Blog
Family businesses celebrate milestone anniversaries
While family businesses are the bedrock of California’s economy and its communities, keeping a business going for decades is extremely difficult. Studies show that only 30 percent of family businesses survive into the second generation, 12 percent to the third, and...
Family Business Assn. Presents Its First Outstanding Legislator Award to Adam Gray
The Family Business Association of California, the only organization advocating exclusively for California’s thousands of family businesses, has awarded its first Outstanding Legislator Award to Assembly Member Adam C. Gray, D-Merced, for his record on legislation...
Happy Thanksgiving for California Democrats, Black Friday for Republicans
By Dennis Albiani, FBA Legislative Advocate As the final votes are tallied in California, more races get called for the Democrat challengers taking down the few moderate Republicans that remained in California. The tight race for California Senate District 34 took a...
The Economy is Not Overheating
Elliot Eisenberg, Ph.D., Graphs and Laughs, LLC The U.S. unemployment rate recently fell to 3.7%, a rate last seen in 1969. This very low rate is giving the Fed and many other market watchers reasons to worry that the labor market, and thus the overall economy, may be...
Four family businesses join the Family Business Association of California
Four more businesses recently joined the Family Business Association of California, the only organization exclusively working to protect the interests of family businesses in Sacramento. Mag Bay Yachts was founded in 2013 by father and son Michael and Barrett Howarth...
At end of the Brown era, FBA helps defeat last-minute tax measure
By Dennis Albiani and Faith Borges Late in the evening on Sunday September 30, stakeholders, advocates, and constituents received the last email notification from Governor Jerry Brown providing a legislative update on the final bills to be signed or vetoed. In his...
Gentrification is Good
By Elliot Eisenberg, Ph.D., GraphsandLaughs, LLC Over the past few decades, the term “gentrification,” i.e. high-income persons and households moving into poor minority neighborhoods, who, in doing so, push out significantly poorer lifelong residents, has become one...
Chico ice cream and candy store marks 80 years as a North State icon
When Leonard Shubert rolled into Chico in 1938 and decided it would be a great place to start an ice cream business, some of the locals were skeptical. “People said, ‘You’re going to sell five-cent ice cream cones? Good luck with that,’” recalled Kasey...
Why Healthcare Is So Expensive
By Elliot Eisenberg, Ph.D. GraphsandLaughs, LLC While there are many reasons why healthcare spending is growing much faster than the economy — including an aging population and the rising cost of prescription drugs — one problem that gets virtually no attention and is...
End-of-session legislative update
By Dennis Albiani and Faith Lane Borges Early in the morning of September 1, the 2018-19 legislative session was gaveled to a close. During the last month of session, the Legislature acted on over 1,000 measures, the majority of which made it to the Governor. All of...
Another family business giving back
Family businesses are often the pillars of their community. A case in point is Peterson Holding Companies, the parent firm of FBA Member Peterson Cat. The company was founded in 1936 by founder and company namesake Howard Peterson and now his grandson, Duane Doyle, is...
Four family businesses join FBA
Firms in Petaluma, West Sacramento, Chico, and Salinas seek to protect family business Four businesses recently joined the Family Business Association of California, the only organization exclusively working to protect the interests of family businesses in Sacramento....