“The technology-heavy San Francisco Bay Area almost single-handedly propped up California’s otherwise lethargic economic performance in 2014, a new report from the federal Bureau of Economic Analysis indicates.”
The Legislature agreed, but this week, Brown signed legislation that brings back a pared-down form of redevelopment, authorizing creation of “Community Revitalization and Investment Authorities” with many, but not all, of the same powers.
The administration on Thursday staged a show of force. While the Democratic governor appeared in New York to promote climate change policies at a meeting of the United Nations, the California Air Resources Board convened in Sacramento to consider renewing the state’s low carbon fuel standard, a central part of California’s greenhouse gas reduction program.
The state and local revenues were the equivalent of about 20 percent of the state’s overall economy and represented 13.2 percent of all state and local government collections in the nation that year – roughly the same as California’s proportion of the national population.
The median sales price for new and existing houses and condominiums was $409,000, down 1.4 percent from a 7 1/2-year high of $415,000 in July but up 4.3 percent from $392,000 in August 2014, according to CoreLogic Inc. It was the 42nd straight month of annual price gains.
The proposed tax increase would generate an estimated $7 billion to $9 billion a year, and run though 2030. The group filing the measure includes the California Teachers Association, other education labor groups, and health care and police unions.
Current law entitles workers at companies with at least 50 employees to 12 weeks of unpaid leave to care for a sick parent, child or spouse. Senate Bill 406, by Sen. Hannah-Beth Jackson, D-Santa Barbara, would add siblings, grandparents, grandchildren, domestic partners and parents-in-law to the list of family members.
In votes whose broad margins belied the intense struggle that came before, lawmakers approved what remained of Senate Bill 350 after the bill was stripped of a proposal to require a 50 percent reduction in petroleum use in motor vehicles by 2030.
“We might get another bill next year, we might just keep doing it by regulation,” Brown said. “California is not going to miss a beat. Be very clear about that. We don’t have a declaration in statute, but we have absolutely the same authority. We’re going forward. The only thing different is my zeal has been intensified to a maximum degree.”
Most students in the Sacramento region and statewide failed to meet English or math standards under the more rigorous California Assessment of Student Performance and Progress, which replaces the former STAR tests.
The most controversial part of the bill is a provision requiring the state to reduce petroleum use in motor vehicles by 50 percent by 2030. And depending on your point of view, the stakes are these: On one side, the Pope (see Courage Campaign ad here); on the other, enslavement to a Tesla-loving, freedom-hating California Air Resources Board.
Goods movement, energy, manufacturing and construction provide good-paying blue-collar jobs, and collectively employed 20.5 percent of Californians in 2014, according to the California Employment Development Department. However, because of their emissions, these industries are also among those most affected by climate policies. Losing them and the jobs they create would simply add to the challenges already facing too many Californians.
Arbitrary licensure requirements make it much more difficult for those on the lower rungs of the economic ladder – especially women and ethnic minorities – to climb up.
On this Labor Day, it would be fair to say that without public employees, California’s 16.3 percent unionization rate, a bit above the national average, would be more like Oklahoma’s 6 percent.
But it illustrates a dirty little secret of the wide array of tax credits, rebates and other “incentives” that federal and state governments have offered in the name of reducing emissions of carbon and other pollutants: They mostly go to the affluent.