Recently conservative State Assemblyman Kevin Jeffries announced that he will be running for his local seat on the Riverside County Board of Supervisors in 2012. This, of course, was not welcome news for the longtime incumbent of that office, Supervisor Bob Buster, who has announced his 
intention to seek election yet again to the office he has held since 1992.
There will be a number of key issues on which Buster and Jeffries disagree, but it would appear that one of the most significant is going to be the question of whether taxes are too high or too low. Yesterday Buster voted with a majority of the Riverside County Board of Supervisors (Benoit and Stone voting no) to endorse Governor Brown’s local government realignment plan, which is, of course, predicated on the voters of California passing the largest tax increase in state history — a higher rate for income, taxes and car taxes — for five years!
While Buster is voting on the County Board of Supervisors to endorse this big-government plan, Jeffries has established himself over the past four plus years in the legislature as a strong taxpayer advocate and opponent to tax increases. His voting record speaks for itself, and he immediately joined the new Taxpayers Caucus with its contemporary commitment to opposing placing Governor Brown’s taxes on the ballot.
We’ll see what other issues loom large in this upcoming donnybrook, but it doesn’t take a rocket scientist to figure out who is in the running for a coveted endorsement from the Howard Jarvis Taxpayers Association PAC… Apparently Supervisor Buster doesn’t understand how hard the recession is hitting his constituents. Then again, next year will mark two full decades at which he has had his cushy, recession-proof government job.