SACRAMENTO — Balancing the economic realities of the state budget with political influences surely is a challenging task. Unfortunately, in California it is a task which few administrations have managed in recent state history.

Democratic Gov. Jerry Brown announced Tuesday morning that despite a state budget surplus, his May budget revision included projected lower budget figures for fiscal year 2013-14, which begins on July 1, than for the previous fiscal year. The reasons are one-time revenue surges because of federal tax changes that last only one year; and the retroactive part of the Proposition 30 tax increase for 2012.

The result will be less program spending, but with most of the spending increases focused on schools and Medi-Cal.

“We have climbed out of a hole with a Proposition 30 tax,” Brown said, referring to his 2012 initiative which increased taxes on those with incomes exceeding $250,000; and increased sales taxes on everyone. “This is not the time to break out the Champagne,” said Brown, who still called for caution despite an uptick in the state’s revenues.

“I am pleased that for the first time since I was elected to the… Read More

The pro-tax politicians in the Legislature continue to threaten Prop. 13, homeowners and small businesses.

TODAY at least 7 bills that would directly undercut various provisions of Prop. 13 will be heard in committee. If approved, these bills could cost every property owner thousands of dollars.

There are seven bills pertaining to Proposition 13 that are up in the Senate Governance and Finance Committee. Six of these bills directly undercut various provisions of Proposition 13.

The bills are: SCA 3, 4, 7, 8, 9 and 11.

THE FOLLOWING BILLS PLACE A BULLSEYE ON PROPOSITION 13 AND TAXPAYERS:

Senate Constitutional Amendment 3(SCA 3), Mark Leno (D—San Francisco): Lowers the threshold for school district per-parcel property taxes from two-thirds to 55%. This is a direct assault on Proposition 13 because it makes it easier to increase property taxes above Proposition 13’s one percent cap.

Senate Constitutional Amendment 4(SCA 4), Carol Liu (D—La Canada)and Senate Constitutional Amendment 8(SCA 8), Ellen… Read More

One week from today in what is predicted to be a low-turnout election, voters will elect a new mayor to lead California’s largest city. Because the mayor manages the 47,000 employees of the City of Los Angeles, at least 47,000 voters employed by that city have a strong interest in who wins. But these workers will wield clout beyond their numbers, because no source of mayoral campaign contributions is anywhere close to those coming from unions representing Los Angeles city employees.

Here is a link to a graphic from the Los Angeles Times “Campaign contributions by special interest,” showing reported direct and independent expenditures on behalf of the two major candidates, Eric Garcetti and Wendy Gruel. Over $6.0 million has been spent by labor unions, more than twice as much as the next four largest categories of contributors. And that’s only partly why these unions are buying this election.

Using data from the LA Times graphic, we’ve come up with our own table, one that shows what percent of each contribution – by category – went to each candidate.… Read More

Yesterday the State Senate and State Assembly both passed, on party-line voters, well over thirty empty bills each — placeholders in advance of an eventual budget deal. These bills get amended (they would be “gut and amends but there is no there-there to gut) to include an 11th hour budget and trailer bills. This will be a budget that doesn’t get public scrutiny, and likely gets jammed through the legislature before it’s 120 members all get a chance to thoroughly understand what is in the budget.

The most obvious question: Since the budget only requires a majority vote, and the same political party controls the legislature and the Governor’s office — what is… Read More

In a bunker somewhere in Sacramento, a secret committee meeting of state power brokers is taking place. Let’s listen in as the chairman addresses the members:

“Welcome to this week’s meeting of the ‘Don’t Leave Them With Two Nickels to Rub Together Committee’ It is good to see that the public employee union bosses, who represent the highest paid government workers in all 50 states, are in attendance. They are the heart and soul of our movement. Then of course, we must acknowledge those newspaper editors from some major papers, who work so hard to help our cause of increasing the tax burden on average Californians. Special mention and thanks must go to the representatives of theLos Angeles Times, a publication whose institutionalized hostility to Proposition 13 is legendary — it hardly seems like it has been 35 years since Howard Jarvis labeled your paper ‘the enemy of the people.’ Also, I want to give a shout out to the several leftist professors from taxpayers supported universities who have joined ustoday. And lest I forget, our special interest enablers in the private sector, most of whom profit directly from… Read More

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Trying to write about the politics of West Orange County, without necessarily providing a broader look at what is happening county-wide in 2014, will prove to be a challenge. But I will give it a shot. Writing about all of the 2014 politics in my county will take multiple blog posts.

In West Orange County next year, on the natural, there is an open State Senate seat and an open Supervisorial seat, where Lou Correa and John Moorlach, respectively, are facing term limits.

The 34th State Senate District is a “new” seat, redrawn in the decennial redistricting process. While the retiring Correa is a Democrat, the newly drawn boundaries of this district actually make it much more fertile territory for a Republican. Currently the match-up for this seat is Republican Supervisor Janet Nguyen, and retired Democratic Assemblyman (and now community college trustee) Jose Solorio. Nguyen has been aggressively campaigning for this seat for some time. The only real variable out there that potentially impacts this dynamic are reports that Nguyen is… Read More

We are now heading into the fourth consecutive “change” election in 2014. In California, Republicans are hoping for more success than we experienced in 2010.

In that year, popular myth holds that the Republican “wave” washed across America, but stopped at the California border. For some reason, it was believed, we did something different that kept us from electing the same number of new Republicans as we did in other states.

But like so many myths, this one is wrong too.

It turns out that in 2010, in the six most populous Democratic states, we elected only one Republican statewide candidate: Mark Kirk was elected to the Senate in Illinois. Every other statewide Republican candidate in states such as New York, California, Massachusetts, Illinois, Connecticut, etc. lost. The 2010 Republican wave benefitted the entire country – except in its most Democratic strongholds.

What puts California in this category?

Republicans in the state have struggled for years looking for an answer. Some believed redistricting reforms and abolishing party primaries would solve the problem. A decade ago, some believed a more “professional”… Read More

It’s always good to see the California Legislature proposing more vindictive bills aimed at penalizing employers.

The new “Walmart loophole” bill, AB 880, would require large employers to “pay their fair share when they dump workers onto Medi-Cal by cutting hours or wages in order to circumvent their responsibilities under the Affordable Care Act,” according to the bill’s author Assemblyman Jimmy Gomez, D-Los Angeles.

Nice.

Under Gomez’s bill, the ACA threshold for fining businesses would be lowered so that large employers would be fined if their part- or full-time workers are enrolled in Medi-Cal.

The legislation — which is supported by the California Labor Federation and United Food and Commercial Workers — “aims to encourage large businesses to offer job-based coverage.”

I’d word that a little differently. The legislation, supported by two of the largest, most aggressive labor unions in the state, aims to force large non-union businesses to cover all employees, regardless of their part-time status.

And remember the other Obamacare penalty bill I wrote about earlier this week:

… Read More