CA Legislators Pass Bill To Allow Them To Live Outside Their Districts
Just as the 2018 legislative session was winding down, California lawmakers sent Gov. Jerry Brown a bill that would allow them to live outside the districts in which they were elected and ostensibly represent. What’s next? Mayors who don’t have to live in the cities in which they were elected? City council members who do not […]
California’s Department of Business Prevention Strikes Again: Another Minimum Wage Hike
From the State of California’s Department of Business Prevention comes another random minimum wage hike to help kill off more businesses. The final phase of the 2013 Assembly Bill 10 went into effect Jan. 1, bumping the minimum wage to $10-per-hour statewide. AB 10 is the final step of a two-stage increase. California and Massachusetts are now […]
Pepperdine Grad Students’ Head-On Collision With Local Govt. Officials
Why does it take 54 days, more than 30 emails, 25 phone calls, 3 faxes, and 2 trips to the city of West Covina to obtain records available to the public? The short answer is that some local government officials don’t believe they have to make the public records available to the public. A group […]
Legislature Taking Up Climate Change and Social Change
The Legislature is back in session after a summer recess. On the agenda, according to sources inside the Capitol, nobody seems to have any new issues circulating at this point. Some think that Assembly Speaker Toni Atkins, D-San Diego, will still try to move for something on low income housing or homeless housing, but there […]
Mandating a 50-Percent Reduction in Oil—at What Cost?
A bill in the California Legislature is blazing through to mandate the reduction of 50 percent in the use of petroleum-based fuels, 50 percent reduction in energy use by existing buildings and increases the Renewable Portfolio Standard from 33 percent renewables to 50 percent — notably as California is well on track to meet the 2020 […]
Sacramento Mayor: $8M Art Piece For Publicly Subsidized Arena a ‘Good Investment’
As the Sacramento City Council voted 7-0 Tuesday evening to approve a public contract with a New York artist for an $8 million piece of art, Sacramento Mayor Kevin Johnson called it “a good investment for our community.” High-end art is one of the most manipulated markets in the world. But that didn’t stop the […]
Plastic Bag Ban Opponents and Supporters Bringing the Fight To You
Staring at a gigantic German Shepherd poop on my bedroom rug last weekend, I reached for one of those single-use grocery bags outlawed by California, for the clean up. Thankfully, I have a small stash of extra “single-use” plastic bags… but not for long. After eight years of failed legislative attempts to ban plastic grocery […]
California’s Business ‘Leakage’ Becoming a Deluge
The list of businesses leaving California for greener pastures is long and growing. And now we can add Toyota to it. The word ‘leakage’ is the new politically correct term used by legislators, the Governor, bureaucrats and the California Air Resources Board, to describe what happens when California businesses leave the state because of tax […]
‘Families Before Fish’ in The Farmland
A bill to address California’s drought and future water supply in the House of Representatives has Gov. Jerry Brown angry. Brown said the water bill is “an unwelcome and divisive intrusion” into California’s effort to manage the state’s drought, the Sacramento Bee reported Monday night. H.R. 3964 by California Congressmen David G. Valadao, CA-21, Devin Nunes, […]
How Will Brown Budget Proposal Address Pensions, Taxes, Debt?
California’s budget battles will begin on Friday when Gov. Jerry Brown releases his proposal for fiscal year 2014-15, which begins on July 1. The media and political buzz in the Capitol building is that the state has a surplus — and maybe voters even are ready for higher taxes. “We now find that California’s state budget […]