While impacts of extending the Proposition 30 income surtax would be confined to those at the top of the economic ladder, other looming tax hikes would have a much broader effect and could hit the poor particularly hard, as a new report from the left-leaning California Budget and Policy Center implies.
California income tax collections in April have already exceeded the Brown administration’s January estimates, underscoring the surge of higher-than-expected money flowing into the state treasury and possibly offering health and welfare programs – not just schools – a piece of the windfall.
Last month, when the BLS announced revised data for 2014, several economic analysts pointed out that California, which had been clobbered by the Great Recession, had finally surpassed Texas in the creation of new jobs.
If your history of the drought doesn’t extend past April 1, you might be excused for wondering why no additional agricultural water cuts were ordered. But the governor, who has previously been referred to as “the adult in the room,” has played that role again, explaining to people that farmers have endured two years of significant, mandatory cuts in water supplies, and how those cuts have rippled across rural California – land idled, people thrown out of work, communities suffering.
As a recent report from the Brookings Institution reveals, income disparities are widest in the nation’s bluest – most liberal – cities and much narrower elsewhere. . . Blue-city politicians claim to help the poor with increases in minimum wages, but the burden of paying them mostly hits small employers, rather than the 5-percenters, and thus may eliminate jobs.
California’s rising traffic fines were the subject of debate amid the economic recession as legislators raised total penalties by expanding or adding on new assessments. Four years ago, with the state strapped for cash, then-Senate President Pro Tem Darrell Steinberg described the growing traffic penalties as “one of the patches that we’ve relied upon to avoid deeper cuts” to state programs.
“While the drought is affecting many Californians and communities in different ways, we currently do not expect the drought to have a significant effect on statewide economic activity or state government revenues,” Tuesday’s report by the Legislative Analyst’s Office read. “That being said, we acknowledge the drought as a risk factor for the state’s economy, especially if its effects worsen or are prolonged.”
CalPERS is about to raise pension contribution rates again, this time by more than 9 percent, a move that will cost state government and local school districts nearly $600 million.
Among the high-profile proposals CalChamber is targeting are SB 350 (Senate President Pro Tem Kevin de León, D-Los Angeles), a push to increase California’s use of renewable energy to 50 percent by 2030 that is backed by billionaire environmentalist Tom Steyer; AB 357 (Assemblyman David Chiu, D-San Francisco), requiring retail and food service businesses to provide employees at least two weeks’ notice of their schedules; and SB 3 (Sen. Mark Leno, D-San Francisco), another effort to raise the minimum wage.
It also framed another issue: When do licensing agencies cross the line that separates ensuring professional competency from protecting the regulated profession’s monopoly?
With California slogging into its fourth year of withering drought, Gov. Jerry Brown on Wednesday ordered mandatory water reductions of 25 percent in cities and towns across the state.
Surface storage is the first and most important part of a comprehensive water solution. Even the areas of the state with the greatest potential to recharge groundwater require a steady supply of water to fill the underground aquifers. Other than the few short months of heavy rains, that water will come from a reservoir.
“Gas prices are higher in California than almost anywhere else in the nation, albeit markedly lower than they were a year ago. And there are reasons for that disparity. California’s fuel taxes are among the highest in the nation, the state Air Resources Board just imposed cap-and-trade fees on fuel, and the state requires unique, smog-fighting formulations.”
There’s a wide range of sales tax rates in California, some rates are increasing this week and if pending legislation is successful, the range will get even wider.
Education groups, led by the influential California Teachers Association, have complained for years that the state is near the bottom in per-pupil spending, but with recent and sharp increases in spending, California has climbed rapidly in state-to-state comparisons.