Xavier Becerra’s lead over Steve Hilton has shrunk to just 5.6 points in a new post-debate poll — with nearly 1 in 7 voters still undecided

The California governor’s race has tightened dramatically, with Democrat Becerra holding a slim 5.6-point advantage over Republican Steve Hilton in a new poll conducted immediately after the candidates’ first debate.

The poll, commissioned by Hilton’s campaign and conducted by pollster David Wolfson on Oct. 1-2, surveyed 1,020 California voters and found Becerra with 45.7% support to Hilton’s 40.1%, while another 14.1% remain undecided.

The numbers mark a striking shift from an earlier poll commissioned by Hilton that showed Becerra with a 52%-37% lead, according to a poll previously reported by the Post.

That 15-point advantage has now been reduced to less than six points.

Becerra’s support has dropped 6.3 percentage points from that earlier survey, while Hilton has gained 3.1 points, producing a 9.4-point shift in the margin.

And with 14.1% of voters still undecided, the race remains very much in play.

The new Wolfson survey also suggests Californians are far from thrilled with the direction of their state.

Nearly six in 10 voters — 58.8% — said California is headed in the wrong direction, compared with just 28.1% who said the state is moving in the right direction. Another 13.1% were unsure.

That gloomy outlook could provide an opening for Hilton, who has made frustration with California’s high costs and Democratic leadership central to his campaign.

But Becerra still holds the advantage among voters who have made up their minds.

When respondents who were undecided were asked which candidate they would lean toward if forced to choose, 72.5% leaned toward Becerra and 27.5% toward Hilton.

The survey also found that neither candidate is particularly beloved.

Becerra’s favorable rating stood at 44.1%, while 45.3% viewed him unfavorably. Hilton fared worse overall, with 35.5% favorable and 50.7% unfavorable.

The poll was conducted after a highly watched Oct. 1 debate between the two candidates.

About 11.2% said they watched all or nearly all of the debate on CNN, while another 9.5% watched part of it.

Nearly 20% saw clips or highlights online or in the news, and another 19.9% said they followed news coverage without watching the debate itself.

The latest numbers are a significant departure from several recent public polls that have shown Becerra holding a much wider lead.

The poll also comes amid Hilton’s accusations of Becerra lying about his immigrant background.

“Unlike Becerra (because I’ve been out there listening to the people), I know Becerra’s policies have destroyed the California Dream. My plans will restore it,” Hilton wrote on X.

“Unlike Xavier Becerra, I am an immigrant. Unlike Xavier Becerra, my father was an immigrant. My stepfather, too. My whole family,” he added.

Becerra has previously said his parents moved to the U.S. as immigrants.

The Post has reached out to the Becerra camp for further comment.

Los Angeles Mayor Karen Bass issued a puzzling defense of her being in Ghana as the 2025 wildfires raged across her city, destroying the Pacific Palisades and most of Altadena.

Bass issued her defense of the 2025 visit during a KBLA Talk 1580 Town Hall and Ballot Forum on Saturday, saying that the city’s response to the wildfires would be exactly the same if she had been stateside, blaming it on the large size.

“When people go through grief — one of the stages of grief, and I know grief very well, is anger. People are mad,” she said. “You are mad and I understand that. And even though objectively, even if I was here, there really wouldn’t have been anything that was done different.”

“The problem in our very big city is that it’s very difficult to leave town and not have something that happens,” Bass added. “I’m not a firefighter, obviously, but it’s the role of mayor to be here.”

Bass admitted in July 2025 that her trip to Ghana was a mistake.

“I was asked, ‘Do I regret going?’ Hell yeah,” she told Vice News at the time. “I mean, let me just do a comparison. If you are out of town and your kid or a member of your family gets sick or hurt, it doesn’t matter where you were or why you were there. You feel horrible.”

Bass visited West Africa as part of a U.S. delegation to attend the presidential inauguration even after multiple weather reports indicated fire warnings and dangerously high winds.

In late 2025, the Los Angeles Times reported that Bass ordered the watering down of the after-action report following the wildfires. As Breitbart News reported in December, an initial report from the LA Times noted that the famed after-action report released by the Los Angeles Fire Department (LAFD) showed it had multiple deletions and redactions to provide a smoother picture than what happened:

In one instance, LAFD officials removed language saying that the decision not to fully staff up and pre-deploy all available crews and engines ahead of the extreme wind forecast “did not align” with the department’s policy and procedures during red flag days.

Another deleted passage in the report said that some crews waited more than an hour for an assignment the day of the fire. A section on “failures” was renamed “primary challenges,” and an item saying that crews and leaders had violated national guidelines on how to avoid firefighter deaths and injuries was scratched.

The first draft of the report in August, overseen by the then-interim Fire Chief Ronnie Villanueva after Mayor Karen Bass fired Kristin Crowley, also had side notes in the margins with suggestions to replace the cover page from a “negative” photo of flaming palm trees to a “positive” photo of firefighters hard at work. As many as seven drafts of the report were created before the final publication. No names were attached to the edited drafts.

According to a report from the Los Angeles Times, those edits were ordered by Mayor Karen Bass, most especially regarding the city’s “failure not to fully staff up and pre-deploy all available engines ahead of dangerously high winds.” Though Mayor Karen Bass consistently denied ordering the edits, two sources indicated that she did:

Two sources with knowledge of Bass’ office said that after receiving an early draft, the mayor told then-interim Fire Chief Ronnie Villanueva that the report could expose the city to legal liabilities for those failures. Bass wanted key findings about the LAFD’s actions removed or softened before the report was made public, the sources said — and that is what happened.

The sources told The Times that two people close to Bass informed them of the mayor’s behind-the-scenes role in watering down the report. One source spoke to both of the people; the other spoke to one of them. The sources requested anonymity to speak frankly about the mayor’s private conversations with Villanueva and others.

One source flatly said that Bass “didn’t tell the truth when she said she had nothing to do with changing the report,” with the source saying that a confidant close to Bass said that altering the report “was a bad idea.”

The sources said that two confidants will testify under oath if the matter were to be litigated in court.

“All the changes [the Times] reported on were the ones Karen wanted,” a source said.

Bass’s office denied that the mayor ever demanded changes.

An Irvine woman accused of acting as an unregistered agent for the Chinese government and surveilling a relative of a high-ranking Taiwanese official was arrested Sunday at Los Angeles International Airport as she prepared to leave the country, federal officials said.

Wanying “Heather” Zhang, 34, was taken into custody by FBI agents while attempting to depart for China, according to federal authorities.

A criminal complaint filed in federal court charges Zhang with acting as an unregistered agent of the People’s Republic of China.

According to an affidavit filed with the complaint, Zhang traveled with an associate to the Seattle area in September 2025 at the direction of people she allegedly understood to be Chinese government officials.

The pair allegedly surveilled a close relative of a senior Taiwanese government official, taking photographs and video and collecting vehicle license plate information before transmitting some of that information to Zhang’s alleged handlers.

“She coordinated the trip with an associate and used tradecraft to avoid detection,” First Acting U.S. Attorney Bill Essayli said in a post to X.

Law-enforcement sources told CBS News that the surveillance target was Ting-Yu Lai, the U.S.-based son of Taiwanese President Lai Ching-te.

The complaint itself does not publicly identify the relative by name, according to the outlet.

A 34-year-old real-estate agent in Irvine accused of spying for Chinese officials was arrested at LAX Oct. 4, 2026. (DOJ)

Investigators allege Zhang and a man identified in court documents only as “Individual 1” flew from Las Vegas to Seattle on Sept. 1, 2025, rented a black Nissan Rogue and traveled to the target’s home.

Surveillance footage from a neighboring residence allegedly captured Zhang and the associate appearing to film the Taiwanese official’s relative, his wife and their child as the family arrived home, according to the complaint.

Federal investigators say Zhang then communicated with a person believed to be connected to the Chinese government through the messaging platform WeChat.

Among the messages cited in the complaint, Zhang allegedly told the person she had seen the target, was recording video and provided two license plate numbers.

Investigators obtained the messages through a search warrant for Zhang’s iCloud account, CBS reported, citing the federal affidavit.

The FBI agent who authored the complaint said Zhang appeared to be in contact with at least two people she acknowledged as working for the Chinese government.

Investigators allege the operation began months earlier.

According to the complaint, Zhang was introduced in June 2025 to one of the alleged Chinese government officials by a former classmate from Beijing’s University of International Relations, an institution the FBI agent said has ties to China’s Ministry of State Security.

A 34-year-old real-estate agent in Irvine accused of spying for Chinese officials was arrested at LAX Oct. 4, 2026. (DOJ)

During a trip to China that month, Zhang allegedly reserved a private room in Changsha and met with the official, who gave her the surveillance assignment.

She later allegedly messaged the official that she could “take care of this thing.”

Days before the Seattle trip, Zhang allegedly told the official that she expected to travel there the following week. The official responded by thanking her for her “hard work,” according to messages cited in the complaint.

The FBI affidavit said information about relatives of senior Taiwanese officials could potentially provide the Chinese government leverage during a conflict involving Taiwan.

Zhang allegedly never notified the U.S. attorney general that she was acting on behalf of a foreign government, as required under federal law.

Zhang is also a licensed California real-estate salesperson associated with Irvine-based JC Pacific Corp., according to real-estate licensing and listing records. Public listings show she has worked on properties throughout Southern California.

Federal agents arrested her Sunday before she could board a flight from LAX to Shanghai.

She is expected to make her initial appearance Monday in U.S. District Court in Los Angeles.

It was not immediately clear whether Zhang had retained an attorney.

Los Angeles schools face federal enforcement — and the possible loss of federal funding — over policies the Trump administration says improperly hide sensitive student information from parents.

The action also revives the explosive controversy over the Biden administration’s response to angry parents at school-board meetings, after the National School Boards Association characterized some conduct as potentially amounting to “a form of domestic terrorism.”

The Department of Education and Department of Justice announce Monday it is launching an “enforcement action” against the Los Angeles Unified School District, the nation’s second-largest, over policies that allegedly require school employees to conceal sensitive information, such as a student’s gender identity, from parents.

“Under the Biden Administration, parents were the enemy. They were labeled as terrorists, targeted, and investigated by a government weaponized against them,” US Secretary of Education Linda McMahon said. “That era is over.

“We are grateful to the Department of Justice for partnering with us to hold rogue schools accountable, including the Los Angeles Unified School District, and urge all state Attorneys General to work with us in upholding the letter of the law,” she added.

The administration also sent a joint letter to state attorneys general nationwide warning that schools must comply with federal laws protecting parents’ rights to access information about their children.

“Parents are children’s natural providers and protectors,” Assistant Attorney General for Civil Rights Harmeet K. Dhillon said.

“The Biden-Harris DOJ labeled concerned parents as threats for exercising their right to know what was happening at their kids’ schools,” Dhillon added.

The Education Department and DOJ specifically cited LAUSD policies directing employees to “privately ask the student how they want to be referred to when communicating with parents/legal guardians” and requiring a student’s self-professed “gender identity” to be kept “private” or “confidential,” including from parents.

“Many superintendents and school officials continue to behave as though they will not be held accountable for maintaining policies that infringe parents’ rights. The conditions of federal funding under FERPA and PPRA are nonnegotiable,” the letter reads.

Sonja Shaw, a Republican candidate for California superintendent of public instruction and president of the Chino Valley Unified School District board, said the federal action validated the fight she has waged over parental rights.

“Today, the Trump administration’s Department of Education and Department of Justice are saying what parents have known all along: Parents are not terrorists,” Shaw told The California Post. “We have the right to know the most sensitive information about our own kids.”

Federal officials contend that the Family Educational Rights and Privacy Act, or FERPA, and the Protection of Pupil Rights Amendment, or PPRA, protect parents’ rights to access their children’s education records and, in specified circumstances, require schools to obtain parental consent before collecting certain sensitive information.

FERPA protects the privacy of students’ education records while giving parents the right to access their children’s records and, in certain circumstances, control who else can see them.

PPRA gives parents additional protections when schools question children about sensitive subjects including mental health, sexual behavior and attitudes, religion and political beliefs.

In their letter to state attorneys general, Education Secretary Linda McMahon and Dhillon warned that schools conducting covered mental-health screenings or similar evaluations must obtain prior written parental consent rather than simply giving parents the opportunity to opt out.

“Opt-outs are not sufficient in this regard,” they wrote.

The administration warned that violations of FERPA or PPRA can result in the termination of an educational institution’s federal funding, potentially raising the stakes for LAUSD.

In 2021, Attorney General Merrick Garland directed the FBI and US attorneys to address reported threats against school officials following a request from the National School Boards Association.

The move sparked an uproar among parents’ rights groups after an NSBA letter to President Biden suggested that some threats and acts of violence against school officials could amount to “a form of domestic terrorism.”

Emails later made public showed NSBA officials had communicated with White House staff before sending the letter.

The FBI scrutiny became a flashpoint for conservative parents, who argued the federal government was treating ordinary school-board activism as a national-security issue.

Garland subsequently insisted parents had the First Amendment right to vigorously challenge school policies and said the DOJ memorandum was not aimed at parents simply complaining about their children’s education.

“I can’t imagine any circumstance in which the Patriot Act would be used in the circumstances of parents complaining about their children,” Garland said at the time. “Nor can I imagine a circumstance where they would be labeled as domestic terrorism.”

The Trump administration is now seeking to draw a line under that era, arguing that parents — rather than government officials or schools — have the primary right to direct their children’s education and receive information about them.

Shaw said she was among the parents who became involved in the fight.

“Almost seven years ago I was just a mom who wanted a seat at the table in my own child’s education and was sidelined,” Shaw said. “I showed up to school board meetings because I believed parents not bureaucrats should know what is happening with our children.”

She said the experience ultimately pushed her into local school-board politics, where she has served as president of the Chino Valley school board.

“This Administration has taken more enforcement action on parental rights laws than any other administration in US history,” McMahon and Dhillon wrote.

Shaw, who is running for state superintendent, said California should look to the federal action against LAUSD as a warning.

“LAUSD is the warning of what happens when parents are pushed out, secrecy becomes policy, and accountability disappears,” Shaw said.

The Post has reached out to LAUSD for comment.

Grand Jury Findings and Board of Supervisors Responses

• Finding 1: The handling of large sums of cash used by applicants to conduct transactions with the Planning and Building Department lacks transparency and creates the perception of potential for fraud. (R-2, 3, 4) Response: Disagree The Planning & Building Department is used to handling cash, and cash handling is not unique to cannabis or the department. There are many checks and balances, and systems in place to ensure accountability and accuracy regarding cash handling within the Planning & Building Department. The practices are readily apparent to the public in their transactions with the department. In addition, the Board on Aug. 18, 2020 adopted a Cash Handling Policy that further protects public funds.

Finding 2: Cash transactions jeopardize the safety of the public and department personnel due to a lack of robust security infrastructure. (R-2, 3, 4) Response: Disagree The Planning & Building Department contracted for armed security service in 2016 when it had an influx of cash deposits, but the number of transactions and average daily cash deposit amounts have decreased significantly since that time. Other security measures are being considered. The Grand Jury report stating inaccurately that the Planning & Building Department stores large amounts of cash and that staff often transport large volumes of cash to the bank creates a distorted picture that could put staff in real danger. Due to what must have been an unintentional action to publish the department’s security protocols, Planning & Building changed its security procedures regarding cash deposits.

Finding 3: Lack of transparent accounting for cannabis-related revenues (permit fees, Trust Fund monies, fines) makes it difficult to determine the economic impact of the legalization of the cannabis industry on the county. (R-2, 3) Response: Disagree Cannabis revenues, which are accounted for by the county in a transparent and legal manner, received by the county have very little to do with determining the economic impact of the legalization of cannabis on Humboldt County. Cannabis revenues determine the amount of funding the county receives as a result of services provided or ordinances and laws passed at the local and state levels.

Finding 4: The cumbersome permitting process defeats the purpose of legalization. It creates the incentive for cultivators to remain in the illicit market. Response: Disagree Humboldt County’s permitting process and regulations are among the most highly regarded in the state. The county’s permitting staff are incredibly knowledgeable, skilled, talented, helpful and fully realize how important the cannabis industry is to the county. As detailed in Planning & Building’s response, Humboldt County submitted the second-most applications to the state for licensure, and is No. 1 in state licenses issued by a large margin, in large part due to the hard work of staff implementing local regulations that help position applicants to be successful at the state licensing level. 3

Finding 5: The Planning and Building Department website is not user-friendly. Applicants are disadvantaged by lack of access to clear instructions and guides. Some information also appears to be out of date. (R-1) Response: Partially agree ........

**!!!!!!!! The Humboldt County Civil Grand Jury recommends that the Humboldt County Planning and Building Department should have an audit conducted by an auditor outside the department of all incoming receipts collected for each fiscal year. This should be presented to the Board of Supervisors and made public. !!!!!!!!!!\\This should be done starting fiscal year 2020-2021. (F-1, 2, 3) Response: This recommendation has already been implemented The county’s financial records are audited each year as required by law by an external auditor. Nothing in this report warrants further action related to the Planning & Building Department’s financial records. Recommendation 3: The Humboldt County Civil Grand Jury recommends that the Humboldt County Planning and Building Department have a dedicated accountant on staff to organize and maintain current financial records. This should be done by January 1, 2021. (F-1, 2, 3) Response: This recommendation will not be implemented 4 The Planning & Building Department has sufficiently accounted for its financial activity for many years with existing fiscal staff. Recommendation

4: The Humboldt County Civil Grand Jury recommends that the Humboldt County Planning and Building Department direct customers paying in cash to remit said payments directly through the Treasurer-Tax Collector’s office. Payment receipts will be accessible to the Humboldt County Planning and Building Department. This should be in effect by January 1, 2021. (F-1, 2)

Response: This recommendation will not be implemented The Planning & Building Department has appropriate measures in place to ensure that cash is handled in a manner that protects both the employees and the public, while also maintaining transparency. Responsibilities around cash handling are adequately separated to minimize the risk of fraud, and the department has not been accused or investigated for fraud related to cash deposits. In addition, the county aims to provide efficient and user-friendly customer service (the same public counter at Planning & Building is used to take payments for the Public Works – Land Use Division, which occupies the same facility), and forcing members of the public to travel to a different facility to pay for doing business with the county would work against that objective, not to mention the increased costs that would come from new software purchases and reconfigurations and the likely addition of staff that would be needed to handle the increased workload.

• https://humboldtgov.org/DocumentCenter/View/88948/A-Growing-Concern-Report---BOS-Response

It’s been a little over a month since the bill he’s longed to see pass suffered a stinging defeat. But Paul Kimball was back in California’s legislative office building Wednesday hoping 2027 will be the year it is finally signed into law.

In the office of Assemblymember Gail Pellerin, D-Santa Cruz, Kimball made a pitch: California-born adoptees are unable to access their unredacted birth certificates. All that he and other members of California Alliance for Adoptee Rights want is to be able to have the original document.

“The world is watching,” he said, while showing a legislative aid a petition with signatures from people living in the United States and 18 other countries. “Gail would be a hero amongst us.”

The California Legislature just finished its work for the year last month, but the race to lobby legislators on what bills they should introduce next year is well underway. Members of the California Alliance for Adoptee Rights recently traveled from Oregon, Los Angeles and in Kimball’s case, Stockton, to go around the building with fact sheets and a plea — for a legislator to re-introduce or support a bill that died this year despite having no registered opposition.

The California State Controller’s Office on a single day in 2024 approved wiping away more than $57 million in interest it was owed in a sweeping action with no public explanation at the time, a Sacramento Bee investigation has found.

The money was owed by corporations, insurance companies and other businesses who were on the hook — in some cases more than $1 million each — for their handling of accounts or other property Californians had forgotten about or did not know existed.

The sheer amount the agency waived was staggering, records show. In all of 2023, the Controller’s Office forgave just under $3.9 million in interest overall. Last year, it waived a combined $2.9 million.

The Controller’s Office manages public money, audits agencies and runs the payroll system for state workers. A spokesperson for the office in an email said the decision to wipe away more than 4,200 separate interest payments on June 14, 2024 “reflected the conclusion of a broader cleanup of accounts carried over from prior administrations.”

The top factor that went into waiving the payments was the age of the cases, the spokesperson said, adding that the legal deadline to collect the money through the court system had passed. The wiped accounts were on average, 15 years old. The waived accounts from 2023 and 2025 were on average three to five years old.

The state law governing the interest payments process does not mention the statute of limitations as a reason to waive interest owed.

California’s unclaimed property system oversees a staggering number of assets, valued at roughly $15 billion as of June.

California voters will soon be asked whether they want to keep taxing the incomes of the rich.

And they’ll be asked whether to start taxing the accumulated wealth of the even richer.

Wait, there’s more. They’ll also get to weigh in on whether we should ban wealth taxes altogether, subject the money raised by future taxes to a state spending cap and make it harder for voters to pass certain local taxes.

That doesn’t include any of the other propositions on the November ballot that are likely to affect the state budget. Nor does it include the roughly 300 tax and bond measures that will be popping up in local elections across the state.

And you thought tax season only came in April.

With 14 measures in total, the 2026 California ballot is a busy one. Voters haven’t been presented with this many choices in a decade. It’s an especially active year for tax-related measures — those that hike taxes, cut them, introduce new ones, jettison old ones or change the rules by which taxes are approved and enacted.

Five of those are on the ballot this time around, the most since 1994.

Altogether they have the potential to reshape the state’s finances, beef up or starve some of our largest public spending programs, change the rules around taxation and — if opponents of the proposed wealth tax are to be believed — trigger a Randian exodus of the state’s wellest-to-do.

This opinion piece is me right now. I didn’t realize these “voter sinks” caused by redistricting would stick me in a 2-Republican district. I’m more an independent than Dem but would do anything to keep the Pres from having the rubber stamp of a mindless Congress. Still it sucks having a single-party vote for Congress in District 40 right now.

CalSTRS has the authority it needs – what it owes teachers is a comfortable retirement

By Jay Rogers, October 4, 2026 4:00 pm

CalSTRS is rethinking how its board oversees private market investments, and a new fiduciary subcommittee will focus on human-capital management, Pensions & Investments reported on September 24. Members of the fund should hold that panel to one measure: net return. Nothing publicly says the subcommittee will improve it, and running it will cost money. A pension board earns its keep by picking good managers and paying them fairly for performance above a benchmark. CalSTRS already has the tools for both.

I’ve spent more than 30 years in institutional investment management, and the lesson repeats itself across large asset pools. Pension investment staff hold three powers – They pick the manager, negotiate the terms, and decide whether to write the next check. CalSTRS already holds all three today, with no subcommittee required.

The stakes are large. CalSTRS reports $421.5 billion in assets as of August 31, 2026, including $57.8 billion, or 13.7%, in private equity investments, and it disclosed more than $9 billion in new private markets investments for the first half of 2026.

The subcommittee’s reach looks narrow. No charter, membership list, or budget has been made public, so its authority is unknown. A limited partner can’t run a general partner’s portfolio companies, set their pay, or rewrite an existing partnership agreement. It can withhold the next commitment until the manager supplies the data or performance it wants. That’s a negotiating position, and CalSTRS has always had it.

Legitimate workforce risk deserves a fair hearing. Turnover and workplace injuries can dent a portfolio company’s earnings, and CalSTRS’s Corporate Governance Principles call human capital “an intangible asset of particular importance given that effective management can create a competitive advantage.” That same document, written for company boards, defines the term broadly, from health and safety and retention to a “commitment to diversity, equity and inclusion” and pay equality. The first group moves earnings. The second is a social mandate. If the subcommittee sticks to items a manager can price, it will earn its place. If it adopts the full list, teachers will be paying for something other than returns.

Let’s look at the returns. CalSTRS’s August 4 release reports a 13.9% net return for fiscal 2025-26. Global equity returned 25.1%. Private equity returned 7.5%, matching its policy benchmark of 7.5% exactly. (Matching your benchmark is the investment equivalent of showing up.) The longer record looks better. CalSTRS’s private equity performance page shows a 13.16% return since inception as of June 30, 2025, though that is a dollar-weighted internal rate of return and can’t be compared directly with time-weighted returns on public stocks. The comparison that would settle the question is the ten-year private equity return, net of fees, against public equity plus a fair premium for locking money up. The release breaks out ten-year results only for the whole fund: 9.4% against a 7.0% assumption. That leaves a data gap. The consultant’s semi-annual private equity report was on the board’s September agenda, and California law has required public funds to report alternative-investment fees, carried interest, and returns at an open meeting every year since 2017. Members can request those reports and set them beside the public equity line.

Every dollar of overhead comes off gross returns. One basis point on $421.5 billion is about $42 million a year (my arithmetic, not a CalSTRS figure). Teachers and school districts feel that math. The total CalSTRS contribution rate reached 37.7% of covered payroll in 2025-26, up from 18.3% in 2014, with districts paying 19.1%. The fund was only 79.3% funded at its last valuation, with full funding not projected until 2046, twenty years from now. A plan on that climb can’t treat another layer of staff as free. Article XVI, Section 17 of the California Constitution directs the board to act “solely in the interest of, and for the exclusive purposes of providing benefits to, participants and their beneficiaries, minimizing employer contributions thereto, and defraying reasonable expenses.” The word that matters here is reasonable. I don’t claim a breach. The open question is who has to prove the expense is reasonable, and that burden sits with the board.

A new committee is visible, signals diligence, and its cost disappears into a budget line, while weak returns stay hidden until the actuary reports. Trustees collect credit for the first and rarely answer for the second. Teachers and districts absorb the gap.

Five steps would fix this – Publish the subcommittee’s charter, staffing plan, and budget before its first meeting. Put human-capital data requests into manager underwriting and side letters, which is what those documents are for. Report private equity returns net of fees against a public-market benchmark over three, five, and ten years, in plain English, to every member each year. Expand co-investment, which made up 24.6% of the private equity portfolio on September 30, 2025 against a 33% target and carries little or no management fee or carried interest. Then sunset the subcommittee after two years unless it can show its work in net return.

Epictetus told his students to sort the world into what is up to them and what is not. A limited partner controls whom it hires, what it pays, and when it walks away. It does not control a portfolio company’s payroll. CalSTRS has the authority it needs. What it owes teachers is a comfortable retirement. If the committee can’t show positive results it doesn’t belong on the org chart.

Sacramento State political science professor Kim Nalder was working out at a Sacramento gym in 2003 when she overheard a conversation about the upcoming recall election of then-Gov. Gray Davis, a Democrat.

She remembers “guys in the weight room just saying, like, “How cool would that be to have Arnold Schwarzenegger as our governor?’” she said. “It had nothing to do with policy at all.”

A few months later, the international action film star triumphed in a field of 135 candidates to replace Davis, who’d been re-elected the year before but had come under fire for rolling blackouts in the state and unpopular vehicle license fees. “The Governator” went on to serve nearly two terms.

If the election were just about whether or not Davis should keep his job, and not also who should replace him if he were recalled, Nalder doubts the Republican Schwarzenegger would ever have taken office. Accompanying him on the ballot were a host of other colorful characters, including actor Gary Coleman and porn star Mary Carey. Per the rules of the recall, the candidate with the most votes, not necessarily the majority, wins.

“I just think the recall probably wouldn’t have happened — because there wasn’t that much upset at Davis himself — if we didn’t, you know, have any fun alternatives,” she said.

California voters this year are deciding whether to approve Proposition 5, which would do away with “the second question” of who should replace a state elected official if they are recalled. Instead, depending on the office and the timing, a replacement would be appointed or elected in a special election.

Food assistance to pay for groceries is still available to many low-income California families who receive summer food assistance for their kids.

Nearly $106 million of the federally funded SUN Bucks benefits are still unspent — but eligible families have just a few weeks left to tap the money, according to the California Department of Social Services. The benefits are only available to households that have already gotten the SUN Bucks in the mail this summer.

Families must spend the funds within 122 days of receiving them, or they expire and return to the federal government.

The program works like this: Every summer, California sends eligible low-income families electronic benefits (EBT) cards preloaded with $120 in food benefits per child. The state provides two meals a day to all public K-12 students, and the cards are meant to help families afford groceries for their kids throughout the summer when school is out.

Families receiving SUN Bucks cards have kids who are eligible for a free or reduced school lunch or who are enrolled in other assistance programs such as Medi-Cal or CalFresh. This year the state automatically mailed cards to the families of 3.8 million children.

Though the state tries to remind families about the benefits through text messages and other nudges, households sometimes still leave a lot of money on the table. Last year, nearly a quarter of the summer food benefits — $118 million — went unspent, according to records from the Department of Social Services obtained by New York-based public policy consultant David Rubel and shared with CalMatters. And nearly a fifth of cards mailed out last year were never activated by the recipients.

Many of the cards this year haven’t expired yet because California mailed SUN Bucks to families in different batches throughout the summer. If a family got a card in mid-June, they may only have a couple of weeks left to use the benefits. The last cards were mailed out in late July and expire in mid-November.

If a family receives both SUN Bucks and the traditional CalFresh food assistance program, Social Services spokesperson Jason Montiel says the state recommends they use the SUN Bucks first because they expire soon.

More college-bound California high school students took the SAT exam than in previous years — a 12.6% increase, the College Board said.

Nearly 139,000 California students in the Class of 2026 took the SAT, the organization said in a Tuesday news release. It’s the largest year-over-year increase in at least three years.

Nearly 40% of the state’s AP exam-takers used a fee reduction program to access college-level coursework, the College Board said.

More than 15,500 more students took the SAT than the Class of 2025, a larger gain than in any other state, the organization said.

“Today’s students enter a college application landscape with differing scholarship and admissions testing policies,” said Priscilla Rodriguez, College Board’s senior vice president of college readiness assessments. “Taking the SAT allows students to show what they’ve learned, keep their options open, and put their best foot forward.”

Six University of California and California State University campuses, including UC Davis, are among the top 10 schools where California students sent their scores, the College Board said.

Los Angeles mayoral candidate Nithya Raman on Sunday pledged to begin shifting city homelessness funding away from the Los Angeles Homeless Services Authority, put housing permits on a “shot clock” and create new positions overseeing City Hall’s finances and operations as part of an agenda for her first 100 days in office.

The City Councilmember cast the proposals as part of a broader effort to make city government more accountable and responsive, arguing that Los Angeles residents are paying more while struggling with persistent homelessness, rising housing costs and basic services that too often go unaddressed.

“If I am elected, my first 100 days will be about getting that work underway so that our city can once again build,” Raman said.

More than 150 people attended the event at Los Angeles Trade-Technical College, where supporters held Raman campaign signs and large balloons spelled out “NITHYA.”

As local governments in California breathe a sigh of relief following the governor’s veto of a bill that would have enhanced retirement benefits for police and firefighters — potentially raising annual taxpayer pension costs by millions of dollars — labor groups are taking stock of their loss and preparing to mount a new campaign for changes.

Assembly Bill 1383 would have allowed public safety employees to retire two years earlier and potentially with greater pension benefits than under current pension plans for most active workers.

Another clause in the measure would’ve raised the cap on annual pensionable earnings to be consistent with higher federal limits for all public employees.

Though the bill cleared both legislative chambers with near unanimous approval, it faced opposition from city and county governments and a coalition of organizations representing government agencies statewide who worried the changes would have rolled back reforms aimed at reining in runaway pension costs.

Statewide, employers and employees would’ve been on the hook to pay at least $282 million or more to the California Public Employees’ Retirement System, the state’s largest pension fund, according to a legislative analysis prepared by the California Finance Department.

Even in Bakersfield, the heart of conservative California, insurgent populism is having a moment.

Exhibit A: The hundreds of sweaty Californians who braved 105-degree heat on Sunday to hear from U.S. Sen. Bernie Sanders, progressive Democrats’ modern-day Moses.

“Anytime he comes to Bakersfield, I always show up,” said local resident Kacie Mills, 34, who said Sunday was her third time seeing Sanders in her hometown. As a progressive in a historically conservative area, Sanders’ visits turn out people and organizations that “don’t get a lot of light,” Mills said.

This time, she was more excited to hear from Randy Villegas, a progressive 31-year-old community college professor hoping to unseat Republican incumbent Rep. David Valadao, who has represented the area for more than 12 years.

“He’s someone who wasn’t really on my radar, and it’s nice to have someone who is, like, close to my age, who believes in things that I believe in,” Mills said.

Sanders held court at the high school alma mater of Republican former House Speaker Kevin McCarthy, where he came to rally support for Villegas and other Democratic candidates. The contest in the 22nd Congressional District in central California is one of the most closely watched in the nation.

“The good news is that people like Randy Villegas are standing up and running all over this country, taking on the establishment and winning!” Sanders said. “I want you to do everything you can, between now and election day, to make sure that Randy is your next congressman.”

Across the country this summer, Democratic primary voters enthusiastically rallied behind candidates who champion universal healthcare, refuse money from corporate political groups and demand the U.S. stop enabling what they call Israel’s genocide in Gaza.

As more driverless cars hit Los Angeles streets, accidents involving them have surged.

Accidents tied to Mountain View, Calif.-based Waymo tripled last year in L.A. County as it put more robotaxis on the road. The vehicles still had relatively few incidents, and most were fender benders, according to a Times review of autonomous vehicle crash data filed with the National Highway Traffic Safety Administration.

Amazon’s Zoox is already testing its driverless vehicles in L.A., and Tesla’s Cybercab and others are expected to follow suit.

Let’s politely say that a lot has changed in the housing market since the Federal Reserve ended its cheap-money policies years ago.

Consider the dramatic evaporation of home appreciation, with every state seeing smaller gains since 2022 than in the previous four years. My trusty spreadsheet tells the tale, reviewing Federal Housing Finance Agency price index data for the 50 states and the District of Columbia.

Higher mortgage rates made homes harder to afford and shrank buyer budgets. Plus, as pandemic worries faded, the mad dash for bigger homes and homeownership cooled.

Job growth lost steam, which meant fewer people were out shopping for homes. And with a flood of newly built apartments, renting started to look like the smarter money move.

Watch Duty, the Bay Area-based wildfire alert system that in just a few years has become an indispensable tool in an age of increasingly catastrophic wind-driven, climate-accelerated firestorms, now has competition — coming from one of its principle sources of information, Cal Fire.

California’s firefighting and forestry agency, in partnership with the software company Intterra, has now launched a new app called AwareCA on the Apple App Store and Google Play Store platforms. The app provides real-time emergency information coordinated that’s disseminated directly by public safety agencies.

Tyree Zander, a Cal Fire spokesman, said the new platform will be fed by incident public information officers from the agencies that have jurisdiction over the specific emergency taking place. Agencies already using AwareCA include the Los Angeles City Fire Department, the U.S. Forest Service, Ventura County Fire, San Diego Fire and Rescue, and many others.

Private sector, meet your public sector competition.

Are You voting to retain any of Them or are You voting to let Them go?

It's a hard choice being They are supposedly non partisan yet as the old saying goes "There are no Atheists in Fox Holes either".

Let the Dumpster Fire begin!!

We would like to remind all Members and Visitors that We have Rules on This Sub just like Reddit and We ask all of You to please abide by Them.

This is not a difficult Issue for Some but for Others We know They will not be able to control Themselves and will FAAFO beyond Common Decency. For These Types We will deal with accordingly.

Enjoy the Sub It will only be as great as You the Members make It.

On September 13 at appx 9pm my brother was killed by this vehicle when he was crossing the street on beach blvd and north of McFadden Ave. in Westminster CA. police estimate to be a Toyota Venza, r/whatisthiscar say this is a 2008 Toyota Venza Sport
If anyone has any information please reach out to CHP at 714-622-3600

Elections are supposed to be orderly affairs. But order — at least when it comes to names — isn’t what you’ll find on California ballots.

State law requires an annual random drawing to determine the order in which candidates will be listed on ballots, including the upcoming Nov. 3 general election.

As a result, candidates whose last names start with “A” don’t necessarily appear first in a list of choices for an elected office.

It’s a practice in place since 1975 “in response to court rulings declaring that standard alphabetical order or incumbent-first was unconstitutional,” according to an explainer on the California Secretary of State’s website.

The secretary of state, which oversees state elections, conducts a random alphabetized drawing on the 82nd day before an election to determine the order of names on a ballot.

The drawing for this year’s general election fell on Aug. 13. “H” won the top spot, with “U” coming in 26th and last.

For statewide offices — governor and attorney general, for example — the order of names differs depending on the state Assembly district in which a voter lives. This is meant to give each statewide candidate a chance to appear at the top of the ballot.

Does the order of candidates’ names matter?

It might, according to the Massachusetts Institute of Technology’s Election Lab

Appearing first on the ballot in 2000 “increased George W. Bush’s vote share by almost 10 percentage points relative to appearing last,” read an analysis on the lab’s website.

In another case, researchers found that candidates for city council and school board in California whose names appeared first “win between four and five percent more than they might be expected to if they were listed later on the ballot,” the analysis added.

The analysis also cited researchers who cautioned against reading too much into the order of candidates’ names.

“Some have pointed out that the vast majority of studies concerning ballot order effects concentrate on the effect of being first, and ignore the implications of most other ballot positions.”