Rev & Tax Committee Back the Wrong Solutions
Looking at the Controller’s report on revenues coming into the state you have to wonder what the Democrats on the Assembly Revenue and Taxation Committee were thinking as they embraced new business tax proposals yesterday. Revenue collection is below estimates in most tax categories. One of the few exceptions is the Corporation Tax.
The Democrats’ solution? Let’s kill that golden goose, too.
On a party line vote, the Democrats on the committee supported raising property taxes on business property and eliminating business tax breaks that were passed in last year’s budget negotiations.
Delaying AB 32 is Risky Business
There’s an unsettling, ongoing effort to dismantle California’s roadmap
to a clean energy future – one that will create uncertainty for
California businesses.
Since AB 32 was passed four years ago, California businesses have been
busily planning and participating in the implementation process by the
Air Resources Board. Many have invested in technology and products to
make their businesses more efficient and reduce pollution.
These
investments are part of the reason California is home to seven of the
top 10 clean tech businesses in America, and five California cities are
on the top 10 list of the best places for clean-tech businesses in our
nation.
Crane’s Testimony on Pension Reform
Reprinted here is David Crane’s testimony yesterday before the Senate Public Employees and Retirement Committee on pension reform, SB 919, (Hollingsworth, R- Murrieta)
Good afternoon, Mr. Chairman, and thank you for allowing me to appear before the committee today on this important matter.
I will divide my remarks into five categories:
- The nature of pension promises
- The rising costs of meeting those promises
- The consequences of those costs
- The causes behind those costs
- What the state can do about it
Dick Riordan’s Fight Is Our Fight
In standing up in public and denouncing Mayor Antonio Villaraigosa as irrelevant and calling out the corruption at City Hall that leaves Los Angeles teetering on the brink of bankruptcy, Former Mayor Dick Riordan has assumed a role that no other prominent person has shown the courage to take on.
He has heard the cry of the people and is speaking in their voice. It is the voice City Hall has ignored for a long time but they can’t ignore Riordan. So they attack him with all the artillery at their disposal to prevent him from becoming a rallying point for public anger and discontent.
They accuse him when he was mayor of making many of the same mistakes as they are making today, of giving into the blackmail of city unions and too often doing city business for the benefit of special interests. And so they ask, what right does he have to criticize?