Assemblymember James Ramos has introduced a bill that would transfer 4,301 acres of Northern California coastline to a Native American tribe, reopening a debate about whether California’s Legislature moves too fast on major commitments before counting the cost.
Assembly Bill 2356, carried by Ramos, a San Bernardino Democrat, would hand Tolowa Dunes State Park in Del Norte County over to the Tolowa Dee-ni’ Nation. The tribe calls the land ancestral territory. In materials it’s circulating to build support for the measure, the Nation frames the transfer as overdue justice: “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 historical depredations and wrongs against California Indian People, including the Nation.”
That’s a serious claim. The 4,301-acre park sits on one of the most ecologically sensitive stretches of Northern California coastline, and the bill leaves critical questions unanswered about public access, conservation obligations, and long-term management.
Critics drawing the comparison to Medi-Cal aren’t doing it to dismiss the tribe’s claims. They’re pointing at a pattern in how Sacramento operates.
Here’s what happened. Gov. Gavin Newsom announced a $97.5 billion state surplus roughly four years ago and used that number to justify expanding Medi-Cal coverage to undocumented immigrants of all ages. Newsom put it plainly at the time: “I campaigned on universal health care,” he said. “We’re delivering that.” Legislators didn’t push back on the surplus figure, didn’t demand detailed cost modeling, and the expansion moved forward.
The $97.5 billion number never showed up in a formal budget document. Newsom offered it directly. That matters because the figure was wrong, by a lot. What followed was the disclosure of a $165 billion error in state revenue projections, one of the largest accounting misses in California budget history. The state wasn’t sitting on a surplus. It was running multibillion-dollar deficits.
The expansion still took effect in 2024. By then, Newsom and legislators already knew the math had collapsed beneath the original rationale. Costs didn’t slow down. In 2025, the administration reported Medi-Cal spending was running $6.2 billion above projections, driven by enrollment numbers that far exceeded what planners anticipated among newly eligible immigrants. The state’s response was to freeze new enrollments, a significant retreat from a program Newsom had described as a historic achievement.
CalMatters has reported on how the Medi-Cal episode fits a recognizable Sacramento habit: broad commitments made with political momentum but without rigorous analysis of what it’ll actually cost, or what happens when the numbers don’t hold.
California’s electricity deregulation from roughly three decades back offers another data point. That push also moved quickly, with the appeal of the idea outpacing scrutiny of the risks. The result was shortages, rolling blackouts, and a PG&E bankruptcy that ratepayers didn’t finish paying for in a very long time.
None of that history makes the Tolowa Dee-ni’ Nation’s claim to its ancestral land wrong. Indigenous communities across California have legitimate grievances with the state going back well over a century, and the Legislature has been moving since 2026 to address some of them. But the Tolowa Dunes transfer is a permanent action. Once 4,301 acres of Del Norte County coastline leave state ownership, they don’t come back through a budget amendment.
What the bill still doesn’t answer clearly: what access rights public visitors retain, who bears responsibility for environmental management on one of California’s most sensitive coastal parcels, and whether the state has done the legal and ecological groundwork to make the transfer durable rather than contested.
Ramos has been the Legislature’s most consistent voice for Indigenous rights since his election, and that’s not a role to discount. But it’s worth remembering that the Medi-Cal expansion also had a compelling moral argument driving it. Newsom’s 2026 budget is already carrying a structural deficit. The Legislature’s credibility on large commitments isn’t what it was before the $165 billion revenue projection error surfaced.
The questions about Tolowa Dunes deserve answers before the vote, not after.