Will CA join the party for America’s 250th birthday?

In two more years, America will celebrate the 250th anniversary of its founding and the signing of the Declaration of Independence. Known as the Semiquincentennial, the federal government in 2016 and 40 other states have set up commissions to help commemorate the event.

So far, California has not.

Not to miss out on festivities, state Sen. Janet Nguyen has a bipartisan bill to establish the California Commission on the United States Semiquincentennial, which the Senate Governmental Organization Committee is expected to hear Tuesday. 

This is the Huntington Beach Republican’s third attempt to create the commission. Why does she care so much?

In an interview with CalMatters, Nguyen said living in America is “a blessing.” As a Vietnamese refugee who fled a communist country, she said that she may not be alive today if she had stayed in Vietnam after the war — much less become a legislator. 

• Nguyen: “Our family, we hold our freedom and democracy very dear…. We as Americans should remember who we are today, why we’re the best country and what we do today. It’s because of the Founding Fathers.”

The commission would “plan and coordinate commemorations and observances” of the anniversary, using private or federal funds. Its 11 members would include lawmakers, regular Califonians (including three appointed by the governor) and others. Leading the group would be the state archivist.

Because the archivist is a state employee, there is some uncertainty surrounding state funding. In a Senate Appropriations Committee analysis last year of a similar bill Nguyen authored, the Secretary of State Office estimated that the commission’s work would cost $1 million each year until 2029 (when the commission would dissolve after tying up loose ends), and would require at least seven supporting staff positions.

Money is tight when the state faces a multibillion-dollar shortfall, but Nguyen contends that the commission and the celebration would “purely tap into private or federal funding.”

There is also some precedent: In anticipation of the country’s bicentennial in 1976, the Legislature in 1967 established the American Revolution Bicentennial Commission of California. It helped advise local bicentennial observances, lending “assistance and expertise when called upon,” according to the state archives department. For the state’s official Bicentennial parade, California tapped Huntington Beach, which annually holds the largest July Fourth parade west of the Mississippi.

And while Nguyen said it’d “be nice” to see the state come together in celebration, it wouldn’t be up to her to decide what the Semiquincentennial in California would entail and she wouldn’t necessarily be on the commission.

• Nguyen: “My duty is to create the commission and let the commission dream big or dream small.”

From CalMatters Capitol reporter Jeanne Kuang:

Many landlords providing new low-income housing in California won’t be able to increase the rent on their tenants by more than 10% per year, under a rule imposed this week by a state committee.

The cap, passed Wednesday by the California Tax Credit Allocation Committee, affects all future developments built with the help of Low Income Housing Tax Credits. California awards the federal and state credits to build about 20,000 new units a year; the program is the primary government funding source for private developers to build affordable housing. 

The rule is similar to a 2019 state law for other tenants — restricting annual increases to either 5% plus inflation, or 10%, whichever is lower.

The cap doesn’t directly protect those living in the roughly 350,000 existing low-income units statewide financed by the tax credits. But officials expect most property owners to comply anyway because they need the state committee’s approval to sell the properties, or to get new tax credits for renovations.

Marina Wiant, the committee’s executive director, said the committee can’t legally impose new rules on developers who have already entered contracts with the government to receive the tax credits. 

The cap closes what many tenants have decried as a loophole in state law. CalMatters reported in December that, during a period of record inflation, the lack of a rent cap in affordable housing allowed landlords of some of the state’s poorest tenants, some of them for-profit developers, to hike rents by double-digit percentages in a year. To qualify for such a unit, tenants need to earn less than local average incomes. 

But tenants’ advocates aren’t fully satisfied with the rule. 

Leah Simon-Weisberg, legal and policy director for the Alliance of Californians for Community Empowerment, said low-income renters should instead be protected from being charged more than a certain share of their individual income, similar to other affordable housing programs.

• Simon-Weisberg: “It’s a step in the right direction, but it’s not low enough. We need to think about, ‘What can the tenant pay?’”

Nine other states already place rent caps on low-income housing, and the Biden administration last week announced a nationwide 10% cap.

For more history on California’s rent caps, read the story.

More than a month after voting ended in California’s primary, the outcomes for some key races are finally starting to crystallize.

Coachella Valley contest: As CalMatters San Diego and Inland Empire issues reporter Deborah Brennan explains, voters in a Coachella Valley state Senate district will be picking between two diverse candidates in November.

On the Democratic ticket is Lisa Middleton, a Palm Springs City Council member. As a former mayor of Palm Springs, she boosted police and fire department salaries and expanded the city’s financial reserves. Middleton is also a transgender woman, and if she wins the Senate race, she’d be California’s first transgender state legislator and third in the country. 

She is challenging incumbent Sen. Rosilicie Ochoa Bogh of Redlands, who became California’s first Republican Latina state senator after winning election in 2020. During her first term, she has passed about a dozen bills and is revisiting measures to address the fentanyl crisis.

Despite the potential to make culture wars the focal point of the race, both candidates have been sticking to bread-and-butter issues such as jobs, infrastructure and public safety. And when they do clash, it has been about renewable energy, reproductive health and parental rights.

To learn more about the two pioneering candidates, read Deborah’s story.

Vince Fong’s fate: Reading between the lines, it appears that state appeals judges may be more concerned about throwing an ongoing election into chaos than about the potential longer-term chaos of letting candidates run for the Legislature and Congress simultaneously.

The courtroom arguments happened Thursday in the appeal by Secretary of State Shirley Weber, who is trying to kick Assemblymember Vince Fong off the ballot in the 20th Congressional District, even though he finished first in the primary and advanced to November to face fellow Republican and Tulare County Sheriff Mike Boudreaux. Fong also ran unopposed for his legislative seat. Weber wants a ruling by April 12, when she is supposed to certify the primary results. (Fong and Boudreaux are also in a May 21 runoff to serve the remainder of former House Speaker Kevin McCarthy’s term.)

Since 2021 Indigenous students have been eligible to attend the University of California tuition-free. But Native American students still make up less than 1% of the system’s enrollment. Find out why UCs are struggling to recruit and provide resources for these students from Christopher Buchanan of CalMatters’ College Journalism Network.