Image by eyegelbOPINION – The State of California General Fund budget more than doubled in size from $96.3 billion in fiscal year 2014 to $225.9 billion in fiscal year 2024 while the state population remained essentially flat. Do residents feel their state government services have doubled during this period? I doubt it.
Stethoscope and calculator, image by Michail PetrovOPINION – Rising inflation has led to soaring healthcare costs for businesses. Compounding these challenges is SB 598, a bill currently under consideration in the California Legislature that, if enacted, it would further burden businesses, especially small businesses, with additional costs while introducing low-value care into the state’s healthcare system, harming patients across California.
Image by Blue Planet Studio via ShutterstockYou should have the right to choose whether the oil used in our cars and the numerous petroleum-based products we use daily comes from California or is imported from foreign countries thousands of miles away.
Image by TSViPhoto via shutterstockAmerican businesses face constant legal threats, many of which are underwritten by wealthy funders exploiting the judicial system in California and across the country.
Strikers and their allies at a Nov. 16 rally on the campus of UC Davis. (Photo: David Kn, via Shutterstock)About 48,000 academic union workers at the University of California are in the second week of a strike at UC’s 10 campuses, from San Diego north to the Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory. They walked off their jobs on Nov. 14 amid complaints of unfair labor practices, an action that closed some classrooms and research labs.
The state Capitol in Sacramento. (Photo: PPIC)The midterm campaign season enters its final stretch after Labor Day — in the context of rising consumer prices and higher interest rates that have created financial turbulence and uncertainty about job growth. Meanwhile, Californians are feeling the impact of climate change: severe drought, heat waves, and wildfires. Recently passed federal and state legislation aims to address these issues ahead of the highly consequential Nov. 8 election.
Image of the California state flag, showing the cracks and fissures representing political differences. (Illustration: helloRuby, via Shutterstock)ANALYSIS: For the past two years, redistricting experts and politicos, myself included, have been building toward the 2022 election cycle. A big part of this included building tools for analyzing potential new districts for their partisan breakdown and likely voting behavior. Getting these kinds of metrics was critical to the drawing of lines by legislatures that still have the control, and performing advocacy before commissions in states, like California, that have transitioned to a public and open redistricting process.
Illustration of the elements of medicine and the law. (Illustration: vchal, via Shutterstock)The latest chapter in a decades-long battle between physicians and lawyers is unfolding through compromise in Sacramento and so far, almost everyone involved has come aboard. The political battle revolves around California’s Medical Injury Compensation Reform Act (MICRA) which limits the amount of money patients can receive if injured by a physician in connection with medical treatment.
A Los Angeles police officer inspects the damage of a car crash. (Photo: Matt Gush, via Shutterstock)OPINION: Imagine paying the insurance premiums on your home for years, thinking you’re protecting yourself against disaster. Then, horribly, one day your house burns to the ground in a catastrophic fire. Only then do you find out the shocking news that your insurance policy will pay the cost to replace your home – but only up to the value of what the home was worth in 1967, back when Lyndon Johnson was President.
The photo gallery in the main entrance of CalSTRS' West Sacramento headquarters. (Photo: CalSTRS)The main California State Teachers’ Retirement System pension fund is seriously underfunded, and school district pension costs are more than doubling, biting deep into classroom budgets. But the agency, called CalSTRS for short, has an inflation-protection fund with a growing $9.8 billion surplus and an eye-popping positive cash flow.