Posts Tagged: Brown
News
Gov. Brown wants state workers to begin paying half the cost of their future retiree health care — a big change for workers making no payments for coverage that can pay 100 percent of the premium for a retiree and 90 percent for their dependents. The governor also wants state workers to be given the option of a lower-cost health insurance plan with higher deductibles.
News
We’re never actually out of election season. Not even in off-election years like this one. Gov. Jerry Brown has set the dates for special elections in three Senate districts to fill vacancies left by officeholders who won congressional seats in 2014.
News
During his press conference outlining his new $164.7 billion state spending plan, Gov. Jerry Brown made extensive remarks about Californians living in poverty, and the challenges the state faces in dealing with those who continue to struggle economically. As California’s economy has recovered, statistics show nearly 25% of the state still lives in serious economic stress.
News
Jerry Brown kept the purse strings tight on the University of California, but proposed an $8 billion boost for public education and wants to spend $1 billion of cap-and-trade auction money on high-speed rail. transit and related projects. In the first budget of his last term in office, the Democratic governor offered a $164 billion spending plan — $113 billion of it in the General Fund, the state’s coffer of sales, income and business taxes — for the 2015-16 fiscal year that begins July 1.
News
For the new plan the state this fiscal year is paying $63.2 million (24.6 percent of pay) for the pensions of 1,407 judges (1,352 active). Judges Retirement System II is 95 percent funded with a debt or “unfunded liability” of $41.2 million.
News
Californians started 2014 the way they ended the previous year – parched by drought, hoping for an improved economy, outraged at Capitol corruption scandals and, finally, looking some relief at the fuel pump. Compared with the drought, the rest of the top stories of 2014 seemed almost trivial. Almost, but not quite.
News
The debt or “unfunded liability” state Controller John Chiang reported last week for state worker retiree health care, $72 billion, is larger than the unfunded liability for state worker pensions reported by CalPERS in April, $50 billion. It’s a legislative legacy, a debt for state worker services received by one generation that lawmakers decided to let the next generations inherit.
News
Missing its own deadline last week, the University of California is now more than two months behind in disclosing to the state Legislature and the Department of Finance details of its expenses. The 10-campus university system first failed to meet an Oct. 1 deadline. It then submitted a seven-page preliminary account on Oct. 31 while requesting an additional six weeks to complete a final report. Those six weeks expired on Dec. 11.
News
California’s Legislature has reached a historic moment for diversity. Latinos are still wining seats in the Assembly and Senate as demographics shift favorably in their direction, but this election year brought a surge in California’s other ethnic caucuses. The number of members in the Black Legislative Caucus has reached a historic high, as has the Asian and Pacific Islander Legislative Caucus. The Latino Legislative Caucus fell by two members.
News
With California’s law banning plastic bags on hold, the plastic bag industry and its allies already are pouring money into California in hopes of overturning the law in a referendum two years down the road. Referendum proponents have until Dec. 29 to collect enough signatures to put the referendum before voters in November 2016.
Gov. Brown unveils his 2015-16 budget draft in the Capitol. (Photo: State of California)
