Daily Business Report: September 28, 2026
How the Trash Screw-Up Happened and Why It’s Not Going Away
By Will Huntsberry | Voice of San Diego
It was the simplest of mistakes.
The city sent bad billing information on roughly 87,700 customers to the county tax collector’s office. An employee transferring the data from Salesforce into a TXT file made an error, the Politics Report has learned.
City staff say that about 50.2 percent of people were overbilled and 49.8 percent of people were underbilled. Mayor Todd Gloria insisted that a fix was in motion and the county was cooperating to quickly send out new property tax bills.
But there’s been a snag: They can send new property tax bills to the people who were overcharged. They can’t send new ones to the people undercharged. The city plans to send supplementary bills to each of them. This will all add time and hassle and major costs to resolving the problem.
Taxing California’s rich just got more complicated. Prop 40’s fate is still uncertain
by Dan Walters | CalMatters
Proposition 40, which would impose a 5% tax on the wealth of California’s billionaires, is arguably the most important measure placed before voters in this century.
It is also probably the most confounding.
While it’s sponsored by a healthcare union, it’s opposed by several other major unions, who are in an odd bedfellows alliance with the billionaires it targets. Meanwhile, the leader of the sponsoring union faces allegations of personal misconduct.
And even if Prop. 40 passes, two other measures on the ballot could nullify it. Finally, the measure contains complex language, raising questions that would probably generate extended legal battles even if it does pass.
Bonta’s cave on Paramount-Warner deal fits California’s history of corporate surrender
by Dan Walters | CalMatters
The deal that California Attorney General Rob Bonta made this week to allow the $111 billion merger of entertainment media powerhouses Paramount Skydance and Warner Bros. Discovery has a familiar ring.
It’s the latest episode of California officials confronting big corporate interests over some issue, loudly promising to make business executives change their ways and then caving in. The corporation often makes some minor concessions that allow the officials to save face.
In this case, Bonta and attorneys general from other states had filed suit contending that the Paramount-Warner deal was monopolistic, would cost consumers more, would hurt workers in a troubled industry and would concentrate ownership of broadcast news media.
