I’ve heard from a lot of FR readers, who are upset at the legislature’s passage of the largest tax increase in the history of any state, and a good number of them ask me why Assemblyman Roger Niello should be treated any differently, in terms of culpability, than Senators Ashburn, Cogdill and Maldonado, and Assemblymembers Adams and Villines.
These readers bring up a good and valid point. While it is true that unlike the other five, Niello did not sign the Americans for Tax Reform No New Taxes pledge, that doesn’t let him off the hook for being a deciding vote to slam Californian’s with two years of higher taxes (to the tune of an estimated $16 billion or more!).
The reality is that just like the others, Roger Niello used plenty of anti-tax rhetoric in his campaigns and in his speechifying — he’ll tell you right now, to your face, how terrible it is to raise taxes.
So, relative to the "non-pledge taker," one has to say that Roger Niello turned his back on his party, and cut a deal with liberal Democrats in order to raises taxes, pay-off state employee unions and keep the already bloated government growing. The California Republican Party cannot and should not support him now or in the future.
Which is to say, to all of those readers who wrote to me — in my book, the egregious vote here for the interests of government growth over the interests of taxpayers and the citizenry is no less by Niello simply because he didn’t sign a pledge.