One victim is Gov. Jerry Brown’s $3.1 billion plan to spend auction proceeds, now on indefinite hold. It not only affects a $500 million allocation for Brown’s bullet train project, but another $500 million for “low carbon transportation and fuels.”
First, the good news: This winter, much of the Sierra had a near-average snowpack. Now, the bad news: It has melted early.
When California’s “cap-and-trade” auction of carbon emission allowances imploded a month ago, it clobbered ambitious plans by Capitol politicians to spend many billions of dollars.
Our jobless rate ranks 34th in the nation, better than neighboring Arizona and Nevada, but worse than other big states such as Florida, New York and Texas. While the lowest in nine years, the rate was 5.2 percent in May, with nearly 1 million Californians actively looking for work but unable to find it.
Transportation: There is no plan to pay for a $57 billion backlog in repairs to California’s crumbling state highway system, despite Brown’s plea earlier this year for lawmakers to “bite the bullet” and approve taxes or fees for it.
The Atieva USA Inc. plant would employ nearly 1,300 workers and cost $530 million to build, according to documents filed with the California Alternative Energy and Advanced Transportation Financing Authority.
The BEA pegged the state’s economic output last year at $2.46 trillion and with several of its international rivals, particularly Brazil and France, experiencing slumps, that would place California at sixth place, behind only the U.S., China, Japan, Germany and the United Kingdom.
The budget package negotiated by Brown and the Democrat-controlled Legislature expects $255 million in lost income from tax returns that include claims with the state’s version of the earned-income tax credit, according to the Legislative Analyst’s Office. That is down a third from the $380 million budgeted for the current year and what Brown proposed in January for 2016-17.
A tentative labor contract for California’s state craft and maintenance workers hikes costs to taxpayers more than any deal bargained by the union in at least 11 years, according to a new report by the non-partisan Legislative Analyst’s Office. . . The pact with International Union of Operating Engineers Bargaining Unit 12, adds a total $473 million over four years to the state’s pay and benefits costs, the analyst’s office estimates.
Gov. Jerry Brown and the Legislature have reached agreement on a budget for the coming fiscal year that repeals a long-criticized rule limiting welfare payments for people who have more children, as well as making an optional $2 billion deposit into the state’s rainy-day reserve.
The angry tone of that 2013 rally, during which Walker pointed to the Capitol and shouted, “This is our house!” was fueled by years of furloughs and stagnant wages. Walker and other union leaders said that Brown had relied on union muscle to pass a 2012 ballot measure to temporarily increase taxes and should have shown gratitude with a better contract.
UnitedHealthcare’s pullback from government-run health insurance exchanges includes vacating the online marketplace for California, state regulators announced Tuesday.
The results of last week’s quarterly auction were posted and revealed that instead of the $500-plus million expected from the sale of state-owned allowances, the state will get only about $10 million, less than 2 percent.
Still, trade plays a vital role in California’s economy. The state’s seaports, airports and border crossings with Mexico are not only major conduits for America’s trade with the world, they provide employment for armies of blue-collar workers who might otherwise find themselves economically disenfranchised in an increasingly high-tech California. . . Instead of focusing on foreign travel, state leaders should be more concerned with more elemental matters – such as why it currently costs more to haul a shipping container by truck the 90 miles from Sacramento to the Port of Oakland than it does to ship that container 6,200 miles across the Pacific to Shanghai.
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Nearly 402,000 California high school seniors received diplomas last year, raising the state’s graduation rate to 82.3 percent, up 1.3 percentage points from 2014’s class, state schools Supt. Tom Torlakson reported Tuesday.