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Scott Lay, California newsletter pioneer and beloved ‘tinkerer of tech,’ dies at 48

Scott Lay, a pillar of the California Capitol community whose illuminating newsletters helped shape the modern landscape of political news dissemination and commentary, died earlier this month. He was 48.

Lay co-founded the Roundup, a daily political newsletter emailed by the Capitol Weekly newspaper to thousands of California subscribers, in the early 2000s.

Years later, he dove full-time into another passion project, this one a daily digest called the Nooner, along with a podcast called “SacTown Talks,” which regularly featured state lawmakers and other political leaders. The Nooner and podcast both continued until shortly before Lay’s death.

“The family is crushed. It’s a hard thing to lose somebody so young,” Lay’s older sister, Lisa Ortega, said in a phone interview. “We’re gonna miss him every day. It’s a comfort to know that he touched so many lives in such a profound way.”

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Lay spent close to two decades with the Community College League of California. He joined the nonprofit in 1995 as an intern. By 2006, he had become its CEO, a role he stayed in through 2014.

The Community College League in a statement Tuesday remembered Lay as a “passionate advocate, brilliant budget analyst, and sophisticated observer of California politics.”

Lay suffered from very severe asthma as a child, prompting extended hospital stays that kept him from graduating from high school, Ortega said. He got his GED, then attended community college in Orange County, where he grew up.

That pathway was one of a few factors that led him to become a stalwart advocate for affordable access to higher education, his sister said.

Lay’s hospital stays would also bring him into the same wards as children with cystic fibrosis, whom he befriended. He worked with the Cystic Fibrosis Foundation prior to community college, which Ortega said was “his jump into the nonprofits” and advocacy. Lay continued to raise awareness and funds to fight cystic fibrosis in the decades that followed.

Ortega said Lay was a “tinkerer of tech” like their father, and that “all the tech behind the Nooner was him tinkering.”

“He’s super curious. As a kid he was super curious, and it just grew as an adult,” Ortega said. “If he didn’t know how to do something, he just played with it until he figured it out.”

Scores of Sacramento politicos, lobbyists, journalists, former colleagues, law school classmates and others paid respects to Lay after family and close friends announced his unexpected death via social media Monday evening.

“If you worked in Sacramento politics, Scott Lay was a constant inbox companion, informing you of what’s happening and coming next,” U.S. Rep. Adam Schiff, D-Burbank, tweeted Tuesday.

Spirited on social media himself, Lay would punctuate his analyses and clever quips with celebrations of Sacramento’s local food scene (tacos were a big favorite) and of San Francisco Giants victories.

“I write and talk into mics. I cook and eat local,” his understated Twitter bio began.

Lay graduated from UC Davis School of Law in 2000, where he co-founded the local chapter of Young Democrats.

Many who mourned him online wrote that whether they agreed or disagreed with Lay on politics, they appreciated his kindness, wit and generosity.

Although Ortega was seven years older, she and her brother were close since childhood. She said the family “is very proud of the way he showed up for his community and his friends.”

“He was always generous with his time, and his work and his energy,” Ortega said. “He had such a great desire to serve others, and make their work better. That was really what was behind the Nooner. The state websites and stuff were so behind the times.

“Rather than complain about it, he fixed it. He solved it.”

Lay’s website, aroundthecapitol.com, was updated Tuesday, topped with an obituary penned by former Capitol Weekly editor and longtime friend Anthony York.

“Scott had a true belief that state policy and politics mattered — and that it was grossly under-covered,” York wrote in a tribute, also published by Capitol Weekly. “We bonded over a common mission to try to get people interested in what was happening in Sacramento.”

Family and friends have not disclosed Lay’s cause of death. York wrote in his tribute for Capitol Weekly that Lay “struggled with demons that created distance with even his closest friends.”

“While he would post enthusiastically on social media … those who knew him best knew that Scott was sick. Over the years, many of us tried to support him in efforts to confront some of those demons. We failed.”

Those who wish to donate in Lay’s memory can give to the Cystic Fibrosis Foundation or to the Orange Coast College Foundation, which has established a scholarship fund in his name.

Memorial service details are pending.