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California regulators are considering a new way for residents to pay for electricity, imposing a charge on the greatest energy users while narrowing price gaps for everyone else.

California employers’ workers’ compensation insurance premiums jumped by $2 billion in 2014 but payments to workers for job-related injuries and illnesses remained static, while medical costs declined, according to the Workers’ Compensation Insurance Rating Bureau.

About 30,000 teachers pay CTA’s “agency fees” without being members, but it’s believed that should the court end compulsory payment, as many as a third of its members would drop out, which could mean a $100 million loss of annual income.

About 15 million Hispanics lived in California on July 1, 2014, compared to roughly 14.9 million non-Hispanic whites, according to U.S. Census Bureau estimates released late last week. The California Department of Finance predicted in 2013 that Hispanics would outnumber whites in 2014; the census figures confirm that prediction.

While also dominated by the Democratic Party, which traditionally aligns with organized labor, the Legislature’s lower house has a growing “moderate caucus” that is generally more receptive to the concerns of the business community. Those members helped kill or stall a number of union priorities before June’s deadline to pass bills out of their house of origin, including legislation to require two weeks’ notice for workers’ schedules.

State and federal water regulators said Wednesday they’re struggling to hold California’s fragile water system together amid dwindling supplies and increasing anger from farmers, lawmakers, environmentalists and others

The budget’s enactment comes a week before the July 1 start of the next fiscal year. But Brown and the Democratic-controlled Legislature still have significant work to do outside the budget process. Brown called a special session last week to address funding shortfalls in health care, roads and infrastructure.

Ultimately, however, it [CEQA] became at best a legal morass and at worst a tool of legal extortion, often for motives that have nothing to do with the environment, such as forcing businesses to unionize. And that misuse, in turn, has spawned a form of crony capitalism as governors gained authority to “streamline” the CEQA process for some projects.

Californians support greenhouse gas reduction. But do they also want the state to compel them to change their lifestyles by parking their cars, jumping aboard trolley cars and bicycles, and trading their single-family homes for denser housing, as the CTP and other state policies assume they must?

The answer lies largely in the rapid expansion of the Medi-Cal program, which will soon provide health care to nearly 1 in 3 Californians. At the same time, the federal government has disallowed a creative financing scheme the state was using to maximize federal money for the program.

Such one-size-fits-all decrees send the message that anyone who doesn’t have, or even seek, a college degree is somehow a lesser person. And it shortchanges those kids who could be well-paid auto mechanics, machine tool operators or computer technicians – or could do countless other jobs that modern society needs done.

The exemption, contained in a budget-related trailer bill, offers a narrower exemption than a broader one Gov. Jerry Brown originally proposed. Lawmakers appeared to be nearing a deal Thursday, after pushing back on Brown’s initial proposal.

Although California motorists pay the second highest fuel taxes in the nation, we sit near the bottom in maintenance spending per mile of roadway and, therefore, at or near the bottom in congestion and pavement conditions.

“That stunning number is stark evidence of California’s ever-widening economic divide.

California has nearly twice as many enrollees as the next largest state, New York, and 17.2 percent of all Medicaid enrollment in the nation.”

In announcing the agreement, Brown said the deal preserves his General Fund revenue forecast and overall spending levels, a major concession by legislative leaders to the fourth-term governor. Total general fund spending of $115.4 billion was only $61 million more than Brown originally proposed, not the $749 million more legislative Democrats wanted.