There are several metrics that can be used to effectively rank the fiscal status of our nation’s 50 states. The top resource for years, when one searched for this information, was the Mercatus School at George Mason University. US News & World Report has and continues to provide an annual ranking of the states. The...
California’s fiscal accountability dashboard for cities, which was implemented in 2019 and identified local governments with financial problems, was taken down last month. Why? First, some background. The County of Orange in Southern California incurred an infamous fiscal calamity in the closing month of 1994 that resulted in nearly $1.7 billion in investment losses. It...
TUSTIN, CA (Nov. 13, 2023) — Former California state Senator John Moorlach has joined California Policy Center (CPC) as senior fellow and director of CPC’s Center for Public Accountability. “I’ve known John as a friend, a finance whiz and principled leader since Ronald Reagan’s second term,” said CPC president Will Swaim. “His consistent approach to fiscal...
On October 4 the California State Water Board held a hearing to discuss how it will implement Senate Bill 1157, passed by the state legislature in 2022, which lowers indoor water-use standards to 47 gallons per person starting in 2025 and 42 gallons in 2030. The title of the hearing was “Making Water Conservation a Way...
On September 16, with great fanfare, California Attorney General Rob Bonta announced his office had filed a lawsuit against five major oil companies. Accusing them of knowingly misleading the public regarding the alleged harm that fossil fuels would inflict on the climate, Bonta’s office seeks billions in compensatory damages. But the climate change theory that...
Last spring, when I wrote “The Rise of Zombie Cities,” I thought that, by now, some of my statements would have been proven prophetic. In the article, I discussed the results of the California State Auditor’s 2022 report on the “Fiscal Health of Cities.” I also noted several negative trends affecting city finances, such as...
“Don’t lie, don’t deceive, don’t hide from the public clean energy pathways forward, and don’t hide from the public the existential threat that fossil fuels created in terms of climate change and extreme weather and damage to the environment.” — California Attorney General Rob Bonta, PBS interview, Sept. 20, 2023 Bonta’s statement exposes the inherent and...
Late last month, Gov. Gavin Newsom signed an executive order in an attempt to address the insurance crisis in California that’s leaving scores of homeowners without coverage. The executive order comes after State Farm and Allstate, the first and fourth largest home insurers in California, announced this year they would no longer sell new home...
The City of San Francisco is reeling from rampant crime and facing a commercial real estate crash. Arguably, City policies have created both problems – the former, a result of lax law enforcement, and the latter, a consequence of the first, coupled with unfriendly business policies. Meanwhile, the City is facing a $489 million budget...
Editor’s note: There’s so much misinformation about the state of AB 5, that we asked Karen Anderson, founder of Freelancers Against AB 5, for an update. AB5 has not been overturned. It is still the law and continues to wreak havoc across a vast swath of professions and sectors in California—everything from performing arts, event...
When it comes to “renewables” wreaking havoc on the environment, wind turbines have stiff competition. For example, over 500,000 square miles of biofuel plantations have already replaced farms and forests to replace a mere 4 percent of transportation fuel. To source raw materials to build “sustainable” batteries, mining operations are scaling up, with no end in sight, in nations with appalling...
Join us Wednesday, October 11, 2023 at 7:00pm in Bakersfield for a Local Elected Candidate & Leadership Training hosted by California Policy Center and Associated Builders and Contractors, Central California. The free training will include campaign basics for candidates planning to run for local office as well as advanced leadership skill building for local elected...
This past summer, the National Civic League published an article entitled “Is It None of Our Business?” The purpose of the article was to evaluate whether local government agencies should be undertaking national issues, which the League characterizes as “the ‘nationalization’ of local government matters.” The League concludes that such nationalization constitutes a “positive phenomenon.”...
Earlier this summer, an environmentalist group that calls itself the John Muir Project, joined by a few other like-minded state and local organizations, sued the U.S. Forest Service. The transgression: a proposal to thin 13,000 acres of forest near Big Bear Lake, in the heart of California’s San Bernardino Mountains. You would think they’d learn. One...