In the Dynamex fight, California lawmakers can be pro-worker and pro-innovation
California and the Bay Area have thrived creatively, economically and culturally because we attract top talent, encourage risk-taking and give people the flexibility and freedom to pursue their dreams on their own terms. It’s a successful formula that reflects California’s indomitable entrepreneurial spirit and empowers people to do great things. It’s not something that policymakers […]
Remembering Mayor Ed Lee
Mayor Ed Lee devoted his life to public service, to helping and fighting for those less fortunate and working to make San Francisco the great city it is. His compassion, thoughtfulness and humble style were his great strengths and allowed him to focus on improving San Francisco for everyone. San Francisco and the Bay Area […]
Bold Action to Bolster Economic Resilience
The San Francisco Bay Area is an economic powerhouse. The region’s innovation industries, from high tech to biotech, helped lead California out of the Great Recession. We are near full employment in some areas, and are responsible for 53.5 percent of the state’s net job growth since 2007. And while we are home to just […]
Northern California Threatened by Leadership Vote
If you are worried about the drought, growing traffic, the funding at your children’s schools, or a whole host of other issues and you live in Northern California, you should be very worried about upcoming elections in the state legislature for the next Assembly Speaker and Senate President Pro Tempore. For 40 forty years there […]
Healthcare Ruling Provides Some Needed Certainty, For Now
Almost above all else, businesses like certainty. When there’s uncertainty around decisions that can have a significant impact on strategy and bottom line, businesses understandably get nervous. Whether they’re big or small. The ruling by the U.S. Supreme Court on the federal Patient Protection and Affordable Care Act (ACA) afforded a measure of certainty – […]
Controlling costs must be paramount in health care reform
This is a critical time for the Affordable Care Act, the health care reform law passed by Congress last year. There is much at stake – for businesses, for consumers and for our economy. At the Bay Area Council, we believe the entire business community can and must play an active and vocal role in keeping cost control at the center of the health care reform bull’s-eye.
Rising health care costs continue to be a scourge on our economy, sapping resources and capital, and hampering our efforts to put the Great Recession behind us and start creating jobs. While the current economic malaise has reduced the rate at which costs are increasing, spending on health care nationwide continues to outpace the economy. Projecting from the latest figures from the California HealthCare Foundation, California health care spending has risen by 225 percent over the past two decades.