A few things about summertime in California have become utterly predictable: cineplex superheroes, beach crowds and a record-setting state budget. Two years ago, we told you the state’s budget hit $180 billion—and that with that money you could buy the Los Angeles Lakers 60 times over. Last summer, the state budget set a new high […]
Everyone agrees there is a humanitarian crisis on the streets of California. But the homelessness population is not a monolith. It is a diverse set of individuals and families who ended up without a roof over their head for myriad reasons. Yet politicians across the state continue to point to the state’s housing crisis as […]
For years, critics of California’s cap-and-trade program have lambasted it as a government slush fund. They say that politicians are able to dip into it to fund their pet projects or raid it to fill the shortfall of the moment — as long as they can assert a mildly credible connection between the spending and […]
The dust has settled on Measure EE, the 16-cent per square foot property tax rushed onto a June 4 ballot by the LAUSD board and its union. Following last week’s election results, politicians, pundits and school boards across the state are pondering EE’s meaning – trying to determine whether the parcel tax’s defeat was a […]
As we transition toward a clean energy economy, California must prioritize those most affected by the climate crisis. In our state, that means communities of color, who tend to be already overburdened with pollution and poverty. It also means that displaced and disadvantaged workers who stand on the precipice of a widening economic gap ought […]
Let me start with an admission: government officials—at all levels—don’t do a good job of engaging the public as we grapple with big, complex challenges. Hearings only go so far. Videos and social posts get into only so much detail and nuance. And, most importantly, most of what we do is based on how we […]
As housing affordability Opens a New Window. remains a major concern for Americans, a recent analysis determined America’s least affordable housing markets. 24/7 Wall Street Opens a New Window. analyzed ATTOM Data Solutions’ Q1 2019 U.S. Home Affordability Report Opens a New Window. and found the 25 areas where the housing market was not affordable. […]
Virginia Kidd has rented her apartment in midtown Sacramento for 12 years. The retired Sacramento State professor lives there with her cats and enjoys helping out at the local library. At 78, she said she has been lucky to age with minimal health issues so far, but she sometimes worries about what she would do […]
Buoyed by a flush state surplus, California lawmakers agreed Thursday on a state budget that will expand enrollment at the state’s higher education systems, keep tuition flat and particularly help older college students with tuition and living costs. In addition, $4 million will be available to study the possible construction of two new campuses in […]
Work used to be much simpler for the California Department of Transportation: widen highways, fill potholes, build new freeways. Alas, those quaint days are gone. To get an idea of what planners must prepare for, state officials recently hosted a demonstration of a drone air taxi that will require devising a “highway above the ground,” […]
The Golden State is cursed with some of the finest weather and richest soil on earth. Its luminous skies and airy loam have been crucial to California’s transformation into our most populous and agriculturally most bountiful state. But capricious nature has withheld one essential resource needed to sustain this dizzying growth—water. In his sprawling, provocative […]
U.S. industrial production rose in May, a welcome sign of strength in the sector after a spate of weak readings this year. Industrial production, a measure of factory, mining and utility output, rose a seasonally adjusted 0.4% in May from the prior month, the Federal Reserve said Friday. Economists surveyed by The Wall Street Journal […]
An unprecedented haul of tax dollars generated by a roaring economy. A governor who campaigned on a big-ticket policy agenda of long-time lefty favorites, including universal childcare and state-funded healthcare for all. A Legislature so thoroughly packed with Democrats it gives rise to a new term—”giga-majority.” Californians could be forgiven for expecting it all to […]
California lawmakers passed a $214.8 billion budget deal Thursday, with new spending on schools, homelessness and health care for undocumented immigrants. The budget relies on a surplus to add billions to the state’s reserves funds, which will bring the state’s total so-called rainy day fund to $19 billion. It puts hundreds of millions of dollars […]
The rout of Los Angeles Unified’s parcel tax last week will reverberate beyond L.A. to other school districts that had hoped a victory in Los Angeles might signal that their voters, too, would consider higher school taxes. Think again, said Mark Baldassare, president and CEO of the Public Policy Institute of California, which regularly polls […]