California Voices

California’s economy is booming with record-high employment, record-low unemployment and billions of extra tax dollars flowing into the state treasury. The official jobless rate dropped to 4.3 percent in February, only slightly above the national rate of 4.1 percent and nearly a full percentage point lower than it was a year earlier. “The record low […]

A proposed ballot measure would raise property taxes on commercial sites such as retail stores, warehouses and factories but not on homeowners.

Left-wingers, who have never liked Feinstein's pragmatic approach, are incensed by her apparent unwillingness to fully embrace the "resistance" to President Trump.

Over the past few years, voters in hundreds of California cities and other local governments were asked to pass tax increases, and indications are that another big batch of local tax measures will be on this year’s ballots. All but a handful of the previous tax hikes were approved, although one failed sales tax, in […]

The Assembly Higher Education Committee unanimously endorsed Assembly Bill 1936 this month, which would seem to bode well for its enactment. It would create an Office of Higher Education Performance and Accountability to plan how California is to meet its ever-rising demand for post-high school education and coordinate the state’s three college and university systems. […]

California’s Democratic politicians frequently proclaim their fervent support for tolerance and acceptance of those outside the cultural mainstream. Increasingly, however, they exhibit intolerance of those who disagree with their party’s orthodoxy, even to the point of infringing on their constitutional rights. That tendency was on display this week in the U.S. Supreme Court as California […]

Highly paid political consultants dream up ways to lure voters into doing something they would not otherwise be likely, or even willing, to do.

The sexual harassment scandal that’s enveloped the Capitol exposes an unsavory aspect of the building’s culture that had been hidden for decades. It’s also exposed another, equally unseemly trait – the Legislature’s routine exemption of itself from laws it imposes on everyone else. Although, for instance, legislative leaders agreed that complaints about harassment should be […]

When Santa Cruz, a picturesque and funky coastal city, first started to feel the pinch of rising retirement costs for city workers, it took several steps to limit the fiscal pain. As recommended by the League of Cities and other authorities, Santa Cruz issued a bond to pay down its rising pension liabilities, set aside […]

Ten years ago, California voters approved – very narrowly – a $9.95 billion bond issue to partially finance what was described as a $40 billion high-speed train system linking the northern and southern regions of the state. Since then, construction has started on a 119-mile starter line in the San Joaquin Valley, from Madera to […]