When celebrities push bills at CA Legislature

It was a somber, and at times tearful, gathering Monday as legislators and advocates promoted a bill to hold behavioral treatment centers for teens more accountable.

Most of the attention was focused on one (some might say, unexpected) speaker: The hotel heiress, socialite and media personality Paris Hilton.

Hilton is the latest celebrity to utilize their fame (or as she said “shine my spotlight”) to persuade the Legislature to change state policy. In Hilton’s case, the physical and emotional abuse she says she experienced at youth treatment centers in California, Utah and Montana has led her on a personal crusade against institutional abuse in the “troubled teen industry.”

• Hilton: “I was subjected to abuse disguised as therapy, isolated from the outside world, and denied even the most basic rights… .The sounds of my peers screaming as they were restrained and injected sedatives will never leave me…. If these facilities are scared of a simple transparency measure, then I think we should ask them: ‘What do they have to hide?’”

Senate Bill 1043 won unanimous approval from the Senate human services committee later Monday. It would require the California Department of Social Services to detail a center’s use of “seclusion rooms” and restraints through a publicly accessible online dashboard by Jan. 1, 2026. The information would include descriptions of the incident, the duration of the incident and what staff members were involved in the incident, among other things. Facilities would also be mandated to provide a report to the person who was confined or restrained, as well as the individual’s parent or guardian if they are a minor.

Hilton’s nonprofit, 11:11 Media Impact, is co-sponsoring the bipartisan bill, led by Sen. Shannon Grove, a Bakersfield Republican, and co-authored by Democratic Sens. Angelique Ashby of Sacramento and Aisha Wahab of Fremont. Disability Rights California and Children’s Law Center of California also support the proposal. 

• Grove: “It doesn’t matter if you’re worth a billion dollars or you’re worth $20. The word trauma is still there.”

In 2021, after reports of rampant abuse, California passed a law that prohibited the practice of sending troubled youth, including foster children, to out-of-state, for-profit treatment centers. As an alternative, youths can be sent to “short term residential therapeutic programs,” which are licensed by the state’s social services department. Two years ago, Gov. Gavin Newsom signed into law a measure to fund crisis residential treatment facilities for children on Medi-Cal.

During Hilton’s time at these youth facilities, including the 11 months she spent at the Provo Canyon School in Utah when she was 17, Hilton said she lived in constant fear. 

Hilton also made a not-so-veiled threat near the end of her remarks: “If you are abusing children, I will find you and I will come with my huge spotlight and shine it on wherever you are.”

Read more about Hilton’s appearance, and celebrity advocacy, in the story.

From CalMatters Capitol reporter Alexei Koseff:

California is taking Huntington Beach to court again — this time over a change to its city charter adopted last month by local voters that would allow the city to require voter identification in municipal elections.

Conservative city officials in Huntington Beach pushed for voter ID, a popular policy in Republican states, to address concerns from constituents about election integrity that have increasingly cropped up in the wake of former President Trump’s false claims that the 2020 election was stolen.

But Attorney General Rob Bonta and Secretary of State Shirley Weber announced Monday that they would seek to invalidate the new law for interfering with state protections of voting rights. The officials, both Democrats, argue that Huntington Beach’s ID requirement could disenfranchise voters and is unnecessary because there is not widespread fraud in California elections.

The lawsuit, filed in Orange County Superior Court, contends that elections are an issue of statewide importance governed by statewide rules and that cities do not have authority to implement additional regulations that could interfere with a voter’s ability to cast a ballot.

Bonta said that Californians must already present identification and swear under penalty of perjury when they register to vote, allowing for a more expedited voting process. He said Huntington Beach had not provided a compelling reason for requiring voter ID at the polls.

Huntington Beach City Attorney Michael Gates said the law — which takes effect in 2026, and also authorizes the city to add more in-person voting locations and monitor ballot drop-boxes — is intended to increase participation in elections.

• Gates, in a statement: “The people of Huntington Beach have made their voices clear on this issue and the people’s decision on the March 5th ballot measures for election integrity is final.” 

Bonta and Weber already warned Huntington Beach last fall that its voter identification proposal would violate a provision in California’s election code. City officials put the measure on the ballot anyway and it passed by 7 percentage points in the March primary. 

Read more about the state’s lawsuit in the story.

In other election news: 

• U.S. Senate money: Republican Steve Garvey is starting to catch up to Democrat Adam Schiff in the money race for U.S. Senate, reports CalMatters’ Yue Stella Yu. Each raised more than $3 million between Feb. 15 and March 31, according to the latest federal campaign finance reports filed Monday. Still, Schiff entered April with $4.8 million on hand — triple the amount in Garvey’s bank. Read more in her story.

• Congressional race: A recount officially started Monday in the Silicon Valley congressional district where two candidates — Assemblymember Evan Low and Santa Clara County Supervisor Joe Simitian — tied for second place with 30,249 votes each. Both advanced to the November election, along with top vote-getter Sam Liccardo, San Jose’s former mayor, but a single vote could change that outcome. The recount in Santa Clara and San Mateo counties is expected to take several days. 

• 2026 campaign: Also Monday, state Sen. Steven Bradford, an Inglewood Democrat, formally announced his campaign for lieutenant governor in 2026. State Treasurer Fiona Ma is running, too, and several others have started raising money for a potential campaign to succeed Lt. Gov. Eleni Kounalakis, who is running for governor. Bradford, a key player in California’s reparations debate, told Politico he has no interest in eventually running for governor.

From CalMatters deputy editor Adam Ashton: 

More generous-than-expected raises for California state workers are nudging up the cost of public employee pensions, according to the California Public Employees’ Retirement System. 

But, for one year, Gov. Newsom has a plan to save some money that otherwise would have to be spent on those retirement plans. He wants to take money set aside 10 months ago to pay down CalPERS’ debt and instead use it for part of next year’s state worker pension costs. 

That’ll save the state general fund $1.7 billion, making it a small but important part of Newsom’s plan to manage California’s yawning budget deficit. 

There’s one catch: The independent Legislative Analyst’s Office wrote that Newsom’s pension plan “appears unconstitutional” because of the way it relies on a previously scheduled debt payment. 

Newsom’s accounting shift is possible because California has been paying down debt to comply with Proposition 2, the 2014 ballot measure meant to put the state’s fiscal house in order. It requires the state to make supplemental debt payments until 2030, even in years when it runs a deficit. Recently, Newsom has been using the Prop. 2 payments to chip away at the state’s substantial pension liabilities, including the $1.7 billion chunk earmarked for CalPERS’ debts in the current budget. 

The analyst’s office contends the governor’s new proposal runs afoul of Prop. 2 by using a planned debt payment to “supplant, not supplement, what the state would otherwise have to provide CalPERS in 2024-25.” 

The Newsom administration has a different view. “Put simply: it’s the Administration’s position that this proposal complies with Proposition 2,” said Finance Department spokesman H.D. Palmer. 

The details on how much California will spend on state government pensions next year — regardless of whether lawmakers go along with Newsom’s proposal — are laid out for the CalPERS Board of Administration this week.

Read more about CalPERS finances in the story.

As California sets its sights to achieve carbon neutrality by 2045, a controversial plan to collect carbon emissions and trap it underground has divided residents of a Kern County community, writes CalMatters climate reporter Alejandro Lazo.

The state’s largest oil and gas producer, California Resources Corp., is seeking federal and county approval to proceed with the state’s first carbon capture project. It calls for injecting 1.46 million metric tons of carbon dioxide a year for 26 years into a mile-deep underground reservoir — the equivalent of the annual emissions from several hundred thousand gas-powered cars.

The process keeps greenhouse gases out of the atmosphere; and Newsom’s administration supports carbon capture and storage as a way to lower the state’s carbon footprint. Dave Noerr, the mayor of Taft, which is located near the project site, says the technology enables the 14,000 Kern County residents employed by the oil and gas industry to hang onto their jobs.

• Noerr: “If we can learn how to do it, and do it right, on a commercial scale, right here, then we can help those people.”

But residents and environmental justice groups argue that such projects prop up fossil fuel companies that are struggling in a decarbonizing world and enable oilfields and power plants to emit toxic substances into local communities. Analysts are also skeptical about how much the process notably reduces greenhouse gases.

• Sonia Sanchez, a Buttonwillow resident, located near the project site: “We cannot afford to compromise the air we breathe, the water we drink and the soil we rely on for the sake of experimental solutions..” 

To learn more about the carbon capture project, read Alejandro’s story.