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It was a deal that wasn’t supposed to cost taxpayers an extra dime. Now the state’s annual tab is in the billions, and the cost keeps climbing.

“Given what’s happening in California, where we have a lot of legislative costs imposed on employers, and we have employers leaving California, this is pretty remarkable,” said Patrick Kelly, treasurer and principal officer of Teamsters Local 952, the union representing some of the factory’s workers.

In California, cities and counties control what is built in their communities. But study after study has pointed to the hurdles local governments put in front of development — such as parking requirements and lengthy environmental reviews — as reasons why homes aren’t built at the rate needed to keep pace with rising prices.

Gordon Schremp, senior fuels analyst for the California Energy Commission, said he was aware of Harris’ investigation of the state’s refiners. . . “There have been all kinds of major allegations,” Schremp said. “I’ve seen [attorney general investigations] with all kinds of price spikes. I don’t know of an incidence where they’ve come back and said, yes we’ve found manipulation in the gasoline market.”

Los Angeles has hemorrhaged manufacturing jobs since 2007, casting a pall over the state’s economic recovery, according to a forecast released Tuesday by Chapman University.

An effort to cap the salaries of hospital executives may be blocked from California’s Nov. 8 ballot, after a Sacramento judge wrote Thursday that its labor union backers broke a political peace treaty with hospitals.

The state’s new budget, which is awaiting Brown’s signature after the Legislature’s approval Wednesday, includes nothing for the vehicle subsidies or other efforts to make heavy-duty trucks more environmentally friendly. Meantime, the clean-car programs are pushing people to waiting lists.

The healthcare workers union that successfully placed a minimum wage increase on the November statewide ballot formally withdrew the proposal Thursday, two months after Gov. Jerry Brown signed a similar plan into law .

California’s last nuclear power plant will be phased out by 2025, under a joint proposal announced Tuesday morning by Pacific Gas & Electric Co. and labor and environmental groups.

Some 5,500 customers — including residences and businesses — scattered across Los Angeles were affected as of 2 p.m. Most would probably have power restored by the evening, Department of Water and Power officials said.

Part of the reason unemployment declined may be that for the first time in years, the state labor force shrank last month. About 9,000 Californians dropped out of the job market in May. 

But as LAO researchers also pointed out, the global GDP numbers that suggest California’s economy as sixth largest in the world don’t take into account something of huge importance: The cost of living. . . .Once that’s factored in, the IMF data finds California drops from sixth to eleventh in the global size of its gross domestic product.

The state’s new budget, which is awaiting Brown’s signature after the Legislature’s approval Wednesday, includes nothing for the vehicle subsidies or other efforts to make heavy-duty trucks more environmentally friendly. Meantime, the clean-car programs are pushing people to waiting lists.

California has benefited more than any other state from the software explosion, the Software Alliance report said. The industry and its attendant fields contributed more than a quarter of total business research and development investment in California, the group estimated.

The linchpin of California’s climate change agenda, a program known as cap and trade, has become mired in legal, financial and political troubles that threaten to derail the state’s plans to curb greenhouse gas emissions.