Butler and a group of education and healthcare groups announced on Wednesday that they’ve gathered more than 980,000 signatures to earn the tax extension a spot on what looks to be a very long Nov. 8 statewide ballot .
Schools do not stand to lose $5 billion if the tax increases expire. They’d just get $5 billion less than they otherwise would – but they’d still get more money than they did the year before. So it’s not like schools would have to take the drastic steps like cutting class sizes that they did during the Great Recession.
Yahoo’s 279 workers let go this year contributed to the 3,135 tech jobs lost in the four-county region of Santa Clara, San Mateo, Alameda and San Francisco counties from January through April, as did the 50 workers axed at Toshiba America in Livermore and the 71 at Autodesk in San Francisco. In the first four months of last year, just 1,515 Bay Area tech workers were laid off, according to mandatory filings under California’s WARN Act. For that period in 2014, the region’s tech layoffs numbered 1,330.
In a report released this week, Washington, DC-based startup incubator 1776 named Boston as the No. 1 place to launch a startup in the US, with the San Francisco Bay Area ranked No. 2.
If all of California’s public pension debt were divided evenly by household, each house would need to pay $77,700, according to a new study by Stanford University.
But a state’s talent pool can only take it so far. Few states are blessed with as benevolent a climate and a first-rate university system as California, yet it is consistently ranked last each year by CEOs. In 2014, it topped New York for the largest out-migration of people. Much of the reason lies with the perception that Sacramento has a hostile attitude toward business.
A campaign statement released Wednesday shows the group of teachers, doctors and labor organizations has nearly $14 million on hand for a November initiative to extend Gov. Jerry Brown’s Proposition 30 tax increases.
In the fourth of a series of releases based on its annual surveys, 27 percent of respondents thought the economy will show improvement over the next six months versus 50 percent who answered the question optimistically two years ago. Another 21 percent in this year’s survey believe the economy will be worse in six months against only 9 percent who felt that way in 2014.
Indeed, our state government seems designed with the opposite of one-stop shopping as its guiding principle. California has more permitting agencies than most other states, all sorts of strange regional bodies, huge incentives for endless litigation, a divide between local governments that oversee land use and state agencies that regulate what you can do on the land, and the California Environmental Quality Act, which can kill almost any worthwhile project.
But rising energy costs are not the only cost increases we are seeing in the state. California businesses on average already pay 19% higher operating costs per job than the rest of the country in addition to paying 53% more in workers’ compensation. Corporate income tax is 43% higher than the national average and per employee is the ninth highest in the nation. Meanwhile, California has a poverty rate of 23.5%, the highest in the nation.
The Milken Institute’s fourth annual California Summit provided an opportunity to assemble prominent state leaders in business, policy, philanthropy, and academia to address the issues facing the world’s seventh-largest economy and one of the most diverse populations on the globe. Held December 8, 2015, at the Ritz-Carlton in Marina del Rey, the Summit focused on four key areas that define many of the challenges facing the state: the business climate; the need for opportunities in finance and access to capital, including financial technology; investment in the state’s infrastructure, particularly involving water; and the need to maintain and grow the culture of innovation.
Before raising our glasses to toast this winter’s abundant El Niño rainfall, here’s a sobering thought: Because of deliberate efforts to protect fish by limiting water storage, about half the rain falling on California will wash into the ocean, instead of being stored for the dry, hot summer to come. As for the water now filling the state’s reservoirs, billions of gallons will be flushed down rivers and out to sea in efforts to protect fish, rather than being used to irrigate food crops or provide water for thirsty communities when the drought resumes. Lawsuits and bad policy decisions have created a situation in which the well-being of fish is seemingly valued more than our economy or quality of life.
San Diego has gone from being one of the most vulnerable areas of California during drought to one of the best prepared—and in so doing has become a model for the future of water use in cities. Even as water supplies have dwindled in many other parts of California during the current drought, San Diego has stockpiled enough to help replenish a local reservoir.
In a poll released Wednesday by the Public Policy Institute of California, a solid majority — 62 percent — of likely voters supported extending for 12 years Gov. Jerry Brown’s Proposition 30 income tax increase on individuals earning over $250,000 to pay for education and health care. An initiative being circulated by teachers unions and health care organizations would put that proposal before voters in November.
Three years later, California education reform groups increasingly question how the LCFF is working out. They cite little evidence of more resources going to struggling students and many instances of extra dollars going into general school district budgets, with the blessing of Superintendent of Public Instruction Tom Torlakson.