She is a close friend of Sen. Angelique Ashby, a Sacramento Democrat who helped the shelter secure $8 million in 2023. Democratic Assemblymember Maggy Krell, who also represents the area, donated $10,000 from her campaign account to Ditmore’s nonprofit in August 2025.

But Ditmore told CalMatters that the governor, who signed an executive order on human trafficking at City of Refuge, may have requested the funding this year.

“This is an authentic place and I’m grateful for history, but also love that this was directed by other eyes who were able to see the value,” Ditmore told CalMatters in an email.

Sen. Lola Smallwood-Cuevas, a Los Angeles Democrat, secured $13.5 million in earmarks this year, including $500,000 for the Los Angeles Black Workers Center, which she co-founded, according to a list provided by her spokesperson Paulette Thornton.

The center is the only one in the area serving Black workers, and the funding will connect Black residents to quality jobs, Thornton said.

Rural, Republican-led counties get less

Los Angeles County, where nearly a quarter of all Californians live, received at least $300 million in earmarks this year — just under a quarter of the total and more than any other county, data analysis shows.

Santa Barbara County, Limón’s home county with a population of 450,000, received at least $72.8 million in earmarks, more than any other similarly sized county. Republican-dominated Tulare County, by comparison, received just $200,000 for its 485,000 residents.

The contrast reflects the power of leadership in Sacramento, said Jack Pitney, a political science professor at Claremont McKenna College.

“Part of the power … is the ability to get benefits for the district, and it’s not surprising that the legislative leaders tend to do pretty well in that respect,” Pitney said.

Last year, a quarter of the earmarks CalMatters identified — more than $100 million — went to the district of former Senate President Pro Tem Mike McGuire, a Santa Rosa Democrat.

This year, CalMatters identified $83.7 million in earmarks benefiting Limón’s district, including the $29 million gym renovation. Others include:

• $6 million to acquire and rehabilitate a historical building that housed nonprofit La Casa de la Raza
• $5 million to restore Pershing Park in Santa Barbara
• $3.3 million for a community pool in the city of Carpinteria
• $3 million for a high school community aquatics center.

Rivas’ district received just over $10 million in earmarks, including $2.8 million for a regional soccer complex in Salinas, $2.5 million for a recreational center in King City and $525,000 for arts and culture in Watsonville. His district overlaps with that of Sen. John Laird, a Santa Cruz Democrat who chairs the budget committee.

Laird’s district received $36.9 million, including:

• $10 million for expanding public access to the PG&E-owned North Ranch property
• $618,000 for highway traffic enforcement on the Bixby Bridge
• $250,000 to the San Luis Obispo Beaver Brigade, a nonprofit advocating for beavers.

Gabriel’s district saw at least $7 million in earmarks, including $2.5 million to Mid Valley YMCA, $500,000 to Los Angeles youth film nonprofit Kids in the Spotlight and $200,000 to social services group Family Rescue Center.

Niello told CalMatters that GOP senators were only given $1 million each in earmarks to distribute.

“That means that I’m not able to do enough for my district (as) Dave Cortese is for his, and we both have the same size districts. Is that fair? To me, it’s not.”

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