The Services Employees International Union Local 1000 announced 74-percent of their voting members authorized union leaders to call a strike. While the Local President Yvonne Walker said the strike vote was about a lack of contract, the suspicion here is that pay cuts through mandatory furlough days held great sway with those who voted for a strike. How a potential strike would play with California private sector workers suffering about 11% unemployment is not a sure thing. Me thinks if a strike occurs it would not go over too well with the general public ….
One wonders what’s on the mind of Attorney General Jerry Brown these days with some of the current political news. Brown, as governor, boosted public employees collective bargaining rights. How would he stand against the empowered public employees and their strike threats and battles over pension reform, which must be tackled by the next governor? Given that Brown is paddling that canoe of his toward the middle recently, while needing to curry favor with the public workers for a gubernatorial run, his position on public employees issues should be interesting ….
As will be his take on the tax commission proposals. You see, Brown was a strong advocate of a flat tax when he ran for president. One of the key ingredients discussed by the Commission on the 21st Century Economy is a flat or flatter income tax to reduce tax volatility. The flat tax has taken some shots from left-leaning commissioners, some of whom have predicted Democratic legislators would not go along with such a plan. Where do you stand on the flat tax now, Jerry? ….
Timing may be right for the tax commission restructuring plans to succeed. Looking at California history, it seems that major changes to the tax system occurs roughly every 30-40 years or so. The effort to allow property taxes to be locally controlled, something called separation of sources by the policy wonks, was initiated by a commission about 1903. About 30 years later, the Depression brought about big changes in the tax code with the advent of the sales tax and income tax. Forty years after that Proposition 13 shook up state and local financing. And, here we are 30-plus years after Proposition 13 with another tax commission suggesting major reforms and the governor calling a special session of the legislature to consider them….
And, finally, a tip of the hat to the guys over at Calbuzz in their analysis of what’s wrong with the Democrats’ strategy in the legislature. Critical point number one they raised was to scold Democratic leaders on the notion “that policy is somehow separate from politics.” That is the exact Lesson Number One I teach my students at Pepperdine Graduate School of Public Policy. If you learn nothing else in the class as students of public policy I tell them, understand this: You cannot separate politics from policy.