If you’ve ever ordered a pizza from Domino’s, Pizza Hut, or Papa John’s, you’ve probably eaten mozzarella made by Leprino Foods in Lemoore, California. But that era is coming to an end. Like hundreds of other companies, Leprino is pulling back from California and expanding operations in Texas.
For decades, Leprino was a cornerstone of the Central Valley economy. Now it is closing one of its two Lemoore facilities, eliminating nearly 400 local jobs. The company has pointed directly to California’s crushing regulatory climate as a key factor behind the decision.
CALIFORNIA SCAPEGOATS BILLIONAIRES FOR ITS RECKLESS BUDGETING
Another reason cited by the company is its new facility in Lubbock, Texas, which will employ around 600 people and be fully operational sometime in 2026. It is more financially sustainable for Leprino Foods to build a facility in Texas and employ 600 people there than to employ fewer than 400 people at a facility in California that has operated daily since 1910. That is how big the gap is between California’s business and regulatory environments compared to Texas’s.
More than 360 companies left California from 2018 to 2024. Going back to 2005, half of the companies that left the Golden State went to Texas. The Lone Star State leads the country in job creation, having recently posted its largest labor force number in history. California, meanwhile, leads the nation in unemployment, as even the state’s top industries of entertainment and technology are losing jobs.
Believe it or not, things are only going to get worse in California. Gov. Gavin Newsom (D-CA) and his fellow Democrats refused to pay back a federal pandemic unemployment loan, making California the only state to do so. The result is that the federal government will recollect its money through taxes on every business for every employee they employ, through a tax that goes up year after year until the debt is repaid, which won’t be until sometime in the 2030s, based on projections. Leprino Foods just saved itself around 400 employees’ worth of additional taxes with this move, and other big businesses could do the same while California’s small businesses are forced to shoulder the burden.
NEWSOM’S UNPAID BILLS ARE COSTING CALIFORNIA JOBS
California’s Democratic regulations have strangled businesses so severely that, from January 2022 to June 2024, over 96% of new jobs created in the state were jobs in the state government. And that is all before this new rising tax on every employee goes into effect, which will force businesses to spend even more money for every person they employ or cut people loose in order to save money.
Leprino Foods is just one of many companies that have decided to take the second option, taking hundreds of jobs to the more business-friendly Texas rather than try to swim upstream in California’s onerous tax and regulatory environment. Despite it all, Newsom considers the California model to be a success, one he is so proud of that he intends to make it the focus of his 2028 run for president. Companies such as Leprino Foods were able to escape Newsomology in Texas, but they won’t have that same luxury if Newsom walks into the White House in 2029.
