Web Version [link removed] | Update Preferences [link removed] CBRT in the News California Will Not Delay Minimum-Wage Jump To $14 An Hour In 2021

Gov. Gavin Newsom announced Wednesday the state would keep in place a planned jump in the state’s minimum wage to $14 an hour next year for larger businesses, saying it would help hard hit lower-income workers even as many companies struggle to survive amid the coronavirus crisis.

The Democratic governor had the authority to suspend the scheduled increase given the state’s troubled economy. Since mid-March, California has processed nearly 6.8 million claims for unemployment as many businesses, especially restaurants and retailers, have been idled or forced to cut back operations while contending with government rules intended to limit the spread of the virus.

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Rob Lapsley, president of the California Business Roundtable, said in a statement that the governor’s decision “will only put more pressure on small businesses as they face unprecedented uncertainty.”

“Not only do most not know if or when they will be able to reopen, but they are also facing the potential of the largest property tax increase in state history should Proposition 15 pass in November,” Lapsley said. Those pressures “will only drive more businesses to close their doors for good and put even more residents out of work permanently.”

Read More [[link removed]] Coronavirus Pandemic Puts A Spotlight On Stockton's Guaranteed Income Experiment

If there was ever a good time to convince people guaranteed income can make a difference, Stockton Mayor Michael Tubbs figured it’d be in the middle of a pandemic that is taking a heavier toll in poor neighborhoods and among Black and Latinx communities. So Tubbs, whose city has been at the heart of one of the nation’s few experiments with free cash payments for more than a year, launched Mayors for Guaranteed Income last month to push for federal policy. So far, the mayors of Oakland, Los Angeles, Compton, Atlanta and 13 others have signed on.

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With guaranteed income, however, not everyone necessarily receives money. In Stockton, only residents living in neighborhoods with a median income below the city’s $46,033 a year were eligible. In that way, Samra said guaranteed income pilots are a way to offer reparations to the communities most affected by institutional racism. Within Stockton’s poorer neighborhoods, recipients were chosen randomly.

Many oppose guaranteed income projects, saying they deter people from working. Rob Lapsley, president of the California Business Roundtable,called it an “easy way out” of addressing existing problems with California’s complex web of public benefits, which he says is inefficient.

Aside from a few who left a second or third job, Samra said there’s been no indication the monthly payments have stopped recipients from working, a trend she says is reinforced by existing research. But she recognizes guaranteed income isn’t a silver bullet. “It has to be coupled with other social safety nets like fair housing practices,” she said.

Read More [[link removed]] Taking Care Of Workers; What About Businesses?

Governor Gavin Newsom announced additional worker protection proposals on Friday to confront the spread of the coronavirus. While these additional protections along with pending legislation the returning legislature will consider are aimed at offering benefits for workers, not enough has been offered for employers who struggle to keep their businesses open.

Among Newsom’s new initiatives are offering help to essential workers who are considered vulnerable because of the nature of their work or the circumstances in which they work. The governor highlighted California farmworkers who toil in the fields and often return to substandard living conditions. Newsom offered to improve housing for farmworkers and said the state would provide hotel rooms for those farmworkers recovering from Covid-19.

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California Business Roundtable president Rob Lapsley, in responding to the governor’s announcement, said in a statement, “there should be liability relief for employers who adhere and exceed the guidelines in the new Employer Safety Handbook. Moreover, strategic enforcement of labor laws must include clear provisions so that corrective actions can be made before punitive actions are imposed.”

It would be extremely important for businesses if the legislature creates a “right to cure” law so businesses can take care of minor errors before being overwhelmed by legal action. If such an action is taken, employers will know that legislators’ concern is not just for workers.

Read More [[link removed]] California High Court Upholds Limits To Public Pension Benefits

The California Supreme Court upheld provisions of a law Thursday that stops public employees from boosting their salaries before retirement with unused vacation days and other leave.

In a 7-0 ruling, the state high court said “the legislature must have the authority, discretion, and flexibility” to address problems in state and local pension systems without being required to extend the life of loopholes and opportunities for abuse for the duration of the careers of current employees.

At issue were provisions in the Public Employees’ Pension Reform Act (PEPRA) of 2013 that stopped retirement systems from counting money employees nearing retirement get by cashing out unused vacation and other leave as compensation when calculating pension benefits.

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The California Business Roundtable, a group of leading businesses in the state, had asked the high court to revise the California rule, but it declined. That was seen by some as one upside for the state’s public workers in what was otherwise a loss.

“There are positive aspects in that the court upheld the California rule and heightened scrutiny for any modification of pension benefits that are contemplated to save money,” Mastagni said.

Read More [[link removed]] Governor’s Decision On Minimum Wage Another Blow To Small Business

The California Business Roundtable supported increased funding for the CalEITC funding last year and our research on upward economic mobility shows it is a critical anti-poverty tool. But programs like the EITC are only effective when people are at work. Due to the governor’s decision to allow for the minimum wage increase, despite the state having met the economic conditions that would allow it to be temporarily suspended, fewer Californians will come back to work when businesses are allowed to re-open.

Offramps to suspend increases in the minimum wage were put in place specifically for economic crises like the one we’re in today.

This decision was made assuming businesses, especially restaurants and retailers, will be open in January. The governor’s announcement, however, will only put more pressure on small businesses as they face unprecedented uncertainty.

Read More [[link removed]] Commercial And Industrial Properties Overdue Payment

Pandemic or not, in less than four months Californians will face two monumental choices at the ballot box. One will help determine the presidency for the next four years; another could begin to repair 40 years of economic damage self-inflicted upon the state’s education system.

In June the Schools and Communities First campaign submitted some 1.7 million voter signatures required to place “The California Schools and Local Communities Funding Act of 2020” on the November 2020 ballot.

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These groups are opposed by the California Business Roundtable, which has vowed that “we will continue fighting to keep property tax rates predictable by protecting Prop. 13 and the certainty it provides California residents and businesses already struggling to make ends meet in our ongoing affordability crisis.” Major funding for the opposition comes from the California Business Roundtable, the California Taxpayers Association and BNSF Railroad, which owns vast tracts of land for their rights of way.

Other Prop. 15 opponents include the California Chamber of Commerce and the Howard Jarvis Taxpayers Association, named for the one-time Senate and Los Angeles mayoral candidate and California Apartment Owners Association lobbyist who was the face of Prop. 13 in the mid-1970s. He appeared regularly in the media decrying “the moochers and loafers” in government who squander property tax dollars.

Read More [[link removed]] Solar Industry Wants Fix To Save California Property Tax Break

The solar energy industry in California, eager to hold on to a valuable tax break, wants to be carved out of a commercial property tax hike that voters will consider in November. Opponents say a proposed deal with lawmakers, however, is an unconstitutional bailout for special interests.

The debate comes to a head Monday when a bill crafted by the solar industry, introduced in June, is heard in the Assembly Revenue and Taxation Committee. Without the bill, the property tax exclusion will end if voters approve the ballot measure and commercial solar systems would be assessed each year starting in 2022.

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Environmental groups including the Natural Resources Defense Council and the Coalition for Clean Air also support the solar bill, saying in a letter to lawmakers it is crucial to maintaining the state’s progress toward clean energy.

Those backing the bill now will need to defend it later in court, California Business Roundtable President Robert C. Lapsley told Bloomberg Tax. The nonpartisan group, which represents executives from major companies in the state, opposes both the solar bill and the ballot measure. The bill is “a special interest bailout and unconstitutional,” the roundtable said in a letter to lawmakers.

Read More [[link removed]] Business Climate and Job Creation Consumer Spending Rose 5.6% In June

U.S. consumers increased spending a solid 5.6% in June but appear to have pulled back since then, restraining the economy’s recovery from the coronavirus outbreak.

Spending rose for the second consecutive month after steep declines in the spring during widespread lockdowns to contain the pandemic, the Commerce Department said Friday. Consumers shelled out more for clothing, health care and restaurant visits in June compared to the prior month—categories that had been particularly hard hit earlier in the pandemic.

Meanwhile, household income fell 1.1% in June, as layoffs remained high and the effects of federal stimulus payments eased. Income—which includes salaries, government aid and investment returns—influences Americans’ willingness and ability to spend.

Household spending reflects two-thirds of economic demand in the U.S. Americans’ spending will help determine the economy’s path in the coming weeks and months. A sharp drop in spending—tied to business closures and fears of the virus—was the biggest reason the U.S. economy contracted at a record rate in the second quarter.

Read More [[link removed]] U.S. Economy Contracted At Record Rate Last Quarter; Jobless Claims Rise To 1.43 Million

The economy contracted at a record rate last quarter and July setbacks for the jobs market added to signs of a slowing recovery as the country faces a summer surge in coronavirus infections.

The Commerce Department said U.S. gross domestic product—the value of all goods and services produced across the economy—fell at a seasonally and inflation adjusted 32.9% annual rate in the second quarter, or a 9.5% drop compared with the prior quarter. The figures were the steepest declines in more than 70 years of record-keeping.

Meanwhile, the Labor Department’s latest figures on unemployment benefits suggested the jobs market was faltering. The number of workers applying for initial unemployment benefits rose for the second straight week—by a seasonally adjusted 12,000 to 1.43 million in the week ended July 25—after nearly four months of decreases following a late-March peak. The number of people receiving unemployment benefits increased by 867,000 to 17 million in the week ended July 18, ending a downward trend that started in mid-May.

“We’re expecting a longer and slower climb from the bottom unfortunately, and here the virus will dictate the terms,” Beth Ann Bovino, U.S. chief economist at S&P Global Ratings, said.

Read More [[link removed]] California's Setbacks In Reopening Could Burden The U.S. Economy

At Bank of the West in San Francisco, Scott Anderson, the chief economist, is watching the jobless claims data for clues about the direction of California’s economy.

New claims for state unemployment benefits fell by more 40,000 last week, not accounting for seasonal adjustments, but Mr. Anderson said, “I’d be careful about reading too much into that decline.” The number of Californians collecting unemployment has been rising, he noted, “and I think we could definitely see an increase in the weeks ahead, given the closures across the state.”

California is not only the nation’s most populous state, Mr. Anderson noted, but also accounts for about 14 percent of the country’s economic output.

Like many states, it has been pulled in opposite directions. A resurgence in coronavirus cases forced many businesses that had reopened to close for a second time in early July. Bars, gyms, indoor dining and family entertainment centers were affected in many parts of California, a move that came as a surprise to proprietors who had high hopes when they reopened their establishments.

Read More [[link removed]] Fed Maintains Stimulus Commitment As Economic Outlook Dims

Federal Reserve Chairman Jerome Powell said on Wednesday the U.S. economy faces a long road to recovery that will require greater public vigilance to prevent the spread of the coronavirus pandemic and more spending from Congress and the White House.

Fed officials didn’t announce new policy steps at the conclusion of their two-day meeting Wednesday and reiterated their pledge to maintain aggressive measures to support the economy.

“The path of the economy is going to depend to a very high extent on the course of the virus, on the measures that we take to keep it in check,” Mr. Powell said at a news conference. “We can’t say it enough.”

The economic backdrop has weakened somewhat since the Fed’s rate-setting committee last met seven weeks ago. After surprising rebounds in employment in May and June, many states have seen significant increases in virus infections, leading to renewed curbs on certain commercial activities and a dampening of consumer confidence.

Read More [[link removed]] Is $600 A Week In Extra Unemployment Aid Deterring People From Seeking Work?

Disagreement in Congress over whether to scale back unemployment aid for workers laid off during the coronavirus pandemic centers on a key question: Are the extra weekly payments of $600 keeping people from returning to work?

Senate Republicans this week proposed reducing the payments to $200 a week, saying the larger payments are keeping workers on the sidelines because many receive more in jobless aid than they did working. Senate Democrats have proposed keeping the $600 a week payments temporarily and shrinking them as the economy improves, saying workers need more support while the pandemic continues to hobble the U.S. job market.

Many economists who have studied the benefits say they so far don’t see evidence in labor market data that the payments are affecting the rate at which people are returning to work during the pandemic.

A study published this month by Yale University economists found that workers with more-generous jobless benefits didn’t experience larger employment declines when the benefits took effect and that they have returned to their previous jobs at similar rates as others.

Read More [[link removed]] New Federal Unemployment Benefits Could Take As Long As 20 Weeks To Process, California EDD Head Says

Amid a testy oversight hearing Thursday afternoon, Employment Development Department head Sharon Hilliard said California could take as long as 20 weeks to process any additional federal employment benefits once they come.

That’s because of what Hilliard calls an “antiquated” system for processing these claims, one that hasn’t yet been modernized.

The exact details of the federal benefits have not yet solidified in Congress. But as the original $600 weekly unemployment supplement introduced under the CARES Act nears expiration — July 31 is the last day — millions of Californians who depended on the extra financial help could soon face budget hardship.

To Assemblyman Jay Obernolte, R-Big Bear Lake, the potential further delay is unacceptable.

“I think that the level of outrage that you’re hearing today would be nothing compared to the level of outrage if we tell the people of California it would take almost half a year to process their unemployment insurance supplement,” he told Hilliard.

Read More [[link removed]] Wells Fargo Sold Assets To Stay Under Fed Asset Cap As Markets Lurched

Wells Fargo & Co. unloaded hundreds of millions of dollars of assets during this spring’s market collapse to stay out of trouble with the Federal Reserve.

The Fed put limits on Wells Fargo’s size as punishment for its 2016 fake-account scandal. Loans the bank made to customers drawing on credit lines in the pandemic’s early days increased its size, and the bank scrambled to sell assets to get back in line, according to people familiar with the matter.

One example: The lender sold assets tied to financing that helps blue-chip companies, including Walmart Inc., manage their cash flow and pay their suppliers, the people said. Wells Fargo ramped up its sales of these assets more than usual in the second half of March and early April during the financial markets’ wildest days this year, amid the coronavirus pandemic, some of the people said.

Read More [[link removed]] China’s Manufacturing Recovery Picks Up The Pace

An official gauge of China’s factory activity expanded at a faster pace in July, as improving demand inside and outside the country kept the recovery of the world’s second-largest economy on track.

China’s official manufacturing purchasing managers index rose to 51.1 in July from 50.9 in June, the National Bureau of Statistics said Friday, beating economists’ expectations and marking the fifth consecutive month that the closely watched measure of China’s factory activity topped the 50 mark that separates expansion from contraction.

China’s official nonmanufacturing purchasing managers index, a gauge of business activity outside the factory floor, remained in positive territory, thanks to robust activity in the property and investment sectors, fueling construction activity.

Even so, the overall nonmanufacturing index slipped to 54.2 in July, compared with 54.4 in June, the statistics bureau said, indicating a slight deceleration in the recovery for China’s service sector as heavy floods hit swaths of central and southern China.

Read More [[link removed]] The $600 Unemployment Boost Has Ended. What's Next?

With negotiations between Democrats and Republicans at an impasse, millions relying on that aid are in the dark as to what comes next.

Meanwhile, the economic recovery appears to have stalled or reversed, coronavirus infections are surging, eviction protections have expired for many and plans to reopen schools remain in flux, potentially requiring many parents to forgo work for child-care duties.

“It’s not clear we’re on a very clear trajectory out of this economic downturn,” said Beth Akers, a senior fellow at the Manhattan Institute for Policy Research and a former staff economist on President George W. Bush’s Council of Economic Advisors. “So I’m very concerned for when we take away the $600 from unemployed people.”

Americans are guaranteed to lose the weekly subsidy, at least temporarily, after Friday. The Senate adjourned for the weekend without an agreement to extend or replace it after July 31.

Read More [[link removed]] Huge Coronavirus GDP Collapse Equals $17,000 Per Southern California Household

The historic, coronavirus-linked drop in the nation’s gross domestic product translates to economic destruction of $17,000 per Southern California household, according to one analysis.

The GDP math tracking the national and regional economy can be daunting to understand even without an unprecedented wallop from business shutdowns designed to fight the COVID-19 pandemic.

But with the help of StratoDem Analytics, the second quarter’s record-smashing GDP drop — a decline of 33% on an annualized basis — can be put into simpler terms. Before coronavirus, the biggest drop was a 10% dip in 1958.

The data cruncher took this spring’s gigantic national losses and translated the trend into localized results based on the region’s historic business patterns and industry concentrations.

Start with the nation’s value of goods and services created, provided, bought and sold. StratoDem says this output fell by $1.7 trillion in the second quarter vs. the previous three months. That three-month dip is on par with Canada’s entire economic production for 2019.

Read More [[link removed]] California Gov. Newsom Unveils Unemployment-Tech 'Strike Team'

California Gov. Gavin Newsom announced on Wednesday the launch of a “strike team” of technologists, including Code for America and U.S. Digital Response founder Jennifer Pahlka, to modernize the state’s backlogged unemployment systems.

The group, which will also include California Government Operations Agency Secretary Yolanda Richardson, will create a “blueprint” for new technology systems within the state’s Employment Development Department, which oversees insurance and benefits for the state’s nearly 3 million unemployed residents. Newsom said the department has processed more than 8 million unemployment insurance claims since March, but that outdated technology is saddling the state with an ongoing backlog of claims.

“There should be no barriers between Californians and the benefits they have earned,” Newsom said in a press release. “Unprecedented demand due to job loss during this pandemic paired with an antiquated system have created an unacceptable backlog of claims. Californians deserve better, and these reform efforts aim to move the Department in that direction.”

Read More [[link removed]] San Francisco Turned Ghost Town? Here's How Empty The City Really Is

Walking through San Francisco's South of Market and Financial District feels like a ghost town.

90-percent of the city's workforce is working from home and people are leaving the city.

The ABC7 I-Team is digging into how this is impacting real estate.

Before the pandemic hit, San Francisco had the highest building occupancy rate in the country. Now, most of the city's skyscrapers sit empty. How long will it stay that way? Is all this emptiness driving prices down everywhere?

"It went severely over asking... $400,000 over asking," said Jason and Stephanie Hicks. "We were shocked."

In the midst of the pandemic, the two newlyweds decided to leave SOMA for a better value in Alameda.

Read More [[link removed]] California Commercial Real Estate Affected Negatively By Pandemic Through 2023, Says Allen Matkins/UCLA Anderson Forecast California CRE Survey

In the wake of the current pandemic-induced economic recession, the Summer 2020 Allen Matkins/UCLA Anderson Forecast California Commercial Real Estate Survey shows uniform pessimism and a drop in sentiment for developers across all commercial real estate spaces in 2023. The biannual survey projects a three-year-ahead outlook for California's commercial real estate industry and forecasts potential opportunities and challenges impacting the office, multi-family, retail, and industrial sectors.

Overall, survey panelists see office market demand decreasing due to work-from-home policies, industrial only moderately decreasing due to the shift to online shopping, retail continuing its downward spiral, and multi-family only moderately decreasing due to the continued shortage of housing across the state.

Given the continuing pandemic, there is much uncertainty about how the experience of working from home will affect today's office space market. The panelists' shared sentiment is about as gloomy as it was in December 2008, during the height of an implosion of economic activity. They see rising vacancy rates and downward pressure on rents over the next three years. This is consistent with the UCLA Anderson Forecast's projection that a rapid return to pre-recession, office-using employment is not likely.

Read More [[link removed]] California Legislature Considering $100B Economic Stimulus Plan

Democrats who control California's Legislature have proposed a $100 billion economic stimulus plan that relies on what they are calling "future tax vouchers" along with speeding up other spending during the coronavirus pandemic.

The plan would allow state Treasurer Fiona Ma to issue tax vouchers that proponents said could raise billions of dollars, though they said it was too soon to provide a more detailed estimate.

The state would let taxpayers prepay their taxes for a future budget year at a slight, as yet undetermined, discount. Most of those likely to take advantage of the program would be wealthy enough to make it financially worth their while, said Tim Schaefer, deputy treasurer for public finance.

"It is a work in progress. A lot of it is aspirational and properly so," Schaefer said.

Read More [[link removed]] Democratic Lawmakers Want Tax Hikes For California’s Million-Dollar Earners

More than a dozen Democratic state lawmakers have signed on to a proposal to raise taxes on California’s wealthiest earners to offset lost revenue due to the coronavirus crisis.

Assembly Bill 1253 would tax income above $1 million an extra 1%. Earnings above $2 million would get hit with a 3% tax hike, while that above $5 million would be taxed an extra 3.5%.

Principal sponsor Assemblyman Miguel Santiago (D-Los Angeles) calls it a “modest” increase for the state’s highest earners to boost services for those hit hardest by the virus — particularly communities of color.

He estimates the tax increases would only impact half a percent of all Californians.

“There are people who are very blessed and doing very well in this COVID economy, but for the other 99.5% of people, there’s a lot of hurt and pain out there,” Santiago said. “There’s a serious desperation to see if they can pay their bills, buy groceries and actually make their rent.”

Read More [[link removed]] Energy and Climate Change California Measure Aims To Protect Almost A Third of State’s Land And Oceans, Increase Access For People Of Color

Juan Altamirano grew up in Southern California with very few parks or green spaces near his home. That’s why he wants to see Assembly Bill 3030 become law, a California proposal that would help guarantee around a third of the state’s land and oceans be shielded from things like development.

“As somebody who grew up in Anaheim near Disneyland, I didn't have access to open spaces,” he said, referring to the vast landscape of parking lots and concrete that fill the theme park. “So, I think that being able to see myself in this bill is incredibly important.”

Now Altamirano is associate director of public policy with Audubon California and says he feels privileged to be in the field, “but I know many communities around the state lack that access to [wild] spaces. And this bill ensures that we as a state say, ‘This is important to us and important to our communities.’”

Read More [[link removed]] Californians Support State Climate Change Policies

Californians across the state are concerned about climate change and support plans to reduce harmful emissions and focus on renewable sources of energy. But there are stark differences when it comes to which residents of the Golden State see pollution as a serious threat to their family’s health.

According to a new survey by the Public Policy Institute of California, Latinos and African Americans are more likely than whites and Asian Americans to be worried about air and water pollution in their neighborhoods.

Of those surveyed, 33% of Latinos think air pollution is a serious health threat and 24% view water pollution the same way, while 29% of African Americans see air pollution as a major health threat and 20% think polluted drinking water poses a serious health threat. For Asian Americans, 17% think air pollution is a big problem and 19% view drinking water the same way. Among white residents surveyed, just 12% are seriously worried about air pollution hurting their health and a meager 8% are concerned about polluted drinking water.

“African Americans and Latinos are more likely than others to say that air and water pollution in their part of California are very serious health threats to themselves and their families,” PPIC President Mark Baldassare said in a statement.

Read More [[link removed]] Is America's Biggest Gas Utility Abusing Customer Money? A California Watchdog Demands Answers

The nation’s largest gas utility has spent months fighting an investigation by a California consumer watchdog agency, saying the company’s constitutional rights are being trampled and refusing to give regulators full access to its financial records.

California’s Public Advocates Office says Southern California Gas Co. should be fined millions of dollars for failing to comply with a subpoena. It’s only the latest skirmish between SoCalGas and the consumer watchdog, which is investigating what it describes as the gas company’s inappropriate use of customer money to fight climate change policies.

SoCalGas serves nearly 22 million people from the Central Valley to the U.S.-Mexico border. The company faces a diminished future as a growing number of cities ban gas hookups in new buildings, and as climate activists call for a total phaseout of fossil fuels — a prospect SoCalGas and its parent company, Sempra Energy of San Diego, are determined to avoid.

Read More [[link removed]] Unplugged: How the Gas Industry Is Fighting Efforts To Electrify Buildings

Just over a year ago, the city of Berkeley, California, passed into law a first-in-the-nation ordinance prohibiting natural gas hookups in new buildings, a move that alarmed the gas industry. This alarm has since boiled over into a full-fledged opposition campaign to counter the rising tide of similar measures meant to restrict gas in favor of constructing all-electric buildings and cutting carbon pollution.

Natural gas constitutes a vast majority, about 80 percent, of the direct fossil fuel CO2 emissions from the residential and commercial sectors, according to the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency (EPA). Transitioning away from direct fossil fuel use in buildings is key for de-carbonizing and meeting climate targets, experts say.

Initiatives are starting to emerge at the local level on the West Coast and in the Northeast to support this transition, with 31 cities in California committed to phasing out gas use in buildings, as of July 8, and several Massachusetts communities in the Boston area doing the same. Policies for electrifying buildings are also in the works in New Jersey as well as Seattle and other cities.

The gas industry, wary of a direct threat to its business, is pushing back against building electrification policies. Gas industry trade associations are spending large sums, some of it taxpayer dollars, on public relations (PR) campaigns, astroturfing and front groups to oppose initiatives aimed at curbing direct gas use.

Read More [[link removed]] How Far Will Utilities Go To Protect Their Fossil Fuel Investments?

There’s a good chance you’ve heard about the scandal unfolding in Ohio. Last week, the FBI arrested Republican lawmaker Larry Householder, the speaker of the state’s House of Representatives, and accused him and his political operation of accepting more than $60 million in bribes from the electric utility FirstEnergy Corp. In exchange, prosecutors said, Householder coordinated passage of a $1.3-billion bailout bill that rescued several nuclear and coal-fired power plants and gutted the state’s clean energy requirements.

FirstEnergy’s alleged bribery would be an extreme case of a utility company working to protect its fossil fuel investments in the face of an accelerating clean energy transition.

Other utilities have adopted less brazen strategies. The Energy and Policy Institute, an industry watchdog group, compiled a list of examples from Arizona to Florida, and released a report showing how utilities use charitable giving to build support for fossil fuel investments and rate hikes.

There are examples in California, too.

In a story for The Times this week, I reported that a consumer watchdog agency is investigating Southern California Gas Co., the nation’s largest gas utility, for what it describes as inappropriate use of customer money to fight climate action.

Read More [[link removed]] California Has A New Plan To Protect Its Water Supply From Climate Change, But Some Say It's Based On Old Thinking

Water is a big deal in California, and climate change is threatening the precious resource. That’s why Gov. Gavin Newsom finalized a broad plan this week to help prevent future water challenges, but some Californians say it relies on old thinking and harmful water storage projects.

The Water Resilience Portfolio outlines 142 actions the state could take to build resilience as the effects of warming temperatures grow. It supports everything from a recent fund focused on safe and affordable drinking water to habitat restoration to improving groundwater storage capabilities.

It’s touted as a way to cope with the effects of climate change — more extreme droughts, floods, rising temperatures, declining fish populations and so on.

“Water is the lifeblood of our state, sustaining communities, wildlife and our economy,” Newsom said in a press release. “My administration has worked to assemble a blueprint to secure this vital and limited resource into the future in a way that builds climate resilience for all communities and sustains native fish and the habitat they need to thrive.”

Read More [[link removed]] Workforce Development Unemployment Department Under Fire

With federal unemployment benefits of $600 per week set to expire today and nearly 1 million claims backlogged at California’s unemployment department, millions of Californians are teetering on the edge of a financial cliff — and increasingly desperate for answers from elected officials.

State lawmakers on Thursday eviscerated the beleaguered agency for leaving many residents in limbo without a lifeline, a day after Gov. Gavin Newsom launched a “strike team” to investigate its outdated technology and share recommendations within the next 45 days.

Though the Employment Development Department has paid nearly $55 billion in benefits to more than 7.6 million people since the onset of the pandemic, it’s struggled to keep up with demand. Its rate of paying claims within two weeks fell from 88% in March to 52% in June, despite hiring 5,300 temporary employees, expanding its call center hours, and creating an online chat bot.

And if additional federal benefits are in the works, it could take the department up to 20 weeks to process them, director Sharon Hilliard said Thursday.

Read More [[link removed]] California Districts Can Seek Waiver For Elementary Schools From Ban On In-School Instruction

Gov. Gavin Newsom didn’t mention it in his hour-long press conference on Friday, but new state guidelines banning in-school instruction in counties on a monitoring list for coronavirus infections includes a waiver provision that could exempt elementary schools.

On Friday, hours after Newsom released his guidelines, Santa Clara County’s superintendent of public schools and the director of public health sent out a letter inviting public and private school officials to apply for the waiver.

“The County Public Health Department and Santa Clara County Office of Education strongly encourages elementary schools to follow this process so that they can safely resume in-person instruction this fall,” said the letter signed by county Superintendent Mary Ann Dewan and Dr. Sarah Cody, director of the county’s public health department.

Other county superintendents reported getting many questions about possible waivers over the weekend.

Read More [[link removed]] California's Online Community College Still Has Much To Prove

Calbright College, California’s online community college, may have survived elimination in the state’s budget, but the pressure is on to prove its value to the state.

The college faces a state audit and has yet to announce any employer partnerships it promised a year ago. Questions also remain whether Calbright’s students, the first of whom are 10 months into the program, will complete and find the employment the college promised. These are the issues awaiting newly-appointed Calbright President Ajita Talwalker Menon.

Menon, who was unanimously selected by the college’s trustee board Monday, said that despite the criticism, Calbright remains “an innovation engine” for the state’s other 115 community colleges. Calbright opened in October as the state’s 115th community college to deliver training to approximately 8 million of the state’s “stranded workers,” between 26 and 34, who are seeking credentials and training to advance. (The system Monday added its 116th college.)

Read More [[link removed]] Oakland Unified To Reform Online Makeup Courses After Harsh Grand Jury Report

Oakland Unified is working to reform an online program designed to help failing students following a scathing civil grand jury report last month that accused the district of awarding some students unearned grades and allowing unqualified students to graduate at one of its high schools.

The district has hired a consultant to review its online credit recovery program before it will allow Castlemont High to use it in the upcoming school year, which starts August 10 with distance learning districtwide. So-called credit recovery programs enable students to make up traditional classes they failed.

In a report called “Castlemont High: Cheating its Students,” an Alameda County Civil grand jury found that the Oakland school and the district had “failed” its students, saying, “There is no excuse for awarding a high school diploma to those who do not earn it.”

Read More [[link removed]] Cultural Proficiency For Teachers Can No Longer Be An Option

I want to be a firefighter, but then I will have to work with the police…and what if they kill me on purpose?” said my son Asher, a second-grader.

Coming from an 8-year-old, these words should be shocking. What’s shocking is that they aren’t.

I fear that far too many educators and educational leaders are not prepared to respond to the heartache and expressions of despair that may come from our students of color, especially in the wake of George Floyd’s death and the ensuing civil unrest. Asher wrote a paragraph for his teacher early this spring about his dream job as a firefighter. Since George Floyd’s murder in May, he sits with confusion, a heavy heart and fear while reconsidering what he might be when he grows up.

Our schools must require educators to learn how to engage effectively with people of different backgrounds. Without that preparation, our students will not feel their identities are valued and affirmed. We, as educators, may not have control over what happens on the world scene, but we can control what happens within the walls of our schools.

Read More [[link removed]] Infrastructure and Housing If Unemployment Benefits Expire, America Could Face An 'Abrupt' Housing Crisis

Federal unemployment benefits are set to expire at the end of the week, and experts worry that without a significant extension, America could face an immediate housing crisis and potentially a second, longer-term one.

The Coronavirus Aid, Relief and Economic Security (CARES) Act that Congress unanimously passed in March expanded state unemployment benefits by $600 per week, but the last of the checks will be sent out Saturday and Sunday. More than 16 million people remain unemployed, and the White House has indicated that unemployment benefits could drop to 70 percent of a person's regular wages.

A loss in wages requires people to either dip into savings to cover their expenses or make sacrifices. A Household Pulse Survey found that about 3.1 million people who had someone in their household lose income worry about how they'll pay their mortgage next month. Delinquent mortgage payments can spell trouble for the economy, but experts' immediate concern is how people will pay the rent.

"What happens when you can't pay your mortgage and you lost your job and have an economic hardship, you sell your home. So we could see a glut of homes for sale, and that will have its own devastating effect on housing prices and wealth, but that's a slow-moving crisis relatively speaking," Wendy Edelberg, director of the Brookings Institution's Hamilton Project, told Newsweek.

Read More [[link removed]] California Landlords Are Locking Out Struggling Tenants. A 'Tsunami Of Evictions' Might Be Next

Christopher Borunda’s landlords locked him out. Theresa Ribeiro’s landlord left vulgar voicemails threatening to remove her. Denise Briggs’s landlord said he was selling her house and she couldn’t stay.

Some California tenants have faced increasingly aggressive eviction efforts over the last month, despite emergency protections meant to preserve people’s housing during the coronavirus pandemic. And although advocates have urged state officials to strengthen the rules, key renters’ protections are set to expire without new state plans in place.

The result, experts say, could be catastrophic.

Amid rising coronavirus infections and a worsening economic crisis, hundreds of thousands of renters are now at risk of becoming homeless in California, potentially exacerbating the state’s dire housing crisis. In addition, advocates fear the lack of protections will embolden some landlords to resort to hostile methods to get their renters out, at a time when many Californians have nowhere to go.

Read More [[link removed]] As Moratoriums End, An Eviction Crisis Looms Over San Diego County

Rent is due tomorrow for thousands of tenants in San Diego county. But many have not been able to pay it during the coronavirus pandemic. Local and statewide moratoriums have kept a wave of possible evictions on hold for months, but many of those moratoriums are set to expire in the coming weeks.

According to a study by the consulting firm Stout, over 40% of California’s renters are currently unable to pay their full rent and are at risk of eviction.

In San Diego, with its already elevated rents and lack of affordable housing, the issue looks very much the same. When the pandemic closures hit, tenants like Imperial Beach resident Patricia Mendoza suddenly saw their income zeroed out. She was laid off from a job at a non-emergency medical transport company in April. A single mother of two, she didn’t receive her first unemployment benefits until June. She’s still working on getting a stimulus check from the government, and hasn’t paid her rent in months.

“It’s extremely hard, because I’m the only one here,” Mendoza told KPBS. “I’m supposed to keep my children safe and healthy. How am I supposed to do that when we’re about to get evicted when these moratoriums lift?”

Read More [[link removed]] Trump Is Making Home Loans Riskier During A Housing Crisis

The wave of evictions caused by the coronavirus could swamp even the massive dislocation caused by the collapse of the US housing bubble more than a decade ago.

As pandemic-driven unemployment leaves people unable to pay their bills, some experts fear evictions could more than double compared to the last crisis, with 20 to 28 million people potentially forced from their homes. Corelogic, the financial data service, has made a baseline forecast that some three million homeowners will fall behind on their mortgage payments—and their pessimistic forecast predicts more than 12 million delinquent borrowers.

And we have a good idea of who will bear the brunt of this dislocation: Communities of color. After the US housing bubble popped in 2007, African American and Latino homeowners were more than twice as likely as whites to be delinquent on mortgage payments and enter foreclosure.

Researchers say this isn’t explained by differences in income, but rather differences in the kind of financial products these communities are offered, which disproportionately include features that can turn loans into vehicles of exploitation.

Read More [[link removed]] California's Housing Crisis Was The State's Most Serious Political Issue Before COVID-19

For the last half-century, the state government has attempted — without much success — to steer housing development in California via periodic calculation of local “needs.”

About once every eight years, the state Department of Housing and Community Development, using formulas based primarily on population growth, has told regional planning bodies or individual counties how much housing for various personal income levels they should be building. Local officials then divvy up shares to cities and the unincorporated areas of counties.

However the process historically contained no provisions for enforcement. To comply, the local communities only had to zone enough land for the goals, which tended to be modest.

Moreover, while local governments could control land use, they had little or no power to build housing, or order it to be built. Thus, actual housing production usually bears little relationship to the “regional housing need assessment” or RHNA. Sometimes construction far exceeds official goals and sometimes — particularly in recent years — it falls way short.

Read More [[link removed]] Amid A Pandemic And Housing Shortage, Can LA Find Homes For 15,000 People?

Even before the COVID-19 pandemic reached Los Angeles County, more than 66,000 of its residents were experiencing homelessness, and almost 600,000 low-income people were spending 90 percent of their income on housing. The city ranked near the top of the list of places where renters experienced the highest cost burdens. And the state of California had one of the worst shortages of affordable housing in the country.

The pandemic, which has already killed more than 4,000 Angelenos, threatens to turn the housing crisis into a catastrophe. In many senses it is already a disaster, and officials are applying the principles of triage to mitigating its consequences. Of the 66,000 people experiencing homelessness in the county, the Los Angeles Homeless Services Authority (LAHSA) has identified some 15,000 who are “highly vulnerable to hospitalization or death should they contract COVID-19,” says Heidi Marston, the authority’s executive director. Last month, LAHSA released a COVID-19 Recovery Plan Report, laying out its goals for rehousing all 15,000 of those people during the crisis and beyond, and how it hopes to achieve them. The plan builds on previous work like Project Roomkey, a state program that houses people in hotel rooms. The Authority’s ultimate goal now is that no one who’s housed during the pandemic should return to living on the street after the emergency is over.

“Now the shift really needs to happen,” Marston says. “Before it was really just emergency efforts to get people inside and now it’s like, let’s take the moment to get them indoors permanently so that we’re actually resolving their homelessness as opposed to just getting them inside temporarily.”

Read More [[link removed]] Editorial and Opinion The Lockdown’s Destruction

Democrats and their media allies have trapped themselves in a contradiction. They are deploring Thursday’s grim second-quarter GDP report even as they demand a repeat of the lockdown that caused the economic catastrophe. What do they expect when government orders Americans to sit in their homes for weeks?

That’s the main message from the 32.9% decline in GDP, the worst ever recorded. The damage extended across the private economy—from business investment to manufacturing and housing. But the greatest harm was from the collapse of consumer spending as the shutdown crushed the service economy.

Consumer spending fell 34.6% and accounted for some 25 percentage points of the GDP decline. The fall in transportation, recreation, food services and hotels was brutal. But the biggest surprise was the plunge in health-care spending during a health-care crisis. Health care represents about 12% of the U.S. economy and its collapse subtracted 9.5 percentage points from GDP.

How does that happen in a pandemic? The answer, as our friend Don Luskin points out, is that politicians panicked in March and waited for a surge of Covid-19 patients that the pandemic modelers told them would arrive. Blessedly, the modelers were wrong, and far fewer hospital and intensive-care beds were needed. But the economic harm from stopping all elective surgeries and barring visits to doctors was severe and unnecessary.

Read More [[link removed]] Trump Helps The Environment By Enraging Environmentalists

The Trump administration recently published the first comprehensive revision of federal regulations under the National Environmental Policy Act of 1970. Environmental groups predictably denounced the initiative. Among its many detractors, the Wilderness Society insists that these regulations will “essentially gut” NEPA by putting “polluters in charge of environment protection.” This objection wholly overlooks NEPA’s deeply dysfunctional features.

From its inception in 1970, NEPA had two basic objectives: first, to require all new projects to receive a thorough and transparent vetting of potential environmental risks; second, to expand democratic participation in the review process via public hearings.

Five decades later, it is clear that NEPA has achieved neither. The most obvious sign of institutional distress is the long time—4.5 years on average—to complete the elaborate environmental impact statement before work can commence. Today’s NEPA behemoth is far from its 1970 origins, which is why the Trump administration’s update is overdue.

Read More [[link removed]] Delay The Election???

President Trump nearly always ends his tweets with a series of exclamation points. His Thursday tweet about the November election uncharacteristically ended with three question marks: “Delay the Election until people can properly, securely and safely vote???”

Mr. Trump’s defenders are correct that he was merely raising the issue. But delaying the Nov. 3 elections is a dreadful idea. Only an act of Congress can change the date, established in 1845, and there is no chance it will do so now. Lincoln ran for re-election amid the destruction and displacement of the Civil War.

Mr. Trump’s opponents—from the media to Joe Biden—have planted the thought that he won’t accept the results or would try to put off the vote. How he helps himself by keeping such disruption narratives in the public’s mind remains a mystery.

Still, a question: Why are Democrats and the press so unconcerned about whether state election authorities are prepared to conduct a credible election amid the pandemic? The conventional wisdom, inserted in every story on this subject, is that there is no evidence of significant fraud in mail-in elections, that many states have used mailed ballots for years without serious incident.

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