Articles by Matt Levin CalMatters

If $800 million wasn’t a sufficiently appetizing carrot to get his audience to buy more motels, Gov. Gavin Newsom could dangle a more spiritual enticement: less time burning in the afterlife. At the California State Association of Counties’ annual conference in mid-November, more than 200 county supervisors and other officials awaited answers via Zoom for how the governor was planning to ward off all manners of local government armageddon — pestilence, wildfires, budget deficits. When asked ab...

When Californians approved Proposition 13 in 1978, critics of the landmark ballot measure say voters did not foresee many of the unintended consequences of capping property taxes on both residential and commercial land: lower school funding, cash-strapped cities, major corporate tax benefits. Forty-two years later, Californians are about to vote on Proposition 15, which proponents say will solve many of those problems by raising taxes on commercial properties. But opponents, and even some supp...

California renters financially impacted by the coronavirus pandemic will be protected from eviction until at least next February, while small landlords will be offered some foreclosure protections, under a measure approved by lawmakers and signed by Gov. Gavin Newsom late Monday night. The deal was passed by supermajorities in both state legislative chambers, with both Democrats and a handful of Republican lawmakers supporting the bill while pleading for additional federal intervention. A two-...

Governor Gavin Newsom doesn’t want it to happen. Neither do powerful leaders in the state Legislature. Tenant groups desperately want to prevent it, and landlord associations say they also want to avoid it so long as they don’t bear an unfair portion of the cost. Seemingly all of the important actors trying to find a solution to the so-called “eviction wave” looming over California have a strong incentive to strike a deal. As the novel coronavirus pandemic has shuttered wide swaths of the econo...