Crafting this year’s budget proved especially difficult as our state has begun to feel the impacts of the cuts coming down from Washington. The dismantling of safety-net programs we’re seeing is truly a historic crisis. Health care costs keep climbing, and Californians are losing access to care, food assistance, and other forms of support. While it proved impossible to backfill every cut, our budget rejects, delays, and softens as much harm as possible.
With input from Californians and the Legislature's collective effort, our final budget reflected the values of our state by ensuring investments in reproductive health, gender-affirming care, security for nonprofit institutions, subsidized premiums for Covered California enrollees, affordable housing projects, diaper banks, education with the highest per-pupil funding, and wildfire prevention.
I'm proud of the investments I championed throughout budget negotiations. Read about the budget wins I had a role in securing below:
allcove youth centers are a statewide network of youth-designed, youth-centered mental health and wellbeing hubs serving young people ages 12–25. These centers provide low-barrier, walk-in access to integrated mental health and substance use services, peer support, care coordination, and school and community connections in a developmentally appropriate, stigma-free setting. I was proud to partner with Assemblymember Berman to secure this statewide network $5,000,000.
Private Duty Nurses serve the most medically fragile individuals in the state, including children with special healthcare needs and children with complex chronic conditions. These nurses allow children to remain at home, providing significant savings to the state and affected families by avoiding prolonged hospital stays. Waitlists for this care are getting longer, but hopefully families will experience some reprieve with the $30,000,000 to support rate increases for private duty nursing.
California has several key public health information technology systems that have proven to be essential to California’s ongoing capacity to detect, respond to, and prevent public health threats statewide. Our local public health officers sounded the alarm when funding for these systems, which the state made significant investment in, was at risk of being completely defunded. Thanks to the partnership with the County Health Executives Association of California, we secured $16.6 million to support these public health tracking systems
Created in 2022, California’s Healthy School Food Pathway (HSFP) program is the nation’s first state and federally registered apprenticeship initiative dedicated to training school food professionals to procure, prepare, and serve freshly prepared school meals. Los Gatos Elementary School District, Santa Cruz City Schools, Morgan Hill School District, and San Lorenzo Valley USD in the district have participated in this program! The budget invests $14.3 million to continue supporting school food professionals build their skills, advance in their careers, and strengthen the meals served to California students.
The Women in California Politics Museum was founded in 2014 to collect, protect, and preserve the history of women who have served in the California Legislature. No other organization was, or is, a central hub for collecting and preserving the work, accomplishments, and history of women legislators. The Museum’s collections of letters, photos, awards, recognitions, campaign memorabilia, original artworks, and articles of clothing women legislators wore – many of whom are no longer living – are invaluable pieces of our state’s history. Thanks to a $1,000,000 investment, the museum is able to continue cultivating historical artifacts.
Established in 2023, the Farms Together program created an unprecedented partnership between the state, food banks, and California farmers. By facilitating the purchase of locally grown produce for regional food banks, it has delivered a triple benefit: economic stability for farmers, nutritious food for Californians facing hunger, and millions injected into our rural agricultural economy. This year, we invested $15 million to continue supporting this great work.
Since 2020, the California Parent & Youth Helpline has been the state's behavioral health front door for families. Roughly 25,000 parents, children, and youth rely on it each year for immediate help with anxiety, depression, family conflict, substance use, and suicidal ideation — available the moment they reach out. Increasingly, the everyday problems families bring to the Helpline include the digital pressures that can escalate into crisis. Facing a complete elimination of its operating budget, which would only add to the mental health crisis we are facing, I was proud to secure $3.6M to continue supporting the helpline.
At the start of the year, election officials faced a lot of uncertainty about what the Trump Administration might do to make voting more difficult. This ranged from the potential of having ICE agents stationed in close proximity to the polls to changes in how the United States Postal Service processes mail, including ballots. We have seen Trump unsuccessfully attempt to do just this. To support the work of election officials and other trusted messengers in dispelling false information, the budget includes a $10,000,000 investment in voter outreach.
In addition to these statewide achievements, the budget also included an investment in the following local projects:
- $2,000,000 to Santa Clara Valley Healthcare for equipment to expand behavioral health treatment modalities
- $1,000,000 to the City of Santa Cruz for the repair of the Lifeguard headquarters
- $1,000,000 from the Coastal Management Program will be appropriated for the Santa Clara Valley Open Space Authority to fund the permanent protection of the Coyote Fields property in Coyote Valley.
- $250,000 to Santa Cruz Metro for radio modernization
