Connecting California

If California were a bank, what sort of bank would it be?
Banc of California has a new and intriguing answer to that question: In just six years, “California’s bank,” as it calls itself, has emerged as one of America’s fastest-growing banks—from $700 million in assets when it recapitalized the old First PacTrust Bancorp. in 2010 to nearly $10 billion and approximately 100 locations statewide today. …

I wish this were a happy column about the advance of California public transit.
I wish I could report that my own life is better now that I ride the brand-new Metro Expo Line extension to work in Santa Monica. And I wish I could validate all the triumphant talk of the great metropolis of Los Angeles becoming a fabulous train town again, with the restoration …

Dear Chicago,
Would you kindly remove your thick, stubby hands from my beautiful state?
C’mon—don’t try to look all Midwestern and innocent. You know exactly what I’m talking about. For years Chicago has been grabbing signature California institutions and screwing them up.
I get a reminder of your mismanagement every night when I turn on the television to watch my local baseball team, the L.A. Dodgers. Of …

It’s a California educational reality worthy of Kafka. Our state’s leaders keep asking parents and communities to take bigger roles in making local schools better—even as those same leaders keep us in the dark about how our public schools are doing.
In the 2013-14 school year, the state suspended the Academic Performance Index, or API, the chief tool Californians had for seeing how their kids’ schools …

Your columnist is not an Olympic athlete. But last Friday I managed a serious athletic feat: playing 18 holes of golf in just 45 minutes, without using a cart or even lifting a golf club. And, no, this wasn’t miniature golf or a video game.
My secret? I was playing FootGolf, which involves kicking a soccer ball into extra-large holes placed on regulation golf courses. This …

Poor San Jose—so far from God, so close to San Francisco.
San Jose is the 10th largest city in the United States, the third most populous in the state of California—and No. 1 in disrespect. With more than 1 million people, it’s Northern California’s biggest municipality—but it’s constantly outshined by those 850,000 San Franciscans to its north.
The famous City by the Bay is our state’s …

I want nothing from California governments—except whatever I need right now.
So why doesn’t my state make things easier for me? In this internet age, shouldn’t there be a one-stop shop where I can go to renew my driver’s license and vehicle registration, register to vote, research state records, pay all my state and local taxes, and buy passes to take the family to a state …

California doesn’t make playgrounds like it used to.
The trend has its advantages. Fifteen years after the state legislated compliance with national safety standards for new and renovated public playgrounds, I can take the Three Stooges—my three impish and ever-brawling sons under age 8—to parks around California confident that I’ll see the same reassuringly safe equipment: low swings, low slides, plastic bridges rather than wood or …

What would a California school district be like if it didn’t have a teachers’ union?
Up until recently, that question has been mostly hypothetical. For some, it’s a fantasy: Conservative education reformers believe that drumming labor out of the classroom would improve test scores and teaching. For others, it’s a nightmare: Teachers worry they would be left with little protection from the whims of said reformers, …

Rent control won’t solve California’s enormous housing problems. But that’s not stopping many Californians from pursuing rent control policies in their hometowns.
2016 threatens to become the Year of Rent Control, with the topic white-hot in the Bay Area, home to California’s most expensive housing. Rent control refers to laws that put limits on how much landlords may raise rents; such laws often include provisions requiring …