Recently approved environmental rules could add hundreds of millions of dollars to the cost of desalination plants proposed along California’s coast. Industry officials say projects will continue to move forward — though it’s an open question about whether the technology will ever flourish in the Golden State.
There’s no justification for continuing to sock the highest income earners — the people who can most easily move to a low-tax state — when Sacramento is wallowing in surplus money.
The eight-foot-tall dam, which is constructed of concrete blocks, reeds and mud, will remain in place at least until November, so that the LADWP can fulfil a variety of mandated obligations, including dust mitigation, tribal land requirements and assisting the Lower Owens River Project — the nation’s largest river restoration effort.
Sabrina Lockhart, a spokeswoman for Californians for Energy Independence, an advocacy group for oil and gas companies, said, “It’s ironic that a billionaire who is promoting policies that will cause energy prices to rise suddenly cares about what Californians pay at the pump.”
California’s cap-and-trade program, in which permits to pollute are traded and fees are levied, has been a swelling source of revenue, helping to fuel major initiatives in the updated spending blueprint released by the governor this week. . . Simply put: When power plants burn fuel and tailpipes spew exhaust, money is pumped into the governor’s agenda.
On Friday, the average for a gallon of regular in the Los Angeles area was higher than $4 for the first time since July, according to daily fuel price reports by AAA and GasBuddy.com. The recent surge in regional fuel prices has left local drivers paying more on average than motorists anywhere else in the U.S.
Japanese equipment manufacturer Kubota Tractor Corp. and its financing arm Kubota Credit Corp. are leaving Torrance. And like a handful of other companies that have left the area lately, Kubota is decamping for the Lone Star State.
The governor immediately mentioned his reservations around a proposal by Sen. Bob Hertzberg to impose a sales tax on professional services such as accounting and advertising.
Business leaders in Santa Clara, San Mateo, San Francisco, southern Alameda and northern Santa Cruz counties predict a hiring boom in 2015. Almost 64 percent of 217 companies surveyed plan on staffing more people this year, according to the annual CEO Business Climate Survey by the Silicon Valley Leadership Group.
California, which has added 1.87 million jobs since its employment hit bottom in February, 2010, came in fifth at 13.18 percent, just below Colorado’s 13.45 percent.
The number of private sector jobs in the Los Angeles area has remained relatively flat over the past quarter century, while employment in the San Francisco Bay Area has boomed, a report by a business group shows.
Rather then trying to convince nations to impose the costs of more expensive clean energy on their citizens, it is time to raise the white flag on carbon targets and present a new approach that will actually help mitigate climate change: focusing on driving technological innovation to make clean energy affordable for all.
The windfall is driven by a jolt of personal income taxes, as California bounds through its economic recovery. Income taxes have come in $2.7 billion above projections.
The homeless population jumped 12% in the last two years in both the city and county of Los Angeles, driven by soaring rents, low wages and stubbornly high unemployment, according to a report released Monday.
About 15 percent of the 561,000 pensioners in the California Public Employees’ Retirement System live their golden years outside the Golden State, according to a first-of-its-kind analysis of fund data by The Sacramento Bee. The vast majority have flocked to low-tax or no-tax states, creating a veritable river of cash that flows out of California and into cities such as Las Vegas; Reno; Tucson, Ariz.; and Grants Pass, Ore.