Yesterday afternoon a group of prominent California conservative leaders (including yours truly) sent an open letter to the 120 members of the state legislature urging them not to vote on or for any proposed budget deal until all of the text of the proposed legislation has been available to the public for 72 hours… One of the flaws of the tragic February budget deal was its secrecy and lack of transparency. In a representative democracy, the people have the right to understand what is being voted on, and to have enough time to give input and feedback to their elected legislators…

Here is the letter…

An Open Letter to Republican Members of the California State Legislature: July 22, 2009 … Read More

Professional distractions have kept me from writing here lately, but isn’t our Governor doing a wonderful job of facing down the union bosses on our state budget?! I believe that this is truly Arnold’stime, theopportunity to establish the definingmoments of his term in office, and his firm stand on the budget is fantastic.

At the same time, SpeakerKaren Bass is proving to be an unmovable and largely irrelevant but willing captive of thefrightening bizarro worldsought by theService Employees International Union, whose best shot recently is to muster a press releaseclaiming credit for a new budget, and blaming the structural deficits she and the Legislature’s Democrats have caused on the "national economic recession" (read: George W. Bush). [It took the national Democrats over ten years to stop blaming the Reagan budget cuts of the ’80s for everything in the ’90s, I imagine Obama and Bass will be dumping on George Bush in the same manner thru the 2020s.]

On a few other topics, we note Nativo Lopez, as predicted here, pled… Read More

As of the time posting, seven of the bills are available here. From what we can tell, as more bills are uploaded, they will also be available at that link.

So far there are seven bills uploaded, on these subjects: Health, Development Disabilities, Property Tax Rev Allocations, Reorganization, Lottery, General Government (inc. Non-HSS COLAs), and Public Safety & Judicial.

This is a good step forward. Hopefully Republicans will not put up votes for any of this for 72 hours, giving a reasonably opportunity to have the product negotiated behind closed doors to be reviewed and vetting by the public.… Read More

With a top o’ the hat to Scott Lay at the Community College League, and the Sacramento Bee Capitol Alert, below is a .pdf of the Draft Report that summarizes in detail the proposed changes that are encompassed in the budget deal.

FR readers should be cautioned that this is a summary, prepared by the Democrats. As of now, the actual language of these changes has not been made public. And it would appear that the legislature seems intent on "ramming through" this deal without providing enough time for anyone outside of the Capitol to analyze the language, and provide meaningful feedback to legislators. This is NOT GOOD.… Read More

When Sony Pictures released the movie, “Who Killed the Electric Car,” (http://www.sonyclassics.com/whokilledtheelectriccar/electric.html) the U.S. political landscape was much different, and Detroit had a lot more clout than it does today. The movie honed in on a very specific moment in time when the California Air Resources Board (CARB) eliminated the production of electric vehicles in the zero emissions vehicle (ZEV) initiative, and pinned the blame on D.C.-based lawsuits and lobbying in Sacramento as the reasons electric cars failed to achieve economically-feasible market share. I’d be the last person to underestimate the effects of Sacramento lobbying, but in truth, there have been two primary consumer concerns that have inhibited the success of the electric car: · the cost of the vehicles is higher than comparably-sized gasoline cars; and … Read More

Republican legislators in the State Capitol (at least on the Assembly side) now have copies of the actual bill language to be voted on as early as tomorrow. The GOP Caucuses should be scanning these documents (provided to legislators in printed format only, of course, by Democrats) and posting them on the web right away — like NOW.

Republicans have called for transparency in the process and now is the time to prove it. Once that information is up onm the web, that should start a 72 hour countdown. Republicans should refuse to put up any votes for any of the bills until the public has had three full days to read it, understand it, and provide input to legislators.

Just a few months ago we had a b udget deal that was cloaked in secrecy. As a result, many legislators voted for a supposed spending cap that, upon analysis from experts outside of the Capitol, turned out to be swiss cheese. Let's not do this again.

If a legislative deal is so fragile that it cannot hold up under public scrutiny, then it isn't a good deal.

Please contact your GOP legislator and them that you expect 72 hours to be able to look over those… Read More

What California needs is a release of middle management prison bureaucrats. Instead of pushing a plan of early release of tens of thousands of convicted felons from our state prison we ought to be looking for savings by cutting the fat out of CDCR.

The Governor’s prison budget savings plan would release nearly 30,000 prisoners into our communities. Senate Republicans have a safe and sane plan to achieve the same level of savings without any early release of prisoners, and it’s in writing.

See the "Corrections Budget Reductions" document below.

California has virtually the same number of prisoners in state prison than it did ten years ago, while the state population continues to increase. The number of individuals in state prison in California is roughly average per capita in the US, why the rush to release.

We should cut the fat instead of releasing dangerous felons into our neighborhoods.

Corrections Budget Reductions

Summary of conflicts between Democrat and Administration’s jointly proposed cuts to Corrections and Senate Republican… Read More

Sometimes I refer to State Senate Republican Leader Dennis Hollingsworth as the "Accidental Leader" because of the circumstances which lead to his ascention to his current post. As California politicos know, Hollingsworth was elected leader in the wee hours, after the previous occupant of the Senate GOP’s top post, Dave Cogdill, was rather unceremoniously (and appropriately) removed from his post after pledging his personal support for a budget plan that included massive tax increases, rather than representing the views of his caucus, the vast majority of whom saw that February budget deal as being fatally flawed. From many accounts, Cogdill’s conveyance of information from the Big 5 meetings was less than stellar, adding a "shock value" to the news he brought his caucus of his support for higher incomes, sales and car taxes.

You’ve heard that saying, "what a difference a day makes?" Well, what a difference a few months make. In talking with many… Read More