Posts Tagged: future
Opinion
OPINION: The California Air Resources Board (CARB) recently released the latest quarterly allowance auction results for California’s cap-and-trade program. While demand rose compared to the previous auction in May, a majority of allowances still went unsold due to uncertainty over the program’s future past 2020 – suggesting policymakers should take action, not solace, from better August auction results.
Opinion
OPINION: Imagine a day when California produces almost 100% of its energy from clean, renewable sources such as solar, wind, and geothermal. How many lives would be saved as result of lower cancer and asthma rates? How would this help mitigate extreme weather events, public health risks, and economic problems from climate change? The benefits to California’s health would be enormous. The good news is that California is leading the way.
News
The $3 billion California stem cell agency this week welcomed the first members of its “Great Ideas” club and gave them a total of nearly $4 million to pursue the scientific gleams in their eyes. Nineteen researchers received awards at a meeting yesterday of the governing board of the agency. They were the first such grants approved by the nearly 12-year-old enterprise.
News
Deep in Gov. Brown’s 2016-17 budget was a big surprise for Lake Tahoe – the lake was cut out of its expected share of a $475 million environmental pie.
Opinion
OPINION: What can you do for a kid who wants to play soccer but can’t, because air pollution and the child’s asthma don’t mix on bad air days? It’s the kind of question that comes up regularly for me, as a doctor specializing in asthma and allergies.
News
After a loss of $100 billion in the recent recession, the CalPERS funding level dropped from 100 percent in 2007 to 61 percent in 2009. It has not recovered, despite a major bull market in which the S&P 500 index of large stocks tripled. “Even with the dramatic returns we have seen over the past six years, because the demographics of plans in general have changed and plans are now by and large cash-flow negative, it’s been very challenging to dig out of that hole,” Andrew Junkin, a Wilshire consultant, told the CalPERS board last week.
News
Some thought an appeal of a court ruling blocking a key part of a San Jose pension reform could lead to a high court review of the “California rule,” an issue in an initiative ballot summary issued last week by Attorney General Kamala Harris. But dropping an appeal of the Superior Court ruling is part of a settlement of union suits against the voter-approved pension reform that could soon be implemented by court action
Opinion
The retirement security of California’s retired, current, and future teachers and the stability of the state’s pension fund for educators would be put at risk if a ballot measure addressing those issues is approved by California voters next November, according to an internal analysis by CalSTRS that I requested as chairman of the Assembly’s Committee on Public Employees, Retirement, and Social Security.
Opinion
OPINION: With more than a dozen major tax measures moving through the Legislature or toward the November 2016 ballot, California’s perennial debate about taxes is set to begin anew — with millions of dollars in political campaigns preparing to shape how the state will raise billions of dollars in revenue, and provide public services, for years to come.
News
California state government does not operate in a vacuum. Federal laws, programs and funding decisions are implemented by the state and have a huge effect on the state and its local communities. In addition, the state does not have exclusive control of the policy-making agenda. The federal government and California’s local governments are constantly considering and adopting policies that are of concern to those working with—or in connection with—state government.
A powerplant at sunset. (Photo: David Crockett)
