This week will see likely legislative action on water issues…the cause being a good and needed one. But in the mosh pit of legislative compromise, what will we get as the end result? The voters will be asked to vote on a large bond of some sort, should a proposal survive the legislative process and win the 2/3 vote needed in both houses.

It’s sort of an ideological slide rule as you move the bond proposal slide to each side to find support that gets 2/3 of legislators to agree. Move the slide too far to the right, [money going mostly for building storage, dams, hard infrastructure only] Dems drop off like flies.Slide it to the left, [money mostly for ecosystem restoration as most previous water bonds have done, removing dams on the Klamath, acquiring more land, creating more commissions and morepower for them over land and water use] and Republicans say ‘no thanks’. Place it in the middle and it’s not effective at doing anything, other than a dribble towards eco stuff as dam projects require a large commitment.

How excited are the voters to approve a likely $9B + bond that they aren’t sure produces… Read More

For weeks now top legislative leaders have been toiling in the back room cobbling together a complex package to try and address California’s water woes. The plan is rumored to include not only borrowing through bond measures of close to ten BILLION dollars, but also is said to include a host of new regulations that will impact all Californians.

The handful of legislative leaders that have been engrossed in the negotiations are very familiar will all of these details. One would imagine, if the legislative leaders are doing their job, that to some degree, each of the 120 legislators have some knowledge of the contents of the plans — at least through telephonic briefings and such. Well, at least the plans as of their most recent conference call. In addition some stakeholders have been briefed in summary fashion at various stages of negotiation, but certainly that is a small number.

Once you get beyond this very small pyramid of those in some sort of loop, it becomes clear that once again the legislature and the Governor are once again preparing to put up for a vote a piece of major legislation without providing an opportunity for thorough… Read More

For weeks now top legislative leaders have been toiling in the back room cobbling together a complex package to try and address California’s water woes. The plan is rumored to include not only borrowing through bond measures of close to ten BILLION dollars, but also is said to include a host of new regulations that will impact all Californians.

The handful of legislative leaders that have been engrossed in the negotiations are very familiar will all of these details. One would imagine, if the legislative leaders are doing their job, that to some degree, each of the 120 legislators have some knowledge of the contents of the plans — at least through telephonic briefings and such. Well, at least the plans as of their most recent conference call. In addition some stakeholders have been briefed in summary fashion at various stages of negotiation, but certainly that is a small number.

Once you get beyond this very small pyramid of those in some sort of loop, it becomes clear that once again the legislature and the Governor are once again preparing to put up for a vote a piece of major legislation without providing an opportunity for thorough… Read More

By far, the scariest things out there will not be at your door tomorrow night but will be in Washington DC next week. That is when the Speaker intends to call a vote on her 1,990 page Pelosi Health Care Bill. This bill, which was crafted entirely behind closed doors,was just revealed publicly yesterday. But already weknow that the mandates, taxes, deficits, spending, lawsuits, and restrictions in this bill are enough to scare any freedom loving American. I write you this, as I usually do, while flying home Friday for a short weekend in Orange County. We were in session in DC all week. What did we do all week? Well, here is a complete list of every bill or resolution we voted on the floor. All of them passed. I have excluded only the procedural votes: H. Res. 368 – Congratulating the University of Iowa wrestling team on winning the NCAA national championship.

H. Res. 562

California’s gas prices are the third highest in the nation, hovering around the $3.00 per gallon mark at the end of October. The average price of gas over the past three weeks for all 50 states was closer to $2.60 per gallon. So why are gas prices so much higher in California? To begin with, California charges the highest gasoline taxes in the nation. California even collects a tax on a tax by charging sales taxes on the state and federal excise tax!

In California, taxes on fuel account for roughly 65 cents per gallon, which includes the state sales tax rate of 8.25%, plus 1.2 cents per gallon for Underground Storage Tank (UST) fees, plus additional local sales taxes where applicable. In Sacramento County, sales taxes are 8.75%.

We also pay more in California because of stringent environmental laws dictating that we use reformulated gasoline, which can only be supplied by a limited number of refineries. So when one of them shuts down, as the Tesoro refinery in Los Angeles did earlier this year due to a fire, the supply is reduced enough that prices inevitably rise.

With our… Read More

Editorial of the week – Union-Trib: Our incoherent City Council… Jon my have it posted on today’s main page, but it’s worth plugging in more than one place. From this morning’s U-T:

"City Council members Ben Hueso, Donna Frye, Tony Young, Marti Emerald, Todd Gloria and Sherri Lightner know … that because of the recession-induced plunge in revenue, San Diego is in an even bigger short-term budget crisis than it was three years ago.

"But they don’t care. Last week, in an insulting betrayal of voters, the six members voted to side with public employees and stall Mayor Jerry Sanders’ framework for implementing Proposition C. The argument they used to justify this betrayal is best described as incoherent. It holds that private bidders have an unfair advantage over city agencies because their benefits don’t cost as much … Do you follow? They are saying a key reason privatization is so attractive an option – it allows governments to pay less for services – should disqualify it from being… Read More

The Governor recently called term limits "crazy." Now, I don’t agree that they are crazy, there were good reasons for term limits, and the voters were not crazy in enacting them. But I have come to the conclusion they are not a good idea.

I ran for office in 1990 supporting term limits. I believed at the time that doing whatever it took to remove Willie Brown as the Speaker of the Assembly was justified. Dem Legislators weren’t going to do it, it appeared voters weren’t going to do it. Maybe term limits would.

Well, the voters did, in 1994, when they elected the first Republican majority in the Assembly since Reagan’s first term as Governor. I was elected to the Assembly in 1992, then in 1994, two terms in the Senate, and when my term there was done, I went back to the Assembly. I supported term limits through my first term in the Assembly and my two terms in the Senate. I changed my mind when I went back to the Assembly.

My first term in the Assembly was an interesting one. We were the first class elected knowing we were subject to term limits, but we were mixed in with some of the war horses of the… Read More

The Contra Costa Times recently hailed Democrats, the Legislature’s majority party, as allies in making sure “job killer” bills did not get through the legislative chambers they control. However, the paper failed to mention that of all the 2009 “job killer” bills were introduced by Democrats.

As noted in the story, the “job killer” campaign identifies regulatory, labor, and tax legislation that would have a negative impact on the economy–a majority of these bills have either died in committee, on the floor, or had provisions removed to satisfy the concerns of business owners.

Of the 33 identified “job killer” bills, not a single bill was introduced by a Republican. What’s more, Democrats have only begun to defeat the worst of these Democrat “job-killer” bills as a response to an almost guaranteed veto from one of the state’s last three Republican governors.

Only in California can the villains become media heroes for voting against something they introduced. The real heroes are the small business owners and the Republican legislators who work with them… Read More