An effort to impose a “voluntary” water tax on residents to pay for safe drinking water projects died in the Legislature on Friday. Assembly Speaker Anthony Rendon said “a piecemeal funding approach” to the problem “won’t work.” . . . State lawmakers are hesitant to support any new tax increase after Republicans successfully recalled Sen. […]
A new surcharge on landlines, cellphones and data plans meant to bolster 911 operations sputtered in the Legislature on Friday, even as lawmakers cited the need for an improved system in the wake of the state’s deadly wildfires. “The current system is based on technology from the 1980s,” said state Sen. Holly Mitchell (D-Los Angeles), […]
The current employment boom should be a moment of opportunity for Job Corps: Companies report 6.7 million jobs unfilled because of the shortage of skilled workers, even as millions of inner-city and rural youths languish in poverty or dead-end jobs. Superficially, the system seems successful. Centers report that, on average, 87 percent of graduates at […]
First, the evidence that something is changing. Last year more Americans left the county of San Francisco than arrived. According to a recent survey, 46% of respondents say they plan to leave the Bay Area in the next few years, up from 34% in 2016. So many startups are branching out into new places that […]
When Ajay Royan of Mithril Capital, an investment fund, asks rhetorically “How are you supposed to have a startup in a garage if the garage costs millions of dollars?”, he is barely exaggerating the problem. The immense success of its tech industry means that the San Francisco Bay Area in which Silicon Valley sits has […]
Even one of the most iconic figures of Bay Area business, Charles Schwab founder and Chairman Chuck Schwab, sees more people leaving California as a result of the tax changes, and not just at the upper end of the income scale. “A lot of companies will be moving their people out of here, unless something […]
Don’t squeeze your kids too hard as you send them off to another school year, because the state of California is already squeezing your kids hard enough to hurt their future. Call it The Great California School Squeeze. The state is stuck in a nasty school funding paradox: Even though our school districts never have […]
Gov. Jerry Brown’s last contract with the state’s highway engineers includes some sweet perks aimed at retaining the longtime road designers, planners and project managers who’d be charged with executing work funded by the gas tax he backed last year. Brown struck a two-year agreement with Professional Engineers in California Government that includes general wage […]
Brown has often lamented California’s inability to do the big projects that were a hallmark of the state during the post-World War II era, such as freeways, dams and canals. He’s tied that lament to his own pet projects, twin tunnels to carry water beneath the Sacramento-San Joaquin Delta and a north-south bullet train. However, […]
Because even though you may not be voting on this until 2020, the political repercussions start now. Changing Prop. 13 is still an uphill fight—one that dissuaded advocates from their initial plan to place the initiative on this fall’s ballot. But the pro-split roll camp can proudly boast that they collected 800,000 signatures, and received […]
Knowledge, it’s been said, is power. The more you learn about something that affects you, the more you can influence that something. It’s especially true in politics, whose insiders joust constantly among themselves and with outsiders, including the media and the voting public, over access to information. One of California’s more important arenas of info-war […]
The estimated cost of the Delta tunnels project, Gov. Jerry Brown’s controversial plan to re-engineer the troubled hub of California’s water network, has jumped to nearly $20 billion when accounting for inflation. Tunnels backers say the higher cost reflects the impact from inflation over 16 years, not cost over-runs or design changes, and isn’t expected […]
Californians have approved two water bonds in recent years, with another facing voters this November. In 2014 voters approved Prop. 1, allocating $7.1 billion for water projects. This June, voters approved Prop. 68, allocating another $4.0 billion for water projects. And this November, voters are being asked to approve Prop. 3, allocating another $8.9 billion […]
Last year’s corporate tax cut is reducing U.S. tax collections, as expected. But that change is likely to ripple far beyond the country’s borders in the years ahead, shrinking other countries’ tax revenue, according to a recent paper by economists at the International Monetary Fund. The U.S. tax law will reduce what other countries collect […]
“It’s unclear exactly which ‘bad environmental laws’ Trump is referring to,” explained a CNN report. “Experts assume he’s talking about the age-old fight for water rights in California, which pits farmers in the state’s conservative Central Valley against big cities and against environmentalists, who want to see some water left in rivers and streams to […]