CalPERS Making Strides to Meet Pension Costs
Later this week, CalPERS’s board is expected to approve a staff
recommendation to require more money from the state in order to meet
pension costs, a decision it had earlier postponed. The board should
be commended for breaking a troubling trend and lowering total pension
costs to boot.
The troubling trend is "cost shifting," a technique by which a
generation issues debt to cover operating expenses and then shifts the
obligation to service that debt to future generations.
For years, the
state has been doing just that by making promises of lifetime pensions
and healthcare after retirement but then not contributing enough money
to meet those promises.
The Changing Job Landscape for California’s Media Access Office
The Media Access Office (MAO) was founded in Hollywood in 1979 by Fern Field Brooks, and Performers with Disabilities, a group of experienced and aspiring entertainment professionals. The group included performers with a range of physical conditions (wheelchair users, amputees, hearing impaired, sight impaired) as well as neurological conditions (performers with Down syndrome, autism, Tourette syndrome).
MAO set as its missions to increase employment opportunities in front of the camera, as well as to change the way that persons with disabilities were portrayed in the movies and television.
MAO grew slowly during the 1990s and early 2000s from a small non-profit into a statewide program under the direction of and funding from the Governor’s Committee for Employment of Disabled Persons and its longtime director, Catherine Kelly Baird. In the past few years, MAO has downsized considerably due to state budget cuts. Still it remains very active in both the north and south of the state.
Don’t Mess With Proposition 13
Thirty-two years ago, Time magazine wrote about the passage
of Proposition 13, "That angry noise was the sound of a middle-class
tax revolt erupting and its tremors are shaking public officials from
Sacramento to Washington D.C."
The power of Proposition 13 to shake up the political landscape and
topple politicians, who attempt to undermine it, remains undiminished.
Just Ask Steve Poizner who ran as a fiscal conservative in the
Republican primary for governor while carrying the baggage of having
spent $200,000 to pass an initiative that has made it easier to
increase property taxes for bonds that have cost taxpayers nearly $40
billion. While he pleaded that he regretted his prior actions,
taxpayers, especially homeowners, had a problem dismissing this, as
well as another Poizner backed effort to increase property taxes, from
their minds when they entered the voting booth.
That’s the Way – Uh Huh, Uh Huh – I Like It!
OCTA Teaches Jobs Creation 101:
You know the facts: nationally, about 370,000 government
jobs were just "created" vs. only 41,000 private sector jobs. With
a real state unemployment rate nearing 20% (counting those underemployed and
those folks who just "gave up looking"), California needs two million jobs right now.
Even Orange County-damning by faint praise with
"only" a 9.5% unemployment rate-has lost almost 175,000 jobs,
with the transportation sector down over 40%.
But
good news for new jobs is here to share. Under the
leadership of City of Orange Mayor Carolyn Cavecche, who also serves on
Orange CountyTransportation Authority’s board of directors, a new OCTA
board policy
was unanimously adopted today: OCTA now has established as its target
that 100%
of all professional services allowed be contracted to the private
sector!