Prop 54: Positive Reform
On Friday, Joe Mathews took to this page to argue that Proposition 54, demanding more transparency in the legislative process, is ill advised. He took on a George Skelton column in the L.A. Times that equated Prop 54 with motherhood and apple pie, claiming mothers would object to the goals of the initiative. However, I think the […]
Why Would Parents Want to Know Anything about LCAPs?
The LA Times reported recently on a poll from USC and Stanford institutes showing that more than half of voters had never heard of read about the Local Control Funding Formula. This is treated as bad news, since LCFF is supposed to make parent engagement a priority. And the funding in LCFF is supposed to […]
UC Stays On Top
The polls are in, and the University of California dominates—in academics, not football. UC Berkeley and UCLA sit atop the new U.S. News and World Report rankings of the top public universities in the nation. Six of the top ten public universities are UC schools, and all nine UC campuses made the list of America’s […]
Public Pension Problem is Not Old News
A couple of years ago, sitting on a panel discussing the recent election and looking at future policy and political topics, I raised the public employee pension issue. A public union representative on the panel dismissed the issue as “old news.” Not hardly. Yesterday, the Los Angeles Times began a series put together in cooperation with […]
Is It Time To Reconsider California’s Initiative System?
On November 8, 2016 Californians will once again have the opportunity to not only elect (or re-elect) local, state, and federal representatives, but also to directly participate in generating public policy. While California’s initiative system is often romanticized, its inflexibility often leads California down a path ripe with unintended consequences and few options for fixing past mistakes. […]
The Great Stampede of 2016
In certain parts of America, Baptist churches still hold “cowbell” services that offer churchgoers a Sunday succession of clergy sharing brief vignettes intended to motivate and inspire their congregation to commit to lives of public service. If a shepherd addresses his flock beyond the allotted time, a moderator rings a cowbell, which is the preacher’s […]