Small business owners frequently cite regulations as one of the largest obstacles in operating their company. Every four years, the National Federation of Independent Business asks small business owners to evaluate and rank 75 potential business problems. In 2016, they told us that their second biggest problem was “unreasonable government regulations.”
But the 11-2 vote by the South Coast Air Quality Management District board left intact controversial plans for pollution reduction from the region’s ports and warehouse centers to be achieved through voluntary compliance with industry.
The California Supreme Court says the public has the right to access emails and text messages about government business sent on California officials’ private accounts. . . The use of private email accounts by public officials has faced scrutiny in recent years, with some using it as a way to avoid disclosure. Many states treat those emails as public records.
Gov. Jerry Brown’s proposed state budget may have mistakenly excluded some $22 billion from a formula to limit spending that was first imposed by voters in 1979, according to a new study by the Legislature’s independent analysts.
Republicans chose the damaging 13 rules based on a conventional reading of the CRA, which allows Congress to override regulations published within 60 legislative days, with simple (50-vote) majorities in both chambers. Yet the more scholars examine the law, which had only been used successfully once before this year, the clearer it is that the CRA gives Congress far more regulatory oversight than previously supposed. . . A third discovery could be the most important. The opening words of the CRA read: “Before a rule can take effect” the federal agency in question must submit a Congressional report. No one has tested the legal limits of this provision, but a fair reading suggests the Trump Administration could declare any rule for which a report has not been submitted to be null and void.
The San Francisco Board of Supervisors considered a resolution February 14 asking the state Legislature to grant local governments the authority to impose personal and corporate income taxes.
Drivers in the car-crazy California metropolis spent 104 hours each driving in congestion during peak travel periods last year. That topped second-place Moscow at 91 hours and third-place New York at 89, according to a traffic scorecard compiled by Inrix, a transportation analytics firm.
“At the first meeting of the Trump Leadership Council — an advisory group consisting of top CEOs from major companies — President Donald Trump asked these business leaders what was their biggest problem. I expected the answer to be America’s anti-growth tax system. The CEOs almost all listed the federal tax code as an albatross, but not the heaviest one. But I was surprised to learn that most insisted he biggest restraint on growth is federal red tape and regulation. Manufacturers, energy firms, financial services, agriculture interests — across all industries — federal rules were seen as mindless, inefficient, costly and incomprehensible.”
On Feb. 8, the Small Business and Entrepreneurship Council (SBE) released its annual ranking of the 50 states “according to 55 policy measures, including a wide array of tax, regulatory, and government spending measures.” The findings were not surprising — Nevada, Texas, South Dakota, Wyoming and Florida were at the top, while Vermont, Minnesota, New York, New Jersey and California were at the bottom. What is troublesome is that year after year the business-unfriendly states do so little to improve their rankings. As the author of the study, Raymond J. Keating, chief economist of the SBE Council, noted: “Too many elected officials choose to ignore the basic economic realities of how government affects entrepreneurship, business, and investment.”
Senate Bill 617 enhanced guidance and oversight of agency analysis of major regulations in California. However, based on our review of the analyses of major regulations conducted so far, the analyses still do not consistently follow best practices. These limitations make it difficult to understand trade‑offs associated with different regulatory options and determine which options are most cost‑effective. In addition, certain analytical requirements appear to provide limited value and there is no statewide requirement for agencies to conduct retrospective reviews.
“The total number of union members fell for both private- and public-sector workers last year, the first overall decline in four years, the Labor Department said Thursday. New policies from the Trump administration threaten to put more downward pressure on organized labor’s last stronghold, government employees, but might help stem membership losses among manufacturing and construction workers. Only 10.7% of workers were union members last year, down from 11.1% in 2015, and from more than 20% in the early 1980s. It is unclear whether any of Republican President Donald Trump’s policies could reverse this decadeslong slide in private-sector union membership, especially when unions were unable to gain traction with a union-friendly Democrat in the White House.”
The California Legislature enacted a dizzying array of new bills last year — with Gov. Jerry Brown signing more than 900 into law. With job growth stagnant and small business optimism unclear here in California, hundreds of new laws and regulations on the books this year present new burdens and risk of non-compliance for businesses across the state.
But Brown’s fiscal restraint posturing is more talk than action. His first enacted budget since re-election in 2010 totaled $128.3 billion (June 2016 dollars) in General and Special Fund expenditures. By 2016-2017, the budget had ballooned 30 percent to $167.1 billion. Overall, Brown has increased real General and Special Fund spending by an average of 5 percent per year.
Donald Trump’s pick to head the Environmental Protection Agency cast doubt on whether California should continue to have power to impose its own emission rules for cars and trucks, an authority the state has enjoyed for decades that is also the cornerstone of its efforts to fight global warming.
