Approve ‘California WaterFix’ Project
Every day, I walk into the kitchen, turn on the faucet, and clean drinking water magically appears. It’s a miracle, really, and I’ll bet, like me, you don’t even think about it — the water always flows. Even in the years of drought we endured, good local water management and conservation got us through the […]
Legislative Wrap-Up Leaves Challenges Ahead for Small Businesses
With the conclusion of the first year of the 2017-2018 legislative session last week, small business owners are taking stock of the unfortunately long list of new taxes, mandates, and regulations passed this year. The supermajority party did not shy away from utilizing their 2/3 voting power in both the Senate and Assembly to raise […]
How Not to Solve a Housing Crisis
Sacramento just doesn’t get it. A housing crisis is not solved with new fees, bonds, and local government process overrides. For Senate Bill 3 (and 5), I provided the following abbreviated concerns on the Senate Floor: 1 — Let’s review the housing market over the last eleven years. In Orange County, the median price for […]
German Elections Are Easier Than California’s
For years, I’ve been arguing for reforms that would make California’s elections look like Germany’s. The political science description of a German election is that they have mixed-member districts with proportional representation. This suggestion is widely dismissed in California as too complicated and un-American, even though it was American political scientists who promoted it in […]
Tax-Happy Session Ends; Could Have Been Worse
With the gas tax increase, the cap-and-trade extension, which many call a tax increase because it raises revenue for the government to spend, and now the document tax to fund housing issues, this legislative session probably produced the most tax-happy lawmakers since the 1935 legislature created both a state income tax and a vehicle license […]
Small and Speedy Gonzales, California
Here’s a nasty bit of conventional wisdom: California’s small, rural places are desperate and doomed, with few economic prospects in an era when state policy favors the urban coastal mega-regions with high-paying jobs and reputations for world-class innovation. But if that’s true, how do you explain Gonzales? The small city of just 9,000 sits in […]
Five ways to reform CEQA without ruining the Earth or the middle class
When then-Gov. Ronald Reagan signed into law the California Environmental Quality Act in 1970, he and its authors could not have foreseen what the landmark legislation would become decades later: a law stretched so far beyond its original intent that it threatens to turn the Golden State’s economy to lead. Though conceived as a limited […]
It’s time for liberal Californians to take a chill pill
It’s time for liberal Californians – and that appears to be most of us – to take a chill pill. Their bitter disdain for President Donald Trump – and by extension everyone who voted for him, belongs to his party or even agrees with any of his bombastic pronouncements – is leading them into blind […]