Gov. Wilson: Reps Unlikely to Put Taxes on Ballot
Former governor Pete Wilson thinks its unlikely that Republicans in the legislature will vote to put Governor Jerry Brown’s tax extensions on the ballot.
I caught up with Wilson yesterday after he appeared on a panel at the Reagan Presidential Library discussing Ronald Reagan’s legacy as part of the centennial celebration of Reagan’s birth. (I’ll have more on the Reagan legacy panel discussion in tomorrow’s post.)
Wilson said with gerrymandered districts, Republican legislators live in districts in which their constituents do not want tax increases.
If the tax measures were to make it on the ballot by whatever means, Wilson thinks the taxes will be difficult to pass. "The only thing that would make it remotely saleable to the public would be if they combine it with a real, honest-to-God spending limit like the old Gann Limit," he said.
So Philip Anschutz, you want an exemption from CEQA regs for your stadium? Let’s talk…
I read with interest in the Los Angeles Times that billionaire developer Philip Anschutz has apparently begun an all-out effort to get the California legislature and Governor to provide his planned 64,000 seat downtown Los Angeles football stadium project an exemption from onerous environmental regulations. Apparently these regulations would add years to the duration of time it would take to build the project, in addition to adding major additional costs.
On the natural, I would tell Anschutz and his lobbying team that they are tilting at a windmill — with the disturbingly wackly-left environmentalists that dominate the majority Democrat party in the Capitol in control of the process.
That having been said, I never would have predicted that in 2009 this legislature would do exactly that — waiving California Environmental Quality Act regulations — for another vastly wealthy major developer, Ed Roski, Jr., who is aiming to built his own football stadium on the eastern edge of Los Angeles County.
Is AG Any Better Than Legislature As Author of Title And Summary?
Last week’s appeals court decision barring the legislature
from writing titles and summaries for its own measures has sparked predictable
commentary that the court did the right thing. After all, lawmakers have
routinely used this power to write titles and summaries that are favorable to
their views – but not scrupulously accurate (or event all that useful) to
voters.
But does the decision leave us any
better off? Probably not. Because the court’s decision puts the power to write
such measures in the hands of the attorney general. Politics presumably will
continue to play a role. If anything, giving power to one person and one office
may make political gamesmanship with titles and summaries more common. One a.g.
playing politics can draft such labels alone (and there’s plenty of recent
history of this). In the legislature, any such label had to be a compromise.
Despite this, the decision offers a
bit of good news – or at least an opportunity to design a better system for
drafting titles, summaries and other public information on ballot measures.
There are many good models. Here are 3.
The Economy vs. Clean Energy: A False Choice
I represent an alliance of
nearly 1,000 small, mainstream companies in California, who employ tens of
thousands of people around the state, and who are committed to pursuing clean
energy policies that help grow the economy and create jobs. Our network is made
up of businesses from all geographic regions of the state and includes owners
of print shops, restaurants, construction firms, and landscape companies; CEOs
of and investors in solar and renewable companies; leaders of chambers of
commerce and business associations; and more.
Many of our members would
certainly join the chorus of voices, led by John Kabateck of the National
Federation of Independent Business (NFIB), calling for California to become
more business friendly, but not if regulatory reform occurs at the expense of
moving forward with critical clean energy policies. It is this pursuit of clean
energy that is resulting in thousands of new jobs in energy efficiency,
construction, and manufacturing – and all of this job creation benefits the
very small businesses that NFIB represents.