A man in a bicycle repair shop uses a laptop computer to run his business. (Photo: Mintimages, via Shutterstock)OPINION: It’s like pulling a life raft away from a struggling swimmer. Congress wouldn’t look at what it’s doing to small businesses that way, but that is what it will do if it carries through on some harmful proposals being considered.
A wildfire burns near a home in Salinas, Monterey County, last year. (Photo: David A Litman)With 2020’s disasters in mind, the state is making elaborate plans to deal with an upcoming wildfire season made potentially more deadly by drought. The challenge is there, and it’s a big one.
Illustration by Quentin Lueninghoener, via FairWarningFrom FairWarning: In February, when California labor officials announced the biggest wage theft case against a private company in state history, they made sure to include a warning for all bosses:“Stealing earned wages from workers’ pockets is illegal in California and this case shows that employers who steal from their workers will end up paying for it in the end,” said Labor Secretary Julie Su in a press release announcing nearly $12 million in citations against RDV Construction, Inc. RDV has appealed the penalties.
Hey, Big Daddy: I just started working in the state Capitol and am ready to dazzle the world with my policy analyses, but I’ve been dispatched to a campaign for the final weeks. Any tips for handling a farmer’s tan? —Bronzed in Bakersfield
The Canyon Fire 2 approaches Anaheim in October 2017. (Photo: Aarti Kalyani)OPINION: After a barrage of devastating wildfires raged across our state in recent months, it is time for all Californians to accept a sobering fact: this is the new normal. Several factors — including warmer and drier summers, and decades of fire suppression — have created a California that will be much more susceptible to wildfires in the future.
A professionally operated drone heads into the sunset. (Photo: Concept W, Shutterstock)A squadron of drone bills that emerged from the Legislature wound up crashing on the governor’s desk. Gov. Brown vetoed three measures over the weekend that sought to block drones from flying over schools or prisons, and which would have allowed emergency personnel to shoot down a drone if it came into a fire zone.
A professionally operated drone heads into the sunset. (Photo: Concept W, Shutterstock)Drone bills are buzzing the Capitol and making a beeline for the governor’s desk. At least four measures to curb their use already have flown out of the Legislature with bipartisan support. A fifth, approved in the Senate, awaits action in the Assembly. The governor has not disclosed his position on any of the bills, the remnants of a dozen pieces of legislation that have targeted drones during the past two years.
A graph showing the volatility of income tax revenue (solid line). Prperty tax revenue is in blue.(Graphic: LAO) Could making our state budget more dependent on property tax revenues be the key to eliminating the roller-coaster budgets of the last two decades? Since the early 1990s, we’ve lived through the boom and bust cycles of the California budget. Today, we are more dependent than ever on personal income taxes. And those taxes are more progressive than they have been in years, meaning our economic stability is tied to the fate of the wealthy .
Bankrupt San Bernardino announced an agreement with CalPERS last week to pay off an unprecedented pension debt owed for skipping payments to the pension fund for a year — $13.5 million, plus several million more in penalties and interest. Details of the agreement reached in closed mediation were not released. But the city said in a court filing the CalPERS agreement “will help form the basis” for a debt-cutting plan needed to exit bankruptcy.
OPINION: Rather than focusing our attention on creating uber districts with special powers or buttressing the powers of cities and counties so they can manage groundwater, it would be better to focus our attention on some of the causes for our present failures and direct our efforts to giving local stakeholders the tools to complete the task.