It’s Today’s News: Pensions, Pensions, Pensions
Reading Friday’s news, I couldn’t help think of the union official who, sitting on a Capitol Weekly panel with me after the last General Election, said in response to my bringing up concerns on the pension issue: “That’s yesterday’s news.” Actually it is today’s news over and over and over again. In fact, there were three […]
Retention Elections for US Supreme Court Justices? No!
Following the SCOTUS decision on same-sex marriage, presidential candidate Senator Ted Cruz is calling on retention elections for Supreme Court justices. I’m pretty certain that Cruz knows that it has zero chance of approval be 2/3 of the states, making it an easy bullet point to add to the platform. Cruz knows a bit about the Supreme […]
Attempts to Change Proposition 13 are Misguided
There’s been no shortage of attempts in recent years in the State Legislature to overhaul Proposition 13—California’s landmark initiative protecting homeowners and small business owners from out of control property taxes. Multiple bills have taken aim at the proposition, but the most popular among these bills pushes the so-called “split roll” property tax, which would […]
For a New Legislative Model Look to Texas
Would-be reformers have filed an initiative that, if adopted by voters, would make the California Legislature one of the largest – if not the largest – legislative bodies in the world. The Neighborhood Legislature Reform Act (NLRA) would require one Senator for every 10,000 Californians and one Assembly representative for every 5,000. This would mean […]