Redistricting Panel Still an Improvement
If you want some chuckles, watch the various pundits reel in
horror from the news that the state’s new citizens’ redistricting commission
won’t be releasing a second draft set of maps for California’s legislative and
congressional districts.
A group of black activists is calling
it an "egregious decision to perform their public charge without public
scrutiny."
The Sacramento Bee’s Dan Walters warns
darkly of the problem of expecting amateurs — i.e., real California voters
– to deal with something as complicated as redistricting and suggests the state
would be better off if the state Supreme Court picked up the pieces of the
commission’s likely failed effort.
And Tony Quinn, one of my cohorts on this blog, declared
Monday that "the Citizens Redistricting Commission has decided to exclude
citizens from the process."
CalPERS’ Sophomoric Economic Study Can’t Hide Debts, Losses and Costs
Seeking
to divert attention from its billion dollar losses and huge unfunded
liabilities, this week CalPERS released its own study of the fund’s economic
impact seeking credit for the $26 billion in economic activity generated by its
expensive and generous retirement benefits.
Of course the economic impact
would be exactly the same if General Motors, Boeing or IBM sent the same $12
billion in payments out of a $230 billion pension fund, so there is no credit
to be earned for merely sending out government checks.
Indeed, the
downstream recipients do not care if the money their customers use came from a
public pension fund, a child’s lemonade stand or a jar buried in the back yard. Not surprisingly, the CalPERS sponsored study
glosses over the fact that most of the money they distribute actually comes
from taxpayers, either as employer contributions to the program or as
additional payments imposed to cover staggering pension debts.
These
days across California, employee contributions to public pension costs range
from commonly nothing, up to occasionally 35%, making most of the money in the state
and local government funds the returns on taxpayer contributions. In addition, CalPERS imposes a surcharge on
government agencies to pay for its stock market losses, spectacularly failed
real estate investments and reports on its corrupt former board members and
executives. Taxpayers will be paying
these surcharges for more than 30 years, spreading those costs and huge losses
over two generations of taxpayers.
Bargaining with Mr. Fox
Joel Fox,
proprietor of this web site, has a suggestion for a constitutional amendment
that’s at least half-right. The power of referendum should be extended to cover
tax increases.
What’s so good about it? First off,
the referendum is the one direct democratic power that should be used more.
Referendums have been filed fewer than 80 times in the history of California –
because the short time period (90 days) and high number of signatures make it
far too costly and onerous. (If you want to reverse a law, you’re better off
just doing an initiative – since you have to collect the same number of
signatures and get more time – 150 days). And California has limited the kinds
of laws that can be subject to referendum.
Fox is right – we should end that.
California should reorient its ballot system around referendums – or votes on
the product of the legislature. Not just taxes but other kinds of legislation –
perhaps even budgets – should be subject to referendum.
Is True ADA Reform Possible?
Is true ADA reform possible? Apparently, not, at least not in the hands of the Senate Judiciary Committee. The committee, which is made up of three Democrats and two Republicans, had an opportunity to help stop abusive ADA lawsuits in California, but voted down SB 783 by State Senator Bob Dutton. This simple measure would have allowed businesses 120 days to fix alleged ADA violations before a lawsuit could proceed. Senator Dutton was even willing to reduce that window down to 60 days. This would have stopped the vast majority of these drive-by ADA lawsuits that are being filed in California.
However, Senators Noreen Evans, Mark Leno and Ellen Corbett did not feel that was reasonable (only Senators Tom Harman and Sam Blakeslee supported SB 783). The majority argued that when SB 1608 was passed and signed into law in the fall of 2008, a compromise had been reached on ADA lawsuits and that it has not been given a chance to work. Corbett actually argued that it is working and that there is no need to even consider SB 783. She argued this despite the fact that one of the people testifying at the hearing was a businessman who has been sued twice since the passage of SB 1608 and was even CASp certified (certified access specialist), which means he hired a specialist to ensure his business was compliant. Currently there are approximately 300 CASps and more than 1,400,000 businesses in California. Doing the math, it’s not hard to figure out why businesses have a difficult time ensuring they are in compliance.