A California economic development board handed out $70.5 million in tax credits on Thursday for private companies promising to create jobs in the state, including $12.7 million for electric car-maker Faraday Future, which broke ground a day earlier on a new manufacturing facility in neighboring Nevada.
“With the gas storage field kept at about one-fifth of its full capacity, power plants could run short of natural gas to burn for power. State law permits power plants’ gas service to be cut off when supplies run short, preserving gas for homes and small businesses. State energy officials have predicted that the L.A. Basin and surrounding counties could face up to 14 days this summer and 32 days in the coming year when utilities might order limited power outages to avoid larger blackouts.”
Latinos’ steady rise as a portion of Los Angeles County’s population has been accompanied by a surge in their economic clout, a trend highlighted in a new study that quantifies increases in the group’s educational attainment, income and consumer spending.
“Manufacturing has not gone away,” said Ann Marie Allen, who is coordinating the grant. “It is still here and thriving, but it has changed. It requires individuals who are trained in higher tech and higher skilled jobs.”
The bill, known as SB 588, was sponsored by state Senator Kevin de León of Los Angeles. It would allow California’s labor commissioner to place a lien on the property of an employer cited for wage theft.
In return, the Fix Our Roads coalition wants California to change how it funds transportation, says Orange County Business Council CEO Lucy Dunn. For one, businesses want transportation taxes and fees to be strictly reserved for transportation projects, she says.
L.A.’s Section 8 program — officially known as Housing Choice Vouchers, a name that’s never stuck — is so coveted that people get on lists that take years to get a voucher. There are 8,000 people on the wait list for Section 8 in the city of Los Angeles alone — and it’s been closed to new applicants for 15 years.
Lyman points out that Southern California is also home to a lot of wealthy environmentally conscious consumers who can afford the cars’ $100,000-plus price tag, which makes distribution easier.
A union-backed proposal to raise California’s minimum wage to $15 an hour was cleared Monday to begin collecting signatures for a ballot initiative next year as local efforts continue nationwide to boost the minimum wage to better reflect the cost of living.
During the recession, welfare programs in California lost about $15 billion according to Peter Woiwode of the California Partnership, a group that advocates for the state’s poor.
Developers of an NFL stadium in Inglewood have promised hundreds of millions of dollars in economic activity, but economists largely believe that the economic impact of sports stadiums is miniscule, KPCC reports. A 2003 analysis on Staples Center commissioned by the Los Angeles City Controller found that economic activity in Inglewood actually increased when the Lakers left town.
You can debate what’s causing gridlock at the ports of Los Angeles and Long Beach; The dockworkers’ union blames the shipping companies, and the shippers blame the dockworkers. But this much is for sure: increasing delays in moving cargo are getting costly for California exporters, especially for growers, which are experiencing the worst delays they have seen in 13 years.
His spending plan allocates $478 million for maintenance on the state’s universities, parks, prisons and hospitals, a tiny fraction of the $66 billion the state needs to spend to catch up with deferred maintenance, according to the state Department of Finance.
California is seen as fertile ground for a new labor movement. The state is home to the largest number of union members in the nation – some 2.4 million, according to the Bureau of Labor Statistics. Union organizers have used the state to test new recruiting strategies; but success has been limited. . . Kent Wong, director of the UCLA Center for Labor Research and Education, says there are more organizing campaigns here than anywhere else in the country.
California was one of the states that has managed to regain all of its jobs — barely. Its job growth from January 2008 to May 2014 was 0.4%, sitting in the middle of the pack compared to other states.