One project was for people who could afford to purchase homes at the market rate in a state with some of the most expensive home prices in the nation. The other project was for people who were homeless. City officials approved the market rate project. But the homeless project has stalled as officials in the growing suburb of Sacramento argued it was not eligible to be fast-tracked under a 2017 state housing law.

Monday, California Attorney General Rob Bonta and Gov. Gavin Newsoms administration jointly sued Elk Grove, arguing city officials broke the law by denying the project and accusing them of discriminating against low income families.

The lawsuit escalates a conflict between the state and local governments over how many housing projects cities should approve, and how fast they should build them. California, the nations most populous state, needs to build 2.5 million homes by 2030 to keep up with demand, according to the California Department of Housing and Community Development. But the state only averages about 125,000 new homes per year, almost two-thirds shy of whats needed.

Newsom, a Democrat with potential presidential aspirations, and Bonta a potential candidate for governor in 2026 have been aggressively monitoring local enforcement of state housing laws. Last year, Newsom briefly withheld $1 billion in funding from local governments because he was unhappy with their plans to reduce homelessness. In March, the state sued the city of Huntington Beach and accused its leaders of ignoring state housing laws requiring them to build 13,000 new homes over the next eight years.

Mondays lawsuit was different in that the dispute is over a single 67-unit apartment complex, signaling how far state officials are willing to go.

That can seem small, but every time we say no to housing we make homelessness worse in California, said Megan Kirkeby, deputy director for housing policy development for the California Department of Housing and Community Development.

Elk Grove Mayor Bobbie Singh-Allen said the city did not reject the project for people currently without homes, it simply ruled it was not eligible to be fast-tracked under a 2017 California housing law. Karen Hallock, an attorney for the projects developers, disputes that, saying the city flatly denied the project.

Singh-Allen said the city is doing its part to support affordable housing, noting more than 1,100 new affordable housing units are in some stage of development there.

The City of Elk Grove is not a bad actor, she said.

The dispute centers on the Oak Rose Apartments, a development proposed by Excelerate Housing Group, an affordable housing company based in Long Beach. The project would include 66 permanent apartments for people who are experiencing homelessness, plus one for a manager. It would include on-site support services, such mental health counseling, job placement and substance abuse help.

A state law law passed in 2017 says if a city does not build enough new housing to meet state-approved goals, then developers can build projects without going through the local governments normal approval process. Developers would still need to follow some rules, including a citys housing standards.

The Elk Grove Planning Commission denied Excelerates project last year because they said having residences on the first floor violated the citys standard for that part of town. Attorney General Bonta argues those standards are not objective, noting the city approved a separate project for the same neighborhood that included market-rate housing on the first floor.

Its clear this project was denied because of the intended residents, Bonta said. The main difference between the two projects is that one creates fewer homes at a higher price, the other creates more homes that are more affordable.

Singh-Allen said the market-rate project the city approved went through a different review process that gives the city more discretion over when to apply its standards.

The states 2017 housing law is set to expire at the end of 2025, though the Democratic-controlled Legislature is debating whether to make it permanent. State Sen. Scott Wiener is leading the effort, noting the law has resulted in about 18,000 new housing units since it was passed. But the bill faces strong opposition from some labor unions because it would not require a certain percentage of the construction workers to have completed a state approved apprenticeship program.

We are trying to take the politics out of housing approvals, Wiener said. When housing is approved that meets all of our standards, you get your permit and you dont become a political football. Thats called good government.

Up on the surface, federal officials overseeing the Energy Departments Waste Isolation Pilot Plant (WIPP) are working harder than ever to smooth over tensions with state officials and skeptics in the state capital so the facility can meet its mission: cleaning up the countrys nuclear weapons production sites. 

WIPP is the only geologic repository for nuclear waste in the country. Since 1999, the Energy Department has used it for one of the worlds largest environmental cleanup missions. 

The mine employs about 1,500 people and now holds drums full of roughly 2.6 million cubic feet of tools, clothing, soil, and other objects contaminated by research and development of the atomic bomb and the nuclear arms race. 

People in Carlsbad, New Mexico, near WIPP, have always liked it for the jobs. That kind of community support for storing nuclear waste will need to be replicated if the US is to meet President Joe Bidens goal of decarbonizing its power sector, relying partly on nuclear power plants. 

But New Mexico regulators under pressure from nuclear opponents, who worry the state has become a nuclear waste dumping ground want the authority under a 10-year hazardous waste permit to halt shipments if they see an environmental or health threat or if new legislation from Washington increases its disposal limit. New Mexico also wants the Energy Department to begin looking for repositories in other states. 

We need to reclaim our authority in many ways that the permit is going to do, said James Kenney, the states environment secretary, who says the Energy Department has treated New Mexico as an afterthought. We need authority to stop shipments, to stop waste streams, to require investigations if there are problems. 

The states stance infuriates community leaders in Carlsbad, a town of 32,000. Local officials, hoping to wean off boom-and-bust industries like oil, see WIPP as a stable economic driver and good neighbor. They want more nuclear facilities, including on a nearby private site where a  developer plans to store spent fuel from civilian reactors. They, and others in the nuclear industry, have touted that project as a model for the departments efforts to garner community consent for nuclear waste. 

WIPP is a marvelous project and a national treasure, said John Heaton, a former Democratic state representative from Carlsbad, who has an honorary room in the mine complete with an autographed bolt hammered in the ceiling. 

Nuclear industry opponents who influenced the states draft permit have little understanding, Heaton said, of the facilitys safeguards. The way that is written is absolutely absurd and makes no sense, he said. The permit becomes a way to stop WIPP, and it would be a tragedy to stop WIPP. 

The Energy Department declined to comment on how the proposed permit conditions would affect operations. But officials have acknowledged they need to do better in New Mexico as nuclear waste piles up nationwide. 

When state officials complained about the departments shortcomings, I took that to heart, said Ike White, who leads the departments Office of Environmental Management, which has a $8.3 billion annual budget and more than 30,000 employees and contractors working on waste cleanup at 15 sites in 11 states.

New Mexicos draft permit contains areas of fairly significant agreement, White said. On the contentious points, he pledged constructive negotiations.

Cheering the Waste

In the 1980s, Congress established a national nuclear waste disposal program that sought to set up repositories for different categories of waste from weapons sites and civilian power plants. 

Lawmakers designated Yucca Mountain, about 90 miles northwest of Las Vegas, as the countrys sole burial site for spent nuclear fuel and the most highly radioactive waste. The plan eventually foundered due to strong public and political opposition in Nevada, and as a result, US nuclear waste remains stored around the country at 75 nuclear power plant sites in 33 states. 

Things went differently in New Mexico. The Carlsbad area was confronting a downturn in industries that had sustained it. Potash mining struggled to compete with cheaper imports. An oil and gas drilling boom hadnt yet arrived, and unpredictable commodity price swings challenged local budgets.

When Congress passed the Waste Isolation Pilot Plant Land Withdrawal Act in 1992, the facility moved forward. WIPP would store up to 6.2 million cubic feet of transuranic waste, a designation that includes contaminated clothing, rags, soils, tools and other elements. It was expected to fill up by 2024, but the law didnt stipulate a closure date. 

As the first trucks with waste passed through Santa Fe, dozens of protesters jeered them, horrified that their communities were subjected to the threat of an accident that would sicken hundreds of people. 

But when the shipments arrived in Carlsbad, hundreds of people cheered along the highway. Scientists, miners and construction workers flooded the area to build and operate the site. 

It really changed the whole DNA of our town, said Jack Volpato, chairman of the Carlsbad mayors nuclear task force.

WIPP appears unremarkable at first. Beige buildings, a hoist and a mound of mined salt emerge from the grassland about a 40-minute drive from Carlsbad. 

Inside the heavily guarded security gate, the site is busier than at any time since the 2014 incident. 

Crews work on a new ventilation system. Workers check waste that arrives in double-lined steel shipping casks on semi-trailers to ensure they meet WIPPs criteria, and then take them 2,150 feet underground a five-minute elevator ride into the pearly white walls of the Delaware Basin.

Workers haul the drums through the vast underground network, geothermally heated to about 82F at all times. Salt crunching under their boots, they navigate with handheld maps, posted coordinates and color-coded emergency escape routes. The drums are stacked in rooms nearly as long as a football field. Workers often end their shift with a salty aftertaste. 

The salt seam is naturally elastic, WIPP officials say, so when one panel closes, the salt gradually collapses and molds tightly around the drums. Elsewhere, mammoth mining machines chew new passages through the seam, installing bolts to keep the migrating salt at bay. 

Against Forever WIPP

WIPP today is 42% full, and shipments could run another 60 years before hitting the legal limit, according to department estimates. Delays stem from slower-than-expected waste cleanup and a 2014 radioactive release at WIPP that halted shipments for more than three years.

This years permit comes at a particularly critical time, said Don Hancock, who has been advocating against the facility since 1975. His office in Albuquerque is filled with newspaper clippings and with binders of WIPP permit documents. A sign hangs in his window: Another Business Against Forever WIPP. 

What we need the state to do, in our view, is send some clear messages in the permit, Hancock said, that theyre serious about limiting WIPP, including its lifetime. 

The 2014 incident fueled concerns. Investigators determined Los Alamos workers mistakenly used the wrong type of kitty litter a common absorbent of liquid nuclear waste which caused one drum to burst. Tests showed 35 employees absorbed elevated levels of radioactivity, though most showed a dose akin to a chest X-ray, the department found.

When the facility reopened in 2017, it installed filters underground for radioactive particles. Those filters required a new $486 million ventilation system, which is years behind schedule and nearly 70% over budget, government auditors discovered last year.

WIPP was never designed to deal with radioactive releases in the underground because it wasnt going to happen, Hancock said. It happened in the first 15 years. 

The facility could soon receive another waste stream: plutonium from weapons production that would be diluted to meet WIPP acceptance criteria. 

The state and some local officials have derided the dilute and dispose plan as an illegal expansion that will cause more traffic on the roads around the state. New Mexico Governor Michelle Lujan Grisham protested to Energy Secretary Jennifer Granholm. The department insists the plan fits within WIPPs original mission. 

In March, the tension escalated beyond WIPP when Lujan Grisham signed a law banning permits for the $3 billion spent fuel storage facility in southeast New Mexico proposed by Holtec International to hold fuel from civilian reactors. 

Future negotiations about where to put nuclear waste in the US will likely involve players like Anna Hansen, chair of the Santa Fe Board of County Commissioners, who has advocated against WIPP and called the plutonium disposal plan insanity and an endangerment to my constituents. 

Recently, however, she has been a diplomat of sorts between the governor and Energy Department officials. She described the meetings in Washington as a positive sign of thawing relations. 

The department offered an olive branch to Kenney, the state environmental director: a new engagement and messaging strategy formalizing its plans to work better with New Mexico. So far, the department has organized public forums in Santa Fe and Hansen moderated the third one in April. 

The lines of communication are open, she said. 

Volpato, the Carlsbad nuclear task force chair, said greater outreach could help his neighbors up north see WIPPs value. As a high schooler, he was against the project until the Energy Department and local supporters held meetings to explain the science and quell fears. 

As time went on, and I got educated on exactly what they were doing, you know, you get the big picture of something, Volpato said. He ended up joining a construction crew that built the roads leading to WIPP today. 

I came around to be a believer and supporter of WIPP, he said. And I think that was a lot of people in the area. 

After previously refusing to disclose the terms of her contract, Fagan had her office email reporters a copy on Monday. It showed the consultancy paid $10,000 per month, with bonuses three times that amount if she helped the company get licensed in other states.

Fagan, a Democrat who is the states second-highest ranking official, indicated she aims to hold onto her elected position despite Republican calls for her to resign. Gov. Tina Kotek, a Democrat, requested investigations by the Oregon Government Ethics Commission and the Oregon Department of Justice into the matter Friday.

I am sorry for harming the trust that I and so many others have worked so hard to build with you over the last few years, Fagan said during a Zoom conference she held Monday. I will begin working to build that trust back today.

The matter came to a head after Fagans office released an audit Friday that called for the Oregon Liquor and Cannabis Commission to reform some rules for marijuana businesses, saying they are burdens when combined with federal restrictions on interstate commerce, banking and taxation.

Fagan recused herself from the audit of Oregons marijuana regulatory agency because she is a paid consultant of an affiliate of marijuana retail chain La Mota, her spokesperson, Ben Morris, said at a virtual news conference timed with the audits release.

Fagan noted Monday that ethics guidelines allow outside employment. She said the consultancy didnt represent a conflict of interest because any action taken as a result of the audit would be by the governor, Legislature or cannabis commission; and because a wide range of businesses would be affected by any regulation changes, not just her client.

La Motas co-owner has hosted fundraisers for top Democratic Oregon politicians, including Fagan, while the co-owner, her partner and their business allegedly owed $1.7 million in unpaid bills and more in state and federal taxes, according to Willamette Week, a Portland newspaper.

Fagan told reporters Monday she contacted Connecticut Lt. Gov. Susan Bysiewicz as part of her consulting gig, just to ask who would be somebody for a cannabis company to talk to if they wanted to get the lay of the land.

Bysiewicz spokesperson Samantha Taylor said in a statement that Fagan called about three weeks ago, asking about Connecticuts cannabis license process for a client Fagan had as part of her consulting business.

After learning of Fagans outside work, minority Republicans in the Legislature called for her resignation.

This appears to be an ethics violation and if it isnt then Oregons ethics laws are broken, Senate Republican leader Tim Knopp and House Republican leader Vikki Breese-Iverson said in a joint statement Friday.

The governor underscored her own concerns as she called for the probes, saying: Its critical that Oregonians trust their government.

Fagan announced Monday she was terminating her contract with Veriede Holdings, the La Mota affiliate. She also provided a copy of the contract, signed Feb. 24, which paid $10,000 per month plus a bonus of $30,000 if she helped the company acquire marijuana licenses in any state other than Oregon or New Mexico. A total of 21 states and Washington, D.C., have legalized recreational use of marijuana.

Fagans annual salary as secretary of state, a job that is responsible for running elections in Oregon and overseeing state audits, is $77,000. Fagan told reporters she is divorced with two young children and has student loans and other bills that she says her secretary of states salary is not enough to cover.

She said her consultant job had nothing to do with her elected position. Reporters, though, were skeptical. They asked why she would be hired as a pot consultant unless La Mota wanted her to leverage her position to expand their business in other states, especially when there are numerous bona fide marijuana business experts in Oregon.

Fagan responded that she has experience advising and representing, as a lawyer, Oregon businesses and contended that her work for La Mota didnt require her to be a marijuana expert.

At Mondays news conference, Fagan fought back tears as she said she is deeply honored to serve as Oregon Secretary of state, regardless of the compensation.

I owe the people of Oregon an apology, Fagan said. I exercised poor judgment by contracting with a company that is owned by my significant political donors and is regulated by an agency that was under audit by my audits division.

Fagan said she was donating all money in her political action committee to the Oregon Humane Society.

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Associated Press reporter Susan Haigh in Hartford, Connecticut, contributed to this report.