When California SB 901 was passed last September instituting a variety of wildfire-related measures, it was met with mixed reactions. The bill’s detractors saw it as a bailout for large utilities such as Pacific Gas & Electric (PG&E), who are able to pass off some their liability in starting wildfires to ratepayers in the form
According to the Energy Information Administration (EIA), California ranked 48th in the country in energy consumption per capita in 2016. In fact, the average California households consumed 31% less energy than the national average. Commonly cited reasons for California’s low levels of per capita energy consumption are its raft of of energy efficiency programs as
Each quarter the Lowe Institute partners with Chapman University to produce consumer sentiment indices for three nearby metropolitan areas: Los Angeles, Orange County, and the Inland Empire. The fourth quarter results—based on surveys conducted in mid-December—are in. You may recall it was a rather eventful quarter headlined by a precipitous stock market decline and a
The Department of Defense’s new policy to kick out non-deployable military members would seem to threaten California’s impressively low 4.1 percent unemployment rate which, according to the California Employment Development Department, reached a 42-year low in September. The DoD enacted their “deploy or get out” policy on October 1st, with the intention of creating a
In the Road and Repair Accountability Act (SB 1), California has pledged to increase its spending on state transportation infrastructure by $54 billion over the next decade for “fix it first” highway and road projects, bike and pedestrian infrastructure, and public transit. One aspect in which these investments can translate into public benefits are the
