Author: Joel Fox

Under the shadow of the public employee protests roiling Wisconsin, the California Foundation for Fiscal Responsibility and other non-profit groups held a one-day "Boot Camp" tackling the issues of benefits to public employees in California.

While the major Wisconsin issue of repealing collective bargaining for public workers was not on the Boot Camp agenda, the meeting dealt with the costs of public employee benefits and the burden they will impose on local and state government budgets.

The Boot Camp was a working session for the 200 attendees in Irvine and 350 following online made up of local government public officials and others interested in the issue, not a rally against public employees. "This is not partisan and not ideological, this is based on numbers," said Jack Dean, the publisher of the website Pension Tsunami, which gathers information around the country on the public pension issue.

Dean said the system has to be fixed for both the worker and the taxpayers. Current employees will lose benefits if nothing is fixed, he said, and it is unfair to taxpayers because they have to guarantee the benefits.

At the request of Governor Jerry Brown, Congresswoman Jane
Harman has postponed her resignation from the House of Representatives for two
weeks to allow the governor to consolidate the election for her replacement with
the statewide special election Brown hopes to call. The move makes sense given
the low turnouts in special elections.

On Tuesday, two special elections occurred in the state with
Republican Sharon Runner winning the 17^th State Senate seat and Democrat
Ted Lieu capturing the 28^th State Senate seat. But the turnout in
both elections was miserable.

Quick calculations based on the reported vote counts (so
far) and the number of registered voters in each district shows about an
11-percent turnout in the Lieu race to fill the seat of the late Senator Jenny
Oropeza; and close to a 13-percent turnout in the Runner election in which she
took over the seat previously held by her husband, George, who moved on to the
State Board of Equalization.

Threats to major businesses are becoming a key strategy for those who support Jerry Brown’s budget solution. Businesses have been warned quietly that if a June special election does not occur, or if it comes off but the tax extensions fail, there will be renewed efforts to pass an oil severance tax and/or a split roll property tax on commercial property. As reported on the website Educated Guess, under the headline “Watch out, biz, if taxes lose in June,” Senator Joe Simitian more publically suggested oil severance tax or split roll initiatives if the June taxes fail.

Frankly, certain spending interests may proceed with an oil severance tax or split roll whether taxes are passed in June or not. Putting aside the merits of Brown’s tax extension policy for a moment, however, let’s question this strategy of pursuing an oil severance tax or split roll.

What makes the supporters of such taxes so confident that voters will rally around these tax increases?

As California and states across the nation struggle with gaping budget deficits, it’s probably a good time to return to basics and ask some essential questions. One I’ve been contemplating: How much does it cost us to maintain a creaking, outmoded mid-twentieth century Industrial Age governmental structure well into the second decade of the twenty-first century Information Age?

The eight-hundred pound gorilla of this question is civil service, an antique way of paying government professionals that, like our pension system, is completely out of alignment with the rest of our economy. If we want our government to perform economically, then we need to pay its employees for how well they perform—like we do in the rest of our highly competitive global economy.

That is grist for a longer discussion; today I want to consider a more modest idea that I heard suggested that will be linked to setting performance standards and pay: internet government services ratings.

Describing himself as the Rip Van Winkle of California politics, Governor Jerry Brown, now back in the governorship after a long absence, was aggressively selling his budget plan to 1500 members and guests of the Los Angeles Chamber of Commerce last night.

Brown was looking for business support to help convince Republicans to get tax measures – he called them “revenue extensions” – on the ballot and to help get the tax extensions passed. He said earlier in the day, “It’s absolutely crucial that the people in business … get behind the effort to fix the mess in Sacramento.”

When asked at an airport news conference earlier in the day how he would convince the businesses of the need to pass the tax measures, Brown responded he would argue “stability,” adding that Californians should not “create undue turbulence” by defeating the tax measures thus requiring more budget cuts.

Brown insisted business would go along with his plan because what he was proposing was reasonable and that the chamber was reasonable.

Here’s what I got out of Jerry’s Brown press conference
yesterday: the public employee union position is currently prevailing in the
Horseshoe (the governor’s suite of offices.)

Governor Brown believes his spending cut and tax extension
plan should go on the ballot pretty much as is. Adding long-term budget fixes
like pension reform and spending limits would weigh down the ballot too much so
that all the measures, including taxes, might fall of their own weight.

The unions, of course, don’t want spending limits or pension
reforms and Brown doesn’t appear to want them on the ballot, either.

The State Board of Education holds a hearing on the Parent Trigger law today and how the board reacts will be a first test of the Brown Administration’s view on school reform. Last month, Brown, in one of his first acts as governor, dumped a majority of the 11-member education board, removing advocates of the Parent Trigger and replacing them with new members, a number with ties to the teachers’ unions.

Teachers’ union officials have opposed the new Parent Trigger law. The Parent Trigger allows for major changes to be made to an under-performing school, including converting the troubled school to a charter school, if more than 50-percent of the parents sign a petition. One teacher union official complained that the law amounted to "mob rule."

However, some parents see the Parent Trigger as a way to shake up a failed school and seek a better education for their children. In Compton, 63-percent of the parents signed a Parent Trigger petition seeking change at the McKinley Elementary School. A heated battle over the petitions broke out with charges of signature tampering shouted by both sides.

Initiative proponents and consultants often calculate in which election they would like their ballot measures to appear. So when I heard that a bill in the California legislature would eliminate the February California presidential primary for 2012, I wondered if a little politics was at play.

The bill’s author, Assemblyman Paul Fong (D-Cupertino), insists that the reason for eliminating the February primary and joining the presidential primary to the primaries of state officials in June is a cost saving measure. Keeping the February presidential primary would make three statewide elections in 2012. And, this after a possible special election this summer, supposedly a non-election year.

However, in initiative-mad California, eliminating a potential election day can change the strategy for certain ballot measure proponents who, like grand master chess players, often make their move to file an initiative depending on which election the proposition will appear.

Other states are looking to get rid of early primaries that were created last presidential cycle so the states would have a relevant role in nominating presidential candidates. The Los Angeles Times’ Mark Z. Barabak yesterday had a good synopsis of the potential changes coming for the 2012 presidential primaries.

We are living in the age of Reagan said presidential historian Douglas Brinkley at a panel discussing Ronald Reagan’s legacy Wednesday at the Ronald Reagan Presidential Library.

Richard Reeves, author and historian, was more succinct. “Ronald Reagan is still president,” he said, meaning the country is living with a political philosophy set out by Reagan. In the same way, Reeves continued, Franklin Roosevelt was president for 30 years.

Reeves said Reagan changed American politics by reversing the populist political attitude of one that believed business was the villain to making government the adversary. Reeves called this an “incredible political achievement”

As part of the celebration of Ronald Reagan’s 100th birthday on February 6, the Ronald Reagan Presidential Foundation has partnered with four universities around the country to examine the life and times of the 40th president. The first session was coordinated with USC’s School of Policy, Planning and Development.