California lawmakers are struggling to climb out of a deep hole. The gas tax that supports road repairs ranks among the highest in the country but the state has some of the worst roads in America. A recent report from the state Senate said 68 percent of California roads are in poor or mediocre condition, […]
Posted inPolitics
Departure of powerful staffer comes amid changes in Capitol
Hours after Greg Campbell awoke from surgery in 2013, the phone rang in his Sacramento hospital room. It was Gov. Jerry Brown, calling to wish him a speedy recovery from the operation that removed a large tumor from his brain. Campbell – a powerful, behind-the-scenes staffer in the Capitol – thanked Brown for the call. […]
Posted inPolitics
Gun control in a blue state: It’s more complicated than you’d think
This week’s shooting in San Bernardino comes as a debate over gun control that has divided Democrats in the state Capitol could head to the voters of California next year. Nearly three years ago, after a man killed 26 women and children at the Sandy Hook Elementary School in Connecticut, Democrats in the state Legislature […]
Posted inEconomy
What’s driving California cities to a higher minimum wage?
Surrounded by city and union officials at a Labor Day rally in South Los Angeles last year, Mayor Eric Garcetti proposed raising the city’s minimum wage to $13.25 per hour by the end of the decade — a plan he said would significantly help low-income workers in Los Angeles while placing minimal burden on employers. […]
Posted inReader Reactions
Opinion: Increasing minimum wage is wrong tool to alleviate poverty
Of late, the minimum wage battle in California appears to be never-ending. No sooner did California increase its minimum wage to $9 per hour in 2013 (slated to increase to $10 per hour in January 2016), did some legislators attempt to accelerate and further increase the minimum wage. More recently, San Francisco Mayor Ed Lee […]
Posted inEconomy
Will California wage hikes replace workers with machines?
After the City of Los Angeles passed an ordinance this summer to increase the minimum wage to $15 an hour by 2020, Richard LoGuercio spent the following weekend driving around a nearby city, looking for warehouses to move his business. “I am just screwed,” said LoGuercio, owner and president of Town and Country Event Rentals […]
Posted inEconomy
California’s working poor grow poorer
Earlimart, Tulare County — After a day of picking grapes for $9.25 an hour, Eva Montes waits in line for food aid in the parking lot of the Veterans Memorial building in Earlimart, a community of 8,537 people. “You can’t make enough money for what you spend,” Montes says in Spanish while waiting with other […]
Posted inEconomy
An up-close view of the pros, cons of raising minimum wage
Rich Winefield has seen first hand the pros and cons of the minimum wage increase. As executive director of BANANAS, an Oakland-based nonprofit that connects families with childcare providers, he has seen how Oakland’s minimum wage hike has impacted workers who benefit from a higher wage, while creating new challenges for families facing more expensive […]
Posted inEconomy
Cities build momentum to go higher than $10 statewide
LANCASTER, Los Angeles County — Lydia Flores saves gas money by taking a two-hour train ride to and from her cashier job at a Los Angeles supermarket. She tells her teenage sons about another way the family can save on the cost of eggs. “Eat it slow,” she tells them. “They gotta savor their eggs […]
Posted inEconomy, Reader Reactions
Opinion: Why California should follow its cities to a higher minimum wage
With wages stagnant, inequality growing, and Washington, D.C., gridlocked, states and cities are taking matters into their own hands by raising the minimum wage. Before 2012, only five local governments in the United States had their own minimum wage laws; now about 30 do. At the forefront are 15 California cities and counties, the largest […]