Daily Business Report: Thursday, April 3, 2025
California’s Regulations, Not Price Gouging, Cause High Gas Prices, USC Study Finds
By Jill McLaughlin | The Epoch Times
Gov. Gavin Newsom stands behind his claim that “Big Oil” is responsible for California’s higher gas prices and vowed on April 1 to continue his fight against the industry. The pledge comes after new research put the blame on state regulations and policies for the high prices at the pump.
California’s Democratic leaders have come out strongly against the oil industry in recent years, saying the companies’ gouging was causing record-high gas prices.
“Gov. Newsom has done more than any other governor in recent history to tackle the challenge of rising gas prices—despite what the oil industry and its allies say,” a spokesman for Newsom told The Epoch Times in an email Tuesday.
AB 1228 One Year Later: How The $20 Fast Food Minimum Wage Has Hurt California
By Evan Symon | California Globe
Assembly Bill 1228, the extremely controversial law that raised the fast food minimum wage to $20 an hour in California, turned one year old on Tuesday. And the differences between now and a year have been shown to be pretty stark.
According to the U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics’ Current Employment Statistics (CES), 22,717 fast food jobs have been lostin the past year when seasonally adjusted. The Berkeley Research Group also found that fast food prices in California have gone up by 14.5% since a year ago – about double the national average of 8.2%. And that’s not even getting into the 89% of all restaurants in the state reducing employee hours to offset rising costs, with 87% planning additional cuts over the next year.
That’s where we are a year later.
For those who support AB 1228, they have been hard pressed to find anything positive about it for well over a year. AB 1228, authored by then-Assemblyman Chris Holden (D-Los Angeles), was one of the most contentious bills in 2023. The Holden bill originally tried for a $22 wage for fast food workers, but it was negotiated down, with the $20 amount narrowly passing both houses in the California legislature and being signed by Governor Gavin Newsom.
Democracy in the dark: How California lawmakers are trying to shield themselves from public view
BY SAMEEA KAMAL AND YUE STELLA YU | CalMatters
At town halls across the nation, including in California, residents have confronted their members of Congress face-to-face to voice their fears and frustrations over Trump administration policies, from cuts to overseas aid to Medicare.
Meanwhile, lawmakers in the state Legislature have introduced about a dozen proposals that would make it harder to confront your local officials at public meetings and would shield more information from the public eye, according to an analysis of CalMatters’ Digital Democracy database.
The bills follow a streak of California officials’ attempts to shroud themselves in secrecy.
Gov. Gavin Newsom recently sent burner phones to major California business leaders with his number preprogrammed — paid for by his nonprofit, allowing him to communicate with executives without having to disclose the content publicly. Lawmakers and government employees signed non-disclosure agreements preventing them from sharing details about taxpayer-funded renovations to the state Capitol. The Legislature refused to say whether federal search warrants and subpoenas were served to lawmakers.
