Let’s give the redistricting commission a chance
I suppose it’s too much to ask that the state’s brand-new redistricting commission be given a chance to do its job.
The 14-member commission, established by 2008’s Prop. 11, didn’t finish appointing all its members until the middle of December and has only held a handful of meetings. But the boo-birds already are out in force, accusing the commission of a partisan bias, a tilt against rural California, sneaky, single-source contracts and, just for the hell of it, general incompetence.
Yesterday, for example, in this very Fox and Hounds Daily blog Doug Jeffe provided a critique of the commission. You really don’t have to read past the headline: “Redistricting commission looks to be fiasco in the making.”
How upset do you think everyone would be if the commission had actually done something by now?
Voters know little about budget details
Cross-posted at HealthyCal.
Gov. Jerry Brown wants California voters to weigh in by June on his plan to balance the budget. But the voters, polls show, know next to nothing about the state’s finances, and much of what they think they know is wrong.
That widespread ignorance, understandable in a state as complex as most countries, might play a role in shaping the debate over Brown’s plan, and ultimately the outcome.
Brown is asking state legislators to approve about $12 billion in spending cuts by early April. Then he wants to ask the voters to pass another $11 billion in taxes, mostly by extending temporary taxes adopted in 2009 and due to expire this year.
Brown believes the voters will be more likely to approve the taxes if the cuts are done first. But his approach carries high risk. If the voters say no, the new governor will have used up much of his political capital and he will then be forced to try to get the Legislature to make extremely difficult decisions to cut spending even further.
On Wisconsin
What are they fighting about in
Wisconsin, and what might this mean for California?
The battle in Badger State is on
many levels, but the closer you look, the less it seems to be about union
members’ benefits and the more it seems to be about union leaders’ ability to
mobilize organizational and political power.
Wisconsin public employees
traditionally have had generous benefits. Their health care contributions have
been about 5.6 percent of total premiums and they contribute only 0.2 percent
of their monthly pay to their pension plans.
Governor Scott Walker is proposing
to more than double state and school employee health care contributions to
about 12.6 percent of premiums, but that still compares favorably to, say,
California. According to the California Health Care Foundation, Californians
paid 27 percent of the cost of premiums in 2010 for family coverage. California state employees pay about 20 percent
of their health care premiums.
California Job Growth and Early Childhood Programs
Within the job training world, there are those writers who receive far more attention in the
media than they deserve (Robert Reich), and those that receive far less. Timothy
Bartik is among the latter. An economist with the Upjohn Institute for
Employment Research in Michigan, Bartik’s work is consistently characterized by
serious research and original thought. Over
the past decade he has written a series
of articles and book s on labor
demand policies, wage
subsidies, and a national
job creation tax credit.
Bartik’s latest work focuses on early childhood programs,
and their link to a region’s job growth. This work arises in part his own
experience as a school board member in Kalamazoo Michigan, from 2000-2008. In
this capacity, he had opportunity to observe pre-school programs, particularly
those focused on low-income families, in the context of allocating limited Kalamazoo
School District resources.