But, perhaps unsurprisingly, Newsom’s proposed reform would exempt only government infrastructure programs from the disastrous law. Newsom has recently recognized the need to reform CEQA, which is notorious for tying up construction projects for years. Overzealous environmental regulation, particularly the California Environmental Quality Act (CEQA), is described in the Chamber report as “extraordinarily cumbersome.” Gov. Each of these problems can be traced back to state and local government policies, and that accounts for the Tax Foundation’s 2023 State Business Tax Climate Index (cited in the report) that ranks California as 48th in the nation for corporate, individual, property, and sales tax rates. The CEOs cite a long list of reasons businesses are leaving, including high tax rates, the burdensome regulatory environment, high energy costs, inadequate infrastructure, and the state’s out-of-control homeless crisis. That offer (or demand) of anonymity is evidence enough of business leaders’ anxiety about the state’s reputation for hostility to free enterprise who wants to criticize regulators in a state with a reputation for seeking and destroying business? The 23 CEOs describe their difficulties in detail, with one summarizing the sense of others thusly: “I have dealt with governments around the country, but the most business unfriendly adversarial government is California.” The report features a compilation of interviews the Chamber conducted with 23 California CEOs who aren’t named. Reading the 68-page document leads one to a simple conclusion: Government must do less. Thanks, then, to the Los Angeles Area Chamber of Commerce for acknowledging a problem Newsom can’t see - and for assessing the ways in which bad governance is responsible for the outmigration. Without a major change of direction, hundreds of thousands of individuals and scores of businesses will continue the flight from California. The loss has been so severe that California lost a congressional seat for the first time in its history. That’s more than the population of Wyoming. Gavin Newsom denies reality, downplaying the flow of people and companies from his state as inconsequential.īut the facts are well-documented - and grim: from January 2020 to July 2022, the state lost 600,000 people. As the exodus of Californians and their businesses continues apace, Gov.
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