The information in this newsletter is being distributed among allied associations that form the California Alliance for Golf (CAG), the organization that speaks with one voice in the Capitol regarding legislative and regulatory issues of statewide scope.
NEW YEAR; NEW LEGISLATIVE SESSION
As the calendar turns to 2026 here is what CAG is looking at and just as importantly what the legislature is looking at as it reconvenes in the 2nd year of the 2025-2026 two-year session.
As with all second years of 2-year sessions, all the bills continued from the previous year have only until the end of January to make it through their policy committees of reference, their respective Appropriations Committees, and successful floor votes in order to move forward in 2026. While CAG is tracking a couple of them for what their success or failure might inform us about Sacramento’s political temperature, none rise to the level of genuine concern for the California golf community. However, to the degree to which the opening month of 2-year sessions jams things up in the Capitol, it tends to delay the dropping of bills that might rise to the level of requiring golf’s attention. A few of such come to mind – a glyphosate bill that might be more ambitious in terms of proscriptions on licensed/restricted applications as well as domestic/consumer applications than the one that was withdrawn last year, another run at permanent Standard Time, and/or housing bills that take dead aim at the limited urban acreage dedicated to open/green/recreational space. Of course, it’s always what doesn’t come to mind that requires the most attention. CAG will be paying attention.
In addition to “paying attention,” a purely reactive habit, CAG has concrete plans to be an actor in the 2026 legislative process by doing something that CAG has yet to do in its short history – run a bill. CAG has spent the last quarter of 2025 doing the legwork and performing the due diligence to determine the appetite for creating a civil cause of action in California law for any 3rd party reselling arrangement in the public sector that isn't by mutual consent of the re-seller and the golf facility — in other words, by written agreement.
The reason should be obvious but given that there are certain things that cannot be repeated too often, let us repeat the following. The preservation of affordable, accessible public golf is always at risk, but it is a California value – consistent with California’s “better angels” of an open, opportunity-for-all society. And that is why the Alliance has never shied away from protecting, preserving, and promoting the social and environmental utility of the game and what it offers communities in terms of recreation, public health, environmental sustainability, and social cohesion.
The working title of the bill is “Blocking Illegitimate Reservations and Protecting Equitable Access to California’s Publicly Owned Golf Courses Act,” because that is what in the final analysis, the bill is all about – equal access to publicly owned amenities.
For that reason and really only for that reason, something we should always remember whenever the game ventures into the public square, we have found more than mere “appetite” for this bill; we have found enthusiasm from both officeholders and just as importantly, the staff of the Assembly Arts, Sports, Entertainment & Tourism Committee to which the bill would be first referred. It is almost certain to be double referred to the Privacy Committee, a committee with which CAG has also met as part of doing its late 2025 “due diligence.”
An initial draft has been sent by the lead staffer of the Assembly Arts, Sports, Entertainment & Tourism Committee to Legislative Counsel for translating into language that can then be numbered, titled, and authored. As for both – number, title, and formal language & author – we expect that both will be nailed down in the next couple of weeks, well before the mid-February deadline for submittal of bills in their Houses of Origin. And as you can tell, the House of Origin for this bill is anticipated to be the Assembly. As soon as these details are indeed nailed down, CAG will share them widely.
Based on conversations with some of the large municipal systems that have been most affected by 3rd parties brokering their tee times absent the kinds of written agreements they routinely enter into with GolfNow and other players in that field, agreements that bring value to both vendor and municipality, we anticipate overt support when the bill is filed and referred to committees. It’s important to emphasize that this bill does NOT in any way affect agreements that are freely entered into for ostensible mutual benefit; it ONLY affects brokering without the consent of the public agency that owns the golf course or the management group that the public agency has put under contract to operate its golf course.
Before moving from what CAG is looking at and for as it enters this new legislative session to what the two houses of our legislature are facing – the political backdrop – it’s important to note that the “enthusiasm” we encountered not just for the bill we plan to run in 2026, but as well for the way in which CAG has “worked” bills and issues in the Capitol in recent years – is confirmation of the goal CAG set for itself some years ago to surely, if at times slowly, establish a credible presence in a Capitol stuffed with more competing interests and sectors than any other state capitol in the United States. CAG has done that by at all times aiming to be transparent, intellectually honest, respectful of divergent viewpoints, and open to compromise. No doubt we have on occasion missed the target but never because we aimed elsewhere. We should have thrown “humility” into that mix of “aims.” It’s just as important to respect the arguments of others as it is to recognize the fallibility of one’s own.
California’s lawmakers enter 2026 staring down a fiscal cliff. Despite surges in AI-specific capital gains receipts and market-general capital gains receipts, the state is looking at an $18 billion shortfall after having tapped a number of rainy day funds and one-time reserves to get it down to $18 billion. Atop that are the cuts to Medical, food assistance, and university grants dictated by the passage of last year’s “Great Big Beautiful” tax reform bill in Congress.
The State Legislative Analyst’s most recent report concludes the following: The state’s expenditures have gone up, anticipated savings haven’t materialized, and federal cuts will force the state to pay billions more to maintain programs like CalFresh and MediCal at their current level, presaging a deficit of $18 billion quickly ballooning to $35 billion annually in the coming years. The savvy among you may now better understand why CAG’s 3rd party tee time broker bill seeks only the creation of a cause of action and not anything resembling any form of administrative penalty requiring state administrative oversight. This year’s Appropriations processes promise to scrutinize very closely anything that proposes to spend state monies on ends that don’t rise to the level of protecting the most essential of public services and public needs.
The new Senate Pro Tempore Monique Limón (D-Santa Barbara) – more about her in a moment – has announced that balancing the state budget is her highest 2026 priority. It’s not yet clear whether she is inclined to favor doing that by some of the ideas being floated around the Capitol about increasing taxes on the “ultra-rich” and corporations, by favoring cuts to the programs the federal government no longer supports that go to the heart of many Californians’ ability to feed, clothe, house, and educate themselves, or some combination of the two. But it is clear that given the very real fiscal problem the state faces in 2026, we are going to be witness to healthy debates about the efficacy of either solution, or any practical combination thereof.
Assembly Speaker Robert Rivas (D-Hollister) continues to identify “affordability” as his house’s north star. In 2025 he put together four “affordability” committees to address food access, child care costs, housing financing, and transportation costs. As of the end of December, three out of four committees have only met once for informational hearings. The committee to address child care costs met three times, but attendance was thin. The only real progress in pursuit of that “north star” in 2025 involved housing, as the Assembly passed 19 bills aimed at making housing more affordable and available in California. Whether those bills hit their intended affordability targets is the subject of a robust ongoing debate that we’ll leave to those expert in the field and not to an Alliance that is laser-focused on golf. One thing is for sure. Expect to see a bevy of more such bills in 2026, and CAG will scrutinize them to determine which among them might single out golf to the exclusion of all other open/green/recreational uses as a single-source salve. It’s important to remind that golf’s objection to certain “housing” bills in the past (e.g., two runs of the “Public Golf Endangerment Act”) was not an objection to golf sharing in the sacrifices necessary to alleviate some of the state’s very real housing problems; it was an objection to being sacrificed up as the ONLY solution.
What about Governor Newsom? What can we say about what he faces the last year of his tenure? He has done quite well in securing the support of the legislature for many of his priorities – e.g., CEQA reform, California Water Plan, and a more “balanced” climate change agenda. His one failure has been his desire to accomplish what every Governor of the last 50 years has tried to accomplish and failed to achieve: Some sort of “Delta Conveyance Plan” capable of obviating interruptions to the State Water Project’s ability to deliver water to the Southern half of the state. Expect him to press that issue hard in the last year he has to avoid the fate of California governors all the way back to the 1st Jerry Brown Administration.
Back to new Senate Pro Tempore Monique Limón (D-Santa Barbara). New leader equals new Party leadership and new Committee Chairpersonships. Of particular note to CAG is the creation of a new committee entitled “Privacy, Digital Technologies, and Consumer Protection,” with Senator Christopher Cabaldon (D-Yolo) as its Chair. Assuming CAG’s tee broker bill makes it out of the Assembly and to the Senate, it will be heard by that new committee; it’s the “consumer protection” aspect that makes it a certainty, as CAG’s bill has enough resemblance to certain bills involving sports/entertainment ticketing that have run into difficulty with some consumer protection groups. “Resemblance” but certainly more than enough difference to make distinguishing them easy; however, given the difficulty of getting any bill passed into law in a state as big as California, anything requiring detailed “explanation” runs the risk of a bill losing traction – another reason why CAG’s bill has been narrowed to apply only to “publicly owned” golf courses. That narrowing eliminates all “resemblance” between the ticket scenario and the tee time scenario. This narrowing does not in any way preclude legislation in a future and perhaps more amenable fiscal year that would apply as well as to the daily fee sector.
Also, of note with respect to Pro Tempore Limón’s new appointments are the following: Majority Leader – Angelique Ashby (D-Sacramento); Appropriations – Sabrina Cervantes (D-Riverside); Natural Resources & Water – Josh Becker (D-Menlo Park); Governmental Organization – Susan Rubio (D-Baldwin Park).
DEPARTMENT OF INTERIOR REVOKES NLT’S LEASE TO OPERATE AND REFURBISH DC MUNICIPAL GOLF COURSES – A Local Story with National Implications
On December 30 the United States Interior Department revoked the National Links Trust’s long-term lease to manage and improve the national capital’s three (3) publicly owned golf courses under the jurisdiction of the National Park Service – a lease that NLT was awarded five (5) years ago in a competitive process per a proposal that pledged to operate the three golf courses at very affordable rates and improve them over time by reinvesting all net proceeds into those improvements.
In a January 1 story Golf Magazine (golf.com) summarized NLT’s performance to date as follows:
“To date, the NLT says it has more than doubled rounds played and course revenue at D.C.’s municipal courses since assuming control of the lease from the Parks Department. It has also invested more than $8.5 million in “capital improvement projects” to the courses while maintaining rock-bottom pricing for peak tee time rates.
As part of the National Links Trust’s original agreement with the Parks Department, the NLT also secured pro bono design work from some of the country’s top golf course designers, including Gil Hanse, Tom Doak and Beau Welling, to handle renovations of each of D.C.’s public courses. Work had just begun on the largest of those projects to date — a wholesale renovation of Rock Creek — when the Trump administration stepped in.
More than golf access or tax revenue, though, the NLT’s most prolific work has involved its commitment to maintaining the D.C. muni scene’s affordability and accessibility. Tee times at each of D.C.’s three muni courses have remained well below market rates in five years since the NLT took over, amounting to less than $50 per 18 holes in most instances, while course maintenance decisions have aimed to ensure upkeep costs are low. In doing so, the NLT appeared to prove it could have its cake and eat it too: steadily improving the quality of D.C.’s public golf without driving up the cost on taxpayers.”
The reason given for the revocation: A claim of $8.8 million in unpaid rent – a claim that NLT vigorously and very publicly disputes. From NLT’s solitary public statement to date:
“We are fundamentally in disagreement with the administration’s characterization of NLT as being in default under the lease. We have always had a productive and cooperative working relationship with the National Park Service and have worked hand in hand on all aspects of our golf course operations and development projects.”
As summarized in that same Golf.com story:
“According to the details of the National Links Trust’s publicly available lease, rent payments from the NLT can be offset by capital improvements to the courses. And, according to the National Links Trust’s statement on the administration’s decision, the National Park Service approved rent offsets for an amount equal to the Department of the Interior’s calculation.”
California’s golf community has openly lauded the Park Service/NLT arrangement to the degree to which it offers a path for municipal golf systems to improve their product while keeping that product maximally affordable and accessible. NLT was an active participant and supporter of the “Community Golf Summit” that California’s allied associations sponsored in the Long Beach area last summer. NLT was the lead agency for a similar “Summit” in Massachusetts in late 2024.
Bottom line: Golf communities and golf alliances throughout the nation have held up the NLT model as something to emulate, and that is why we felt it important to share this story, as it is a story that is national to the degree to which what is unfolding in D.C. has repercussions for community (municipal) golf everywhere.
To be clear, today’s reporting and the reporting we do as this story unfolds will avoid the three “P’s” we always avoid when reporting on those places where golf and public policy intersect– politics, partisanship, and personalities. We will also avoid taking sides in what is in the final analysis a dispute between a lessor and a lessee.
However, we’ll let the poignant words of Jay Karen, CEO of the National Golf Course Owners Association (qtd. in Washington Post, Dec. 31, 2025) on the critical role played by publicly owned golf courses in the golf ecosphere stand as our own:
“The DNA of municipal courses is a bit different than those owned and operated privately and much different than country clubs,” said Jay Karen, chief executive of the National Golf Course Owners Association. “Munis are all about supporting the widest possible access to the game, while also preserving critical green spaces, for perpetuity. … There is a greater sense of history and pride in a community around their public parks that happen to be golf courses.” [Washington Post; December 31, 2025]
More certainly to come. There are a lot of lines to read between here. We’ll continue to provide the “lines” and leave the “reading between” to you.
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There will be a Volume II January 2026 newsletter to update you on the progress and details of the “Blocking Illegitimate Reservations and Protecting Equitable Access to California’s Publicly Owned Golf Courses Act” and anything else of importance that crops up in the first couple of weeks of the 2026 legislative session. In addition, we’ll update you on what we can in good conscience tease as some very good news about some of the public golf courses we have been writing about that are (or were) under some threat of closure, and we’ll share the details of the agreement that CAG and the SCGA reached in November, the gist of which is making what has long been de facto practice something more definitively de jure by executing a contract between CAG and SCGA that spells out how SCGA shall “manage” the Alliance for the benefit of the stakeholders that comprise and fund it and in the process provide the stable base necessary to grow it to the size most anticipate will be necessary to continue meeting public policy challenges that promise to only grow in California.