Make a deal with Google to help local news keep getting worse for local news

Planning Note: WhatMatters is taking Monday off to honor Martin Luther King Jr. and will be back in your inboxes on Tuesday.

In 2024, California and Google struck a deal to spend $175 million over five years on local journalism. That deal came after Google spent $11 million lobbying against two bills that would have required the $4 trillion company to pay newsrooms to use the news they create.

There is no money for this fund in Gov. Gavin Newsom’s latest budget proposal. The deal struck between the state and Google, one of the most valuable companies in human history, requires the tech giant to match state funding. Assemblymember spokeswoman Erin Ivey said Buffy Weeksan Oakland Democrat instrumental in brokering the deal. So if the state contribution to the local journalism fund is zero dollars, Google’s contribution to the fund will be zero dollars.

There are no legal consequences if Google never contributes more money to the settlement.

• ivy: “The deal was never written down on paper and signed by either party – it was a handshake agreement in principle and no party was legally bound by its terms. There was never any penalty or consequence built into the agreement because the agreement was voluntary, not coercive.”

So far, even the $20 million that California and Google have put into the fund together reached the editorswrites Yue Stella Yu of CalMatters.

As Stella notes in her story, a 2019 study estimated that in just one year (2018), Google earned $4.7 billion from news sites. Alphabet, the parent company of Google, reported that it made more than $100 billion in the third quarter of 2025 alone.

More than 3,200 newspapers have closed since 2005, according to one estimate. Google — which benefits directly from the news without having to pay the costs of reporting, illustrating, editing or publishing the news — could pay its share of the initial $175 million settlement hundreds of times over with revenue from the third quarter of 2025 alone.

Newsom’s office referred questions to Go-Biz, which said $20 million will be distributed this year.

Read more here.

From CalMatters housing reporter Ben Christopher:

State regulators at the Department of Housing and Community Development have spent the past five years forcing local governments to plan more new housing in a lengthy, technical process that has left nearly every group involved fuming.

Local governments have complained about the mandates, which they call unrealistic, and say the HCD has foisted on jurisdictions in an unclear or inconsistent manner.

Yes in my backyard campaigners, who want local governments to allow much more construction, have done so criticizes HCD for being too lenient on cities and counties that lag.

Now, in a long-awaited report, the California state auditor’s office has issued his verdict: HCD is doing fine, more or less.

The department met its deadlines by offering local feedback that was “accurate” and “generally consistent,” the report said.

The auditor offered a handful of recommendations to spread HCD’s workload and strengthen communication between the department and local residents. But for local governments seeking rehabilitation or pro-development activists hoping the auditor will defend more aggressive state crackdowns, the report is disappointingly tepid reading.

With some analysts estimating that more than half a million Californians will lose Medi-Cal coverage this year due to funding cuts, a coalition of health care advocates, labor unions and progressive lawmakers gathered at the state Capitol to push lawmakers to find new money to finance medical careCalMatters’ Maya S. Miller and Jeanne Kuang report.

Under President Donald Trump, billions of dollars in federal funding have been cut from California’s social service programs, including the state’s Medi-Cal program. Demonstrators on Wednesday called on Gov. Newsom and the Legislature to fill those cuts, especially to protect the millions of low-income and disabled Californians who would be left especially vulnerable.

• Judy Markpresident of Disability Voices United, at the rally: “We know you are not responsible for these terrible cuts, but now the responsibility is in your hands. You have the power to protect us.”

The event highlights the dilemma Newsom faces in his final year as governor, whether to raise taxes — a politically thorny undertaking — or allow millions of Californians to lose their health coverage.

A major union proposed a ballot initiative to tax billionaires to offset federal cuts that Newsom opposes.

Read more here.