California Voices

California is a deep blue state and one manifestation of its left-leaning politics is a very high level of taxation, particularly levies on personal income. The state has the nation’s highest income tax rates, topping out at 13.3 percent of taxable income, and depends on those taxes for 70 percent of its general fund budget. […]

California’s public employee pension systems have immense gaps – called “unfunded liabilities” – between what they have in assets and what they will need to meet their obligations to retirees. The California Public Employees Retirement System (CalPERS), the nation’s largest pension trust fund, and other state and local systems are desperately trying to close those […]

Decades ago, a clever person – precisely who is somewhat obscure – quipped that the California lieutenant governor’s job is to wake up in the morning, check the newspapers to be sure the governor is still alive and then find a service club to address for a free lunch. That’s not exactly accurate, but it […]

The Capitol’s struggles over big issues such as housing and water get a lot of public and media attention, but the building’s bread-and-butter, so to speak, are hundreds of bills that would benefit some interest group, often to the disadvantage of a rival group. That’s especially true of the legislative agendas of four such factions […]

Will the second time be the charm for Bakersfield Congressman Kevin McCarthy? The three years ago, McCarthy’s bid to become speaker of the Republican-controlled House of Representatives failed due to opposition from a conservative House bloc, calling itself the Freedom Caucus, that saw him as too centrist. McCarthy continued in the No. 2 leadership position […]

The long-distance spitting match between President Donald Trump’s Republican administration in Washington and California’s Democratic politicians in Sacramento over just about everything is either high drama or low comedy. The two sides are clearly looking for opportunities to do battle in the media and in the courts, often over the most innocuous ministerial issues. Each […]

There was a bit of good news for California in the federal government’s latest round of academic test results: it’s one of seven states that registered four-point gains in reading comprehension among eighth-graders. But that positive morsel in the 2017 National Assessment of Educational Progress (NAEP) testing of fourth- and eighth-graders released this week was […]

Reality may finally be catching up with the vision – or pipedream – of a 200-mile-per-hour train connecting California’s northern and southern regions. A few weeks ago, the High-Speed Rail Authority released its latest “business plan” that was supposed to tell Californians how the brief stretch of track now being constructed in the San Joaquin […]

Editor’s note: Thank you for your letter about our report on retirement debt for public employees. As we wrote in our post, “we encourage” feedback and will update our work as appropriate. Trust and the integrity of our work is at the core of all we do at CALmatters. We are committed to a fair […]

Eight weeks out, the June 5 primary election’s biggest uncertainty is whether Lt. Gov. Gavin Newsom will have an unobstructed pathway to becoming California’s next governor or will have to fight for it. All candidates, regardless of party, will appear on the ballot and the top two vote-getters will advance to the November election. Democrat […]