Lawmakers this year allocated $400,000 to a mime troupe in San Francisco, $250,000 to a San Luis Obispo nonprofit advocating for beavers and $500,000 to a nonprofit benefitting Los Angeles youth interested in filmmaking.
It’s all part of an opaque budgeting process, known as pork-barrel spending, that’s shielded from public scrutiny, writes CalMatters’ Yue Stella Yu. Lawmakers earmarking money to fund projects that benefit their districts isn’t unique to California, but critics of the practice are skeptical that taxpayer money is going to those who need it most — especially as the state struggles to backfill major federal cuts to healthcare.
Communities represented by Democrats claimed the lion’s share of the $1.3 billion in pork-barrel handouts this year. Santa Barbara County — Senate President Pro Tem Monique Limón’s home county with a population of 450,000 — received at least $72.8 million in earmarks, including $29 million to renovate a gym at a Santa Barbara college.
Marin County, Gov. Gavin Newsom’s home county, received $13 million for a farmers market and food innovation hub. The state also gave $25 million to the Innovative Genomics Institute, a UC Berkeley-based research facility, which already counts the Chan Zuckerberg Initiative and the U.S. Department of Defense as its wealthy backers.
But 17 counties this year, mostly lower population rural counties led by Republican legislators, did not appear to receive any earmark funding. The red-leaning Tulare County, with its 485,000 residents comparable to Santa Barbara County, received just $200,000.
Limón also loosely capped Senate Democrats’ requests for earmarks at $5 million each, said Sen. Dave Cortese, a San José Democrat who secured $6.5 million for his district. But Sen. Roger Niello, a Roseville Republican, told CalMatters that GOP senators were only given $1 million each.
- Niello: “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.”
Join CalMatters and the UCR School of Public Policy on Sept. 24 in Riverside for a conversation about our investigation into the Riverside County Sheriff’s Department seizure of mail ballots and what it means for future elections. Register today.
Other Stories You Should Know
Exclusive report on military-grade guns at schools
Nine California public school districts are stashing military-grade equipment without fully disclosing their inventories to the public, writes Phoebe Huss of CalMatters’ College Journalism Network.
State law requires schools to annually disclose how many military-grade weapons — including semi-automatic rifles, less-lethal launchers and smoke grenades — they buy and use. Police at five school districts have not disclosed their inventories to the public this year. Another two published updated inventory reports after CalMatters inquired about it. And the final two released reports for the first time in 2026, after owning the weapons for years.
At one school board meeting in Sacramento County in May, some parents and teachers pushed back against what they see is an over-militarization of school police departments. But proponents of the district’s military arsenal argued that school police should take any means necessary to stop serious threats.
- Dean Broussard, the CEO of a security services company: “If the time comes, and I hope and pray it never happens, that these officers need to go into a shooting incident, and they don’t have the tools, and they call for (local police) backup, and officers are 15, 20 minutes away … that’s not good.”
Supreme Court shoots down Trump’s mail-in voting limits
The U.S. Supreme Court on Monday rejected, for now, President Donald Trump’s efforts to limit mail-in voting ahead of the Nov. 3 election through new rules issued by the U.S. Postal Service.
In his concurring opinion, Justice Brett Kavanaugh left open the possibility that the postal service does have the authority to implement the rules, but that it “would be arbitrary and capricious” to do so during the 2026 elections because states and local elections officials won’t have enough time to comply.
Newsom applauded the high court’s decision, saying that mail-in voting is “safe and accessible.” California Attorney General Rob Bonta — who joined more than 20 other attorneys general to sue the Trump administration and stop the restrictions — said the stakes of the lawsuit “could not have been higher.”
- Bonta, in a statement: “In California and several other states, mail voting is the primary way elections are conducted. Had this rule been allowed to take effect, the consequences would have been catastrophic.”
California counties will begin sending out ballots the first week of October.
And lastly: Why CalPERS is talking about AI apocalypse
At a Monday board meeting for the California Public Employees’ Retirement System, fears over artificial intelligence briefly took center stage. The discussion came days after a researcher for the AI company Anthropic resigned from their post and said that leading AI companies could endanger human life by the end of this decade. “This is humanity,” the board president said. Read more from CalMatters’ Adam Ashton.
California Voices
CalMatters columnist Dan Walters: The company that owns The Sacramento Bee and other papers said last week that it will make very deep staff cuts — marking another sad episode in the decline of a once-great newspaper.
Community organizations are treated as temporary partners instead of permanent infrastructure, and the state should step in to help provide sustained funding so organizations can continue to serve vulnerable populations, writes Kaci Patterson, founder and chief architect of Social Good Solutions and of Black Equity Collective.
Other things worth your time:
Newsom tells CNN he won’t run for president if former VP Harris runs in 2028 // CNN (free)
The future of retirement? Work until you die // Marketwatch (free)
States, including CA, and cities sue Trump administration over policy restricting green card benefits // The Guardian (free)
CA lawmakers urge criminal penalties, emergency legislation to rein in unchecked AI // Los Angeles Times (paywall)
‘I did not find them’: GOP official in CA apologizes for voting fraud claims // SFGATE (free)
‘Full-on backlash’ against data centers occurring, as San José leaders court them // KQED (free)
A teen autopsy marks the arrival of a deadly drug in SF // The New York Times (gift link)
What to know about West Nile virus in the Sacramento area as CA cases hit 5-year high // Abridged (free)
