The Prop 55 Conundrum
Proposition 55, which would extend the Prop 30 taxes on high-income Californians for another 12 years, renews a puzzle that California has been facing for more than a decade. That puzzle: Should we go for a small temporary tax increase that plugs a budget problem temporarily? Or hold out for smarter tax reform that produces […]
More Californians Should Retire Like Vin Scully
If only more Californians could retire like Vin. Vin Scully, that is. The Hall of Fame announcer for the Los Angeles Dodgers will call his last game this Sunday, October 2, a month shy of his 89th birthday. That retirement has touched off a national celebration of Scully’s announcing mastery, his storytelling methods, and his […]
Go Ahead, Russia. Hack Away at California’s Elections.
There’s justifiable worry about whether Russian hackers might disrupt American elections, particularly in crucial swing states, and create questions of legitimacy, or even crisis, around the presidency. But in California, there’s no reason to worry. Russia can go ahead and hack our elections. It won’t make any difference. California has made our elections hack-proof—not because […]
What Would Legislative Democrats Do With Two Thirds?
Improbably, I find myself living in the midst of the most interesting State Senate race in California. The Pasadena contest between Democrat Anthony Portantino and Republican Mike Antonovich. It’s not an easy choice. I know, like and respect both men. Portantino has been a reform-minded legislator, a good local mayor, and a very friendly accessible […]
Fighting Fire with Diversity
Californians like to brag about our diversity, how our mix of people of all races, ethnicities and origins produces a vital culture and economy. But we rarely talk about the other less glamorous role diversity plays in our state—as protection against disasters, both natural and manmade. California is a disaster-prone state, and when calamity strikes, […]
Labor Tries to Make Ballot Access Costlier
There is disingenuous, there is deceptive and then there is the labor-backed legislation that purports to reform the ballot initiative process. That bill, SB 1094, would impose a requirement that 5 percent of all signatures submitted to qualify statewide initiatives and referenda be gathered by volunteers. In a Sacramento Bee oped that was almost Trumpian […]
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 […]
Prop 54 Hates Your Mom and Apple Pie
The LA Times columnist George Skelton calls Prop 54 “a motherhood-and-apple-pie proposal if ever there was one” in that it supposedly limits the power of special interests. And Skelton adds: “This is the kind of measure that legendary reform Gov. Hiram Johnson and other California progressives had in mind when they established the state’s initiative […]
California Education is a Game of Chance
Californians may think we have a system of public education. But what we really have is a state system for rationing public education. I got a personal taste of this in the spring, when I took my five-year-old son to our local school district offices to determine his educational future. This being California, the determination […]
Loretta Sanchez, Negotiator
It’s rare that a political candidate shows herself to be not up to the job in a debate negotiation. But Congresswoman Loretta Sanchez demonstrated just that in the back-and-forth over debates in her race for U.S. Senate against Attorney General Kamala Harris. Sanchez badly trails Harris, so she needed as many debates as she could […]