Republican legislators achieved two great victories this week. The newly adopted budget has cut some spending so it is closer to being balanced and even more importantly taxes on working families and businesses are going down. Political battles are rarely clear cut victories and I am sure that our legislators are exhausted and perhaps wondering if all of this effort was worth the outcome. Most definitely.

Despite the best efforts to trade a tax election vote for reforms it was never going to be a clean deal. Getting liberals to vote for real reforms on pensions, CEQA, regulations or any of the other messes they created is like asking them to invite Sarah Palin out to dinner. It is not going to happen. And if the Reps did get 6 Dem Senators and 13 Dem Assemblymembers to vote with them (assuming all the reforms could be done with majority votes) there would be nothing stopping the others and their allies from sponsoring a referendum to repeal all reforms even before they take effect. The reforms proposed also are quite common sense. Nothing radical like abolishing CEQA or abolishing pensions for government workers. Therefore the impacts of these modest reforms… Read More