Web Version [link removed] | Update Preferences [link removed] CBRT in the News Backers Of California Tax Initiative To Repeal Part Of Prop. 13 Submit 1.7 Million Signatures

Supporters of a proposed amendment to the California Constitution that would raise property taxes on some businesses by up to $12 billion a year announced Thursday they have collected more than 1.7 million signatures, all but assuring it will appear on the November ballot.

The Schools & Communities First campaign says it is the most signatures ever collected for a ballot initiative. The campaign needs 997,139 verified signatures to qualify the amendment for the ballot. But by turning in so may signatures, it nearly guarantees the amendment will be qualified.

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"It’s clear that the public employee unions behind the largest property tax increase in state history are willing to spend and do whatever it takes to raise the cost of living for working families,” said Rob Lapsley, co-chairman of Californians to Save Prop 13 and Stop Higher Property Taxes, a group that is opposed to the proposed amendment.

Read More [[link removed]] Prop. 13 Reform Backers Submit Signatures For Revised Measure In November

Backers of the “split roll” property tax measure on Thursday submitted almost 2 million signatures — nearly twice the number required — to qualify a revised version of the initiative for the November ballot.

Schools and Community First, a coalition of education, labor and philanthropic organizations, announced submitting 1.74 million signatures, far above the 997,139 signatures needed by mid-April to qualify for the November ballot. The group aims to alter the state’s Proposition 13, which governs how properties in the state are taxed, by creating a so-called “split roll.”

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“It’s clear that the public employee unions behind the largest property tax increase in state history are willing to spend and do whatever it takes to raise the cost of living for working families,” Rob Lapsley, president of the California Business Roundtable and co-chair of Californians to Save Prop. 13, said in a statement Thursday.

Read More [[link removed]] Backers Of California Proposition 13 Revision Turn In Ballot Signatures

Backers of an initiative to revise California’s Proposition 13 and allow property taxes on large commercial property to rise more quickly submitted 1.7 million signatures Thursday to get the measure on the November ballot.

The signatures going to county registrars’ offices across the state actually are for a property tax measure revising one that is already on the ballot. The revised version makes technical fixes to the original and adds provisions supporters believe will make it more attractive to voters.

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“It’s clear that the public employee unions ... are willing to spend and do whatever it takes to raise the cost of living for working families,” said Rob Lapsley, president of the California Business Roundtable.

Read More [[link removed]] POLITICO California Playbook: April 3, 2020

‘SPLIT ROLL‘ DUST-UP: OPPONENTS’ REACTION coming in to the announcement by Schools and Communities First — the coalition of education and labor groups — that they’ve collected 1.7 million signatures to get the “split roll” measure to revise Prop. 13 on the November ballot, as reported by POLITICO this week:

From California Business Roundtable president Rob Lapsley: “After spending more than $3 million to qualify their first flawed property tax hike, proponents have spent millions more to qualify a second, equally flawed measure. It’s clear that the public employee unions behind the largest property tax increase in state history are willing to spend and do whatever it takes to raise the cost of living for working families.”

Read More [[link removed]] Business Climate and Job Creation U.S. Employers Cut 701,000 Jobs In March

U.S. employers shed more jobs in March than in any month since the darkest days of the 2007-2009 recession—the start of a much deeper labor-market collapse under way due to the coronavirus pandemic.

Payrolls decreased by 701,000 jobs in March, the Labor Department said Friday. It was the largest monthly decline since March 2009, the worst month for job losses during the last recession. More than half those jobs lost were at restaurants and bars, among the first businesses to close because of efforts to contain the pandemic.

The unemployment rate for March rose to 4.4% from 3.5% in February, the largest one-month increase in the rate since January 1975.

Read More [[link removed]] Record Unemployment Claims Unlikely To Show Up In Friday’s March Jobs Report

Record-setting unemployment-insurance claims triggered by the coronavirus pandemic that were filed in the last two weeks are unlikely to materialize in Friday’s March unemployment report.

That is because the government uses different time frames and methods for gathering data for the separate reports. The Labor Department releases a national compilation of unemployment-insurance claims for the prior week every Thursday, giving a fairly quick read on fast-moving changes to the U.S. labor market.

The monthly unemployment report, a separate undertaking, offers a more comprehensive view of the labor market, but the timing of the surveys for that data preceded the virus’s widespread impact on the economy.

A survey of households that determines the unemployment rate asked Americans if they reported to work during the week of March 8-14. Many coronavirus-related shutdowns occurred the following week.

Read More [[link removed]] U.S. Service-Sector Index Suffers Record Decline

The U.S. services sector suffered a record fall in activity in March amid efforts to slow the spread of the coronavirus—and analysts warned that subsequent months could show further declines.

Private data firm IHS Markit said on Friday its U.S. services index—a survey-based measure of activity in industries such as communications, finance and transportation—saw its steepest one-month decline since the survey began a decade ago.

The index fell to a seasonally adjusted 39.8 in March, down from 49.4 in February. The survey data was collected between March 12 and March 27, before some state-lockdown orders were in place.

Data in the coming months could be worse, said Chris Williamson, chief business economist at IHS Markit.

“With more measures to fight the virus outbreak being taken, this decline will likely be eclipsed by what we see in the second quarter,” he said. “More nonessential businesses are being forced to close, some are going bust, and lockdowns are leading to vastly reduced consumer spending.”

Read More [[link removed]] Companies Try To Preserve Jobs By Cutting Pay Amid Coronavirus Crisis

As the coronavirus outbreak spreads, many workers’ paychecks are shrinking.

A growing number of companies are trying to spread the financial pain as they contend with government-ordered lockdowns, dwindling production orders and closed stores, restaurants and plants. They reason that keeping on some workers at reduced pay can ease fixed costs and stave off greater job losses—while keeping talent at the ready if the economy and hiring market recover sooner than later. For some, it is a last resort to keep a skeleton crew employed while others are furloughed or laid off.

Occidental Petroleum Corp. said last week it would temporarily cut the salaries of its U.S. employees by up to 30%, while Cheesecake Factory Inc. reduced pay for corporate and bakery workers by up to 20%. Office furniture maker Steelcase Inc. said some U.S. salaried workers’ base pay and hours would temporarily be halved, with higher-paid workers shouldering bigger paycheck cuts.

Read More [[link removed]] Who's Hiring And Who's Firing: How Firms Are Reacting To The Coronavirus

As the coronavirus disrupts normal life across the U.S., companies are making sudden and major changes to their workforces, including massive cutting and hiring of jobs. The Wall Street Journal is tracking the responses from the largest companies. Below is an updating list, with links for more information.

Read More [[link removed]] The US Box Office Made Just $5K In The Last Week Of March

The outlook is grim for the movie industry at the moment, with cinema closures and postponed movie releases causing seismic shifts in the movie calendar. Now we know the box office impact of those measures to help stem the spread of the coronavirus.

From March 20 to 26, the US box office made just $5K, according to Box Office Mojo (via Reddit user u/TheDankestMofo). The same time last year, that number was over $200 million.

The low figures make sense. By March 19, virtually all cinemas had shuttered in North America.

For the first quarter of 2020, the US box office dropped by 25% compared to last year, according to The Hollywood Reporter. That's a drop of $600 million.

Read More [[link removed]] 'It's Not Enough'--Pelosi Wants More Small Business Loans, Direct Payments And Unemployment Benefits

House Speaker Nancy Pelosi on Friday called for another bill to expand the provisions in the $2 trillion package Congress passed last week to limit the economic devastation from the coronavirus pandemic.

“Right now, I think that we have a good model. It was bipartisan, it was signed by the president. But it’s not enough,” Pelosi told CNBC’s Jim Cramer after the government employment report showed the U.S. economy lost 701,000 jobs in early March as businesses started to shut down.

In the interview on “Squawk on the Street,” the California Democrat said she wants more direct payments to individuals, beyond the chunks of up to $1,200 lawmakers just approved. She pushed for more small business loan funding on top of the $350 billion in the last law, and to extend beefed up unemployment insurance for two more months.

Read More [[link removed]] Nearly Half Of States Don't Have Enough Funds To Pay All Those Unemployment Claims

Even as states are struggling to process a record number of jobless claims, experts warn that even greater challenges loom: A Labor Department report found that, as recently as February, unemployment insurance trust funds in nearly half the states were underfunded.

The staggering 6.6 million jobless claims filed last week call into question even the best-funded states' ability to pay unemployment benefits over a sustained period, said Howard Gleckman, a senior fellow at the nonpartisan Tax Policy Center, making it likelier than not that more federal intervention will be needed.

"We're talking about 10 million people filing for unemployment insurance in two weeks. Nobody is prepared for that," he said. "That's unprecedented."

Read More [[link removed]] Coronavirus Economic Effects Might Last Decades, UC Davis Research Suggests

The economy could be suffering the effects of the coronavirus for decades, suggest economists at the University of California, Davis, who researched the financial effects of pandemics dating back to the 14th century.

“If the trends play out similarly in the wake of COVID-19 — adjusted to the scale of this pandemic — the global economic trajectory will be very different than was expected only a few weeks ago,” the authors wrote in a working paper published this week. “Pandemics are followed by sustained periods — over multiple decades — of depressed investment opportunities.”

Òscar Jordà, Sanjay Singh and Alan M. Taylor, all professors in the Department of Economics, concluded in their paper that the pandemic will likely depress real rates of return, lead to small increases in real wages and weigh on investment. A real rate of return is an annual percentage of profit earned on an investment, adjusted for inflation.

Read More [[link removed]] The State Of California's Economy

In January, California’s governor, Gavin Newsom, unveiled his $222.2-billion budget for the 2020-21 fiscal year for his state. “It’s often said that budgets are statements of values,” Newsom noted in his budget letter to the California State Legislature. “In America’s most populous and productive state, our state budget is more than that. It is a blueprint for a better quality of life and brighter future for millions of individuals striving and succeeding together—in pursuit of their own version of the California Dream.”

But just a day before the budget was disclosed, the Legislature’s budget analyst issued an assessment of California’s fiscal health, which contained some clear warnings. “Data provides a mixed message about the condition of the state’s economy,” the bulletin said. “Some signs point to a weakening economy, while others continue to signal growth. Overall, while not imminent, the risk of a slowdown in the coming year appears higher than it has been for some time.”

Indeed, it is perhaps this duality that represents one of the state’s greatest challenges: while some indicators suggest that it is roaring ahead, others signal caution ahead. California is the world’s fifth-largest economy, having surpassed the United Kingdom in 2018. Today, it is among the United States’ most progressive states, in which Democrats control all three branches of government and in which taxes and regulations are aplenty—which in turn helps to fund much-needed social programmes. And that $3-trillion economy can boast of record low unemployment, spectacular growth in household income that has easily outstripped the national average over the last decade and being the home of many of the world’s most valuable companies, including Apple, Google and Facebook.

Read More [[link removed]] Double-Digit Jobless Rate Looms In California

A grim spike in statewide jobless claims unleashed by the economic fallout of the coronavirus could plunge California into double-digit unemployment rates last seen during 2012 in the aftermath of the Great Recession.

Gov. Gavin Newsom has estimated, based on daily tracking by the state government, that California has received since roughly mid-March about 1.6 million claims for unemployment insurance, which could translate into a jobless rate that tops 12 percent.

“We are not at the end of this at all,” said Jeffrey Michael, director of the Stockton-based Business Forecasting Center at the University of the Pacific. “I expect the unemployment rate to exceed the peak of what we saw during the Great Recession.”

The implications of the math are profound, but the estimates on how the jobless rate might look this spring are based on economic data released by the state’s Employment Development Department, coupled with some assumptions about the California job market.

Read More [[link removed]] California Gives Small Businesses Tax Extension Amid Pandemic

Small businesses in California will have an extra year to pay up to $50,000 in sales and use taxes to the state. The extension applies to businesses with less than $5 million in taxable sales.

Gov. Gavin Newsom announced the reprieve during his daily coronavirus briefing on Thursday. Under the program, small businesses that qualify would be able to sign for for a 12-month, interest-free payment plan.

Newsom said nearly half of all California private-sector workers are employed by small businesses.

“People that make a go of it, put everything on the line, take risks in ways large and small," he said. "So often we take them for granted, even in the best of times. Right now, they have been devastated.”

Read More [[link removed]] UC, The State's 3rd Largest Employer, Will Not Do Layoffs Through June Amid Coronavirus Crisis

The University of California, whose 227,000-member workforce is the third largest in the state, will not lay off any career employee through June 30 because of the coronavirus emergency, despite mounting financial uncertainty facing campuses, UC President Janet Napolitano announced Thursday.

Napolitano also had a message for the state’s employers: Avoid layoffs, and keep your workers paid for as long as possible.

“We are keenly aware of the health concerns and economic uncertainty weighing on the entire University community,” Napolitano and the system’s 10 campus chancellors said in letter to the UC community. “As we face the personal and professional challenges of the day, we are committed to doing all we can to alleviate concerns about income or job stability during this time.”

Read More [[link removed]] Energy and Climate Change Trump Administration Slashes Required Annual Fuel Economy Increase To 1.5%, Potentially Harming EV Market, Advocates Say

Trump Administration officials say the Safer Affordable Fuel-Efficient (SAFE) rules are intended to make vehicles safer and more affordable while loosening annual efficiency and emissions standards automakers need to meet, on average.

The NHTSA and EPA estimate the rule will reduce the sticker price of new cars by about $1,000, while stressing consumers can still, by choice, buy more efficient vehicles.

"If a consumer wishes to purchase a hybrid or an electric vehicle or another vehicle that's highly fuel efficient, they will still be able to do so," said Owen. "What this rule does is recognize that consumers have different preferences."

Market advocates praised the new rule as a win for consumers and automakers.

Read More [[link removed]] Trump's War On Solar

Solar power’s great leap forward over the past decade has been stunning. Solar energy can now supply nearly 14 million homes in the U.S., up from fewer than 800,000 in 2010, and the price for solar generation has plunged by 90 percent. Over the same time, our solar workforce — primarily installers — has more than doubled, to nearly 250,000. Southern states like Florida, South Carolina, and Texas are starting to realize their solar potential, ranking behind only California in new installed capacity last year, when solar accounted for nearly 40 percent of new electrical production nationwide. “Today, solar is cheaper than pretty much any other power technology you can install,” says Jigar Shah, the founder of Sun-Edison, who now helms the green-investment firm Generate Capital.

Solar’s growth is now endangered by the economic slowdown posed by the coronavirus. But the industry faced headwinds from the White House even before the crisis hit. President Trump has used the powers of his presidency to champion fossil fuels — his latest budget request includes $500 million for clean-coal research — while mocking climate change and pulling America out of the Paris Agreement. When it comes to renewables, Trump habitually blasts “ugly” windmills, which he falsely claimed cause cancer. And he’s used high tariffs and his budget authority to slow the deployment of solar. The administration has created “speed bumps,” says Abigail Ross Hopper, president of the Solar Energy Industries Association (SEIA). California’s energy commissioner prefers a different metaphor: “It’s a great example,” says David Hochschild, “of us shooting ourselves in the foot.”

Read More [[link removed]] Coronavirus, Cheap Natural Gas And Building Electrification

Over the past year, a movement to electrify buildings has come fast and furious, pushing both residential and commercial construction away from natural gas appliances.

And in the last few weeks, the coronavirus disruption came faster than anyone anticipated. With the pandemic came an economic crash and cascading energy impacts, including a spectacular drop in natural gas prices.

What will happen as these two forces collide?

While the clean energy transition is pulled by economics, the building electrification movement is being pushed by policy.

"In the end, there are all these people who think that market forces are what’s causing stuff, and that’s just not true," explained VERGE Energy adviser and Generate Capital co-founder Jigar Shah in a recent phone interview. "Market forces are what embolden and inspire the policymakers, but in the end, what gets stuff done is policy."

Read More [[link removed]] Workforce Development Growing California's Health Workforce Gains Added Priority And New Partnerships

For several years California’s healthcare industry has been sounding the alarms about the shortage of workers. That need has become more urgent as more Californians test positive for COVID-19, the Coronavirus. Futuro Health, a new non-profit aiming to train the largest network of certified healthcare workers, has announced new partnerships to address the pressing need to fill that workforce gap.

“The pandemic is bringing to light the importance of the health workforce,” said Futuro Health CEO Van Ton-Quinlivan. “With our partners, we will work to fortify the care teams at the front line and help redeploy talent sidelined by the pandemic.”

Futuro Health was formed through a new partnership between Kaiser Permanent and Service Employees International Union-United Healthcare Workers West (SEIU-UHW) earlier this year. Its aim is to graduate 10,000 new licensed, credentialed allied health care workers in California over the next four years through an affordable education-to-work solution.

Read More [[link removed]] California School Board Meetings Go Virtual, But Not Without Obstacles

While Californians are ordered to stay at home to prevent the spread of the coronavirus, the work of school boards must go on.

To make it possible for boards to carry out their business during the coronavirus crisis, Gov. Gavin Newsom issued an executive order last month allowing elected local government officials throughout the state — including school boards, city councils and county boards of supervisors — to conduct all meetings virtually. A key requirement: Governing bodies must provide options for the public to view and participate in meetings.

The shift toward virtual meetings, however, comes with challenges, as school districts and other agencies across the state are beginning to learn.

Read More [[link removed]] Forget Summer School: California Districts Facing Fiscal Nightmare May Take Years To Recover

With schools across California expected to remain closed until the fall, district officials this week started looking toward an ominous future, one filled with fiscal calamity and academic losses from the fallout of the coronavirus crisis.

It could take years for districts to recover, they said.

Without a significant increase in state or federal funding, schools across the state could face emergency layoffs and severe budget cuts next year, said Bill Clark, Contra Costa County Office of Education deputy superintendent.

Forget summer school or an extended academic year to help kids catch back up.

“The schools would be eager to do that and willing to do that,” Clark said. “It’s just not going to be fiscally possible.”

Read More [[link removed]] Infrastructure and Housing Following California's Water As Another Dry Spell Looms

What does a Central Valley almond farmer have in common with a San Diego homeowner? The answer is simple: Water. More specifically, the amount of water they need to sustain their respective lifestyles — which is a lot.

California, a state with a long, roller-coaster history of droughts and battles over water, faces yet another dry spell as the 2020s begin. At the end of last year, the looming drought had been largely washed away, more than 90 percent of the state was declared drought free. Then another dry spell, then some March rains.

But there was no dramatic “March miracle.” Three-fourths of California remained abnormally dry, and a small piece of California along the Oregon line was in a “severe drought,” according to a March 24 government report. This week, the depth of the Sierra snow pack, a crucial indicator of California’s water supply, was below normal.

Read More [[link removed]] Sierra Snowpack: What The Survey Found In What's Usually The Peak Week

California’s Sierra Nevada snowpack is below normal for spring and the water content around the state is only about half the April average, as much of California struggles under persistent drought, authorities said.

A manual survey of snow Wednesday at Echo Summit found the water contained in the snowpack was equal to 16½ inches, or about 66% of the April average for that location.

Statewide, measurements from 130 electronic snow sensors showed a water equivalent of 15.2 inches, or 53% of the April average, the Department of Water Resources said in a statement.

The National Weather Service said a pair of storms moving in over the weekend could bring more snow to the Sierra.

Read More [[link removed]] We’re Not Paying Rent: Here’s Why

While there has long been a housing crisis in Oakland — and throughout California– COVID-19 makes the issue particularly dire because so many people are out of work and people are being told to stay at home to combat the spread of the virus.

In California, by conservative estimates, there are over 150,000 people who are homeless, 1.3 million people who rent with incomes at or below the poverty line, three million people who pay more than 30-percent of their income on rent, and 1.5 million people who pay more than 50 percent. In the last ten years, average rents in California have doubled. Any unexpected emergency could quickly lead to people losing their homes, whether they become unable to afford a rent payment or a mortgage payment. There also are estimates of at least 108,000 people in California who are sleeping outdoors and another 43,000 in shelters, though some experts believe both of those figures are drastically underestimated.

And all of that was true before COVID-19 began devastating people’s lives. A record 3.3 million filed for unemployment so far this month as large parts of the economy in the United States and throughout California are shut down. And the unemployment numbers are only going to rise. The “jobless claims confirm that the United States is in the thralls of a catastrophic unemployment crisis, the likes of which we haven’t seen since the Great Depression,” said Andrew Stettner, senior fellow at the Century Foundation think tank. “This represents the single worst one-day piece of labor market news in America’s history.”

Read More [[link removed]] City Leaders Rally Around A Fix: Cancel The Rent

April 1 means nothing to a virus, but it has worked like a magnifying glass to concentrate the economic sting of the Covid-19 shutdown on out-of-work residents and rent-burdened families. As millions of Americans struggle to make rent — or sacrifice other necessities to do so — a growing cohort of local leaders around the country are questioning the steps taken by lawmakers to protect renters. Representatives from city councils in nine major U.S. cities, including several dealing with profound health crises due to the coronavirus pandemic, used the first day of the month to call on lawmakers to cancel rent obligations altogether.

In an intra-city press conference on April 1, officials in Boston, Los Angeles, Minneapolis, New Orleans, New York City, Philadelphia, San Francisco, Seattle, and St. Paul, Minnesota, said that Congress and state governors need to cancel rent payments now, echoing the urgent demands of frustrated tenants and activists in those cities and beyond. Apartment residents owe roughly $22 billion in rent, according to CoStar, but nobody knows how much renters can actually afford to pay right now.

Read More [[link removed]] Editorial and Opinion Californians Realize It May Take Three Months Or Longer Before Life Gets Back To Normal, Poll Shows

Almost half of Californians expect it to take three or more months before life is back to normal in the wake of the coronavirus pandemic, and a vast majority trust Gov. Gavin Newsom to handle the crisis.

That’s the message Californians sent in a statewide poll conducted by Public Policy Polling and commissioned by Strother Nuckels Strategies, Democratic strategists based in Washington, D.C., and Sacramento. The survey shows 90% of Californians say their neighbors are taking the virus seriously.

The poll, which surveyed 962 California voters from March 27-29 and has a margin of error of 3.5%, takes a broad snapshot of sentiments across the state on a wide range of issues from coronavirus to taxes to the presidential campaign.

In midst of the crisis, 83% of Californians approve of how Newsom is handling the state’s approach to dealing with the coronavirus. Even supporters of President Donald Trump give the governor high marks with 65% approving of his crisis management.

Read More [[link removed]] In California, A Sign The Coronavirus Crisis Won’t ‘Go to Waste’

“You never want a serious crisis to go to waste.”

That was what Rahm Emanuel, a former mayor of Chicago who also served as chief of staff for President Barack Obama, said about the 2007-2008 financial crash, viewing that moment as an opportunity to pass legislation that likely otherwise would not be seriously considered.

“[W]hat I mean by that, it’s an opportunity to do things you think you could not do before,” Emanuel explained at the time.

Fast-forward to today. California Gov. Gavin Newsom, a fellow Democrat, is taking Emanuel’s admonition to heart.

When asked by reporters on Wednesday whether the coronavirus pandemic will usher in a new “progressive era,” Newsom said:

I think it’s an opportunity anew for both parties to come together and meet this moment and really start to think more systemically, not situationally.

Read More [[link removed]] California Business Roundtable 1301 I Street, Sacramento, CA 95814 916.553.4093 | [[link removed]] Web Version [link removed] | Update Preferences [link removed] | Unsubscribe [link removed]