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About 60% of adults and 66% of public-school parents in a new poll said they favored vouchers that parents could use for their children’s education at any public, private, or parochial school. Republicans (67%) were more likely than independents (56%) and far more likely than Democrats (46%) to hold that view. Across racial and ethnic groups, 73% of African Americans, 69% of Latinos, 56% of Asians and 51% of whites supported vouchers.

Retail sales fell a seasonally adjusted 0.2% last month, the Commerce Department said Friday, after a revised 0.3% decline in February. But over the last 12 months, retail sales have risen 5.2%, a sign that that the economy remains on stable footing.

Still, there are indications that consumers are growing more cautious even though the unemployment rate declined in March to a low 4.5%. Steady job growth as the recovery from the Great Recession nears its eighth year and a bump in consumer sentiment following President Trump’s presidential election have yet to strengthen spending much.

Since the start of 2017, Americans have actually cut back on purchases at auto dealers and restaurants and bars, two major sources of sales gains in prior years. Sales dipped 1.5% last month at auto dealers and 0.6% at restaurants and bars. It was the second straight monthly drop in sales for both categories.

Moves out of the area remain far below levels seen during last decade’s housing bubble, when out-migration was nearly triple what it was in 2016 — and real estate agents urged clients to “drive until you qualify.”

But after slowing down in the aftermath of the Great Recession, which devastated the housing market, out-migration is picking up as prices climb steadily higher, according to U.S. Census Bureau data.

To escape high prices, people — often younger and with lower- or middle-class incomes — are looking toward the Inland Empire and nearby states for additional square footage and a lower mortgage payment.

Often, advocates could not raise enough money for signature gathering, advertising and other costs of an initiative campaign. Some of the most promising efforts, however, ran into a different kind of obstacle: an official summary, written by the state attorney general, that described the initiative in terms likely to alienate voters. Facing bleak prospects at the polls, the sponsors abandoned the campaigns.

Taxpayer advocates contend that the attorneys general — Democrats elected with robust support from organized labor — put a finger on the scale, distilling the initiatives in language that echoed labor’s rhetoric.

The Los Angeles City Council took a step Tuesday toward borrowing up to $60 million to pay for legal payouts and court judgments despite a warning by City Controller Ron Galperin that the borrowing proposal is costly and unnecessary.

Police officers began making fewer arrests. The following year, the Los Angeles Police Department’s arrest numbers dipped even lower and continued to fall, dropping by 25% from 2013 to 2015. The statewide numbers are just as striking: Police recorded the lowest number of arrests in nearly 50 years, according to the California attorney general’s office, with about 1.1 million arrests in 2015 compared with 1.5 million in 2006.

California will need billions of dollars in new funding for housing and transportation improvements, and to make extraordinary changes to state and local government policies, in order to meet its new 2030 climate change goals, according to new reports from state and regional government officials and UC Berkeley researchers.

The company said Monday that it’s ending negotiations with the Bay Area city of Vallejo to buy land for an automobile assembly plant.

California ranked as the toughest state in the nation for first-time home buyers, who typically would be in the millennial age bracket of 18 to 34, according to a recent report by Claes Bell, an analyst with Bankrate.com. . . California consumes one of the highest percentages of people’s income for housing. Folks in that typical first-time home buyer age range, anywhere from the mid-20s to early 40s, are going to have a difficult time in many cases finding room in their budget for a California-sized mortgage payment.

Recent labor agreements, costly court settlements and funding for combating homelessness are driving up expenses and could hamper plans to expand city services in the coming years, a new City Administrative Office report suggests. Despite an improving economy in Los Angeles, the report warns of “renewed fiscal challenges” for the city.

Assemblyman Jose Medina (D-Riverside) says the Rams — and at least five other large developers whose projects were approved by similar means in recent years — have been able to spend significant sums of money to ignore state environmental laws. He’s authored new legislation to block future developers from doing what the Rams did, by prohibiting local governments from approving projects without an exhaustive environmental review.

As California lawmakers debate the future of the state’s battle against global warming, there’s one politically sensitive issue they’ll have to consider: gas prices. . . drivers could see the price per gallon of gasoline increase by 45 cents. A separate policy, known as the low-carbon fuel standard, is also expected to increase gas prices.

A legislative hearing is scheduled for Wednesday on Brown’s effort to expand cap and trade, which requires companies to buy permits to release greenhouse gas emissions.

Getting people out of their cars in favor of walking, cycling or riding mass transit will require the development of new, closely packed housing near jobs and commercial centers at a rate not seen in the United States since at least before World War II, according to a recent study by permit and contractor data analysis website BuildZoom.

Gov. Jerry Brown’s proposed state budget may have mistakenly excluded some $22 billion from a formula to limit spending that was first imposed by voters in 1979, according to a new study by the Legislature’s independent analysts.