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Meanwhile, legislators who voted to abolish redevelopment have been writing proposals to re-establish it, with changes, under some other name.

The governor pegs the total 2014-15 budget of the general fund, special funds and bond funds at $154.9 billion, but the real number is well over $200 billion, when federal funds are included. That’s the equivalent of more than 10 percent of California’s entire economic output.

Brown, citing an ever-increasing dependence on taxes from highly volatile capital gains, said he, too, would resist pressures to ramp up permanent spending and wants to divert much new revenue into paying down debt and building up reserves to cushion future downturns.

The California Department of Water Resources is planning to draft an emergency drought declaration for Gov. Jerry Brown’s consideration as dry winter conditions continue.

The U.S. Bureau of Reclamation plans to reduce flows in the river from the current 1,100 cubic feet per second to 800 cfs starting tonight, then in stages each night afterward until flows reach just 500 cfs on Friday, said Tom Gohring, executive director of the Sacramento Water Forum.

The latest data are, for the most part, positive. A few years ago, the state’s unemployment rate was well over 12 percent, one of the highest in the nation, and it had lost well over a million jobs. But through November, the state Department of Employment Development reported, California had regained over 900,000 jobs, and its jobless rate had dropped to 8.5 percent. The darker side of the data, however, is that California still has more than 1.5 million unemployed workers and the gains have been pretty much confined to a few coastal enclaves, particularly those in the immediate Bay Area.

PG&E said the increase is due to rate changes, effective Wednesday, to pay for higher wholesale energy purchase costs and for work to maintain and modernize the utility’s infrastructure.

Local unemployment is down. The Sacramento economy is slowly growing. But Sacramento’s poorest residents are reaping few of the rewards.

One of the games that politicians and interest groups play is called “economic impact.”

But, one wonders, if streamlining CEQA’s provisions for projects that meet some standard of political correctness – or political pull – is justified, why shouldn’t it apply to more traditional forms of development, especially those that create badly needed new jobs?

Confining CEQA “reform” to certain kinds of politically favored projects – such as a new basketball palace in Sacramento or a football stadium in Los Angeles – is just another form of crony capitalism.

The California State Teachers’ Retirement System (CalSTRS) told Gov. Jerry Brown and legislators months ago that it needs another $4.5 billion a year from someone – the state, school districts or teachers – to avoid insolvency in future years. And the CalSTRS deficit is growing by millions of dollars each day.

Driven by the roaring economic engine of Silicon Valley, home prices in some Bay Area cities have neared or exceeded the record highs reached in last decade’s housing bubble. San Francisco, Palo Alto and other cities flush with cash from Google, Facebook and Apple blew past their prior peaks in recent months and set new records.

California Treasurer Bill Lockyer is warning that the state teacher retirement system is rapidly running out of money.

California homeowners saving up to overhaul that 1980s-era kitchen or build a porch off the family room face an additional cost in the new year: replacing plumbing fixtures throughout the house.

An official for Gov. Jerry Brown’s Office of Business and Economic Development, or GO-Biz, confirmed Monday that California will submit a proposal to Boeing ahead of the company’s Tuesday deadline for states to submit proposals to host production of the 777X.