News

SACRAMENTO – Governor Edmund G. Brown Jr. today signed 18 bills to strengthen the state’s business climate.

Today’s action builds on the legislation Governor Brown signed in July to revamp the state’s economic development program, known as the Governor’s Economic Development Initiative (AB 93 and SB 90). The Initiative, which received broad, bipartisan support in the Legislature, helps bolster California’s business climate and put Californians to work by establishing a statewide sales tax exemption on all manufacturing equipment and research and development equipment purchases for biotech and manufacturing companies; hiring credits for businesses in areas with the highest unemployment rate and poverty; and provides the opportunity for California businesses to compete for available tax credits based on the number of jobs to be created and retained, wages paid in those jobs and other factors.

Four measures, part of a package of 18 business-friendly bills approved Friday, seek to ease the regulatory burden on developers of smartphone-based payment systems; reverse a retroactive tax hike on investors in small start-up companies, and create a “Made in California” program to help market innovative, locally manufactured consumer products.

These 12 heavyweights are among 75 corporations and trade groups that have weighed in on one piece of legislation pending in the U.S. Senate. At least in part, the bill is intended to thwart California’s latest foray into the regulation of interstate commerce.

Amid concerns about crime, half of Californians support the state’s plan to reduce prison overcrowding. Majorities favor regulating fracking, but Californians are divided on water policy. A slim majority support health care reform, an overwhelming majority favor immigration reform, and there are record-high levels of support for legalizing both same-sex marriage (61%) and marijuana (52%).

There was no fanfare, no big press conference, not even a signing statement (though maybe this should have sufficed). In the end, Gov. Jerry Brown signed Sen. Darrell Steinberg’s final CEQA reform bill late on a Friday afternoon, a time-honored way to avoid media attention.

State regulators gathered at a green stamp-making business Thursday to unveil what they tout as the nation’s best approach to identify consumer products containing hazardous chemicals and prod manufacturers to find nontoxic substitutes.

“California’s non-solar homeowners are paying a growing share of maintaining the power grid under a controversial state policy, while ratepayers with solar rooftops are paying less, a report commissioned by the state’s utility regulator said on Thursday.

The report, which was issued by the California Public Utilities Commission but performed by an outside research firm, forecast that in 2020, the policy of “”net metering”” would cost $1.1 billion a year. It will shift about $359 million in costs a year from customers with solar panels to other ratepayers. Residential customers who have no solar panels would bear about $287 million of those costs.”

OAKLAND – Acting to help California’s working families, Governor Edmund G. Brown Jr. today signed AB 10 by Assemblymember Luis Alejo (D-Salinas), which will raise the minimum wage in California from $8.00 per hour to $10.00 per hour.

Gov. Jerry Brown signed into law a bill that will raise California’s minimum wage to $10 an hour by 2016, a move celebrated by workers but criticized by many businesses.

Gov. Jerry Brown signed into law a bill that will raise California’s minimum wage to $10 an hour by 2016, a move celebrated by workers but criticized by many businesses.

“California is recovering from the worst recession since the Great Depression. But as a new report from UCLA’s Anderson School of Management points out, that recovery is slow and uneven.

Meanwhile, opinion polls have found that Californians remain very concerned about whether the recovery will be complete.

Gov. Jerry Brown and other politicians have been touting recovery of late, but they cannot ignore the public’s angst. Often, therefore, when bills were traveling through the legislative process this year, their economic effects — positive or negative — became debating points.”

“The giant lobbying group, which represents 13,500 large and small employers, posted a near-perfect score in efforts this year to defeat legislation it labeled “job killers.”

This year, the chamber went gunning for 38 such bills. Only one made it through both the Democratic Party-dominated Legislature and landed on the governor’s desk.”

Since just before the start of the 21st century, the Earth’s average global surface temperature has failed to rise despite soaring levels of heat-trapping greenhouse gases and years of dire warnings from environmental advocates.

Dozens of measures that unions wanted to enhance their members’ incomes, fringe benefits, bargaining positions and procedural rights were enacted, albeit not always as extensively as they wished. Just as consistently, legislation that unions opposed fell by the wayside, even when it had broad public support, or even when Gov. Jerry Brown, their on-again, off-again ally, wanted it. An overhaul of the California Environmental Quality Act was the most conspicuous example.

Democratic Senate Leader Darrell Steinberg is shelving most of his effort to streamline the California Environmental Quality Act, or CEQA, this year. The decision came late Wednesday night at the end of the second-to-last day of legislative session.