While Gov. Jerry Brown is being fairly tight about spending the state’s multibillion-dollar windfall of sales and income taxes, he’s not shy about spending rapidly increasing proceeds from “cap-and-trade” fees on carbon emissions. The revised 2015-16 budget that he unveiled this month more than doubles, from $992 million to $2.2 billion, projected revenues from selling
Since taking office in 2011, Gov. Jerry Brown has helped to resolve some of California's toughest fiscal challenges -- mainly huge structural deficits and old, forgotten debts. But this year he appears ready to take on Mission Impossible -- getting Democrats and Republicans to agree to increase the state's gas tax to fix California's crumbling roads
Unions and grass-roots organizers are considering an effort to, over Gov. Brown's objections, extend the higher taxes that the governor persuaded voters to go along with in 2012. They are also pondering a proposal to alter the state's landmark restrictions on property taxes, to raise more revenue from commercial interests. In addition, billionaire environmentalist Tom
Five months into a new Congress, and deep into a lasting drought, California water legislation still stymies and splits the state’s lawmakers. Draft copies are tightly held, as if stamped Top Secret. Myriad details are in flux. The legislative timing, though a June 2 Senate hearing could yet happen, remains unsettled. Democrats are divided; some
It turns out that one of the Grand Old Party’s biggest—and least discussed—challenges going into 2016 is lying in plain sight, written right into the party’s own nickname. The Republican Party voter is old—and getting older, and as the adage goes, there are two certainties in life: Death and taxes. Right now, both are enemies
Joaquin Arambula, a long-time emergency room doctor in Selma, but also scion of a politically active local family, this week officially announced that he would seek the 31st Assembly District seat. It’s the same seat that was held by his father, Juan, from 2004-10. He stood by his son as he made his announcement, as
Steve Glazer’s victory in state Senate District 7, which includes a large swath of Contra County County and Alameda County’s Tri-Valley, sent a loud message to the Democratic establishment: We can choose legislators that reflect our communities instead of your whims. In Glazer, voters opted for a centrist, problem-solving Democrat who was willing to challenge
Recognizing a rare liability for the majority party, Republicans have begun more aggressively criticizing Democrats for their management of the crisis. In recent weeks, Republicans have pressed the Brown administration and Democratic lawmakers to approve more water storage facilities, while excoriating Democrats and their environmentalist allies for reduced water deliveries to protect endangered fish. Senate
Gov. Jerry Brown preached fiscal restraint to the region’s top business leaders Thursday, warning that the next economic downturn could be looming. “We know recessions are inevitable,” Brown told a meeting of the Bay Area Council, a regional business group in San Francisco. “We have to plan on a very unpredictable, cyclical flow of money.” Last
With California’s growing cap-and-trade program yielding a budgetary bonanza, lawmakers and interest groups have ample ideas for how to spend the money. Floating proposals as the pivotal period for budget negotiations begins, they say they want to fund port improvements, pay for heavy-duty trucks and ferries, nurture urban rivers, sponge up carbon in soil and