(AP/CalMatters) — Pick any day in 2024 and it’s more likely than not that a California state lawmaker was on a trip sponsored by corporations or nonprofits, many of whom frequently have business before the state.
Last year, those interest groups spent more than $820,000 to take dozens of legislators on both domestic and international trips, according to financial disclosure reports filed by elected officials in March of this year. The total is less than the $1.1 million spent on similar trips the year before.
Nearly 100 groups sponsored trips for 92 lawmakers, about three-quarters of the Legislature, to destinations that ranged from areas like Berkeley and Napa to far-flung places such as Hawaii, Europe, Southeast Asia and Israel.
The largest sponsor of travel for legislators last year was the California Foundation on the Environment and the Economy, or CFEE, which paid nearly $260,000 to take more than 40 lawmakers on domestic and international trips. The nonprofit was also the largest trip patron for legislators in 2022 and 2023.
CFEE is a unique creature in California politics and brings together many organizations that normally fight each other on legislation and regulation. Companies and nonprofits can effectively pay to acquire seats on the board, which includes representatives from Big Oil, organized labor, environmental groups, large companies, tribes, and other industry associations, and some board members are invited to accompany elected officials on the tours.
The international trips are called “study tours” by the nonprofit, and it publishes a list of the most recent destinations and associated study areas on its website. Nine legislators attended the March trip to the United Kingdom which focused on the impact of and technology related to climate change, such as home insurance, offshore wind development and aviation fuel. Six lawmakers attended a November trip to Taiwan and Vietnam focused on electric vehicles, high-speed rail and natural-disaster preparedness.
Each study tour had both Democratic and Republican representatives in attendance and lawmakers who went said that made the trip even more valuable. “I’m a lefty Dem,” said Sen. Scott Wiener, Democrat from San Francisco, “and one of the things I appreciate about the Legislature is that we can work across the aisle.”
The trips allow members to really get to know each other and find ways to work together, said Assemblymember Heath Flora, a Republican from Ripon. He added, “bipartisan legislation is the best legislation.”
Lawmakers who have attended trips organized by the nonprofit in the past have described the trips as a valuable way to learn from other countries and get ideas for future legislation.
Wiener, who went on the trip to the U.K, said he finds the trips to be “completely exhausting.” Flora attended the same trip and said the tours are “some of the most valuable trips we take as elected officials.”
Sen. Anna Caballero, a Democrat from Merced, also attended the trip to the U.K. and said she is carrying three bills this session that were directly inspired by the trip: one related to long-term water supply issues, one that would invest in fusion energy research, and one to study the emissions of biomass.
The second-largest sponsor of trips lawmakers took in 2024 was the Independent Voter Project, a nonprofit that focuses on voter education of public policy issues. It spent more than $100,000 on a pair of trips for elected officials: an annual trip to Maui, hosted by the organization since at least 2016, attended by 17 legislators, and another to Valle de Guadalupe in Mexico with six lawmakers called the “Make it with Mexico Cross Border Conference.” Both trips had Democratic and Republican representatives.
The organization filed rarely used disclosure reports that provide transparency about the donors who attended the Maui trip. State law requires that organizations annually disclose any major donors who travel alongside elected officials, if the travel for elected officials in a year totals more than $10,000 or at least $5,000 to a single official and if the trip sponsorship accounts for at least one-third of the organization’s total expenses.
The Independent Voter Project filed disclosure reports going back to 2021 after CalMatters reported in 2023 that the law mandating transparency had only resulted in two submitted reports. There are now 11 filed reports, six from the Independent Voter Project.
The state’s ethics agency, the Fair Political Practices Commission, found in a 2024 audit that the one-third of total expenses requirement can create transparency gaps since some well-funded organizations might not meet that threshold and, therefore, be exempt from the reporting requirements.
More than 100 representatives of corporations, unions, and other nonprofits attended last year’s trip to Maui alongside the legislators, according to the trip donor disclosure report, many of which have frequent business before the Legislature, such as the state’s prison guard union, Pacific Gas & Electric, an oil industry group and a trade association for California hospitals.
Among the representatives from companies and advocacy groups was Autumn Burke, a former legislator who was elected in 2014 and abruptly resigned in 2022. Burke was listed as a donor and attendee using her 2026 campaign committee for Lt. Governor.
According to her committee’s campaign finance disclosure, the trip cost at least $17,500 to attend. At the time of the trip to Hawaii she was a registered lobbyist with Axiom Advisors though Burke said she didn’t lobby at the event and that she doesn’t lobby the Legislature even back in Sacramento.
“I had a vote, I do not have one now,” Burke said, “and I’m not comfortable telling them how.”
Instead, she said she went to learn more about policy matters in case she runs for office in the future. “I thought that I would at some point run again and this was one of the few venues that I had access to that allowed me informational education,” she told CalMatters in a phone interview.
The Jewish Community Relations Council and the Jewish Federation of Los Angeles paid nearly $82,000 in total to send a delegation of seven Democratic lawmakers to Israel last February, including Democrats Assemblymember Jesse Gabriel from Encino and Wiener, both of whom are co-chairs of the Legislative Jewish Caucus.
One of the sponsors said the point of the trip was to develop connections between California and Israel. Jeremy Russell, director of communications for the Jewish Community Relations Council, wrote that that attendees met with Israelis and Palestinians as well as members of the Knesset, Israel’s national legislature, and visited a few cities in Israel.
“The trips advance California and Israel’s long partnership on issues such as agriculture, technology and innovation,” Russell said.
Wiener said he went on the trip because Israel is home to about half of the world’s Jews and it was “important to see with my own eyes the horrors of the October 7th terror attack and to talk with the families of hostages” held by Hamas. But he said going to Israel doesn’t mean he supports the current government, which he called a “complete disaster.”
“There are times I wonder if Netanyahu and his team are Iranian assets,” Wiener said, referring to the Israeli prime minister, “because they’re creating more danger for Israel, in addition to the horrors in Gaza.”
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This story was originally published by CalMatters and distributed through a partnership with The Associated Press.
