California’s most valuable company – Apple Inc. – has been taking flak lately from the halls of Congress to the capitals of Europe over reports that the consumer electronics giant manages its business to minimize the corporate income taxes it pays to the U.S. and foreign governments.

But you’re not likely to hear too many complaints from California politicians about the company’s contribution to the state and local tax base – or the economy. The taxes Apple pays represent a huge chunk of the state budget, and new numbers show just how big a role it plays in the economic life of the Silicon Valley and especially the company’s home town of Cupertino.

“Three strikes and you’re out”—baseball terminology used to determine the standard for sending someone to prison, and prison overcrowding that is one of its by-products.  “No child left behind”—a federal program on education that failed to deliver.  “Affordable Care Act”—not looking too affordable these days as family health costs escalate double and triple digits just preparing for the new system.

All of these are sound bites used by elected officials and administrators to advance a public policy idea that sounds good, but ultimately backfired, or produced unintended consequences in some way.

Originally ran in The Sacramento Business Journal on June 7, 2013

Small businesses are the lifeblood of California’s economy, supporting almost 80 percent of jobs within the state. However, they are also the most vulnerable — and in some ways the most unappreciated — sector of the economy.

They are less capable of absorbing increased costs of doing business, and their needs are often ignored when laws and regulations are crafted in Sacramento.

You won’t see Gov. Jerry Brown pumping his fist and slapping high-fives with his staff today if the Legislature, as expected, approves his $96.3 billion 2013-14 budget.

After all, as the governor said earlier this week, “I think prudence, rather than exuberance, should be the order of the day.”

And besides, it just wouldn’t be polite to do a football sack dance over the fallen bodies of Democratic legislators.

The state could commission a symphony to commemorate an on-time, balanced budget. But I get the feeling that Gov. Brown would strike it with the blue pencil.

Never mind. The celebration is on. George Skelton tells us that the legislature is no longer dysfunctional and that the voters have gotten things right. California is turning around. Ya!

OK, I know, there are a bunch of caveats, huge caveats, caveats bigger than the size of the pension obligation and the infrastructure deficit put together. But let’s stipulate, for the sake of the argument, that California has turned itself around.

I dropped in on one of Los Angeles Mayor-elect Eric Garcetti’s town hall meetings this week, one of six he is holding in different geographic areas of the city (and another he plans to hold online). As part of his transition plan, Garcetti is meeting with constituents asking them for suggestions on how the city can do things better.

The meetings are broken into working groups of 15-20 people and they are asked to opine on three topics: the economy & jobs, government efficiencies and neighborhoods. Under these topics are sub-topics, for instance, transportation issues fell under neighborhoods column.

For 103 years, the Boy Scouts have inspired generations of boys to become men of character. As the mother of three young children, I hope they will grow up embodying the values of responsibility and service that the Boy Scouts work hard to promote. But instead of recognizing its achievements, activists want to punish the organization by undermining its finances.

The California Senate recently passed Senate Bill 323 to revoke the tax-exempt status of charitable youth organizations such as the Boy Scouts that do not adhere to its definition of “values.” It did this even though the U.S. Supreme Court has upheld the First Amendment rights of the Boy Scouts to determine its membership.

As Dan Walters describes in his column today, budget trailer bills have become a problem. Last minute bill details involving policy changes tied to the budget are introduced with no opportunity for elected officials to debate them.

In fact, the Sacramento Bee issued a call for help in discovering what is in this year’s trailer bills. “As we start to comb through the measures looking for heretofore unknown budget provisions, perhaps Alert readers can lend a hand,” the Bee wrote in a Capitol Alert post by Dan Smith.

Follow this link to the Alert for a list of some of the trailer bills. Maybe you can help expose what’s in them.

Now we’ve got a public school district considering hiring a political PR firm to convince other government officials to raise tax revenue by raising property assessments. Such an action may be illegal and it sure is reckless.

Sure, campaigns supporting tax increases have hired professional help but not with taxpayers’ money. And, yes, with taxpayers’ money local governments have hired lobbyists to convince the state to send money their way. But this move by the West Contra Costa school district appears to be something new.

Jon Coupal, president of the Howard Jarvis Taxpayers Association, told me, “The constitutional responsibility for setting assessments rests with the county assessor. For school districts to venture into this area is a gross misunderstanding of their jurisdiction.”

Why is California so hard to govern? One reason is that we’re suffering from daddy issues, and this Father’s Day is as good a time as any to confront them.

The daddy in question is Grove Johnson, father of one of our most revered governors, Hiram Johnson, who served from 1911 through 1917. Johnson is the governor who convinced Californians to adopt the ballot initiative process in 1911. Many of us revere that process, but it has its problems. And we never address those problems, because our media keep repeating a bogus story: