Budget Talks Come Down to the Wire
As legislators and the governor see the budget deadline
before them, Democrats are reportedly patching
together a budget that will not require tax increases, relying on budget
gimmicks from the past. If that kind of
budget passes, expect Brown to get Republican votes to put taxes on a fall
ballot as long as reforms are included.
However, in a role reversal, reforms could become the hurdle
to a special election if public employee unions object.
At a news conference yesterday, Governor Jerry Brown urged
Republicans in the legislature not to be led by talk radio hosts, bloggers or
Washington ideologues. He did not say public employee unions should not lead
Democrats.
It’s important to know where the unions are on the overall
deal Brown has been trying to hammer out with some Republicans to put both tax
extensions and reforms on the ballot.
Neither Fish nor Fowl, but SF Pilot Benefits Abound
The San Francisco Bar Pilots
know how to lobby Sacramento, witness AB 907. As a result this
homogenized monopoly of 55 men and one woman hold exclusive state licenses
which allow them to drive ships in, out and around the San Francisco Bay, and
this license comes with some great benefits.
They have a great pension. As the only non-public
employees with a publicly mandated defined benefit pension system in California,
they don’t have to contribute a penny towards their own retirement. This
small perk costs somewhere between $250 million and $650 million, depending on
who you ask. Either way, pilots are receiving annual retirements of over
$260,000.
They have great work
schedules. In 2010 each
pilot actually piloted about 140 times, that’s a job on average once every 2
and a half days. And many of those jobs, like the ships moving from sea
to the Port of Oakland are completed in 3 or 4 hours.
California Leads the Nation in Loss of Freedom
It has been said that the first step of solving any problem
is to admit that a problem actually exists.
Ignoring or denying the problem only makes it worse in the
long-run.
In California, we clearly have a jobs problem as we have the
nation’s second-highest unemployment rate at 11.9 percent. At the same time, we also pay one of the heaviest
tax burdens in the nation, including the highest sales and gas taxes and the top
business income tax rate in the West.
Respected publications such as Forbes
and Chief Executive have also ranked
the not-so Golden State as one of the worst places to do business.
Now comes a new report from the
Virginia-based Mercatus Center at George Mason University that confirms the
obvious: California is one of the least friendly states for freedom in the
nation. We rank 48th out of
50 states for having policies and laws that restrict the ability of people to
pursue their dreams. I believe it is
this lack of freedom that makes it harder for us to attract the investment and
jobs we need to turn our state’s economy around.
For a New Generation, Late Budget is Unacceptable
With the looming
budget deadline hanging over the heads of legislators this week, it got me
thinking about one of my father’s favorite "dad-ism’s," "Early is on time, on
time is late, and late is unacceptable". Simple. Elegant. Words to live by in
any situation.
With Wednesday’s deadline nearly upon us, it is looking like our State
Legislature is aiming for unacceptable….Again. Lets face it, lawmakers routinely
fail to pass the budget on time. When I asked one voter if he knew when the
last time the budget was passed on time he stated, "it feels like it has been
forever."
A people’s revolution came into play with the passing of Prop 25 that allowed
voters to reform a horribly broken budget process. Not only did it aim to
stop gridlock by permitting a simple majority to approve the budget, but
— and here is the part I really like — it held the legislators
accountable by placing a pretty hefty set of consequences if they didn’t meet
the deadline. Lawmakers would lose a day’s pay for each day the budget is
late. They cannot pay themselves back once they do finally pass it.