Ben Brown, managing partner at BFBA, an accounting firm in Sacramento, offers his insight into family business planning. For more from Brown, check out “Mapping the Next Move” in our October issue. Sign up for our newsletter and we’ll email you when it’s available online.

With about $350 billion in assets, CalPERS is the largest public pension fund in the nation. Comstock’s spoke with CEO Marcie Frost about some of the challenges the system faces — including the decision to lower its expected rate of return, thereby driving up the mandatory financial contribution from state and local governments.

There is no one-size-fits-all approach to funding your business venture. Here are just a few of the resources available in the Capital Region:

Having a great idea is easy. But turning that idea into a business is a bit more difficult. From creating a product with market viability, to hiring staff and growing to scale, the road to entrepreneurship is rife with obstacles. But, perhaps none are as fundamental as the age-old question of how to fund.

I’m a corporate recruiter. For candidates that progress to an HR phone screen, we ask their expected salary and share the range we have for the role. Is it appropriate to use someone’s low salary expectations as a reason for not moving forward? I’m concerned that a candidate who makes so much less won’t be a good fit. Is that the case?

In 2018, Golden Pacific Bank is an anomaly, one of the few remaining community banks in the Capital Region to emerge in the past 10 years and not be acquired by a larger entity.

In November, the Sacramento Region Business Association launched Region Finance, a trade association created to help local governments do more business with community banks. Its board consists of executives from local banks — including River City Bank, American River Bank and others — pushing to keep businesses, resources and funds local to spur economic growth.

Virginia Varela, Golden Pacific Bank president and CEO, offers her insight into the region’s community banks.

California’s major revenue sources have shifted over time. Until 1995, the biggest was property taxes. Today, it’s personal income taxes.

And California ranks fairly high in overall taxation: 10th highest both per capita and as a percentage of personal income, based on the latest available data from the U.S. Census.

We are a small business with a staff of three: myself, my husband and one employee. As a seasonal business, we are sometimes very busy and sometimes have hardly any business at all. Recently, our employee asked to convert from a salary to hourly pay. He made this request during our busy season. My question is: Do we have to pay him during a month when we have no business at all?