Newsom and Democratic lawmakers remain divided on infrastructure plan Los Angeles Times

Table Of Content

• Column: We learned nothing from previous oil spills. Will we learn from this one?
• Report urges Metropolitan Water District to abandon Newsom’s $16-billion delta tunnel plan
• These are the California cities where $150,000 still buys you a home. Could you live here?
• New York News
• Rudy, from lawman to lawbreaker: Giuliani gets indicted, again
• Natural gas bills could be huge for Southern Californians this month. Here’s what you can do

With the Rwanda bill becoming law this week and the PM announcing a commitment to increase defence spending, there's been plenty to talk about. Under NY HEAT, ratepayers will also be relieved of the burden of paying more than $150 billion dollars over the coming decades to replace old, leaky pipes, which translates to $35,000 for every gas customer in New York. This status quo is not only unsustainable, it’s unaffordable, and it’s driving rate increases across our state. Senate President Pro Tem Toni Atkins (D-San Diego) and Assembly Speaker Anthony Rendon (D-Lakewood) said they are “continuing to negotiate and make progress” on a budget deal with the governor. Lawmakers intend to pass their agreed upon budget Thursday to meet a June 15 legislative deadline and then amend the budget bill after reaching a final agreement with Newsom in the coming days. Using the new funding, the Los Angeles Department of Water and Power said Wednesday, it wiped out $76 million in pandemic-period debt owed by 137,478 customers.

Column: We learned nothing from previous oil spills. Will we learn from this one?

A bill requiring the Federal Energy Regulatory Commissionto review and sign off on any federal regulation that the commission or a state utility regulator finds has a "significant negative impact" on grid reliability is being opposed by Democrats. It also excluded the proposed rollbacks to IRA programs and left out a provision from the House bill barring DOE from finalizing new efficiency standards for electric distribution transformers. 4394, with a list of all amendments and a description provided by the sponsor, is available here. "We need to make sure that every Angeleno knows that they have access to these crucial programs," Martinez said.

Report urges Metropolitan Water District to abandon Newsom’s $16-billion delta tunnel plan

First fiscal 2024 appropriations package heads to Biden's desk - Roll Call

First fiscal 2024 appropriations package heads to Biden's desk.

Posted: Fri, 08 Mar 2024 08:00:00 GMT [source]

The state should also expect $9.45 billion for public transportation and $384 million to expand an electric vehicle charging station network statewide. California will receive a minimum of $100 million to expand broadband access. An additional $124 million will be available for protection from wildfires and cyberattacks such as ransomware. As the largest state, California stands to gain the largest share of much of this spending, based partially on statutory formulas.

These are the California cities where $150,000 still buys you a home. Could you live here?

As I wrote after last week’s disillusioning election, “messaging” is something that Democrats have been atrocious at. Now that they have something to brag about, they’d better get their bragging skills up to snuff. To Donald Trump, “infrastructure” was just another catchphrase, so it’s hardly surprising that it turned into a joke. No infrastructure program ever emerged from the Trump White House during its four years.

News

In the end, it had support from 19 Republicans, including Minority Leader Mitch McConnell of Kentucky. The Senate on Tuesday approved an expansive bill to rebuild the nation’s aging roads and bridges, with $8.3 billion specifically targeted to water infrastructure projects in the West and billions more to fund national projects to mitigate the impact of wildfires. The proposals included two GOP bills related to US Department of Energy efficiency standards. One would prevent the DOE from updating conservation standards for electric distribution transformers for five years, while the other would overhaul the process for forming DOE efficiency standards for all products. City Council President Nury Martinez said officials were working to spread the word through the Help Is On The Way campaign because "even now, there are utility debt programs available that many Angelenos simply don't know are available to them." The Climate Change Superfund will ensure that New Yorkers are not left holding the bag for all these costs.

The suit was filed by the Western Watersheds Project, which is also one of the groups suing the federal government for failing to conduct required environmental reviews for grazing permits on public lands across the West, per Kylie Mohr at High Country News. In other wildlife news, wild burros — descended from domesticated donkeys left behind by gold miners more than a century ago — are wreaking ecological havoc in Big Bear Valley, in California’s San Bernardino Mountains. In other news about oil and gas facilities in our communities, a long-awaited study of the health consequences of the Aliso Canyon gas leak is finally getting underway, with dozens of UCLA researchers involved, as Olga Grigoryants reports for the L.A. I can also confirm that no one has appealed an Aliso Canyon leak settlement with Southern California Gas Co. that critics see as wildly inadequate, as I recently reported. The state’s Public Utilities Commission has also eliminated a “withdrawal protocol” that limited when Aliso Canyon could be used. The subcommittee considered 12 bills to support nuclear energy and improve the Nuclear Regulatory Commission licensing process, including by setting clearer timeframes, reducing hourly fees for advanced reactors, and avoiding duplicative environmental reviews.

Though the act of passing a preliminary budget and following up with an amended bill later has become commonplace in Newsom’s tenure, an estimated budget deficit of at least $31.5 billion has heightened Democratic discord at the state Capitol this year. Interest groups are lobbying to preserve funding promised in stronger revenue years and Newsom and lawmakers continue to squabble over where to pare back spending. The BLS is committed to providing data promptly and according to established schedules. Automated retrieval programs (commonly called "robots" or "bots") can cause delays and interfere with other customers' timely access to information. Therefore, bot activity that doesn't conform to BLS usage policy is prohibited. According to Edison, the second round of funding should eliminate all of the past-due balances accrued during the pandemic period, including the portion not canceled in the first round.

Rudy, from lawman to lawbreaker: Giuliani gets indicted, again

The CAPP aid arrived in two installments, with about $990 million paid to utilities by the end of January 2022 and almost $650 million paid in November. The utilities were given 60 days to put the funds into their customers’ accounts, which means the second round of credits should appear on utility bills no later than February. Chairwoman Kay Granger's opening remarks are available here.Subcommittee Chairman Chuck Fleischmann's opening remarks are available here. Bill report, before adoption of amendments in Full Committee, is available here. A table of included Community Project Funding requests is available here. Put it together and it becomes evident that infrastructure is no longer properly thought of as bricks and mortar.

In 2019, residents in Grimsby voted Tory for the first time since the end of the Second World War. The old Cleethorpes constituency was always more of a bellwether, having voted Conservative since 2010. The lack of a clear dividing line between the two parties could be a problem in the general election, especially as both parties have been trying to show a bit more leg this week ahead of a fully-fledged election campaign. There might not be a general election just yet, but there are important votes that will define how the areas around us are run for the next four years. On the Sky News Daily, Niall Paterson is joined by deputy political editor Sam Coates to discuss why the elections are so important for the prime minister's future and where the key political backgrounds are. With the Conservatives lagging behind Labour in the polls, the outcome will offer some insight on how voters in England and Wales feel ahead of the general election.

The utility said that 39% of its customers are receiving credits of $500 or more this round, about 42% are receiving credits of $100 to $500, and the remaining credits were for $100 or less. If you fell behind on your gas or electric bill during the pandemic, you should receive a credit without having to apply for one. Similarly, we identified all budget resolutions agreed to since 1975 and when they passed relative to the CBA deadlines. Those include federal waters off the Atlantic and Pacific coasts, which should be of special interest here in Southern California, given our recent experience with an oil spill from an underwater offshore pipeline. Although the infrastructure bill is described as a $1.2-trillion measure, it actually encompasses $550 billion in new spending — that is, allocations beyond what Congress was already planning to spend. Army Corps of Engineers, the bill protects Congressman Rogers' annual requested prohibition preventing the Army Corps from carrying out a water-supply reallocation study for Lake Cumberland to protect local communities from being charged fees for accessing the lake for municipal water supply.

The Senate has demonstrated that it has taxpayers’ backs, putting the Climate Change Superfund in the Senate one-house budget proposal. Unfortunately, the governor’s administration remains opposed to this common-sense measure. Newsom also wants to allow the California Infrastructure and Economic Development Bank, known as IBank, and the Department of Water Resources to take advantage of and leverage federal funding for projects that reduce greenhouse gas.

Those bills cleared the subcommittee by voice vote with bipartisan support. People can also visit ladwp.com/cares for information about utility relief options. Along with automatic credits, people can obtain financial assistance programs, discounts and extended payment plans, allowing "E-Z Save" customers to pay off their bills over four years. LOS ANGELES (CBSLA) - Los Angeles officials launched a campaign Wednesday to spread the word that utility debt relief is still available to Angelenos struggling to pay their water and power bills during the COVID-19 pandemic. One bill in the governor’s plan aims to reduce the opportunity for lengthy record preparation delays due to lawsuits filed under the California Environmental Quality Act, which can sink building projects. Another proposal would speed up judicial review in CEQA lawsuits related to water, transportation, clean energy, and semiconductor or microelectronic projects.

Authority spokeswoman Melissa Figueroa said the agency sees about $20 billion to $40 billion in the bill that it could be eligible to compete for and, pending finality of the legislation, plans to apply. It could accomplish many of progressives’ top policy priorities, such as implementing paid family leave and a universal prekindergarten program, expanding Medicare and enacting a pathway to citizenship for some immigrants. The plan, which is the first portion of Biden’s “Build Back Better” program, will next go to the House, where it faces challenges from progressives. The House approved amendments to provide loan guarantees for the Alaska Natural Gas Pipeline and to bar funds to finalize any regulation that costs the economy more than $100 million annually. A summary of the bill, before adoption of amendments, is available here. 4394, The Energy and Water Development and Related Agencies Appropriations Act.

In the most extreme case, the final spending bill for fiscal 2017 didn’t become law until May 2017, more than seven months into the fiscal year. In short, the typical appropriations process isn’t the orderly one laid out in the 1974 Congressional Budget Act. Instead, it’s a hodgepodge of late budget blueprints, temporary spending measures to keep the government running, and sprawling omnibus appropriations packages that often are passed in the waning days before one Congress ends and the next one begins. The House GOP bill differs in many ways from the Senate Committee on Appropriations' fiscal year 2024 proposal. The Senate legislation, which passed out of committee with bipartisan support, proposed budget increases for the DOE's renewables office and Office of Fossil Energy and Carbon Management. Together, NY HEAT and the Climate Change Superfund Act will save New Yorkers billions of dollars every year for decades to come, while putting our state on the path to reducing our greenhouse gas emissions and protecting our families from the impacts of the climate crisis.