Even the liberal Chronicle focused on overwhelming opposition to rent control by economists, noting that 81 percent of those surveyed disagreed that rent control has “improved the quantity and quality of affordable rental housing.” The article pointed to the nonpartisan Legislative Analyst’s Office, which concluded rent control results “in a decline in the overall quality of a community’s housing stock.”
To be sure, since 2010 California’s job growth has outperformed the national average, propelled largely by the tech-driven Bay Area; its 14% employment expansion over the past six years is just a shade below Texas’. But dial back to 2001, and California’s job growth rate is 12%, less than half that of Texas’ 27%. With roughly 10 million fewer residents, Texas has created almost 2.8 million jobs since the turn of the millennium, compared to 2.0 million in California.
His signature followed narrow passage in the Legislature and intense lobbying by farmworkers. Assembly Bill 1066 will raise overtime wages for agricultural workers incrementally over four years, ultimately matching other industries by requiring time-and-a-half pay for more than eight hours in a day or 40 hours in a week.
In California, cities and counties control what is built in their communities. But study after study has pointed to the hurdles local governments put in front of development — such as parking requirements and lengthy environmental reviews — as reasons why homes aren’t built at the rate needed to keep pace with rising prices.
If the proposal is approved by the state’s Public Utilities Commission, California’s carbon dioxide emissions will either increase or decline far less than if Diablo Canyon’s two reactors, which generated about 9 percent of the state’s electricity last year, remained in operation. If this deal goes through, California will become a model of how not to deal with climate change.
Volkswagen AG confessed last fall to installing “defeat devices” in diesel cars that overrode nitrogen-oxide controls. For these sins of emission, VW has agreed to compensate consumers and perform green acts of contrition including promoting electric cars, which may be another way for the government to supercharge Elon Musk’s Tesla.
The Nov. 8 ballot includes the largest number of measures – 17 – since 2000, when 20 measures qualified, according to the California secretary of state’s office. The most all time was in November 1914, when 48 measures appeared.
Although the next increase in the California minimum wage is still six months away, a number of local minimum wage hikes are set to take effect on July 1, 2016.
Nobel laureate Randy Schekman, a cell biologist at the University of California at Berkeley, told The Post, “I find it surprising that groups that are very supportive of science when it comes to global climate change, or even, for the most part, in the appreciation of the value of vaccination in preventing human disease, yet can be so dismissive of the general views of scientists when it comes to something as important as the world’s agricultural future.”
A just-released report hails California as the dominant state in the country when it comes to developing a clean-energy economy and promoting green technology.
After weeks of uncertainty and pressure from members of Congress, federal officials on Wednesday announced a plan for managing water releases from California’s largest reservoir this summer in a manner that will not involve cutbacks in farm water deliveries – at least if all goes as hoped.
“(The housing crisis) is not just displacing tens of thousands of low-wage workers but also nonprofits who work with them,” O’Hara said.
An effort to cap the salaries of hospital executives may be blocked from California’s Nov. 8 ballot, after a Sacramento judge wrote Thursday that its labor union backers broke a political peace treaty with hospitals.
The state’s new budget, which is awaiting Brown’s signature after the Legislature’s approval Wednesday, includes nothing for the vehicle subsidies or other efforts to make heavy-duty trucks more environmentally friendly. Meantime, the clean-car programs are pushing people to waiting lists.
The healthcare workers union that successfully placed a minimum wage increase on the November statewide ballot formally withdrew the proposal Thursday, two months after Gov. Jerry Brown signed a similar plan into law .