During his first term as governor, Jerry Brown famously became a self-proclaimed “born again tax cutter” after Proposition 13 passed. While he may have discarded that image,  he has now taken on the role as the “backstop” to potential government big spenders and that’s a good thing for California taxpayers.

Releasing the budget revision yesterday, Brown called the state Capitol “a big spending  machine.” He warned the legislature that they must be fiscally prudent and made the point by surprising those who hoped the governor would spend much of the reported unanticipated revenue by declaring there wasn’t as much excess revenue as projected.

We congratulate Gov. Jerry Brown on a proposed balanced budget that will help California provide important government services.

We appreciate that the Governor proposes the addition of a statewide sales tax exemption on the purchase of manufacturing equipment.  This will make California a more competitive place to scale up production.

When Steve Jobs died in October 2011, crowds of mourners gathered outside of Apple stores, leaving impromptu memorials to the fallen businessman. Many in Occupy Wall Street, then in full bloom, stopped to mourn the .001 percenter worth $7 billion, who didn’t believe in charity and whose company had more cash in hand than the U.S. Treasury while doing everything in its power to avoid paying taxes.

A new, and potentially dominant, ruling class is rising. Today’s tech moguls don’t employ many Americans, they don’t pay very much in taxes or tend to share much of their wealth, and they live in a separate world that few of us could ever hope to enter. But while spending millions bending the political process to pad their bottom lines, they’ve remained far more popular than past plutocrats, with 72 percent of Americans expressing positive feelings for the industry, compared to 30 percent for banking and 20 percent for oil and gas. 

The strong revenue California collected in April is one more encouraging sign that after years of weathering the Great Recession we appear to have reached a point of budget stability. To help build on that stability, Assembly Democrats have crafted a Blueprint for a Responsible Budget that will keep California on sound financial footing not just this budget year, but in the future as well.

Over the past several years, Legislative Democrats have made tough but necessary budget cuts. Voters approved the majority-vote budget, which removed the game playing and gridlock that had jeopardized California’s financial picture. And voters stood with Democrats in supporting temporary tax revenues to help fund our schools and avoid even deeper cuts. The Blueprint for a Responsible Budget is based on the following three interrelated principles:

There is a statewide campaign afoot that wants to eliminate Proposition 13 gradually by first trying to take away its protections for the timing of property tax reassessments of commercial properties.

The Miramar Hotel in Santa Monica is being used as a high profile symbol of why Proposition 13 should be revoked for commercial properties.  But maybe the Los Angeles Times Building in downtown Los Angeles and billionaire owner Sam Zell is a symbol of a much bigger alleged tax scofflaw than the Miramar Hotel and billionaire business owner Michael Dell.

(Editor’s Note: David Abel’s Los Angeles newsletter, The Planning Report, this week featured short pieces of advice consisting of a To-Do list for the next Los Angeles Mayor from civic leaders and interested observers, including County Supervisor Zev Yaroslavsky, SEIU leader Julie Butcher, business association executives Bill Allen and Billie Greer, conservationist Joe Edmiston, former state official and educator Bonnie Reiss and others. The commentaries can be found at the The Planning Report here. My contribution is reprinted below.)

The two Democrats vying to become Mayor of Los Angeles, a city in financial trouble, should consider the advice of a Democratic icon on smart government. Former New York governor Mario Cuomo once pointed out, “It is not government’s obligation to provide services, but to see that they’re provided.”

California’s economy has been powered for decades by technology, trade and tourism — businesses and jobs mostly near the coast from San Diego to Los Angeles and around the San Francisco Bay Area. The state’s great inland valleys, while serving as a breadbasket for the world, have not been a land of high-paying employment or tax-producing industry.

A glance at the most recent unemployment numbers reflects this reality. While the state’s overall jobless rate is still high by historic standards, it has fallen to 6.3 percent in Orange County, 6.0 percent in San Francisco and 5.7 percent in San Mateo County. In the Central Valley, by contrast, unemployment remains in double digits from Kern County (13.6) all the way to San Joaquin (14.1).

In a bunker somewhere in Sacramento, a secret committee meeting of state power brokers is taking place. Let’s listen in as the chairman addresses the members:

“Welcome to this week’s meeting of the ‘Don’t Leave Them With Two Nickels to Rub Together Committee’ It is good to see that the public employee union bosses, who represent the highest paid government workers in all 50 states, are in attendance. They are the heart and soul of our movement. Then of course, we must acknowledge those newspaper editors from some major papers, who work so hard to help our cause of increasing the tax burden on average Californians.

We’re blowing out the candles on the cake celebrating our 5th anniversary at Fox & Hounds Daily.  We want to thank our readers and our growing subscriber base for all the support they have shown Fox & Hounds over the years. We are proud of the recognition the site has garnered, not only named one of California’s best political blog sites by the Washington Post’s “The Fix” column, but also acknowledgement from frequent followers of the political scene, some samples included below:

• “Check out his (Joel Fox) site, Fox & Hounds Daily. It’s more of a magazine than a blog, with articulate columnists and news updates on California.” – Robert Greene, Los Angeles Times

Last week, it was revealed that the Los Angeles city Department of Transportation was sitting on $42.6 million in hidden funds, which immediately became an issue in the mayor’s race. It could be a make-or-break issue for the candidates, City Controller Wendy Greuel and councilman Eric Garcetti, depending how well they articulate their arguments on the matter.

Similar in feel to the “discovered” funds in the state’s parks department that sizzled in the headlines last year, the $42.6 million would have been beneficial to the city during the great recession when services were cut back for lack of funds.