A prudent investor would never consider buying shares of a company and then ignoring how the firm is performing in the marketplace. By the same token, it would be foolhardy for the state to spend $70 billion each year to educate six million K-12 students but stubbornly refuse to monitor whether those kids are receiving […]
Quirky as airtime sounds, it’s the edge of a much larger issue on protecting pension rights embodied in the so-called California Rule. For decades, the courts have sided with arguments that pensions can’t be altered without compensation, an approached adopted by a dozen other states. . . . The political backdrop makes a court decision […]
Shoppers looking for a bargain by skipping California sales tax will soon close a loophole that let them buy goods from out-of-state online retailers without immediately paying local taxes. That deal ends on April 1 for thousands of out-of-state online retailers that will be required to collect California sales tax for the first time, according […]
Texting your sweetheart that you’re on your way home? California may soon charge you for that. This is no LOL matter, critics say. State regulators have been ginning up a scheme to charge a fee for text messaging on mobile phones to help support programs that make phone service accessible to the poor. The wireless […]
The WIN Act extension would, at least in theory, make restoration easier and make farmers’ water deliveries more predictable. It also would provide more than $670 million in federal funds for water storage projects that farmers and other water interests have been demanding to increase supply. While Feinstein, Brown and McCarthy are supporting the deal, […]
The project’s troubles have been largely self-inflicted, starting with poor route choices. At the south end of the line, from the Central Valley to Los Angeles, rather than proceeding in a direct route from Los Angeles to the northwest through Tejon Pass, roughly along Interstate 5, the planned line takes a detour to the northeast […]
President Trump’s top economic adviser said the administration is looking to eliminate subsidies on electric cars, a move that could hamper the auto industry’s push to broaden the market for battery-powered vehicles. “As a matter of our policy, we want to end all those subsidies,” Lawrence Kudlow said on Monday. “And by the way, other […]
Californians could soon get two years of community college for free, enough to earn an associate’s degree. In 2017, California Gov. Jerry Brown signed into law the California College Promise, waiving the first year of community college tuition for full-time students. Assembly Bill 2, announced Tuesday, would add a second year to that program. “When […]
France’s violent Yellow Vest protests are now about many domestic concerns, but it’s no accident that the trigger was a fuel-tax hike. Nothing reveals the disconnect between ordinary voters and an aloof political class more than carbon taxation. The fault line runs between anti-carbon policies and economic growth, and France is a test for the […]
Democrats return to the California Capitol on Monday with their strongest political advantage in decades poised to fulfill a huge item on their list of pent-up demands: Vastly expanded access to preschool for 3- and 4-year-olds. Their plan comes with a big price tag, a problem that has doomed past proposals, most recently with outgoing […]
California’s most senior Democrat and most powerful Republican in Washington are teaming up to extend a federal law designed to deliver more Northern California water south, despite the objections of some of the state’s environmentalists. While controversial, the language in their proposal could help settle the contentious negotiations currently underway in Sacramento on Delta water […]
With a state as big, as populous, and as complex as California, quickly summarizing how its economy or state budget works is impossible. Instead, Cal Facts is a visual guide—using a variety of different charts—to the state’s economy, revenues, and major program trends.
California has the highest number of children and highest percentage of children living in poverty of any state in the nation.1 In order to help address additional strategies, in 2017 the California legislature passed Assembly Bill 1520 (Chapter 415, Statutes of 2016) directing the California Department of Social Services to convene The Lifting Children and […]
A Stanford University and Policy Analysis for California Education (PACE) report entitled Getting Down to Facts II comes ten years after an initial look at California’s education system taking into account all the changes over the past decade. Most newsworthy out of the report was the finance item declaring the need for a 38% increase […]
Butte County’s Camp Fire not only claimed a staggering amount of lives and property, it spewed out a whole lot of greenhouse gases – about as much as all of California’s cars and trucks produce in a week, according to new state estimates. This blast of emissions contributes negligibly to the planet’s overall warming, but […]