State gas taxes vary widely. The highest state gas tax is assessed in Pennsylvania, at 50.4 cents per gallon, with Washington State (44.5 cpg) and New York (42.64 cpg) following closely behind. Alaska drivers pay the lowest rate in the country at 12.25 cents per gallon. These figures do not include the 18.4 cpg federal gas tax.
DWP officials have been campaigning for the $330-million water rate hike and a $720-million power rate increase for the last several months. They say the revenue is necessary to replace aging water mains and develop more local water supplies. On the power side, officials estimate that about 80% of new revenue would go toward meeting clean energy and climate change mandates.
For a city to sustain itself, it must provide a wide range of opportunities–not just for the affluent. The city, better seen as a metropolitan area, needs to addrss the diverse interests and preferences of its residents. And given that those interests and preferences are constantly evolving, the “over planning” mindset is untenable, even dangerous, to the future of cities that embrace it.
Rent control can have a negative impact on low-income households not living in rent-controlled units through higher growth in citywide median rents. Rents are too high because multi-family housing and the state’s housing stock have failed to expand
commensurately with the ever-growing population. The solution to this affordability problem is to expand the apartment stock in these cities, not introduce price ceilings.
When we reflect on the remarkable revival and development that’s occurred in such places as Downtown Los Angeles, Hollywood and Venice in recent years, we seldom think of this: Dramatically lower crime rates made that gentrification possible.
Home-price growth accelerated late last year, according to a report released Wednesday by the National Association of Realtors, as a lack of supply continues to drive up prices despite cooling demand. . . The five most expensive markets in the county were San Jose, Calif., where the median existing family home price was $940,000, San Francisco at $781,600 and Honolulu at $716,600. . . “Homeownership continues to be out of reach for a number of qualified buyers in the top job-producing, but costliest, parts of the country—especially on the West Coast and parts of the South,” said Lawrence Yun, chief economist at NAR.
After examining Piketty’s groundbreaking research, Matthew Rognlie of MIT concluded that much of the observed inequality is from redistribution of housing wealth away from the middle class. . . .Rognlie concluded that much of this was due to land regulation, and suggested the need to expand the housing supply and reexamine the land-use regulation that he associates with the loss of middle-class wealth. . . Homes represent only 9.4 percent of the wealth of the top 1 percent, but 30 percent for those in the upper 20 percent and, for the 60 percent of the population in the middle, roughly 60 percent. The decline in property ownership threatens to turn much of the middle class into a class of rental serfs, effectively wiping out the social gains of the past half-century.
In this follow up to California’s High Housing Costs, we offer additional evidence that facilitating more private housing development in the state’s coastal urban communities would help make housing more affordable for low–income Californians. Existing affordable housing programs assist only a small proportion of low–income Californians. Most low–income Californians receive little or no assistance. Expanding affordable housing programs to help these households likely would be extremely challenging and prohibitively expensive. It may be best to focus these programs on Californians with more specialized housing needs—such as homeless individuals and families or persons with significant physical and mental health challenges.
Tax propositions might rain down on Bay Area residents like an El Niño downpour this year as cities, counties, school districts and agencies try to persuade voters to pay for improved transit, smoother roads, school repairs, city building rehab, and bay water and wildlife conservation.
Were politicians willing to seriously address California’s housing crisis, rather than make token gestures, they’d reform CEQA and take other steps to encourage supply.
City officials have “no choice” but to increase electricity rates, since the majority of the rate hike revenue would go toward complying with state mandates to switch to renewable energy sources, he [Board President Levine] said.
The report issued by the Office of Public Accountability, led by Ratepayer Advocate Fred Pickel, also noted that the 21 percent average increase over the next five years — or an average 3.86 percent increase annually — is “less than what is needed” and the utility’s power system “will continue to be challenged to perform activities at planned levels.”
Big oil companies deepened their cutbacks to staff and investment Tuesday, as the price of oil briefly slipped below $30 a barrel for the first time since December 2003.
Today is a more extreme test of that divergence from the 1990s. Inflation is even lower, most visibly due to the surprising persistence of low oil prices, but also due to the strong dollar, which is helping make import prices cheaper. Yes, people’s paychecks are growing slowly, but their inflation-adjusted paychecks have been growing at a clip that may even be considered healthy.
If we are serious about exempting “necessities” from taxes, the list will become very long, but if we do it, we should also be willing to do a top-to-bottom overhaul of taxation to close egregious loopholes.