Gas prices are rocketing up in the Sacramento region, hitting well above the $3 mark. The average price of a gallon of regular gas is $3.226, compared to $2.784 a week ago, according to the AAA Fuel Gauge Report.
The average pump price in Los Angeles has risen 75 cents over the past month, according to GasBuddy.com, although Scotto said his prices have jumped $1.24 since Jan. 20. The average price of gas in Los Angeles County jumped 9.9 cents overnight, according to GasBuddy.com
Assembly Speaker Toni Atkins announced a sweeping affordable housing plan Tuesday that would impose new real estate fees and expand tax credits as a way to house the needy.
“It’s the biggest. The reason it’s so large is that fuels have come under the cap,” said David Clegern, a spokesman for the ARB. Transportation fuels account for about 40 percent of greenhouse gases.
San Francisco may have cool startups and some of the biggest names in the technology business, but when compared with 11 other global cities with strong tech clusters, the city that is home to Silicon Valley under-performs in key metrics like business environment, quality of life and property prices, according to a new report by property consultants Savills .
Wholesale gas prices rose 6 to 10 cents in California after a large explosion at the Exxon Mobil refinery in Torrance injured four workers and shut down a portion of the plant..
U.S. inflation gauges are sliding toward negative territory for the first time in more than five years. But the oil-fueled tumble in prices is far from the kind of growth-sapping episodes of deflation that tend to worry economists.
“What’s really making California prices jump more than the rest of the nation is our strict environmental standards,” she said. “Our refineries are converting from their winter blend to the summer blend of gas a little earlier than the rest of the country and they are under maintenance for the turnaround.”
The Board of Equalization released a proposal on Friday to reduce the per-gallon tax Californians pay on regular gas by 7.5 cents per gallon, a 21 percent cut from the current 36-cent excise tax. The new rate of 28.5 cents per gallon could be approved Feb. 24 and take effect July 1, the start of the 2015-16 fiscal year. Californians will still pay some of the highest gas taxes in the nation, based on sales tax, federal taxes, and other fees.
Despite the recovery, California is still experiencing the aftereffects of the most recent housing bust, and the long-term challenges of housing California’s population haven’t gone away. The housing bubble, which popped in 2008, left the state with a foreclosure problem and large losses of construction jobs. About 652,000 California homeowners remain “underwater”—their mortgages are higher than the market value of their homes (CoreLogic, 2014 second quarter). Paradoxically, a housing recovery for some is a housing problem for others, as high rents and increasing prices place housing out of reach for many Californians.
One of the main reasons for the disparity is the difference between California and the nation when it comes to the cost of housing – and this is readily apparent in the new numbers released by the BEA. The state has been in the midst of a housing shortage for years now, due in large part to regulatory hurdles such as the California Environmental Quality Act (CEQA) and other legislation that constrains construction. The lack of supply pushes up prices and forces residents to commit more of their disposable income to housing. According to the real estate research firm DataQuick, the median price for an existing home in California was $388,000 in December 2014, nearly double the national median home price of $209,500, as reported by the National Association of Realtors.
Opponents of the auctions, led by business interests, believe the transportation fuels auction will force companies to pass on their costs to consumers, resulting in higher prices.
“Instead of cherry-picking job creation in favored industries benefiting wealthy areas, we should be growing jobs in impoverished communities that continue to suffer from disgracefully high unemployment rates,” Vidak said.
The release of climate change proposals by Senate Democrats on Tuesday quickly spawned a heated debate over the direction of California’s economy and the potential effect of new environmental regulations.
California is one of just a handful of states currently not included in the FMMO. In recent years, dairy farmers in Idaho also have been lobbying to be included under the federal marketing order. But dairymen in that state have yet to petition the USDA.