Excluding The Public: The Redistricting Commission Goes Dark
Running out of time, beset by rebellious consultants, and manipulated by partisans, the Citizens Redistricting Commission has decided to exclude citizens from the process. The Commission is going dark.
On Saturday, the Commission voted not to release a second set of draft redistricting maps to the press or the public on July 14 as promised. They also voted not to post maps of the districts they are drawing on their own redistricting website. Despite a $3 million budget and hundreds of thousands of dollars paid to their consultants, the consultants told them they had no time for public maps. Outside groups are being recruited for that task.
Their line drawing staff also has announced that the Commission must be done with its directions by July 20; they will accept no more directions on districts after that — despite the fact it is three and a half weeks until the Commission is supposed to adopt its final maps. This will allow for no public input on the final maps since their staff will have stopped working. California will get whatever districts their consultants concoct over the next nine days — like it or not.
Since the release of their first sets of maps on June 10, and resultant uproar from communities that felt ill treated, the Commission has tied itself in knots over racial districting, redrawing the Los Angeles and Bay Area urban cores over and over, while giving the back of its hand to the rest of the state. For much of suburban and rural California, their new districts are far worse than anything the legislature ever drew.
FIRST, They Want to Go After Business Property Taxes
Here’s the word and the sentence that stood out to me in
Steve Lopez’s Los Angeles Times weekend
column on Proposition 13: It would
make the most sense to go after commercial property taxes first, Villaraigosa said, since business has gotten the biggest
break.
Underline and circle the word FIRST in that statement by the
Los Angeles mayor. Seems to me the intent is to change the property tax system
for all property owners. They just want to do it in pieces and begin with
business property.
And, don’t fall for the idea that business got a bigger
break than homeowners under Proposition 13. A study from
a couple of years ago by former state Legislative Analyst Bill Hamm and
economist Jose Alberro stated:
Don’t look now, the Legislature is increasing your taxes
Just because state taxes weren’t extended by the
Legislature (or the voters) to close the state budget gap doesn’t mean the
Legislature is not planning to raise your taxes.
And when I write "Legislature," I’m including
Republicans.
Even as negotiations to temporarily extend sales,
income and vehicle taxes came a cropper, both the Assembly and Senate approved
legislation – by supermajority votes – moving tax increase proposals to the
opposite house.
These tax increases would not support trivial
programs like colleges and universities, trial courts or state parks. They go
to a core function of state government: subsidizing renewable energy and energy
efficiency programs and research.
Left, Right and Wrong on ‘Reform’ of Initiative Process
The good news: reform of the initiative process is finally
on the table in California. The bad news: the left and the right are getting
reform wrong.
There’s a
whiff of hypocrisy on both sides.
The left, which rails against the rich in most contexts,
loves the rich when it comes to the initiative process. It’s pushing bills that
add regulations and restrictions on signature gatherers that will make a
process that’s the province of very rich people and institutions the even more
exclusive province of super-rich people and institutions.
The right,
which claims to be worried about budget deficits and runaway spending, thinks
busting the budget is fine if it’s done by initiative. In particular, conservatives
are attacking common-sense changes that would force initiatives to live within
the budget, by requiring spending cuts when a measure mandates spending.