Nine months after California imposed its first-ever mandatory statewide water conservation rules to cope with the state's historic drought, dozens of leaders of water agencies on Tuesday pleaded with the administration of Gov. Jerry Brown to relax them. Their argument: It's raining, reservoirs are filling, customers are mad -- and selling less water is costing
Commentary from the Sacramento Bee Millions of Californians will be paying billions of dollars in local government and school property taxes this week. The exercise will be repeated next spring as the second semi-annual property tax installment payment comes due and the grand total for the 2015-16 fiscal year will be somewhere north of $55
One of the goals of Californians who traveled to Paris for climate talks this week was to showcase green-energy businesses that are succeeding in the state. But it was the “coercive power” of government for which Gov. Jerry Brown was seeking credit. Regulations, he said at an event with billionaire environmentalist Tom Steyer at an
Wall Street Journal 12/1/15 Business investment across the U.S. is fizzling out. Companies appear reluctant to step up spending on the basic building blocks of the economy, such as machines, computers and new buildings. The broadest measure of U.S. business investment advanced 2.2% from a year earlier in the third quarter, the Commerce Department said
The last Boeing C-17 Globemaster III cargo plane built at the company's Long Beach plant departed from the facility Sunday, ending production — at least for now — of the last military or civilian aircraft to be built in California. In an event attended by hundreds of Boeing employees, the aerospace giant officially ended production
As the governor prepares to unveil the 2016-17 state budget early next month, the Legislative Analyst’s Office says California's state budget is better prepared for an economic downturn than it has been at any point in decades. Under the main economic scenario in this year's LAO Fiscal Outlook, 2016-17 would end with reserves of $11.5
A huge new set of government borrowing data from the California Treasurer’s Office for the first time details how government entities – from the state on down to counties, cities and special districts – planned to repay $1.5 trillion in bonds sold since the mid-1980s. Some of the borrowing has been financed with special taxes,
The worth of hot technology start-ups seemed for years to go in only one direction: straight up. Now there are signs of growing unease over the dizzying valuations of some of the most richly priced private companies. The latest sign has emerged with one such favorite, Snapchat, being discounted 25 percent by one of its
By more than 2 to 1, voters both nationally and in California say they are more worried than hopeful about changes in the country's morals and values. By nearly the same margin, more worry than express hope about the changing national economy. And by 5 to 1, they say they are worried about how the
In early 2016, the U.S. Supreme Court will hear arguments in Friedrichs v. the California Teachers Association et al., a closely watched California-based lawsuit with major implications for the state’s teachers unions and potentially all public-employee unions. The lawsuit challenges the authority of the CTA and other public-employee unions to collect mandatory fees, a main