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Marin County will continue to limit home building beyond what other regions of California are allowed under affordable housing laws after Gov. Jerry Brown signed legislation Friday afternoon. The measure, Senate Bill 106, lets Marin’s largest cities and incorporated areas maintain extra restrictions on how many homes developers can build. Assemblyman Marc Levine (D-San Rafael) inserted the provision into the bill, which was tied to the state budget and didn’t have to go through the regular committee process.

California’s economic engine quieted in June as employers reduced their payrolls by 1,400, according to a report Friday by the state’s Employment Development Department. It was the second month this year that the state lost jobs. The unemployment rate stayed flat at 4.7%, the lowest rate since November 2000.. . . A net reduction of 1,400 jobs is slight compared with the state’s total employment of about 17 million non-agricultural workers. But it is another indication that 2017 could be a year of cooling for California’s typically bustling job market.

The proposal to build a major tunnel system under the hub of California’s waterworks won another approval Friday when the state finalized its environmental review of the project. “Today we are approving California WaterFix,” said Cindy Messer, acting director of the Department of Water Resources. DWR’s blessing was expected. But the long-planned project still needs a number of other permits, as well as the financial support of major water districts, before construction can begin.

The board that oversees the Los Angeles City Employees’ Retirement System will meet Tuesday to consider cutting its “assumed rate of return,” the yearly expected earnings for its investment portfolio, from 7.5% to 7.25%. The move is expected to shift about $38 million in retirement costs onto the city’s general fund, which pays for police patrols, firefighter staffing and other basic services, in mid-2018. The pension board also has the option to pursue a more dramatic step: taking the investment assumption to 7%, which would add $93 million to the city’s yearly pension burden, officials said.

As inspectors assess the damage and investigate what caused the explosion, Saturday’s incident is emblematic of the challenges facing the nation’s largest municipal utility as it plays catch-up to update its aging power grid, officials said. The blast provided another example of the city’s deteriorating infrastructure, which has made headlines after epic bursts of aging water pipes, crumbling sidewalks and gaping sinkholes. There are 70 large transformers in the utility’s network, and 20 of them still need to be replaced at a cost of about $5 million each, officials said. The utility’s ongoing Power System Reliability Program seeks to upgrade or replace thousands of smaller transformers, power poles, circuit breakers and other equipment. Wright said the utility is trying “to make up for what is several decades of deferred maintenance. The concern is that we need to get ahead so that reliability increases.”

In a report last month, the analysts noted while 16% of properties statewide were sold in 1977-78, just 5% were sold in 2014-15. Less turnover means tax rates don’t get recalibrated, resulting in less revenue for government services. But the report concluded that’s likely to change, as more than half of California’s homeowners are 55 or older. The homes of baby boomers, as their lives come to an end or when they seek alternatives like assisted living, will end up on the market. The property tax rates for new owners will be set by higher purchase prices. The impact could be substantial. The report pointed out that the typical homeowner over the age of 65 has been in that house for at least 20 years. Many of those are in Southern California.

Upscale jeans maker True Religion Apparel Inc. said Wednesday that it filed for bankruptcy reorganization, making it the latest Southern California apparel firm to falter as people embrace online shopping. But True Religion said that in tandem with filing under Chapter 11 of the bankruptcy laws, its owner, TowerBrook Capital Partners, a private equity firm, reached a proposed deal with lenders to slash True Religion’s debt by about three-quarters as it continues operating.

In a state that prides itself as a global leader in protecting the environment, recycling rates for beverage containers have dropped to their lowest point in almost a decade amid the continued closure of centers that pay for bottles and cans and the fallout from changes to California’s recycling program. Beyond the environmental concerns, the financial effects are also growing — pinching large supermarket chains and low-income residents. . . . RePlanet, a recycling collection network that partners with grocery chains to provide nearby recycling centers, announced in January 2016 that it would be closing 191 of its recycling centers in California. Scientists make water bottles the old-fashioned way to see if they were toxic to early Californians The company said it was shutting the locations in part because of a reduction in state fees and declines in the commodity pricing of aluminum and PET plastic. It also cited rising operating costs, such as increases in the minimum wage and requirements for health insurance and workers compensation insurance.

For the second year in a row, the number of babies delivered in the U.S. fell in 2016, according to a new report from the National Center for Health Statistics. For some groups of women, the birth rate reached record lows.

Developers have built more than 500 homes in Foster City since the council approved its housing plan in 2015, a number that already exceeds the new houses called for under the plan through 2023. But all those new homes came from projects approved before 2012 that home builders are just now putting on the market. And the city has turned away other developers interested in building housing where the city’s plan said they could, Perez said. Since early 2015, Foster City’s median home value has increased 13% to a record $1.5 million, more than seven times the national average. Perez believes state politicians should hold cities accountable for approving new housing projects by providing money to local

In a big victory for labor, the Los Angeles City Council on Wednesday approved a contract giving six raises in five years to members of the Department of Water and Power’s biggest union. The vote came despite objections from some council members over what they considered a rushed process that didn’t give them time to scrutinize the deal. It also is expected to open the door for other labor groups at City Hall to demand generous salary packages at a time when the city is struggling with tight budgets and financial woes

Four years ago, Los Angeles’ elected officials wrested major financial concessions from the Department of Water and Power’s biggest and most powerful employee union, persuading those workers to go three years without raises. City budget officials billed the agreement as a road map for negotiations with its other employee groups. Soon afterward, several other unions agreed to postpone pay increases for one or more years. Now a new salary package, backed by Mayor Eric Garcetti and heading to the City Council next week, would give six raises in five years to thousands of DWP workers. That could spur other unions to seek a similar deal, placing new burdens on a city budget already under significant stress.

Los Angeles Mayor Eric Garcetti, who campaigned four years ago as someone who would stand up for Department of Water and Power ratepayers, is pushing a proposal to give six raises within five years to more than 9,000 workers at the utility.

The salary agreement, backed Tuesday by Garcetti’s appointees on the DWP board, would provide raises of least 13.2% and as much as 22.3% by October 2021, depending on inflation. Beyond that, the pact would deliver a 4% boost over two years to the base pay of hundreds of DWP electrical distribution mechanics, also known as linemen.

One of California’s wealthiest counties may continue to get a pass under the state’s affordable housing laws. Lawmakers are considering a measure that would allow parts of Marin County to limit growth more tightly than other regions of California. The provision, inserted last week into a bill connected to the state budget, lets Marin County’s largest cities and unincorporated areas maintain extra restrictions on how many homes developers can build. . . . Since the changes are tied to last week’s passage of the state budget, which Brown has yet to sign, the measure does not have to go through the regular committee process. It’s had just one public hearing and lawmakers could vote on the bill as early as Thursday. . . . Today, the county’s per capita income of $60,236 is the highest of any county in the state, according to U.S. census figures. But the average renter in Marin County makes just $19.21 an hour and would need to work 77 hours a week to afford a studio apartment at the $1,915-a-month market rate, according to data from the National Low Income Housing Coalition.

Expanding mass-transit systems is a pillar of green and “new urbanist” thinking, but with few exceptions, the idea of ever-larger numbers of people commuting into an urban core ignores a major shift in the labor economy: More people are working from home. True, in a handful of large metropolitan regions — what we might call “legacy cities” — trains and buses remain essential. This is particularly true of New York, which accounts for a remarkable 43% of the nation’s mass-transit commuters, and of other venerable cities, such as San Francisco, Washington, Boston, Philadelphia and Chicago. Together, these metros account for 56% of all mass-transit commuting. But for most of the rest of the country, transit use — despite often-massive infrastructure investment — has either stagnated or declined. Among the 21 metropolitan areas that have opened substantially new urban-rail systems since 1970, mass transit’s share of work trips has declined, on average, from 5.3% to 5%. During the same period, the drive-alone share of work trips, notes demographer Wendell Cox, has gone up from 71.9% to 76.1%. Meantime, the proportion of the labor force working from home continues to grow. In 1980, 2.3% of workers performed their duties primarily at home; by 2015, this figure had doubled to 4.6%, only slightly behind the proportion of people who commute via mass transit. In legacy core-metropolitan statistical areas (MSAs), the number of people working from home is not quite half that of those commuting by transit. In the 47 MSAs without legacy cores, according to the American Community Survey, the number of people working from home was nearly 250% higher than people going to work on trains or buses.