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.

Three companies found to have sold toxic lead paint for decades—despite knowing it posed health hazards for children—are waging a major battle to avoid paying the several hundred millions of dollars in liability that California courts have slapped on them.

And they’re asking you, the California voter, to help them get their way.

Businesses in California now have a new centralized directory with which to find information about relevant state and local incentives.

For the past year, the Fiddyment House, a former pioneer homestead dating to the mid-19th century, has sat vacant in West Roseville. All around it, land is being developed into residential neighborhoods, as the owner of that historic house — the City of Roseville — considers the future of the property.

John Cox wants to slash the California income tax—abolish it, if possible. Maybe you disagree, but he thinks he can convince you.

Raised in Oak Park and a Sacramento State graduate, Sacramento Police Chief Daniel Hahn brings a lifetime of local experience to the job. Rich Ehisen sat down with Hahn last January — exactly two months prior to the officer shooting of Stephon Clark — to discuss Hahn’s priorities for our April issue, which went to press just days after details of the shooting began to surface. We have updated the Q&A with a follow-up interview that took place in early April.

The California Public Employees’ Retirement System, the largest U.S. pension fund, is weighing a policy to urge companies in which it invests to disclose sexual-harassment settlements.

This election season five California counties are doing away with hundreds of neighborhood polling places and replacing them with fewer “one-stop vote centers”—an experiment sold by Democrats as a way to save money and boost anemic voter turnout from the last mid-term elections.

When an FBI agent asks a roomful of high school juniors, “How many of you watch FBI shows on TV?” nearly every hand goes up. But at the recent Sacramento FBI Teen Academy, held in March, these 41 students soon learn fact — not fiction — about how the bureau works.

California may face its share of thorny policy problems and political conflicts, but for Republican gubernatorial candidate Travis Allen, the solutions are actually “very simple.”

Minutes before President Donald Trump landed in California on March 13, the most powerful politicians in the state sent out a public statement that had nothing to do with him and would garner little attention.

When Marybel Batjer left her C-suite position with Caesars Entertainment in Las Vegas to run California’s newly-created Department of Government Operations in 2013, Gov. Jerry Brown tasked her with a big mandate: Make the Golden State’s government more efficient. Five years later and recently named one of Governing magazine’s 2017 Public Officials of the Year, Batjer sat down with us to discuss what she’s done to make that a reality.

As a teenager growing up in Iraq in the 1990s, Khaleel Yasir wanted to become a U.S. citizen. But his path to citizenship — like that of so many others — turned into a decades-long journey.

After years of waiting, Khaleel Yasir and his wife, Zuhal Al Ameen, became naturalized U.S. citizens on Feb. 22 at the Sacramento Memorial Auditorium. During the monthly naturalization ceremony, 1,060 residents from 81 countries took the oath of citizenship. Yasir resettled his family to Sacramento in 2012 after nine years of service as an interpreter for the U.S. military in Iraq. 

Donna DeMartino, CEO of the San Joaquin Regional Transit, offers her insight into the regional transit industry.

The U.S. Supreme Court has yet to weigh in on a high-profile case that could slash the power of public-employee unions. But California labor leaders are already planning to push for new state laws to blunt the impact of an unfavorable ruling.

In 2014, the City of Sacramento’s construction valuation (which tracks the dollar amount of issued permits) was $390 million, but by June 2018, that valuation will be about $1.5 billion (adjusted for inflation), according to Ryan DeVore, Sacramento’s community development director.

Permitting can be a logistical mess for developers, while the future of economic development depends on this process. Efforts to improve the process find that enhanced communication trumps speed in terms of efficiency.

Effective water conservation throughout the City of Folsom made way for the largest expansion of the city in decades. While not all residents agree with Folsom’s strategy, it is being implemented in growing cities around the state as an effective tool to meet housing demand. 

Ellen Hanak, director of the Water Policy Center at the Public Policy Institute of California offers her insight into California water management.