Just minutes ago, California’s Applicant Review Panel completed
its work selecting its pool of 60 finalists for California’s first-ever
Citizens Redistricting Commission. The pool, consisting of 20
Democratic applicants, 20 Republicans, and 20 "others," now advance to the Legislative Strikes phase of the selection process.

The 60 finalists are a diverse group. In
the battle of educational institutions, the UC system beat out the Cal
State system 33 to 13. Ivy Leagues schools have 9 finalists, USC has 6,
Standford has 5 and our sister institution Claremont Graduate
University has two. (Some applicants graduated from more than one
college or university, and are thus counted more than once).

In terms of income, one applicant reported earning less than $35,000
last year, 9 earned between $35,000 and $75,000, 20 earned between
$75,000 and $125,000, 22 earned between $125,000 and $250,000, and 8
earned more than $250,000.

A
document sent to PublicCEO.com reveals that the city of Bell received
nearly $1 million of federal money in the fiscal year ended June 30,
2009 alone (see attached document). 

A
bulk of the federal money received by Bell was from the CDBG program
which is intended to provide assistance for low-income housing, among
other things. 

Did
the City use this money to help provide low income housing or did it
instead use the money to pad its highly paid administrators salaries?

What a gap we have in the thinking of California’s academic types and business leaders about whether companies are fleeing the state because of high taxes, over-regulation and general hostility to commercial enterprises.

The Public Policy Institute of California (PPIC) has updated a report about companies leaving California that concludes the exodus is exaggerated. The San Francisco-based think tank says that between 1992 and 2006, jobs leaving the state never accounted for more than 2.3 percent of job losses in any given year. So, folks, don’t worry.

However, for two years in a row Chief Executive magazine found California to be the worst state in the nation in which to do business. Said one CEO, "California is terrible. Even when we’ve paid their high taxes in full, they still treat every conversation as adversarial. It’s the most difficult state in the nation." The magazine called California the "Venezuela of North America."

The Legislature may
vote on a legitimate (if not balanced) budget proposal in the next
couple weeks. Or it may not. But in any event the lack of a budget for
nearly the entire first fiscal quarter should not prevent us from
war-gaming the budget for the next fiscal year.

Jerry Brown has said on many occasions that he would only raise taxes with a vote of the people. At a recent editorial board he floated the idea of a special election next spring (Joel Fox predicted
May 17, 2011, to coincide with the LA mayoral election) to "tee up
some key decisions," presumably meaning voter approval of tax increases
tied to a budget. If Prop 25 passes in November, the Legislature could approve a budget by a simple majority vote. But
wouldn’t he still need a two-thirds vote to place a tax increase on the
ballot?

Maybe not.

Voters are waiting …  waiting for something to break open this governor’s race. The Field Poll shows the governor’s race is dead even. Since the two gubernatorial candidates have been within the margin of error throughout the summer, today’s Field Poll doesn’t show much change.

The Brown campaign might say that since they are up on the air now they are turning things around, but in reality, the race has been flat and I suspect it will stay that way until the next turning point being the first debate on Tuesday at UC Davis.

The even poll puts more pressure on the candidates to perform well during the debate and the closeness of the race may bring more attention and interest from the voters than the voters seemed to have shown in this race so far.

Due to "Alice in Wonderland" accounting methods, the amount that
taxpayers owe to provide pensions for local and state government
employees is much larger – perhaps an extra $2.5 trillion – than
government officials have let on, according to an economic advisor to
Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger speaking at a Securities and Exchange
Commission (SEC) hearing in San Francisco on Tuesday.

"State and local governments utilize a misleading method for
reporting the size of public pension obligations," said David Crane.
For example, an annual obligation of $30,000 for 25 years for a
government employee’s pension is projected to cost the government
$320,000, while the same $30,000/year, 25-year obligation in the form
of a bond is projected to be $425,000. "Two identical and unconditional
obligations owed by the same government are valued at different
amounts. The answer lies in the Alice in Wonderland world of government
pension accounting that allows governments to hide liabilities."

Government officials justify the lower obligation for the pension
based on the earnings they hope to receive by investing the money.

You probably have better things to do with your time than crunching numbers gathered from dozens of political Facebook fan pages. But this is exactly what our social media strategists love to do in their spare time (it’s a little geeky, I know).

Our team recently did such an analysis on the Facebook fan pages of the upcoming California ballot initiatives. And, without spending too much time, we discovered something worth considering: ballot initiatives that enjoy a high level of popular appeal have a significantly higher number of Facebook fans than those dealing with more typically policy related matters. The table below summarizes number of Facebook fans for the various Yes and No initiative campaigns on the California November ballot. It becomes clear that the "sexier" an issue is culturally, the higher the level of social media engagement.

The
National Bureau of Economic Research announced that the recession that began in
December of 2007 ended in June of 2009. While the economic contraction lasted
only 18 months, job losses in California have lasted for twice as long.

The
peak of California employment was in July 2007. Through August of 2010, total
nonfarm employment continued to drop, although the major losses seem to have
abated since last December.

Although the state travel
industry has shown notable gains in 2010, we’re not out of the woods yet.
True, the number of passengers flying through California’s top 10
airports is up 5 percent in 2010, and the number of hotel rooms sold through
July increased 7.5 percent over last year, but we can’t afford to getcomplacent about sustained economic recovery.

To
mitigate future economic
downturns and thrive, it’s important we think of investments over
thelong haul. For the California travel industry, we’ve been
diversifying
our tourism marketing efforts as a long-term investment, striking a
balancebetween investments in our high-return domestic markets and
lucrative
international markets, whose travelers tend to stay longer, spend more
and
represent the highest growth potential long-term.

Recent
statistics prove this strategy is paying off. Although many destinations have
cut back on marketing international travel, leaner and meaner approaches have
enabled California to stay in the game globally. This has been critical, as a
rebound in international arrivals this year is expected to outpace the domestic
visitor rebound.