Brown Shows He’s Willing to Offend Everyone
If Jerry Brown is thinking about running for re-election in 2014, it’s a good thing the campaign didn’t start this summer. For weeks, the governor has been anxious to kick over every political hornets’ nest in the state, whether it’s high-speed rail, the peripheral canal or environmental regulation. In the process, he’s managed to anger […]
Facebook Folly: Prop 30 and California’s Budget Pains
Proposition 30’s reliance on the rich could make the state budget long-term problems worse because it adds more volatility to state taxes. While the Legislative Analyst pointed that out in the Prop 30 analysis –“due to swings in the income of upper-income taxpayers, potential state revenue fluctuations under this measure could complicate state budgeting in […]
The Uncertain Future of the California Bullet Train
On July 18, at a site pregnant with symbolism— the future location of what HSR advocates hope will become San Francisco’s terminus of the state’s bullet train — California Gov. Jerry Brown signed a bill to fund construction of the first section of the high-speed line. Earlier in the day, Brown had traveled for a […]
How Much Does Your City Spend on Lawsuits?
Recently, Rockefeller College’s Local and Intergovernmental Studies program in New York released preliminary data from a study evaluating how much localities in New York State are spending on judgments and other costs of lawsuits. The study, the first to tally the statewide costs of lawsuits in New York, was commissioned by the Lawsuit Reform Alliance of New […]