“New Majority” Says Budget Reforms Must Happen Now
The influential, deep-pocketed Republican organization New Majority has engaged in the budget debate, sending a letter to Republican leaders Bob Dutton and Connie Conway declaring that the only way Republican legislators should vote to put taxes on the ballot is if meaningful reforms are put on the ballot as well.
The letter specified meaningful reforms as a spending cap that limits the growth of government and uses excess revenue to pay down debt, as well as pension reform modeled after the Little Hoover Commission’s recommendations.
Significantly, the letter rebuked groups that endorsed placing the tax extensions on the ballot with a promise that reforms will follow. The letter, signed by the chairmen of the four New Majority chapters, stated, “…our experience has shown little follow-through on behalf of the Legislature to address meaningful reform.”
Will This Be GOP’s Last Hand in Budget Poker Game?
It is true that Republican legislators have some valuable cards in the high stakes negotiation over adopting a spending plan and putting tax extensions on the ballot in June. Also true is that reality that the GOP leverage is fleeting and the Republican Caucuses could end up squandering their last and best chance to get some of the reforms that they and the business community covet.
Legendary Ohio State football coach Woody Hayes was famous for saying his teams stuck to the ground game because three things can happen when you throw a forward pass and two of them are bad. The GOP should be careful about throwing the long bomb, because they could end up scoreless.
What should be sobering to Republicans and the business community is the likelihood that Republicans will fall short of the one-third mark in both houses of the Legislature after the next election. The last reapportionment probably squeezed out every district possible for Republicans and the new lines drawn by the Commission or the courts are unlikely to do that. Some incumbent Democrats may find themselves displaced or challenged by Latino candidates, but the number of safe Democratic seats is probably going to be pretty stable. With the open primary and reconfigured districts, however, there may very well be many fewer safe GOP seats and several other that are up for grabs. This may be the last year to exact a price for allowing tax increases.
California’s Demographic Dilemma: A Class And Culture Clash
Cross-posted at NewGeography.
The newly released Census reports reveal that California faces a profound gap between the cities where people are moving to and the cities that hold all the political power. It is a tale that divides the state between its coastal metropolitan regions that dominate the state’s politics — particularly the San Francisco Bay Area, but also Los Angeles — and its still-growing, largely powerless interior regions.
Indeed, the “progressives” of the coast are fundamentally anti-growth, less concerned with promoting broad-based economic growth — despite 12.5% statewide unemployment — than in preserving the privileges of their sponsors among public sector unions and generally affluent environmentalists. This could breed a big conflict between the coastal idealists and the working class and increasingly Latino residents in the more hardscrabble interior, whose economic realities are largely ignored by the state’s government.
The Census shows that the Bay Area and Los Angeles are growing at their slowest rate in over 160 years under American rule. Between 2000 and 2010 Los Angeles gained less population than in any decade since the 1890s. Its growth rate was slower than metropolitan Chicago, St. Louis and virtually every region that has reported to date, with the exception of New Orleans.
Pot Calls the Kettle ‘Shady’
Assembly Speaker John Perez was quoted in a New York Times story last week saying this about a California city: “How shady its practices have been. And the more I looked at it, the more I realized this was really the center of tremendous corruption.”
He’s talking about Sacramento, right? Or maybe Los Angeles?
Nope. He’s referring to Vernon. A town comprising 5.2 square miles and 80-some residents. In Perez’s mind, tiny Vernon is the source of most of the depravity here in California.
That’s why Perez wrote a bill to disincorporate the town, and he took the time to tour Vernon with a New York Times reporter. And it’s why the Los Angeles City Council last week voted unanimously to support Perez’s bill.