Bay Area Financial Crisis: Oakland
Bay Area Financial Crisis: Oakland
Like San Francisco, the Bay Area City of Oakland is facing major budget woes. Mayor Sheng Thao’s proposed budget for 2023-25 released last month reveals the city is facing a $360 million shortfall, the largest budget deficit in Oakland’s history. The proposed budget for FY 2023-24 and 2024-25 plans for total expenditures of over $2.1...
By Sheridan Swanson
San Francisco’s Financial Crisis
San Francisco’s Financial Crisis
The State of California isn’t the only one scrambling to prepare a budget while staring down a deficit. Several Bay Area municipalities are also struggling with their own budget problems, San Francisco chief among them. San Francisco’s 2022-23 budget and next year’s 2023-24 budget total approximately $14 billion each. On March 31, the San Francisco...
By Sheridan Swanson
Sacramento’s Mismanagement of Taxpayer Dollars
Sacramento’s Mismanagement of Taxpayer Dollars
Leaders in Sacramento are grappling with the state budget this month as California faces a budget deficit of nearly $32 billion. Senate leaders claim they can address the deficit without cutting spending on state programs, but the reality is that a fiscal reckoning is long overdue. According to a survey released by the Public Policy...
By Sheridan Swanson
Capistrano Unified: A Case Study in Opposing Bad Bonds
Capistrano Unified: A Case Study in Opposing Bad Bonds
A practical way for citizens to fight ill-conceived school bond measures View our full School Bonds Toolkit here for additional resources. School bonds are designed to fund the building and maintenance of school facilities, but there have been increasing concerns about bond oversight and how districts utilize bonds. Too often, school districts put bond measures on...
By Sheridan Swanson
School Choice Wins Across the Nation
School Choice Wins Across the Nation
The school choice movement is accelerating across the nation as more state legislatures pass laws that empower parents to use tax dollars to send their child to the best school for them. Support for school choice is also skyrocketing among voters across demographics. Among likely voters, a survey by the Invest in Education Coalition found...
By Sheridan Swanson
Lone Star Bound
Lone Star Bound
Frisco, Texas — nestled in the north Dallas-Fort Worth metroplex — has been making headlines for the number of companies flocking to the city to take advantage of its business-friendly environment and rapid growth. This month, the Frisco Economic Development Corporation (FEDC) released a statement highlighting the city’s impressive 2022 track record, having welcomed sixteen...
By Sheridan Swanson
Mogul Migration
Mogul Migration
Among the most notable people taking part in the Exodus from California are the tech and finance elite. More and more high-profile business leaders are losing their patience with California’s anti-business regulatory morass, sky-high tax rate, and unreasonable cost of living. In 2017, entrepreneur and author Tim Ferriss left Silicon Valley for Texas. Ferriss cited...
By Sheridan Swanson
Race Preferential College Admissions
Race Preferential College Admissions
And how they ultimately hurt minority students and expose a glaring hypocrisy in the California education system. State-funded universities in California are pushing to use race as a metric for college admissions, a practice many Californians believe should stay in the past. But while claiming to champion educational opportunity for low-income and minority students,...
By Sheridan Swanson
Move over, California. Is Colorado the new land of opportunity?
Move over, California. Is Colorado the new land of opportunity?
High-profile California companies continue to join the wave of businesses fleeing a highly taxed, heavily regulated California for more business-friendly environments. You can add Colorado to the growing list of states that former California employers and employees now prefer to call home. Virta Health, a biotech company that specializes in diabetes treatment, announced in late...
By Sheridan Swanson
Student Achievement Disparities in California
Student Achievement Disparities in California
California parents are understandably exasperated with the alarming achievement disparities among K-12 students in the state. State and national performance assessment rankings show that California’s traditional public schools are some of the worst performing in the nation. And while poor school performance affects students of all backgrounds, low-income and minority students are disproportionately impacted. The...
By Sheridan Swanson
The California Book of Exoduses
The California Book of Exoduses
For the first time in its history, California experienced a loss in population in 2020. The trend continued into 2022, by which time California had lost more than a half-million people in two years. But while California’s extreme COVID policies that shuttered businesses and schools accelerated the California Exodus, the trend existed long before the...
By Sheridan Swanson