As foretold the South Pasadena Unified School District’s parcel tax passed. It was a little closer than I thought. The margin was 67.26%. It takes a 2/3rds vote to pass parcel taxes. This was the first of four tax elections in school districts in Los Angeles County. Voters seem have very few problem passing these taxes.

Local control seems to be the key for many of these communities. They feel they get their monies worth and have a say in how it is spent. How many can say that about Sacramento?… Read More

WALTERS IS BLOGGING THE BUDGET CONFERENCE State Senator Mimi Walters, one of three Republicans on the Budget Conference Committee who opposed the ill-fated big taxes/big budget/open primary deal last February, has set up a blog (www.waltersreport.com) to keep interested parties up to speed on what is going on in that key committee…

Senator Walters had this to say to FR:

As previously predicted, Undersheriff Bill Gore was just appointed by the County Board of Supervisors to the vacant position created by Bill Kolender’s mid-term resignation. It was expected the Supervisors would conduct interviews today, with a vote next week. However, the board proceeded with the decision to fill the spot just minutes ago.

The vote total by ballot, prior to the decision being memorialized by adopted motion, was as follows:

Bill Gore – 4

Jim Duffy – 2

Jay La Suer – 1

If it doesn’t seem to add up, that’s because each Supe was allowed more than one vote if needed to narrow the field. Supervisor Dianne Jacob voted for all three of those listed, prior to the final motion being adopted.

Gore will now be able to run as the appointed incumbent in next year’s election. Both Duffy and La Suer have announced campaigns, as have David Bejarano and Bruce Ruff. The latter two did not file the paperwork necessary to be considered to fill the vacancy by appointment.

With Gore’s appointment, it remains to be seen if all of the previously announced candidates stay in the… Read More

You have to love the creativity of the public employee unions that have lorded over the massive growth in state government spending — they have come up with a "pretty name" for their efforts to politically attack Republican legislators who have drawn a line in the sand against punishing Californians with higher taxes — "The Fair Budget Coalition" — hey, who would be opposed to a fair budget? No one, right? Well, I guess what you have to ask yourself is, "Fair to whom?"

You’ve heard this here before, and you will hear it a lot — public employee unions have two and only two core purposes. The first is to increase the wages and benefits for their respective members. The second is to increase their number of members. EVERYTHING else is window dressing.

The public employee unions that make up the "Fair Budget Coalition" — the California School Employees Association, American Federation of State, County and Municipal Employees, California Teachers Association, California Federation of Teachers, United Public Employees PAC, State Building and Construction Trades, Professional Engineers… Read More

FR friend John Myers with KQED Public Radio had an opportunity to sit down with Governor Schwarzenegger for a one-on-one interview. Myers 30,000 foot take from the exchange was that the Governor is flexible in terms of ideas that legislators may have to come up with $24 billion in cuts to resolve the state’s fiscal imbalance, with so much more money budgeted to spend than is actually available. But Myers says that the Governor is resolute about his opposition to resolving the situation with any tax increases.

You can click here to see Myers’ recent entry on his Capitol Notes Blog which gives more of his summary of the interview, along with a number of audio excerpts. If you are a public employee, retired, or a total political hack, you can listen to the entire twenty minute or so interview here.… Read More

Well, the Democrats are acting predictably, I am sorry to say. This morning in my commentary (a couple of post below this one), I said that the Democrats would unveil tax increases as part of their plan. This morning just after 11am, the Sacramento Bee posted this story: Assembly Democrats Push Oil, Tobacco Taxes.

I urged Democrats to just come out with their nefarious plans — and they did! Once again, they have demonstrated that they are completely tone dead from the message sent by voters last month with the overwhelming rejection of Proposition 1A and its tax increases.

The attempt by Democrats to hike taxes are not surprising in the slightest. After all, we are talking about Democrat caucuses that are split between complete union hacks, whose fealty to the public employee union bosses leave them unable to vote for cuts that would negatively impact the core mission of the unions (to increase the wages and benefits for union members, as well as increase the size of the union) — and liberal ideologues to whom making any cuts in social welfare programs, let alone cuts of this… Read More

From today’s Wall Street Journal Political Diary E-mail…

Terminating the California Income Tax

… Read More

Over my objections, the BoE voted 3-2 to sponsor a bill that would make it extremely difficult, if not impossible, for non-wealthy taxpayers to sue the government. The back story to this is the BoE recently lost a case in Superior Court. The judge awarded attorney’s fees to the plaintiffs because the Board’s position was so unreasonable the judge ruled the case involved the enforcement of an important right affecting the public interest. The judge ruled the BoE must pay the plaintiff 1.5 times a reasonable fee, which he found in this case is more than $600,000. Before it got to this point I repeatedly argued we needed to settle the case, but the Board’s Democratic majority would only listen to the flawed legal advice we were getting from our legal department.

On Tuesday, the same lawyers who previously insisted we fight this case brought before the Board a bill idea to eliminate the current system for recovering costs and replace it with an exclusive standard that raises the bar so high for fee recovery that it will preclude non-wealthy taxpayers from bringing actions against the Board. Attorneys will not be willing to take a case for a regular taxpayer… Read More