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The map below shows the average property tax deduction taken on the Schedule A, per tax return, for each county in the United States.

After the dust settled Sunday on the final day of the year’s regular legislative session, business groups were quick to claim victory over a torrent of labor-backed bills.

Wringing enough pollution out of trucks and other cargo-moving vehicles to get Southern California’s ozone levels down to 70 ppb will require a “paradigm shift” to battery-electric and fuel cell technology, said Scott Samuelsen, an engineering professor who directs the Advanced Power and Energy Program at UC Irvine. The key question, he said, “is how to make an economically viable transition of a freight industry that’s evolved with diesel engines.”

Assembly Bill 1506 grants relief to employers from frivolous actions under PAGA by allowing employers to cure certain alleged wage statement defects before an employee may recover PAGA penalties.

“Other cities will likewise find limited ability to raise new revenues as CalPERS continues its plan to ramp up its bill for cities that participate in its pension plan. Yet Sacramento officials act as if the pension problem is gone. There’s hardly an issue legislators didn’t try to address in the recently concluded legislative session, yet nothing of substance to deal with growing pension debts. The good-government group California Common Sense confirms that the state’s unfunded pension liabilities continue to show a pattern of steady increases.”

The state and local revenues were the equivalent of about 20 percent of the state’s overall economy and represented 13.2 percent of all state and local government collections in the nation that year – roughly the same as California’s proportion of the national population.

The proposed tax increase would generate an estimated $7 billion to $9 billion a year, and run though 2030. The group filing the measure includes the California Teachers Association, other education labor groups, and health care and police unions.

In its lawsuit, the advocacy group Fix the City said Mobility Plan 2035, which calls for the addition of hundreds of miles of new bus- and bike-only lanes, will lead to increased tailpipe emissions as drivers confront fewer car lanes and greater traffic congestion.

In its first months, California’s expanded film and TV production tax credit has prompted producers of four out-of-state TV shows to decamp for the Golden State, according to the state’s film office.

A new study from the San Francisco-based Pacific Research Institute has ranked the regulatory climate for small businesses in California the worst out of all 50 states — and the Bay Area is a prime example of why.

A California lawmaker has proposed a new label for food irrigated with what he calls “fracking water.”

A study released Monday by the Jet Propulsion Laboratory and NASA found that smog-forming chemicals making their way across the Pacific Ocean from China are undermining the progress California has made in reducing ozone, the most caustic component in L.A. smog.

The WCIRB report says that despite steps to curtail costs, total premiums paid to workers’ compensation insurers hit $16.5 billion in 2014, up from $14.8 billion the year before and 27 percent of all such premiums in the nation. It pointed out, however, that the premium jump reflected not only higher rates being charged by insurers to compensate for rising costs, but increases in the number of Californians on payrolls as the state recovered from recession.

Greed, profligacy, tiny companies with outlandish valuations: it is not hard to detect echoes of the turn of the century, when the dotcom bubble burst spectacularly and America’s economy stumbled as a result. But to see history as about to repeat itself is to miss how deeply things have changed. Today’s technology businesses are selling services and products from which they already generate income, rather than just saying that one day they might. And the group of people doing the investing is much smaller now than it was then. The risks are on fewer shoulders.

On governance and budget matters, Gov. Jerry Brown has earned a reputation for being reasonable and moderate. Even many Republicans describe him as the “last adult” in the Capitol, given his refusal to embrace far-reaching programs. Yet when it comes to global warming, the governor is anything but measured these days.