A Budget with Loose Threads
The legislature is expected to pass the budget bill today thus satisfying the demand of 2010’s Proposition 25 that required the budget to be passed on time so that legislators may continue to get paid. But when legislators vote on the budget bill before June 15 are they really passing a complete budget? Legislators admit […]
Can Bay Area Taxpayers Afford a New “taxpayer busting” $100 billion Transit Tax Proposal?
Bay Area business leaders made headlines recently by floating a new $100 billion “mega tax increase” that would break the record for transportation tax increases in the region, and extract still higher tax increases from Bay Area commuters. New $1 increased Bay Area bridge toll hikes took effect on January 1, 2019, which increased […]
On Housing, California Reaches for a Formula, Not a Solution
It’s an iron-clad rule of California governance: why bother to solve a problem when you can just create a formula to make it more complicated. That approach to a big problem—those of renting in our era of high housing costs—is now being advanced in the state legislature. AB 1482, a compromise bill that now seems […]
Most ‘job killer’ Bills Already Dead
Going into this year’s legislative session, it appeared that the California Chamber of Commerce’s long string of wins on bills it labels “job killers” might end. Over the previous two decades, the chamber and its allies in the business community had killed or neutralized about 90 percent of the bills on the annual list. In […]