Enjoying the tailwinds of a massive surplus and large Democratic supermajorities in both houses, Gov. Gavin Newsom is using his first budget proposal to put his policy stamp on nearly every sector of California government. The Democratic governor described Thursday — in detail, for nearly two hours — how he would use his $209 billion […]
AMERICA’S AGEING economic boom can still produce pleasant surprises. Companies added an astonishing 312,000 new jobs in December, the Bureau of Labour Statistics reported on January 4th, and raised pay at the fastest clip in years. For the third of working-age Americans without any college education, such spells of rapid income growth have been exceedingly […]
Two leading experts on the “gig economy” now say their estimates of its impact were too high, skewed by spotty data and the recession of a decade ago. Alan Krueger of Princeton University and Lawrence Katz of Harvard sifted through new evidence to explain how, in a 2015 survey, they overestimated how people cobbling together […]
Congo’s historic yet disorganized election suffered yet another delay on Sunday as the election commission admitted it had tabulated only about half of results on the day it was supposed to have completed the count. It did not say when it would be able to release results. The delay fuels suspicions that the election commission […]
President Trump announced Friday evening that U.S. troops had been sent to Gabon to protect U.S. assets in the Democratic Republic of Congo, which is awaiting the first results of its presidential election. Mr. Trump wrote in a letter to House Speaker Nancy Pelosi Friday that around 80 personnel had been deployed to the capital […]
The United States has long been the only industrialized country not to offer paid leave to new parents. Instead of waiting for the federal government, the incoming governor of California intends to change that in a significant way for families in his state. He is expected to introduce a proposal to give families six months […]
Facing a $36 million deficit and a possible state takeover, the top budget officer at the Sacramento City Unified School District has a sober message for his counterparts around California. Sacramento is “just one of the first dominoes,” said John Quinto, the district’s chief business officer. By any measure, Sacramento City’s distress is worse than […]
A Los Angeles real estate developer has filed a lawsuit accusing two labor unions of violating federal racketeering and antitrust laws as they attempted to block the approval of a mixed-use complex in the San Fernando Valley. The Icon Co., which is seeking to build a $150-million project in Panorama City, said in its lawsuit […]
Deep in Gov. Gavin Newsom’s new budget is a figure that says a lot about California’s shaky legal marijuana market: The state is expecting a lot less cash from cannabis taxes. The Democrat’s proposed spending plan, released Thursday, projects the state will bank $355 million in marijuana excise taxes by the end of June. That’s […]
School districts laboring under higher mandated expenses would receive a surprise windfall — pension-cost relief — in Gov. Gavin Newsom’s first proposed state budget for 2019-20, which will also provide big spending increases for early and higher education. Using surplus money from the state’s General Fund, Newsom would wipe out $3 billion of districts’ rising […]
From major funding increases for affordable housing, to his threat to take away any city’s transportation dollars if it doesn’t meet its housing quota, Newsom’s plans match the audacious ambitions he outlined in the campaign. “We are not playing small ball with housing,” said Newsom. Not that his plan includes everything (more on that later), […]
Gov. Newsom proposed a state budget yesterday that would give CalPERS an extra $3 billion to pay down debt and CalSTRS a potential extra $5.9 billion, most to pay down debt but also some for relief to schools hard hit by doubling pension costs. “We are investing an historic amount and doing what no previous […]
Following Jerry Brown’s footsteps, Gov. Gavin Newsom announced Thursday he wants to make extra pension payments even as California’s retirement liabilities for state workers and teachers top $256 billion. In unveiling his first budget, flush with a surprisingly large surplus from a robust economy, Newsom said he wants to put an extra $3 billion into […]
While Newsom stressed the budget’s finances, it’s also a policy document whose most important segment deals with the state’s most pressing issue, a chronic and growing shortage of housing that has driven costs sky-high, discouraged private sector investment and caused the state to have the nation’s highest level of poverty. Brown was only tangentially interested […]
For 50 years, California has required cities and counties to plan for enough new housing so that residents can live affordably. But many local governments fail to approve new development, contributing to the state’s housing crunch. Now, Gov. Gavin Newsom is proposing a radical new step: punishing communities that block homebuilding by withholding state tax […]