The California State Controller, the state’s chief fiscal officer, has a mandate to “make sure the state’s $100 billion budget is spent properly.” In that cause, the Controller’s Office recently asked the state’s school districts to provide data on salaries. As Loretta Kalb notes in the Sacramento Bee, “about 70 percent of the public…
Read More »
We have been keeping track of California’s bullet train boondoggle, or as some call it, a “Browndoggle” after governor Jerry Brown. He backs the train and wants to dig two massive tunnels under the Sacramento-San Joaquin River Delta at an estimated cost of $25 billion. Now taxpayers learn that the bullet train also has…
Read More »
As we recently noted, the California Department of Transportation employs 3,500 full-time engineers who do little more than sit at their desks. The state’s Legislative Analyst wants to cut these positions, but Caltrans executives cried foul. So did union boss Bruce Blanning, executive director of Professional Engineers in California Government. Blanning told reporters the…
Read More »
Politicians and pundits like to decry predatory lending, the practice of private banks and credit card companies preying on poor and vulnerable people. Indeed a new federal agency, the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau, was recently established to ride herd on private lenders. As Brad Branan of the Sacramento Bee shows, the worst offenders would…
Read More »
California is the least tax-friendly state according to new rankings from Kiplinger. Much of that unfriendliness is due to the 2012 Proposition 30, which imposed the highest income tax rate in America, 13.3 percent, and also raised the sales tax to 7.5 percent, also highest in the nation. Proposition 30 was pitched as a…
Read More »
As we noted in 2013, California’s government employee unions are so confident of their power that they demonstrate in front of the capitol chanting “This is our house!” They were right then and are still right now, as a Sacramento Bee editorial explains. Senate Bill 376 by Ricardo Lara is “a sop to the…
Read More »
As Lawrence McQuillan has observed, unfunded pension liabilities have soared to $4.7 trillion nationwide, and California accounts for $550 billion to $750 billion of the total. CalPERS, the Golden State’s biggest public pension fund, has authorized 99 types of special payments that count in pension calculations, but the only one that drew any objection…
Read More »
In 2012, California assemblywoman Fiona Ma backed AB 2482, a bill to license, yes, interior designers. Backers of the measure claimed it would protect consumers from unqualified home decorators, but as Dan Walters of the Sacramento Bee notes, “it was quite evidently aimed at limiting who could offer design services to potential clients –…
Read More »
California borders the Pacific Ocean, the largest body of water in the world, so desalination is a no-brainer for the Golden State. But as Dan Walters of the Sacramento Bee shows, government is not exactly eager to slake the parched state’s thirst. The San Diego County Water Authority is building a desalination plant near…
Read More »
In recent years California has raised per-pupil education spending about 50 percent, to $13,000 a year. As Dan Walters of the Sacramento Bee shows, despite this increase, “national academic testing has found that California’s students rank near the bottom in achievement.” The response of the state’s education establishment is to attack the tests. As…
Read More »
 |
 |
 |