A bill written and sponsored by the union labor group State Building and Construction Trades Council of California, appears to be an effort to eliminate from monitoring and enforcing prevailing wage laws through independent compliance audits and enforcement of building contractors.

SB 776 by Sen. Ellen Corbett, D-San Leandro, will be heard today in the Assembly Labor and Employment Committee. This should be interesting.

According to the non-union California Construction Compliance Group, the audits always find labor violations, and particularly those involving employee prevailing wage requirements. It’s ironic that the prevailing wage is supported entirely by unions, but it’s usually union contractors which violate this rule and do not pay prevailing wage to construction workers.

Once an audit is completed, employees receive substantial amounts of back wages they were cheated out of through fraudulent labor practices, or just sheer incompetence by the contractor employers.

If the wages were underpaid due to fraud, the State of California Labor Commissioner assesses fines and penalties on the employer commensurate with the level of fraud or… Read More

[Publisher’s Note: We are pleased to feature this column from Steven Foley of the Minority Report website. I would remind you that the opinions expressed are those of the author only, not necessarily mine – Flash]

Legislation To Alter Traffic Signals: Dubious And Dangerous

By Steven Foley

How do traffic lights best keep the greatest number of people from having the least number of accidents?

This is the question at the heart of the current debate over AB 612 (Nazarian). The bill is expected to be heard in the Senate Committee on Transportation and Housing next week, Tuesday, June 18th.

AB 612 aims to lengthen a yellow signal by approximately one second. It assumes that giving motorists a greater amount of time to slow the speed of their vehicle and come to a stop would prevent more accidents. And yet, oddly, the change is only called for at intersections at which a red-light camera is already in place. Whytarget only intersections where safety measures have already been implemented? Why not other intersections or all… Read More

[Publisher’s Note – We are pleased to offer this column from San Diego City Councilman Kevin Faulconer, which is cross posted with our local partner – San Diego Rostra — Flash] San Diego Labor Deal Locks in $1 Billion of Pension Reform Savings

By Councilmember Kevin L. Faulconer

The promise of voter-mandated pension reform in California was on the line in San Diego this week. San Diego’s 2012 Comprehensive Pension Reform… Read More

California’s November 2012 statewide ballot included Prop. 32, the “Stop Special Interest Money Now” initiative. Among the provisions included in this campaign finance reform measure was the requirement that public sector unions obtain permission from each member prior to using a portion of their dues to support political campaigns.

It’s hard to precisely determine just how much public sector unions spent to immolate Prop. 32, since their campaign material often combined “Yes on 30” (new taxes), with “No on 32,” meaning resources were being directed at both initiative campaigns. Also, hard dollar campaign spending was only part of the effort; an army of union operatives were activated to defeat Prop. 32 – from public school teachers influencing students and parents to precinct walkers to labor friendly slate mailings. Overall, the unions probably spent about $100 million to defeat Prop. 32.

And their message was consistent: Prop. 32 targets “working families,” it attempts to “silence our voices,” it is “deceptive,” it provides “special exemptions” to the real… Read More

[Note: This column was posted on Tuesday evening, then updated this morning.]

Yesterday the Governor and legislative leaders came to terms on a budget (for the most part) — and then subsequent to that the Joint Budget Committee met and voted out the the agreed upon budget details. All of the state’s newspapers are carrying stories with some of the details today.

I took the opportunity to peruse a bunch of the articles — specifically, in the Los Angeles Times, the San Gabriel Valley News, the San Francisco Chronicle, the San Jose Mercury News, the… Read More

California has aggressively raised taxes over the last few years, more than any other state in the union.In 2009 Gov. Schwarzenegger signed what was then the largest state tax increase in U.S. history and just last year Gov. Brown secured a $50 billion tax increase, retroactively effective, on individuals, families, and employers across the Golden State. Last week, though, it seems California taxpayers finally dodged a bullet.

Budget Trailer Bill 415 originally included language that would raise taxes on software sales. However, in Conference Committee last week the bill was stripped of language that would have changed the definition of storage media to… Read More

A massive car tax (actually a collection of various taxes and fees) that was signed into law in 2007 (with no GOP support except, of course, then-Senator Abel Maldonado), billed as “temporary” at the time, is currently set to expire in 2015. Given that Californians face some of the highest levels of taxation in the entire country, it would be some welcome relief for car owners to have these taxes expire.

Of course the adage “there is no such thing as a temporary tax” has reared its head — in the form of two bills, Senate Bill 11 and Assembly Bill 8. Both are similar — and both would authorize a new tax to begin in 2015 right on the heels of the expiring old one. This new… Read More

I’ve received a number of calls from reporters over the last few weeks seeking my reaction to the fact that many tax hike bills have stalled in the Legislature. Despite the passage of Prop 30 giving California both the highest marginal income tax rate and the highest state sales tax rate in America, the sheer number of legislative proposals seeking even more revenue is staggering. Especially common are proposals to hit unpopular products or industries like cigarettes, soda, and oil extraction. But, for now, it appears that most of these tax hikes have lost traction.

When I was younger and more naïve, I would have shared the reporters’ assumption that the Legislature isn’t as enthusiastic to raise taxes as we originally feared once the Democrats achieved their super-majority status. But I’m older, wiser and far more cynical than I used to be and, more importantly, I’ve worked within two blocks of the Capitol and have observed what really motivates its inhabitants. In a word, it’s money. And the interests targeted by these bills have lots of it.

For example, not long ago soft drink manufacturers rushed to contribute millions to Jerry Brown’s… Read More