Yesterday San Diego Assemblywoman Toni Atkins was formally elected to be Speaker of the Assembly. She will assume her office later this year, succeeding current Speaker John Perez. Ideologically there is hardly a lick of difference between these two liberal Democrats, though many have shared with me privately that Atkins style of doing business may be more pleasing to those participating in the legislative process than that of Perez. Whatever.

Let me add to the chorus of those wishing Speaker-Elect Atkins congratulations on her election — what a tremendous personal achievement! She and her family can be quite proud, indeed.

That said, let me just express after-the-fact, as the vote was held yesterday, my disappointment that Atkins was elected to the Assembly’s top spot via a unanimous voice vote. Let’s get real. The office of Assembly Speaker is a partisan office at the top of a partisan institution. Toni Atkins may be Speaker of the entire Assembly, but she is the leader of the Democrats, chosen by them behind closed doors and put up by the Democrats as their choice for Speaker. Republicans weren’t part of that… Read More

Late last spring, when I told an accountant friend of mine that I was running for California Secretary of State, there was a long pause on the other end of the phone line, then, catharsis: “Pete! We have to get together for coffee this week. You need to know how tough it is for business owners to work with our Secretary of State’s office!”

Days later at the Coffee Bean on Wilshire in West Los Angeles, Carl escorted me into a world of red tape, paper, and problems, which greet the California entrepreneur as she attempts to launch her dream. We don’t think of the office in these terms, but the California Secretary of State is the first person a small business owner sees when they start up a business (filing registration forms), and the last person they see when they leave (filing dissolution forms).

The sight isn’t pretty…coming or going.

As Carl explained to me, “You know, Pete, when a new business owner wants to start their business here in California, we start the paperwork with Sacramento, and knowing that’s going to take a couple weeks, we go online with the Nevada Secretary of State just so we can register that day and my client can… Read More

Texas Governor Rick Perry is returning to California and to left leaning politicians in Sacramento he is about as welcome as Godzilla in Tokyo. The cause of this consternation is Perry’s pro-business record which exposes all the weaknesses of the California approach to governing. While Texas focuses on job creation, California lawmakers give their highest priority to reducing the calories in soft drinks. While Texas cut taxes last year, Sacramento is constantly searching for new ways to burden… Read More

In December 2013, at my urging, the Board of Equalization voted unanimously to end the sweeping security deposit requirements the Board had previously imposed on new California corporations and LLCs. The required security had typically equaled half a year’s worth of expected taxes and ranged from $2,000 to $50,000 per company.

I am pleased to announce the Board of Equalization is making good progress in getting millions of dollars in security deposits back to California businesses.

We’re currently writing to more than 4,000 taxpayers who made non-cash security deposits, like bonds and TCDs, to let them know they are no longer required to post security. These non-cash deposits exceed more than $40 million statewide. Millions more in cash refunds will be mailed to business owners next month.

Depending on the type of security released, taxpayers may need to contact their financial institution, insurance agent or broker to complete the process of cancelling their deposit.

Here’s a list of security released so far to accounts in the… Read More

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The GOP merry-go-round in San Francisco

I registered for the California state GOP convention in San Francisco this weekend, March 14-16, even though I don’t know what I’ve registered for.

I had the same feeling when I took my five-year-old granddaughter, Vera, on the merry-go-round at the Topanga Plaza Mall in Woodland Hills. Some of the animals went up and down; some stood still. Some seemed to leap forward in frozen passion; some were just frozen in time. When the merry-go-round turned, the world seemed to spin around it, oblivious to its mythic themes and intrepid explorers. Vera and I were both dizzy after the ride; the difference- she enjoyed the sensation.

Just so, when I set foot in the Hyatt Regency next Friday night, I’ll face a mysterious array of horses, some perhaps riding somewhere, some only seeming to, some not even trying- it will be difficult to tell which is which. I did not have this problem at the October convention in Anaheim because, based on my opposition to the Common Core Standards, I had been invited to the Tea Party Caucus, one of the rowdiest and most interesting political gatherings I’ve ever witnessed. Unfortunately,… Read More

The Administrative Office of the Courts is in the news once again, and again, it’s not good news.Known as the central bureaucracy for California’s courts, the AOC has a rich history of statewide controversy.

Following a promotion of the state judiciary’s top lobbyist to a specially created executive position at the Administrative Office of the Courts, Curtis Child, theAdministrative Office of the Courts Chief Operating Officer,has been billing taxpayers for travel from his home in Sacramento to the San Francisco AOC office where he works, according to Courthouse News Service and the Alliance of California Judges.

Curtis Child, the former AOC lobbyist, has been billing taxpayers for lodging, tolls, parking, and travel costs of working from Sacramento, where he lives, when the AOC office and 223 employees he manages are in San Francisco, the Alliance of California Judges and Courthouse News… Read More

Last September, I penned this column calling on CRP Vice Chair Harmeet Dhillon to drop her lawsuit against the blog known as The Munger Games:

The Munger Games asserts that the purpose of the suit (which now includes a request to Google to provide email correspondence to and from the Munger Games’ Gmail account) is really a fishing expedition to try and expose the authors of the Munger Games.

I [urge] her to drop her lawsuit against the unknown authors of the Munger Games. Not because she shouldn’t defend her rights to her photo (I’m no expert on that), but because we all lose if anonymous political speech is stifled because of the lawsuit.

Dhillon didn’t take my advice at the time, and it is too late to take it now because U.S. District Court Judge Susan Illston has reviewed Dhillon’s lawsuit and found it so wanting that she didn’t bother with the… Read More

[Publisher’s Note: We are pleased to present this original commentary from Neel Kashkari, candidate for Governor of California. If you had not seen in, I conducted an interview with Kashkari not too long ago, which you can read here.– Flash]

Over the weekend, at the California Democratic Party Convention in Los Angeles, Gov. Jerry Brown echoed a familiar refrain. He said that “California is back!” and that “California is working.”

Really? Companies moving out of state and taking California jobs with them? Record-high state government spending? Hundreds of billions of dollars in unfunded pension liabilities? 17 percent of Californians unemployed or stuck in a part-time job?

Gov. Brown may believe that the state is better than ever – but that’s far from the reality millions of Californians are living every day.

Worse still, the Governor not only ignores the enormity of the challenges facing our state today – but he continues to pursue a $67 billion legacy project that Californians don’t want and can’t afford.

Last week, I traveled around the Central… Read More