Across the Bay Area, recycling companies are in a crunch to find places overseas where they can sell plastic yogurt cups and junk mail flyers. China had been a big buyer of reclaimed refuse but recently tightened its rules on the products it accepts, requiring the various materials to be rigorously separated and much cleaner […]
This map shows the real value of $100 in each state. Prices for the same goods are often much cheaper in states like Missouri or Ohio than they are in states like New York or California. As a result, the same amount of cash can buy you comparatively more in a low-price state than in […]
Tesla Inc. has backed away from an agreement to buy all of the output from a solar-panel factory it operates with Panasonic Corp. , the Japanese company said Thursday, another sign of the uncertain outlook for Tesla’s SolarCity subsidiary. Panasonic said it began making solar cells and modules at the factory in Buffalo, N.Y., in […]
California’s energy regulators effectively cooked the books to justify their recent command that all homes built in the Golden State after 2020 be equipped with solar panels. Far from a boon to homeowners, the costs to builders and home buyers will likely far exceed the benefits to the state. The California Energy Commission, which approved […]
California will add two million jobs in the next decade, with the fastest job growth coming in sectors that require college degrees, according to new projections from the California Employment Development Department. The number of jobs that require at least an associate’s degree will grow by 810,000, or 12 percent, by 2026. By comparison, jobs […]
Brown has often lamented California’s inability to do the big projects that were a hallmark of the state during the post-World War II era, such as freeways, dams and canals. He’s tied that lament to his own pet projects, twin tunnels to carry water beneath the Sacramento-San Joaquin Delta and a north-south bullet train. However, […]
Last weekend, the Los Angeles Times reported that before being appointed as Los Angeles’ new police chief, Michael Moore “took a brief, highly unusual retirement” that allowed him to rejoin the police department while claiming “a financial windfall: a lump sum retirement payment of $1.27 million from the city.” That’s because of Moore’s enrollment in […]
The North Face is packing up all that gear and moving its headquarters, along with hundreds of jobs, out of the Bay Area. The outdoor activewear and gear maker’s parent company, VF Corp., announced this week that it is splitting its outdoors and denim businesses into two publicly traded companies. The outdoors operation in Alameda […]
The initiative would make dramatic changes to the tax system established four decades ago by Proposition 13, which capped how much property tax bills could increase every year. The proposed measure would boost property tax revenues from commercial and industrial properties by assessing them at their current market value. Property tax protections would remain unchanged […]
Because even though you may not be voting on this until 2020, the political repercussions start now. Changing Prop. 13 is still an uphill fight—one that dissuaded advocates from their initial plan to place the initiative on this fall’s ballot. But the pro-split roll camp can proudly boast that they collected 800,000 signatures, and received […]
California is home to nearly two million residents who choose to work for themselves. As pillars of the workforce, these independent contractors are part of virtually every industry in the state including child care, healthcare, insurance, financial services, construction, technology and transportation. A recent California Supreme Court ruling, however, has called into question the ability […]
Knowledge, it’s been said, is power. The more you learn about something that affects you, the more you can influence that something. It’s especially true in politics, whose insiders joust constantly among themselves and with outsiders, including the media and the voting public, over access to information. One of California’s more important arenas of info-war […]
It’s been two years since voters passed a $9 billion bond to renovate and modernize the state’s public schools and community colleges, yet classrooms across California are still waiting for the vast majority of that money. Less than 20 percent of the $7 billion in the Proposition 51 bond for the state’s K-12 schools has […]
California still has the nation’s highest poverty rate when you take into account the state’s high cost of living. But the number of people living in poverty here has dropped since the beginning of the decade. There were nearly 600,000 fewer impoverished Californians in 2016 than in 2011, according to the Public Policy Institute of […]
The estimated cost of the Delta tunnels project, Gov. Jerry Brown’s controversial plan to re-engineer the troubled hub of California’s water network, has jumped to nearly $20 billion when accounting for inflation. Tunnels backers say the higher cost reflects the impact from inflation over 16 years, not cost over-runs or design changes, and isn’t expected […]