Two Budget Votes Are Not Enough
The scheduled votes Tuesday on two disparate budget plans for California — one put forth by Governor Arnold Schwarzenegger, the other by legislative Democrats — are fine as far as they go but they do not go far enough. There should be votes on many possible budget plans.
Tuesday’s exercise is designed to consider two different ways to look at spending plans for the state government and to take a measure of where those plans stand with legislators. The outcomes of the votes are obvious.
The Republicans will support the Schwarzenegger plan built around extensive budget cuts to close the $19-billion state deficit; the Democrats will stand behind their own plan, which features far fewer cuts.
Referendum, RIP
Joe
Mathews unearthed
a nugget Thursday – turns out the 99-year-old referendum power in
California may have a more distant provenance than we thought, older than even
the state itself.
That
news could be bittersweet, though, because a measure on the November ballot would effectively
prevent the referendum from celebrating its centenary.
On
its surface, Proposition 25 is fairly simple – it reduces the vote
requirement to pass a budget from two-thirds of the Legislature to a simple
majority. However, Prop. 25’s language also eviscerates the
referendum, one of Governor Hiram Johnson’s great reforms enacted to
counteract the power of special interests, and a critical check that voters
have on the actions and power of the Legislature.
The Rest of the Story
In his Fox and Hounds opinion piece on August 27, Jeremy Leffler COO of BayBio, an industry consortium, touts the growth in biotechnology and bemoans the effects of Proposition 23 could have on that industry. He’s got many facts wrong and misses the bigger picture.
Mr. Leffler states that AB32 was adopted in "bi-partisan fashion." In 2006, on a party-line vote, legislative Democrats passed AB32 over the objections of Republicans. Authored by then-Assembly Speaker Fabien Núñez, ostensibly to combat the effects of global warming, AB32 forces businesses to reduce greenhouse gas emissions to 1990 levels by the year 2020. At the time, California’s unemployment rate was just under 5 percent.
"More than 6,000 new jobs were created in our [biotechnology] sector in just in the past 12 months, many of them in the development of alternative bio-fuels that are the direct result of California’s leadership." Also partly as a direct result of that ‘leadership’ California LOST 9,400 jobs in July alone and remains three percentage points higher in unemployment compared to the national average, according to the Bureau of Labor Statistics.
The Nobility of CA’s ‘Green Chemistry’ Program Deserves Careful, Scientific Regulation
If you
haven’t heard of California’s ‘Green Chemistry Initiative, you will
soon. It is a bold step that has the potential to change the way we
approach chemicals in consumer products.
It also has the potential to
further hamstring California’s struggling economy, drive jobs from the
state and raise consumer prices. So, it’s an issue worth our
attention.
In a nutshell, the ‘Green Chemistry Initiative’ is a California-only
endeavor to identify and regulate "chemicals of concern" in consumer
products made or sold in California. It would regulate alongside
existing oversight by the FDA, EPA, Prop. 65 and many others. The
Department of Toxic Substance Control is now finalizing the
regulations to make this plan a reality.
These rules will determine whether the initiative enhances consumer
safety, inspires innovation and triggers new investment, or whether it
delivers only increased costs, lost jobs and crippling new burdens on
manufacturers and business in California.