Realignment: A Trojan Horse for Local Governments
Democrat and Republican governors across the country are working to cut costs and lower taxes, but Governor Brown’s plan to level California’s $26 billion deficit – the result of several years of out of control government spending – is a “realignment” proposal that not only extends the previous administration’s ineffective tax hikes, but also irresponsibly shrugs the state’s financial burden onto the shoulders of cash-strapped county and municipal governments, creating a real threat to California’s economic recovery and public safety.
In April, Brown signed into law AB 109 – the public safety realignment bill – essentially launching a Trojan horse style attack on local governments and ensuring catastrophic consequences for Los Angeles County’s criminal justice system.
Set to take effect October 1st, this would shift responsibility for convicted felons and parolee supervision from the state prison system to county resources, transferring the state’s legal obligation to already overcrowded local jails and stressed law enforcement agencies — without fully paying for the increased burden.
How to bungle dismantling Vernon
A few weeks ago, I published a piece in Fox and Hounds that not only called for the disincorporation of Vernon but outlined a future for that area. The proposal offered a resolution to the uncertainty and fear that both business and labor have regarding life after dissolution of the city. Shortly after the article appeared
here, Assembly Speaker John Perez introduced a companion bill to his AB 46, the disincorporation bill. The new bill, AB 781, would create – guess what! – a Vernon Community Services District, the special district advocated in that article here.
My proposal placed the governance of the CSD in the
hands of a board elected by business owners and workers. As it now stands, the city of Vernon is governed by a self-perpetuating city council elected by 67 voters, nearly all of whom owe their jobs, their cheap rent and their right to live in Vernon to the little clique that has run Vernon for over a century. The people who have the greatest stake in Vernon, the 1800 business owners and the 50,000 workers who commute into town each day, have no voice whatsoever in Vernon’s governance.
In the proposal, the CSD would continue to provide all of
the same services that business now receives from the city. That’s important because one of the main objections to disincorporation is about the loss of city services. Among the complaints are the fears that they will lose their cheap power rates, that the fire department they laud as one that couldn’t be better will be disbanded, and that police protection will deteriorate if the city is dismantled. Under my proposal, all those services would be provided by the CSD. There would be no change.
Over 2 Million Retail Employees Will Benefit From AB 28X – E-Fairness Legislation
It is important to correct several claims made by Bill LaMarr in his post on this website. He argued that small businesses will be harmed by e-fairness; actually, small businesses have been harmed by the lack of e-fairness.
E-fairness means that all retail sales are treated the same. Whether a product is sold in a store or online, tax collection is treated the same way. Unfortunately, online-only retailers don’t collect the sales taxes, while their competition is required to do so. As a result, they are able to offer a much cheaper price than brick-and-mortar stores for the exact same product. For over a decade, small and large businesses have been asking for e-fairness at the federal level. More recently, e-fairness has been pursued at the state level. As e-commerce continues to grow, it is important to update our laws so they are consistent with 21st Century commerce.
Without it, small businesses that create jobs, pay their taxes and invest in the community will be forced to close their doors. More and more often, California employers are treated like showrooms where customers come and test out their products and then purchase online from an out-of-state, online-only retailer in order to avoid paying sales tax. Customers are actually required to remit the sales tax from these purchases to the state tax board, but most do not.