Is it possible to change the culture of a regulatory agency by enacting a new law? “I can’t tell you I know that it can be definitively done,” state Sen. Mark Leno (D-San Francisco) acknowledged in a recent interview with KQED. “But we’ve got to start somewhere.” Leno’s starting with Senate Bill 660, legislation he
Gov. Brown’s call for a special legislative session to fix California’s crumbling roads, highways and bridges comes as music to the ears of those who build big projects. For months, groups representing labor, contractors, local governments, transportation interests and others worked on legislation to revamp the state’s roads and ease the movement of freight at
Los Angeles entrepreneur Elon Musk has built a multibillion-dollar fortune running companies that make electric cars, sell solar panels and launch rockets into space. And he's built those companies with the help of billions in government subsidies. Tesla Motors Inc., SolarCity Corp. and Space Exploration Technologies Corp., known as SpaceX, together have benefited from an estimated
Rooftop solar electricity -- what is it truly worth? A search for answers by California utility regulators is generating some prickly computer challenges. An intricate computer model was commissioned last year by the California Public Utilities Commission to analyze the cost-effectiveness of new solar policy proposals. A recent test run of the giant equation found
Sacramento Bee Editorial By the billions, California’s cap-and-trade experiment is putting the green into greenhouse gas. Gov. Jerry Brown proposes spending $2.23 billion of the windfall. The Assembly adds to that, hoping to spend $2.4 billion. The Senate would spend $2.7 billion in the fiscal year staring July 1. But sooner rather than later, lawmakers
From the Wall Street Journal, June 2 The private market is putting bubbly valuations on startups. What if the public market doesn’t agree? And there are magnified potential impacts for California’s state budget, which depends in significant part on capital gains taxes from large investors. If a bubble is forming, it could create a chill
Anyone who wandered into the state Capitol this week might conclude that important business was being done. The floors of both legislative houses are going full blast, working through more than 500 bills – the core of this year’s legislative agenda. Meanwhile, a two-house conference committee is chewing through two versions of the 2015-16 state
Like a bolt out of the blue the US Supreme Court has suddenly thrust front and center the most important question in a democracy: who should exercise political power. Should it be all the people, or should it just be those citizens qualified to vote? The Supreme Court has agreed to hear a case out
Steve Glazer, who took his seat in the state Senate on Thursday, is the $10 million man of California politics. That’s about what he, his opponents, special interest groups and wealthy individuals spent on two special elections to fill the 7th Senate District seat that Mark DeSaulnier vacated upon being elected to Congress last November.
It’s time, then, to retire “farm-to-table.” The term has been drained of any real meaning it may have once had. Chefs themselves are getting sick of it. http://www.vanityfair.com/culture/2015/05/farm-to-table-what-does-it-mean-anymore