The way inland California lawmakers see it, the only benefit to their constituents from Gov. Jerry Brown’s expansion of carbon pollution laws will be cleaner air to breathe as they wait at the unemployment office.
BART will need voter help to meet more than $9.6 billion in capital needs through 2024, and it has no contingency plan if voters don’t come through to help, California’s state auditor says in a report released Tuesday afternoon.
Unless it alters its current funding structure, CalPERS will be even more vulnerable to market losses in the next economic downturn than it was during its devastating plunge in the Great Recession. . . Most of the CalPERS governing board members recognize the adjustments are needed, but they have yet to determine the details and price. They’re trying to temper the impact on state and local governments, which already face pension rate increases of roughly 35 percent to 50 percent over the next six years from the three prior calculation changes.
Chevron has announced it will move 100 jobs from its San Ramon corporate headquarters to Houston this year. . . Last year, Chevron announced it was transferring 400 jobs from San Ramon to Houston.
In its first congestion report card in five years, the Bay Area’s transportation planning agency said that average congestion — defined as traffic moving 35 mph or less — increased 65 percent in the Bay Area from 2009 to 2013.
In addition to the standard base rate of 1 percent of assessed value of a property, owners pay more than 20 other items listed on their tax bills. One, misleadingly labeled “City of Richmond,” is actually a levy solely to help fund the retirement plans for workers and retirees.
Through the difficult budgets of recent years, “a lot of my frustration was that there’s not a lot of research that indicates what a good investment is” to abate poverty and reduce inequality, he said. Just as the Legislature’s Environmental Caucus has been instrumental in developing landmark legislation that has put California ahead of the nation and world on various issues, so too does DeSaulnier hope this new caucus will do likewise.
The Bay Area is the only region in California where more people are moving in from elsewhere in the United States than moving out, another sign of the tech industry’s rebound and the creation of more jobs here, according to a state population report released Thursday.
State regulators gathered at a green stamp-making business Thursday to unveil what they tout as the nation’s best approach to identify consumer products containing hazardous chemicals and prod manufacturers to find nontoxic substitutes.
If you harbor reservations about California’s business climate, or its attractiveness to commercial ventures, it can only mean you have yet to make the acquaintance of Kish Rajan, the state’s director of business and economic development. When the former Walnut Creek councilman talks about what lies ahead, he sounds as excited as a kid on Christmas Eve.