Web Version [link removed] | Update Preferences [link removed] CBRT in the News What California Voters Need To Know About Proposed $15 Billion School Construction Bond: A Quick Guide

The March 3 California ballot includes a $15 billion state bond issue to help schools, community colleges and universities with construction costs for their facilities. Last fall, the Legislature and Gov. Gavin Newsom placed the measure on the ballot by approving Assembly Bill 48. It will appear on the ballot as Proposition 13.

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Support is coming from Newsom, dozens of legislators, the California Teachers Association and the California Federation of Teachers, numerous school groups, including the California State PTA, associations representing school boards, administrators and business officers, the UC regents, UC trustees, and the community colleges’ board of governors. It also has key business backers: the California Building Industry Association, California Business Roundtable and California Chamber of Commerce.

The largest donors, as of Jan. 29, include the Coalition for Adequate School Housing, an industry-based lobby, $1,050,000; CTA, $500,000; RMV Community Development, LLC, $320,000; California Democratic Party, $254,000; and California Charter Schools Association, $250,000 . The “yes for Prop. 13” coalition had raised $7.9 million.

Read More [[link removed]] Business Climate and Job Creation U.S. Consumer Spending, Wage Gains Eased In Late 2019

Consumer spending and wage gains eased at the end of last year, signs the U.S. economy is returning to a more moderate pace of growth.

Personal-consumption expenditures, or household spending, rose a seasonally adjusted 0.3% in December after a 0.4% rise in November, the Commerce Department said Friday.

The reading was in line with an overall trend of slower growth in household spending in the final months of 2019 compared to earlier in the year. Spending for all of 2019 was up 4%, the smallest annual increase since 2016, according to the Commerce Department.

A separate report from the Labor Department showed wages for private-sector workers rose 3% year-over-year in the fourth quarter, marking the fourth straight quarter of growth.

Read More [[link removed]] Why Texans Don’t Want Any More Californians

Across a frightened nation divided by politics and culture, a fragile harmony is ascendant, as Americans in small towns and large cities alike cry out in trembling unison: Hey, where did all these Californians come from?

Talk of a “California Exodus” is sweeping the country—and so are anxieties about its effects on the rest of the West. In October, the Boise mayoral candidate Wayne Richey proposed at an election forum to build a $26 billion wall to keep out people moving from the Golden State. (His backup plan to stop the invasion of Boise? "Trash the place.”) A viral Wall Street Journal article recounted the plight of a small Idaho town buckling under the stress of thousands of inbound Californians. And this month, Texas Governor Greg Abbott issued a warning on Twitter to Californians moving to his state: “Remember those high taxes, burdensome regulations, & socialistic agenda advanced in CA? We don't believe in that.” The sentiment was echoed in various warnings in Dallas newspapers about the awful “California-ing” of North Texas.

Read More [[link removed]] Attacking Prop. 13 Will Worsen California's Problems

As California taxpayers, we should be wary of Sacramento politicians as they begin the budget process to determine how to spend the hard-earned money of everyday Californians. California’s record-breaking spending budget of $222 billion is large enough to rival the GDP of countries like New Zealand or Greece.

While the state budget has doubled in size in the last decade, Sacramento's addiction to spending goes with very little accountability. In this budget alone, Gov. Gavin Newsom proposes 25 new state departments and agencies, which means spending will only continue to increase year after year. This means even more tax and fee increases will fall upon burnt out taxpayers in California.

The latest monster proposal in addition to the budget will be on your November ballot. The ballot initiative will roll back parts of Proposition 13 — California’s last remaining taxpayer protection — to raise property taxes by billions of dollars annually.

Read More [[link removed]] President Trump Signs New North America Trade Deal. Here's What It Means For Northern California

With President Donald Trump signing a new trade deal between the U.S., Mexico, and Canada, a Mexican top official who negotiated the treaty tells ABC10 the new deal will have big implications for the economy in Northern California.

The U.S.-Mexico-Canada Agreement (USMCA), which updates the 25-year-old North American Free Trade Agreement (NAFTA), was signed at the White House on Wednesday.

Trump celebrated the fulfillment of one of his top campaign promises as “probably the number one reason that I decided to lead this crazy life that I'm leading right now."

The new deal includes, among other things, new laws on property protection, the internet, investment, and state-owned businesses. The 2,082-page agreement also includes big changes in several key areas, such as incentives to make cars in North America and open Canadian markets for American dairy farmers.

Read More [[link removed]] Gig Economy Initiative Collecting Signatures Quickly, Blows Past 25%

A ballot measure supported by gig economy companies to battle California’s Assembly Bill 5, the new independent contractor labor law, has reached 25% of its needed signatures to get on the November ballot.

Supporters say they're planning to go past 100%, and they have app-based drivers volunteering to get petitions signed.

A coalition of ride-hailing and other network companies called Protect App-Based Drivers and Services has been collecting signatures for three weeks, and it has gathered more than 230,000. The group said it expects to shoot past the 623,212-signature requirement and collect at least 1 million.

Read More [[link removed]] Should Legislators Consider Modifying California's Labor Bill AB 5?

The Wall Street Journal editorial board last week criticized the controversial new California labor law Assembly Bill 5.

The law sought to turn independent workers into actual employees, which would mean sick leave, minimum wage, workers comp and other benefits. That intention is what many of its supporters point to in the face of opposition.

However, AB 5 has been out for a month and has been the subject of lawsuits.

Read More [[link removed]] California Lost More Manufacturing Jobs To China Than Any Other State, Report Says

California has lost far more jobs to China than any other state, with the San Francisco Bay Area accounting for more than any other region in the nation due to a long outflow of technology manufacturing.

From 2001, when China joined the World Trade Organization, to 2018, the Golden State lost 654,100 jobs to the Asian nation. That’s about double the next highest state loss, Texas’ 334,800 jobs, according to a report released Thursday by the Economic Policy Institute, a labor think tank in Washington, D.C.

The study, based on the latest U.S. Census Bureau, and Labor Department data, calculated that among the congressional districts that lost the most jobs to China, six of the top 10 were in California. Four of those districts were in the Bay Area and Silicon Valley — the 15th, 17th, 18th and 19th districts — where 80% or more of the lost jobs were in the computer and electronics sector.

Read More [[link removed]] SoCalGas Opens New Renewable Gas Station In California

Southern California Gas Co. (SoCalGas) has opened a new CNG fueling station in Bakersfield, California. The new site is open to the public and will exclusively offer renewable natural gas (RNG).

RNG is a sustainable fuel made from methane that would otherwise be emitted from landfills, dairy farms, and other waste sources.

In any given day, over twenty thousand trucks pass through Highway 99 in Bakersfield, emitting roughly eighty-five tons of smog-causing nitrogen-oxide emissions. Near-Zero emissions natural gas trucks fueled with RNG can virtually eliminate smog forming pollutants and reduce greenhouse gas emissions linked to climate change by as much as 80 percent, according to SoCalGas.

Read More [[link removed]] Energy and Climate Change No, Banks Don’t Hold The Key To Climate Change

Attendees at the World Economic Forum in Davos last week repeatedly heard that the path to a carbon-free future runs through the financial system. “Banks, insurers and pension funds are as culpable for the climate emergency as the fossil-fuel industry,” Greenpeace charged. “Immediately and completely divest from fossil fuels,” Swedish teenager and climate activist Greta Thunberg demanded.

And indeed, environmentally conscientious bankers and investors are rushing to get on the right side of history by shunning coal, Canadian oil sands and arctic drilling.

But for all its attractive symbolism, divestment isn’t going to shrink the fossil-fuel industry. Capital and oil are the world’s two most fungible commodities. Choke off one source of money—say, bank loans—and another will fill the void. Leave one deposit of oil and gas in the ground, and there are lots of others to exploit.

Read More [[link removed]] Arizona Lawmakers Advance Bill To Preserve Natural-Gas Hookups To New Homes

Arizona lawmakers are advancing a measure that would protect the natural-gas industry by preventing municipalities from banning gas hookups for new buildings, which has been done in some states to address climate change.

Senate Bill 1222 from President Karen Fann, R-Prescott, and House Bill 2686 from Speaker Rusty Bowers, R-Mesa, would prevent municipalities from requiring new homes and commercial buildings to be built with all-electric hookups, preventing natural gas service.

No municipality in Arizona has tried that. But amid California's broad efforts to combat climate change, multiple cities there have essentially banned natural gas at new developments. Berkeley, California, was the first to do so last year.

Read More [[link removed]] Why California's Environmental Policies Aren't Enough For This State Lawmaker

Earlier this month, Democratic Assemblymember Rob Bonta of Oakland described dire consequences of climate change: Australia is burning; the Philippines, where he was born, is regularly hit by typhoons; and California faces drought, wildfire and the threat of sea level rise as global temperatures warm.

Bonta can’t fix the world, but he has a plan for California. The California Green New Deal would build on existing climate change policies to accelerate the state’s decarbonization while prioritizing historically marginalized populations. The bill’s details are still vague, so some politically powerful special interest groups like the Western States Petroleum Association have yet to take a position. But the legislation aims to address big goals, like doubling public transit capacity and affordable housing by 2030.

Read More [[link removed]] Here's How We Could Go Carbon Neutral In 25 Years

In the fall of 2018, as California governor Jerry Brown’s final term was winding down, he signed an executive order that set an audacious climate goal: the world’s fifth-largest economy needed to become carbon neutral by 2045.

That means the state will have to remove enough greenhouse gases from the atmosphere to balance out whatever amount its residents and businesses are still emitting 25 years from now.

But many wondered whether California, or any other major economy, could actually stop adding to the greenhouse gases driving climate change with the technology we have today. In a study released Thursday, researchers at Lawrence Livermore National Lab determined the answer is yes.

Read More [[link removed]] How Even Stronger California Climate Policies Could Spark A $7 Billion Economic Opportunity

California is a global leader in the clean energy transition, with some of the world’s most ambitious decarbonization policies. But even the Golden State, which met its 2020 greenhouse gas emission reduction target four years early, should be doing more.

Results from the newly released California Energy Policy Simulator (EPS) find the state’s existing climate policy strategy risks falling short of California’s 2030 target of 40% emissions reductions below 1990 levels. Findings suggest 2030 emissions will exceed the target by about 25 million metric tons – roughly 10 percent – even using optimistic assumptions about policy effectiveness.

There is still time to adjust, and the California EPS analysis identifies a package of policies that gets emissions on track. The policies are constrained to using currently available technologies and include a mix of ratcheting up existing policies and new initiatives. If implemented, these recommendations could be a net positive for the economy. California EPS results suggest that together, the recommended policies would create $21 billion dollars in net benefits, including $7 billion in direct economic benefits and $14 billion in health and climate benefits.

Read More [[link removed]] Workforce Development CSU Trustees Delay Decision To Require Extra High School Class For Admission

California State University trustees on Wednesday voted to move forward with an independent analysis of a controversial proposal to require four years of high school math or related courses in freshman admissions.

The vote was applauded by education advocacy groups, who had called for CSU to conduct such a study before voting on whether to approve the requirement that could also be achieved through a quantitative reasoning course. Trustees originally had planned to vote Wednesday to formally authorize the requirement. They will now wait until 2022 to hold that vote.

“Any major admissions change has to be data-driven, evidence-based, and centered on equity. We are encouraged about the chancellor’s recent decision to delay the quantitative reasoning proposal and instead call for a yearlong, independent study,” said Elisha Smith Arrillaga, executive director of The Education Trust-West, an organization focused on closing achievement gaps and one of the groups leading the opposition to the math proposal.

Read More [[link removed]] Mixed Results For California's Experiment With Community Colleges Offering Bachelor's Degrees

California’s experiment of allowing community colleges to grant bachelor’s degrees shows promise of benefiting students but partnering with universities may be a better alternative.

That’s the conclusion of a state Legislative Analyst’s Office report that says there may be other more effective options to meeting students’ needs and improving the state’s workforce than the colleges awarding bachelor’s degrees.

“We found little evidence that graduates from these pilot programs were better prepared to fill these positions compared to those with other bachelor’s degrees or that pilot program graduates were helping employers fill hard-to-staff positions,” according to the report released Friday by the Legislative Analyst’s Office, known as the LAO. “The most common benefit of the pilot cited by students was the relatively low cost of attending the community college bachelor’s degree programs.”

Read More [[link removed]] California's Big Educational Dilemma

California’s largest, most important — and perhaps most troubled — governmental program is the education of nearly 6 million elementary, middle and high school students.

Federal, state and local taxpayers are spending more than $100 billion each year on the assumption, or hope, that the state’s 944 school districts, ranging in size from 400,000 students (Los Angeles Unified) to four (Lincoln Elementary) will adequately educate our kids.

Educationally, California’s academic achievement, as measured by state and federal testing, is mediocre at best. The most troubling aspect is the wide and stubborn “achievement gap” that separates more than 3 million poor and English-learner students from more affluent and English-fluent classmates.

Former Gov. Jerry Brown sponsored an overhaul of school finance aimed, he said, at narrowing the gap by giving school districts more money to be spent on poor-performing students.

Read More [[link removed]] Infrastructure and Housing California, Mired In A Housing Crisis, Rejects An Effort To Ease It

For years, a determined state senator has pushed a singular vision: a bill challenging California’s devotion to both single-family housing and motor vehicles by stripping away limits on housing density near public transit.

Now the state will have to look for other ways to relieve its relentless housing crisis. On Thursday, one day before the deadline for action on the hotly debated bill, it failed to muster majority support in a Senate vote.

In the end, in a Legislature where consensus can be elusive despite a lopsided Democratic majority, the effort drew opposition from two key constituencies: suburbanites keen on preserving their lifestyle and less affluent city dwellers seeing a Trojan horse of gentrification.

Read More [[link removed]] Why Desalination Can Help Quench California's Water Needs

If you’ve ever created a personal budget, you know that assigning your money to different investment strategies is a crucial component to meet your financial goals. When you stop dipping into your savings account each month, savings can begin to build.

Understanding why desalination is so critical to California’s water future is a lot like building a personal budget. With a changing climate, growing population and booming economy, we need to include desalination in the water supply equation to help make up an imported water deficit.

The California Natural Resources Agency, California Environmental Protection Agency and Department of Food and Agriculture recently released the Water Resilience Portfolio. In it, officials highlighted the importance of diversifying water supplies through the introduction of new water sources and preparing for new threats, including more extreme droughts.

Read More [[link removed]] Editorial and Opinion Pharma To The Rescue

The World Health Organization on Thursday declared China’s novel coronavirus a global health emergency, though governments and businesses have already been mobilizing against the contagion. And look who’s on the front lines—evil U.S. drugmakers.

The coronavirus originated late last year in Wuhan but is rapidly spreading and has infected more than 8,200 people—more than the deadly SARS virus in 2002-2003. More than 15 countries have confirmed cases, and many airlines have suspended flights to China to limit the contagion.

The good news is that the coronavirus so far appears less deadly than SARS. Immunology has also advanced by leaps and bounds, so treatments and vaccines should be available much sooner. Several U.S. drugmakers including Johnson & Johnson, Moderna Therapeutics and Inovio Pharmaceuticals are already working with the National Institutes of Health on vaccines.

Read More [[link removed]] Weaning California From Gasoline Cars Would Create A Major Economic Boom

How will we pay for it? That’s the No. 1 question that gets asked in response to bold climate solutions.

The economy vs. environment narrative has been driven by decades of well-funded persuasion that we cannot transition off of fossil fuels without damaging the economy.

In California, where so many residents walk a tightrope to make ends meet, it’s easy to assume that significant action to green our economy will make things more challenging.

We tested this notion by modeling the potential impact of increasing electric vehicle adoption to successfully cut our largest source of climate pollution: gas-powered cars and trucks.

We looked at the possible impacts from increasing electric light vehicle adoption to help achieve our 2030 and 2050 emissions reduction targets, analyzing how Californians across all income levels would be impacted.

The results of our research were stunning.

Read More [[link removed]] L.A. Politicians Killed SB 50. So What's Their Plan To Fix Housing? They Don't Have One

Once again, it appears that Los Angeles-area lawmakers have collectively blocked Senate Bill 50, the most significant housing bill in California. Even worse, they did it without offering any meaningful proposal that could reverse the state’s debilitating housing shortage.

The bill fell three votes short of passing the Senate — with nine Los Angeles-area senators either voting no or abstaining, The Times reported. For the Assembly to have the chance to amend and improve the bill, some no-vote senators will have to switch to “yes.” (We’re looking at you, Democratic Sens. Steven Bradford, Bob Archuleta and Tom Umberg.)

SB 50 is an attempt to get at the root cause of the state’s housing and homelessness crises. Namely, California has, for years, failed to construct enough housing to keep up with population growth. Part of the problem is that zoning restrictions dramatically limit the number of homes that can be built. That’s created a shortage that has driven up prices, and the brunt of the cost increase has fallen on the poorest, most vulnerable renters.

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