Legislators weighed in early and often this year with bills dictating where the growing fund could be spent. According to an analysis by the California Taxpayers Association, legislators have floated 23 bills that would allocate a whopping total of $4.8 billion.
Nearly two years later, the utility announced Monday that it would credit or refund tens of millions of dollars to customers who were overbilled during the botched rollout, under a proposed class-action lawsuit settlement between the utility and aggrieved customers.
Another Washington-like tendency is passing sweeping legislation but leaving the sticky, all-important, details to unelected bureaucrats, such as the Air Resources Board’s multibillion-dollar “cap-and-trade” fees to curb greenhouse gases.
The Los Angeles Department of Water and Power is seeking a rate increase of 25 to 30 percent, spread out over five years, in an effort to raise an extra $900 million for power and $230 million for water, a total of $1.13 billion, to fix aging infrastructure and comply with state mandates for renewable energy.
Gov. Jerry Brown’s January budget proposal called for an overhaul of California’s state worker retiree health care system. It faces more than $70 billion in long-term debt. Seven months later, nothing’s changed.
California, the nation’s most populous state, also has more government workers than any other. Nearly 1 in 10 Californians belongs to one of 85 government pension systems, according to a new report by Kevin Cook of the Public Policy Institute of California. About two in three pension members belong to either the California Public Employees’ Retirement System or the California State Teachers’ Retirement System.
The official analysis of a proposed public pension initiative issued last week said “likely large savings” in retirement benefits would be offset by pressure for higher pay and other costs.
The proposal asserts California voters have the right via initiative and referendum to determine state and local government employees’ pay and benefits. Employees hired Jan. 1, 2019, or later would not be allowed to join existing pension plans unless voters approved continuing those plans.
According to WalletHub’s analysis, California has the 9th worst school system in the nation, thanks in part to low reading and math test results, a high dropout rate and an abysmal score (worst in the nation) for the high number of pupils per teachers in our classrooms.
As part of their effort to pay for the major transportation overhaul Gov. Jerry Brown has called for without levying new taxes, Assembly Republicans have proposed cutting 3,500 full-time positions from the California Department of Transportation, at a savings to the state of half a billion dollars.
“There’s a sense that Prop. 30 solved all school budget woes when, in fact, it only stopped the bleeding,” said Alvarez. “Even if Prop. 30 was extended, that’s not going to give us more money – that’s going to keep us where we are now, and we are appreciative of that but we need to go further.”
Everyday, California government officials are looking for people to fill thousands of full-time vacancies. Their recruiting is heating up. Forty percent of state employees are eligible to retire, and only about 10 percent of the workforce is under age 30, compared to about 25 percent of the overall workforce in California in that age group.
More than 350 commissions, committees, councils and boards call California home, but few citizens and elected officials know exactly what they do.
An annual report card Wednesday from the trustees of both programs showed that the long-term deficits associated with the two largest benefit programs would be slightly smaller than forecast last year. The report also offered the latest warning that the Social Security disability-insurance program will exhaust its reserves late next year, which would trigger a 19% cut in benefit payments.
This tax proposal, like all of them, creates winners and losers and would hurt certain industries disproportionately. Developers, for example, who buy, sell and develop multi-million dollar properties would be hard-hit by this new tax, and I would imagine they’d have some serious objections to it. Warehouse owners would also be hard hit, as would any business that involves a large real-estate footprint in California. Retailers, manufacturers and restauranteurs could all be negatively impacted.