San Jose and other Silicon Valley cities have long agreed to Project Labor Agreements, which privilege union recognition, compulsory union dues, and mandatory use of union hiring halls prior to the hiring of any employees for large construction projects. Other cities' experiences with PLA's suggest they lead to soaring costs and gross inefficiencies. The Coalition for Fair Employment in Construction reports.
One of the less attractive gifts London Breed left for new SF Mayor. Daniel Lurie was a mammoth-sized ($800m!) budget deficit. SF's Briones Society's policy experts smartly analyze Lurie's first steps to get our northern neighborhor's finances back into the real world, and offer pointers to Mahan and SJ City Council.
We all learned it in grade school: correlation ≠ causation. Unless you're a local Woke university trying to define (and box in) students by their heritage and skin color—which has huge consequences for The Academy's central mission. An Opp Now exclusive with experts Dr. Tabia Lee and Kenny Xu.
Lurie moves money away from Housing First and to shelters. Also increases mayor's power to direct homelessness spend. Housing advocates squawk. Sound familiar? The SF Examiner reports.
Did you know that in May, Santa Clara Valley OSA was seeking a new board member to appoint? Well, neither did Ted Stroll, former Assembly candidate and seasoned OSA volunteer—and he scrutinizes the agency's dubious practices (which yielded just one applicant) in this Opp Now exclusive. He also recalls being the sole applicant to OSA's Citizens Advisory Committee in '22, and how their strange pivot—after praising Stroll's qualifications—might reveal "aspects of a private club."
In California and Silicon Valley, local leaders and activists in cities like Oakland push a deceptive decarceration narrative that downplays public safety concerns and puts residents in danger. The book Mass Incarceration Nation by Jeffrey Bellin perpetuates the false notion that America over-incarcerates, but Zack Smith at the Heritage Foundation explains how the book's thesis is flawed and how it ignores the roots and impacts of crime.
As ever with the free market, many Silicon Valley companies are now dropping their DEI depts, initiatives, and language. But education—from Kindergarten to college—is a whole different story. Free speech advocates Kenny Xu and Dr. Tabia Lee analyze in this Opp Now exclusive.
County and SJ City homelessness rates are rising. The majority of our homeless neighbors remain unsheltered. Yet local officials, says SV GOP chair David Johnson, refuse to respond in a businesslike manner to the scope of the crisis. From svgop.com.
It can be done. Rent prices are falling fast in a number of pro-housing cities in the U.S. Reason magazine explores what they're doing right {Spoiler alert: Deregulating housing market & dramatically upping permitting are key}.
