Looking at the numbers in the context of the rest of the country, though, helps explain the boom that we’ve seen throughout the state. Austin’s average of 1,341-square feet per $200,000 makes the city seem expensive and overpriced to people in parts of the state where your money goes a lot further. But it’s a […]
How would a downturn affect all of California’s public employee pension systems, the agencies they serve, and the taxpayers who fund them? In a CPC analysis published earlier this year, “How to Assess Impact of a Market Correction on Pension Payments,” the following excerpt provides an estimate: “If there is a 15% drop in pension […]
Ride-haling such as Uber and Lyft are changing the ways people travel. Despite widespread claims that these services help reduce driving, there is little research on this topic. This research paper uses a quasi-natural experiment in the Denver, Colorado, region to analyze basic impacts of ride-hailing on transportation efficiency in terms of deadheading, vehicle occupancy, […]
When it comes to economic mobility, the image that comes to mind is one of savvy, ambitious kids from the cities and suburbs of large superstar metro areas like New York, Boston, and San Francisco getting ahead, while children from more isolated, rural areas fall further and further behind. But this narrative is not borne […]
Last year the California Legislature raised gasoline taxes by 12 cents a gallon, and conservatives were so outraged they launched an effort to repeal it at the ballot box. Proposition 6 comes up for a vote in November. Now, with considerably less fanfare, the state’s air-pollution agency has enacted a regulation that will raise gas […]
Defying the Trump administration on climate change, California’s air-pollution agency ruled Friday that automakers must comply with the state’s strict rules on greenhouse gases if they want to continue selling cars here. The California Air Resources Board approved a regulation that will significantly curtail carbon spewed by new cars sold in the state, beginning in […]
The advocacy and research group, Coalswarm, which claims to have information on 13,000 existing and proposed coal plants worldwide via its Global Coal Plant Tracker, says satellite imagery shows China is set to add 259 GW of new coal-fired capacity to its grid. In a new report, Coalswarm says the central government in Beijing transferred […]
Authors of a new UN climate report say it is “extremely improbable” that governments across the globe will be able to stop global warming beyond the 1.5C target, the Guardian reported. According to the report, the global population would need to take dramatic action in terms of how it generates energy, and grows food, among […]
Californians in November will weigh billions of dollars’ worth of ballot measures for low-income housing, children’s hospitals and more. But one of the biggest asks will be mostly invisible to most voters—100 or more local proposals to sell bonds for school construction projects that, if passed, could total more than $12 billion in local borrowing […]
The Sacramento City Unified School District is even more in the red than previously thought: By 2020, the district will have a structural deficit of $48 million by 2020 if cuts aren’t made, a gap that’s almost $12 million more than announced in June, and $8 million more than the district’s most recent estimates. “It’s […]
Two separate panels of experienced California teachers and administrators were given background information and three days together to help answer a longer version of this question: How much would it cost to provide all California students the academic knowledge, skills and opportunities they’ll need to successfully pursue their plans after high school and participate in […]
For the second year in a row, California students’ test scores have inched up so slowly that, by some estimates, it could take a generation for disadvantaged students to close the achievement gap with their peers. That was the sobering assessment on Tuesday as the California Department of Education released the 2018 results of the […]
Residents of San Francisco’s North Beach neighborhood packed a community meeting on Monday night to voice their concerns about the concurrent increases of both homelessness and crime in the area. Over the weekend, San Francisco police said a mentally ill homeless man viciously attacked a man walking in Washington Square Park with his young son. […]
It’s official: Your backpack, laptop, tablet or phone — or the vehicle in which you left all these things behind — are more likely to catch the fancy of a thief in San Francisco than any other major metropolis in the country. FBI data released last week show the city had the highest per-capita rate […]
Amazon garnered praise for raising the minimum wage for its hourly workers to $15 yesterday, but the widely-publicized move also came at the expense of monthly bonuses and stock options. The company explained its decision to shift to a new stock purchase program in the announcement blog post yesterday, citing that hourly employees preferred the […]