They are the top vacation hoarders in a state bureaucracy with a lot of them. Tens of thousands of state employees have exceeded the official limit of 80 banked vacation days, leaving the state on the hook for hundreds of millions of dollars.
Employees who while on call are required to stay at a worksite should be compensated for all their hours, including sleep time, the California Supreme Court ruled unanimously Thursday.
It’s no secret that California is expensive. It’s a little more nuanced than that: coastal California is very expensive, while inland California is just moderately expensive. State leaders in Sacramento, however, don’t appear too concerned with California’s growing price tag even though there’s evidence that it could be slowing the Golden State’s economic growth.
. . . Summit leaders have spent the last few months developing a five-year plan that aims to build on these successes. The Summit’s new Roadmap to Shared Prosperity, scheduled for release in January, integrates the work of the Summit’s seven action teams and once again identifies the “right next steps” the state must take between now and 2020 to advance prosperity—from developing a workforce that can compete in the global economy to making needed infrastructure investments and encouraging the state to find new ways to fund these vital efforts.
In reality, once a Legislature creates a program and gives regulators broad new powers, it’s unlikely anything will rein it in. Maybe as the Legislature returns, someone can propose a law that requires a careful analysis of old laws. Then again, one can only guess the unintended consequences that would result from that idea.
Starting Thursday, gasoline and diesel producers will be subject to the state’s cap-and-trade system, forcing them either to supply lower-carbon fuels — which are more expensive to produce — or to buy pollution permits for the greenhouse gases created when the conventional fuel they supply is burned. In the short term, at least, that will mean higher prices at the pump, starting almost immediately.
Already, the specter of California’s regulations are believed to be contributing to record prices for eggs. The average wholesale cost of a dozen large eggs hit a peak of $2 on Thanksgiving Day — doubling in price from the start of November before settling this week to about $1.40. It comes at a time when soaring meat prices are expected to help push U.S. egg consumption to its highest level in seven years.
The report also points out that the EU’s climate policies were enacted based on the assumption that the rest of the world would soon follow suit. That hasn’t happened, and despite some fleeting green optimism following the joint emissions agreements from the U.S. and China last month, the Global Climate Treaty is still dead in the water. The EU may be a first mover in this arena, but it’s suffering the costs, not reaping the benefits, of blazing this trail. By going it alone, the bloc is putting itself at a competitive disadvantage with regard to the rest of the world, as the cost of electricity continues to rise and turn the screws on households and businesses alike.
Fed officials, concluding their last meeting of the year Wednesday, issued a statement that essentially left their easy-money policy in place, indicating that their key interest rate would stay near zero for at least a few more months.
There is no question that a uniform global system of measurement helps cross-border trade and investment. For this reason, labor unions were among the strongest opponents of 1970s-era metrication, fearing that the switch would make it easier to ship jobs off-shore.
People who own all-electric cars where coal generates the power may think they are helping the environment. But a new study finds their vehicles actually make the air dirtier, worsening global warming.
Egg prices could jump by as much as 20 percent in California as a result of the the new rules, Dermot J. Hayes, an agribusiness professor at Iowa State University in Ames, told Bloomberg.
The mere anticipation of the change has already driven prices up by more than $0.25 over the past month in California. And that increase comes on the heels of what has already been a pretty unkind year for omelette prices across the country: wholesale egg prices are averaging nearly $2.30 per dozen, up almost 35 percent since the start of the 2014.
You are on your own, Southern California businesses, and can count on very little help, and, likely, much mischief, from Sacramento and various lower orders of government. To find a way out of stubbornly high unemployment and anemic income growth, the Southland will need to find a novel way to restart its economic engine based almost entirely on its grass-roots business, its creative savvy and entrepreneurial culture.
The basis for fuel-efficiency claims and the regulation of CO2 emissions are results obtained under “type-approval” tests. What was once a gap between the mileages achieved on test tracks and real-world roads has become a chasm, according to a recent report from Transport & Environment (T&E), a green pressure group. Analysis by the International Council on Clean Transportation, a consultancy, of data reported by car owners in Europe shows that in 2013 fuel-economy figures “on the road” were on average 38% worse than those advertised (see chart).
The California Climate Leadership Forum, starting at 1 p.m. at the Kaiser Center, will focus on the state’s climate policy and its impact on local communities, as well as new approaches to addressing climate change. State Senate President Pro Tem Kevin de León and Assembly Speaker Toni Atkins will deliver keynote addresses, as will Steyer, a big political player who spent $30 million in 2012 to help pass an energy conservation measure, Proposition 39.
