Total state government revenue rose by 16.3 percent, from $1.9 trillion in 2012 to $2.2 trillion in 2013, according to the latest findings on state government finances from the U.S. Census Bureau.
California contains 12.2 percent of the nation’s population but its state government accounted for 13.8 percent of all state spending in the 2012-13 fiscal year, according to a new Census Bureau report.
In January, the State Board of Education asked the accountability advisory committee to study whether a single index – the API – was the best measure of school performance or whether a broader system would be more effective. Such a system could include measures like absenteeism, suspension and expulsion rates, course-taking patterns, test scores, graduation rates and other factors to evaluate how well schools are serving students.
For the second straight year, California will ask the federal government to exempt it from using scores on the new assessments that students will take this spring to measure progress in math and English language arts, a key requirement under the No Child Left Behind law.
The California Air Resources Board says the state has 16 regions that are not meeting the current standard. More rural, mountainous and less populated areas of California would likely exceed federal limits if the new standard is approved.
As California enters its fourth year of a historic drought – rung in with record dry spells this January in many regions across the state – water conservation becomes more important than ever.
In some recent merger cases, shareholder plaintiffs have based their suits on the claim, among others, that the venture capitalists on the board who constituted a majority had conspired to sell the company at a discount to the detriment of minority shareholders. Venture capitalists aren’t often accused of undue generosity, but especially not to buyers. San Diego-based Trius Therapeutics, which was sold to Cubist Pharmaceuticals well over a year ago, was sued in both Delaware and California. Though the suit was dismissed in Delaware, the case grinds on in California.
While the prospects for tax reform in Washington are dim, as many as 20 Republican governors are moving forward with their own pro-growth tax-relief initiatives. This is on top of the 14 states, including Florida, Michigan, Ohio and Wisconsin, whose 2014 tax cuts will take effect this year.
The Obama administration’s plan for the federal budget will contain a new line-item that is numerically trivial but philosophically important: $15 million for states to analyze the costs and benefits of their job-licensing requirements. . . State governments, with little public attention or debate, have spun a vast web of red tape that bars entry into working-class professions. Jobs like florists, manicurists, barbers, and on and on, impose unnecessarily burdensome restrictions on those who can practice the trade, closing off potential avenues for upward mobility. These restrictions have no policy rationale; they exist because incumbents in those fields have an interest in keeping out competition.
Significant new spending commitments could represent a failure of the state to heed the lessons of its past if they were to come at the expense of its budget reserve or rested on aggressive future revenue assumptions, the report says.
“California’s finances are roaring back,” the report said. “History would suggest, however, that any fiscal renaissance will be temporary.”
With that, the governor explained exactly why the idea of flattening income-tax rates will never fly. To make up for a 1 percent rate reduction in tax rates on the few with incomes of more than $300,000 would require a 1 percent rate increase on everyone else.
With the 2015-2016 legislative session under way, it’s worth reminding our elected leaders why legal reform is needed. Ultimately, enacting legal reform is about making our lawsuit system serve the interests of ordinary people, rather than making personal injury lawyers rich. Stopping the abuse of our legal system will enable California businesses to grow and create jobs.
Business leaders say L.A.’s business tax rate is too high and puts local firms at a competitive disadvantage. Since taking office in 2013, L.A. Mayor Eric Garcetti has said he wants to reduce the tax to stimulate economic growth in the city.
Roughly two-thirds of the rate spike came because it’s costing more to buy energy in the first place, especially from renewable sources crucial to meeting the state’s 33 percent mandate, she said. “Renewables are simply more expensive than the traditional power.”