Posts Tagged: analysis

News

Private firms eye state-run pension savings plans

A retiree checks out the newspaper in his back yard. (Photo: Budimir Jevtic, Shutterstock)

Calpensions: A board working on a proposal to enroll most small business employees in a state-run retirement savings plan, unless they opt out, was told last week that small technology-focused financial firms could do the job. The founders of three firms that offer 401(k)s and other retirement plans to small businesses did not object to competition from the state.

Opinion

Crucial balance: Environmental safeguards and economic impacts

A sugar factory , Puunene, Maui, Hawaii. (Photo: Mike Brake)

OPINION: Political pundits are saying Gov. Brown, Senate Leader Kevin de León and Sen. Fran Pavley suffered a major political defeat when SB 32 was pulled back and the fuel reduction provisions of SB 350 were removed. We don’t see it that way. This was one skirmish in a long-term battle to balance our environmental, social and economic goals.

News

Vanishing breed: SoCal’s statewide contenders

The Los Angeles skyline late at night. (Photo: Songquang Deng, via Shutterstock)

Where are the Southern Californians? We are at the beginning of the run-up to the 2016 political season; candidates and potential candidates for statewide office are beginning to make their presence known. But where are the candidates from the land of palm trees and Valley Girls? An outside observer could be forgiven for thinking Northern Californians are taking over the state’s politics, given the outsized disparity between Southern California’s population and its candidate offerings.

News

Data: Will political races ever have their ‘Moneyball’ moment?

A man at a computer screen making his picks during "March Madness." (Photo: SAJE, via Shutterstock)

ANALYSIS: Now that we’re in the middle of March Madness and nearing the opening of the 2015 Major League baseball season, we see the sports data geeks take center stage. Ever since the book, and subsequent movie, “Moneyball,” fans have been intrigued by the data that appears to be a major driver in sporting decisions, from the players chosen for a team, to the offensive and defensive formations, where and when the percentages suggest shooting or passing, and so on.

News

Property taxes: The magic bullet for budget stability?

A graph showing the volatility of income tax revenue (solid line). Prperty tax revenue is in blue.(Graphic: LAO)

Could making our state budget more dependent on property tax revenues be the key to eliminating the roller-coaster budgets of the last two decades? Since the early 1990s, we’ve lived through the boom and bust cycles of the California budget. Today, we are more dependent than ever on personal income taxes. And those taxes are more progressive than they have been in years, meaning our economic stability is tied to the fate of the wealthy .

Opinion

Indirect land use change: ARB needs evidence, not theory

OPINION: When the Greek philosopher Aristotle presented fellow scholars with empirical evidence and scientific proof that the world was round—not flat—around 330 BC, he was called a lunatic and a charlatan. More than two millennia later, Sacramento has its own version of the Flat Earth Society — the California Air Resources Board (ARB). Only this time, the debate isn’t over the shape of the Earth; it’s over an obscure regulatory concept known as Indirect Land Use Change (ILUC), a component of the state’s Low Carbon Fuels Standard (LCFS).

News

States eye CalPERS pension model

The CalPERS' governing board during a meeting several years ago at the pension fund's headquarters. (Photo: CalPERS board)

Calpensions: A California plan to give private-sector workers a state-run retirement savings plan is nearing $1 million in contributions, the goal set to pay for a market analysis to help design the program. Although the California plan is still in the formative stage, last week the Illinois legislature approved a plan based on the California model, even using the same name, “Secure Choice.”

News

DWR: Progress on delta tunnels

Islands in the Sacramento-San Joaquin River Delta, an aerial view. The Delta is home to about half of California's drinking water. (Photo: Worldislandinfo.com

California’s top water official told a key gathering of south state water interests that “hard-earned progress” is being made on the Brown administration’s controversial plan to build twin tunnels through the Sacramento-San Joaquin River Delta. The comments by Mark Cowin, director of the state Department of Water Resources, were aimed in part at dispelling rumors that the project had run aground, perhaps permanently.

News

A six-way split: The late, great state of California?

Photo: Andy Dean

The new state of North California, population 3.8 million, would be a band running west to east bounded by the northern edges of Sonoma, Napa, Yolo, Sutter, Yuba and Sierra counties and the southern borders of Marin, Solano, Sacramento, Amador and El Dorado counties along with Nevada and Placer counties.

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