Steven Yoder writes about business, real estate and criminal justice. His work appears in Vice, The American Prospect, Pacific Standard Magazine, Mic.com and elsewhere. Read more at www.stevenyoder.net. On Twitter @syodertweets.
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Building a Better Board
How to take advantage of a new law to create better oversight and decisions
Here’s how experts say companies can strengthen corporate governance.

Finding Affordable Financing
The flow of money to pay for low-income housing could be slowing just as demand soars
There’s a staggering demand for affordable housing coming just
when there’s less financing available to build it.

Transfer of Power
Some owners who want to sell decide the best buyer is their staff
Research indicates that employee ownership can improve profit margins and company culture, but it may not be the right choice for every seller.

Hospitals on Life Support
As the Capital Region moves into the seventh month of the coronavirus crisis, it’s not just sick patients at risk
Smaller, independent hospitals are at risk of closing due to financial strain exacerbated by the pandemic.

The Cannabis Recession Test
This economic collapse offers the first trial of how the legal recreational weed industry performs in a downturn
Certain product sectors came through the 2008 Great Recession relatively unscathed. Will cannabis get through this one?

Planning During Coronavirus
For young business owners, the time is right to put together a savings and investment plan
Here’s what financial planning experts in the Capital Region say young adults can think about to stay alive financially through 2020 and beyond.

Child Care Crisis
The region’s shortage is at critical levels, and part of the problem is not enough space. Capital Region leaders are looking for ways to get more facilities up and running.
As of 2017, Sacramento County had enough licensed child care slots to accommodate little more than a quarter of children with working parents. State and local officials are spearheading efforts to change that.
Sponsored

Bankers Find Their Niche
Specialization has come to the lending business, but doing it well requires planning for the worst
The recession of 2008 and its aftermath reordered the landscape across industries. In banking, the most obvious effect was to tighten the rules on mortgage lending after passage of the 2010 Dodd-Frank Wall Street Reform and Consumer Protection Act.
Sponsored

Active-Adult Communities Offer an Alternative
As the baby boomer population ages, more services are being developed to suit their lifestyles. For older adults who don’t yet need assisted-living housing, there are active-adult communities. Some are age-restricted, with homes required to have one resident 55 or older. Others are age-targeted, marketing to those older than 55, but don’t restrict residents by age.
Sponsored

Senior-Housing Mismatch
A looming nursing-home shortage and a possible assisted-living glut has forced new thinking on options for taking care of older adults
The baby boom is now the silver tsunami.
By 2030, the state’s over-65 population will almost double from 4.6 million to 8.6 million, according to state figures. For companies that innovate better ways to serve them, that means opportunities — apps to help loved ones coordinate care, products to help older people get around and remote tech support to help with computer challenges.

What If You Don’t Have a Pension?
Only about 13 percent of private-sector workers are covered by a pension, a dramatic fall from the peak of 46 percent in 1980.

How Safe Is Your Pension?
Defined-benefit plans represent a promise, but whether it will be kept depends on the type — and your employer
Pensions put the risk on employers, who are on the hook to pay retirees an agreed amount no matter what happens to the underlying investment.

Rx for Merger Madness
Hospitals and physician practices are consolidating; for businesses covering their workers, that means re-evaluating current plans to keep health care costs from soaring
In the 2019 American economy, the big are getting bigger. Mergers are everywhere — the number of mergers and acquisitions exceeded 15,000 in 2017, a record for a single year, with 2018 a close second.

Will Assembly Bill 5 Destroy the Gig Economy?
An end-of-session legislative fight has huge implications for companies and their contractors
A momentous Supreme Court decision. A presidential candidate weighing in. A noisy late-August demonstration outside the Capitol. Not Washington, but Sacramento. Not abortion or guns — Dynamex.

Teaching the Teachers
With the teacher shortage at crisis levels, education leaders are trying something new — intensive coaching while training on the job
Statewide, the number of people getting into teaching via a county office of education or school district internship doubled in the last five years.

Are You Recession Ready?
In uncertain times, gaming out a recession strategy should be part of every company’s planning
If you’re looking for advice on whether winter is coming, you might do no better than an architect.

Trained in the Trades
Area companies and educators are developing much-needed middle-skill workers, but will low wages make it impossible to fill the void?
Industries around the Capital Region are feeling the pinch of trying to find qualified, skilled workers needed to fill various positions. Some companies are starting to reach out to trade programs to help fill those gaps.

The Herb Column: Could Sacramento Attract Cannabis Tourists?
Inviting visitors who want to sample product could be a boost — but city leaders aren’t yet onboard
Luke and Eliza Maroney want to bring more buzz to Sacramento, and not just the kind they sell. They’re spouses and partners in Lucky Box Club, a subscription service delivering curated cannabis products to customers monthly. But they’re out to fuse weed and other concepts too.

Lost in the Block
Blockchain is poised to oust middlemen across industries — here’s how it works
Bitcoin’s value in the real world derives in part from the fact that it runs on a blockchain, a distributed and transparent online accounting register

The Herb Column: The Elusive Marriage of Cannabis and Crypto
Two emerging industries may one day join forces to solve legal marijuana’s banking problem — but not quite yet
Cash is king in the cannabis world, and no one likes it that way. Because marijuana remains illegal at the federal level, only a handful of banks will do business with those in the industry in states where cannabis is legal.

For Women Seeking Corporate Board Positions, It’s Still an Uphill Climb
A new California law is forcing publicly-traded for-profit businesses to get women on their boards. Yet getting tapped for a directorship is no easy feat.

Will SB 826 Survive?
Last August’s law, SB 826, was in part the product of frustration. In 2013, one of its sponsors, Sen. Hannah-Beth Jackson, authored a resolution that urged all publicly held California corporations to ensure one-fifth of their board directors were women by the end of 2016. While adopted by both legislative chambers, the resolution carried no consequences. When the deadline rolled around, fewer than 20 percent of companies had actually hit the target, according to a Senate analysis.

The Herb Column: Is Onsite Smoking on Its Way?
Sacramento City Council could soon decide whether to permit people to light up in smoking lounges and cafes
For proponents of legal cannabis, Prop. 64 will forever be a landmark. But another ballot measure — Prop. 65, passed 30 years earlier in 1986 — gets almost no attention, although it also affects state government’s approach to cannabis.

An Alternative to ‘Deny and Defend’?
One area health system is among a small group of providers nationwide trying something different. In September 2014, Dignity Health implemented a system in four Sacramento-area hospitals designed to bring more satisfaction to patients and families after adverse medical events while boosting patient safety.

Settling For Less
The rising cost of medical malpractice suits has made attorneys who take those cases an endangered species
Mamas, don’t let your babies grow up to be medical malpractice lawyers. That may lack the ring of Waylon Jennings’ original, but area attorneys say it’s a reality given the money-losing proposition of bringing malpractice cases in California.

The Herb Column: Competing With the Underground Market
Licensed operators say they’re barely holding on as their market share gets eaten up by illegal sellers
The underground market is flourishing in Sacramento and across the state. The BCC and city have promised a crackdown. But there’s disagreement in the industry about whether that’s the right move.

Down to the Details
Can fee adjustments incentivize more affordable housing projects?
Fees and permitting are a vital tool for municipalities looking to address the housing shortage on a local level. We take a look at different strategies being employed in the region.

The Herb Column: How Commercial Landlords Protect Their Assets in the Age of Legal Bud
For building owners out to make money in the cannabis space, it’s not all roses
For landlords with the right commercial space, the green premium would seem to be cash-flow heaven.

The Herb Column: Still Unbanked, Cannabis Enterprises Struggle
Federal law deters banks from serving legal cannabis businesses
Eleven months after recreational marijuana use became legal in California and six years on from legalization in Colorado and Washington state, legal pot growers and dealers still can’t use banks the same way other businesses can.

The Edtech Edge
Local edtech startups are less about disruption as they are about enhancing current models
Local edtech innovators aren’t trying to blow up traditional educational models. At a time when edtech funding models are on the decline, local founders are bootstrapping solutions to existing classroom needs.

Power Politics
The growing number of publicly owned CCAs offer cheaper and cleaner electricity than for-profit utilities — so are they viable in the long-term?
Community choice aggregators are the latest test of whether local, publicly run ventures can deliver cheaper and cleaner power than their investor-owned counterparts. But electricity procurement can be a fickle industry.

Mapping the Next Move
Now in its 36th year, accounting firm BFBA has turned its succession-planning expertise inward
Do business advisers practice what they preach? We look at how accounting firm BFBA handles its own succession planning, as its first generation partners approach retirement.

Fast Tracked
The results are coming in from a multiyear push to increase graduation rates — and they look promising
Delayed college graduation is costly to students, schools and local economies. Both Sac State and Los Rios implemented measures to help students graduate faster. Can they move grads through without diminishing the quality of education? Results look promising.

Classification Complications
How to navigate the maze of California’s new rules on overtime and independent contractors
Employee classification is already murky territory for many business owners, and recent changes have further tightened requirements. Yet, with huge penalties attached to mistakes, the laws are critical to understand.

MBA Makeover
As enrollment in MBA programs drops nationwide, area universities adapt their offerings for the modern student
With interest in MBAs flat or falling across the nation, can modernization help programs keep up with student interest? We take a look at how the region’s education programs are innovating their offerings.

Banning the Box
A new state law aiming to help those with a criminal record rejoin society is changing how companies hire
Giving ex-offenders a better chance at reintegration is behind the California Fair Chance Act, which took effect in January. With exceptions for a few types of jobs, the new law forbids businesses with five or more employees from asking applicants about criminal history until late in the hiring process — which could mean big changes in how many employers hire.

Small Wonders
19J’s microunits are a gamble — but will demand for downsized living make the project a winner?
Picture 350 square feet. That’s 11 queen-sized beds. It’s the inside of a school bus with an extra row or two of seats. It’s a little smaller than the average two-car garage. And it’s the size of 25-year-old Rachel Vaney’s apartment in Midtown Sacramento.

Strength in Numbers
It’s not just possible for companies to both diversify and perform well — evidence shows the two may be inseparable
Studies suggest that diversity and profit aren’t two sides of a
coin,
but more like the symbiotic relationship between bees and
flowers.
So what does diversity actually look like, why does it seem to
have
financial implications and how can businesses work toward
more
inclusive hiring practices?

Limits to Launch
Is the UC’s two-tiered tech-transfer system restraining innovation and economic growth?
Tech transfer at publically-funded universities isn’t just about generating revenue from IP — it’s about the public good. But is the UC’s strategy for negotiating licenses making this double-barrelled mission even more complex?

The Hidden Heist
Smaller businesses are more at-risk for fraud — here’s how to protect yourself
Each year, small and mid-sized organizations, including small businesses, lose the most to employee theft. We talked to financial advisors about the lessons they learned about how to prevent fraud from damaging your business.

The Legacy
As Holt of California approaches a crossroads, the company relies on its history of strong leadership transitions
Back in 1998, two family businesses —Holt Bros. and Tenco Tractors — merged into one, for a total of three families now under one business roof at Holt of California. Twenty years later, they rely on a long history of leadership transitions to select the next in line for succession.

Now Hiring
A dwindling immigrant workforce will have significant impacts on industry vitality and wages — the question is to what extent
The departure of long-established but undocumented Mexicans from California is a signal — along with other government data from the southwest border — that the flow of unauthorized immigration is shifting direction, perhaps dramatically.

Digital Detective
A State Bar opinion on electronic discovery underlines a new reality — lack of technology competence isn’t just a competitive risk, but an ethical one
From texts to photos to emails, every modern law case involves some sort of e-discovery — so why are lawyers still failing to do it?

A New Role Call
How two state institutions of higher education came to lead the way in gender parity
In the last 50 years, higher education’s customer base has become decidedly more female. In 1967, 40 percent of college students were women. By 2014, it was 56 percent. The U.S. Department of Education projects that will climb to 59 percent by 2025.
But the people responsible for delivering those educations are still overwhelmingly male.

Fortress of Solvency
For families taking care of a special-needs child or adult, solid financial and legal planning gives a measure of control over an expensive future
The day that Jenny and Bob had their son Justin in 1994, they set foot in a new world. Jenny went into labor four weeks early, and her baby presented in the wrong direction — feet first. So he was delivered through emergency C-section. Once he was born, his heart rate dropped instead of rising, as it should have. For weeks it wasn’t clear whether he’d survive.

The Great Millennial Migration
As millennials grow up, many are growing out of the urban core that has defined their generation — and redefining suburban life
Now that millennials are older and starting to have kids, the economics of schools and space are driving many of them to the suburbs, just as it did their parents.

A Port in the Storm
Value-based health insurance may offer stability for employers in a marketplace about to be upended by more new federal policies
Seven years after passage of the Affordable Care Act created a new world order in health insurance, it all may be upended. With a new administration in Washington, all or parts of Obamacare could be repealed and replaced. All the while, premium increases have continued apace:

From Lab to Launch
UC Davis churns out startups by giving its researchers a chance to mix with — and think like — entrepreneurs
Venture Catalyst is one part of a multipronged effort at the school that its leaders say is helping turn university research into companies that produce world-changing technologies. The school has facilitated a total of 49 startups in the last four fiscal years, up from 18 in the four years prior.

In Whom We Trust
A new federal rule is about to shake up the business of retirement financial advice
For a sense of how fungible the label “financial adviser” has become, talk to Mike Chamberlain of Chamberlain Financial Planning & Wealth Management, which has an office in Sacramento. “’Financial services industry’ is a very broad term,” he says, “and I don’t like being included in it.

The Family Fund
Immigrant entrepreneurs are twice as likely to launch new businesses, and their startup success often hinges on family
There are good reasons to focus on the special challenges posed by family businesses, like how to keep family resentments from turning to business rivalries and avoid nepotism that results in the wrong people working in key positions. But for some Sacramento immigrant family businesses, blood ties have been the key to survival.