California Defies Lower-Tax Texas in Creating More Jobs

California, which sent a delegation to Austin last year to find out how the Lone Star State had beat it in employment growth, surged ahead of Texas to lead the nation in job creation for the last two consecutive months.

California added 365,100 nonfarm jobs in the year ending in July, a 2.6 percent increase and the state’s largest 12-month gain since 2000. Texas picked up 222,500, or 2.1 percent, according to U.S. Labor Department statistics. California also outpaced Texas the prior month.

Texas led California in job creation in 18 of the last 24 months, since August 2010, the first month both states posted employment gains following the longest recession since the 1930s. The latest numbers show that California has defied comparisons with financially troubled Greece, including a joking reference by Republican presidential candidate Mitt Romney earlier this month.

“What these new figures do is drive a stake through these weak Republican talking points,” said Gil Duran, a spokesman for California’s Democratic governor, Jerry Brown. “California jobs are coming back at a higher rate here. We hope that happens everywhere.”

To be sure, California is the only state where three cities have filed for bankruptcy in the past two months. The state’s unemployment rate of 10.7 percent in July was the third-highest in the U.S., trailing only Nevada and Rhode Island. Texas ranked 30th with a jobless rate of 7.2 percent, beating the national average of 8.3 percent.

Austin Delegation

Texas’s economic performance impressed California Assemblyman Dan Logue enough that the Republican from Linda organized a delegation of California lawmakers and Lieutenant Governor Gavin Newsom, a Democrat who was San Francisco mayor, to Austin in April 2011.

California’s job picture reflects the depth of the recession in the state, where the economy relies more on housing and construction than energy-dependent Texas, said Christopher Thornberg, principal of Beacon Economics LLC in Los Angeles.

“California got hit a lot harder than Texas during the downturn,” Thornberg said. “We hit the ground pretty damn hard, so you’d expect more of a bounce back.”

The increase runs counter to the notion that growth favors states with lower taxes. California, the world’s ninth-biggest economy, has the highest statewide sales tax in the U.S., at 7.25 percent. That would rise to 7.5 percent if voters approve a November ballot initiative. The income tax rate for those making $1 million or more a year, now 10.3 percent, would rise to 13.3 percent, the most of any state.

Income Tax

Texas, the 13th largest economy if it were a country, has no income tax. Most state revenue comes from a 6.25 percent sales levy.

“Texas is still the model for job creation and economic growth in this country,” said Josh Havens, a spokesman for Governor Rick Perry, a Republican.

The state that was once a sovereign nation will maintain economic growth by following Perry’s policies of “low taxes, restrained spending, reasonable and predictable regulations, and a fair judicial system,” Havens said by e-mail.

Texas has higher general-obligation credit ratings than California from both Moody’s Investors Service and Standard & Poor’s, meaning the state can borrow at more favorable rates. Both states received top ratings for short-term notes they sold in August. Texas completed a $9.8 billion sale of one-year notes Aug. 21 at yields of 0.23 percent, a week after California paid 0.33 percent to 0.43 percent on $10 billion in short-term notes.

State Rivalry

The rivalry between the two most-populous U.S. states came into relief in April 2011 when 10 Republicans and a Democrat from California’s Legislature, accompanied by Newsom, visited Texas to study its job-creation strategies. That month, Texas’s year-over-year job growth of 254,400 was more than 100,000 higher than California’s.
Logue attributes much of the growth to early implementation of President Barack Obama’s health-care program. Educational and health-care employment grew 3 percent in the year ended in July, California’s Employment Development Department reported. The biggest increase was in professional and business services, at 5.4 percent.
Newsom, a Democrat elected separately from Brown, said lingering difficulties such as negative equity on 2 million homes in the state’s Central Valley threaten to hold back California’s recovery.

‘Structural Problems’

“We may have another year or two of a recovery based on low-hanging fruit, but we still haven’t dealt with our structural problems,” Newsom said. “It’s good to be on the other side of bragging rights in terms of our competitive position with Texas, but we need to be cautious about reading too much into that.”

California and Texas have different strengths. Texas has a lower cost of living and fewer regulations, while California has a more educated workforce and availability of venture capital, said Ray Perryman, a Waco, Texas-based economist.

“Both states have fiscal challenges, though California’s is somewhat more severe,” Perryman said by e-mail. “Texas has had the lead in that arena for some time, but long-term investments in education and infrastructure (primarily roads and water resource development) will be needed to sustain it.”

Moving Out?

Andrew Puzder, an executive who joined California’s delegation to Texas, said he’s no longer considering moving his company’s headquarters from Carpinteria to escape the state’s taxes and regulations. Puzder is chief executive officer of CKE Restaurants Inc., which operates the Carl’s Jr. and Hardee’s fast-food chains.

Most economic recoveries are led by manufacturing and construction, with professional services gaining afterward, said Puzder, co-author of the book “Job Creation: How It Really Works and Why Government Doesn’t Understand It.”

“Professional and business services are people who generally are not involved in creating wealth,” Puzder said. “They’re involved in managing and directing wealth.”

To contact the reporters on this story: James Nash in Los Angeles at jnash24@bloomberg.net; Darrell Preston in Dallas at dpreston@bloomberg.net

Via Bloomberg

 

California job growth slows in August, employers add 12,000 jobs

California's jobs engine slowed in August, with state payrolls growing by a meager 12,000 jobs, the 13th straight month of net job gains.

The jobless rate dipped slightly to 10.6% in August, down from 10.7% the month before, according to data from the state's Employment Development Department.

At the start of the summer, the state was adding jobs at a brisk pace, much faster than the nation as a whole. But with July's gains revised downward to 17,900 and August's tepid growth, economists said the slowing U.S. and global economy are beginning to affect California.

"Employers are worried about the slowdown in Asia and Europe," said Esmael Adibi, director of Chapman University's A. Gary Anderson Center for Economic Research. "They're taking a wait-and-see attitude" before hiring, he said. 

Employers across several industries added jobs, with education and health services posting the largest over-the-month increase with 8,900 jobs. The beleaguered construction industry, buoyed by growth in multi-unit housing projects, posted a gain of 5,100 jobs. The leisure and hospitality industry added 4,400 jobs.

Those gains, were offset by losses in other industries such as professional and business services, which lost 2,300 jobs. The steepest job losses, however, were in government, which shed 7,400 jobs last month, primarily in education as schools were on summer break. 

"California continues to post sustained job growth, faster than the nation, but slower than we hoped for," said Stephen Levy, director of the Center for the Continuing Study of the California Economy in Palo Alto.

Last month, U.S. employers added just 96,000 jobs as the recovery nationally languishes as concerns over the European debt crisis and the economic slowdown in China. Additionally, employers are nervous over the looming "fiscal cliff" at the end of the year, when several tax cuts will expire and automatic spending cuts kick in if Congress does not act. 

"We're doing better than the nation because tech, trade and tourism are reviving our economy, but we are linked to the trends that affect the nation," Levy said. 

Over the year, California payrolls have grown by almost 299,000 jobs, a growth rate of 2.1% compared with the nation's 1.4%. The unemployment rate has fallen 1.2 percentage points since last August, according to the state employment agency.

California has the third-highest unemployment rate, behind Nevada, which saw its jobless rate rise to 12.1% in August, and Rhode Island at 10.7%.

The report also showed that the state's labor force shrunk by about 70,000 in August as some job seekers stopped actively looking for work.

In Los Angeles, employers shed 10,400 jobs, primarily in government. The county's seasonally adjusted unemployment rate in August fell to 11% from a revised 11.2% the month before.

Next door, Orange County, lost 5,200 jobs, primarily in education and its unemployment rate was 7.7%. And the Inland Empire, which includes Riverside and San Bernardino counties, gained 10,800 jobs; its unemployment rate is 12.3%, down from 12.7% the month before. 

LA Times

California prisoners make historic call for peace between racial groups in California prisons and jails

Oakland – Prisoners in Pelican Bay State Prison’s Security Housing Unit (SHU) have announced a push to end all hostilities between racial groups within California’s prisons and jails. The handwritten announcement was sent to prison advocacy organizations. It is signed by several prisoners, identifying themselves as the PBSP-SHU Short Corridor Collective. [Their statement follows this one.]

The Short Corridor refers to a section of Pelican Bay Prison’s notorious Security Housing Unit (SHU). Pelican Bay’s SHU was the point of origin for last year’s hunger strikes which rocked California’s prison system, at one point including the participation of nearly 12,000 prisoners in over 11 prisons throughout the state.

The statement calls for the cessation of all hostilities between groups to commence Oct. 10, 2012, in all California prisons and county jails. “This means that from this date on, all racial group hostilities need to be at an end,” the statement says.

It also calls on prisoners throughout the state to set aside their differences and use diplomatic means to settle their disputes. The Short Corridor Collective states, “If personal issues arise between individuals, people need to do all they can to exhaust all diplomatic means to settle such disputes; do not allow personal, individual issues to escalate into racial group issues.”

The statement calls for the cessation of all hostilities between groups to commence Oct. 10, 2012, in all California prisons and county jails. “This means that from this date on, all racial group hostilities need to be at an end,” the statement says.

In the past, California prisoners have attempted to collaborate with the Department of Corrections to bring an end to the hostilities, but CDCR has been largely unresponsive to prisoners’ requests. The statement warns prisoners that they expect prison officials to attempt to undermine this agreement.



“My long-time experience in urban peace issues, gang truces, prevention and intervention is that when gang leaders and prisoners take full stock of the violence and how they can contribute to the peace, such peace will be strong, lasting and deep. I honor this effort as expressed in this statement,” says Luis J. Rodriguez, renowned violence intervention worker and award-winning author of “Always Running: La Vida Loca, Gang Days in L.A.”

Rodriguez has helped broker gang truces throughout the U.S. as well as in other parts of the world. This spring, Rodriguez was involved in a historic truce between gangs in El Salvador leading to a 70 percent drop in violence in that country.

According to Rodriguez, “What is needed now – and where most peace efforts fail – is the meaningful and long-lasting support of society and government, in the form of prison reform, training, education, drug and mental health treatment and proper health care. We need an end to repressive measures that only feed into the violence and traumas.”



Azadeh Zohrabi of the Prisoner Hunger Strike Solidarity Coalition sees the agreement as a positive development that stems from last year’s hunger strikes. “While living through some of the worst conditions imaginable, the authors of this statement continue to work for change,” states Zohrabi. “While the prison administration drags its feet on even the most basic reforms, these guys are trying to build peace throughout the system. That says a lot about their humanity and hope.”

Advocates and the Short Corridor Collective are eager to spread the word as far and wide as possible and implement peace plans throughout California’s prisons and jails. “We must all hold strong to our mutual agreement from this point on and focus our time, attention and energy on mutual causes beneficial to all of us [i.e., prisoners] and our best interests,” says the Collective.

“The reality is that, collectively, we are an empowered, mighty force that can positively change this entire corrupt system into a system that actually benefits prisoners and thereby the public as a whole.”

“While living through some of the worst conditions imaginable, the authors of this statement continue to work for change,” states Zohrabi. “While the prison administration drags its feet on even the most basic reforms, these guys are trying to build peace throughout the system. That says a lot about their humanity and hope.”

The PBSP-SHU Short Corridor Collective has strongly requested that its statement be read and referred to in whole. It follows here:
Agreement to end hostilities

Dated Aug. 12, 2012

To whom it may concern and all California Prisoners:

Greetings from the entire PBSP-SHU Short Corridor Hunger Strike Representatives. We are hereby presenting this mutual agreement on behalf of all racial groups here in the PBSP-SHU Corridor. Wherein, we have arrived at a mutual agreement concerning the following points:

1. If we really want to bring about substantive meaningful changes to the CDCR system in a manner beneficial to all solid individuals who have never been broken by CDCR’s torture tactics intended to coerce one to become a state informant via debriefing, that now is the time for us to collectively seize this moment in time and put an end to more than 20-30 years of hostilities between our racial groups.

2. Therefore, beginning on Oct. 10, 2012, all hostilities between our racial groups in SHU, ad-seg, general population and county jails will officially cease. This means that from this date on, all racial group hostilities need to be at an end. And if personal issues arise between individuals, people need to do all they can to exhaust all diplomatic means to settle such disputes; do not allow personal, individual issues to escalate into racial group issues!



3. We also want to warn those in the general population that IGI [Institutional Gang Investigators] will continue to plant undercover Sensitive Needs Yard (SNY) debriefer “inmates” amongst the solid GP prisoners with orders from IGI to be informers, snitches, rats and obstructionists, in order to attempt to disrupt and undermine our collective groups’ mutual understanding on issues intended for our mutual causes (i.e., forcing CDCR to open up all GP main lines and return to a rehabilitative-type system of meaningful programs and privileges, including lifer conjugal visits etc. via peaceful protest activity and noncooperation e.g., hunger strike, no labor etc.). People need to be aware and vigilant to such tactics and refuse to allow such IGI inmate snitches to create chaos and reignite hostilities amongst our racial groups. We can no longer play into IGI, ISU (Investigative Service Unit), OCS (Office of Correctional Safety) and SSU’s (Service Security Unit’s) old manipulative divide and conquer tactics!

In conclusion, we must all hold strong to our mutual agreement from this point on and focus our time, attention and energy on mutual causes beneficial to all of us [i.e., prisoners] and our best interests. We can no longer allow CDCR to use us against each other for their benefit!

Because the reality is that collectively, we are an empowered, mighty force that can positively change this entire corrupt system into a system that actually benefits prisoners and thereby the public as a whole, and we simply cannot allow CDCR and CCPOA, the prison guards’ union, IGI, ISU, OCS and SSU to continue to get away with their constant form of progressive oppression and warehousing of tens of thousands of prisoners, including the 14,000-plus prisoners held in solitary confinement torture chambers – SHU and ad-seg units – for decades!

We send our love and respect to all those of like mind and heart. Onward in struggle and solidarity!

Presented by the PBSP-SHU Short Corridor Collective:

    Todd Ashker, C-58191, D1-119
    Arturo Castellanos, C-17275, D1-121
    Sitawa Nantambu Jamaa (Dewberry), C-35671, D1-117
    Antonio Guillen, P-81948, D2-106

And the Representatives Body:

    Danny Troxell, B-76578, D1-120
    George Franco, D-46556, D4-217
    Ronnie Yandell, V-27927, D4-215
    Paul Redd, B-72683, D2-117
    James Baridi Williamson, D-34288. D4-107
    Alfred Sandoval, D-61000, D4-214
    Louis Powell, B-59864, D1-104
    Alex Yrigollen, H-32421, D2-204
    Gabriel Huerta, C80766, D3-222
    Frank Clement, D-07919, D3-116
    Raymond Chavo Perez, K-12922, D1-219
    James Mario Perez, B-48186, D3-124

Note: All names and the foregoing statement must be shown verbatim when used and posted on any website or other publication.

 
via SFBayview.com

California State University Officials Approve 5% Tuition Hike

By Stephanie Minasian
Staff Writer | 0 comments


A 5% student tuition increase for the spring semester was approved by the California State University Board of Trustees at a meeting on Wednesday, but will be contingent on if voters fail to pass Governor Jerry Brown’s Proposition 30 tax-initiative to fund public education.
The CSU’s Committee on Finance approved the tuition hike 11-3, which will add $150 per semester for full-time undergraduates. If Proposition 30 is passed in the November election, the hike would not go forward, officials said.

“It is clear that we cannot simply cut our way out of another $250 million hit to our budget,” said CSU Chancellor Charles B. Reed in a statement on the CSU website. “We need to take a balanced approach in terms of cost reductions and revenue enhancements. That is reflected in the contingency plans going before the board.”

The committee also voted to repeal a 9% tuition hike that is already into place, if voters pass the tax initiative. This would mean that students would be reimbursed by $250 for the fall 2011 semester.

If voters don’t pass the initiative, the 23-campus university system will face a $250 million mid-year “trigger” cut — on top of the CSU’s $16 billion deficit. If the trigger gets pulled, the system will have lost nearly $1.2 billion — or 39% — of its state support since 2007.

The worst-case scenario also could mean a reduction of 20,000 students or a fee increase across the board, Reed said.

Whether or not voters pass Prop. 30, Reed noted that the committee has voted to devise a plan to raise certain student fees, although the committee said they would wait until November to make a decision. The increases would begin in the 2013-2014 school year, and could generate up to $35 million per year.

Those potential fee increases could hit the graduation incentive fee, which would require seniors who have earned 150 semester units or more to pay an additional cost per unit equal to that paid by nonresident students; a course repeat fee, which would require students repeating a class to pay a repeat fee of $100 per unit; and an extra unit tuition fee that requires students to pay $200 per semester for any course load of 17 or more units.

For more information about the cuts, visit www.calstate.edu.

Via Gazettes.com

Victory: Housing eligiblity now granted to people with past felony convictions in San Bernardino County

Dear allies,

We are excited to announce that through the advocacy efforts of Time for Change Foundation’s Homeless Leadership Empowerment Project (H.E.L.P.), the Housing Authority of San Bernardino County (HASBC) has enacted policy and created procedures that grant housing eligibility to people with past felony convictions. This both protects and enhances public safety, while giving people deserving of a second chance, a fair and equal opportunity to housing (in accordance to standards set by the President and Secretary of the United States Department of Housing and Urban Development).

A key component in the success of the H.E.L.P. was taking homeless individuals and training them to be the solution to the problem. By learning how to stand up and speak out for themselves, they were able to advocate on their own behalf and successfully change the status quo. 

We congratulate the Homeless Empowerment Leadership Project (H.E.L.P.), who did the footwork and research throughout United States, that did in dual purpose meet the needs of individuals in ensuring public safety for public housing. 

It’s a great day in the County of San Bernardino when you have nonprofits working with government agencies to meet the needs of individuals. This is one more testament of the great proactiveness that this county and nonprofits have demonstrated over the past couple of years. We're excited that the Secretary of HUD, under his guise and leadership, made it publicly known that it is okay for the HASBC to allow people with past felony convictions to move back in with their families and reunite them, keeping them whole for people who have turned a new leaf in their life and have become law abiding citizens. 

Sincerely,

Time for Change Foundation

Gov. Jerry Brown Has a Chance to Usher in Major Prison Reforms in California

With a couple strokes of his pen, Gov. Jerry Brown can significantly alter the way California's prison system works.

Yesterday, the state Senate passed a bill that would give parole opportunities to juvenile offenders sentenced to life without the possibility of parole.

This week, that body will likely also vote on a bill that would allow journalists to set up interviews with inmates in state prisons. The prison media access bill has passed through the state legislature eight times over the past couple of decades, and has been vetoed at the governor's desk each time.

Brown, who has paroled inmates at a much higher rate than his two predecessors, has yet to take a public stance on either of these bills.

The juvenile parole bill, proposed by Sen. Leland Yee, a San Francisco Democrat, would allow juvenile offenders to appeal a life sentence after serving 15 years. If the inmate shows remorse and pursues rehabilitation, a court can grant him a parole hearing after his 25th year. Juveniles convicted of torture or killing a cop would not be eligible. There are currently around 300 lifers who could request a parole opportunity if the bill passes.
Yee, who has worked as a child psychologist, argues that because young people's brains are not yet fully developed, they should have the opportunity to prove they are fit for release.
Sen. Joel Anderson, a Republican from San Diego, disagreed that juvenile murderers have the potential to rehabilitate:
"This is absolutely outrageous that we are going to release these little psychopaths back onto the street to murder again," he said, according to the L.A. Times. "We're talking about serious crimes where we have young people who are flat-out evil."
The bill passed 21-16 -- the dissent coming from all 14 Republicans as well as two Democrats.
The prison media access legislation might be just as close. California's Department of Corrections opposes the bill, claiming that inmate interviews can "glamorize" criminals and bring back past trauma to victims. Reporters have been barred from scheduling in-person interviews with inmates since 1996. Instead, prison officials allow 15-minute telephone interviews with inmates who have phone access. Even when reporters gain access inside prisons, they can only speak to the inmates they randomly encounter on guided tours. To the Corrections Department, though, "the media already enjoys a wide range of access to prisons and inmates."
Which is just ridiculous.
As This American Life correspondent Nancy Mullane explained in a Sac Bee op-ed last week:

Let's say an inmate has filed a lawsuit against the state, been injured in a riot, has direct knowledge about criminal conduct or has been involved in a high-profile court case. Reporters can only hope that while they are being escorted by a prison public information officer, they will randomly run into the specific inmate they need for a story.

The bill, pushed by Assemblyman Tom Ammiano (D-San Francisco), would require that prisons, given advanced notice, allow reporters to interview specific inmates as long as it doesn't "pose an immediate and direct threat to the security of the institution or the physical safety of a member of the public." Journalists would be allowed to bring in cameras, notebooks, and recording equipment.
The prison guards union -- the California Correctional Peace Officers Association -- supports the bill. As do media organizations and civil rights groups. Opposition from the Corrections Department and victims-rights groups has kept previous governors from signing off on the legislation.
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California Tries to Guide the Way on Health Law

Members of the audience lined up to speak at a meeting of the California Health Benefit Exchange last month in Sacramento. 

By ABBY GOODNOUGH

SACRAMENTO — The meeting came to order, the five members of the California Health Benefit Exchange seated onstage with dozens of consumer advocates and others looking on. On the agenda: what to name the online marketplace where millions of residents will be able to shop for medical coverage under President Obama’s health care law.

 An adviser presented the options, meant to be memorable, appealing and clear. What about CaliHealth? Or Healthifornia?

Or Avocado?

“I am kind of drawn to Avocado,” declared Kim Belshé, a member of the exchange’s board of directors, which is hustling to make dozens of decisions as the clock ticks toward deadlines set by the law.

Delay and outright resistance to the health care overhaul might be the norm in much of the country, but not here. California — home to seven million uninsured people, more than any other state — is at the forefront of preparations for January 2014, when a controversial requirement that most Americans have medical coverage or pay a penalty takes effect.

So far, only 13 states and the District of Columbia have told the Obama administration they intend to set up the insurance exchanges that are supposed to provide a marketplace for people to buy health plans. None are being watched as closely as California, whose singular challenges, from the size, diversity and geographic spread of its uninsured population to its vast budget problems, make it stand out. Many feel a successful rollout here could convince other states with high numbers of uninsured residents that the law can be made to work for them.

“We are the example,” said Anthony Wright, executive director of Health Access California, an advocacy group. “If it can be done here, it can be done anywhere.”

The California Health Benefit Exchange has already hired 50 employees and is poised to hire 50 more. Construction of the Web portal through which some three million people are expected to buy insurance by 2019, and through which many others will likely enroll in Medicaid, is under way.

This fall, the board will seek bids from insurers to sell plans through the exchange, and it intends to have the portal up and running by next summer, several months before enrollment starts in October 2013.

Realizing that much of the battle will be in the public relations realm, the exchange has poured significant resources into a detailed marketing plan — developed not by state health bureaucrats but by the global marketing powerhouse Ogilvy Public Relations Worldwide, which has an initial $900,000 contract with the exchange. The Ogilvy plan includes ideas for reaching an uninsured population that speaks dozens of languages and is scattered through 11 media markets: advertising on coffee cup sleeves at community colleges to reach adult students, for example, and at professional soccer matches to reach young Hispanic men.

And Hollywood, an industry whose major players have been supportive of President Obama and his agenda, will be tapped. Plans are being discussed to pitch a reality television show about “the trials and tribulations of families living without medical coverage,” according to the Ogilvy plan. The exchange will also seek to have prime-time television shows, like “Modern Family,” “Grey’s Anatomy” and Univision telenovelas, weave the health care law into their plots.

“I’d like to see 10 of the major TV shows, or telenovelas, have people talking about ‘that health insurance thing,’ ” said Peter V. Lee, the exchange’s executive director. “There are good story lines here.”

Although the exchange will not start advertising until next year, the California Endowment, a foundation that has spent $15 million promoting the law, is running newspaper and television ads, including one in which the television personality Dr. Mehmet Oz exhorts viewers to “get educated, get engaged, get enrolled.” That campaign has targeted Hispanics, who make up more than half of the state’s uninsured population.

But for all the progress, California’s intractable budget woes loom as a threat to implementation here. Even with the federal government financing most of the insurance expansion, the state’s contribution could exceed $2 billion a year, according to an estimate that was made by the administration of Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger, a Republican, who signed the legislation creating an insurance exchange here in September 2010, earlier than any other state. Diana S. Dooley, the state’s Health and Human Services secretary, said the administration of Gov. Jerry Brown, a Democrat, was working on a new estimate.

Mr. Brown, while supportive of the law, has not spent much time talking it up publicly, in part, Ms. Dooley said, because he is “absolutely laser-focused on getting the budget balanced.”

To help close a $16 billion deficit, Mr. Brown made more than $1 billion in cuts from Medicaid and other health programs even though about a million of the Californians expected to gain coverage through the health care law by 2019 would get it through a prescribed expansion of Medicaid. (Those who buy private insurance through the exchange will be able to get federal subsidies to help cover the cost if they earn up to four times the federal poverty level, or currently $92,200 for a family of four.)

Mr. Brown is hoping voters will approve a package of temporary tax increases in November to avoid $6 billion more in cuts. Ms. Dooley said that without the tax package, carrying out the health law might be at risk, including the expansion of Medicaid.

“I wouldn’t characterize it as all bets are off,” she said. “I’m just saying nothing is protected.”

The exchange itself has so far been financed by three grants, worth $237 million, from the federal government. Most of the money is committed to consultants, including Accenture, which has a $327 million contract to build and support the initial operation of the enrollment portal.

Ms. Dooley said getting the enrollment system up and running in such a tight time frame was one of her biggest worries. The other, she said, was making sure the health plans sold through the exchange were affordable. The federal law lists 10 categories of “essential health benefits” that plans sold through exchanges must provide, but Ms. Dooley said those categories “go beyond what I would call essential.”

“It’s all good for consumers,” she said. “But somebody’s got to pay for it, and that’s going to go into the premium.”

Despite the full-throttle approach here, another uncertainty is the outcome of the presidential race. Mitt Romney, the Republican nominee, has vowed to repeal the health care law and restructure Medicaid, not only scrapping the planned expansion but making the program much leaner. Even without a repeal, Republicans could undo the federal subsidies and other financing for the law if they won the presidency and even a narrow majority in the Senate.

“If the federal funding stopped,” Mr. Lee said, “we would be at a ‘press reset’ button.”

In a Field Poll released on Aug. 20, 54 percent of California voters said they supported the health care law, compared with 37 percent who said they were opposed. Support was strongest among blacks (88 percent) and Hispanics (67 percent), who together make up more than 44 percent of the state’s population. Voters of Vietnamese and Korean descent also firmly supported the law, but white and Chinese voters were more divided. The poll of 1,579 voters, conducted in July, has a sampling error of plus or minus 3 percentage points.

Only 17 percent of respondents said they had seen, heard or read anything about the insurance exchange though. Still, 75 percent of those who are not insured through their employer or Medicare said they would be interested in using the exchange to shop for health insurance.

Mr. Lee said the fact that few people had heard of the exchange was “totally unsurprising.” A catchy new name might help spread the word, he said; a decision on Avocado and the other finalists should come next month.

“The fact that very few people have heard about us isn’t an issue,” Mr. Lee said. “Come back in a year.”