A few months ago Steve Baric announced his candidacy for the open 73rd Assembly District in South Orange County. The popular Rancho Santa Margarita City Councilman and former Vice Chairman of the California Republican Party made a big splash, coming out of the gate with prominent endorsements from his former boss, District Attorney Tony Rackauckas, and Sheriff Sandra Hutchens. In a five way GOP donnybrook in a seat destined to elect a Republican as a “red” seat, Baric ended the June 30th fundraising period with the most cash in the bank. While his victory was far from assured, Baric’s odds of going to Sacramento, in my opinion, were the greatest of any other candidate in the field.

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I am pleased to announce Senate Bill 582, a joint effort between my office and Senator Steve Knight, has passed both houses of the Legislature and reached the Governor’s desk.

SB 582 will make life simpler for taxpayers by requiring the Board of Equalization, Franchise Tax Board and Employment Development Department to consider integrating their websites to better serve taxpayers. The idea is to create a one-stop shop for taxpayers to visit for all of their tax services. This will streamline filing requirements by providing taxpayers with up-to-date integrated access to accounts with all three tax agencies.

In a 2005 report the non-partisan Legislative Analyst’s Office urged the creation of a portal that would allow a taxpayer to “log onto a single website and through a series of menus, be directed to the proper form which would allow them to file their taxes or remit a payment.” As you can see, this reform is long overdue.

It’s not easy doing business in California. One of many challenges for a business owner is the confusing… Read More

Efforts to increase taxes on business property put homeowners in peril; here’s why.

Sacramento can never get enough tax money to satisfy the political class. Although California has the highest state sales tax, highest marginal income tax rates, and highest gas tax in all 50 states, we rank only 14th highest in per capital property taxes. The politicians, government employee unions, and the special interest pleaders see this as an area of potential revenue growth — higher taxes, that is.

Several years ago, Senate leader Darrell Steinberg outlined a plan to incrementally diminish taxpayer protections to allow for the ratcheting up of taxes. The first step was be to eliminate the two-thirds vote to pass a state budget – a law that dated back to 1933 – and then move on to targeting Proposition 13’s two-thirds vote requirement for increases in state taxes as well as for the passage of local per-parcel property taxes on homeowners. Steinberg’s step one was accomplished in 2010, with the passage of Proposition 25.

In addition to their efforts to destroy Proposition 13’s two-thirds vote protections for taxpayers, tax raisers have opened up a… Read More

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Pearce onCadiz, water and theburied treasure in the Mojave Desert.

One would think that if a huge underground lake existed less than 100 miles from Southern California water users who live continually on the edge of a water supply crisis, there would be a rush to get that water into Southern California’s water system. One would also think, since this is California, that an extraordinarily challenging level of environmental review would be required before a single drop of that water could head toward users, and that a round of lawsuits would challenge the environmental review’s conclusions.

As it turns out, there is an aquifer holding as much water as Lake Mead, America’s largest reservoir, at Cadiz in the Mojave Desert, about 100 miles from Southern California’s population centers. There also has been a rigorous environmental review of Cadiz, Inc.’s proposal to move 50,000 acre feet of that water (enough for 100,000 families) each year to water users from Ventura County to Imperial County. And, of course, there are lawsuits aplenty that ultimately should verify the thoroughness and correctness… Read More

People who frequent this website know that it is our general rule (with occasional exception) to only support attributed blogging and commenting. I can think of a handful of times over the years when we have featured, or linked to, anonymous content.

That having been said, anonymous speech certainly has its place in politics, and here in America its foundations are rooted in our beginnings. The federalist papers, as they were drafted, first appeared in pamphlets around the colonies under the pseudonym Publius — and Benjamin Franklin himself wrote on more than one occasion under the pen name of… Read More

SACRAMENTO — With the Republican Party at such a low ebb, the supermajority Democratic Party is advancing connections everywhere.

In particular, there’s cross-pollination between groups pushing for overtime for domestic workers — and groups receiving Obamacare money. In some cases, they’re the same groups.

Assembly Bill 241is by Assemblyman Tom Ammiano, D-San Francisco. It mandates overtime must be paid to domestic workers, including nannies, babysitters (not teenagers) and in-home workers taking care of the disabled and elderly. Gov. Jerry Brown just signed it into law.

Many of the groups who pushed Gov. Jerry Brown to sign AB241 are direct recipients of grants from… Read More

I came across the 2002 estimated cost of the [San Diego]“Mid–Coast Corridor Transit Project” — the so-called light rail line from Old Town to points north. It was $30 million per mile.

Doubtless because of “galloping inflation” (geezers will recall that term — used by President Richard Nixon to describe the 4.7% inflation in the early 70’s that caused him to impose Draconian wage and price controls), naturally this project’s cost today is estimated to be higher. How much higher? Somewhere north of $160 million per mile. Now THAT’s inflation!!

Well, actually, it’s S.O.P. — low-ball the costs to get the project approval, get the project rolling, and only later reveal the true costs. Liar, liar, trolley wheels on fire.

I hate “I told ya so” moments.

Gov. Jerry Brown just signed SB 743, “easing environmental regulations for developments in California cities, including a new basketball arena in downtown Sacramento,” the Los Angeles Times said.

In March I predicted Senate President Pro Tem Darrell Steinberg, D-Sacramento would jam legislation through exempting the Sacramento Kings new arena plan from the restrictions of the California Environmental Quality Act, in order to meet a dubious deadline imposed by the NBA.

March 30, after Steinberg’s office told me he did not plan on authoring legislation to streamline or bypass the required environmental process for the proposed Sacramento NBA arena, I predicted they weren’t being straight with me.

Steinberg’s office denied any plan to do this. But the reason I wrote the story and asked about this was I knew this was the next step in scamming the public with the publicly subsidized arena.

The need to bypass California’s absurdly strict environmental guidelines and restrictions prevent most large scale projects from ever taking place without legislative intervention. And Sacramento officials shoved the… Read More