Residents of Cascade Village, whose rent payments are subsidized by the federal government, will be moved into temporary quarters while their apartments, about 750 square feet each, are spiffed up with remodeled kitchens and bathrooms and new appliances, plus handicapped access. That’s good news for them, certainly, but it raises a serious issue: Why is […]
California is casting off fossil fuels to become something that doesn’t yet exist: a fully electrified state of 40 million people. Policies are in place requiring a rush of energy from renewable sources such as the sun and wind and calling for millions of electric cars that will need charging—changes that will tax a system […]
There is a substantial list of governance issues that former Gov. Jerry Brown said were important, but that he left on his desk for successor Gavin Newsom. For instance, although he and the Legislature enacted a very modest reform of public employee pensions, he repeatedly said it was only a first step and more was […]
Californians who like the idea of getting more paid time off work to care for a new baby may find good news and bad news in the details of Gov. Gavin Newsom’s proposed budget. The bad news: The proposal is not quite as generous as it initially seemed. It doesn’t call for each worker to […]
California’s version of redevelopment hinged on the novel notion of “tax increment financing.” Local governments, cities mostly, could deem neighborhoods as “blighted,” borrow money through bonds to improve housing and other services, and repay the loans from the property tax “increments” that those improvements generated. For decades, those powers were gingerly used, although there were […]
What would you do with a $21.4 billion windfall? That’s essentially the question California is confronting amid record surplus projections in Gov. Gavin Newsom’s first year in office. On one hand, the former San Francisco mayor showcased his progressive agenda by setting ambitious goals for universal preschool, expanding health coverage for undocumented immigrants, and proposing […]
While decrying economic inequality is not a new theme for California politicians, they’ve only occasionally cited high living costs as a factor. In fact, those costs are the major reason we have the nation’s highest level of poverty, as measured by the Census Bureau, and they are not confined to housing. Californians’ personal incomes, while […]
From major funding increases for affordable housing, to his threat to take away any city’s transportation dollars if it doesn’t meet its housing quota, Newsom’s plans match the audacious ambitions he outlined in the campaign. “We are not playing small ball with housing,” said Newsom. Not that his plan includes everything (more on that later), […]
Following Jerry Brown’s footsteps, Gov. Gavin Newsom announced Thursday he wants to make extra pension payments even as California’s retirement liabilities for state workers and teachers top $256 billion. In unveiling his first budget, flush with a surprisingly large surplus from a robust economy, Newsom said he wants to put an extra $3 billion into […]
While Newsom stressed the budget’s finances, it’s also a policy document whose most important segment deals with the state’s most pressing issue, a chronic and growing shortage of housing that has driven costs sky-high, discouraged private sector investment and caused the state to have the nation’s highest level of poverty. Brown was only tangentially interested […]
The U.S. Census Bureau and the state Department of Finance issue annual population estimates each December and they don’t always agree on how many human beings occupy California. During the previous decade, following the 2000 census, their estimates were as much as one million persons apart – largely because of different calculations of state-to-state migration. […]
In recent weeks, more than 7,000 migrants have gathered in Tijuana, hoping for asylum in the United States. Some will be deported. Others will be detained for long periods of time. Those who have made it into California are finding support mixed with hardship. Across the border, there’s a cadre of pro bono attorneys eager […]
The 2017 deal, for subsidies worth as much as $350 million, rescued a cliffhanger vote in the Legislature that extended the state’s cap-and-trade program to 2030. Under cap and trade, industries may pay to pollute by buying allowances in a carbon-trading market. In addition, some receive free allowances from the state. The state Air Resources […]
Early childhood education. A top-tier national ranking for K-12 per-pupil spending. A data system that would track kids from nursery school through state universities. California’s Legislature won’t reconvene until 2019, but the Christmas wish list for public schools is already long and pricey. On the first day of session, Democratic lawmakers introduced two major education […]
The most obvious and most important victims of California’s chronic and still-growing housing shortage are the countless thousands of families that struggle to put affordable roofs over their heads. The shortage has driven prices skyward in a classic example of a supply-demand mismatch and housing costs are the largest single factor in California’s shameful status […]