California Voices

It’s doubtful whether more than a relative handful of Californians have heard of the Unemployment Insurance Fund. It is, however, one of state government’s largest activities – and a case study in political mismanagement. Currently, California employers pay about $6 billion in payroll taxes into the UIF each year. And currently, the state Employment Development […]

Eric Bauman, the state Democratic Party’s newly elected chairman, made an appearance before the Sacramento Press Club last week and, of course, the blowup over sexual harassment in and around the Capitol was a hot topic for questioning journalists. Bauman made some news during the joint event with his Republican counterpart, Jim Brulte, by suggesting […]

Tax policy has become another conflict between Democrat-dominated California and the Republican-dominated federal government.

Some may have believed – or hoped – that the furor over sexual harassment in and around the state Capitol would soon fade away. Nope. The initial letter complaining about harassment, signed by 140 women, has exploded with many more names and a spate of personal accounts. The Los Angeles Times, which broke the initial […]

California's new gas taxes will do little, if anything, to relieve traffic jams. Most of the proposed improvements won’t be obvious.

That sigh you hear is Antonio Villaraigosa’s relief that Eric Garcetti won’t be running for governor next year. Garcetti, the current mayor of Los Angeles, would have been a strong contender vis-à-vis Lt. Gov. Gavin Newsom, the frontrunner in all polls. But the most immediate beneficiary of Garcetti’s weekend announcement of non-candicacy is Villaraigosa, his […]

The dramatic rise of the San Francisco Bay Area into a globally important cultural and economic powerhouse, and why it zoomed past its much larger rival in Southern California, is, among other things, a case study in regional cohesion.

Gov. Jerry Brown persistently cautions Californians that their pulsating economy cannot last forever. When, for example, he unveiled a revised state budget last May, he included what has become boilerplate, warning that “by the time the budget is enacted in June, the economy will have finished its eighth year of expansion – only two years […]

Sunday’s initial quasi-debate among the four declared Democratic candidates for governor strongly indicated that access to medical care may be a dominant campaign issue. However, it also strongly indicated that voters will likely see more sloganeering on the issue than reality-based prescriptions. That would be unfortunate, because it’s an issue that potentially affects not only […]

The four Democratic candidates for California governor mostly believe that dealing with the state's big issues will mean spending a lot more money. But they're murky on where that money should come from.