The city of Cerritos may be a trailblazer of sorts among local governments, but it’s leading the way on a trail that local governments probably don’t want to follow. The southern California community, which boasts a population just shy of 50,000 residents, is among the first of several city governments in California to go to the mat against the state controller’s review of its shift of local assets from the redevelopment agency.
Across California, some six dozen community college districts – locally administering 112 schools, the largest higher education institution in the country – were scrambling for $90 million.
An effort is under way in the Capitol to require local governments to perform comprehensive economic impact studies of so-called “superstores” before approving the projects.
The thorny issue pits big-box, general-service, non-union retailers such as Wal-Mart against small businesses and organized labor, who believe the huge stores unfairly compete and spark downward economic spirals. It
Gov. Brown’s rewritten budget borrows $500 million from California’s cap-and-trade auctions and diverts the money for use in other state programs – a move that drew immediate fire from clean-air advocates.
The administration said the $500 million represents a one-time loan and will be paid back, with interest. Tapping the money was proper, the
For Frank Spevacek, last Thursday was a long day indeed. After a full day at work, the La Quinta city manager headed to Sacramento to meet with the officials in the most powerful office in the state bureaucracy, the Department of Finance. The department writes the governor’s budgets, rides herd on billions of dollars of
A record $16 billion in income tax revenue will flow into state coffers during April, according to predictions in Gov. Jerry Brown’s January budget plan.
About $5 billion of that $16 billion comes from higher taxes approved by voters in November through Proposition 30 — $4.5 billion in taxes owed for 2012 and $500
Bond insurers who want CalPERS to share the financial pain of the Stockton bankruptcy do not answer a key question in lengthy court filings: How would “bloated” and “overly rich” pensions be cut?
The insurers backing $250 million worth of Stockton general fund bonds argue that the city’s bankruptcy plan gives them major cuts