San Francisco’s $11.05 billion budget for the coming fiscal year will be the largest in the city’s history. That’s a 9.3 percent — or $937 million — increase over last fiscal year’s budget, which came in at $10.11 billion.
One rents a spare bedroom in her client’s Berkeley home, paying $200 a month as she waits for word on her application for low-income housing. Another drives from Stockton to the East Bay four times a week because rental prices in her native Oakland became out of reach. A third commutes to Berkeley from Tracy, […]
Covered California premiums projected to rise 11 percent in 2019
California may soon become the first state in the nation to require that virtually every new home be equipped with solar panels. The California Energy Commission on Wednesday is expected to mandate solar arrays on almost all new single-family houses built after Jan. 1, 2020, as part of the state’s fight against global warming. The […]
California continues to lead the nation in electric car sales. But it must drive a long, hard road before it can achieve its goal of getting 5 million emissions-free cars on the road 12 years from now. That’s the message of a new report, which found that while sales of battery-electric and plug-in hybrid vehicles […]
The median Bay Area home price surged to an all-time high of $820,000 in March, up 9.3 percent from February and up 14.7 percent from March of last year, research firm CoreLogic reported Tuesday. The previous peak was $784,000 in November. The report includes newly built and existing homes and condos sold in all nine […]
Thanks to a booming economy and soaring stock market, California’s income tax revenue has continued to far exceed both projections and last year’s totals. For the crucial month of April through Monday, personal and corporate income tax revenues have come in about $700 million above projections and nearly $1 billion more than last year, according […]
California’s housing shortage is a crisis that the next governor will have to fix, the six leading candidates for the job say. . . . California has added fewer than 80,000 homes each year over the past decade, while the need has been closer to 180,000, according to the state Department of Housing and Community […]
SunPower of San Jose reported Wednesday that it will buy SolarWorld Americas, a solar manufacturer in Oregon, in a sign of how the industry is reconfiguring itself to deal with the Trump administration’s protectionist moves. SunPower will use SolarWorld’s factory in Hillsboro, Ore., to build its own panels, while the facility continues to make SolarWorld […]
The U.S. Environmental Protection Agency announced Monday it will reconsider the federal government’s Corporate Average Fuel Economy standards for passenger cars for model years 2022-25. The Obama administration set very stringent standards, peaking at 54.5 miles per gallon in 2025. After the EPA’s midterm review, it found these standards to be inappropriate. Automakers also warn […]
Even as drivers debate repealing California’s recent gasoline tax hike, an often-overlooked state program has quietly helped push fuel prices higher. Dubbed the Low Carbon Fuel Standard, the program is designed to fight climate change by forcing oil companies to lower the “carbon intensity” of the fuels they sell in California. For years, it had […]
Health insurance premiums in California are expected to rise nearly 18 percent in 2019 as a result of federal policy changes enacted by Congress and the Trump administration, according to an analysis released Monday by the Urban Institute left-leaning think tank. In 2019, roughly 1 million fewer Californians will be enrolled in health plans in […]
California’s tax revenues far exceeded expectations in January for the second consecutive month, but it remains to be seen how much of the excess reflects underlying strength in the economy, versus people speeding up their 2017 state income tax payments while they were still fully deductible on federal tax returns. State income tax revenues for […]
The EITC is working, but creating a California where work pays enough to cover people’s basic needs will require more of it. Ending the poverty crisis requires a minimum wage that is a living wage — $25 per hour. It’s time to live up to our progressive rhetoric and be champions for the millions of […]
Heat maps of where last year’s 30,000 police reports were taken in San Francisco show car break-ins are concentrated in tourist hot spots — from the Beach Chalet to Fisherman’s Wharf, from the Academy of Sciences to, yes, Lombard Street. Sometimes, the losses are major: passports, cash, laptops, entire packed suitcases. Other times, they’re small […]