Homepage

How Much California Water Bond Money is for Storage?

How Much California Water Bond Money is for Storage?

Californians have approved two water bonds in recent years, with another facing voters this November. In 2014 voters approved Prop. 1, allocating $7.1 billion for water projects. This June, voters approved Prop. 68, allocating another $4.0 billion for water projects. And this November, voters are being asked to approve Prop. 3, allocating another $8.9 billion...

By Edward Ring

School officials want you thinking how to spend millions, but not how they’ll get it

School officials want you thinking how to spend millions, but not how they’ll get it

Survey says? Whatever they want it to say. Under the guise of measuring public opinion, Santa Ana school officials are trying to shape it – and they’re using taxpayer dollars to pay for it. In April and May, Santa Ana Unified School District officials papered the city with mail that looks like a poll. The...

By Kelly McGee

AFSCME’s push for rent control proves the importance of the Janus union-dues ruling

AFSCME’s push for rent control proves the importance of the Janus union-dues ruling

Sacramento What do the following two things have in common: The U.S. Supreme Court’s recent decision allowing government workers to opt out of paying union dues and an effort by liberal activists to pass a rent-control initiative in November? On the surface, both issues directly involve the American Federation of State, County and Municipal Employees....

By Steven Greenhut

How the Los Angeles Unified School District spent its summer vacation

How the Los Angeles Unified School District spent its summer vacation

LAUSD schools open in two weeks after having had the July from Hell. The Los Angeles Unified School District is heading into the new school year after something less than a whiz-bang summer. The follies began with a report revealing that the predicted 2017 graduation rate of 80 percent didn’t quite hit the mark. In...

By Larry Sand

California’s Transportation Future, Part Four – The Common Road

California’s Transportation Future, Part Four – The Common Road

With light rail, high speed rail, and possibly passenger drones and hyperloop pods just around the corner, it’s easy to forget that the most versatile mode of transportation remains the common road. Able to accommodate anything with wheels, from bicycles and wheelchairs to articulated buses and 80 ton trucks, and ranging from dirt tracks to...

By Edward Ring

The SAUSD Song Remains the Same

The SAUSD Song Remains the Same

1999: Kelly Rowland, LaTavia Roberson, Beyonce Knowles and LeToya Luckett, of Destiny’s Child, perform at the Woodlands Pavilion at Jump Jam. Santa Ana Unified was asking taxpayers to pay its unplayable bills. (AP Photo/Houston Chronicle, Steve Campbell) It’s 1999, and Bill Clinton is one year removed from his affair with Monica Lewinsky becoming public. Destiny’s...

By Kelly McGee

The dust has cleared, so it’s time to analyze Janus based on reality rather than rhetoric

The dust has cleared, so it’s time to analyze Janus based on reality rather than rhetoric

Sacramento The dust still is clearing from the U.S. Supreme Court’s Janus decision, which declared that government employees are no longer required to pay union dues even for collective-bargaining purposes. Virtually everyone – from conservative reformers to union activists – agrees that the decision was momentous. But recent predictions about its real-world import vary widely,...

By Steven Greenhut

Before they called their schools ‘deteriorating,’ Santa Ana officials called them ‘exemplary’

Before they called their schools ‘deteriorating,’ Santa Ana officials called them ‘exemplary’

Call it a tale of two school districts: The Santa Ana Unified School District (SAUSD) is sending out conflicting messages regarding the status of its schools: their facilities are amazingly good — unless they’re amazingly bad. According to the School Accountability Report Cards (SARCs) posted on the SAUSD website, all of the district’s high schools...

By Kelly McGee

Water Rationing Laws Exemplify the Malthusian Mentality of California’s Legislators

Water Rationing Laws Exemplify the Malthusian Mentality of California’s Legislators

As reported in the Sacramento Bee and elsewhere, on May 31st Gov. Jerry Brown “signed a pair of bills Thursday to set permanent overall targets for indoor and outdoor water consumption.” After pressure from the Association of California Water Agencies and others, the final form of these bills, Assembly Bill 1668 by Assemblywoman Laura Friedman, D-Glendale,...

By Edward Ring

Formerly bankrupt Stockton is fiscally healthy again, but offers warning to others

Formerly bankrupt Stockton is fiscally healthy again, but offers warning to others

Sacramento Two mid-sized California cities, Irvine and Stockton, have topped a national list of financially healthy governments compiled by an influential watchdog group. Irvine’s top ranking shouldn’t surprise anyone, given that the affluent Orange County city has long been a model for prudence, despite some high-profile spending miscues over the years. But the second-place ranking...

By Steven Greenhut

Retiring California teachers will earn more than working teachers in 24 states

Retiring California teachers will earn more than working teachers in 24 states

More than 900,000 current and former public school teachers are covered by the California State Teachers’ Retirement System (CalSTRS). The pension system has $210 billion in net assets. It will need all of it and more, since it holds only 63.7 percent of the funds necessary to pay all those teachers what they are owed....

By Mike Antonucci

How Big Tech Monitors Our Lives and Manipulates Our Minds

How Big Tech Monitors Our Lives and Manipulates Our Minds

Google knows where you live, how you earn a living, what you do for fun, and who your friends are. And it wants to know more. An internal company video obtained this week by The Verge reveals the company’s plans for total data collection, in which “Google helps nudge users into alignment with their goals, custom-prints personalized...

By Shawn Steel

Brown right to give cities dose of reality, but wrong to punt on pension issue

Brown right to give cities dose of reality, but wrong to punt on pension issue

Sacramento It’s rare that a politician will say something that is praiseworthy and anger-inducing in the same breath. Nevertheless, Gov. Jerry Brown accomplished that unusual feat when he released his May revised budget, and told cities that the state government isn’t in a position to help them with their soaring pension costs. “They have to...

By Steven Greenhut

After scandal, City of Bell’s fiscal revival shows importance of civic engagement

After scandal, City of Bell’s fiscal revival shows importance of civic engagement

Sacramento – The city of Bell has been California’s poster child for local-government corruption, ever since the Los Angeles Times in 2010 exposed the greed and mismanagement that plagued the Los Angeles County burg. The story was a juicy one: The leaders of a tiny impoverished city lavished huge salaries and benefit packages on themselves,...

By Steven Greenhut