Our eighth annual Best States for Business ranking measures six vital categories for businesses: costs, labor supply, regulatory environment, current economic climate, growth prospects and quality of life. We factor in 35 points of data to determine the ranks across the six main areas.
A mixed record for business in this year’s legislative session got a bit of a boost when the governor signed a slew of bills intended to help business. While the latest flurry of bill signings is good news, big issues still concern the business community.
California ranked 48th out 50 states in the Washington, D.C.-based Tax Foundation’s 2014 State Business Tax Climate Index.
As I travel around California visiting with our many small business members, these mom and pop employers have told me almost every story of lawsuit abuse imaginable: customers pretending to slip and fall in order to sue a business, lawsuits over the blue paint on a parking space being faded, businesses facing Prop. 65 lawsuits for not warning customers that alcohol is bad for them…the list goes on and on.
The battle is on to get more support for film and television production from the California government. Only days after Los Angeles Mayor Eric Garcetti put industry vet Tom Sherak in charge of lobbying Sacramento for more tax credits for Hollywood, the Motion Picture Association of America has issued a new call to bolster the incentive program for big-budget blockbusters.
SACRAMENTO – Governor Edmund G. Brown Jr. today signed 18 bills to strengthen the state’s business climate.
Today’s action builds on the legislation Governor Brown signed in July to revamp the state’s economic development program, known as the Governor’s Economic Development Initiative (AB 93 and SB 90). The Initiative, which received broad, bipartisan support in the Legislature, helps bolster California’s business climate and put Californians to work by establishing a statewide sales tax exemption on all manufacturing equipment and research and development equipment purchases for biotech and manufacturing companies; hiring credits for businesses in areas with the highest unemployment rate and poverty; and provides the opportunity for California businesses to compete for available tax credits based on the number of jobs to be created and retained, wages paid in those jobs and other factors.
The roads in greater Los Angeles are the most deteriorated in the United States, which costs Southern California drivers more than $800 a year, according to a national transportation analysis released Thursday.
The American Community Survey (ACS) and the Puerto Rico Community Survey (PRCS) ask respondents age 1 year and over whether they lived in the same residence 1 year ago. For people who lived in a different residence, the location of their previous residence is collected. The state-to-state migration flows are created from tabulations of the current state (including the District of Columbia and Puerto Rico) of residence crossed by state of residence 1 year ago. Tables of ACS state-to-state flows are available going back to the 2005 ACS – the first year of full implementation of the survey. People living in group quarters (e.g. adult correctional facilities, nursing facilities, college/university student housing, and military quarters) were added to the sample for the first time starting with the 2006 ACS.
“The U.S. is overtaking Russia as the world’s largest producer of oil and natural gas, a startling shift that is reshaping markets and eroding the clout of traditional energy-rich nations.
U.S. energy output has been surging in recent years, a comeback fueled by shale-rock formations of oil and natural gas that was unimaginable a decade ago. A Wall Street Journal analysis of global data shows that the U.S. is on track to pass Russia as the world’s largest producer of oil and gas combined this year—if it hasn’t already. “
“The cost of financing California government with bonds is expected to consume 7.7% of the state’s general fund tax revenue over the next year, according to a new report from the state Treasurer Bill Lockyer.
The total bill is pegged at $7.5 billion for principal and interest. That’s a reduction from last year, when it totaled $8.6 billion and was 8.8% of revenue.”
These 12 heavyweights are among 75 corporations and trade groups that have weighed in on one piece of legislation pending in the U.S. Senate. At least in part, the bill is intended to thwart California’s latest foray into the regulation of interstate commerce.
California’s State Auditor last week released its updated assessment of high-risk issues that loom over the state, and the failure to keep up with the state’s infrastructure needs made the cut.
A Texas-based conservative think tank, the National Center for Policy Analysis, has entered the debate by launching an interactive website that allows users to calculate the tax effects of moving from one state to another.
“Gov. Jerry Brown has repeatedly pledged to tear down what he calls California’s “”wall of debt.””
But Brown’s definition of that debt wall – about $30 billion in accumulated deficits from recent state budgets – is less than 10 percent of the debt that state and local governments have amassed, according to a new compilation by the California Taxpayers Association, if one includes unfunded liabilities for public employee pensions.
Cal-Tax researchers counted $443 billion in state and local debts, roughly two-thirds of it carried by the state and the other third by local agencies. That’s the equivalent of a fifth of the state’s annual economic output and amounts to $11,600 for each of California’s 38 million residents. “
The head of Germany’s largest utility has warned it will be years before Europe can hope to counter the US’s growing advantage in energy costs and predicts that the disparity will meanwhile lead heavy industry to abandon the continent.