There seems to be something particularly egregious about something I read about in today’s Los Angeles Times, DWP proposes hiring former Assembly speaker Nuñez to help lobbyists.
Apparently the Los Angeles Department of Water and Power, a public agency, is looking to spend big bucks to hire former Assembly Speaker Fabian Nunez to provide "strategic advice" on how the agency should be navigating through the regulatory maze that has come about with the passage of AB 32, the legislation that requires state government to enact rules limiting people-caused actions that produce carbon emissions.
The irony hear, which should make FR readers cringe, is that Nunez himself was an absolutely critical player, while Assembly Speaker, in the passage of AB 32 in the first place.
Or to put it another way — are we creating a new "industry" in California — which is where politicians adopt complex, onerous regulations thus enabling them, after they are out of office, to be hired by those forced to deal with the impacts of those laws?
Given the state of the California economy, what really needs to be happening is an outright repeal of AB 32 — to avoid all together the case for taxpayer (or ratepayer) dollars having to be sunk into consultants like Nunez. While I know that Nunez would help the economy with the ability to spend an extra $20k a month on fine wine and luxury hotels (assuming he stays spends his money in California, as opposed to France or Italy), better for the economy is to terminate the economy-damaging regulation.