The California School Boards Association is exploring whether to place a $15 billion tax for K-12 schools, early education and community colleges before voters, creating the possibility of dueling tax initiatives on the statewide ballot in November 2020. Together with the Association of California School Administrators — its only partner so far — the school […]
There was a jarring reality check in the Legislature last week for interest groups plotting to change Proposition 13 and raise property taxes on major businesses. The reality is that raising any taxes will be very hard to sell voters. The plotters are led by some powerful public employee unions, including those representing teachers and […]
Bernie Sanders is coming to downtown Sacramento and not just any old spot in the heart of the capital city. Sanders is coming to Cesar Chavez Plaza on Thursday evening. Directly across from City Hall, Chavez Plaza is the home office of homelessness in the urban core of the capital of California. It’s where California […]
We live in volatile economic times, with global markets reacting moment by moment to the latest bits of data and the utterances of central bankers and politicians — even the tweets from the White House. California’s economy is much too big — the fifth largest in the world, we are constantly reminded — to avoid […]
Sales of new U.S. homes fell a steep 12.8% in July, but the drop came after revisions to June sales showed the sales highest growth in 12 years. The Commerce Department said Friday that new homes sold at a seasonally adjusted annual rate of 635,000 units. That’s down from a sharply revised upward rate of […]
It’s ironic that the site of a longtime fast food restaurant — where predictable food was served with predictable haste — has become an emblem of City Hall’s incredible slowness and indecision. The McDonald’s that stood at Haight and Stanyan streets for five decades attracted violent crime and open-air drug sales, and it had to […]
If it seems like it takes longer to get around Sacramento than it used to, it’s not just your imagination. The latest urban mobility report from the Texas A&M Transportation Institute showed Sacramento-area residents had the 22nd-worst commute delays in the country, losing 59 hours in 2017 stuck in traffic. Since 1982, the amount of […]
The first order of business for a new higher education advisory board appointed by Gov. Gavin Newsom will be to look at ways to improve the low college graduation rates in the Central Valley and the Inland Empire and counter the effects of poverty and geographic isolation there, officials say. The “Council for Post-Secondary Education,” […]
Embrace the new “adversity score” in college admissions or ignore it? That’s a question that college officials in California and nationwide are debating now. A College Board-sponsored index that measures hardships students face at their high schools and in their neighborhoods is being tested as a college admissions tool on a small-scale nationwide and is […]
California has just 25 years to achieve its economywide carbon-neutrality target. Buildings account for about a quarter of California’s greenhouse gas emissions, so concerted efforts will be needed to squeeze carbon out of the sector, especially existing buildings. State policymakers are increasingly coalescing around a solution: electrification. As a recent California Energy Commission (CEC) report […]
California has released its annual greenhouse gas inventory, with the numbers praised by Governor Gavin Newsom. But emissions are up in nearly every category, with critics calling presentation of the data misleading In the Golden State, all is golden on the issue of climate change, or at least that’s what we’re being told. In essence, […]
Climate change is rapidly becoming America’s biggest economic and business challenge, and no state is doing more to address it than California. The Golden State has not just led the way in challenging the do-nothing policies of the Trump administration by requiring its electric companies to switch to renewable energy sources and preserving higher fuel […]
President Trump said U.S. companies were “hereby ordered” to start looking for alternatives to doing business in China after Beijing said it would impose tariffs on $75 billion worth of additional U.S. products. “Our Country has lost, stupidly, Trillions of Dollars with China over many years,” Mr. Trump wrote in a series of tweets. “They […]
Trolling off the California coast, Sarah Bates leans over the side of her boat and pulls out a long, silvery fish prized by anglers and seafood lovers: wild king salmon. Reeling in a fish “feels good every time,” but this year has been surprisingly good, said Bates, a commercial troller based in San Francisco. She […]
Pacific Gas and Electric’s customers were warned about the cost of massive wildfires that it may have sparked. Even before California’s largest utility filed bankruptcy proceedings at the start of the year, lawyers, policymakers and consumer advocates all cautioned that the company’s liabilities in those fires would, one way or another, hit the pocketbooks of […]