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Lessons from Bill Lockyer |
Posted by: mturnipseed on 10/26/2009 08:34 PM
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Lessons from Bill Lockyer
By Joel Fox, Editor of Fox & Hounds and
President of the Small Business Action Committee
Mon, October 26th, 2009
State Treasurer Bill Lockyer generated a storm last week with his testimony before the Senate and Assembly Select Committees on Improving State Government.
He warned that public pensions and health care costs could bankrupt the state, that taxes will not go up, and that the legislature should clean up its act by getting rid of “junk” bills. An edited clip of his testimony can be viewed here.
Some might argue this was Lockyer’s Nixon-to-China moment, telling his Democratic colleagues to deal forthrightly with the state’s fiscal realities. In FlashReport, Former Republican State Senator Ray Haynes that Lockyer as the state senate leader had a different view of pensions, but now welcomed him to the fight. |
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STATE GOES DOWN THE BUDGET RABBIT HOLE |
Posted by: mturnipseed on 06/04/2009 07:45 PM
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From Capitol Weekly
State goes down the budget rabbit hole
By Anthony York | 06/04/09 12:00 AM PST
This year, there were a lot of firsts in California politics. We had the budget essentially put to the voters in May, and unprecedented public testimony at the budget conference committee. We’ve foregone the budget subcommittee process. Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger gave what amounted to a State of the State address in June, and we got the governor’s final budget revisions weeks later than the typical May Revise. For all the talk of necessary change, it appears we’ve already gone down the proverbial rabbit hole.
Of course, the more things change, the more they stay the same. The state is still feeling cashflow pressures that have created a tight budget deadline. Negotiations are still going through the routine theatrics – complete with cut proposals that most of us know will never come to pass. And the fundamental rift remains between Democrats who still seem interested in a budget that involves both deep cuts and new revenues, and Republicans who are drawing a harder line against new state spending. Tuesday crystallized the brave new budget world that California now confronts. It began with an unprecedented June speech from Schwarzenegger to lawmakers in the Assembly chambers. The speech felt at times like a parliamentary drill, with both Speaker Karen Bass, D-Los Angeles, and Senate Leader Darrell Steinberg, D-Sacramento, briefly sketching out their budget visions before the governor made his case. |
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California has a golden opportunity to return to local control |
Posted by: mturnipseed on 06/04/2009 07:38 PM
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From the Los Angeles Times | CAPITOL JOURNAL
California has a golden opportunity to return to local control
A 'realignment' of state and local government is needed to reconstruct their tangled, unhealthy relationship since the passage of Proposition 13 in 1978.
By George Skelton | June 4, 2009
From Sacramento — Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger invoked Winston Churchill on Tuesday in trying to rally legislators to mop up the state's gushing red ink.
"Like Winston Churchill said," the governor told a rare joint session of both legislative houses as lawmakers sat passively and glum, "a pessimist sees difficulty in every opportunity. But an optimist sees the opportunity in every difficulty."
Yeah, yeah! You'd have to be a fiendish idiot to welcome this opportunity: a shot at shortening the school year and increasing class sizes; a chance to phase out financial aid for college students; an opening to cut poor people's health and welfare services so deeply that some end up dying. |
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California voters want more state services but resist tax increases |
Posted by: mturnipseed on 04/27/2009 05:28 PM
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from the Los Angeles Times
California voters want more state services but resist tax increases
Many voters see efficiency as a cure-all, but it's not that simple.
By Cathleen Decker | April 26, 2009
I
In the pages of one day's Times last week were two in a lengthening procession of articles explaining what happens when governments run out of money, as city and county officials across the state cut programs to save cash. Four pages earlier was the kind of story that keeps them awake at night as they slice.
"Files detail deaths of 14 children."
The article, based on documents obtained by The Times, outlined, hauntingly, the demise last year of 14 children killed by abuse and neglect in families that had been under the scrutiny of Los Angeles County child welfare officials.
Elected officials asserted they were shocked. No one else could have been. The county has seen those sorts of headlines before. And still, funding for its child welfare program lags. |
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California budget fixes on May 19 ballot are mostly shams and frauds |
Posted by: mturnipseed on 04/27/2009 05:12 PM
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From the Los Angeles Times
California budget fixes on May 19 ballot are mostly shams and frauds
Of the six propositions billed as solutions to the fiscal crisis, two would make things worse, one would be irrelevant to the budget, two would be mostly irrelevant and the last is wishful thinking.
Michael Hiltzik
April 27, 2009
One can always tell that a California election is drawing near because commercials lying about ballot propositions start crowding commercials lying about detergents and pharmaceuticals off the TV.
So it is with the May 19 election. Every time I turn on my set, I can already detect the acrid stench of political mendacity billowing into the room. And nearly a month yet to go. |
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Read between the lines to find the tax hike |
Posted by: mturnipseed on 03/05/2009 10:39 AM
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FROM THE LOS ANGELES TIMES | Capitol Journal
Read between the lines to find the tax hike
George Skelton, Capitol Journal
9:40 PM PST, March 4, 2009
From Sacramento -- Many Californians will be torn in May. They can vote for a ballot measure that forces Sacramento to control state spending. Or they can vote against it and reduce their future taxes.
Control spending or reduce taxes? Reads like a non sequitur. Do both, conservatives would say. Do neither, liberals would respond.
Nobody gets everything they want on taxes and spending. That's why there was a compromise haggled out in the Capitol to keep Sacramento from drowning in red ink.
Democrats wanted permanent tax increases. Republicans insisted that they be temporary. Really, the GOP didn't want any tax hike unless there also was a spending cap. Democrats detested a spending cap. But they needed tax hikes to save education and welfare programs. Republicans could block the necessary two-thirds majority vote. |
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The Decline of California |
Posted by: mturnipseed on 02/23/2009 06:13 PM
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•Wall Street Journal
•FEBRUARY 17, 2009, 9:59 P.M. ET
The Decline of California
They still think they can tax their way out of this one.
If you thought Washington's stimulus debate was depressing, take a look at the long-running budget spectacle in California. The Golden State's deficit has reached $42 billion, Governor Arnold Schwarzenegger is threatening to furlough 20,000 state workers (go ahead, make our day), and as we went to press yesterday Democrats who control the legislature had blocked lawmakers from leaving until they finally get a deal. |
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Wiser spending would better serve California schools |
Posted by: mturnipseed on 01/19/2009 11:40 AM
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San Diego Union-Tribune Editorial: Closing the literacy gap
Wiser spending would better serve California schools
2:00 a.m. January 19, 2009
At 23 percent, California leads the nation in residents 16 and older at the lowest level of literacy. The National Assessment of Adult Literacy, released this month, is calculated by the U.S. Department of Education from 2003 data. Its estimate for California: 6 million of its 26 million adults can, at best, read and understand only “short, commonplace prose text.” At worst, they cannot read and comprehend any information written in English. Behind this eight-point increase in below-basic literacy since the last assessment in 1992 is primarily immigration. One in eight U.S. residents is an immigrant, the highest percentage in 80 years. Half of them over the age of 5 are not proficient in English. Nationwide, functional illiteracy is greatest among adult immigrants who did not graduate from high school, spoke no English before starting school, and are Hispanic. And that bodes ill for their children. Children of immigrants with little English, little education and therefore low earnings generally lag as well. Most are Hispanic. Most live in poor households, increasingly with an unmarried mother. As elsewhere, such combined disadvantages leave many among the state's million-plus English-language learners – and future workers – badly behind in reading and math. How schools can change that no one quite knows. |
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Hype clouds our real air pollution picture |
Posted by: mturnipseed on 01/19/2009 11:34 AM
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Lois Henry: Hype clouds our real air pollution picture
BY LOIS HENRY, Bakersfield Californian, 1/18/09
I have no idea how to say this, so I’m just going to say it:
Claims about air pollution’s devastating effects on public health are, um, hooey. Or at least largely hooey. You have no idea how it pains me to say that having many times, and publicly so, taken officials and politicians to task for not doing more to clean our “filthy air.”
Ewww, this crow tastes nothing like chicken!
Please don’t take this to mean we shouldn’t continue to try and make our air as clean as possible. We should.
But it should be done using a reasoned approach based on solid scientific evidence without the wild claims and near hysteria some environmental groups have beaten us over the heads with to keep us in fear of our next breath without more and more and MORE regulation. |
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With GOP budget plan, who'll blink first? |
Posted by: mturnipseed on 12/16/2008 12:17 PM
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from sacbee.com | Capitol and California | Dan Walters
With GOP budget plan, who'll blink first?
By Dan Walters
dwalters@sacbee.com
Published: Tuesday, Dec. 16, 2008 | Page 3A
The Legislature's Republicans, after months of dithering, have finally unveiled their proposal for dealing, at least partially, with the state's ever-growing budget deficit – and it's not half bad.
That doesn't mean the scheme, which relies heavily on cutting schools and health and welfare services, will or should be enacted. But it's not one of those fact-challenged fantasies that Republicans have floated in the past. |
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