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In one big way, Gov. Gavin Newsom is tougher on public employee unions than his Republican counterpart in Texas: Making state workers show up in the office.

After facing strong opposition from workers, it took Texas Gov. Greg Abbott three months to reverse his 2025 ban on remote work for state employees. But Newsom, whose return-to-office mandate has been in effect since July 1, shows no signs of backing down. 

It’s a stance that has upset — and at times befuddled — some state workers who are calling for the governor to scrap the four-day-a-week in-office policy as they hammer out new labor agreements.

Typically, they’re allies to the Democratic governor. They helped him fight off a recall in 2021, and they encouraged their members to vote for him against his Republican opponents.

More importantly to them, they maintain they’re just as effective at home, which they say they proved when Newsom ordered them to work from home during the COVID-19 pandemic. 

“It’s confusing to people when they think that they’ve done a great job to be told, ‘Well we don’t think it’s good enough and you should incur going back into the office,’” said D’Arcy McLeod, chairperson of the Professional Engineers in California Government’s bargaining team.

Roughly 108,000 of California’s more than 245,900 state employees are affected by the mandate, according to the state human resources department. The others generally already are required to work at a specific location five days a week, including prison, firefighting, law enforcement, and custodial employees.

Service Employees International Union Local 1000, California’s largest state worker union, represents 96,000 employees and is in contract negotiations. It argues that remote work saves taxpayers and employees money, reduces traffic and lowers emissions — all without affecting productivity.

Newsom’s mandate allows exemptions on a case-by-case basis, including for those who live 50 miles or farther from their worksite, or who conduct work outside the office, such as telehealth providers and inspectors. Public transportation costs for commuting are also reimbursable.

But that isn’t enough for SEIU, which in May filed an unfair labor practices complaint with the California Public Employment Relations Board. It also threw its support behind a bill that would give state agencies more authority to shape their hybrid work policies.

“A blanket mandate does not work for all the jobs that our workers do,” said Anica Walls, the union’s president. “Let the departments decide.”

California exceptionalism?

States have taken different approaches to calling workers back to the office since the pandemic. Republican-led Nevada and Democratic-led New Mexico require state employees to be in the office five days a week, for example. Utah with a Republican governor wants them at the office twice a week. 

But Newsom’s blanket policy appears to be an outlier among other blue states with robust public employee unions: Colorado, Hawaii, Illinois, Massachusetts, New York, Oregon and Washington state still embrace remote work in some capacity. It also differs from Texas, a Republican-led state that Newsom has contrasted with California. 

A few months after President Donald Trump began his second term and called for federal employees to return to the office, Abbott banned remote work for Texas state employees. But following a multi-agency survey that found that telework did not curb productivity and helped reduce turnover, Abbott walked back the move.

Newsom “is a man who has talked about the importance of innovation, wrote an entire book about government adapting to technology and providing services in a more cost-effective way,” said Ted Toppin, the executive director of the engineers union.

“It strikes me as interesting and ironic that Texas would have a more modern, flexible and efficient take on state employee telework.”

Despite a state audit that concluded that telework could save California as much as $225 million a year, Newsom moved forward with his March 2025 executive order directing workers back into the office at least four days a week.

In May during a state budget presentation, Newsom told reporters that he is “empathetic to change,” but that returning to the office helps build a sense of community. The governor has also contended that in-person work fosters collaboration, accountability and helps boost small businesses. 

McLeod said he’s surprised Newsom remains resolute to the mandate even after the audit found that remote work proved successful during and after the pandemic.

“Every single Newsom appointed official that testified for the state auditor indicated that … the work that was being delivered during telework was substantially of higher quality and more efficient,” said McLeod of the engineers union. 

The CalPERS Sacramento Regional Office in downtown Sacramento on July 15, 2026.Miguel Gutierrez Jr./CalMatters

What unions wanted from Newsom

In some ways the rift echoes labor disputes from California’s last two governors. 

Republican Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger came out swinging against public employees with unsuccessful ballot measures that were designed to cut their influence. He later imposed unpaid furloughs on public employees during the Great Recession.

Then Democratic Gov. Jerry Brown battled with unions over pensions, passing a law that curbed retirement benefits and required workers to chip in more for their benefits. He had a reputation for being stingy with raises, too.

Public employee unions were optimistic about Newsom. He offered concessions when he asked workers for temporary pay reductions during the pandemic, gave one-time bonuses to many employees and negotiated contracts that often included goodies for workers in hard-to-fill positions even if the deals didn’t please everyone.

Then came the fight over returning to the office. 

Besides union leaders, Newsom’s steadfast commitment to in-person work has baffled Steve Maviglio, a Democratic political consultant who has worked with public employee unions on pension issues. For Newsom, a Democratic politician who is likely eyeing a bid for the presidency, “it’s political malpractice to come across as anti-labor,” said Maviglio.

“The only thing you’ll be able to say is that ‘I stood up to state workers,’ which isn’t particularly helpful in a Democratic primary where labor is the key constituency nationwide for Democrats.”

But for Will Swaim, chief executive of the libertarian think tank California Policy Center, Newsom’s fight with the unions signals something larger than remote work. Rather, it is a “policy disagreement that has turned into a foundational challenge to democracy,” said Swaim.

SEIU 1000 has donated at least $2 million to current members of the Legislature, according to the CalMatters Digital Democracy database. In addition to its contract, the union is pushing for more flexible telework policies through a legislative proposal currently in the state Senate.

Through its campaign donations and labor talks, SEIU is attempting to wrest control from Newsom, a publicly elected official, over who gets to shape policies over government work, according to Swaim.

“That’s simply undemocratic,” said Swaim. “I don’t know anybody out there who believes that in their jobs they could tell their boss, ‘I’m not coming to the office, no matter what you want.’ It just doesn’t fly.”

But bosses should work to accommodate current employees, according to SEIU president Walls — especially if they have presumably bigger ambitions to oversee even more workers.

“As a state employee I would have trouble voting for someone who would be the boss of federal employees when I know he hasn’t shown to be a stellar employer to state employees,” said Walls.

By WYATTE GRANTHAM-PHILIPS, AP Business Writer

NEW YORK (AP) — A federal judge on Monday ordered Paramount and Warner Bros. Discovery to halt their $81 billion merger for at least two weeks, allowing states that are challenging the deal more time to see their case through in court.

Twelve states, led by California, sued to block Paramount’s pending buyout of Warner last week— alleging that such a combination would “extinguish competition” in Hollywood and lead to fewer choices for consumers, particularly moviegoers and cable customers across the U.S.

The states’ top prosecutors called on Warner and Paramount to not close the transaction until after a court had time to “fully evaluate” their claims. And when the companies refused, they filed for a temporary restraining order — which is what District Judge Araceli Martínez-Olguín granted on Monday. That opens the door to a potential preliminary injunction that the states are also seeking to effectively block the deal.

“This is a critical first win in our case to ensure this megamerger never sees the light of day,” California Attorney General Rob Bonta said in a statement following Monday's order. “History tells the tale of what happens when a few people have great power over markets that are central to Americans’ lives: fewer opportunities for more people, worse products and services for all people.”

A Warner-Paramount tie-up would bring together two of the five last legacy studios in Hollywood — as well as host of TV networks, titles filling streaming libraries and news operations. That would include Warner’s HBO Max, fan favorites like “Harry Potter” and even CNN coming under the same roof of Paramount-owned CBS, movies like “Top Gun” and the Paramount+ streaming service.

Paramount did not immediately comment on Monday's order. But the company, which was bought out by Skydance just last year, has vowed to “vigorously defend” its Warner acquisition. Paramount previously called the states’ complaint “wrong on both the facts and the law,” maintaining that a merger would instead strengthen competition against bigger entertainment rivals. And it touted regulatory greenlights the deal has received elsewhere, including from the administration of President Donald Trump last month.

The temporary restraining order granted Monday halts the deal from progressing for at least 14 days, although the pause could be extended for up to 28 days. The court has set Aug. 3 as a date for a hearing on the states' preliminary injunction motion, although that schedule could also be pushed back.

The clock is ticking. Many were previously bracing for Paramount and Warner to try closing their deal as soon as later this week. And ahead of Monday’s decision, the companies proposed wrapping up a preliminary injunction hearing by the end of August, leaving time to make a possible appeal by Sept. 30 — a date on the top of Paramount’s mind because it’s pledged to pay shareholders added “ticking fee” compensation amounting to about $7 million per day if the deal isn’t closed by then.

But the states called such a timeline unprecedented and unfair. They maintain that money Paramount might have to incur after Sept. 30 was the risk of a decision the company made on its own — and argued in a hearing held Friday that commencing a trial in April 2027 would allow enough time to for discovery and presenting proper evidence.

Including billion of dollars in debt, Paramount’s proposed purchase of Warner is currently valued at nearly $111 billion based on outstanding shares.

Beyond California, states joining Monday’s lawsuit include Arizona, Colorado, Connecticut, Massachusetts, Minnesota, Nevada, New Jersey, New Mexico, New York, Oregon and Washington. And others — including the Writers Guild of America — are also suing to block the merger.

SAN FRANCISCO (AP) — Police have recovered the body of a woman who was one of three people missing after a boat sank this week in San Francisco Bay.

The body was identified as Tondra Madruga, 58, also known as Tondra Miller, the San Francisco medical examiner said Friday.

Madruga's body was recovered Thursday by a police marine unit, two days after the Volare, a 49-foot (15-meter) cabin cruiser, sank with 20 people aboard after being hit by a wave and capsizing. The group was on the boat to scatter the ashes of a loved one.

“Our family is heartbroken by the loss of our beloved mother, daughter, sister, and aunt, Tondra Madruga,” family member Quin Madruga said on Facebook. “Our hearts remain with every family impacted, and we sincerely appreciate your kindness and understanding.”

One man, Clifford Boisa, died immediately after being retrieved from the chilly water. The U.S. Coast Guard suspended rescue efforts Wednesday evening but police are still looking for the missing.

Ralph Boisa said his extended family and some close friends were on the boat Tuesday to celebrate the life of his daughter, who died over a decade ago. Madruga was a friend.

The two people who remain missing are Ralph Boisa's sister, Carol, and Clifford Boisa's wife, Jackie, he said.

Madruga's body was discovered in San Francisco Bay near Treasure Island, a former naval station, when a boater first reported it, police said.

The bay is notorious for its strong currents, and within hours of the boat’s sinking, rescuers were also searching the open ocean beyond the Golden Gate Bridge.

Crews searched more than 800 square miles (over 2,000 square kilometers), according to the Coast Guard. That’s an area roughly half the size of Rhode Island.

The boat is believed to be submerged on the rocky seabed in water 120 feet (36 meters) deep. When the wreck is located, authorities will determine whether a safe recovery can be conducted, police said.

By Alejandro Lazo, CalMatters

This story was originally published by CalMatters. Sign up for their newsletters.

California bars utilities from cutting off power to customers who fall behind on their bills when it’s dangerously hot outside – a basic safety protection. Losing power in some rural areas can also mean losing water, and in cities, having no way to cool down can be dangerous, even deadly, when hot weather spans several days. 

California regulators concluded more than a year ago that rules protecting delinquent customers from power shutoffs during heat waves weren’t strong enough. They ordered the state’s largest utilities to come up with better safeguards. 

When the utilities unveiled their plan in December, their proposals barely changed anything, the commission concluded on Thursday, finding their proposal “does not offer sufficient health protections for ratepayers.”

The commission had set a May 1 deadline for the new rules. Utilities missed it, and consumer advocates filed emergency motions to force action.

As another stretch of dangerous heat gripped the state, the California Public Utilities Commission wrote stronger rules itself. In a 4-0 vote, the commission lowered the temperature at which utilities must stop shutting off power to delinquent customers, from 100 to 90 degrees, and ordered utilities to adopt a more protective, region-specific heat standard within six months.

A battle to define extreme heat 

During a record heat wave two years ago — the hottest July in California history  — The Utility Reform Network, a consumer group, asked the utilities commission to revisit its definition of extreme heat. The group’s emergency request argued that “heat kills more people directly than any other weather-related hazard.” 

The rules already barred electric utilities from disconnecting residential customers for nonpayment if forecasted temperatures soared above 100 degrees within 72 hours.

But a single statewide threshold, the group argued, didn’t account for how differently Californians experience heat depending on where they live.

Regulators declined to treat the request as an emergency, but ordered the utilities to come up with a plan for changing the 100-degree threshold by working with advocates and others.

The utilities proposed using CalHeatScore, a newly created state tool that scores heat by ZIP code – from Level 0  to 4 –  using local health data and historical impacts, taking into account data on nearby cooling centers, as well as the number of children and seniors, who can be more susceptible to extreme heat.

The problem: the utilities proposed setting the cutoff threshold at Level 3 – a higher bar than advocates wanted – and keeping 100 degrees as the backstop when the index wasn’t available.

Advocates filed protests seeking a wider safety net, arguing for a lower Level 2 index score and a 90-degree backup threshold.

Utilities said they could not meet the deadline because CalHeatScore’s own data system, run by the state’s Office of Environmental Health Hazard Assessment, was not yet ready to support them. Advocates countered that the utilities offered little evidence for sticking with the higher 100-degree threshold. 

By May, with utilities still behind schedule, The Utility Reform Network joined with the San Diego-based Utility Consumers’ Action Network, the National Consumer Law Center and the Center for Accessible Technology, asking the commission to intervene. 

The commission sides with advocates

This week the commission rejected the utilities’ proposal, siding with advocates. The path the utilities were proposing would be “no different” than prior practice. The resolution noted the extreme heat threshold is already below 100 degrees in 41 of California’s 58 counties. 

A 90-degree day might be routine in dry, inland cities such as Bakersfield or Fresno, but such temperatures could be atypically dangerous in coastal or mountainous communities where fewer homes have air conditioning and people are less acclimated to the heat.

San Francisco, for instance, defines heat as extreme when temperatures climb above 85 degrees. In the far northwest county of Del Norte, extreme heat means anything above 76.8 degrees, the commission said.

“A single threshold temperature level needs to be more protective of residents in areas of the state that are not accustomed to high temperatures,” the commission wrote in its resolution.

Utilities move to comply 

While the utilities had wanted a narrower safety net for customers, they are now stressing they will comply with the more protective standard.

Last December, the major investor-owned utilities had together argued that extending protections to consumers at lower heat scores would halt disconnections too often, deepen unpaid balances, and add costs without a comparable health benefit. In a January filing, according to a PG&E spokesperson, the utilities argued that the 90-degree threshold was “overbroad.”

The protections would apply only to shutoffs for unpaid bills. They would not prevent outages caused by equipment failures, wildfire-prevention shutoffs, or other emergencies. Nevertheless, advocates say the changes are important.

“When electricity is shut off to a home, it can have a sort of a cascading effect of problems on tenants,” said Jason Zeller, an attorney with the Utility Consumers Action Network. “If tenants don't have electric service, they can be subject to eviction; if they have children, they can lose child custody.”

Reached ahead of the vote, all three utilities said they were prepared to comply with the commission’s new rules. Edison said the resolution would strengthen protections during extreme heat and that it was ready to change its disconnection policies. SDG&E said it supported the added safeguards and would implement the commission’s final requirements.

“Disconnection is a last resort at PG&E, only after multiple attempts to contact customers and offer payment plans and assistance programs,” said PG&E spokesperson Adrienne Moore. The region-specific standard is expected to be implemented within six months.

The commission’s independent Public Advocates Office had pressed for stronger protections throughout the process, formally opposing the utilities’ plan. Director Linda Serizawa the vote would provide consumers with “protection that takes effect when they need it most.”

This article was originally published on CalMatters and was republished under the Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-NoDerivatives license.

Last month, Diane-Louise Alessi told the Placer County Board of Supervisors that the era of backroom deals was over.

Tech companies, she said, were arriving in California under false pretenses. "They are using covert names like ‘innovation centers’ and ‘advanced manufacturing parks’ as their masks to hide massive AI data centers."

"Look at the Phillip Road project in West Roseville," Alessi said. "Developers call it an innovation center, yet the zoning explicitly allows for data center infrastructure." Alessi, who addressed the board via Zoom from Christian Valley Park, asked the county for a moratorium on data center approvals. She said its water and power grid were at stake.

The field she was talking about sits at the western end of Blue Oaks Boulevard, 30 miles from her home, in a city the county does not govern.

The Phillip Road project site is about 240 acres of tilled dirt and dry grass, split east to west by Pleasant Grove Creek, where the last subdivision gives way to open country. Trees and weeds crowd the edges. Barbed wire runs the perimeter. A four-foot metal gate is chained and padlocked, and the sign on it reads: ‘no trespassing, violators will be prosecuted.’ Below it, another sign: City of Roseville Open Space.

It's quiet at the site. A car every few minutes. Otherwise just birds, insects and wind.

A padlocked gate blocks the entrance to the Phillip Road site in west Roseville on July 9, 2026. The city owns the roughly 240-acre parcel, which developer Panattoni has proposed for housing, retail and a million square feet of an innovation center.Greg Micek/CapRadio

The City of Roseville owns the land. In 2021, the city council declared sale of the property in the city's interest and signed an option and purchase agreement with Panattoni Development, which wants to build about 660 homes, a park, shops, medical offices, and just over a million square feet of buildings the plans call ‘an innovation center.’ The sale hasn't closed. The city is both the seller and the agency reviewing the application.

But nothing has been built. Nothing has been approved. No data center has been proposed. No tenant has been identified, and no hearing has been scheduled.

Josh Hickson has been watching anyway. He moved into the neighborhood in 2022, and early the next year a neighbor knocked on his door with flyers about an industrial park planned for the field.

"I started going to neighborhood association meetings," Hickson said. "It was kind of just interesting how local representatives voiced support for this project, despite it being halfway through the CEQA process, environmental review."

That proposal drew enough opposition, most of it over truck traffic, that Panattoni withdrew it and started over.

When the city issued a notice of preparation for the new plan in 2025, Hickson read the documents and looked up the developer. He found one of the country's largest industrial builders, which had launched a data center division the year before.

He wrote the city a letter. It asked officials to say plainly whether a data center was coming to Phillip Road.

The draft environmental report that followed lists its own areas of controversy. The first one is concern about what the new zoning would allow.

Roseville isn't the only place having a data center argument. More than 70 cities and counties now restrict new data centers in some form, among them Denver, Minneapolis and New Orleans. On June 2, Monterey Park became the first city in the country to ban them by popular vote — 86% of voters approved a measure killing a 250,000-square-foot proposal. Last month Seattle's council voted unanimously to freeze new facilities above 20 megavolt-amperes — roughly 20 megawatts — for a year. Fifty-two people testified. Not one spoke in favor.

The data center backlash has grown consequential enough to move elections in other states, according to a March report from the Little Hoover Commission, an independent state oversight agency that spent last fall studying what data centers mean for California's electricity system. Policymakers, the commission warned, "may face pressure to defer to powerful technology companies and utilities."

“How close is this to my community?”

Before Rachel Davis and her family moved to West Roseville, she knocked on neighbors' doors, called school districts, read environmental reports. But she never heard of the Phillip Road site.

In June a friend forwarded a Reddit post to her.

The post ran on Roseville's subreddit under the headline "I found plans for an AI Data Center in West Roseville." It drew hundreds of replies. Some were careful, others less so. One commenter called data centers instruments of mass surveillance. Another suggested blowing it up. Several pushed back, pointing out that data centers have operated quietly in Roseville for years, and that the same infrastructure carries everyone's email and streaming video.

A site plan showing proposed bicycle and pedestrian routes for the Phillip Road project, with housing along the eastern edge and commercial and innovation center buildings to the west. The plan is from the draft environmental impact report.Ascent / City of Roseville

By the time Davis read it, the public comment period on the Phillip Road site environmental report had been closed for weeks.

"My initial reaction was, ‘How close is this to my community?’" she said. She typed the address into Google Maps. A few miles.

Davis went looking for paperwork and context.

"On social media, it's easy to become a little bit alarmist, and people are happy to give their opinion," she said. "But I think it's also important to do something about it and to do your own research and diligence."

What she did was start converting the alarm into arithmetic. She found Seattle’s data center freeze. "The potential data center in the Phillip location would actually not be permitted under that new legislation in Seattle," she said.

Underneath the noise, the specific data center fears are consistent. Electricity bills. Water. Diesel generators near schools. Noise. Property values. And running through all of it, a suspicion that the decision has already been made somewhere nobody was invited.

"I want to make sure that construction doesn't start and 90% of families in West Roseville are like, 'What is going there?'" Davis said. "And it's too late before people can really have their voices heard."

A hyperscale concern

Roseville's answer arrived days after the Reddit post, in an updated FAQ on the city's website. A hyperscale data center at the Phillip Road Site, it said, is not planned, and not possible.

Those facilities can draw upward of 200 or 300 megawatts, the city said. Roseville's peak demand across the entire city is about 370 megawatts. Roseville runs its own electric utility, and it says the local grid was never built for hyperscale-level load.

But running its own utility is part of what makes a city attractive to data centers in the first place. Municipal utilities tend to charge less for power than PG&E does — one reason California's data centers have clustered in Santa Clara and Los Angeles, according to the Little Hoover Commission. Both cities, like Roseville, run their own.

But "hyperscale" describes scale. It’s not a building type and not a zoning category, and neither is "AI data center," a phrase that describes what the machines inside are computing.

Khara Boender spends her days explaining that distinction. She’s director of western state government affairs for the Data Center Coalition, the industry's national trade association.

"The conversation today really is almost putting data centers and AI as being synonymous," Boender said. "But I would say that that is not a true reflection of everything that data centers support."

"The term cloud almost feels like a misnomer, because it almost implies that all that data is just going out into thin air," Boender added. "But it turns out that that data is going into a physical structure. And that physical structure is a data center."

Boender said artificial intelligence drives roughly 20% to 25% of data center demand today, and that industry projections don't show an even split with conventional cloud computing until about 2030. The rest is streaming, online banking, telehealth, the average American household's 21 connected devices.

Data centers also vary enormously. Roseville's own FAQ makes the point: data centers "range in size and type, and many of them are small-scale facilities and may even exist within a building or business where you work." 

Roseville has several along Foothills Boulevard. The largest in the Sacramento region is a 52.7-megawatt campus near Natomas run by NTT. Most of the rest fall between 3 and 26 megawatts.

At 30 megawatts, a data center at Phillip Road would be smaller than a hyperscale campus by an order of magnitude, but still larger than nearly everything already operating in the region.

Davis, who has spent much of her career in accounting for technology companies, said the vocabulary is a problem.

"There's a lot of buzzwords going around, right? Like AI, hyperscale," she said. Rather than the buzzwords, "just look at the numbers behind everything." Size is relative, she said. "If you're okay with a 30 or 40 megawatt data center next to your home, that's great. But I do think you have the right to know and make that decision for yourself."

Illustrative site plan for the Phillip Road project in west Roseville shows existing homes in gray at top, with proposed housing and innovation center buildings in color. The plan was included in the February 2026 draft environmental impact report.

What's on paper

The Phillip Road project's draft environmental report, published in February, is where residents went looking. It describes no hyperscale facility, but does consider a smaller one.

The report's zoning table contains no line for a data center. It contains a line for "specialized industrial," and a footnote defining that term to include one.

While the report is vague about what would go in the innovation center, it is specific about what a data center there would need. Its air quality and energy chapters assume 15 diesel generators of three megawatts each, "to provide power to the future potential data center." They would be backup, for outages. The report requires the cleanest tier of engine, because without it, it calculates, cancer risk at the most exposed nearby home would exceed Placer County's threshold.

Backup generators are the most significant community risk the Little Hoover Commission identified. Its report cites a proposed hyperscale facility in San Jose that would run 39 of them — enough, by the California Energy Commission's estimate, to emit as much air pollution in 20 hours a year as 428 cars driven for a year. It also notes that the EPA recently clarified data center generators may run a set number of hours outside emergencies, and without limit during them. The commission recommends the state limit what those generators do to surrounding neighborhoods.

The report's utilities chapter budgets 538 acre-feet of recycled water a year for "the data center cooling system," if one is built — roughly 175 million gallons, more than the rest of the site's development would use. It would come from the city's recycled water system through pipes Panattoni would build along Blue Oaks Boulevard. The report finds the supply sufficient.

How much water that is depends on who's measuring. The Little Hoover Commission puts a typical data center's use at roughly what 1,000 homes consume in a year, and a hyperscale facility's at about a town of 50,000. By that yardstick, Phillip Road would land somewhere near 1,500 homes — more than typical, but nowhere near hyperscale.

Boender, with the datacenter trade association, offers a different yardstick. She points to a 2024 Virginia legislative study of the nation's largest data center market, which found 83% of the data centers there use no more water than a large commercial office building — about 6.7 million gallons a year.

By that measure, the facility considered for Phillip Road would use roughly 26 times what a large office building uses.

None of that means a data center is coming to Phillip Road. Environmental reports study the most intensive version of what the zoning would permit, whether or not it happens. The city makes the point directly: the studies "examine a scenario with the maximum potential impact that could occur," its FAQ says, and that "doesn't necessarily mean that the scenario will definitely occur."

The city says any data center would be capped at 30 megawatts and restricted to recycled water. The new zoning would bar warehouses outright, a concession Panattoni made when it redesigned its plans for the site.

Skepticism over reassurance

Hickson read the Roseville’s FAQ and noticed its phrasing. The question "Is a hyperscale data center planned?" is answered no. The question directly beneath it says a 30-megawatt data center could be.

"The structure of the city's FAQs really strongly implies that there isn't going to be a data center," he said, "until you actually do the reading."

He tested that on his neighbors. "I've talked to a handful of neighbors, and I've showed them the FAQs," Hickson said. The ones who read it, he said, stopped at the first question. "If you go on Facebook, if you go on Nextdoor, you'll find a lot of people saying, 'Oh, there's not going to be a data center put here.'"

His skepticism predates the FAQ. In the summer of 2023, with the industrial park in trouble, Panattoni started asking neighbors what they wanted on the land. The developer held 12 public workshops that summer, according to February’s draft environmental report, followed by an open house that fall and two more the next spring.

Hickson said he remembers poster boards and sticky notes in neighbors' living rooms and in community rooms at local stores.

"It kind of felt disingenuous, because it wasn't an official survey or anything," he said. "It was just post-its and markers, and it was divisive because people wanted different things."

He also doesn't pretend to be confused about the developer's motives.

"Panattoni's an industrial developer, so they have industrial goals," Hickson said. "At the end of the day, they want to make a profit with the land that they've entered into a sale contract with."

Panattoni is one of the country's largest industrial builders, and in 2024 it launched a data center division. Its website advertises a global pipeline of more than five gigawatts across 20 countries, and says its data center projects "range from 100 MW to 1+ GW." One of them, in Van Buren Township, Michigan, is a full gigawatt.

Thirty megawatts would be below the floor of what Panattoni's data center group says it builds.

A representative from the city of Roseville declined an interview, citing the ongoing review. "As part of this review, the City is required to evaluate a variety of potential uses, whether or not they move forward," wrote Erin Dunlay, the city's public affairs and communications manager.

Panattoni declined an interview as well. In a written statement, a company spokesperson pointed to the project's website. "We are committed to transparency and encourage community members to explore the information available, share their feedback, and stay engaged throughout the planning process. We value the perspectives of our neighbors and are committed to an open dialogue as we continue planning for Roseville's long-term economic growth and quality of life."

The Phillip Road site, outlined in red, sits between existing west Roseville housing to the east and farmland to the west. The map is from a draft environmental impact report prepared for the City of Roseville by the consulting firm Ascent.

Who the land is for

Beneath the argument about data centers is an older one about what a city owes the people who live in it.

The most common complaint about data centers is that they employ almost no one once they're built. Boender positions that concern as a positive. A facility with few workers, she said, can help a town.

"You're not seeing the same strains on these localities and needing to hire additional teachers, hiring additional social people to handle different social services," she said, "because you're not seeing this type of influx into those communities." What communities get instead, she said, is tax revenue — money that in places like Loudoun County, Virginia, has gone toward schools and lower property taxes.

Davis wants something more tangible. She'd like a library on the Phillip Road site, or a post office, or a school. Children in her part of Roseville already have to be bused across the city because school construction has failed to keep pace with housing construction.

"We are building more homes every single day," Davis said. "If we're just bringing in more homes and families, that's great, but we need to be sure that we can support them staying in their neighborhood."

She also doesn't think the Phillip Road field looks like a place a data center belongs.

"There's really nothing industrial about this location," Davis said. "You look around, they have a massive soccer complex that they just put in where, I don't know the number, but easily hundreds of kids and parents play soccer."

"I'm definitely not anti-data center in the city," she said. "I just think it's much more advantageous to have designated industrial parks away from master-planned communities."

What's next

The city is writing responses to comments it received and has not said when the final environmental report will be released. Panattoni's application to rezone the property then goes to the planning commission, and after that to the city council.

In Sacramento, two bills by State Senator Steve Padilla passed the Senate in May and are before Assembly committees. One would make data center developers cover the transmission costs they trigger — though it directs the state Public Utilities Commission, which regulates PG&E and other investor-owned utilities but not municipal ones like Roseville's. The other would bar data centers from categorical environmental exemptions, which would apply to a possible Phillip Road data center.

The Little Hoover Commission's report describes two futures. In one, data centers modernize California's grid and spread its fixed costs across more customers, easing bills. In the other, they raise rates, strain reliability, and leave Californians paying for infrastructure built to serve computing that never arrives. Which one materializes, the commission concluded, depends on rules the state hasn't written yet.

The report made 15 recommendations. One applies directly to cities like Roseville.

Municipal utilities answer to their own governing boards, not to the state Public Utilities Commission. The Little Hoover Commission found that leaves their customers without the same protections — on cost, on reliability, on impacts to the neighborhood — and urged the state to close the gap. It pointed to Imperial County, where residents and city officials said they weren't adequately consulted about a proposed 330-megawatt data center in territory served by a publicly owned irrigation district, and that its environmental review was insufficient.

California's approach, the report said, "should not depend on where a data center is located or which utility happens to serve it."

Which leaves the decision about Phillip Road where it started — with five Roseville  city councilmembers, on a date nobody has set.

For now, the site is a field, a set of plans and a lot of mistrust. The people who live near it would rather not find out too late that they were right.

"I'm not saying that it's the end of the world here," Hickson said. "I'm just saying that it's time to wake up and pay attention to what the city's doing and what the developer wants for this land."

For the first time in more than two decades, Sacramento Congresswoman Doris Matsui heads into a general election after finishing behind her opponent in the primary. 

Now she'll face fellow Democrat Mai Vang in November’s runoff for California’s 7th Congressional District. Matsui, who will be 82 in September, faces a challenger who’s running for Congress for the first time, is far to her left politically and about half her age.

The Matsui name in Sacramento is synonymous with Democratic politics: Doris Matsui has served in Congress since March 2005. That’s when she won a special election to take over the seat that had been held by her husband, Robert Matsui, who had died two months earlier. Robert Matsui had represented California’s Capital region in Congress since 1979. 

But despite, or perhaps because of her longevity in office, political observers say Matsui could be pushed aside this fall if the wave of anti-establishment sentiment within the Democratic party continues to crash down on longtime incumbents.

At Vang's election night party in June, the celebration reflected something few political observers expected just months earlier. After trailing in early vote counts, the Sacramento City Councilmember finished first in the primary. Vang finished first with 30.8% of the vote, ahead of Matsui's 29.1% — a difference of 3,510 votes. 

Across town the mood sounded different. Matsui was measured but confident. The incumbent went into election night with endorsements from local leaders, like Sacramento Mayor Kevin McCarty and Governor Gavin Newsom. 

“I feel good about where we are. I felt the energy on the ground and it was really wonderful,” Matsui said on election night. 

At that point, thousands of ballots still remained uncounted. The final tally would eventually show Vang finishing ahead. The contest has become about much more than two Democrats. It's also become a test of experience versus change.

Nathan Gonzales is the editor of Inside Elections, which analyzes congressional races across the country. 

“Right now, based on what we're seeing in the district and nationwide, I think Congresswoman Matsui is at significant risk of losing re-election,” Gonzales said in a July interview.

Gonzales said Sacramento’s race reflects a broader national trend. In recent weeks, younger progressive candidates backed by Democratic Socialists of America chapters have defeated longtime Democratic incumbents in New York and Colorado.

Vang has campaigned as a progressive Democrat advocating for policies like Medicare for All. She’s also taken a more critical stance on U.S. support for Israel.

Matsui, by contrast, has emphasized her experience and influence in Congress, including the relationships she's built in Washington.

But Gonzales said those qualities could be a liability this fall.

"Democratic incumbents, particularly aging Democratic incumbents, are facing pressure from a Democratic base who wants younger, fresher voices and more of a fighting message and maybe even a more liberal or progressive ideology,” Gonzales said. 

At their lone debate during the primary, Vang criticized Matsui for the way she raises money.

"There are clear contrasts in terms of who we are, our values, and also where we get money from. I don't take any corporate PAC money. Doris Matsui does,” Vang said. 

Matsui on election night focused on her own accomplishments such as securing funding for the Folsom dam and other regional projects.

"I really don't know what quite her policy issues are, but I will tell you this: I have fought against Donald Trump. I fought against ICE. I really believe that healthcare is fundamental, and we need universal healthcare. We need to make sure that we move everything forward,” Matsui said.

With Republicans off the ballot in November, the two Democrats now compete for the roughly 44,000 voters who backed GOP-candidate Zachariah Wooden.

Sacramento State political scientist Kim Nalder said Republican voters may have a tough time deciding what they do for this race. 

"This presents kind of a dilemma for them,” Nalder said. “Do they go for the more moderate candidate, which would be Matsui, or do they just sit it out?"

The district, which was redrawn after the last round of redistricting, stretches from central Sacramento through Elk Grove and Galt.

Wooden, a Sacramento State student who finished third in the primary, said many Republicans will feel they have nobody who represents them.

"I am not going to be voting for either candidate in this race. It's possible that many Republicans also end up doing so,” said Wooden. “When the general comes around you're going to want as many votes as possible. Whether that's Matsui or Vang attempting to appeal to Republican voters, I wouldn't be surprised."

Mindy Romero directs the Center for Inclusive Democracy. She said longtime incumbents rarely trail challengers.

"There's something happening with voters wanting something different,” Romero said. “But still, it's an uphill battle for anybody to challenge a long-time incumbent."

Matsui said her second place finish in the primary shows voters wanted more from her.

“I think that, I looked at the primary vote and, I think all my colleagues say the same thing,” Matsui said. “Voters are just upset and frustrated about what's going on, particularly in Washington, and I don't blame them because I feel the same way, too.”

Both Matsui and Vang will compete for voters who backed someone else just weeks ago.

Vang said she will try to prove the coalition that carried her through the primary can grow large enough to win in November. 

“What you're seeing is voters across this country showing they're ready for a new generation of leadership. Progressive candidates are viable,” Vang added.

Gonzales said Vang’s surprising win in June follows a wave of upset victories by candidates backed by the Democratic Socialists of America — a group that supported Vang.

Vang acknowledged receiving the endorsement of Sacramento's Democratic Socialists of America Sacramento chapter but describes herself as a progressive Democrat focused on working families.

Gonzales said those upset victories came at the expense of establishment Democrats like Matsui.

"Her share of the primary vote has steadily declined over the years but bigger picture, looking nationally, she is the type of incumbent we have seen lose,” Gonzales said. 

Whether Sacramento voters ultimately choose continuity or change won't be decided until November.

This story was originally published by CalMatters. Sign up for their newsletters.

The University of California will still evaluate the role of the SAT in undergraduate admissions, despite media reports indicating that the revered public university system suspended those deliberations.

The confusion comes at a time when a growing chorus of professors and media commentators are pushing the UC to reinstate the SAT for undergraduate admissions, which the UC Board of Regents removed from the admissions process in 2020. That board decision overruled the UC Academic Senate’s recommendation that the UC keep its then-policy of relying on the SAT and the ACT. The regents’ vote was unanimous. 

The latest whiplash began last month, when the academic senate said it would launch a review of standardized tests in admissions and the high school classes that students must take to be minimally eligible for UC admissions. Monday afternoon, several news stories reported that an academic senate committee that oversees admissions decided to scrap that review.

However, two key officials at the UC said a new evaluation of the role of standardized testing in admissions is still on the table. One of those officials is the chair of the academic senate, Ahmet Palazoglu.

“The Academic Senate is not rescinding its commitment to a comprehensive review of standardized testing in admissions,” he wrote in a statement Monday night on the UC Office of the President website. He said the senate is merely revising its original timeline for a full review of the admissions process.

At a Tuesday meeting of the UC Board of Regents, the new board chair, Maria Anguiano, said the academic senate will finish its review by “no later than the end of this academic year,” which means around June 2027.

That speeds up the original timeline. An academic senate document issued last month said its final report and recommendation to the regents would come sometime in fall 2027.

Palazoglu clarified in an email Tuesday that the June timeline pertains only to the question of standardized tests in admissions. The academic senate will meet July 22 to decide on a separate approach to reviewing the high school courses students must take for UC eligibility. 

While the academic senate has considerable power at the UC, it cannot unilaterally return the SAT to undergraduate admissions. Only the board of regents can. Procedurally, the board must first hear least one informational item that’s on the agenda and then vote on any proposed policy at a subsequent meeting.

Students again oppose SAT use

The UC Student Association sent a letter to the regents this week opposing a return to the SAT. The association, which represents 237,000 undergraduate students at the UC, “does not believe SAT/ACT will result in better prepared students.” The letter notes that racial and ethnic diversity at the UC increased after 2020 while the system posted no decline in graduation rates.

“The role of public education is to ensure all students can access their right to a robust, quality learning experience, and the UC must not limit the number of students able to enter its halls,” the students wrote.

Students in 2020 urged the regents to remove standardized tests from admissions. The regents reaffirmed their ban on exams for admissions in 2021.

At the meeting, Anguiano hinted at her discomfort with the current discourse over the role of tests in admissions. “Recent public conversations have focused on admissions and standardized testing, too narrowly, in my opinion,” she said Tuesday.

Why faculty want the SAT back

More than 2,000 UC professors in science, technology, engineering and math have signed a petition urging the UC to reinstate the SAT or ACT as requirements for undergraduate admissions for STEM majors by fall 2027. Nearly 1,000 additional professors in other disciplines signed a similar letter to fully reinstate the SAT or ACT in the admissions process.

The petition from STEM professors said high school grades alone are not a sufficient measure of college readiness, pointing to increasing grade inflation and the growing number of students relying on artificial intelligence to complete assignments. That means some students aren’t prepared for the rigors of a UC education, they say.

Mina Aganagic, a physics and math professor at UC Berkeley, spoke Tuesday in favor of returning the SAT. “Without the SAT, our introductory courses are forced to reteach elementary and middle school material. This wastes opportunities, misallocating resources rather than increasing access,” she said.

But the leader of an influential nonprofit that advocates for increased access to the UC said focusing on the SAT is the wrong move.

“This is absolutely the wrong solution to an undefined problem,” said Jessie Ryan, president of the Campaign for College Opportunity. “What we know, based on the UC Office of the President’s own research, is that since going to test-free (admissions), our retention rates have remained stable and graduation rates have also increased.” 

She continued: “If, in fact, we want to address college preparation, we should be looking not at becoming more selective, but being more supportive to students across the state. Working with our K-12 partners to improve preparation, not slamming the door on thousands of students.”

Critics of the SAT maintain that the test is unfair to low-income students, who are less likely to be able to afford test preparation services to boost their scores. 

Standardized tests were just one factor in how campuses decided whom to admit. Other considerations included the quality of courses students take, how that courseload compares to students from the same high school, an applicant’s special talents or achievements and the location of their high school.