Economy

President Trump today unveiled his proposal to revamp the federal tax code, and state Democrats swiftly pointed out that it could hit Californians particularly hard by revoking a deduction that disproportionately benefits the Golden State.

California leads once again in something no state wants to boast about: the highest poverty rate in the country.

In the final days of the session, hundreds of bills landed on Brown’s desk. Here are some of the most consequential.

While California tops the list of states with insane housing costs, it’s by no means a uniquely Golden State phenomenon. Building affordable housing—and particularly getting cities and other localities to permit its construction—is a tough endeavor that has bedeviled state policymakers across the country. So where should Californians look to solve a problem that feels so intractable? Affordable housing experts suggest legislators find inspiration in Massachusetts. For more than 40 years, the state’s signature affordable housing policy—Massachusetts “40B”—has served as a model for how states can motivate and sometimes bully reluctant localities into meeting their fair share of affordable housing.

At this point, it’s practically a California tradition. First, state judges find a loophole in California’s constitutional bulwark against new, higher taxes. Then conservative legislators and anti-tax activists rush in to patch the hole with a new ballot proposition. This week, the state Supreme Court made the first move in this familiar two-step by issuing a ruling that both anti-tax crusaders and proponents of more local investment say could make it much easier for city and county governments to raise new taxes. Now California conservatives are counter-punching.

Tax reform may not be much more than a glimmer in the eye of Republicans in Washington D.C., but their promise of lower rates and closed loopholes appears to be already jostling state and local finances.

(Update: Gov. Jerry Brown split on these bills, signing into law AB 168 to prohibit job interview questions about previous salary, but vetoing AB 1209, which would have required companies to submit pay data categorized by gender, race, and ethnicity. The governor said he worried thatt bill would “encourage more litigation than pay equity.”) California […]

As the quieter ‘companion bill’ to Monday’s cap-and-trade extension legislation, Assembly Bill 617 sought to placate environmental justice advocates who have increasingly complained that the state’s globally ambitious climate policy overlooks a local problem: poor California communities living in the shadow of polluters. The bill, sponsored by Democratic Assemblywoman Cristina Garcia of Bell Gardens, was […]

A mutant octopus? A psychedelic Rorschach test? The world’s most elaborate Chinese finger trap? No, this CALmatters creation is the California state budget for the 2017-18 fiscal year. Follow its fiscal tributaries from tax revenues on the left to spending on the right, and you’ll see where the state’s priorities lie—all 183 billion of them. […]

It's early, but it looks like good news for public health advocates.