A.M. Splash: South Bay Leads Nation in Job Growth; SF Supes Delay Bag-Fee Vote; Anti-Tax Groups File Ballot Initiative

The South Bay led the nation in job growth over the past year, according to a new government report -- and economists predict the region's surge will power a Bay Area expansion. During the 12 months that ended in October, the South Bay job market grew by 3.2 percent, the U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics reported Wednesday. Meanwhile, the East Bay employment sector expanded by 0.1 percent.

A day after Gov. Jerry Brown filed an initiative to raise taxes, anti-tax groups filed their own ballot measure to curb spending. The measure would lock in recession-era spending levels, with fiscal year 2010-11 as the base year. Then, any revenues above that base, after being adjusted for inflation and population, would be used to pay off debt -- or, in flusher times, given to schools and returned to taxpayers.

Hit with more than 1,000 calls from customers saying they've been victims of fraud, Lucky Supermarkets is urging shoppers who used self-checkout lanes at nearly two dozen Bay Area stores to close their bank and credit card accounts after a number of its kiosks were hacked.

It's a sign of the still struggling economy that a $263 million budget deficit is considered good news, but that was the case among relieved San Francisco city officials on Tuesday.

After their first public glimpse at the details of a sealed billion-dollar deal to finance a San Francisco 49ers stadium, Santa Clara City Council members on Tuesday appeared on their way to approve a mountain of debt to build a gleaming new NFL home in Silicon Valley.

A Board of Supervisors vote to expand San Francisco's groundbreaking plastic bag ban and to start charging customers 10 cents for paper and compostable bags was delayed until Feb. 7, which prevents the sponsor of the proposed law, Supervisor Ross Mirkarimi, from seeing his legacy legislation adopted on his watch.

Richmond voters will get a chance to weigh in on a penny-per-ounce soda tax next year. The City Council directed staffers Tuesday to prepare a measure for the November 2012 ballot that would impose a sales tax on "sweetened beverages." Councilman Jeff Ritterman invited Contra Costa Public Health Director Wendel Brunner to make a presentation on the health effects of sugary beverages ahead of the vote.

California's major corporations have rung up hundreds of billions of dollars in profits in recent years, but have paid only a few percentage points of those profits in state income taxes, according to a new nationwide study by several liberal organizations. The compilation of corporate profits and state taxes was conducted by the Institution on Taxation and Economic Policy and Citizens for Tax Justice and released in California by the California Public Interest Research Group.

Today is the 70th anniversary of the Japanese attack on Pearl Harbor - a date that President Franklin D. Roosevelt said "will live in infamy." It would also begin a complete transformation of the Bay Area and the West Coast from a place that seemed isolated and remote from the rest of the country.