The governor, who has described himself as tight with a buck, set out to prove it before the UC Regents when he said they needed to bite into a “reality sandwich” if they were thinking of getting more than a 5 percent hike in state funds. The increase Brown granted in this year’s budget was relatively modest but desperately needed to fill some gaps for UC.
After a lot more time and money than expected, and a rocky launch greeted with months of customer complaints, CalPERS has succeeded where two other state agencies recently failed. Its big new computer system is up and running.
“To me the best model is Japan which is a very different culture from ours with much higher densities. They started by building their inner city rail, then their commuter rail and then when they went to high speed rail on top of inner city rail, they did Tokyo to Osaka. So they moved out from where the ridership was and kept expanding based on where the ridership is and you generate a fair amount of revenue. And the reason they did that is that the private sector would then come in to securitize some of it. In Japan the secure lines are all publicly traded companies.”
It was kind of like eBay.
For three hours on Wednesday, millions of dollars worth of pollution credits were expected to be sold to scores of companies at California’s first auction under the state’s 2006 law to curb greenhouse gas emissions.
The auction, which went forward despite legal challenges, is unique among the states,