Author: Joel Fox

The maneuver in the Senate Appropriations Committee
yesterday to undercut the referendum on the Amazon tax legislation is a glaring
example of the contempt with which legislators hold the people’s right of initiative
and referendum. The process is an integral part of the checks and balances
system giving the people control over their government. Clearly, some
legislators don’t want the voters making decisions at the ballot box on actions
taken by the legislature.

Amazon.com challenged a new law that requires online
retailers to collect sales tax. A referendum was filed to put the issue before
the voters. According to the Los
Angeles Times, signature gatherers "already are off the streets, having met
their goal well before the Sept. 27 deadline for turning in completed
petitions."

To foil this process, Senator Loni Hancock pulled what
amounts to a parliamentary parlor trick by gutting a bill and substituting
language similar to the wording in the original tax law calling the revised
bill an "urgency" measure. The constitution declares that an urgency measure,
which requires a two-thirds vote to pass, is immune to a referendum effort.

The combination of
a newly drawn congressional district in a heavily Democratic area along with
California’s experimental top-two primary probably means Republican voters will
determine whether Congressman Howard Berman or Congressman Brad Sherman will
represent the newly drawn 30^th Congressional District.

Fourteen year
Congressional veteran Sherman will likely face off with Berman, who has been in
Congress twice as long, unless either one decides to seek a different seat,
which appears unlikely.

The two
heavyweights have plenty of connections to the San Fernando Valley where the
new seat is drawn.  They each have big
name supporters in their corner. Sherman recently touted the endorsement of
former President Bill Clinton while Berman received fundraising support from
the DreamWorks trio of Steven Spielberg, Jeffrey Katzenberg and David Geffen.

Results of the Deliberative Poll from a couple of months ago
were revealed yesterday and they seemed to track the feelings Californians
express in more standardized polling.

The poll was conducted over a weekend in Torrance with 400
citizens, a sampling of the voter population, taking part. The participants
were polled at the beginning of the exercise. Over the course of the weekend
they took part in breakout groups, meeting occasionally as a committee of the whole
to hear discussions on four separate issues from experts in State-Local Reform,
the Initiative Process, Representation and Taxation & Fiscal Policy. They
were then polled at the end of the weekend.

For the purposes of this column, I will focus on the
Taxation and Fiscal Policy section since I served on the expert panel in that
category.

A message gleaned from the polls on the taxation issue might
be: Waste Not, Want Not.

It would seem a conservative firebrand from a generation ago and the public defender of the state’s most liberal city would have little in common. However, on political strategy, at least, Howard Jarvis, the prime mover behind Proposition 13 and Jeff Adachi, San Francisco Public Defender and newly minted mayoral candidate, made similar political moves with like motivations in mind.

With 40 minutes to spare before the deadline to register as a candidate for mayor, Adachi filed his papers for the office bringing to 16 the number of candidates who seek to be San Francisco’s mayor.

Likewise, Howard Jarvis ran for mayor of Los Angeles in 1977. Both men took on the mayoral runs with a similar purpose in mind – not necessarily to be elected mayor but to use the candidate spotlight to pound the bully pulpit for governance changes each thought was essential. Adachi wants to reform the public pension system. Jarvis’s goal was to change the state property tax formula.

The powers that be in Sacramento are focusing on the job
dilemma in California with pronouncements this week from both Governor Jerry
Brown and Senate President Pro Tem Darrell Steinberg. This follows the focus
put on economic policy by Lt. Gov. Gavin Newsom a couple of weeks ago.

Attention is being put where it belongs to help California
reduce its staggering unemployment rate and stifling business climate.

The question is: Will there be follow through to make
positive changes?

While some wonder if there is anything state government can
do while the country is in the grips of a national recession, other states have
managed to keep unemployment away from the sky-high figures with which California
suffers. Positive steps can be taken at the state level.

The governor appointed former Bank of America executive
Michael Rossi as a jobs czar. His mission is to advise the governor on ways to
make job creation less difficult through regulatory reform or legislative
actions. He will also try to create a cooperative atmosphere between business
and labor working toward the goal of increased business and job creation.

This article was first published in
today’s Los Angeles
Daily News

Despite
alarm raised in many corners over costly new regulations, the California
Legislature is pursuing AB 52 to clamp new regulations on health insurance
premiums.

The
purpose of the bill, according to the author, Assemblyman Mike Feuer, is to
control dramatically rising health care costs by giving state regulators the
authority to deny or moderate proposed insurance premium increases.

Once
again a measure that purportedly is designed to protect consumers ignores the
cost of doing business. Ironically, the increased cost of regulation will find
its way to the consumers either through increased costs or reduced services.

Los Angeles Mayor Antonio Villaraigosa addressed the
Sacramento Press Club yesterday offering a "grand bargain" of revenue increases
and tax cuts to fix the fiscal condition of the state but the core of the plan
dealt with significant dismantling of Proposition 13.

The 1978 property tax reform measure set a firm property tax
rate, and limited yearly property tax increases while requiring a two-thirds
vote of the legislature to raise taxes and a two-thirds vote of the people for
some local tax increases.

Villaraigosa proposed undoing many parts of the proposition removing
business property from property tax protection, lowering the two-thirds vote to
simple majority votes for legislative tax increases and lowering the two-thirds
vote for local property parcel taxes dedicated to education. Parcel tax
increases would be new taxes on both business and residential property.

He also called for a tax on services that could raise $28
billion.

Despite radio commercials that try to scare voters not to
sign ballot petitions, signatures calling for a referendum on the so-called
Amazon tax law requiring out-of-state Internet companies to collect sales taxes
from California buyers are piling up. The necessary signatures to put the
referendum on the ballot will likely be in hand well before the 90-day
deadline.

The eager response on an opportunity to stop a tax comes at
a time when tax talk may come back to the state capitol. Hoping for new
revenue, the state budget included a failsafe — a trigger to be pulled
mandating further cuts if billions in expected revenue does not show up.

Given the condition of the economy and the recent gyrations
of the stock market concern is that the hoped-for money will not materialize. A
rumor circulated around the Capitol yesterday that to avoid the "trigger" cuts,
the governor might call a special legislative session focused on taxation.