MAY
The worst inflation of all: Record levels of debt
Rising debt and delinquencies
Credit card balances increased $61 billion in the fourth quarter of 2022 to $986 billion, surpassing the pre-pandemic high, according to an analysis released by the Federal Reserve Bank of New York. It’s the most significant debt gain in the history of the New York Fed’s data, compiled since 1999.
And timely payments are becoming an issue. “The share of current debt becoming delinquent increased again in the fourth quarter for nearly all debt types,” the report said.
In particular, the Fed noted that younger borrowers — in their 20s, 30s and 40s — were struggling to keep up with monthly payments:
“Some of these borrowers are struggling to pay their credit card and auto loans even though payments on their student loans are not currently required. Once payments on those loans resume later this year under current plans, millions of younger borrowers will add another monthly payment to their debt obligations, potentially driving these delinquency rates even higher.”
-Nerd Wallet
Vacation inflation: Going out of town will cost you this summer
To gauge price pain across the spectrum of vacation spending, my trusty spreadsheet looked at 10 slices of the Consumer Price Index tracking common traveler expenditures. This vacation inflation scorecard compared price averages for the first four months of this year vs. the same timeframe last year and in 2019 — way back when nobody knew what a coronavirus was.
The results suggest leaving town won’t be “leisurely” for your wallet. Remember, even the cost to stay home has soared. Overall inflation averaged 6% annual gains in this year’s first four months and is up 19% since 2019.
Be warned: some fun expenses have increased even more swiftly …
Pain ports
Airfares: 16% pricier this year and up 9 percent since 2019. Planes will be packed so don’t expect airlines to be enticing folks to fly. And flight numbers are down due to staffing shortages. Jet fuel remains pricey.
Outdoor supplies: 11 percent costlier this year and up 28 percent since 2019. The supply-chain woes are gone, so supplies are plentiful, but demand for the required outdoor gear grows.
Dining out: 8 percent pricier this year and up 24 percent in four years. Restaurants are full of diners and short of staff. And it’s not just rising labor costs — costs of ingredients and other supplies remain elevated.
Hotels: 7 percent more expensive this year and up 16 percent since 2019. “No Vacancy” signs have become as common as pre-pandemic days. So there are few discounted room rates, and labor costs are surging, too — if staff can be found.
Entertainment: 7 percent costlier movies, theaters and concerts this year. Admission prices are up 17 percent since 2019 as folks no longer avoid crowds. The talent is more expensive, for both performers and workers who operate the venues.
Booze, beer, wine: 6 percent pricier for “alcohol away from home” this year — and up 16 percent since 2019. Bars had a rough time during the pandemic, as many locations could not do what eateries could — take-out and delivery meals.
Sports tickets: 3 percent costlier this year and up 1 percent since 2019. Athletic attendance hasn’t rebounded as robustly as other entertainment options. But seeing a game can get costly once you’re inside the stadium or arena.
-Lansner
JUNE
What you need to know on the California budget deal
The state budget, which the Assembly approved 62-14 and the Senate passed 32-6, takes effect July 1. It marks a retrenchment from three years of record education funding supplemented by tens of billions in one-time federal and state Covid relief, which together set in motion ambitious new programs with eye-popping costs. These include $4.4 billion for community schools and $4 billion for after-school and summer programs for low-income children through the Expanded Learning Opportunities Program.
Funding for all of those Newsom priorities remains intact in the new budget, as does an 8.2% cost of living increase for the Local Control Funding Formula, special education and other ongoing programs — the top priority of school districts.
Funding for Proposition 98, the formula that sets the portion of the state general fund going to TK-12, community schools and some child care funding, will be $108.3 billion. That is $2.1 billion less than the Legislature adopted a year ago for the current year.
But it is also $1.5 billion more than Newsom had proposed in January for 2023-24. The difference reflects higher projected revenue from local property taxes going to the state for Proposition 98, enabling the Legislature to substantially reduce cuts in one-time funding that Newsom had suggested. Instead of reducing $1.8 billion from the $3.6 billion arts, music and instructional grant program, the cut will be only $200 million. Instead of cutting $2.5 billion from the $7.5 billion learning recovery block grant, the cut will be $1.6 billion.
The additional revenue will also stave off the Legislature’s proposal to delay spending $400 million of $500 million from another Newsom priority, the Golden State Pathways program. Passed last year, it will promote career opportunities for low-income high school students in high-skill, high-wage areas, including technology, education and health. It would combine dual enrollment in college courses, completion of A-G courses required for admission to the University of California and California State University, and workplace apprenticeships.
-Fensterwald
What you need to know on the California budget deal
Just in time for the start of a new fiscal year July 1, Gov. Gavin Newsom and legislative leaders announced Monday night that they have reached a deal on the state budget — a $310 billion spending plan that they say protects core programs and covers a $30 billion-plus deficit without dipping into key reserves.
Despite largely agreeing on the overall structure for weeks, budget negotiations were delayed by the governor’s demands to include a sweeping infrastructure proposal that many lawmakers resisted. The final compromise narrows the types of projects that can take advantage of an expedited approval of permits, leaving out a contentious proposed water conveyance tunnel under the Sacramento-San Joaquin River Delta.
“We are accelerating our global leadership on climate by fast-tracking the clean energy projects that will create cleaner air for generations to come,” Newsom said in a statement.
Senate President Pro Tem Toni Atkins, a San Diego Democrat, said she was “heartened” that the leaders agreed on the infrastructure package, and “in a way that focuses on equity by laying the groundwork to ensure that our most vulnerable communities will be hired first on impactful state infrastructure projects.”
The governor and legislative leaders also touted that they were able to preserve money for education and social service programs, and increase money for childcare providers.
Newsom also noted that the budget includes accountability measures for transit and homelessness, and tax credits for some industries.
“This is a budget for the future,” said Assembly Speaker Anthony Rendon, a Lakewood Democrat who is scheduled to hand over the speaker’s gavel to Assemblymember Robert Rivas, a Salinas Democrat, on Friday under a negotiated transition.
If all goes to plan, the main budget bill will be approved by both the Assembly and Senate today and signed by Newsom soon after. The Legislature began publishing a series of budget-related bills — reflecting agreements in specific policy areas — online Saturday morning to fulfill a requirement that they be available for public review for 72 hours before any votes.
Democratic lawmakers already passed a budget, reflecting their own priorities, on June 15 in order to meet a constitutional deadline. That kicked off a 12-day window for Newsom to sign or veto the bill, increasing pressure on the two sides to reach a deal by Tuesday.
This year’s negotiations were more fraught due to a $31.5 billion deficit, a sharp contrast with record budget surpluses the last two years. The deficit is the result of a downturn in the stock market — a volatile but significant source of California’s state revenues because of its reliance on income taxes, especially those of high earners. Bracing for potential further revenue declines, the budget deal allows the governor to delay, with notification to the Legislature, one-time spending commitments before March 1.
– Jeanne Kuang and Nicole Foy
JULY
Some of California’s ‘cheapest’ cities have seen the biggest rent hikes
Inland cities throughout California including Bakersfield, Fresno, Visalia and Riverside — once cheaper options than pricey places such as the Bay Area — are no longer refuges from California’s housing affordability crisis.
Since the beginning of the pandemic, the typical asking rent in these former bastions of relative affordability have exploded by as much as 40%, according to data from the real-estate listings company Zillow.
California’s inland rent spike is yet another lasting effect of the COVID-19 pandemic. Beginning in 2020, California’s dense metropolitan coast saw an outflux of people, as educated white-collar workers, suddenly untethered from the office, packed their bags in search of cheaper and more socially distanced modes of living.
For many smaller California towns, the surge of new residents competing for housing has placed new financial pressures on lower-income residents, upended local housing markets and, in some cases, shifted the politics around housing and affordability.
In Santa Maria, just an hour up the 101 from Santa Barbara, the last three years have been a “perfect storm” for renters, said Victor Honma, who oversees housing vouchers across the region for the Housing Authority of the County of Santa Barbara.
-Christopher
Sunrise Services terminates Warming Shelter Director Yvonne Cox
On Tuesday, Yvonne Cox, during the public comment hearing portion of this week’s board of supervisors meeting, expressed her thoughts about her termination as emergency warming shelter director.
Cox shared her story, expressing that there was an out of the area administrator brought in by Sunrise Special Services Foundation who terminated her after a conversation regarding inefficiencies in administration. Cox said, “Me being transparent I think is what got me fired, I think I intimidated the poor man.” Cox alleged she has been paying out of pocket expenses during her tenure as EWS director.
She told the board that she has been paying for food and cleaning supplies for the last three months to the tune of $2,000 to $2,400 a month.
Cox said her termination was “a hostile takeover” because she was replaced by someone who is, in her opinion, inexperienced and also accused the organization of “misappropriating funds” adding she has been hushed every time she has brought up the issue. “I will be lawyering up, thank you.” she said. At press time, Cox was unable to be reached for further comment.
In a press release issued Tuesday, Sunrise Special Services thanked Cox for her work helping to setup the shelter in February and announced Rayan Aava as chief executive officer and Chris Bloodworth II as director of operations. In a letter addressed to the community this week, Annie Barnes, Co-founder of Sunrise Special Services wrote, “I assure you that Sunrise remains in full compliance and good standing with the State of California and the County of Lake. We adhere to the professional processes set forth by the Lake County Continuum of Care and Board of Supervisors, which prioritizes oversight and transparency. It is unfortunate that slanderous comments have been made through the media and a recent Board meeting. Accusations of fund misappropriation by Sunrise are false, misguided, and ignorant of the facts.”
Aava informed the Record-Bee that the decision to let go of Cox as director of the shelter was made on Thursday after hearing multiple complaints from staff including that it was a “hostile work environment” under Cox, improprieties regarding logging of hours, and actions which were unethical, if not illegal. Staff claims they were threatened that they would lose their jobs (by Cox) or were threatened to lose hours if they went to Barnes about not getting paid for overtime or other matters. Aava said Cox was let go “based on performance issues.”
-Carboni and Carmona
AUGUST
Grand Jury examines bullying in schools
The Grand Jury interviewed officials from the six school districts in Lake County as well as parents and students in four of the districts about bullying in schools for their final 2022-23 Civil Grand Jury Report.
All schools have written policies that ban bullying, but school officials noted that discipline is often undermined by delayed consequences and disinclination to effect suspension or expulsion. According to the definition expressed in the report, “bullying is a learned behavior and starts at a very young age”.
It also classifies the types: “bullying may be direct (a combination of both verbal and physical bullying) or indirect (mainly verbal) or, a more recent development, cyberbullying. Bullying involves a real or perceived power imbalance between those who bully and their targets.”
They mention the Center for Disease Control (CDC) – “One in five high school students reported being bullied on school property. More than one in six high school students reported being bullied electronically in the last year. Most studies indicate that approximately 15 percent to 20 percent of students will experience bullying at some point from kindergarten through high school graduation. More than 160,000 students avoid going to school every day because of their fear of bullying.”
The document brings attention to the fact that 75 percent of school shootings have been linked to harassment and bullying against the shooter. Suicide is the second leading cause of death among youths ages 10 to 14.
In California, the law requires schools to have a policy on bullying and harassment that prohibits discrimination, harassment, intimidation and bullying based on actual or perceived characteristics such as race, color, ancestry, national origin, ethnic group identification, age, religion, marital or parental status, physical or mental disability, sex, sexual orientation, gender, gender identity or expression.
The suggested ways schools can try to prevent bullying include teaching kindness and empathy; creating opportunities for connection; identifying “gateway behaviors”, such as teasing, that can lead to bullying if left unchecked; using arts to create context; minimizing “concentric circles” and cliques in schools; and participating in role-playing exercises.
Among the findings pointed out by the Grand Jury are that students do not feel safe at school and teachers do not have sufficient authority and responsibility for dealing with bullying incidents. They also learned there are not enough trained school resource officers in use, students need more education regarding bullying and improved communication is needed between schools and families.
-Appel
Heat-related deaths are up, and not just because it’s getting hotter
Heat-related illness and deaths in California and the U.S. are on the rise along with temperatures, and an increase in drug use and homelessness is a significant part of the problem, according to public health officials and data from the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention.
Heat was the underlying or contributing cause of about 1,670 deaths nationwide in 2022, for a rate of about 5 deaths per million residents, according to provisional data from the CDC. That’s the highest heat-related death rate in at least two decades. Data from this year, which has been exceptionally hot in much of the country, is not yet available. The next-highest death rate was logged in 2021.
Heat-related illness ranges from heat exhaustion, which causes heavy sweating and a rapid pulse, to heat stroke, which causes confusion, loss of consciousness, high fever, and in many of the severest cases even death. Heat-related illness can occur alongside and exacerbate other health conditions.
The simplest explanation for the increase is that it is getting hotter. The last eight years were the hottest on record, according to NASA figures dating to the late 1800s.
But factors other than climate change also play a role.
Substance abuse, especially misuse of methamphetamines, has emerged as a major factor in heat-related illness. Methamphetamines can cause body temperature to increase to dangerous levels, and the combination of meth abuse, heat, and homelessness can be fatal.
About 140 death certificates in California listed both heat-related illness and drug overdose as causes from 2018 through 2022, according to CDC data. That’s about 25% of all deaths in which heat-related illness was an underlying or contributing factor.
Homelessness has risen in the past few years, including in several hot Western states like California, and unsheltered homeless people are particularly vulnerable during heat waves. The homeless represented about 13% of California hospitalizations involving a primary diagnosis of heat-related illness from 2017 through 2021, state data shows. California’s 172,000 unhoused residents make up fewer than half a percent of the state’s population, federal data shows.
“With any environmental crisis, people experiencing homelessness experience it first, they experience it worst, and they experience it longest,” said Katie League, behavioral health manager for the National Health Care for the Homeless Council.
The elderly are also particularly vulnerable to heat-related illness. Their bodies often don’t adjust as well as younger people’s to temperature change, and they often have chronic health conditions exacerbated by heat. The numbers of elderly residents in California and across America have risen sharply as baby boomers have aged.
-Reese
Heat related emergency calls
New Orleans Emergency Medical Services has been busy this summer, responding to heat-related emergency calls and transporting patients to nearby hospitals.
At the city’s main ambulance depot, the concrete parking lot seemed to magnify the sweltering heat, circulating the air like a convection oven. Capt. Janick Lewis and Lt. Titus Carriere demonstrated there how they can load a stretcher into an ambulance using an automated loading system. Lewis wiped sweat from his brow as the loading arm whirred and hummed, raising the stretcher into the ambulance — “unit,” in official terminology.
But mechanical assistance isn’t the best thing about the upgraded vehicles. “The nicest thing about being assigned a brand-new unit is it has a brand-new air conditioning system,” Lewis said.
The new AC is much more than a luxury for the hard-working crews. They need the extra cooling power to help save lives.
“The No. 1 thing you do take care of somebody is get them out of the heat, get them somewhere cool,” Lewis said. “So the No. 1 thing we spend our time worrying about in the summertime is keeping the truck cool.”
Like much of the country, New Orleans has been embroiled in a heat wave for weeks. As a result, New Orleans EMS is responding to more calls for heat-related conditions than ever before, Lewis said. During the third week of July, the city’s public EMS crews responded to 29 heat-related calls — more than triple what they handled during the same period last year.
Scientists say dangerous heat levels — and the stress they put on human bodies and medical systems — will likely keep increasing. Health systems nationwide face serious funding and staffing challenges that could make it harder to keep up.
