Posts From Dave Roberts
Back to homepage
Dave Roberts
LAO: Bullet train could increase greenhouse gases by 2020
Gov. Jerry Brown’s plan to spend the lion’s share of cap-and-trade auction revenue on the high-speed rail project won’t help the state meet its goal of reducing greenhouse-gas emissions by 2020, according to a recent Legislative Analyst’s Office report.
Read More
Judge blasts ‘corrupt’ Cal Fire in wildfire lawsuit
Superior Court Judge Leslie Nichols this month ruled that the California Department of Forestry and Fire Protection repeatedly deceived and withheld evidence in a lawsuit seeking $8.1 million from a company and several landowners for a wildfire that the company
Read More
Transit strike ban fails in committee
California’s Bay Area suffers the third worst traffic congestion in the nation, behind Honolulu and Los Angeles, according to USA Today. That congestion occurs despite Bay Area Rapid Transit‘s 104 miles of track taking nearly 400,000 people off of
Read MoreDemocratic lawmakers again kill work flex bill
In what has become an annual tradition in Sacramento, Democratic legislators have killed a bill to provide more flexibility in the hours that employees work. “Assembly Bill 907 would have allowed Californians to work more than eight hours in a
Read More
Lawsuit threatens teachers unions’ power
“Money is the mother’s milk of politics” — Former Assembly Speaker Jesse ‘Big Daddy’ Unruh The California Teachers Association has poured more than $150 million into state politics in the past decade – most of
Read More
Will San Francisco take a big gulp of soda tax?
There have been a number of efforts to increase the tax on sugary beverages in California in recent years, with little to show for it so far. But the next battle in the soda tax war, in San Francisco
Read More
California’s disappearing farmland
More than 370,000 acres of California’s irrigated farmland disappeared from 2006-10. Officials are concerned that hundreds of thousands of additional acres could be lost in the coming years, threatening California’s leading role in feeding the nation and indeed much
Read More
Pressure grows for CA $15 minimum wage
The California Legislature this year boosted California’s $8 per hour minimum wage to $9 in July 2014 and $10 in January 2016. But advocates for, and beneficiaries of, that 25 percent wage hike are not content. Pressure is building
Read More
Expert: CA may need ‘paramilitary’ response to climate change
Paramilitary tactics may be necessary in California to prepare for, or head off, an apocalyptic future with flooded coastal communities, scorched central valleys and rampant wildfires in the Sierras. That was the advice and prediction from one of the
Read More
CA tax board slow to act on protests
online essay If the California taxman unfairly penalizes you for an alleged infraction that you didn’t commit, don’t hold your breath waiting for justice. The Franchise Tax Board takes nearly four years on average to resolve many of its
Read More