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Lawmakers agreed last month to extend a vital subsidy for the Silicon Valley company, one that makes its pricey power generators more attractive to buyers such as hospitals, data centers and mega-retailers. . . “It would be a great disadvantage for the customers to no longer have this incentive,” said V. John White, a lobbyist for Fuel Cell Energy, a company that produces fuel cell generators. “It would undermine the ability to make these units economically feasible.”

The court ruled that the state must reimburse Los Angeles and 83 other Southern California cities for certain costs of complying with a stormwater permit issued by the Los Angeles Regional Water Quality Control Board. . . The Supreme Court held that the contested stormwater permit conditions were state policy choices of how to implement the Clean Water Act, but were not themselves federal mandates. Therefore, the state must pay for the costs of their implementation.

NFIB California State Executive Director Tom Scott added, “Compared to the national trend, California paints an even uglier picture for small businesses. Three problems California small business owners rank much higher than those in other areas of the United States are family/sick leave mandates; minimum wage laws; and hiring/firing employment regulations.

A widespread Southern California Edison power outage early Monday forced the shutdown of the Torrance refinery, raising concerns that gasoline prices throughout Southern California may see a temporary spike.

“I think voters are starting to say, `Wait a minute. We keep raising taxes – where’s it going?’” Nation said. “Well, to a great extent, it’s going to public employee compensation and to pensions, specifically. And I think at some point, voters are going to say, `Not anymore.’”

“Most importantly, the LAO’s analysis separates fact from fiction about the split-roll concept, which unions and other liberal groups have promoted for decades by arguing that homeowners are shouldering an ever-larger share of the $50 billion in property taxes that schools and local governments collect each year. Fundamentally, the LAO’s analysis rejects that claim, concluding, “Proposition 13 likely did not cause the slight increase in the share of property taxes paid by homeowners.””

And while the Sierra Club report said U.S. dealerships need to improve marketing of electric vehicles, it also said this: “Our volunteers were 2 1/2 times more likely to find no EV on a dealership lot in the nine other ZEV states than they were in California.”

But by grading schools that serve California’s 6-plus million K-12 students on “10 areas critical to student performance,” the system – whose precise details are yet to emerge – moves away from traditional academic standards into fuzzier areas. And that will likely make it more difficult for parents and the larger public to determine what’s really happening, or not, in the classroom.

Through six months this year, CNCDA said sales of new, conventional hybrids accounted for about 4.5 percent of all new-vehicle sales statewide. That’s down from nearly 7 percent in 2013. The CNCDA report showed that California sales of new, plug-in hybrids and electric vehicles (EVs for short) have remained basically flat since 2014, with each segment accounting for about 1.5 percent of all new-vehicle registrations statewide. Between 2010 and 2014, plug-in and EV sales were rising.

It was a deal that wasn’t supposed to cost taxpayers an extra dime. Now the state’s annual tab is in the billions, and the cost keeps climbing.

But 13 years later, and just four years from the goal date, San Francisco continues to throw away huge amounts of garbage. The city’s waste has averaged 1,463 tons every workday over the past year, according to Recology, the city’s trash collector. There’s no penalty for not meeting the target other than, of course, a swelling landfill that’s bad for the environment and a big dent in San Francisco’s reputation as one of the greenest cities in the world.

It turns out that Calpers, which managed the little pension plan, keeps two sets of books: the officially stated numbers, and another set that reflects the “market value” of the pensions that people have earned. The second number is not publicly disclosed. And it typically paints a much more troubling picture, according to people who follow the money.

Employers statewide added a robust 63,100 jobs during the month, the Employment Development Department reported Friday, although the unemployment rate was unchanged at 5.5 percent. The job gains for August were a sharp contrast with a fairly weak showing of 18,600 the month before.

Both the formation of firms (for example, McDonald’s as a whole) and establishments (an individual McDonald’s restaurant), have dropped off precipitously since the financial crisis and remained low.

Retail sales declined last month for the first time since March and manufacturing production slipped, government data released Thursday showed. Meanwhile, prices businesses receive for their goods and services were unchanged last month, a sign of still-soft demand at home and abroad. Companies also remain cautious about building up too much inventory, new figures showed.