Remote Surveillance Trailer in San Jose, CA

As gas prices are on the rise, San Jose Mayor Matt Mahan, who is running for governor of California, called on Sacramento to temporarily suspend the state’s gas tax.

According to AAA, the average price for a gallon of gas in California is $5.42, which is significantly higher than the national average of $3.63.

UC Berkeley professor Severin Borenstein said typically, gas prices in California are about a dollar and a half higher than the rest of the country.

“About a dollar of that is due to the higher taxes we have, the environmental fees we have, and the fact that we use a cleaner burning gasoline, which has helped clean up air quality quite a bit in California,” he said.

Because of this, San Jose Mayor Matt Mahan announced he called on Sacramento to temporarily suspend the state’s gas taxes.

“I’m calling on our state leaders to temporarily suspend our gas tax and provide relief to those who need it most,” Mahan said.

However, Governor Gavin Newsom said pumping the brakes on the gas tax won't necessarily bring down prices: his office said in a statement earlier this week, saying that, “Gas taxes are fixed costs that don’t fluctuate with the market and have nothing to do with the price spikes that Americans are experiencing this week.”

But as the war with Iran goes on, drivers across the Bay Area are still seeing an increase at the pump.

And it could get even worse.

“If the conflict drags on and we start to deplete the inventories we’re using now, it's possible that prices could spike quite a bit higher,” Borenstein said.

Borenstein said it is possible for gas to reach $7 a gallon, and even, NBC Bay Area crews saw a gas station on Sand Hill in Menlo Park where gas already reached that price; ultimately, Borenstein notes much of it depends on the war, and there is a lot of uncertainty with that.

He recommended paying attention to different gas prices across different areas and shop around.

San Jose Mayor Matt Mahan aims to stand out from the crowded field of California governor candidates with a statewide policy plan to speed up housing production. Advocates say there’s plenty to like — even if certain facets of the plan could cut funding to local public services.

Mahan unveiled his 15-point plan March 5 in Altadena, where the fifth deadliest and second most destructive wildfire in state history razed more than 9,000 buildings in Los Angeles County last year. The proposals include a two-year tax holiday on local fees for new housing developments and a 30-day limit on permit processing. Mahan proposes fast-tracking approvals for new accessory dwelling units, or ADUs, and factories making modular homes. He also wants to revise state building codes and develop a plan to curtail lawsuits used to block projects.

“His plan is bold, comprehensive and grounded in real-world experience, not easy sound bites,” Adrian Rafizadeh, spokesperson for Mahan’s campaign, told San José Spotlight. “It drives down costs by cutting the taxes, regulations and lawsuits that make projects more expensive. It gets more value for every taxpayer dollar by putting housing at the center of California’s industrial strategy. And it holds every community and every level of government accountable for results.”

Kelly Snider, a land use consultant and urban planning professor at San Jose State University, said it’s the most detailed housing plan she’s seen from this year’s governor candidates.

“I think it’s a good platform, and there is a sufficient amount of detail so far to believe him,” Snider told San José Spotlight. “I think it’s credible.”

Yet there are elements in the proposal where Snider anticipates pushback — namely, the two-year tax holiday. Mahan has bemoaned California’s housing construction fees as the highest in the nation and vows to prevent local governments from imposing exorbitant sales or transfer taxes on new infill housing, such as the voter-approved “mansion tax” — or Measure ULA — in Los Angeles.

“It’s a good idea and it’s the kind of centralization of state authority that a governor could probably implement in a four-year term, but it is going to be so unpopular with almost every jurisdiction in California because they have no other source of revenue to pay for things like building permits or housing elements, which are required by the state,” Snider said. “These unfunded mandates are going to be literally impossible for most cities in California to abide with.”

South Bay housing advocate Alex Shoor shares that concern.

“When you cut fees, and you don’t replace that revenue with something else, you’re cutting off your nose to spite your face,” Shoor told San José Spotlight. “You need that revenue to provide city services and have to make sure it can be replaced. It can be a gamble.”

In San Jose, the Parks, Recreation and Neighborhood Services Department is struggling with a massive $550 million maintenance and infrastructure backlog, which officials have blamed on developer fee cuts. Officials said they’re studying how the department can restructure the funding loss as the city tackles a larger $56 million budget deficit.

“We absolutely need more housing, but adding more residents while cutting the services that protect and serve those residents is a recipe for disaster,” John Tucker, a spokesperson for AFSCME Local 101, the union representing public employees across Santa Clara County, told San José Spotlight. “The reality is that developers won’t ‘pass those savings onto buyers.’ They’ll sell at the market rate and pocket the difference. It’s just corporate handouts disguised as a housing plan.”

In other areas, Shoor said Mahan’s plan has a lot to like.

“This is a laundry list of things that we have been talking about for a long time and have been working on and have already had some achievements on,” Shoor said. “I don’t think anything here is breaking radically new ground, and yet it is super important ground.”

Shoor likes the elements of Mahan’s plan that emphasize affordability. One proposal has the state purchasing apartment buildings to maintain low- and middle-income rental rates.

“I think time will determine whether Matt Mahan is as unabashedly pro-housing as he purports to be,” Shoor said. “But he has always been good about measuring outcomes and making sure government resources are spent efficiently. I think that’s always been his strong point, and I think the elements of the plan that talk about that are going to be really important.”

Another prong of Mahan’s plan includes changing state building codes to make them more affordable to property owners. Mahan said the costs of meeting new building codes every year, including those which are decades old, have skyrocketed.

“I think there is generally pretty popular support for updating and streamlining state building codes and eliminating the patchwork of county fire authorities and city public works authorities that have to get involved, but that will be unpopular, specifically with the unions,” Snider said.

Though Snider points out key signs of optimism that unions are becoming more receptive to lower regulatory hurdles. For instance, the California Conference of Carpenters was a key partner to the state’s biggest legislative effort in years to roll back California’s landmark environmental review law, known as CEQA, and exempt urban apartment projects.

There’s one idea Snider wanted to see that isn’t in Mahan’s plan. While it calls for a two-year tax holiday to support ADU construction and private sector financing partnerships, it doesn’t call for a government-backed, standardized funding mechanism for single-family homeowners to build secondary homes on their property. For example, Snider is interested in new Fannie Mae & Freddie Mac government-guaranteed loans for this purpose.

“We need something that really gets the stamp of approval from all of the insurers, brokers and mortgage lenders and third-party markets and also becomes available to typical homeowners in California,” Snider said. “If there was some way to unlock the equity of someone’s single-family home while they were still living there, that would be a great funding source to build these second units the state needs.”

Contact Brandon Pho at brandon@sanjosespotlight.com or @brandonphooo on X.

A group of Bay Area billionaires has poured $35 million into a campaign to block a proposed California wealth tax, backing three ballot initiatives designed to kill or weaken the measure.

The billionaires have put $35 million into a new political action committee called Building a Better California that is gathering signatures to put on the November ballot three counter-initiatives targeting the proposed California Billionaire Tax Act.

The union-created tax proposal would impose a one-time “emergency tax” of 5% on the net worth of California residents holding more than $1 billion in wealth.

RELATED: More than half of California’s billionaires call the Bay Area home: Who are they?

“Of course they’re going to oppose this,” said Jack Citrin, emeritus professor of political science at UC Berkeley, who dismissed the idea that billionaires are so loaded they shouldn’t care about the initiative’s proposed 5% hit on net worth. “Some of these billionaires have pledged to give half or all to charity. They want to control what they do. They want to live a particular lifestyle. They want to give money to their heirs.”

Building a Better California declined to comment on the billionaire tax proposal and their initiatives. The Service Employees International Union–United Healthcare Workers West, which put forward the initiative, on Friday decried Building a Better California’s “expensive and wasteful tactics.”

The union argues that the levy would help fill a hole in the state budget made by federal funding cuts. But it faces prominent foes including Gov. Gavin Newsom and San Jose Mayor Matt Mahan, who have expressed fears it will drive billionaires out of California, depriving the state of revenue, and stifling innovation.

Google co-founder Sergey Brin, the committee’s largest donor, has already left California. State records show the former Los Altos resident now lives in Nevada.

Media reports indicate Brin recently bought a $42 million mansion on the Nevada side of Lake Tahoe. Brin, worth $231 billion according to Forbes’ real-time billionaires rankings, put $20 million into Building a Better California, state records show.

Adding $2 million each to the committee were a who’s-who of Bay Area tycoons: former Google CEO Eric Schmidt of Atherton, who’s worth $34.8 billion; Kleiner Perkins chairman John Doerr of Woodside, who’s worth $19.4 billion; Stripe CEO Patrick Collison of San Francisco, who’s worth $17.5 billion; Ripple executive chairman Chris Larsen of San Francisco, who’s worth $12.3 billion; Sequoia Capital partner Michael Moritz, who’s worth $7.1 billion; and DoorDash CEO Tony Xu of San Francisco, who’s worth $1.6 billion.

Max Levchin of San Francisco, CEO of Affirm and worth $1.4 billion, threw in $1 million. Beverly Hills water and pomegranate magnate Stewart Resnick, co-owner of the Wonderful Company and worth $5.4 billion, added $2 million.

The group is backing three ballot initiatives — one designed to block the billionaire tax outright and two that could undercut it.

The first, titled the Retirement and Personal Savings Protection Act, would prohibit new state personal property taxes. If both that measure and the billionaire tax passed, the one receiving the most votes would take effect under state law, effectively canceling out the other, said Shaun Bowler, a political science professor at UC Riverside.

The other two initiatives could complicate or undermine the tax if voters approved it.

One proposal, called the Improving Transparency, Effectiveness & Efficiency in California Government Act, would require audits of programs funded by new state special taxes.

Another, titled the Protect Schools and Taxpayers Act, would require new taxes to comply with existing school-funding rules. That requirement could send a large chunk of the billionaire tax’s projected $100 billion revenue to schools instead of the health care programs the union hopes to fund.

Taken together, the measures appear to be “spoiler propositions” meant to weaken the tax or force legal challenges if voters approve it, Bowler said.

“It’s a clever strategy if you’ve got lots of money,” he said. “Money is no object here so you can get a wider range of strategies.”

While the California Secretary of State identifies Building a Better California as a top funder for five initiatives, only three are aimed at this fall’s election, said ballot-campaign strategist Brandon Castillo, president of Sacramento-based BCFS Public Affairs.

Given the multimillion-dollar cost of gathering enough signatures to qualify a measure for the ballot, launching multiple initiatives to counter a single proposal is uncommon, Bowler said.

In order to qualify for the November ballot, the three billionaire-backed measures and the billionaire tax initiative must each collect at least 874,641 signatures from registered California voters. The union’s petition drive must submit signatures by June 24, while Building a Better California has until Aug. 10.

The battle over the billionaire tax initiative is already playing out at grocery stores, farmers markets, libraries and post offices across the state, where clipboard-wielding signature gatherers collect a bounty for each valid signature they turn in.

Experts say the size of that bounty often determines which petitions get promoted most aggressively.

“They’re going to lead with the measures that are paying them more,” said ballot-campaign strategist Castillo.

As of Thursday, on two of the three billionaire-backed petitions, signature gatherers were earning more per signature than those circulating the billionaire tax proposal, according to data from BCFS.

The initiatives banning new personal property taxes and requiring audits of tax-funded programs typically pay about $15 per signature — roughly 25% more than the $12 paid for signatures supporting the billionaire tax.

Resources, Castillo said, “don’t seem to be an issue” for Building a Better California.

That likely means the group’s heavy spending on signature gathering could foreshadow major advertising campaigns if the billionaire tax reaches the ballot, Bowler said.

“These guys have got more money than you can even conceive of,” he said. “Twenty million in advertising here, or $30 million there, it doesn’t mean anything to them.”

A survey of 1,220 randomly selected California registered voters conducted by UC Berkeley’s Citrin Center and Politico from Feb. 25 to March 3 found that 50% supported the billionaire tax and 28% opposed it.

But Citrin, for whom the center is named, noted that when respondents were asked about potential effects — including whether it could drive wealthy residents or businesses out of the state — majorities expressed concern.

An advertising campaign highlighting those issues could “whittle away some support” for the proposal, he said.

For now, however, the fight is unfolding on sidewalks and storefronts across California as petition sheets fill with signatures.

“We’ll see what happens,” Citrin said, “when the ads start bombarding people.”

The inaugural FREE South Bay Camp & School Fair is TODAY, Mar. 14, sponsored by Stanford Medicine Children's Health in San Jose at Lynbrook High School Field House, 1280 Johnson Ave. with over 50 exhibitors.

The INDOOR Fair is open from 11am to 2pm with FREE admission and FREE parking.

The FREE Bay Area Camp & School Fairs sponsored by provide families with a one-stop shopping experience as they plan their spring break and summer activities. There is a wide variety of schools and camps for children, teens and families including preschools, day camps, overnight, performing arts, S.T.E.M. & S.T.E.A.M. programs, scouts and sports. Camps from around California and the nation take part.

Here are the free 2026 Bay Area Camp & School Fairs co-hosted by Bay Area Festivals and ActivityHero:

Each Camp Fair is indoors and open from 11am to 2pm with free admission and ample free parking.

Bay Area Camp Fairs provide families with a one-stop shopping experience as they plan their spring break and summer activities. There is a wide variety of schools and camps for children, teens and families including preschools, day camps, overnight, performing arts, S.T.E.M. & S.T.E.A.M. programs, scouts and sports. Camps from around California and the nation take part.

The first 200 families each day receive a free Camp Backpack courtesy of Stanford Medicine Children's Health.

There is a free raffle drawing for camps and KidFest tickets. Anyone bringing cans of food donation for the Monument Crisis Center will receive an extra raffle ticket for each can.

Stanford Medicine Children's Health hosts a free craft activity at each Fair.

Admission and parking are FREE each day.

is a one-stop shop for all types of kids camps and classes, used by over four million families. See parent reviews, camp schedules and prices all in one place. Camps & Activity Providers can promote their kids activities and use our online tools for all your registrations.

Visit www.Bay AreaCampFairs.com for more information.

Camps, schools, other programs and businesses wishing to exhibit at Camp & School Fair can visit to register or .

Julia Bonaguidi scored five goals and freshman Despoina Drakatou continued her remarkable freshman season with four goals, five assists and two steals as the No. 4 California women's water polo team rolled past No. 17 San José State 22-10 on Saturday at Spieker Aquatics Complex.

Senior Abbi Magee added four goals and two assists for the Golden Bears (10-3), including her 100^th career goal in the first quarter. Junior Feline Voordouw also had four goals for Cal.

Bonaguidi netted four goals in the first quarter and Magee scored three to combine for all of the Bears' scoring in the first quarter and a 7-4 lead. Cal gradually pulled away before holding San Jose State scoreless in the fourth quarter to win going away.

The Bears had 10 different players score goals overall.

Cal remains home next weekend when it hosts No. 6 Hawai'i on Sunday at 1 p.m. PT.

No. 4 California 22, No. 17 San Jose State 10 SJSU 4 2 4 0 – 10 Cal 7 5 5 5 – 22 SJSU Goals: Darcy Spark 6, Nynke Willemsen, Makenzy Clark, Bridget Cranley, Rose Jensen. Cal Goals: Julia Bonaguidi 5, Feline Voordouw 4, Abbi Magee 4, Holly Dunn 2, Despoina Drakatou 2, Julianne Snyder, Nieve Courtney, Eszter Varro, Reece Heisel, Maria Bogachenko. SJSU Saves: Tatianna Raffin 4. Cal Saves: Talia Fonseca 3,