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 […]
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 […]
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 […]
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 […]
As crews across California battle more than a dozen wildfires—including the largest in state history—the blazes are spewing enough carbon into the air to undo some of the good done by the state’s climate policies. What’s even worse: Climate-warming compounds that will be released by the charred forests long after the fires are extinguished may […]
Despite expressing verbal support for reform, however, Brown has been reluctant to make it a priority and his governorship probably will end in a few months with no major CEQA overhaul – which gets us back to those 142 bills. Most of them would either exempt certain activities, or even specific projects, from CEQA, or […]
Two back-to-back events last month frame California’s educational conundrum. A Superior Court judge in Los Angeles County rebuffed efforts by state schools Supt. Tom Torlakson and other state officials to block a lawsuit alleging that California has failed to teach reading to some black and Latino children. The suit, filed on behalf of children in […]
Raising minimum wages and welfare grants and offering a state tax credit to the working poor may have some impacts on the margin. However, the extra incomes they generate are quickly consumed by higher housing costs, plus the higher gas taxes, local sales taxes and energy bills being imposed to deal with other political priorities. […]
California’s public schools have enjoyed a remarkable restoration of funding since the bone-deep cuts they endured during the recession, but many are now facing a grave financial threat as they struggle to protect pensions crucial for teachers’ retirement. Over the next three years, schools may need to use well over half of all the new […]
There’s much more at stake than this one man’s tax liability, because of fears among state officials that other high-income Californians might emulate him and change their residences to escape state taxes. By siding with Hyatt on harassment, the Nevada courts have, in effect, declared that the Silver State will welcome and protect tax refugees […]
The Local Control Funding Formula that provides the extra money for what are termed “at-risk” kids is the handiwork of Gov. Jerry Brown. He not only boasts of allocating even more money to LCFF in his last budget, but counts it as a significant effort to combat California’s high poverty and income disparity rates. It’s […]
Other proposals in the mix include allowing industrial and commercial energy customers to cut the cord that binds them to major utilities, as well as a bid to help California reach its climate goals by fashioning a fully “clean” power supply by 2045. California is at the forefront of the budding consumer choice movement—ratepayers leaving […]
Late last month, the Legislature enacted a 9,900-word bill purporting to protect Californians’ personal and financial information from being revealed without their permission. This legislation was hastily drafted to persuade San Francisco developer and privacy advocate Alastair Mactaggart to drop an initiative ballot measure on the same issue that he had qualified for the November […]
So why are so many local entities feeling strapped? Local officials will tell you, if you don’t quote them by name, that it’s mostly because their mandatory payments into the state’s two big pension funds are soaring. The California Public Employees Retirement System (CalPERS) and the California State Teachers Retirement System (CalSTRS) lost tens of […]