Dave Cortese, a San Jose city council member who is running for mayor, is planning on declaring a "permit holiday,” which would reduce the red tape for potential new business start-ups in his city, according to the San Jose Mercury News. Cortese, the son of the former state Assemblyman Dom Cortese (Democrat-turned-Reform Party), faces a June 2006 primary election to replace current Mayor Ron Gonzales.  Cortese told the paper that he was borrowing the permit holiday idea from the City of Anaheim, where Mayor Curt Pringle and his city council have held not only a permit holiday for businesses, but also a “Home Improvement Holiday” for homeowners. 

(Interesting bit of political junkie history, Cortese’s father crossed party lines to support Republican rule changes in January 1996 that helped the Republicans gain control of the Assembly, leading to Pringle’s election as speaker. Dom Cortese lost his race for the 13^th Senate district to John Vasconcellos later that year.)

Cortese is an interesting candidate who some say is too pro-developer.  He recently had to answer questions at a forum about his role in the city’s land grab of an aging shopping center to turn it into a new mall.  Happily, the landlords and tenants successfully fought the city’s development agency’s eminent domain action (costing the city nearly $8 million in damages and attorney fees). Cortese unfortunately defended his vote supporting the city’s private property taking, saying that he saw the new development as a “significant public investment.”  

(I’m starting to hate to hear politicians use the word investment.   Cortese defends his support of government grabbing private property simply to increase the city’s sales tax revenues as an "investment."  Rob Reiner calls his "tax-the-rich-to-pay-for-universal-preschool scheme an "investment" in our schools.   Gag me.)

When Cortese was running for city council, his opponent tried to hammer Cortese for not being pro-gun control.  Apparently, Cortese does not support local gun control ordinances (like the idiotic one that San Francisco voters just passed), having said in the past that guns should only be regulated by that state and federal governments.

San Jose has got to be one of the worst planned (and ugliest) cities in the state.  Cortese also sees problems with the city’s long-term planning.  He recently took a shot at Gonzales in an op-ed in the San Jose Mercury News where he said that Gonzales didn’t have any long-term, clear vision for the city. 

I like some of what I hear Cortese say he wants to do if he’s elected mayor, although he needs to wake up and protect the private property owners of his city.  Frankly, he’d do well by taking a few other pointers from Pringle and the city of Anaheim, including following up the business permit holiday idea with a home improvement holiday, and stregthening San Jose’s eminent domain regulations to better protect private property rights.  (Full disclosure:  I do some freelance media work for Pringle.)

This entry was posted on Monday, November 28th, 2005 at 12:00 am and is filed under Blog Posts.