California’s economy is especially sensitive to events in Asia. Its budget, meanwhile, is dangerously dependent on income taxes paid by a handful of wealthy Californians, largely on their capital investment profits. We saw, just a few years ago, what happens when the global financial system hiccups. The wealthy got a financial cold, so to speak,
The drought is costing California about $2.7 billion this year, according to a new UC Davis study, although the statistics suggest the state’s overall economy can withstand the impact. In their latest estimate of the four-year drought’s economic effects, professors at the university’s Center for Watershed Sciences said Tuesday the drought has reduced seasonal farm
Lawmakers from both parties are calling for more stringent oversight of a clean jobs initiative after an Associated Press report found that a fraction of the promised jobs have been created. The report also found that the state has no comprehensive list to show much work has been done or energy saved, three years after
On the same day this summer that he celebrated the 40th anniversary of the Agricultural Labor Relations Act at a reception in Sacramento, Gov. Jerry Brown announced the abrupt reassignment of Sylvia Torres-Guillen, general counsel of the board created to enforce the law. Farmers who accused Torres-Guillen of unfairly advocating for the United Farm Workers
Fixing the state’s roads will take more than money, in other words. It will also take better governance. This is the message of a letter released today by the co-leads of the California Economic Summit’s Infrastructure action team, which details two opportunities in the special session to improve how transportation funds are managed by creating
Sacramento Bee opinion In 1998, Gov. Pete Wilson issued a Statewide Goods Movement Strategy filled with detailed analysis and specific recommendations. Four years later, Gov. Gray Davis put out a proposal-rich Global Gateways Plan of 2002, which was in turn replaced by Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger’s two-part Goods Movement Action Plan of 2005 and 2007. As
Although California’s official unemployment rate climbed out of the cellar during the year that ended June 30, it still has the nation’s second highest rate of total “labor underutilization,” according to a new federal government report. The state’s unemployment rate shot up to well over 12 percent during the Great Recession and was at or
California can handle all of its cash flow needs in-house, State Controller Betty Yee said, the first time since before the dot-com bust that that the state will make it through a fiscal year without turning to Wall Street for short-term loans to smooth the ebb-and-flow of tax revenue. The state has used “revenue anticipation
The Workers’ Compensation Insurance Research Bureau’s 2015 State of the System Report summarizes the key components of the California workers’ compensation insurance system as of mid-2015. Principal findings include: Written premiums in California continue to grow at a double-digit annual rate due to higher premium rates and to growth in insured payroll resulting from economic
The new price tag for restoring the Salton Sea: $3.15 billion. That’s how much money local officials now say they want from California, as detailed in a plan approved Tuesday by the Imperial Irrigation District’s board of directors. It’s less expensive than a $9 billion plan that died in the state Legislature, and local officials