
What’s Behind All Those Dmv Voter-Registration Snafus?
The DMV gave the public a series of piecemeal explanations as it acknowledged making more than 100,000 errors in recent months in registering Californians to vote. Software problems, it said in May. Human errors from toggling between computer windows, it said in September. Data entry mistakes that were corrected but never saved, it said this month.

Meet Ken Alex, Gov. Jerry Brown’s Climate Concierge
The officials gathered at the front of the room, arranging themselves on a dais, last fall at the United Nations Climate Change Conference in Bonn, Germany.

Disaster Contractor Gives Big Money to California Dems
A Florida-based company accused of botching the clean-up after last year’s devastating fires in Santa Rosa has jumped into California politics, writing big checks to Gavin Newsom’s gubernatorial campaign and the California Democratic Party.

How Stroopwafels Helped Sacramento Legalize Food Bikes
Dutchman’s Stroopwafels may be the first business to cook on a bicycle in Sacramento, but local entrepreneurs have been finding creative ways to combine the area’s twin passions for cuisine and cycles for decades.

Also on the November Ballot? Lots and Lots of School Bonds
Californians in November will weigh billions of dollars’ worth of ballot measures for low-income housing, children’s hospitals and more. But one of the biggest asks will be mostly invisible to most voters—100 or more local proposals to sell bonds for school construction projects that, if passed, could total more than $12 billion in local borrowing in coming years.

The Herb Column: Battling for Onsite Consumption
Law creates barriers for entrepreneurs interested in the cannabis field
Uncertainty over where people can consume marijuana can create significant limitations for cannabis businesses.

Climate Change Is Going to Cost California, and the Bill Will Be Staggering
As California lawmakers struggled this week to address an apparent new normal of epic wildfires, there was an inescapable subtext: Climate change is going to be staggeringly expensive, and virtually every Californian is going to have to pay for it.

Gig Companies Beg for Relief from Pro-Labor Supreme Court Ruling
State and federal labor laws give employees a wide range of worker protections, from overtime pay and minimum wages to the right to unionize. But those rights don’t extend to independent contractors, whose ranks have grown dramatically in the gig economy.

Back and Forward: Jennifer Randlett Madden
Employment law adviser on independent contractor classification
Jennifer Randlett Madden, partner at Delfino Madden O’Malley Coyle & Koewler, offers her insight into independent contractor classification. For more from Madden, check out “Classification Complications” in our August issue, and now online.

Classification Complications
How to navigate the maze of California’s new rules on overtime and independent contractors
Employee classification is already murky territory for many business owners, and recent changes have further tightened requirements. Yet, with huge penalties attached to mistakes, the laws are critical to understand.