State lawmakers want to use a projected $31 billion surplus to fuel an infrastructure boom, a tactic that could reduce the amount Californians might see in any rebate checks this year – if they happen at all. The state expects to have so much money it risks exceeding a state spending threshold called the Gann Limit. If it does, it must send more money to schools and some money back to taxpayers through rebates.

Plastic is a big part of our everyday lives: It keeps our food fresh, has made all kinds of advanced medical equipment possible, and is a key component in a broad range of innovations from cars to computers, from phones to contact lenses. But new research is finding plastic in places you wouldn’t expect: in our water, in salt, and in the placentas of pregnant women.

Thousands of students at California State University may lose out on affordable housing because the Cal State system misread the fine print of a new state student housing program.

A new California policy could send dozens of quadriplegic, paraplegic or otherwise permanently incapacitated inmates from nursing homes back to state prisons.

Prison officials say a change in federal rules led them to limit medical parole to inmates so ill they are hooked to ventilators to breathe, meaning their movement is so limited they are not a public danger. The state previously included a much broader range of permanent incapacities allowing inmates to be cared for in nursing homes outside prison walls.

.... For the past decade, some of the city’s poorest neighborhoods have been ineligible for significant investments as a result of a complex California Environmental Protection Agency tool called the CalEnviroScreen, which maps “disadvantaged communities” by census tract — geographic areas of about 1,000 to 8,000 people designated by the U.S. Census Bureau. 

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The most broadly adopted gun-control measure in the U.S. in recent years is rarely being used in many cities and counties, government data show. Nineteen states and Washington, D.C., now have red-flag laws, which allow authorities, and sometimes family members or co-workers, to ask judges to order the temporary seizure of guns from people threatening violence. But many jurisdictions have used the laws to take away few or no guns, a Wall Street Journal analysis of the data shows.

Community groups fighting against the rise of hate crimes and related actions directed at Asians could start seeing some of a new $165.5 million state fund by the end of this year, state and local leaders said Monday, Nov. 15, during a news conference in Garden Grove.