GSM Investigation · Energy · Santa Clarita

In the Name of Safety

SoCalGas wants $485 million more from you.
Edison already took the biggest base-rate increase in its history.

Every request wears the same badge — safety.

Follow the money, and the badge starts to look a lot like a price tag.

Scan for reporter profile

By

I Martinez

Investigative Reporter · Good Shepherd Media

Business Fraud • Misuse of Land • Zoning Violations • City Responses to Local Issues

Santa Clarita, CA · October 29, 2026

The email landed on October 28 with a friendly blue headline: “Share Your Thoughts at a Public Participation Hearing.” Underneath was the bill.

Southern California Gas Company is asking the California Public Utilities Commission for $485 million more in revenue — a 10.5 percent increase — and for an automatic formula that would raise its revenues another 5.5 to 6.2 percent every year from 2029 through 2031. The very first reason SoCalGas gives, before modernization, before compliance, before technology and insurance, is this: to “enhance safety.”

That word has become the most expensive word in California. It is printed on your gas notice. It is the CPUC’s own explanation for why your Edison bill has doubled. It is the reason your lights get shut off on windy days, and the reason you will keep paying a line item on your electric bill for a wildfire fund until 2045. Nobody is against safety. That is exactly what makes it the perfect word to put on an invoice.

Good Shepherd Media went through the rate filings, the CPUC decisions, the Public Advocates Office reports and Edison International’s own investor and SEC filings. The record does not show that safety is fake. People died in the Eaton Fire, and we say so below. What the record shows is something the utilities would rather you not think about: in California’s utility system, safety is not just a cost. It is a profit center.

How a utility makes money on “safety”

A regulated utility is not paid for selling you gas or electricity the way a store is paid for selling you groceries. It is paid a guaranteed rate of return on the money it invests in pipes, poles, wires, meters and buildings. Regulators call that pile of investment the “rate base.” The bigger the rate base, the bigger the profit — for decades, because customers pay it back with interest over the life of the equipment.

That turns the usual incentive upside down. A normal business tries to spend less. A utility earns more when it spends more on capital — and the easiest capital project to get approved is one labeled “safety,” because no regulator wants to be the one who said no before the next fire or the next pipeline explosion.

The CPUC sets those returns. For 2026 it authorized Southern California Edison a 10.03 percent return on equity on a capital structure that is 52 percent equity (Decision D.25-12-043, December 18, 2025). Edison had asked for 11.75 percent. SoCalGas was authorized 9.78 percent. Remember those numbers; every “safety” dollar that goes into the rate base earns them.

Safety is the justification. Rate base is the business model.

The SoCalGas rate increase: back for more, again

This is not SoCalGas’s first trip to the well. In December 2024 the CPUC decided the company’s last rate case and set its 2024 revenue at $3.806 billion — $324 million, or 9.3 percent, more than 2023, with further increases built in through 2027. SoCalGas had asked for $4.434 billion. The CPUC’s own press release announcing the decision said the money was to operate the system “safely and reliably.” Customers started seeing those higher rates on February 1, 2025, retroactive to January 1, 2024.

Now, less than two years later, the new request (filed June 15, 2026):

• $485 million more, a 10.5 percent increase, which SoCalGas’s notice describes as covering 2027–2028; the rate-case filing asks for it to take effect January 1, 2028.
• An automatic 5.5 to 6.2 percent increase every year from 2029 through 2031. Compounded, that is roughly 17 to 20 percent more by 2031 on top of the 10.5 percent — without SoCalGas having to come back and justify each year line by line.
• SoCalGas estimates the average residential customer using 35 therms a month would pay about $5.67 more per month. That figure is the delivery and system portion only. It does not include the price of the gas itself, which SoCalGas passes through separately and which spikes in winter, when Santa Clarita families actually use the heat.
• Intervening parties in the case have calculated that the request is roughly 34 percent above 2024 authorized levels. Eleven parties filed protests.
• Running alongside it is a separate SoCalGas application (A.25-12-019) to replace its advanced gas meters for about $3.76 billion. The CPUC’s Public Advocates Office has asked that the meter project be folded into the rate case, so customers can see the whole price at once instead of in pieces.
• At the same time, SoCalGas has proposed closing all 43 of its remaining customer branch offices (A.25-05-001) and pointing customers to third-party payment locations. Less service, higher bill.

Look at SoCalGas’s own list of reasons again: “enhance safety, modernize and maintain the natural gas system, meet compliance requirements driven by government regulations, improve technology, and address rising costs like insurance.” Some of that is real, required work. But “modernize,” “improve technology” and “address rising costs like insurance” are not safety. They are ordinary business costs and capital choices — the kind of costs that, in any other business, come out of the owner’s pocket before they come out of the customer’s. SoCalGas is owned by Sempra, a publicly traded company that answers to shareholders.

The fair question for the judge on November 9 is simple: of the $485 million, how much is work the law actually requires, and how much is discretionary spending that happens to earn shareholders 9.78 percent? SoCalGas should have to answer that line by line.

Edison: the template

If you want to see where SoCalGas’s path leads, look at your electric bill. Santa Clarita is Southern California Edison territory, and Edison has been running the “safety” play for a decade.

On October 1, 2025, Edison raised its average residential rate from 31.2 cents to 35.3 cents per kilowatt-hour. The typical residential bill went from $171.17 to $193.23 a month — $22.06 more, a 12.9 percent jump in one day, according to Edison’s own rate advisory. Compilations of Public Advocates Office data put Edison’s average residential rate up roughly 101 percent since January 2016.

Why? You do not have to take our word for it. The CPUC’s own September 30, 2025 report to the Legislature on electric rates (the SB 695 report) states that the largest contributors to rising electricity rates are wildfire-related costs, and forecasts Edison’s residential rates rising about 7 percent a year through 2028 — faster than PG&E or San Diego Gas & Electric. The CPUC’s Public Advocates Office counts Edison’s 2026 wildfire-related revenue requirement at $2.69 billion, 14 percent of everything Edison collects, up from 9 percent in January 2023.

Then came Edison’s 2025 rate case. In Decision D.25-09-030 (September 18, 2025), the CPUC set Edison’s 2025 base revenue at $9.664 billion — $1.082 billion, or 12.6 percent, more than 2024, with more increases locked in for 2026, 2027 and 2028. Over four years, about $41.8 billion. The CPUC announced the decision as a win for affordability because it cut $4.39 billion from what Edison asked for. It was still the largest base-rate increase in Edison’s history.

The seven-to-one choice

Here is the clearest window into how the incentive works. Edison has two main ways to harden power lines against fire: covered conductor (insulated wire on the existing poles) and undergrounding (burying the lines). In its rate case, Edison asked for $4.232 billion to underground 580 miles of line and install 1,250 miles of covered conductor. The CPUC’s own fact sheet on the final decision shows what it approved instead:

Burying a mile of line cost roughly seven times as much as covering it. The Utility Reform Network (TURN), the ratepayer watchdog, told the CPUC in testimony that Edison’s own risk modeling identified covered conductor as by far the most cost-effective way to harden the grid. Edison’s own chief executive told investors in July 2025 that the CPUC’s proposed decision found covered conductor highly effective against wildfire.

So why did Edison ask for 580 miles of the expensive option? Because under the rules, both options go into the rate base and both earn the same 10.03 percent. The more expensive the safety, the more the shareholders earn. The CPUC cut Edison back to 177 miles — but the request itself tells you which way the incentive pulls. Edison now has a separate 10-year undergrounding plan pending before the CPUC (A.26-02-005).

Meanwhile, at Edison International

While Santa Clarita customers absorbed a 12.9 percent overnight increase, here is how the parent company did, from its own filings:

• Rate base: Edison projects Southern California Edison’s rate base will grow from $47.6 billion in 2025 to $67.9 billion in 2030 — about $20 billion more for shareholders to earn on — on a $38 to $41 billion five-year capital plan.
• Earnings: core earnings per share rose from $4.76 in 2023 to $4.93 in 2024 to $6.55 in 2025 — up about 38 percent in two years, in the same year as the Eaton Fire.
• Dividend: raised for the 22nd straight year, to $3.51 a share for 2026, up from $2.55 in 2020.
• Executive pay: Chief Executive Pedro Pizarro’s total reported compensation was $14.9 million in 2023, $13.8 million in 2024, and about $16.5 million in 2025 — roughly 20 percent more, and about 75 times the pay of the company’s median employee, according to Edison’s 2026 proxy statement. In fairness, the board cut his 2025 cash bonus by about 40 percent because of the Eaton Fire. His total pay still went up, because most of it is tied to financial performance, not safety.

You are also their insurance company

In 2019, after PG&E’s Camp Fire, the Legislature passed AB 1054 and created a $21 billion state Wildfire Fund to pay fire victims when a utility’s equipment starts a catastrophe. Much of it is paid for by a non-bypassable charge on your electric bill. In September 2025, SB 254 added an $18 billion “continuation account.” Half of it, $9 billion, comes from ratepayers, by extending that bill charge from 2036 to 2045. Utility shareholders put up the other half.

To be fair, SB 254 also did something important: it bars utilities from earning a shareholder return on the first $6 billion of new wildfire-mitigation capital. That is the Legislature itself admitting that the profit incentive on “safety” spending is real.

Then the Eaton Fire. It ignited January 7, 2025, in Eaton Canyon, killed 19 people and destroyed more than 9,400 homes in Altadena. Edison has told the SEC that a “viable explanation” is its own idle transmission equipment; it has not conceded the cause, and the official cause has not been publicly determined. The U.S. Department of Justice and Los Angeles County have both sued. And in April 2026, according to Utility Dive, the CPUC granted Edison’s request to collect an additional $274 million to $650 million from customers this year to cover Eaton Fire costs. Customers fund Edison’s self-insurance first; the Wildfire Fund, which customers also fund, comes after.

Ask yourself who carries the risk in that arrangement. It is not the shareholders who collect the 10.03 percent.

When “safety” means sitting in the dark

Canyon Country, Sand Canyon, Bouquet Canyon, Agua Dulce and Castaic know Edison’s other safety product: the Public Safety Power Shutoff. In January 2025, customers “from Piru to Sand Canyon” were left without power for days. In October 2026, Edison warned about 259,194 customers that they could be shut off, many in the Santa Clarita Valley — and then admitted it had sent shutoff alerts to some Santa Clarita Valley residents by mistake.

When the power is cut for safety, the spoiled food, the lost medicine, the closed small business and the generator fuel are generally yours to pay for. Edison does not publish shutoff counts for Santa Clarita, and has declined to give local figures to the press. On October 19, 2026, Rep. George Whitesides introduced H.R. 10854, the Public Safety Power Shutoff Data Transparency Act, to require that kind of reporting.

A charge for simply being a customer

Since November 2025, almost every Edison household that is not enrolled in a low-income program pays a $24.15 monthly Base Services Charge whether it uses a lot of power or almost none. Usage rates were trimmed in exchange. For a retiree in a small home who conserves, that is a bill increase dressed up as reform.

The result shows up in the arrears. The Public Advocates Office reports that 812,073 Edison customers — 17 percent — were behind on their bills in early 2026, owing an average of $833.

The watchdog found no invoices

When someone actually checks the receipts, the “safety” label does not always hold. In a pending Edison application (A.25-12-002), the company is asking for $62.2 million in extra 2024 wildfire-mitigation capital beyond what its rate case already funded. The CPUC’s own Public Advocates Office recommended approving only $13.2 million of it, and found that for some “professional and administrative support costs” charged to wildfire mitigation, Edison offered “no invoices, no unit quantities.”

No invoices. For money labeled safety. That is what happens when the word does the work that documentation is supposed to do.

Our corrupt independent and democratic government leaders are allowing these energy companies to rape our pockets till their dry! and we will still have the fires and all that their safety claim lies are supposed to address!

At the pump: same playbook, different label

Gasoline is not regulated by the CPUC, and the justification there is usually roads and climate rather than safety — but the playbook is the same: a noble purpose, an automatic escalator, and no vote when it rises.

• California’s gasoline excise tax rose from 61.2 cents to 63.4 cents a gallon on July 1, 2026 (CDTFA), and it is indexed to rise again every July automatically.
• With other state fees, California’s state taxes and fees on gasoline total roughly 73.6 cents a gallon, the highest in the nation, before federal tax and sales tax.
• California’s average price was $6.003 a gallon in the week of September 21, 2026 — $1.53 above the national average (EIA).
• The chair of the California Air Resources Board told a Senate committee in May 2026 that the state’s cap-and-invest program “does have a gasoline cost pass through.”

In fairness, economists at UC Berkeley’s Energy Institute at Haas found that the recent Los Angeles and Benicia refinery closures raised the local wholesale premium only about 4 cents a gallon, and argue that California’s gap is driven mostly by a concentrated, isolated refining market. Taxes and fees are not the whole story. But they are the part that is chosen by government and guaranteed to rise.

What the utilities will say — and what is true about it

Good Shepherd Media holds itself to the same standard it asks of the utilities, so here is the other side:

• The fires are real. The Camp Fire killed 85 people. The Eaton Fire killed 19. Power lines in high winds start fires, and hardening the grid saves lives. Nobody serious argues for doing nothing.
• Regulators did cut requests. The CPUC cut $4.39 billion from Edison’s rate case, cut its requested return from 11.75 to 10.03 percent, and trimmed undergrounding from 580 miles to 177. It cut $628.7 million from SoCalGas’s last request.
• Covered conductor works. Edison has installed thousands of miles of it, and state regulators credit it with reducing ignitions.
• Credit matters. If utilities could not borrow, their borrowing costs — also paid by customers — would rise. That is the stated reason for the Wildfire Fund.

All true. And none of it answers the central question: why is the system built so that the people who decide how much “safety” to buy are the same people who profit when it costs more? Ratepayer advocates like TURN and the Public Advocates Office generally do not fight safety itself. They fight the mix, the markup, the guaranteed return and the missing receipts. So should you.

Five questions to put on the record

1. Itemize it. Of SoCalGas’s $485 million, how much is work the law actually requires, and how much is discretionary capital that earns a 9.78 percent return?
2. No autopilot. Why should SoCalGas get an automatic 5.5 to 6.2 percent raise every year from 2029 to 2031 without proving each year’s need?
3. Show the whole bill. Will the CPUC put the $3.76 billion meter replacement in front of ratepayers alongside the rate case, so the total cost is visible at once?
4. Who pays for insurance? If insurance premiums are rising because of the utility’s own risk, why should customers carry all of it while shareholders carry none?
5. Cheapest safe option first. Will the CPUC require every “safety” project — gas or electric — to prove it is the lowest-cost way to reduce the risk, with invoices, before it goes into the rate base?

How to be heard

In person — Monday, November 9, 2026, 2:00 p.m. and 6:00 p.m.
El Monte City Hall East, Council Chambers, 11333 Valley Blvd., El Monte, CA 91731. Arrive 15 minutes early and sign up at the Public Advisor’s table to speak. Bring two printed copies of your remarks (one for the judge, one for the court reporter). Signs must be no bigger than 8.5 by 11 inches and may not be on sticks.

By phone — December 9 and 10, 2026, 2:00 p.m. and 6:00 p.m.
Call 1-800-857-1917, passcode 1673482#. Watch live at adminmonitor.com/ca/cpuc.

In writing — takes two minutes, any time before the record closes

The CPUC’s comment form for this case opens on its own site. Click the button, choose the “Public Comment” tab, type your comment, and submit. You will see “Your public comment has been successfully submitted.” Always reference A.26-06-014.

File your comment →

On your phone? Scan to comment

Questions about participating, or need an interpreter or accommodation (at least five days ahead): CPUC Public Advisor’s Office, 1-866-849-8390, 505 Van Ness Ave., San Francisco, CA 94102, or by email:

Questions for SoCalGas about the request: 1-800-427-2200, 8326 Century Park Ct., M/S CP 31E, San Diego, CA 92123, or by email:

Where the votes actually happen: CPUC voting meetings on November 19 and December 3 (Sacramento) and December 17 (San Francisco), 2026, each at 11:00 a.m., take public comment by phone at (800) 857-1917; check the meeting page on cpuc.ca.gov for that day’s passcode. Agendas post about ten days ahead.

The hearing notice says the judge wants to hear “your thoughts.” Here is one worth repeating in El Monte: we will pay for safety. We will not keep paying a guaranteed profit on every dollar that gets called safety. The utilities have lawyers, economists and lobbyists in that room every day. The only people missing are the ones paying the bill.

Sources. SoCalGas hearing notice for A.26-06-014 (email, Oct. 28, 2026); CPUC Docket Card A.26-06-014; SoCalGas General Rate Case page; CPUC press release on the 2024 Sempra rate case (Dec. 19, 2024); SoCalGas rate advisory; CalRegulatory on the 2028 rate case protests; SoCalGas meter replacement application A.25-12-019; SCE rate advisory, Oct. 1, 2025; CPUC 2025 SB 695 report; CPUC fact sheet, SCE 2025 rate case decision; CPUC cost of capital fact sheet; TURN wildfire grid-hardening testimony, A.23-05-010; Edison International Q4 2025 results presentation; Edison dividend release; Edison 2026 proxy statement; Edison 2025 proxy statement; Nossaman on SB 254; Utility Dive on Eaton Fire costs; CalMatters on the federal Eaton Fire lawsuit; Public Advocates Office testimony, A.25-12-002; The Signal on October 2026 shutoff warnings; The Signal on erroneous shutoff notices; CDTFA gasoline excise tax notice L-1025; Energy Institute at Haas, Oct. 26, 2026; CPUC public participation hearings.

Good Shepherd Media · goodshepherdmedia.net · Santa Clarita, California

The public record · A.26-06-014

What 86 ratepayers told the CPUC

Good Shepherd Media read every public comment filed on SoCalGas’s rate case as of 2:00 a.m. on October 29, 2026. Not one supported the increase.

What they said, in their own terms

“I dont get a 10 percent increase in wages every year.”
— A ratepayer from Perris, in a public comment to the CPUC

Every comment is public and signed. Read them all yourself on the CPUC’s docket for this case — and add yours. The CPUC also offers the full list as a PDF download on the same page.

Read all comments →
Add your comment →

How we counted: Good Shepherd Media read all 86 comments posted on CPUC proceeding A.26-06-014 as of 2:00 a.m., October 29, 2026. Theme shares are approximate; many comments raise more than one point. The CPUC may post or remove comments after that time. Source: CPUC Docket Card, A.26-06-014, Public Comments tab.

Editorial  |  Election 2026  |  Vote by Tuesday, November 3

No on Proposition 45: The Chamber of Commerce Wrote a 41-Page Law to Cut You Out of the Room

Utilities, homebuilders and data-center money paid to put it on your ballot. The Legislative Analyst says it could cost taxpayers $100 million a year. And the one thing it does not do is lower your rent.

By Philip Zullo, Publisher  ·  Good Shepherd Media  ·  October 28, 2026

Every Californian who has ever stood up at a planning hearing, filed a comment on a traffic study, or asked why a developer’s evacuation plan assumed a two-lane canyon road could empty a subdivision in a wildfire has used one law to do it. It is called the California Environmental Quality Act, CEQA, and it has been on the books since 1970.

Proposition 45 would rewrite it. Not by the Legislature, where it could be fixed when it breaks, but by a 41-page initiative statute drafted by the California Chamber of Commerce’s lawyers, placed on the ballot by paid signature gatherers, and locked in so that it can only be amended by a two-thirds vote of both houses. It takes effect the moment the vote is certified.

The campaign calls it the “Building an Affordable California Act.” Read the text and you will not find a dollar of rent relief, a mortgage program, or a cap on anything you pay. What you will find is a new fast lane for a category the measure calls “essential projects,” a stopwatch on public review, a shorter leash on the courts, and a definition of “essential” wide enough to drive a server farm through.

What Prop 45 actually does

Prop 45 creates an opt-in track for eight kinds of “essential” projects: housing, water, clean energy, public health, public safety, broadband internet access, education facilities, and transportation. A developer who qualifies can choose the new track. Once on it, the agency must finish the environmental review within a fixed clock of 365 business days. Any lawsuit challenging the approval must be decided within 270 days. The court is told to defer to the agency, to interpret the measure “liberally” in favor of approving the project, and to limit what a challenger can raise. Agencies are relieved of some of their duty to respond to late public comments.

Supporters are correct that it is not a blanket exemption. Projects still have to produce an environmental document. But the practical effect, according to the state’s nonpartisan Legislative Analyst, is that state and local agencies will have to hire people and build systems to meet the deadlines, at a cost the Analyst puts in the high tens of millions of dollars a year, possibly more than $100 million. That money comes from the same general fund and city budgets that pay for deputies, road repair and fire protection.

Follow the money: $42.5 million says yes

According to the Fair Political Practices Commission’s top-contributor list and reporting compiled by KQED, the Yes on 45 effort had raised roughly $42.5 million by mid-October. The largest single source is a committee called Building a Better California, at about $10 million, whose top donors include Google co-founder Sergey Brin. The California Building Industry Association’s committee put in about $9.9 million, bankrolled by KB Home and Lennar. A Chamber-controlled business PAC gave $3.9 million, with its top donors listed as California Resources Corporation, the state’s largest oil and gas producer, and PG&E. PG&E separately funded a committee named “BRIDGE Issues PAC, Yes on 45, Funded by PG&E Corporation” with $2.3 million. Edison International, the parent of Southern California Edison, gave $2 million directly and, by the No campaign’s count of all affiliated committees, about $4 million in total.

Then there is Prologis, the San Rafael-based industrial developer that is planning five data centers in San Jose alone. State filings show its “Modern Infrastructure Alliance Action Fund” put $500,000 into Yes on 45. The No campaign puts total data-center-related money behind the measure at more than $4 million.

The No side, sponsored by labor, health and environmental groups, had raised about $1.5 million. Its biggest donors are an environmental coalition, philanthropist Wendy Schmidt, and the State Building and Construction Trades Council. That is a roughly 28-to-1 money gap, and you can see it in the glossy mailers arriving at Santa Clarita Valley homes this week.

Ask yourself why a utility that reported record profits of $2.47 billion last year, and another that reported $1.69 billion, would spend millions to shorten the public’s chance to object to transmission lines, substations and power plants. Ask why a company building data centers wants a shorter clock on the review of projects that draw enormous amounts of power and water. They are not doing it to lower your rent.

The data-center question

The words “data center” do not appear in Prop 45. That is exactly the problem. The measure fast-tracks “essential broadband internet access projects,” and it says an essential project “includes all related and ancillary public, private, and utility infrastructure” needed to serve it, naming electric, telecommunication, gas and water improvements. Opponents, including the Sierra Club and a coalition of land-use attorneys, argue that language is broad enough to let a data center ride the broadband lane, and that Prop 45 would hollow out the data-center rules the Legislature only just passed.

In fairness, the Yes campaign disputes this. Kurt Oneto, the Nielsen Merksamer attorney who is the measure’s official proponent, wrote that supplying the internet no more makes a data center a broadband project than supplying lumber makes a sawmill a housing project. The campaign asked the Office of Legislative Counsel, which opined that the statutory definition of “broadband internet access service” the measure borrows would not sweep in data centers.

Here is why that does not settle it. Legislative Counsel’s opinion is advice, not a court ruling, and Prop 45 itself orders judges to resolve ambiguity in favor of the project. The measure cannot be fixed by a simple majority of the Legislature if a court reads it the other way. And the people who wrote it were paid, in part, by the industry that stands to benefit from the broad reading. When a law’s authors insist a loophole is not there, the honest test is whether they would accept an amendment closing it. They wrote the measure so that no such amendment is possible without a two-thirds vote. Voters should not be asked to take the drafters’ word for what their own text means.

The “housing” sales pitch

The ballot argument leans hard on housing. The Building Industry Association claims Prop 45 would take $75,000 off the price of a new home. That figure is the industry’s own estimate of total permitting delay, not a promise, and nothing in the measure requires a builder to pass a single dollar of savings to a buyer or renter. Prop 45 sets no rent, builds no home, and appropriates no money for housing. Even California YIMBY, the state’s loudest pro-housing group, declined to endorse it, noting that the measure’s main housing effect is to help large new subdivisions that do not already qualify for the infill exemptions the Legislature adopted in 2025.

What the measure does do is define “essential housing project” to include not just apartments and single-family tracts but transitional housing, emergency shelters, supportive housing, farmworker housing, group living facilities, student and senior housing, and conversions of commercial buildings. Those are overwhelmingly publicly funded projects. Prop 45 then exempts 100 percent affordable projects under 85 feet from the labor standards it imposes on everyone else. In plain terms: the taxpayer-financed projects get the fastest lane, with the thinnest public review, and the neighbors who pay for them lose the comment rights they have today. If you think the public should have more say over where a state-funded shelter or supportive-housing complex goes, not less, Prop 45 moves in the wrong direction.

Readers who want to weigh the actual taxpayer housing question on this ballot should look at Proposition 1, the $11.25 billion housing bond. That is where the money is. Prop 45 is about who gets to object, and for how long.

Why it matters in Santa Clarita

This valley is a place where the environmental review is often the only room the public is allowed into. The City Council meets at hours most working people cannot attend. Staff reports arrive days before a vote. The CEQA comment period, the traffic study, the fire-evacuation analysis and the lawsuit that follows when the city ignores them are the tools canyon residents have used for forty years to force an honest accounting of what a project does to a two-lane road, a water table or a wildfire corridor. Prop 45 puts those tools on a timer set by the developer’s lawyers and tells the judge to lean toward the developer when the clock runs out.

CEQA is abused. Everyone who has watched a union use it to extract a labor agreement, or a competitor use it to stall a rival, knows that. The Legislature has been cutting back the abuse for a decade, most recently with the 2025 infill reforms. Those changes can be adjusted by a majority vote when they misfire. Prop 45 cannot. It hands a corporate coalition a permanent rewrite and asks the rest of us to trust the fine print.

The Sierra Club, the California Nurses Association, the League of Women Voters, the Western Center on Law and Poverty and the California Democratic Party say no. So does this newspaper. The California Chamber of Commerce, the California Republican Party, the hospital and water associations, and Assemblymember Buffy Wicks say yes. Their argument is that the current system is slow, expensive and litigious, and they are not wrong about that. The question is whether the cure should be written by the people who profit from it and placed beyond the reach of ordinary repair. It should not.

Fix CEQA in the Legislature, in daylight, where a mistake can be corrected next session. Do not let the people who profit from the shortcut write it into permanent law.

Vote No on Proposition 45.

Sources

• California Secretary of State, Official Voter Information Guide, Proposition 45
• Proposition 45, Text of Proposed Law (41 pages)
• Fair Political Practices Commission, Top 10 Contributors, November 2026 General Election
• KQED 2026 Voter Guide, Proposition 45 (fundraising totals)
• CalMatters, “Prop 45 explained: CEQA overhaul could shift who holds power over building”
• LA Public Press, “Critics worry about a potential data center loophole”
• The San Francisco Standard, “Prop. 45 promises more housing. Why are some YIMBYs against it?”
• California YIMBY, “Proposition 45: No Recommendation”
• Lexology, Legislative Counsel opinion on data centers and the broadband definition
• Courage California, PG&E and Edison contributions and 2025 profits
• LA Progressive / Capital & Main, California Resources Corp. contributions
• No on Prop 45, Prologis contributions (campaign source)
• Yes on Prop 45, “Read the Measure” (campaign source)
• California Environmental Voters, “What is Proposition 45?”

No on Prop 37: Sacramento Wants to Be Your Second-Mortgage Lender

A $25 billion state-run mortgage program, written by the real estate lobby and sold as “zero cost to taxpayers.” The fine print says who really holds the bag.

I pay my own mortgage. So do you. The money comes out of a paycheck that was already taxed once on the way in, and it goes to a bank every month for the privilege of a roof over my family. Nobody co-signed for me. Nobody handed me 17 percent of the purchase price. I scraped it together, the way working Californians have always done.

On November 3, voters are being asked to make the State of California a $25 billion mortgage lender for other people. That is Proposition 37. Its backers — the California Association of Realtors, the building-trades unions, and former Assembly Speaker Bob Hertzberg — want you to believe it costs you nothing. Before you take their word for it, read what the measure actually does, who wrote it, and what “no cost to taxpayers” really means when the state gets into the lending business.

What Prop 37 actually does

Strip away the campaign language and Proposition 37 is a lending program. It authorizes the California Housing Finance Agency (CalHFA) to issue up to $25 billion in revenue bonds and use the money to write second mortgages for homebuyers. The buyer puts down at least 3 percent. The state writes a second mortgage for up to 17 percent of the price. A private bank writes the first mortgage for the rest. The buyer then makes two mortgage payments every month — one to the bank, one on the state loan.

The loans are limited to newly built homes (or units newly converted from commercial buildings) where the buyer is the first purchaser. The buyer must have lived in California for a year, must occupy the home, and must earn no more than twice the area median income. The price cap is roughly $1 million to $1.5 million depending on the county, adjusted every year.

Think about those limits for a second. A couple earning well into the $200,000s — in some counties more than $300,000 a year — qualifies as “middle class” under this measure. The home can cost up to $1.5 million. And it has to be new construction. This is not a program for the family in a Canyon Country apartment trying to buy a 1970s tract house. It is a demand pump aimed squarely at the inventory that homebuilders and Realtors are trying to move.

“Zero cost to taxpayers” — read the fine print

Let us be precise, because the Yes campaign is counting on voters not to be. Proposition 37 does not raise your taxes. It does not take money out of the General Fund today. The bonds are revenue bonds, not general obligation bonds, which means the state’s budget is not legally pledged to repay them. The Legislative Analyst’s Office says the measure would have no direct state or local cost because borrowers are supposed to repay the bonds through their loan payments. The official voter guide prints that line, and the Yes campaign repeats it in every ad.

That claim is true exactly as far as it goes, and not one inch further.

“No direct cost” is an accounting statement about today. It is not a promise about what happens when a $25 billion book of second mortgages — the riskiest slice of any home loan, the part that gets wiped out first when prices fall — goes bad. Second liens on 3-percent-down purchases of top-of-market new construction are precisely the loans that failed in 2008. The Hoover Institution’s analysis of the measure puts it plainly: the “no cost to taxpayers” claim holds only if borrowers repay in full, and what the measure really creates is what public-finance analysts call a moral-obligation or contingent risk. The nonpartisan League of Women Voters, which opposes the measure, notes the same thing in fewer words: if borrowers default, there may not be enough money to repay the bonds.

So who eats that loss? On paper, the bondholders. In the real world, the bonds carry the name of a California state agency. When a state housing agency’s bonds start defaulting, two things happen: every other bond the state tries to sell gets more expensive, and the Legislature faces enormous pressure to make investors whole so the state’s credit does not take the hit. That is how a “no cost” program becomes a taxpayer cost — not by a tax on the ballot, but by a bailout vote in Sacramento five years from now, after the people who wrote this measure have cashed their commissions.

CalHFA also has to square a circle that nobody in the Yes campaign wants to talk about. To sell $25 billion in bonds backed by risky second liens, it has to offer investors a return that compensates for that risk. To make the program attractive to buyers, it has to lend at a rate below what the market would charge for the same loan. The California Budget & Policy Center — no conservative outfit — warns that the Prop 37 second-mortgage rate could land above the roughly 6.5 percent buyers already pay on a conventional first mortgage, and that the monthly cost of the second loan could erode much of the help the program was supposed to provide. The Legislative Analyst itself lists investor demand and borrowing costs as the measure’s major unknowns. Voters are being asked to approve a loan program without knowing the interest rate, the term, or the monthly payment.

Who wrote it, and who gets paid

Follow the money. The sponsor is the California Association of Realtors, which has told its members in writing that it is sponsoring Prop 37 and is recruiting “Prop 37 Ambassadors” to mobilize agents before Election Day. The Carpenters union and the nurses union are on board. The initiative is restricted to new construction, and it ties builder incentives to labor standards. Every dollar it lends is a dollar that lands in a transaction with a Realtor on each side and a builder at the closing table.

There is nothing illegal about an industry writing a ballot measure that pumps $25 billion of state-backed credit into its own product. But do not call it a middle-class housing program. Call it what it is: a demand subsidy for the people who sell new homes, with the risk parked on a state agency’s balance sheet.

And note what the Yes side chose not to do. The California Budget & Policy Center points out that because revenue bonds do not require voter approval, this entire program could have been created by the Legislature or by CalHFA on its own. It went to the ballot instead — where a campaign funded by the industry gets to define the terms, and where, as it turns out, no argument against Proposition 37 was even submitted for the official voter guide. Nearly every California voter will open their ballot pamphlet and see one side of this question.

Subsidizing demand in a supply crisis

California does not have a down-payment crisis. It has a supply crisis, manufactured over decades by the same Sacramento establishment now asking you to fix it with more borrowed money. CEQA abuse, impact fees, permit timelines measured in years, and prevailing-wage mandates have made it almost impossible to build an ordinary house at an ordinary price. Prop 37 touches none of that. It does not cut a single fee or shorten a single permit. It adds buying power.

Any first-year economics student can tell you what happens when you add $25 billion of credit to a market that cannot add supply: the price goes up. The builder who knows that his buyer can now bring 20 percent to the table instead of 3 percent will price the house accordingly. The subsidy gets capitalized into the sale price, the buyer carries two mortgages instead of one, and the Realtor’s commission — a percentage of that higher price — grows. The program is designed to help the people who sell homes more than the people who buy them.

“Help” that means deeper debt

The down-payment barrier is real. It is also, for most families, the last honest signal left in the housing market: if you cannot save 10 or 20 percent, you probably cannot afford the house. Prop 37 does not remove the barrier. It replaces savings with a second loan. The buyer still owes the money — now with interest, on top of a first mortgage, property taxes, insurance, and maintenance. The League of Women Voters, which spends most of its time on the other side of the aisle from this newspaper, opposes the measure for exactly that reason: it gets more people into homes only by putting them deeper into debt, on terms they will not know until after they vote.

We have run this experiment before. Low-down-payment lending with the risk shifted onto a government-linked entity was the engine of the 2008 collapse. It ended with millions of families underwater, the Treasury writing checks to Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac, and the people who structured the loans long gone. California now proposes to do the same thing with its own housing agency and call it compassion.

The fairness question nobody in Sacramento will answer

Here is what the Yes campaign cannot explain. Millions of Californians did it the hard way. They rented longer than they wanted to. They drove the old car. They saved the down payment out of after-tax income and they make the payment every month out of after-tax income. Prop 37 tells those people that the state will now lend 17 percent of a $1.5 million house to a household earning $300,000 a year — and that if the loan goes bad, the state’s name is on the bonds.

Government has no business being anyone’s second-mortgage lender. Not because helping families is wrong, but because a state that writes $25 billion in risky loans has created a $25 billion reason to make taxpayers cover them later. That is the honest version of “my taxes will pay for someone else’s mortgage.” It will not happen on November 3. It happens the day the defaults start.

What supporters say

In fairness, the case for Prop 37 is not nothing, and readers should hear it. Supporters — including the California Democratic Party, State Treasurer Fiona Ma, State Controller Malia Cohen, gubernatorial candidate Xavier Becerra, the Realtors, the Carpenters and the United Nurses Associations — argue that the down payment is the single biggest wall between working families and ownership; that the program is a loan, not a grant, repaid by the people who use it; that private lenders and bond investors, not the General Fund, carry the default risk; that limiting it to new construction will spur building rather than bid up existing homes; and that the measure carries audit and transparency requirements. The California Republican Party has taken no position. The NO case made here is that every one of those assurances depends on the loans performing, and that voters are being asked to bet $25 billion of the state’s credit on it.

The vote

A NO vote on Proposition 37 does not take anything away from anyone. Existing state down-payment programs continue under current law. What a NO vote does is keep California out of a $25 billion mortgage business it has no business being in, written by the people who profit from it, with the risk parked where it always ends up.

Election Day is Tuesday, November 3, 2026. Good Shepherd Media recommends a NO vote on Proposition 37.

Health & Science • Special Report

What Years of Heavy Cannabis Use Do to the Brain and Body — What the Science Actually Shows

From receptor shutdown in the brain to psychosis, heart attack, stroke and cancer, a decade of peer-reviewed research paints a clear picture of daily, high-potency use. The good news: some of the damage starts to reverse within days of quitting.

By Philip, Good Shepherd Media • October 28, 2026

Cannabis is now sold legally on Main Streets across California, often at strengths that would have been unrecognizable a generation ago. Federal drug-testing labs at the University of Mississippi, which analyze marijuana seized by the DEA, found the average THC content of seized plant material climbed from about 4 percent in 1995 to about 12 percent by 2014, and to roughly 14 percent by 2019. Concentrates and vape oils run far higher.

That shift matters, because the research that follows keeps pointing to the same two risk factors: how often a person uses, and how strong the product is. Occasional adult use is a different exposure from years of daily, high-THC use. This report is about the second one.

1. The brain turns down its own cannabinoid receptors

THC works by binding to the brain’s CB1 receptors — the same receptors the body’s own endocannabinoid system uses to regulate mood, appetite, memory, pain and sleep. Flood those receptors every day and the brain defends itself by pulling some of them out of service, a process called downregulation. That is the biological root of tolerance: the same dose stops working, so users take more.

Two brain-imaging studies measured this directly in living people using PET scans:

• National Institutes of Health, 2012 (Molecular Psychiatry, Hirvonen and colleagues, including NIDA director Nora Volkow). Thirty men who smoked cannabis daily had roughly 20 percent fewer available CB1 receptors in the brain’s cortex than non-users. The deeper brain regions and cerebellum were not significantly affected. The more years a man had smoked, the greater the loss.
• Yale University, 2016 (Biological Psychiatry: CNNI, D’Souza and colleagues). Cannabis-dependent men aged 18 to 35 showed about 15 percent lower CB1 availability than healthy controls.

How long until the receptors come back?

Here the science carries genuinely encouraging news. The receptor loss is reversible, and recovery starts fast.

2. Addiction is real — and so is withdrawal

The old line that “weed isn’t addictive” does not survive the data. The Centers for Disease Control and Prevention estimates that roughly 3 in 10 people who use cannabis have cannabis use disorder, the medical term for problem use that a person cannot control despite harm to health, work or relationships. Risk is higher for those who start before age 18.

A 2022 clinical review in the journal Addiction found that about half of regular and dependent users go through a recognizable withdrawal syndrome when they stop. Symptoms usually begin within one to two days, peak between days two and six, and in heavy users some last three weeks or more. The authors note the clinical danger: withdrawal itself drives people back to using.

3. Psychosis and schizophrenia: the strongest evidence of harm

In 2017 the National Academies of Sciences, Engineering, and Medicine — after reviewing more than 10,000 studies — rated the link between cannabis use and the development of schizophrenia and other psychoses as supported by substantial evidence, one of its highest categories.

Later research sharpened the picture:

• Europe and Brazil, 2019 (The Lancet Psychiatry, Di Forti and colleagues, King’s College London). Comparing 901 patients with a first psychotic episode to 1,237 people from the same 11 cities, daily users had about 3.2 times the odds of a psychotic disorder compared with people who never used. For daily use of high-potency cannabis (above 10 percent THC), the odds rose to 4.8 times. The researchers estimated that about 12 percent of first-episode psychosis cases across the sites might have been prevented if high-potency cannabis were not available.
• Canada, 2025 (JAMA Network Open, Myran and colleagues, University of Ottawa). Tracking the health records of 13.5 million Ontario residents from 2006 to 2022, researchers found the share of new schizophrenia cases associated with cannabis use disorder rose from about 4 percent before legalization to about 10 percent after. Among young men, the figure reached roughly 18 percent. About 9 percent of people treated for cannabis use disorder went on to develop schizophrenia, versus 0.6 percent of people without it.

The Ontario authors are careful to say their study does not by itself prove cannabis causes schizophrenia. But the combination — a dose-response pattern, a potency effect, and rising rates as products got stronger and more available — is exactly what public-health researchers look for.

4. Teenage brains: the IQ that did not come back

The Dunedin Study in New Zealand has followed 1,037 people from birth since 1972. Because participants took IQ and memory tests at age 13 — before anyone used cannabis — and again at age 38, researchers could measure change inside the same person.

Published in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences in 2012, the findings were stark: the most persistent users who started as teenagers lost an average of 8 IQ points between childhood and adulthood, while non-users held steady. Friends and family independently reported more attention and memory problems in those users. Quitting later in life did not fully restore lost function. People who began heavy use only as adults did not show the same decline.

The honest caveat: the group of heavy adolescent-onset users was small, about 50 people. But the finding fits the biology — the brain is still wiring itself until the mid-twenties.

5. Heart attack and stroke

A 2024 study in the Journal of the American Heart Association, led by researchers at Massachusetts General Hospital and drawing on CDC survey data from about 430,000 U.S. adults (2016–2020), found that daily cannabis users had:

• 25 percent higher odds of heart attack
• 42 percent higher odds of stroke

The link held even among people who had never smoked tobacco or used e-cigarettes. Most users in the survey smoked their cannabis. The data were self-reported, and the authors called for long-term follow-up studies.

6. Uncontrollable vomiting sending users to the ER

Cannabinoid hyperemesis syndrome — repeated bouts of severe nausea, vomiting and abdominal pain in long-term heavy users — was once a medical curiosity. In Ontario, a 2022 study in JAMA Network Open found emergency-room visits for the condition rose 13-fold between 2014 and mid-2021, with the sharpest jump after the retail market expanded. Nearly 1 in 11 of those visits ended in hospital admission. The only reliable cure is stopping.

7. Head and neck cancer

A 2024 study from the Keck School of Medicine of USC, published in JAMA Otolaryngology–Head & Neck Surgery, compared about 116,000 adults diagnosed with cannabis use disorder against matched patients without it, after accounting for tobacco and alcohol use. Those with the disorder had about 3.5 times the risk of head and neck cancer, with laryngeal cancer showing the largest increase. The researchers point to the smoke itself as the likely culprit and say the mechanism and dose still need study.

8. Dementia later in life

In April 2025, the University of Ottawa team published a study in JAMA Neurology following 6 million Ontario adults aged 45 and older. People whose cannabis use was serious enough to land them in an emergency room or hospital had 72 percent higher risk of a new dementia diagnosis within five years compared with the general population, and 23 percent higher risk than people hospitalized for other reasons, after adjusting for other health conditions. Within five years, 5.0 percent of the cannabis group had been diagnosed with dementia, versus 1.3 percent of the general population. The risk was still lower than for people hospitalized for alcohol, and the authors stress the study shows an association, not proof of cause.

What the science does not say

Good reporting means stating the limits. Most of the studies above are observational: they show strong, repeated associations, not laboratory proof of cause. The heaviest harms track with daily, high-potency, often smoked use, and with starting young. The same 2017 National Academies report that found substantial evidence of psychosis risk also found substantial evidence that cannabis can help some adults with chronic pain, chemotherapy nausea and multiple sclerosis spasms, and it did not find an established link to lung cancer.

What the record does show is that the image of cannabis as harmless does not match the medical literature — and that today’s products are not the cannabis most of that earlier reassurance was based on.

Sources

1. Hirvonen J, et al. “Reversible and regionally selective downregulation of brain cannabinoid CB1 receptors in chronic daily cannabis smokers.” Molecular Psychiatry 17 (2012): 642–649. pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/21747398
2. D’Souza DC, et al. “Rapid Changes in CB1 Receptor Availability in Cannabis Dependent Males after Abstinence from Cannabis.” Biological Psychiatry: CNNI 1 (2016): 60–67. pmc.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/articles/PMC4742341
3. Connor JP, et al. “Clinical management of cannabis withdrawal.” Addiction 117 (2022): 2075–2095. pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/34791767
4. Budney AJ, et al. “The time course and significance of cannabis withdrawal.” J Abnorm Psychol 112 (2003): 393–402. pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/12943018
5. CDC. “Understanding Your Risk for Cannabis Use Disorder.” cdc.gov/cannabis/health-effects/cannabis-use-disorder.html
6. National Academies of Sciences, Engineering, and Medicine. The Health Effects of Cannabis and Cannabinoids (2017). doi.org/10.17226/24625
7. Di Forti M, et al. “The contribution of cannabis use to variation in the incidence of psychotic disorder across Europe (EU-GEI).” The Lancet Psychiatry (2019). doi.org/10.1016/S2215-0366(19)30048-3
8. Myran DT, et al. “Changes in Incident Schizophrenia Diagnoses Associated With Cannabis Use Disorder After Cannabis Legalization.” JAMA Network Open (2025). doi:10.1001/jamanetworkopen.2024.57868
9. Meier MH, et al. “Persistent cannabis users show neuropsychological decline from childhood to midlife.” PNAS 109 (2012): E2657–64. doi.org/10.1073/pnas.1206820109
10. Jeffers AM, et al. “Association of Cannabis Use With Cardiovascular Outcomes Among US Adults.” Journal of the American Heart Association (2024).
11. Myran DT, et al. “Changes in Emergency Department Visits for Cannabis Hyperemesis Syndrome Following Recreational Cannabis Legalization and Subsequent Commercialization in Ontario, Canada.” JAMA Network Open 5 (2022): e2231937.
12. Gallagher TJ, Kokot NC, et al. “Cannabis Use and Head and Neck Cancer.” JAMA Otolaryngology–Head & Neck Surgery (2024). doi:10.1001/jamaoto.2024.2419
13. Myran DT, et al. “Risk of Dementia in Individuals With Emergency Department Visits or Hospitalizations Due to Cannabis.” JAMA Neurology (2025). pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/40227745
14. ElSohly MA, et al. “Changes in cannabis potency over the last two decades (1995–2014).” Biological Psychiatry 79 (2016); and “A 10-year trend in cannabis potency (2013–2022).” Frontiers in Public Health 12 (2024).

This article is journalism summarizing published research and is not medical advice. Talk to a doctor before making health decisions. © 2026 Good Shepherd Media.

2. Was a site, parking and traffic plan ever submitted and reviewed, or any Temporary Use Permit issued, for events at the barn?

3. Is the 4.18-acre barn parcel (APN 2848-012-032) actually inside the mapped overlay, which requires 50 or more contiguous acres?

4. What occupancy classification was the 8,750-square-foot barn, built in 2019, permitted as? Assembly occupancy is required for events.

Opinion · Election 2026 · CA-48

Marni von Wilpert: Socialist Spending in a Moderate Disguise

She says she isn’t a socialist. Her health care agenda says otherwise — and families who already pay their own way would foot the bill.

By Philip Zullo, Publisher · Good Shepherd Media · October 23, 2026

You already pay for your health care.

Maybe you write the check yourself every month. Maybe you took a job partly because the company offered a solid plan. Maybe you run a small business and cover your own workers because it’s the right thing to do and it keeps good people around. However you got it, you earned it.

Marni von Wilpert wants you to pay for someone else’s too. And she wants you to believe that doesn’t make her a socialist.

The San Diego City Councilmember faces Republican Supervisor Jim Desmond on November 3 for California’s 48th Congressional District, the seat Darrell Issa is leaving. It is one of the most-watched House races in the country. And health care sits at the very center of her pitch.

What She’s Actually Promising

Strip the campaign slogans away and read what she has told interviewers. Von Wilpert says she would fight to protect Medicaid and Medicare and restore funding for reproductive and preventive health services. In a May interview with East County Magazine, she called for restoring Medicaid funding and the Affordable Care Act tax subsidies, funding Planned Parenthood, and making sure “everyone has access to healthcare.”

Notice the word that keeps coming up: restore. Restore funding. Restore subsidies. In plain English, that means more federal spending. And federal spending is your money.

Here is what just one piece of that agenda costs. The nonpartisan Congressional Budget Office estimated that permanently extending the enhanced ACA premium tax credits — the subsidies Democrats created in 2021 — would add about $350 billion to the federal deficit over ten years. That’s one line item. It doesn’t count the Medicaid dollars or the rest of the wish list.

Actions Define You, Not Labels

Von Wilpert has gone out of her way to tell reporters she does not agree with the Democratic Socialists of America’s platform. She campaigns as a moderate. Some outlets even describe her as a pro-Israel centrist running a safe, conventional campaign.

Fine. Then judge her the way we judge anyone in public life: not by what she calls herself, but by what she wants government to do.

Anyone can say anything. A candidate can swear up and down she isn’t something. The honest test is simple: What does she want taxpayers to pay for, and who gets the bill?

Take money from the people who earn it. Run it through government. Let bureaucrats decide how it gets spent. That is the socialist belief system — no matter what name is printed on the yard sign.

Today’s Democratic Party has figured out that the word “socialist” polls badly in swing districts. So candidates in places like CA-48 stopped using the word. They did not stop pushing the policies. The disguise changed. The agenda didn’t.

Big Government Money Builds Big Medical Bureaucracies

Follow where taxpayer health dollars actually go. They don’t flow to your family doctor. They flow to the giant hospital networks and HMO systems that already dominate Southern California.

Those systems hire armies of administrators to process government reimbursements, chase paperwork, and manage compliance. Those administrators are well paid. And they are the ones who end up deciding which treatments get approved, which specialists you’re allowed to see, and how long you wait.

The more government money pours into the system, the bigger and more powerful those bureaucracies grow. Patients get less say. Doctors get less say. The paper-pushers in the middle get more.

That’s not a conspiracy theory. It’s what happens whenever one giant payer starts writing the checks: the people who handle the money gain the power.

Your Own Plan Means Your Own Choices

Compare that to coverage you buy yourself or get through your job.

You pick the plan. Your employer competes for workers by offering better coverage — it’s part of the paycheck, and good companies use it to attract and keep good people. If the plan is bad, you switch plans. If the employer is cheap, you switch employers.

That is choice. That is competition. That is the pressure that keeps quality up and keeps insurers honest.

Every dollar Washington pours into expanding government-funded programs tilts the field further away from that model and toward one-size-fits-all care, run by people you will never meet and can never fire.

The Hidden Tax on Rent, Food and Supplies

Here is the part the campaign ads leave out. When government spending grows, the cost doesn’t stay politely in the health care column. It spreads.

• Businesses pay more in taxes and compliance, so they raise prices.
• Landlords pay more on every front, so rents go up.
• Suppliers pass their higher costs down the line to everyone who buys from them.
• Families see it at the grocery checkout, at the gas pump, and on every bill that hits the kitchen table.

And who takes the hardest hit? The people already carrying their own weight. The self-employed contractor. The small business owner who covers his crew. The family paying premiums out of pocket. They pay once for their own coverage, again through taxes for everyone else’s, and a third time through higher prices on everything they buy.

In San Diego County, where housing and living costs already push families out of the state, that’s a burden people simply cannot absorb.

Washington Knows Exactly What It’s Buying

If you want to know who a candidate will answer to, look at who’s paying for the campaign.

Von Wilpert leads the fundraising race with about $4.5 million. On top of that, more than $6 million in outside money has poured into CA-48 — more than almost any other House race in California — and nearly all of it is backing her. National Democrats named the district one of their “Districts in Play” months ago. After the primary, she even changed her slogan to “Take Back Congress.”

That’s not a local candidate running on local issues. That’s a national party buying a seat. And a seat bought by Washington answers to Washington.

What Her Supporters Will Tell You

Her backers will say the subsidies keep low-income and self-employed people insured, and that fewer uninsured patients means fewer expensive emergency-room visits that drive up everyone’s premiums. They’ll point to the CBO’s estimate that extending the credits would insure millions more people.

Ask the obvious follow-up: insured by whom? Every one of those policies is paid for by somebody — and that somebody is the taxpayer who already bought his own. If government spending were the cure for high health costs, decades of rising federal health spending would have made care cheap by now. It hasn’t. It has made the bureaucracies bigger.

The Question for CA-48 Voters

Ignore the label. Ignore the “moderate” branding. Look at the agenda, and look at who is funding it.

Then ask yourself one question before you mark your ballot on November 3:

Do you want to pay more for everything so Washington can run more of your health care?

If you already pay your own way, you know the answer.

This is an opinion piece. The views expressed are those of the author and Good Shepherd Media.

Sources

• The Advocate — von Wilpert on health care, Sept–Oct 2026
• East County Magazine — interview with Marni von Wilpert, May 22, 2026
• LGBTQ Nation — von Wilpert on the DSA platform, Aug. 2026
• CalMatters — fundraising and outside spending in CA-48, Oct. 2026
• Times of San Diego — “Take Back Congress” and DCCC targeting, June 2026
• Ballotpedia News — CA-48 general election
• States Newsroom — CBO: extending enhanced ACA credits would cost $350 billion

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