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Tesla is a large recipient. The carmaker is currently applying for over $140 million–more than enough to deplete an entire year’s fund.

Under the proposed “ban the box” or “fair chance” policy, employers would not be allowed to ask an applicant about his or her criminal history – or run a background check – until they have been given a conditional offer of employment.

Senate Bill 863, backed by employers and labor unions, affected many specific aspects of the system but was aimed largely at reducing medical costs and redirecting savings into cash benefit increases for disabled workers. . . The medical care portions of the bill appear to be having the desired effect, a new study by the Workers’ Compensation Insurance Rating Bureau concludes.

For instance, policy makers could have chipped away at emissions efficiently with modest taxes on carbon, or by switching electrical generation to natural gas. Instead many countries, including the U.S. and those in the EU, have poured money into phenomenally inefficient subsidies for solar and biofuels, which politicians go for like catnip. The EU’s 20/20 climate policy—the goal, embarked upon in 2010, to cut emissions 20% from 1990 levels by 2020—is the clearest example of such gross inefficiency.

A preliminary state proposal to drastically reduce a 25-year-old safe harbor standard for lead in consumer products has no scientific basis and is likely to lead to unnecessary warnings, the California Chamber of Commerce and an 82-member coalition is arguing.

But Irvine-based business-relocation consultant Joseph Vranich, whose company Spectrum Location Solutions did the study, charted businesses that relocated offices and facilities, remained in state but expanded elsewhere, outsourced work, cancelled a planned California expansion project or mulled an in-state location but ultimately chose another locale. Relying on public records and media reports, Vranich found 1,510 such events – and used a multiplier to account for data showing that more than five disinvestments are not known for every one that is publicized.

The state’s cap-and-trade system requires businesses to purchase allowances for their climate-altering emissions, and it has generated some $2.8 billion for climate related programs to date. The Air Resources Board is selling off potentially more than 75,000 additional permits today, promising even more funding to be directed by elected officials who still haven’t decided how to divvy up the existing pot.

For the first time in at least a decade, imports fell in both September and October at each of the three busiest U.S. seaports, according to data from trade researcher Zepol Corp. analyzed by The Wall Street Journal. Combined, imports at the container terminals at the ports of Los Angeles, Long Beach, Calif. and around New York harbor, which handle just over half of the goods entering the country by sea, fell by just over 10% between August and October.

With the recession over, Sacramento-area freeways and roads are crowded again. Some say more than ever.

Whether or not El Niño turns out to be a drought-buster, this parched period has highlighted California’s larger need to get smarter about its water supply as the population grows and future droughts loom.

A huge growth in the over-65 population, from about 4.5 million today to more than 11 million by 2050 – nearly a quarter of the state’s residents then – will disrupt labor markets as it imposes major new costs on taxpayers for health care and other services.

That said, would increasing the minimum wage help to decrease the poverty rate? In this paper, we addressed that topic, developing a regression model looking at minimum wage, education level, labor force participation rate, and the cost of living and their impact on the poverty rate. Our results indicate that there is no statistical significance between minimum wage and poverty rate and our other independent variables were all statistically stronger than minimum wage.

However, the staff recommendation before the state school board is to eliminate the API and “identify the obsolete and outdated references to the API that need to be removed” as part of its repeal, implying that the parent trigger law should also die.

In order to ensure the Bay Area’s economic vitality and resilience despite increasing boom and bust cycles, public and private sector leaders must come together around pragmatic solutions to persistent issues and barriers to success. The purpose of the Regional Economic Strategy Roadmap is to offer concrete actions for growing regional prosperity and a flexible framework for developing actions going forward. Its proposals are evergreen agents of economic resilience, strategies wise in both expansion and downtown, necessary to accelerate the former and dampen the latter. It is a recipe for a robust and enduring regional economy.

But that swift economic growth hasn’t improved the fortunes of California’s poorest. The state’s official poverty rate (based on a federal threshold of $24,230 for a family of four) is at 16.4%, according to the most recent census data from 2014, up from 12.4% in 2007.