Los Angeles pays a qualifying mayoral candidate six dollars in public money for every one dollar an individual donates — and in the current mayor's race, challenger Nithya Raman has drawn more of that taxpayer match than Karen Bass.
Phil and Camille break down how the public matching-funds program actually works, why the "isn't it a First Amendment violation to fund a candidate I oppose?" objection reached the Supreme Court twice and lost both times, and why California has banned public campaign financing everywhere except a handful of charter cities.
Then: the California Energy Commission has used a 2003 law that sat dormant for two decades to rewrite which replacement tires can be sold in the state — and the "70% of tires banned" figure is being used to argue two opposite things at once. There's also a second, completely unrelated tire crackdown most coverage misses.
Finally, the California High-Speed Rail Authority is on course to run out of money by December 2027, according to its own inspector general — while the project's own CEO says the state's regulatory process is what's strangling the railroad he's trying to build.
No team. Just receipts.
Read more from Phil at The Gilded State: www.thegildedstate.comFull sourcing and show notes: caunderground.substack.com