School Districts across the state deem unused school sites "surplus" and sell them off to private developers. This practice is largely a bad idea. Just because a community’s demographics have shifted to an older population does not mean that young families will never return. And there is no re-capturing acreage that was once a school and becomes single-family homes.

In fact, if the school district needs a new school site in a dozen years from now, it is highly likely that they will be forced to go to the taxpayers for the money through the sale of bonds or increased property taxes like a parcel tax.

I my home town of Irvine the school district is on the verge of selling off two neighborhood schools. This school district is always crying poor. Even worse, they may be looking to use loopholes in state law to spend the proceeds of the sale to fund operations.

You can check out my column on the subject in today’s Orange County Register here.… Read More

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In February 2003, I was approached by at least one group that was promoting the recall and asked to run for Governor should the recall get on the ballot. I said no, I wasn’t ready for Governor, but I would do everything in my power to make sure the recall succeeded.

About three days later, I was one of two elected officials to speak at the first recall rally (Tom McClintock was the other), and spoke of the disaster that was created by Gray Davis in our state government. As soon as I was done speaking, I went to an appointment I had with Darrell Issa, who was, I thought, thinking about running for U.S. Senate against Barbara Boxer in 2004. Since I wanted to go to Congress at that time, and Congressman Issa’s seat covered my district, I thought it important to talk to him about his future plans. We spoke, and he asked me what I thought about the recall. I told him I thought it a good idea, but it would never qualify for the ballot. We had strong grass roots support, but no money, and nothing like this would succeed without money.

He asked me if I thought that people would support him if he financed the recall. I… Read More

Peter Nicholas of the LA Times recently reported that the National Chamber of Commerce poured millions into opposing politicians who supported Obamacare. The Chamber also defied Obama’s scare mongering on so-called climate warming. The National C of C was a crucial link in defeating 63 democrat congressmen — giving conservatives one of our nation’s finest congressional victories.

However, the National C of C suffered some losses in membship because of the Chamber’s new militancy for the Market.

The companies who supported Obamacare and other statist plans who quit are as follows : * Pacific Gas & Electric

*Exelon – phony energy solar green company

* Pentair – water technology

* Apple… Read More

The Sacramento Bee is reporting that it is Governor Jerry Brown’s plan to propose massive slashing of K-12 education funding unless the voters of California agree to vote to enact income, sales and car taxes on themselves, to generate an additional roughly $9 billion in additional tax revenue annually.

These are the same "temporary" taxes enacted by the legislature in 2009 — proving that in the mind of California Democrat leaders, there is no such thing as a temporary tax increase. But they are set to sunset (in fact the income taxes already did), thus they are new taxes.

As I wrote about Monday, it appears that Brown is planning to put into play the "Washington Monument" strategy — putting something so important to voters up for proposed cuts in an effort to get them to tax themselves (in a recession, no less).

The reality is that that Brown and legislative Democrats are putting forward what we… Read More

The media seems to be salivating over comments Jerry made about Prop 13. But for those of us who take threats to Prop 13 very, very seriously, weprefer to digest and parse what was actually said.

First, Jerry Brown did NOT say he wanted to repeal Prop 13 or anything close to that. In fact, he said that Prop 13 is not the problem. His point was that state government consolidated its power (to the detriment of local governments) after Prop 13. It is our view that Prop 13 did not cause this and we have several arguments in support of our position. (As it relates to education spending, the Serrano series of court opinionswas the primary — if not sole — cause of transferring power to Sacramento).

Let’s hope that Governor Brown and his people are taking note of the education debate raging in Illinois.An article in today’s Wall Street Journal sums up the plan under debate:teachers would not earn tenure until they’ve been rated "proficient" or "excellent" by their principals for four years; tenured teachers rated "ineffective" for two years could lose tenure, districts would have an easier time dismissing ineffective teachers and layoff decisions would be made based on teacher performance—as opposed to seniority.The final piece of the proposal would restrict teacher unions’ ability to strike by requiring them to take part in mediation (and give school boards the power to accept the mediator’s solution) before striking. According to the WSJ, this deal is being rushed because state officials want to offer this up in exchange for a tax increase. … Read More

From todays’ Wall Street Journal Political Diary E-mail… … Read More