The number of wage and hour cases filed in federal court rose to 8,871 for the year ending Sept. 30, up from 1,935 in 2000. That’s an increase of 358 percent, compared to the the federal judiciary’s overall intake volume, which rose only a total of about 7 percent over the same period.
California got into this pickle because in 2001, when the UIF had a $6.5 billion reserve, the Legislature and then-Gov. Gray Davis decided to boost benefits sharply – nearly doubling them, in fact – without raising payroll taxes to pay for them. The extra benefits reduced the fund balance, leaving it unable to cope with sharp increases in claims for benefits when recession hit the state six years later. It was irresponsible, akin to the big increases in public employee pensions that Davis and legislators also decreed without a plan to pay for them, which also has created a big debt.
Isola Group is closing its Elk Grove manufacturing location. The cost: 72 jobs.
During this decade, however, a slow recovery from recession and a temporary hike in taxes approved by voters in 2012 have boosted general fund revenues from scarcely $80 billion when Jerry Brown began his second governorship in 2011 to an estimated $116 billion today.
In 2012, the top 50 percent of all taxpayers (69.2 million filers) paid 97.2 percent of all income taxes while the bottom 50 percent paid the remaining 2.8 percent.
For example, taxpayers currently pay amounts equivalent to 37% of state firefighters’ salaries to CalPERS to cover their future retirement checks. That payment is based on estimates that the fund’s investments will continue to earn 7.5% over the decades. But if the investments earn just 6.5%, required taxpayer payments for firefighters jump to an amount equal to 55% of their salaries, according to CalPERS documents.
The cuts to government services to pay CalPERS may have just begun. The pension fund has already warned cities that they are in the midst of a six-year span in which pension payments will rise 50%. The new plan will add even more to those costs.
It is important to remember that even in our global economy, states’ stiffest competition often comes from other states. The Department of Labor reports that most mass job relocations are from one U.S. state to another rather than to a foreign location.[1] Certainly job creation is rapid overseas, as previously underdeveloped nations enter the world economy without facing the third highest corporate tax rate in the world, as U.S. businesses do.[2] State lawmakers are right to be concerned about how their states rank in the global competition for jobs and capital, but they need to be more concerned with companies moving from Detroit, Michigan to Dayton, Ohio, than from Detroit to New Delhi. This means that state lawmakers must be aware of how their states’ business climates match up against their immediate neighbors and to other regional competitor states.
Whether or not El Niño turns out to be a drought-buster, this parched period has highlighted California’s larger need to get smarter about its water supply as the population grows and future droughts loom.
San Diego Mayor Kevin Faulconer said the city’s push to build a stadium for the Chargers took “a huge step forward” when Gov. Jerry Brown approved an accelerated judicial-review process for any lawsuits filed against the project’s environmental-impact report.
The California Public Employees’ Retirement System will discuss a plan Tuesday that is expected to increase the already fast-rising amounts that taxpayers contribute for government retirements.
Sixteen years after it abetted one of the most irresponsible political acts in state history – a massive increase in public pension benefits – the California Public Employees’ Retirement System may finally be reforming.
Businesses in San Francisco’s Mid-Market district skirted nearly $34 million in city payroll taxes last year thanks to a controversial incentive program known as the “Twitter tax break” intended to keep tech firms from fleeing for Silicon Valley. . . Last year, six companies qualified for the program — a drop from 11 in 2013.
In other words, the regulations under which EPA and CARB are prosecuting truckers are based on dubious science. But when the cause is green virtue, such details don’t matter.
In his final term, Brown is focused on creating a legacy of fiscal prudence after inheriting a $26.6 billion state deficit when he returned to the governor’s office in 2011. But unlike social measures that can easily pass the state Legislature on a majority vote, finance issues are more complex. Tax increases require both Republican and Democratic support to reach a two-thirds vote.