Field Poll: Obama ratings slide

Buoyed by a soaring stock market and rising home prices, personal income tax receipts are flowing into the state treasury at a rate exceeding all expectations. But one big question looms as lawmakers and the governor consider how to spend the government’s new found riches: what will happen when the music stops?

Tax credit: Lights, camera, action

by SAMANTHA GALLEGOS posted 12.02.2013

California’s TV and film tax incentive appears as popular as ever, despite a rash of negative news coverage of an FBI undercover sting of a state senator in which an industry tax break figured as a lure. “The FBI could have picked any topic from any industry to mount a sting,” Assemblymember Raul Bocanegra, D-Los Angeles, said recently at the Hollywood Chamber of Commerce’s 2nd Annual State of the Industry Conference.(Photo: Stan Rudich)

The rapidly growing cost of state worker retiree health care, a more generous benefit than received by active state workers, soon could be taking a bigger bite out of the state general fund than pensions. As if trading places, a new forecast expects the annual general fund payment for state worker retiree health care, now $500 million less than the payment for pensions, to be $500 million more than the pension payment in six years.

CAPITOL WEEKLY INTERVIEW: Assembly Speaker John Pérez would like to stay in the Legislature but he’s got a problem: The law won’t let him. He’s termed out next year under voter-approved term limits and it’s time to move on. Pérez heads into the controller’s race with a $1.5 million campaign war chest. He likely will face fellow Democrat Betty Yee, a former chief deputy in the Finance Department, the office that writes budgets for the governor. Yee currently serves on the state Board of Equalization.

The governor, who has described himself as tight with a buck, set out to prove it before the UC Regents when he said they needed to bite into a “reality sandwich” if they were thinking of getting more than a 5 percent hike in state funds. The increase Brown granted in this year’s budget was relatively modest but desperately needed to fill some gaps for UC.

U.S. Bankruptcy Judge Christopher Klein, ruling disclosure was adequate, gave Stockton permission to circulate the debt-cutting “plan of adjustment” to all creditors for a vote on Feb. 10. An objection from one creditor can force a trial.

Millennials eye shot at center stage

by NIK BONOVICH posted 11.25.2013

The new poltical landscape reflects such things as redistricting, the top-two primary and the majority-vote budget. Partisanship even seems to be waning –gasp! — in Sacramento, as some Republicans crossed party lines to support driver’s licenses for undocumented immigrants and liberals behaved pragmatically in order to pass a fracking bill. Does a new day loom in the Capitol? The Millennials hope so. (Photo: Eddie Villanueva)

Pressures mount on California ports

by GREG LUCAS posted 11.21.2013

From Humboldt Bay in the north to San Diego in the south, California’s 11 ports generate more than $40 billion in annual economic activity. The Ports of Long Beach and Los Angeles provide most of it — together, they represent the nation’s largest cargo container port and the world’s sixth busiest harbor. But new pressures, including a revamped Panama Canal, are clouding California’s picture. (Photo: Port of Long Beach)