The Same Old Tune: Pay Raises and Fee Increases
I guess the kindest way to put this is that we have a tone-deaf legislature. Out of town for a few days, I came back to read that the Assembly leaders were attempting to justify pay raises for assembly staff while the state deficit is growing. On top of that, other legislators were proposing targeted fee and tax increases at a time that the tax question is weighing down attempts at budgetary reform.
Now Speaker Karen Bass and Assembly Republican Leader Mike Villines have cancelled the pay raises. Bass said the pay raises caused a distraction from the discussion about the May ballot measures. No kidding. But that doesn’t change the fact that legislators somehow lose touch with the public they represent.
Bass and Villines argued at first that many of the staffers who received increases have not seen a pay raise in a number of years. With the budget problems of the last couple of years, that is appropriate. Many taxpayers haven’t seen a pay raise, either. On top of that they have been asked to pay more in taxes to keep the government solvent. While the pay raises are a small part of the overall budget, the symbolism was of monstrous proportions.
Anti-Tax Anti-Semites
There’s always some nut jobs out there who need to hang onto the good intentions of others to make their case. Witness California GOP Chairman Ron Nehring’s blast Monday against anti-Semitic graphics being displayed on-line in support of an anti-tax TEA bag event in San Mateo last week
It seems to me that you don’t have to be a Republican to be offended by the crude, if effectively designed graphic:
“The image pictured a bucket of money being poured into a funnel with a Star of David on it, which in turn drips blood into a bottle where a person holding a Palestinian flag is seen drowning in blood. The text reads “Uncle Sam Reminds You: KEEP PAYING TAXES. The ongoing extermination of Palestinian Children Can’t be Done Without Your Help.” (Contra Costa Times, 4/20/09)
Environmental Storm Troopers
While almost every politician in America was stumbling all over themselves to be photographed with a shovel or some other tool of manual labor on Earth Day, a California company announced that after 65 years it was closing its doors effective immediately.
Gregg Industries is a foundry in El Monte and it has been in operation since 1944 when California was a critical player in FDR’s “arsenal of democracy”. They didn’t make planes or tanks. But they made some of the critical engine pieces that drove tanks in war and the bulldozers and heavy equipment that built postwar California.
They were due to close on April 30, but decided to close today, a week early.
Why? What was the rush?
Enter the Environmental Storm Troopers of the South Coast Air Quality Management District (SCAQMD).
Improved State of Competition
Top executives like having their headquarters in Los Angeles. They say they enjoy the fine weather and the celebrity glam. But expansions? New plants? They say put ’em in Nevada or someplace else where taxes are lower and regulations are lighter.
That’s why the single-sales factor of taxation that the state Legislature recently passed is important. It kills a lot of the incentive for businesses to site their expansions and new plants in other states.
As reported in the Business Journal last week, the current formula makes each company pay state taxes based not only on the amount of sales the company makes in California, but also on the payroll and the value of the property in the state. The new formula eventually eliminates the tax on the payroll and the property, relying instead on in-state sales. That means a company could add a string of plants and double its employee count in California and theoretically pay no additional state tax.
In short, the Legislature told businesses to come on in, the water’s fine.