Business

Assemblyman Mike Morrell has won the special election for the State Senate’s District 23 seat. Morrell, R-Rancho Cucamonga, held commanding leads late Tuesday in Riverside and San Bernardino counties of 60 and 64 percent of the vote respectively, according to multiple published reports. Morrell defeated four other candidates and avoided …

A nursery that supplies plants and flowers to commercial clients has reached an agreement with the Western Municipal Water District that could save the company up to $300,000 a year in water costs. Altman Specialty Plants, which operates a 375-acre facility in Lake Mathews in unincorporated Riverside County, will capture, …

A follow-up on the jobs report released Friday by the California Employment Development Department: Nearly 37,000 more people were working in the Inland Empire last month than were working in February 2013, the highest employment level for the two-county region since the start of the recession, according to the report. …

The federal government has cut its funding to its Small Business Development Centers, but the program’s Inland Empire office has barely felt the reduction. The reduction forced the local office to change one full-time consultant to a part-time position but otherwise day-to-day operations haven’t been affected, said Vincent McCoy, executive …

Unemployment in California dropped to eight percent in February, as the state’s jobless rate continued its steady decline. That number was virtually unchanged from January, when the state’s unemployment rate was 8.1 percent, but it did represent a significant year-to-year drop: unemployment in California was 9.4 percent in February 2013, …

The owners of a Riverside 7-11 are suing the convenience store chain’s parent company in federal court, claiming the store was taken away from them without cause. Dilip and Saroj Patel, who owned and operated the store at Magnolia and Jurupa avenues for more than two decades, lost the business …