With State Pension Initiatives Sidelined, Now Unions Go After Local Measures
Public employee unions are turning up their offensive to prevent changes to public sector retirement programs. In the wake of proposed state initiatives pulled back by proponents because they say the Attorney General’s title and summary did not fairly reflect the measure, a proposed San Diego initiative to reform the city’s pension system has suddenly […]
Brown’s Tax Plan Looking for Love
Governor Jerry Brown is taking knocks for not yet clearing competing tax proposals proposed for the November ballot to the point where Scott Lay in his Nooner report asked the question whether Brown would be the one to dump his measure and back another. Joe Mathews in his weekly rankings of the ballot measures on […]
Labor and State Democrats Tie the Knot Tighter
Supreme Court Justice Louis Brandeis once commented that each state could “if its citizens choose, serve as a laboratory; and try novel social and economic experiments without risk to the rest of the country.” Over the weekend one could glimpse this laboratory function in full operation with California Democratic leaders declaring for a state with […]
Will Pension Reform Come from the Legislature?
California Pension Reform announced that it will not move forward to qualify one of the two initiatives it filed this year, blaming a “false and misleading” title and summary from the Attorney General that stunted fundraising and made it doubtful an initiative would pass. That switches the focus for pension reform to the legislature.
Spending Limit Launched
The Attorney General issued the title and summary for the spending limit proposal yesterday emphasizing the proposal’s goal of not only controlling government spending but also cutting down the “wall of debt” Governor Jerry Brown rightly criticizes as burden to state government and its taxpayers. The Investors Business Daily posted an editorial recently on the […]
Brown and Friends Put the Squeeze on Initiatives
Molly Munger and I are not in the same corners when it comes to ballot measures proposed for the November ballot but we do have one thing in common: Governor Brown and his allies are trying to knock both of our initiatives out before they make the ballot. Munger is for more taxes and more […]
Indiana Super Bowl Bodes Well For Downtown LA Stadium
Congratulations to Indianapolis for putting on a grand super week that in some way might give a boost to Los Angeles’s hope of getting an NFL team and those who are promoting the downtown stadium plan. I found myself in Indiana this weekend and took in the atmosphere around the Super Bowl. Indianapolis received much […]
Facebook IPO to Enrich State Treasury. LIKE
California’s budget is described as being on a rollercoaster the last decade-plus streaming to great heights when the economy is good and bottoming out with a rush when the economy dips. There was no better expression of the California budget rollercoaster ride than this week when we went from the low of the state controller […]
If Stop Special Interest Money Initiative Passes– A Test of Trust for Unions
As reported by Steve Harmon in the San Jose Mercury News, the Stop Special Interest Money initiative on the November ballot will stir up public employee unions in a frantic effort to defeat it. The measure would require union members to declare they want some of their dues to be used for political purposes and […]
Ballot Measure Titles and Summaries Should not be Written by Attorneys General
A couple of months ago, at a discussion on the initiative process at a Zocalo Public Square meeting in Los Angeles, the panelists were asked what one thing they would change with the initiative process. As a panelist, my answer: Take away the power to write the initiative title and summary from the attorney general’s […]