California lawmakers to consider giving state park to tribe

from Dan WaltersCalMatters

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Four years ago, when the state budget seemed to provide an abundance of new revenue, Gov. Gavin Newsom and the Legislature expanded state-paid health care for undocumented immigrants of all ages.

Newsom declared that the state has a $97.5 billion surplus and can easily afford an expansion that, at least on paper, would result in all of California’s nearly 40 million people having some form of health insurance, the first state to do so.

“I was campaigning for universal health care,” Newsom said. “We deliver that.”

Expanded coverage of the state Medi-Cal program began in 2024, but by then Newsom and lawmakers already knew that the $97.5 billion surplus was a mirage, the result of a $165 billion error in revenue forecasting. In fact, the state was facing multi-billion dollar annual deficits.

However, the Medi-Cal expansion went into effect and in 2025, the administration revealed that spending was $6.2 billion above estimatesmostly due to the larger-than-expected enrollment of eligible immigrants. In response, Newsom and lawmakers backed down, freezing enrollment.

Lawmakers readily accepted the too-good-to-be-true $97.5 billion surplus statement, a number that came from Newsom’s mouth but never appeared in a budget document. Nor did they question the administration’s projected costs of expanding Medi-Cal.

Either the administration was horribly wrong on both, or it was cooking the numbers. We’ll never know which.

The failure of Medi-Cal was not an isolated case, but rather illustrates the impatience of California politicians to make sweeping declarations and commitments without fully examining the potential consequences.

Many similar blunders have been recorded over the years, including perhaps the worst example, a a disastrous decision three decades ago for a basic overview of how electricity is produced, distributed and priced. At the time, it led to power shortages, blackouts and PG&E filing for bankruptcy.

A new bill in the legislature is another potentially disastrous situation if it is passed without understanding the potential consequences.

Assembly Bill 2356worn by Assemblyman James RamosDemocrat from San Bernardino, would give Tolowa Dunes State Parkwhich contains 4,301 acres of coastal land in Del Norte County, of the Tolowa Dee-ni Nation, an indigenous tribe.

The tribe says it’s heritage land that should rightfully be returned to its ownership, citing California’s historic mistreatment — some of it deadly — of Native Americans in the state.

“AB 2356 returns the center of the world to the Taa-laa-wa Dee-ni’ and fulfills the state’s commitment to demonstrate respect for its original governments and people, while honoring its commitment to redress the state’s historic depredations and wrongs against the California Indian people, including the nation,” the tribe said in a document released by the tribe.

The abuse of California’s native tribes, beginning with the first Spanish explorers, is unavoidably true. California even once offered bounties for American Indian scalps.

However, a bell once struck cannot be unstruck. And the potential ramifications if the Tolowa Dee-ni Nation gets a state park are huge.

Arguably, all of California’s 100 million acres have at one time been home to the more than 100 tribes that are now recognized and the 50 or so that are seeking federal recognition. And that includes, of course, the 280 state parks which cover 1.6 million acres.

If this proposed compensation is granted, how could the state deny any other claim to any other park by any other tribe?

AB 2356 contains text that the land, if granted, will be maintained as open space and not be developed commercially, such as having a casino. However, it would be virtually impossible to enforce such guarantees once the land has changed hands.

The state has already ceded some undeveloped government lands to various tribes. But transferring state parks can change or close unique parks to the general public.

Does the Legislature really want to risk that outcome?

This article was originally published on CalMatters and is republished under Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-No Derivatives license.