Meg is 100% Right
On Thursday, columnist George Skelton of the Los Angeles Times wrote a piece analyzing Meg Whitman’s new radio ad. Skelton’s analysis gets the facts wrong. What’s even more puzzling is that the conclusions he draws are directly opposite the facts reported by his own Times colleagues.
Meg Whitman states in her new radio ad that government spending has increased 80 percent in the last ten years. The Department of Finance numbers are clear: General fund spending grew from $57.8 billion in 1998-1999 to $102.9 billion in 2007-2008. Meg used that ten-year period, from fiscal years 1998-1999 to 2007-2008, because they are real numbers. The state’s fiscal books have been closed for that period. The numbers can’t be recalculated or changed.
Logic and government accounting schedules tell us that there will be no reliable numbers for the 2008-2009 fiscal year that ended June 2009 for at least another few months, and likely much longer. Since the start of the 2008-09 budget through today, there have been three separate budgets passed, and there could be a fourth one before June 30, 2010. The books are far from closed on the current fiscal year.
All the Would–Be Governors’ Men
For the first time since the field of potential gubernatorial candidates narrowed to five, consultants for all the candidates appeared on the same stage at the California Chamber of Commerce’s Fall Public Affairs retreat in Napa yesterday.
Steve Glazer, advisor to Jerry Brown’s exploratory committee, joined Garry South chief advisor to the Gavin Newsom campaign, Jim Bognet, Steve Poizner’s campaign manager, Jamie Fisfis with Tom Campbell and Rob Stutzman, consultant to Meg Whitman.
The spin masters dodged and weaved and spun their way through a lively hour-plus presentation.
South said his candidate, Gavin Newsom, did not have to worry about his standing in the polls well behind Jerry Brown, pointing to a number of gubernatorial races over the past two decades in which the leading candidate for governor in early polls did not win.
The Importance of Petition Privacy
There was a story in San Francisco earlier this month about a defense attorney who had seven gang members stand up in court and stare at a witness who was testifying against one of their buddies in a murder case.
A similar type of intimidation is the only reason for taking away the privacy protection that now exists for voters who sign an initiative or referendum petition. It isn’t an expansion of open government, but rather a dangerous attack on the people’s right to have a direct say in their government.
Earlier this week, my friend Joe Mathews argued in this space that the names, home addresses and phone numbers of people who sign an initiative petition should be made available to anyone interested, just as it is with voter registration cards and campaign finance information.
“Signing a petition is not like voting in an election,’’ he said. “It is in every way a public act.”
Would Con Con Be a Revolt of the Locals?
If you strongly believe that California’s local governments
need more power and discretion, you probably should get behind the
constitutional convention.
It’s
hard to predict how an event that may never take place might work. But the
just-filed initiative to call a convention, considered in the light of history,
offers some clues.
Here’s
what jumps out: the method of delegate selection all but guarantees that the
views of cities, counties and school districts will be extraordinarily well represented.
It’s possible to imagine the locals dominating the convention.
How’s
that? The exact number of delegates that would be selected by local governments
(either through county selection committees that include county supervisors,
mayors and a school board representative, or by city councils in the state’s
three largest cities) is not yet known because it would be based on population.
The locals would get one delegate for every 175,000 residents (every county is
guaranteed at least 1 delegate). Assuming California’s population is 38 million
people next year, that’s 217+ locally appointed delegates. That’s not a
majority, but it’s a big minority.
Reforming State Government: From Diagnosis to Cure
One particular paragraph in the late Sen. Ted Kennedy’s memoir, True Compass, jumped out at me; although
it deals with the U.S. Senate, it bears directly
on what Californians are mulling over these days.
Kennedy wrote, "I think of the withering away of collegiality and sense
of collective mission as the corruption of the Senate. I don’t mean corruption in a legal
sense; rather I mean corruption in the sense that things are broken."
Kennedy argued that the "breakdown
has been driven primarily by two factors." First," there are forces that
actually do not want the Senate to meet and be active in the affairs of the
nation…second is the distorted influence of money and the power of vested
interests in the legislative process."