Election Ballot as Advisory Poll
Two separate California appellate court decisions last week – one directly, one indirectly – deal with the question that voting on state ballot measures can be used to simply get voters’ opinions. The court was directly dealing with the status of advisory measures in the case of Proposition 49 to upend the Citizens United case. […]
Don’t You Dare Ask the Voters for Their Opinions!
California faces a grave crisis that tears at the very fabric of our direct democracy: The state is about to ask California voters for their opinion. And you just can’t do that. It’s dangerous – as everyone from Gov. Brown to the Howard Jarvis Taxpayers Association has pointed out – to survey voters via a […]
The Serrano Decision: What Does it Mean, and Does Anybody Care?
Recent legislative activity, and a decision by a Los Angeles County Superior Court judge striking down teacher tenure laws because such laws deprive students of the right to a quality education, returned to prominence an important 40-year-old California Supreme Court decision declaring the then-existing school finance laws to be unconstitutional. In 1971, in Serrano v. […]
The Case for Adjustable Defined Benefits
Notwithstanding the fact that “adjustable defined benefits” might constitute an oxymoron, as a concept it represents the only way that defined benefit plans can be sustained. Rather than throwing new employees into individual 401K plans, while they effectively subsidize legacy defined benefits for veteran employees and retirees, why not adjust defined benefits down to a […]