An El Segundo Blue butterfly. (Photo: esbcoalition.)The 2028 Summer Olympics will take place in Los Angeles between July 21 and Aug. 6, 2028. The event will cost an estimated $6.9 billion, will host 15,000 athletes, and could potentially attract at least one million visitors, both foreign and domestic. Most of them will pass through Los Angeles International Airport near one
A California forest fire seen at night. (Photo: vladseagull, via Shutterstock)OPINION: Until 2019, if a California utility violated fire safety rules and thereby caused a catastrophic wildfire, the utility could not make its customers pay for its uninsured wildfire costs.In 2017, San Diego Gas & Electric (SDG&E) was found by two administrative law judges to have violated numerous fire safety rules when its operations caused San Diego’s catastrophic wildfires in 2007.
The Los Angeles skyline late at night. (Photo: Songquang Deng, via Shutterstock)Where are the Southern Californians? We are at the beginning of the run-up to the 2016 political season; candidates and potential candidates for statewide office are beginning to make their presence known. But where are the candidates from the land of palm trees and Valley Girls? An outside observer could be forgiven for thinking Northern Californians are taking over the state’s politics, given the outsized disparity between Southern California’s population and its candidate offerings.
An aerial view of the Sacramento-San Joaquin River Delta.Gov. Jerry Brown went back to the future Wednesday, saying water problems have confronted him, his father’s governorship and their predecessors as they sought ways to get northern water to the south. Brown said delta-linked proposals had been studied for decades, with perhaps a million personnel-hours spent looking at the plan. “Until you put a million hours into it, shut up!” Brown, defending the proposal, told a gathering of hundreds of people at a statewide at a conference of the Association of California Water Agencies. Brown’s comment drew applause.
Boats cluster together at drought-ravaged Shasta Lake. (Photo: David Greitzer). People across California pay dramatically different amounts for the same amount of water, with price tags set by individual agencies from Crescent City to El Centro. North or south, inland or coastal, what Californians pay for their water is locally driven. Ultimately, retail water’s value is determined in a way similar to real estate – location, location, location.
A computer-generated image of the proposed California bullet train. (Photo: High Speed Rail Authority)Hundreds of millions of dollars from California’s auctions of carbon emission credits are being tapped to help finance the $68 billion bullet train project. In subsequent years, a fourth of the auction money will go to the train. The budget requires the governor’s signature to take effect.
A view toward the Bay Bridge, via Chinatown. (Photo: Christian Mehlfuhrer)ANALYSIS: Los Angeles County is home to more than 26% of all Californians. But when it comes to running for statewide office, being from Los Angeles may be more of an obstacle than a political advantage. While the people may be in Los Angeles, the largest chunk of the state’s voters – those who actually cast ballots — come from the nine counties in the San Francisco Bay Area.
Photo: Andy DeanThe new state of North California, population 3.8 million, would be a band running west to east bounded by the northern edges of Sonoma, Napa, Yolo, Sutter, Yuba and Sierra counties and the southern borders of Marin, Solano, Sacramento, Amador and El Dorado counties along with Nevada and Placer counties.
OPINION: For 40 years there has been an unspoken — and unbroken — rule that Southern California splits leadership of the Legislature with the Bay Area and greater Northern California. This year, Southern California leaders could seize complete control of the Legislature, winning leadership of both the Senate and the Assembly.
The Field Poll, in a survey completed last week, asked a statewide sample of California voters what they thought of these proposals. The results show that only one in four voters (25%) back the idea of having these counties break away from California to form a new state.