August 26, 2018

Though two state workarounds remain in play as California's Legislature enters the final days of the session, lawmakers have less than a week to find an alternative to new federal income tax rules that, among other things, set a cap of $10,000 on combined state and local income, property and sales tax deductions.

Bill Walzer, Berkeley California Public Utilities Commission President Michael Picker writes that the “current level of forest activities probably isn’t enough to supply biomass facilities with an economically viable flow of fuel from high-hazard areas and is insufficient to meet forest management needs within those same fire-prone regions.” Pessimism about using biomass from cleaning up […]

There's a "low-profile revolution" is underway in California's thousands of local governments as lawsuits force more of them to abandon "at-large" voting for members of their governing boards and elect them, instead, from districts. It's a result of a 2002 law, the California Voting Rights Act, that makes it easier to overturn at-large systems.