In a whirlwind of activity recently, the California State Assembly completed committee work on hundreds of bills. The state is not better for this effort. I serve on both the Budget and Appropriations Committees, and both met not long ago to address financial legislation before moving it to the floor of the Assembly. It is hard to decide which committee did the most damage to California.

The various budget subcommittees three weeks ago authorized nearly half a billion dollars in new spending. Half a billion dollars in new spending for a near bankrupt state! The Governor’s May revise reported a bit more than $6.5 billion in unanticipated revenue, and it is already burning a hole in the pocket of Democrats on the Budget Committee. Some of the spending decisions are particularly ridiculous.

For example, the Governor proposed eliminating the Commission on the Status of Women. This is one of those expensive, do-nothing but feel good about yourself while not doing it, commissions that liberals love. To his credit, the Governor proposed zeroing it out of existence. At the hearing, witnesses in response to my questioning testified that private organizations such as NOW… Read More

It’s not my imagination — State Senate President Darrell Steinberg has been much more prominent and verbose than his counterpart, Assembly Speaker John Perez, when it comes to the state budget. Maybe it is because while Steinberg (in his immature way) is focused on trying to pass a state budget complete with massive tax increases, Perez is focused on his quixotic quest to eradicate the City of Vernon. That’s his prerogative, of course. This isn’t new, last year he obsessed over legislation concerning carpets, dragging it into Big 5 budget negotiations. Yes, carpets.

As I have… Read More

[Publisher’s Note: We are pleased to offer this original, exclusive commentary from FR friend Paul Jacob. Paul Jacob is president of Citizens in Charge, the only national organization dedicated to protecting and expanding the initiative and referendum rights of every American without regard to partisanship or politics – Flash]

SENATE BILL 448 -A BAD SIGN By Paul Jacob

Centerville, Virginia, man made news when he agreed to his wife’s demand that he stand at a busy intersection wearing a sign emblazoned “I Cheated: This is My Punishment.” His merciful wife ended the punishment after just a couple hours.

In recent years, a few judges have sporadically sought to shame criminals in similar fashion. Back in 2007, several people convicted of shoplifting opted to avoid a longer jail sentence by donning a sign outside the store they had ripped off. One sign read, “I Am a Thief, I Stole from Wal-Mart.”

But Wal-Mart soon opted out of allowing such humiliating and dehumanizing… Read More

The vituperative, arrogant letter of resignation issued by Costa Mesa’s interim police chief, Steve Staveley, has ignited a media storm – which was most likely his intention in releasing the letter. While the news stories have regurgitated Staveley’s various unsubstantianted allegations — such that Costa Mesa has no fiscal crisis or that the council is “corrupt” and “inept” – what is totally absent is any context as to who Steve Staveley is.

The average reader would assume Staveley is a veteran cop: an apolitical law enforcement professional who just couldn’t stomach the council’s reductions to the police department budget.

The reality is Staveley is anything but apolitical, but is, in fact, a partisan Democrat. Staveley ran for mayor of Anaheim in 2002 as the… Read More

I am on my way to tour the Bureau of Public Debt in Washington, D.C. Government spending and rising debt have reached an all time high. The debt crisis America is facing threatens our job growth, national security and sovereignty, and the nation’s stability for future generations. Our nation’s debt currently stands at over $14 trillion and this year, our annual deficit is projected to reach over $1.6 trillion – the largest in history. We are spending money we don’t have, borrowing 46 cents on the dollar, much of it from the Chinese, and sending the bill to our children and grandchildren.

We cannot continue down this irresponsible fiscal path. It is time to make government more efficient and effective, by making responsible choices today to save our children from tougher choices in the future. Our current spending levels are unsustainable, making it necessary to implement policies that increase government efficiency. I firmly believe that we must reign in spending and exercise stringent fiscal responsibility.

… Read More

Triggers and Critters: I sometimes offer amendments on bills that come to the House floor from committees other than the those on which I serve. Such was the case last week when the Agriculture Appropriations bill came to the floor. Various other people offered amendments to reduce the spending in the bill by 5%, limit or eliminate subsidies, and otherwise save money. As you might suspect, I supported all such money-saving amendments. Unfortunately, most of them lost.

The amendment I offered reduced spending by $11 million, which is not much in an appropriations bill that proposed to spend $17.25 billion next year. The amendment would eliminate a program whereby the U.S. Department of Agriculture kills predators (wolves, coyotes and such) that threaten privately-owned livestock. The government kills these animals using methods such as shooting them from aircraft and putting out bait with cyanide capsules that explode in the animal’s face when it goes for the bait.

I thought there were a lot of good reasons to support this amendment:

1. It saves $11 million, all of which will be borrowed.

2. Why is it a taxpayer… Read More

In the ongoing political drama over the California state budget (or lack there of) all eyes are currently on State Controller John Chiang. Under the relevant section of voter-approved Proposition 25, Chiang is responsible for making the call on whether the budget that the legislature passed by on the deadline, is “balanced” — a requirement that must be met (on time, and balanced) or else legislators forfeit their pay and per diem going forward until a balanced budget is passed (it is a forfeiture of compensation, by the way, so any pay that legislators do not receive may not be later reclaimed, it is lost forever).

For all of those people who are spending their time trying to do their own analysis to determine whether the budget passed by Senate and the Assembly and quickly vetoed by the Governor was balanced, in order to try to figure out what Chiang will do — I would submit to you that you are looking to both the wrong standard, and the wrong decision maker.

John Chiang is a wholly owned subsidiary of the state’s public employee unions. You can read about that… Read More

Republicans are nothing, if not responsible. In the late ’90’s, I became an advocate for majority vote budgets because of that character trait in Republicans. My Republican colleagues in the Legislature would always say they had to do the responsible thing in the lean budget years, and vote for tax increases, because “we had to have a budget,” and that budget needed a two thirds vote. Of course, in the budget’s salad days, Republicans loved the two thirds vote because it meant they got some of the pork. We never restrained spending in the good years with the two thirds vote because of the lure of pork, and we never stopped taxes in the bad years because of the need to be “responsible.” It was the worst of both worlds.

So I voted for a majority vote budget. Boy, was that ever controversial. Everybody said I was selling out Republicans. I was being anti-Republican. How could I do such a thing? I of course had no real dog in that hunt, so rather than take the heat, I just stayed quiet. No one was pushing on the matter, I had no friends that wanted it. I just thought it was good policy, because Republicans… Read More