Wednesday, 24 Apr 2024

California Today: Paid Parental Leave, by the Numbers

Good morning.

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Yesterday, on his fourth day on the job, Gov. Gavin Newsom laid out a sweeping budget proposal for the state that was, as predicted, a marked break with the famous frugality of his predecessor, Jerry Brown.

Mr. Newsom called for ramping up spending on education, health care and homelessness, as well as to pay down the debt.

And, as my colleagues Claire Cain Miller and Jim Tankersley first reported last week, the new governor aims to boost paid parental leave to the longest in the nation: six months.

The United States remains the only industrialized country not to offer paid leave to parents, and such a policy has been a tough nut to crack at the federal level, because, well, no one can figure out where to get the money. The California proposal, right now, has the same problem.

Still, it’s an idea worth exploring. So I asked Claire to share some of the most interesting statistics she came across in her reporting. Here’s more about parental leave, by the numbers.

Year that California became the first state to offer paid parental leave: 2002

Number of years before another state did it: Six

Number of states that offer it today: Six and Washington, D.C.

Length of California’s family leave as it exists: Six weeks

Length of the longest state family leave program (in Washington): 12 weeks

Number of prime-age workers economists say America would add to the labor force with family policies like paid leave: 5 million

Average total paid leave available to mothers among O.E.C.D. countries in 2016: 55 weeks

Share of Americans who get paid parental leave from their employers: 16 percent

Share of Americans who support paid parental leave: 80 percent

Number of paid leave bills that have passed Congress: 0

Concrete plans to pay for California’s expanded leave program: 0

But Mr. Newsom said he planned to start a task force to figure out a way to phase in the expansion.

California Online

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Senator Kamala Harris will announce her 2020 presidential bid on or around Martin Luther King Jr. Day, most likely at a rally in Oakland, sources said. [KCBS Radio]

• Representative Kevin McCarthy, who has largely thrown his support behind the president, again found himself defending the use of federal funds for wildfire relief after President Trump threatened to withhold the money unless the state better managed its forests. “California is getting the money,” Mr. McCarthy said. [The Bakersfield Californian]

• Tetra Tech, a company at the center of a scandal around a San Francisco Superfund site, was awarded a new state contract worth up to $250 million to lead Camp Fire cleanup efforts. [The San Francisco Chronicle]

• A judge ruled that the strike by Los Angeles public schoolteachers can start on Monday as negotiations continue. [The Los Angeles Times]

• A man who was found dead in the Democratic donor Ed Buck’s West Hollywood apartment was identified as Timothy Dean, 55. Mr. Buck hasn’t been named as a suspect, but the authorities said homicide detectives were among the first to arrive on the scene. [The New York Times]

An investor has sued the board of Alphabet, Google’s parent company, saying the group had an active role in the $90 million exit package for an executive accused of sexual harassment. By covering up the misconduct, the lawsuit says, the board breached its fiduciary duties. [The New York Times]

The Department of Homeland Security extended a deadline for California to meet requirements related to its troubled Real ID program until April 1, narrowly averting a situation where residents would have had to also carry a passport to fly. [The San Bernardino Sun]

• Citing The New York Times’s investigation from last year, the City of Los Angeles is suing the Weather Channel over its use of location data. Experts say other similar suits are likely to follow. [CityLab]

• The Milwaukee Brewers teammates Christian Yelich, Ryan Braun and Mike Moustakas, who were displaced in the Woolsey Fire, spearheaded a celebrity softball game to raise money for people affected by the blaze, as well as the Thousand Oaks shooting. The game is set for Sunday at Pepperdine University. [MLB.com]

• A man who lives in Oakhurst looked back on his father’s monumental achievement, 90 years later: Becoming the first person to record summiting Mount Whitney, the tallest mountain in the lower 48, during the winter. [The Fresno Bee]

• In East Los Angeles, tortillerias compete for customers block by block. Francisco Ramírez and his La Princesita dominated. Mr. Ramírez, a community figure who had stepped back to let his children take over years ago, died on Saturday at 64. [The Los Angeles Times]

And Finally …

Our food writer, Tejal Rao, who’s been sending you off into the weekend with a recommendation for the last few weeks, had to take a break today. I won’t pretend I can fill in.

But if you’re looking for inspiration, Eater’s city sites just released their updated 38 Essential Restaurants lists. They have handy information about some of the best restaurants in Los Angeles, San Diego and San Francisco in both scrollable text and a map, depending on how you want to approach your search.

New additions to the L.A. list included Bäco Mercat, Joy, Bavel and HomeState. In San Francisco, the newcomers were Delfina, Marlowe, RT Rotisserie and San Tung. And in San Diego, Bivouac Ciderworks, El Jardín and Mitch’s Seafood joined the roster.

California Today goes live at 6:30 a.m. Pacific time weekdays. Tell us what you want to see: [email protected].

Jill Cowan grew up in Orange County, went to school at U.C. Berkeley and has reported all over the state, including the Bay Area, Bakersfield and Los Angeles — but she always wants to see more. Follow along here or on Twitter, @jillcowan.

California Today is edited by Julie Bloom, who grew up in Los Angeles and graduated from U.C. Berkeley.

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