Posts Tagged: richard

LAO: Ballot initiative would triple cigarette taxes

A cigarette smoker enjoying his habit. (Photo: Pe3k, via Shutterstock)

by JOHN HOWARD posted 11.30.2015

An initiative aimed at next year’s ballot to more than triple the tax on California cigarettes would raise at least $1.3 billion annually, with the money going to an array of health and other programs, according to the Legislature’s nonpartisan fiscal adviser. The Legislative Analyst’s Office reported Monday that the proposal to add $2 in taxes to a pack of cigarettes would increase the per-pack taxes to $2.87.

SB277 removes the right of informed consent from California parents. It slid through the Senate Floor on a Democratic Party line, and paused briefly at the Assembly Health Committee Hearing June 9th, drawing over 5,000 people in protest to the Capitol stairs and hallways of Sacramento. Its next stop, this week, the Assembly Floor Vote.

Dan Richard, bullet train conductor

An artist's rendering of the California bullet train. (Photo: HSR)

by JIM CAMERON posted 08.18.2014

Dan Richard, the chair of the California High Speed Rail Authority, is a man in the middle. The middle of court fights, the middle of political fights, the middle of a fight over California’s future. “The rest of the developed world has moved energetically to adopt high-speed rail. We will too,” Richard says. He may be right.

In the last election, two Assembly candidates did something that isn’t often accomplished in legislative elections, but is more likely following redistricting: They beat an incumbent.

From two of the most liberal, Anglo, affluent, coastal districts in the state, Richard

Los Angeles has the best-funded retiree health care among the nation’s big cities, a new study found, and it’s also paying a big price for a policy praised by many but practiced by only a few.

The city’s rare