News

The study, Apples to Apples, released on Wednesday, shows charter schools and private school voucher programs doing better at educating students than public schools in Wisconsin.

The latest figures are a marked deceleration from the third quarter’s 3.5% pace, which had been the strongest reading in two years. They are, however, broadly in line with an economy that has, through ups and downs, settled at a roughly 2% growth pace since the recession ended.

Republicans chose the damaging 13 rules based on a conventional reading of the CRA, which allows Congress to override regulations published within 60 legislative days, with simple (50-vote) majorities in both chambers. Yet the more scholars examine the law, which had only been used successfully once before this year, the clearer it is that the CRA gives Congress far more regulatory oversight than previously supposed. . . A third discovery could be the most important. The opening words of the CRA read: “Before a rule can take effect” the federal agency in question must submit a Congressional report. No one has tested the legal limits of this provision, but a fair reading suggests the Trump Administration could declare any rule for which a report has not been submitted to be null and void.

The gas, nitrogen trifluoride, or NF3, is a key chemical agent used to manufacture certain types of photovoltaic cells for solar panels, as well as semiconductors and LCD flat screens. . . NF3 is thought to be 17,200 times more potent than carbon dioxide as a greenhouse gas, according to the U.N. Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change.

“Of the 55,000 bridges across the U.S. that were deemed structurally deficient in a report published by the American Road and Transportation Builders Association, more than 1,300 California bridges fall under that category,” KCRA and the Associated Press reported. “That means that of the 25,431 bridges in the state, 5 percent have one or more key bridge elements – deck, superstructure or substructure – that are considered to be in ‘poor’ or worse condition, the analysis found.”

My trusty spreadsheet tells me that in 2016 an average 47.2 percent of households in the L.A.-O.C. metropolitan area lived in homes they owned vs. 49.1 percent in 2015. In both years, those percentages were the lowest ownership rates among the nation’s 75 largest metro areas.

The hits from CalPERS and CalSTRS will cost school districts $1 billion more next year, the Legislature’s budget analyst has calculated, markedly more than the $744 million in additional state and local revenue Brown’s budget proposes.

The bill to repair California’s crumbling roads, dams and other critical infrastructure hammered by an onslaught of storms this winter could top $1 billion, including nearly $600 million alone for damaged roadways that more than doubles what the state budgeted for road repair emergencies, officials said Friday.

In response to this year’s storms and the emergency at Oroville Dam, California Governor Jerry Brown wants to expedite a half-billion dollars in funding for flood repairs and upgrades.

Nearly two-thirds of the Europe’s renewable energy comes from burning wood. No, this isn’t some time capsule report from 500 years ago—that’s actually what the European Union is doing to meet its vaunted climate targets.

The AFL-CIO is dismissing dozens of staff members as part of a restructuring amid continuing declines in union membership and fresh political threats to labor rights.

L.A. County’s manufacturing sector has suffered massive job losses over the last decade, but a new report points to worse news — those positions have been replaced by jobs that pay less than half as much.

One of the impediments to housing production in California is a state environmental quality act that requires developers to assess the local environmental impacts of new housing. The result is that little new housing has been built in California, forcing people to move to places like Arizona and Texas. But California’s temperate climate means that greenhouse gas emissions there are far lower than in interior states. “If California’s restrictions induce more building in Texas and Arizona, which require far more artificial cooling,” says the paper, “then their net environmental [effects] could be negative in aggregate.”

Xero, a company that makes accounting software for small businesses, this month moved its U.S. headquarters from San Francisco to Denver. . . chief executive Rod Drury expects that will expand to ‘a few hundred’ as he tries to build a mass of people in a more affordable city than San Francisco, where its U.S. leadership team has previously been based. Drury said San Francisco was a ‘great place to get started’ and the first port of call to raise capital, but as the company moves into an ‘operational phase’ he had to weigh up whether to stay in that city or move.”

The San Francisco Board of Supervisors considered a resolution February 14 asking the state Legislature to grant local governments the authority to impose personal and corporate income taxes.