The following links are just news items and opinions that pass my desk throughout the week. I don’t necessarily support or advocate any of the items, they are just interesting reads.
What drives California’s budget decisions? A lot of politics, not as much data – …That’s just one example of how the state budget gets put together, often without fully knowing if a program is paying off. Revenue dictates decisions, and voter-passed initiatives direct some spending. After that, legislators use any data that’s available, but they also negotiate with other officials and listen to their constituents.
They’re also lobbied by advocates and interest groups. (More than 650 organizations spent money lobbying on the budget, as well as other issues.)
For the 2024-25 budget now before the Legislature, Newsom released a revised plan earlier this month that calls for dipping into reserves, canceling some new spending and cutting existing programs to cover a remaining shortfall of $27.6 billion. The independent Legislative Analyst’s Office, which assesses the budget picture through different calculations, cites the deficit as $55 billion, though it generally agrees with Newsom’s overall view of the state’s finances.
Today and through this week, the Assembly and Senate will conduct hearings on Newsom’s proposals. The Legislature faces a June 15 deadline to approve its version.
Jesse Gabriel, who leads the Assembly budget committee, noted that only a handful of legislators have dealt with a deep deficit before. The state had a record budget surplus as recently as two years ago, thanks to federal pandemic aid and a roaring stock market; the last lengthy recession ended in 2009.
Addressing California’s deficit is a two-part equation, where increasing revenue could help. But Newsom has ruled out increasing taxes and instead emphasized “right-sizing expenditures,” telling legislators they shouldn’t expect bills with high price tags to pass.
For Gabriel, the May 6 hearing by the revamped accountability and oversight committee hints at an appetite for culture change in the Legislature — though one that could take time.
“We want to be doing a lot more data-driven decision making about which programs and services are really delivering results for Californians,” he told CalMatters. “For us, that metric is not did the money go out the door? But was it impactful? Did it make a difference in results for the people it was intended to serve?”
California currently uses “incremental budgeting:” Each department’s or program’s funding request starts with what they spent last year, updated with best estimates of what they need in the coming year. Also known as “baseline budgeting,” it’s the most common approach states take, according to the National Conference of State Legislatures.
Some public analysis of how programs are working comes from the nonpartisan Legislative Analyst’s Office and state agencies, sometimes at the request of lawmakers.
But a CalMatters analysis published in February found that 70% of the 1,118 state agency reports on how laws were working due in the past year had not been submitted to the Office of Legislative Counsel, which keeps reports. And about half of those that were filed were late. Read More > at CalMatters
Teachers, school boards threaten to sue over Gov. Newsom’s fix for revenue shortfall – Two powerful education groups’ opposition could derail Gov. Gavin Newsom’s plan to fix a massive state budget shortfall for TK-12 schools and community colleges and lead to litigation this summer with an unpredictable outcome.
The dispute is over Proposition 98, the 35-year-old, complex formula that determines how much money schools and community colleges must receive annually from the state’s general fund. Newsom says he’s complying with the law while largely sparing schools and community colleges the larger budget cuts facing UC, CSU and non-educational parts of state government.
To which the California School Boards Association and the California Teachers Association say, “Thanks, but no thanks.”
In separate announcements, the school boards association on Wednesday and CTA on Friday threatened to sue over what they characterize as an end run around the Proposition 98 formula that would deny schools and community colleges billions of dollars. They argue that Newsom’s tactic would set a bad and expensive precedent that governors in other tight times would imitate if allowed.
Like other areas of state government, schools and community colleges are facing a massive revenue shortage — a drop of $17.7 billion in Proposition 98 funding over a three-year period, including $3.7 billion just since January alone.
The biggest piece of the drop reflected a big miscalculation. Because of winter storms in early 2023 across much of the nation, the federal government and California pushed back the filing date for taxes from April 15 to Nov. 15. As a result, Newsom and legislators lacked accurate revenue estimates when they set the 2023-24 budget in June; it turns out they appropriated $8.8 billion more than the minimum required under Proposition 98.
Since TK-12 and community colleges had already budgeted and spent the money, Newsom promised to hold them harmless. The contention is over his Department of Finance advisers’ plan to treat the “overpayment” as an off-the-books accounting maneuver.
The Department of Finance would pay for the $8.8 billion in cash — the state apparently has lots of it these days — and then accrue the expenditure from the general fund over five years, starting in 2025-26.
The proposed budget “is not only legal and constitutional in our view, but is designed to provide predictable and stable support” in response to unprecedented disruption in revenue projections,” said H.D. Palmer, the deputy director for external affairs for the Department of Finance. But the nonpartisan Legislative Analyst’s Office has questioned whether the governor’s plan is prudent, without commenting on its legality. And key legislators, including the chairs of the budget subcommittees on education financing — Sen. John Laird, D-Santa Cruz, and Assemblymember David Alvarez, D-San Diego — appeared skeptical in hearings this week. Read More > at EdSource
Newsom Said He Wouldn’t Raise Taxes To Fix California’s Deficit. His Budget Proposal Includes $18 Billion in Tax Hikes for Businesses. – California governor Gavin Newsom (D.) told reporters earlier this month he wouldn’t raise taxes to fix the state’s $73 billion budget hole, but buried in his latest budget proposal are $18 billion in temporary tax hikes for businesses.
Earlier this month, the governor repeatedly pledged he would not raise taxes to solve the budget crisis—which comes just two years after he boasted a nearly $100 billion surplus—telling reporters that “the answer is no,” should Democratic lawmakers bring him tax hike proposals, and that “there’s only so many times I can say no to the tax question.”
“I don’t see there’s real evidence and need right now to increase general taxes … in this state and put more burden on working folks and our competitive posture,” he told one reporter who asked him if tax hikes were an “absolute nonstarter” for him.
Newsom unveiled his budget proposal on May 10, and the tax policy details the following week. The proposal would, for the next three years, bar businesses earning $1 million or more from deducting operating losses from their taxes while also limiting business tax credits. The provisions are projected to cost California businesses about $18 billion through 2027, although they wouldn’t take effect if tax collections beat expectations. Such a scenario appears unlikely, however, given that California’s tax revenues are massively down thanks to a stagnating economy and exodus of both high-earning residents and businesses.
State finance department spokesman H.D. Palmer said the proposals are “designed to protect small businesses” and said the administration projects they will hit a small percentage of corporations, and the tax credit limits especially will primarily affect research and development. He also disputed the framing of the policies as temporary tax increases, saying they are “fundamentally different in structure.”
Yet critics are blasting the move as tax increases, regardless of the governor’s framing. David Kline, vice president of communications and research for the California Taxpayers Association, said adding these taxes will only make California’s already beleaguered economy worse. Read More > in The Washington Free Beacon
California is on track for another record year spent on lobbyists – Special interest groups spent more than $114 million to lobby California officials and legislators in the first quarter of this year, matching the pace last year when a record $480 million was spent to influence state policy decisions.
So far, nearly $600 million has been spent since the current two-year session of the Legislature started in January 2023. This year’s pace so far is about $1.25 million per day.
The top 10 spenders for the first quarter of 2024, revealed in the latest financial reports filed with the Secretary of State, include nine that have been on the top 10 list since 2005. The only one that wasn’t: Contra Costa County.
Here are the 10 organizations that invested the most in state level lobbying between January and March of this year and how much they spent.
Who spent the most on state lobbying so far this year?
| 1 | CHEVRON U.S.A., INC. AND AFFILIATES | $3.07M |
|---|---|---|
| 2 | WESTERN STATES PETROLEUM ASSOCIATION | $2.47M |
| 3 | CALIFORNIA CHAMBER OF COMMERCE | $1.18M |
| 4 | HOWARD JARVIS TAXPAYERS ASSOCIATION | $1.05M |
| 5 | CALIFORNIA HOSPITAL ASSOCIATION/CALIFORNIA ASSOCIATION OF HOSPITALS AND HEALTH SYSTEMS | $1.02M |
| 6 | PACIFIC GAS AND ELECTRIC COMPANY AND ITS AFFILIATED ENTITIES | $1.14M |
| 7 | CONTRA COSTA COUNTY | $772.77K |
| 8 | AT&T SERVICES INC. AND ITS AFFILIATES | $865.46K |
| 9 | CALIFORNIA STATE COUNCIL OF SERVICE EMPLOYEES | $753.94K |
| 10 | CALIFORNIA TEACHERS ASSOCIATION | $667.16K |
Table: Jeremia Kimelman, CalMattersSource: Secretary of StateGet the dataCreated with Datawrapper
Contra Costa County: $773,000
The East Bay Area county spent 65% of the total it spent last year in just the first quarter of this year and reported advocating on seven bills. It supported a bill about hosting public meetings online and another about in-home supportive health service certifications through an association called Urban Counties.
The $570,000 quarter-over-quarter increase is due to a lobbying blitz in favor of a bill that extends the deadline by which hospitals must be seismically retrofitted or demolished. The bill is pending in the Senate.
Contra Costa County was the only lobbyist employer in top 10 spenders from last quarter to not be in the same list historically. Since 2005, it has reported spending just under $18 million to push its point of view in state government. Read More > at CalMatters
Newsom promised 1,200 tiny homes for homeless Californians. A year later, none have opened – In March 2023, Gov. Gavin Newsom stood before a crowd in Sacramento’s Cal Expo event center and made a promise: He’d send 1,200 tiny homes to shelter homeless residents in the capital city and three other places throughout the state.
The move was part of Newsom’s push to improve the homelessness crisis by quickly moving people out of encampments and into more stable environments. But more than a year later, none of those tiny homes have welcomed a single resident. Only about 150 have even been purchased.
Irontown Modular, one of six vendors the state chose to supply the tiny homes in Sacramento, San Jose, Los Angeles and San Diego County, is “absolutely shocked” that they’ve received no orders, said Kam Valgardson, general manager of the Utah-based company.
There have been multiple delays and about-faces, over everything from the way the state is funding the units to the ability of local cities and counties to find places to put them. The state has suggested the delays are the fault of local governments. But tiny homes have failed to materialize even when local leaders moved quickly to approve a project site.
In some cases, it’s difficult to know exactly what’s holding up these projects. Communications involving the governor’s office are exempt from the California Public Records Act. Multiple requests by CalMatters for emails between the governor’s office and the cities and counties slated to receive the tiny homes were denied. Read More > at CalMatters
VTA is betting on federal dollars to complete the San Jose BART extension — with no backup plan – The Santa Clara Valley Transportation Authority is betting on a hefty sum of money from the federal government to help complete the $12.75 billion San Jose BART extension. But if those dollars don’t come in, it appears the transit agency doesn’t have a backup plan.
For more than two decades, transportation officials have envisioned completing a ring of rail around the Bay Area. In 2020, BART reached its southernmost point, opening stations in Milpitas and the Berryessa neighborhood of San Jose. But now VTA, the agency tasked with building out BART, has its eyes set on the final leg: a six-mile, four-station extension through downtown San Jose and up to Santa Clara.
The megaproject’s cost has ballooned in the last decade, skyrocketing from $4.4 billion to a more than $12 billion estimate made earlier this year. The project has also faced repeated delays, going from a 2026 opening date to 2037.
VTA has already earmarked dollars from state and local sources that will cover slightly more than half of the project costs. But this year, the agency will submit a grant application to the Federal Transit Administration asking them to fund the other 49.4%, or $6.297 billion.
But what if VTA doesn’t get the money they need for the BART extension? General Manager Carolyn Gonot told the Mercury News this week that contingency planning isn’t on their radar at the moment as their “first priority” is to work on the funding plan with the FTA. Read More > in The Mercury News
You’ll have to wait longer to ditch your Clipper card to ride BART or Muni – Being able to pay for BART or Muni fares with your debit or credit card instead of a Clipper card is going to take longer to become reality.
The launch of the upgraded Clipper system, which was scheduled for this summer, has been paused indefinitely, according to the Metropolitan Transportation Commission, the region’s transportation agency.
The upgrade will eventually allow contactless debit or credit card payment options to ride BART, Muni and other Bay Area transit.
For years, the region’s transit agencies have been planning to transition to a fare payment system that promises to give riders the ability to pay for bus, train and ferry rides with the simple tap of a debit or credit card. The upgraded Clipper system that most Bay Area transit agencies use to collect fares will also give operators the ability to offer free transfers.
Jason Weinstein, MTC’s director of electronic payments, told Bay Area transit executives during a Monday gathering that the switch to the so-called Clipper II system has “proven to be more difficult than had been estimated,” adding, “it’s really become clear that the summer of 2024 is no longer feasible in terms of a launch date.” Read More > in the San Francisco Chronicle
Why ‘paper or plastic?’ may be coming to an end at California grocery stores – For years, “paper or plastic?” has been the question that millions of shoppers hear when they roll up to the checkout counter.
But in California, that universal phrase may soon be going the way of “Yada, yada, yada,” “Heeere’s Johnny!” and “Send me a fax.”
On Tuesday, lawmakers in the California state Senate and Assembly approved two bills that would ban supermarkets, retail stores and convenience stories from providing shoppers with thicker, reusable plastic bags. If those bills pass the other chamber and are signed by Gov. Gavin Newsom, which is likely, the measures would take effect Jan. 1, 2026.
California already bans flimsy, single-use plastic bags at most supermarkets and retail stores. They were prohibited in 2016 when voters passed Proposition 67 over concerns about litter on the streets and plastic pollution in the ocean.
But that ballot measure contained a loophole, inserted by some Democratic lawmakers in Sacramento who had plastic bag factories in their districts. It said that thicker plastic bags could still be used at stores if they were labeled as recyclable and could be reused.
Now a coalition of environmental groups and their supporters in the state Capitol say those bags need to go too. Read More > in The Mercury News
New cars in California could alert drivers for breaking the speed limit – California could eventually join the European Union in requiring all new cars to alert drivers when they break the speed limit, a proposal aimed at reducing traffic deaths that would likely impact motorists across the country should it become law.
The federal government sets safety standards for vehicles nationwide, which is why most cars now beep at drivers if their seat belt isn’t fastened. A bill in the California Legislature — which passed its first vote in the state Senate on Tuesday — would go further by requiring all new cars sold in the state by 2032 to beep at drivers when they exceed the speed limit by at least 10 mph (16 kph).
“Research has shown that this does have an impact in getting people to slow down, particularly since some people don’t realize how fast that their car is going,” said state Sen. Scott Wiener, a Democrat from San Francisco and the bill’s author.
The bill narrowly passed on Tuesday, an indication of the tough road it could face. Republican state Sen. Brian Dahle said he voted against it in part because he said sometimes people need to drive faster than the speed limit in an emergency.
“It’s just a nanny state that we’re causing here,” he said.
While the goal is to reduce traffic deaths, the legislation would likely impact all new car sales in the U.S. That’s because California’s auto market is so large that car makers would likely just make all of their vehicles comply with the state’s law. Read More > at ABC News
Hundreds of pelicans have been stranded on the California coast for the second time in 2 years – Droves of starving brown pelicans have been found stranded on the California coast since late April and the root cause of the event remains a mystery, wildlife watchers say.
Arriving dehydrated, starved and injured from fishing lines and hooks, the pelicans are mostly turning up in the Monterey and Santa Cruz areas in Northern California, International Bird Rescue, a nonprofit conservation organization, said on its website.
They’re also popping up in “odd spots” in Southern California, including a lake at Inglewood’s SoFi Stadium and a fire station in Malibu, the group said
The California Department of Fish and Wildlife is “performing postmortem examinations on brown pelicans sent to our laboratories in Sacramento and Santa Cruz. Preliminary findings indicate emaciation as the primary issue contributing to this stranding event,” department spokesperson Tim Daly told CNN in a statement.
International Bird Rescue reported more than 260 brown pelicans – a once endangered species – have arrived at the organization’s California treatment centers since April 20.
The seabirds have displayed this behavior before – almost exactly two years ago – in the same areas. And the recovery effort is expensive. Read More > at CNN
Study: Delta pumps likely killed 500K fish in 2 decades – Just east of the San Francisco Bay, a steel bucket holding 90 gallons of water is strained to rescue precious cargo. The metal roars as it spins, dispelling more and more water, to reveal, finally, a wriggling pair of juvenile Chinook salmon.
These young, 2-inch long fish were drawn into danger by giant pumps that push water south to millions of Californians and farms. Saving them from likely peril has been the core purpose since 1968 of the John E. Skinner Delta Fish Protective Facility.
But the facility been the subject of considerable attention recently for a spike in fish deaths, drawing the ire of environmentalists and anglers. That’s not to say farmers are happy either, as pumps deliver less water despite a second year of drought-busting storms.
A Sacramento Bee analysis of data from the Department of Fish and Wildlife shows that since 2002, state and federal water pumping from the Sacramento-San Joaquin River Delta killed an estimated 600,000 Chinook salmon and 50,000 steelhead trout.
This year has been especially deadly, state figures showed. During February and March, pumps killed an estimated 3,600 winter-run Chinook, the highest number killed in any two-month period in 20 years.
And about 3,200 steelhead died in February and March, the highest number since 2007.
The exact reason for this year’s high mortality is unclear, fish scientists have said. And Delta pumps are just one of many threats to fish survival in California’s main waterways, including habitat loss and drought. Read More > in The Mercury News
California’s largest reservoir fills for a second year in a row – Shasta Lake, the largest reservoir in California, is virtually full for the second year in a row, following months of steady storms.
NASA satellite images show how much conditions have changed at Shasta Lake from about two years ago, when the reservoir was at just 39% of total capacity.
The reservoir is 96% full as of May 20, with water levels at 115% of the historical average for this time of year.
“At this time with no more rain predicted, we anticipate this will be as full as Shasta Reservoir will be this year,” said Michael Burke, a public affairs specialist with the Bureau of Reclamation, by email. Read More > in the San Francisco Chronicle
California Still Has the Highest Jobless Rate in the Nation – The national unemployment rate is at its lowest level in decades. In March, the country added 315,000 jobs. In April, that number was a smaller yet robust 175,000.
It’s a different story in California. On Friday, the Employment Development Department (EDD) announced the state had a net growth of just 5,200 jobs in April. California’s unemployment rate kept steady at 5.3% — the highest of any U.S. state.
“We just have real challenges here in California that other states don’t face,” Renee Ward, founder of Seniors4Hire.org, told the Los Angeles Times. These include higher costs and stricter regulations on businesses.
Only the healthcare and social assistance sectors are bucking the trend. They account for 75% of jobs added since April 2023.
The EDD’s monthly report came a week after Gov. Gavin Newsom issued his May revise, which includes an expected budget deficit of $27.6 billion. Despite state and local budgetary constraints, California’s public sector held steady, adding 2,600 jobs last month. Read More > at California City News
Stop signs replace some Oakland traffic lights to deter copper theft – Oakland has removed the traffic lights from one intersection and replaced them with 4-way stop signs due to people stealing copper and then tampering with an electrical box.
It’s a sight that has made drivers do a double take: a stop sign hanging overhead where a traffic light would normally be, located above the intersection of E. 12th Street and 16th Avenue in Oakland.
Neighbors said city workers removed the all the traffic lights in the last week and replaced them with four-way stop signs. The installation came after months of people stealing copper wires and tampering with the city electrical boxes that supply power to the traffic lights.
“It’s just telling us that the city is giving up on us,” said Tam Le, owner of Le’s Auto Body & Engine Repair, located at the corner of the intersection.
Neighbors said the lights that were there before hadn’t worked in months, either blinking red or being completely out.
A city spokesman said they tried to put heavy cement blocks on top of the boxes, but people just dragged them out of the way.
“If you really want to fix the stop sign, I think you really have to clean up this homeless encampment,” said Le.
The encampment stretches about three blocks on E. 12th street, between 17th and 14th Avenues. The city has made attempts to clear it previously, but it continues to grow larger.
“Many businesses already closed down on E. 12th St. And I don’t know how long we’re going to be here. Because once they move to our side of the sidewalk, we will be gone,” said Le. Read More > at CBS News
Taxpayers lose billions to government overlap, duplication – Overlap and duplication cost taxpayers billions of dollars, according to a new report from a Congressional watchdog.
The U.S. Government Accountability Office’s annual report identified opportunities to save billions of dollars by reducing overlap, duplication and fragmentation across the federal government.
The report outlines 112 measures that Congress and federal agencies could take to save money and improve government services.
“This year’s report provides Congress and federal agencies with new opportunities to save federal dollars, increase revenue, and improve the efficiency and effectiveness of a wide range of federal programs,” said Gene Dodaro, comptroller general and head of the GAO. “By addressing this year’s pointed list, as well as open recommendations to both agencies and Congress from GAO’s past work, the federal government could potentially save tens of billions of dollars.”
Earlier this year, the GAO, which serves as the research arm of Congress, estimated annual fraud losses cost taxpayers between $233 billion and $521 billion annually, according to a report published last month. Read More > at The Center Square
No One Knows How Many Children Die from Mistreatment. But It’s More Than Die from Cancer. – Just over 1,500 children, from newborns to age 14, were expected to die of cancer last year. Even more infants and children — an estimated 2,000 — die each year as the result of maltreatment. A group of researchers and child services experts are working to bring attention to these deaths and the circumstances that can lead to them.
Lives Cut Short, a project from the American Enterprise Institute (AEI) and the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill (UNC), was launched at the beginning of May. Among its early activities is gathering and publishing data from publicly available sources to tell the stories of children who have died as a result of abuse or neglect since 2022.
These are worst-case outcomes from a societal problem that affects a surprisingly large segment of the population. Somewhere between a quarter and a third of all American children are involved in investigations of alleged maltreatment at some point between their births and age 18.
This count encompasses incidents that are actually reported, not the full scale of mistreatment, says Dee Wilson, a member of the Lives Cut Short advisory board. Wilson worked in child services in two states for 32 years and directed child welfare services for Casey Family Programs.
If there are something like 7 million reports in a year, and only 2,000 children die, Wilson says, that’s a rate that’s too low to be much use in making predictions. It also makes it to harder to build agreement that this is a priority issue. Read More > at Governing
Drunk Driving Deaths Hit Nearly 20-Year High Despite Fewer DUI Arrests – The pandemic had big impacts all over the world and, in America, one of its most notable effects was making driving more dangerous. Deaths on U.S. roads rose to historic highs, and one of the factors promoting that tragic trend was drunk driving.
The National Highway Traffic Safety Administration released data on impaired driving from 2022, and revealed that around 13,500 people died in accidents in which alcohol was a factor. That’s roughly on par with 2021’s figures, and 33 percent higher than in 2019. The last time so many people lost their lives in collisions involving impairment was in 2006.
Meanwhile, data from the FBI shows that DUI arrests have been falling, reports the Wall Street Journal. In 2019, police made around a million arrests for impaired driving around the country. By 2020, the number was down to 780,000, and in 2022, police made 788,000 arrests.
These figures reverse a trend that started in the 1980s, when public education campaigns against drunk driving started to really take effect. In the early part of that decade, around 20,000 Americans died every year in accidents in which alcohol was a factor. By 2010, that number had halved thanks to education campaigns from organizations like Mothers Against Drunk Driving, rising enforcement, and other factors.
However, Jonathan Adkins, who runs the Governors Highway Safety Association, told WSJ that DUI arrests fell steadily in the 2010s, while deaths hovered at between 10,000 and 11,000. The pandemic led to increases in risky behavior, though, just as police departments were struggling with staffing issues.
Reports suggest that the numbers did improve in 2023 (official data for which is not yet available), but not by much. “It’s still a very urgent situation,” said Adkins, and it’s an issue that some politicians, like Republican Governor Mike DeWine, are taking up.
“Saving lives is an absolute top priority,” said DeWine. “I think it’s an enforcement issue. I think it’s an education issue. I think it’s also judges enforcing that law.” Read More > CarScoops
Transit Agencies Must Replace Most Maintenance Workers This Decade – The Central Ohio Transit Authority, which runs bus service in and around the state capital in Columbus, offers paid internships to area high school students who are interested in becoming mechanics. Interns earn $12 an hour while learning the rudiments of bus maintenance and inspection from experienced workers in the authority’s vehicle maintenance department. In the last few years, about half of the interns who’ve completed the program have been hired to work with the authority full time.
Many more such partnerships will be needed if the transit industry is going to overcome a deep shortage of maintenance workers, according to a new report from the New York-based advocacy group TransitCenter.
The report, Developing Transit Talent Pipelines, is the last in a series that has examined workforce challenges in the industry over the last several years. An earlier report explored the shortage of vehicle operators, which started before the COVID-19 pandemic but was accelerated by it (and which has complicated agencies’ schedules and service-expansion plans for years). Another report probed human resources practices in the transit industry that make it more difficult for agencies to hire and retain workers.
The labor shortage has been spurred by a wave of retirements with no accompanying wave of young hires. And it has dovetailed with a dire fiscal crisis in many transit systems, driven partly by a loss of ridership during the pandemic. Agencies have begun to make some headway in filling vacant positions in recent months, says Chris Van Eyken, research director at TransitCenter and author of its latest report, but they have much more work to do to solve the challenge — and prevent it from making public transit’s woes much worse. Read More > at Governing
Romick in Oakley 
