With fewer discretionary dollars in their pocketbooks and more sensitivity at the gas pump, recession-era gamblers want to spend their quarters closer to home.

If the people of California won’t vote to tax Big Tobacco or Big Oil, why does Gov. Jerry Brown think they’ll vote to tax themselves?

For business owners like Zennes Faljean, the Supreme Court’s decision to uphold President Obama’s federal health care overhaul marked far more of a beginning than a conclusion.

Like so many recent law school graduates, Seth Benkle searched vainly for a job after graduating from the University of the Pacific McGeorge School of Law in Sacramento in 2010, increasingly stressed about his $160,000 in student loans, interest accruing.

Gov. Jerry Brown’s tax measure would raise sales taxes by one-quarter of a percent for four years and increase taxes on incomes of $250,000 or higher by 1 to 3 percentage points for seven years.

John O’Malley is the recruiting partner at Sacramento’s largest law firm, Downey Brand, which was founded nearly a century ago and employs more than 120 lawyers in five regional offices, 103 of them in Sacramento.

Life often has been unkind to economic development directors since California put its redevelopment agencies out of business last year. Randy Starbuck tells it first hand.

New legislation is typically received by the business community with as much adoration as a Yankee fan at Fenway, but there are exceptions.

High-speed trains linking Northern and Southern California have been a point of contention for more than a decade. For some, such “bullet trains” are the ideal solution to growing transportation needs; for others, they represent a boondoggle with enormous economic risk.

Assemblywoman Connie Conway, a Tulare County Republican, made her presence felt immediately in the California Legislature.