Posts Tagged: budget
News
California’s hospitals are experiencing unprecedented financial stress due to the COVID-19 pandemic, with net losses projected to hit $14.6 billion by the end of 2020. The losses are “way above anything anyone could have anticipated… the costs have been nothing like we have ever seen before,” said Jan Emerson-Shea, a spokeswoman for the California Hospital Association, which represents about 400 hospitals, large and small.
News
Gov. Gavin Newsom has been riding a high tide of approval from Californians for his handling of the COVID-19 pandemic, but he could be heading for stormy weather. California’s tax revenues are projected to decline more than 22 percent and the state estimates that unemployment for the year will hit 18 percent.
News
Strapped California, facing an unprecedented budget crisis as it battles COVID-19, is setting aside hundreds of millions of dollars to confront wildfires. Already, more than 1,300 fires — mostly small — have been reported as the hottest, driest months of the year approach.
News
This was supposed to be a big health care year for California. Democratic Gov. Gavin Newsom in January unveiled ambitious proposals to help him achieve his goal of getting every Californian health care coverage. Though it was far less than the single-payer promise Newsom had made on the gubernatorial campaign trail, his plans, if adopted, would have expanded the health care system as no other state has.
News
With the recently concluded 2017-18 legislative session, it is valuable to look at some of the key data, including bill introductions, the fate of those bills, the work of the committees, the lawmakers’ legislation and the actions of the governor. So let’s crunch some numbers: We’ll look at the Senate first.
News
Two California counties profit from a loophole in the “sanctuary state” law, while most others have canceled their ICE contracts under public pressure or let them expire. When California’s sanctuary state law, Senate Bill 54, was approved, the public assumed that local law enforcement would be prevented from cooperating with ICE agents except when dealing with people “convicted of a serious or violent felony,” such as murder, rape, child abuse or battery.
News
OPINION: Gov. Jerry Brown is trying to revamp the way funding for the state’s 114 community colleges is determined, which is smart since the current practice of funding schools in various regions of the state based almost entirely on enrollment does not do the areas with the highest need students any good.
News
The first person to hold statewide office in California without aligning with a political party could be Steve Poizner. He is vying for the seat left open by Dave Jones, who is running for state attorney general. Poizner’s main opponents are Democrats Sen. Ricardo Lara and physician Asif Mahmood. The Department of Insurance has more than 1,300 employees and a $250 million budget. It oversees the state’s $300 billion insurance market, the largest in the country.
News
The State Water Project comprises 700 miles of tunnels, pipelines, aqueducts and siphons that transport water from California’s north to its more arid south, serving 26 million people and 750,000 acres of farmland along the way. It’s a huge project with a lot of infrastructure, and it’s most of what DWR does. But more than 60 years later, there is a move under way to take control of the project out of the hands of DWR and place it in an independent commission.
Opinion
OPINION: A certain (now disgraced) writer-producer-director is credited with saying, “80 percent of success is just showing up.” That would be nice, right? But for many of us, this just doesn’t hold true. Showing up to a job interview doesn’t get us 80 percent of the way to the job. Showing up to college doesn’t get us 80 percent of the way into the class we want.