News

U.S. consumer sentiment retreated in August from last month’s six-year high, though Americans were slightly more upbeat in their outlook than earlier in the month, a survey released on Friday showed.

For the fourth consecutive summer, teen employment has stayed anchored around record lows, prompting experts to fear that a generation of youth is likely to be economically stunted with lower earnings and opportunities in years ahead.

Governor Jerry Brown’s administration has pulled the plug on efforts to amend Proposition 65, California’s toxics warning law, through legislation this year.

GO-Biz Director Kish Rajan Debuts New On-line Permitting Tools and Provides Overview of the Governor’s Economic Development Initiative

If you harbor reservations about California’s business climate, or its attractiveness to commercial ventures, it can only mean you have yet to make the acquaintance of Kish Rajan, the state’s director of business and economic development. When the former Walnut Creek councilman talks about what lies ahead, he sounds as excited as a kid on Christmas Eve.

Real estate brokers through the Lake Tahoe and Reno markets say sales of upper-end homes have been buoyed since the start of the year by California residents who make no bones about their desire to get beyond the reach of the Golden State taxman.

It’s an uncomfortable point of notoriety for a city with pockets of fabulous wealth that craves civility and political correctness. For the record, Palo Alto has “unhoused individuals,” not homeless people; and an Opportunity Center as opposed to a homeless shelter.

Substantially overhauling the 40-year-old California Environmental Quality Act may still happen, but with just two weeks remaining in the legislative session, it probably won’t happen this year.

Anyone interested in exploring economic, demographic and other data about California and its communities – yours truly, for example – has had to work at it because there’s been no central repository. One must mine data from federal agencies such as the Census Bureau or the Bureau of Labor Statistics, from state agencies such as the Employment Development Department, the Department of Education or the Department of Finance, or from private and academic data banks.

California has experienced negative domestic migration in recent years. The increase in the number of residents moving out of the Golden State to other places in the United States is often blamed on California’s high personal income taxes. In fact, this was one of the main arguments waged against the recently enacted Proposition 30, which raised the statewide income tax rate as a way to address the state’s fiscal woes. However, data from the U.S. Census Bureau show that the perceived connection between out-migrants and the state’s income tax is likely overblown. Statistics on the characteristics of California’s inbound and outbound migrants suggest that the patterns in domestic migration over the past decade are more related to housing costs in the state than to the local income tax structure.

The demand for labor explains a lot of migration patterns. Where the uneducated once moved to staff large industrial centers, now those with the means and a college education flock to feed the Innovation Economy that is rising from their ashes.

California’s largest greenhouse gas-emitting businesses paid $12.22 per metric tonne (1.1 tons) for the right to release carbon this year, lower than expected and down almost 13 percent from the previous sale in May, the state said on Wednesday.

Carbon prices in California have slumped to the lowest level this year as the state weighs increasing the number of free permits offered to polluters in an effort to kick-start the fledgling market.

With the legislative session drawing to a close–and with Steinberg continuing to juggle proposed amendments and work to keep the governor interested in CEQA–more and more voices outside Sacramento have begun to pose this very question: What exactly will Steinberg’s bill do to streamline CEQA for infill projects–and is the Senate leader’s approach good policy for the economy, for communities, and for the environment?

California is the second-most-expensive state in which to operate a motor vehicle, according to a new study released by Bankrate.com.