Daily Business Report: June 5, 2026
By Drew Sitton| Times of San Diego
All eyes are on the city budget, knowing cuts are coming to close a $120 million budget deficit. Residents and council members alike have been told that if they want to reverse a budget cut in one area, arts grants for instance, they need to pull the money from another program.
Frequently, residents point at the Transportation Department, and more specifically new bike lanes, as a place those cuts can be made.
But the independent budget analyst has another concern in the transportation budget: overtime. The cost of overtime has exploded in recent years as city workers address a backlog of streets that need repaving.
Trump Official Shares Vision of Desal Plants Lining California Coast
by MacKenzie Elmer | Voice of San Diego
President Donald Trump’s top Colorado River official visited San Diego Wednesday to say the president sees “real potential” in developing more plants that make drinking water using the ocean – right off the California coast.
That’s a problem for environmentalists, who say desalination plants are environmentally harmful, energy intensive and costly.
“Imagine a future where a string of six, or even a dozen desalination facilities are operating along the California coast providing ample amounts of beautiful, clean, clear, fresh water in an environmentally benign way to serve not just California communities but to be shared at a reasonable price with… sister states to the east,” said Scott Cameron, acting commissioner of the Bureau of Reclamation, standing in front of the Carlsbad desalination plant.
Can California Still Be Saved?
By Victor Davis Hanson
The recent California gubernatorial and Los Angeles mayoral elections—where, remarkably, Steve Hilton and Spencer Pratt both appear to have advanced to the general election in November—offer a glimmer of hope.
Could it be that some on the Left, along with a number of Independents, have finally realized that neither wealth nor an upscale ZIP code can protect them from the Left’s vindictive socialist madness?
California gas prices, even prior to the Iran war, had reached the highest levels in the continental United States.
