A California rice field at sunset. (Photo: Sirisak Baokaew, via Shutterstock)This September, 300,000 of California’s 550,000 acres of rice fields lay barren—over half the state’s rice crop. Instead of miles of soft green grasses swaying amid shimmering water, the state’s rice fields were cracked bare dirt, some crowded with weeds. “It is now just a wasteland,” a third-generation rice farmer told the San Francisco Chronicle.
A landscaping worker trims a bush with a gas-powered machine while a technician monitors the air quality for FairWarning. (Photo: Stuart Silverstein)New California rules aimed at curbing the surprising amount of pollution coming from leaf blowers, lawn mowers and other small gas-powered machines cleared a final hurdle Monday, and are set to take effect on Jan. 1. The requirements mark another step in the state’s long-running battle to reduce emissions from a category of small engines that have come to rival cars as a source of smog-forming pollution.
A San Francisco street scene. (Photo: Oneinchpunch, via Shutterstock)Part 3: As California grows, the shifts of population within the state can have a dramatic impact on the drawing of future political boundaries. These shifts can be broken into two different types of population counts: The absolute population counts as defined by the 2020 U.S. Census, and the citizen voting age populations, or CVAP.
A street sign for voters. (Photo by Gustavo Frazao, via Shutterstock)CA120: The 2016 General Absentee Vote Tracker is up, and over two million California voters have already returned their ballots. This year, a great deal of national attention is being paid to the rate of early voting, and politicos on both sides of the aisle are using this data to make predictions in the presidential, congressional and state contests.
OPINION: Just as patients don’t want to see a $15 charge for an aspirin on their hospital bill, hospitals don’t want to charge patients those prices. Hospital pricing has evolved because of decades of government regulations, cost shifts to private payers and unfunded government mandates (including expensive seismic retrofitting), inadequate Medicare and Medicaid reimbursements, and the obligation for hospitals to treat all patients, regardless of ability to pay.
Property theft in California increased in the first year of correctional realignment, according to a new report by the nonpartisan Public Policy Institute of California highlighting the policy’s possible effect on future crime rates. Under realignment, the state shifted responsibilities to the counties — including the incarceration of some state prisoners — and gave them money to cover the costs.
Months before California voters approved new taxes in the Nov. 6 election, accounting practices in the state budget were changed – changes that ultimately could make it much harder to define just how much money the state has taken in or is likely to get.
The changes were approved by the Legislature and governor