Public Pensions and Prop 13
The renewed discussion about Proposition 13 this week prompted by Governor Jerry Brown’s plan to realign state and local government responsibilities should put the focus on another key issue: public employee pensions and health benefits.
The Wall Street Journal reported last month that property taxes are rising all around the country with public officials blaming the need to met pensions and health care costs.
Philadelphia raised property taxes nearly 10-percent. A spokesman for the Illinois Municipal League said while property taxes have increased in recent years to keep up with pension and health care costs, the increases this year have been much larger. Don Boyd, a senior fellow at the nonpartisan Nelson A. Rockefeller Institute of Government at the State University of New York told the Journal, “Unless governments really want to squeeze essential services…there are likely to be a lot more property tax increases.”
Let’s Use Costa’s Bad Initiative for Good
California needs more revenues. One obvious place to get them: Washington DC. But the feds have their own problems and aren’t eager to oblige. How to get their attention?
Ted Costa’s new initiative offers a way.
Yes, this is the initiative that would alter presidential politics in favor of Republicans by switching California from a winner-take-all state (with all electoral votes going to the statewide winner) to a state in which the winner in each Congressional district would get one electoral vote. This would break the current Democratic stranglehold on the state’s 55 electoral votes and give roughly 20 of those votes to the Republicans – a sea change in presidential elections.
This is a partisan idea that’s bad policy…
And perhaps the perfect weapon to wield against the Obama administration and the Democrats in service of getting more federal money for California.
Is that Light I see on Yonder Horizon?
If you are reading this, then we
have all, once again, survived the year-end holiday season. As I write, the 112th Congress is
finding where the bathrooms are located and the rain has finally stopped
drowning California, after going on to set blizzard records back East and
inundating Manhattan in more snow than I (and most people) have ever seen
there. Everybody has now returned to
their office or workplace or place of business and all are waking up to the
bills piled up late last year, rolling up their sleeves, and plunging back into
the fray.
Later today, the job numbers come
out. Breaths are being held. Fall indicators seemed to say that retail did
better than in years prior and that even some jobs may finally be in the
process of re-materializing, though year end employment numbers are always a
bit suspicious due to holiday season temporary hiring, and other exotic
economic factors which would put you right to sleep if I began listing them
here.
So, is it finally over? Can we come out of our bunkers now and get
back to business as usual? Is the long, national nightmare of what they are now
calling the Great Recession (still not the dreaded D word, for obvious reasons)
finally now in the rear view mirror and can we finally get back to business for
this new, sci-fi sounding year of 2011?
If you grew up like me as a Boomer, you may remember the 50’s
predictions that, by the year 2000, we would all be commuting in those flying
Jetsons’ cars.