Author: Joel Fox

Nero, they say, fiddled while Rome burned. Are Los Angeles officials doing the same?

Civic leaders and columnists are lashing out at inaction by the city in the face of record deficits. The current deficit is over $200-million with a $485-million deficit forecast for the next fiscal year. Bond rating agencies have notified city officials L.A. bond ratings are on the verge of tumbling down if no action is taken to deal with the problem.

Mayor Antonio Villaraigosa called for 1,000 city jobs to be eliminated. The City Council put off action on job cuts for 30 days. The delay was imposed not to examine if these particular job cuts are the right ones to make but to stall making the cuts at all. And, what of these proposed job cuts? Is the mayor going after only public employees not covered by a recently negotiated contract? Are the cuts real or are some workers simply being moved to agencies funded by Special Funds instead of the General Fund?

The split roll property tax measures appear dead this election cycle.

Since the economic recession and the collapse of tax revenue in California government treasuries, commentators and activists pointed to a split roll property tax as a likely device to raise revenue. Under a split roll, Proposition 13 would be altered to tax business property under a different formula than residential property.

Two split roll initiatives were filed aimed at the November 2010 ballot. One would require reassessment of commercial property to full market value on a regular basis; the second raised the property tax rate on business property.

The chief backer of these initiatives was the California Teachers Association. CTA has floated a number of split roll proposals in recent years. Despite gathering signatures for a split roll tax in 2004 and 2006 the petitions were never filed and the measures never appeared on the ballot.

(with apologies to Mary and her little lamb)

Carly had a demon sheep
With eyes red as hot coal
And everywhere that Carly went,
The demon sheep would go

There it was on You Tube one day,
One of those new campaign rules,
And it made the journalists laugh and play
To see the political fools

In my piece last week discussing concerns with the Low Carbon Fuel Standard, I did not dismiss alternative fuels. Yet, David Crane’s response to my article seems to indicate that I was promoting the exclusive use of oil for transportation fuel into the distant future. I was focused on the present. I argued that the LCSF standards would add to the cost of fuel prices in the here and now, especially when alternative fuels are not ready to meet demands.

David argued that my position banks on the scenario that oil prices would not go up. Oil prices will undoubtedly rise with more demand, new taxation, and with limits put on exploration. Altering the attitude against exploration and preventing tax increases on oil production would lessen the pressure to increase costs.

However, there is also no question oil prices will be raised immediately if the CARB regulations take effect. Limiting the importation of oil by affixing a “carbon intensity” measure to the fuel transported to the California market has to affect the cost of the fuel.

What an entertaining week! No, I’m not talking about the re-emergence of the LOST TV series. I’m talking about the dramatic and open fratricide practiced by high profile Republican candidates in California.

“Cutting up” opposition candidates is part of the political game. However, resorting to the use of a “wood chipper” to accomplish this goal takes the analogy to the extreme, as Meg Whitman consultant Mike Murphy did in his infamous email referring to the damage Whitman could inflict on gubernatorial political rival Steve Poizner.

Poizner running off to the FBI over the offending email brought the first of what appears to be a weeklong rush to the thesaurus to find words that match “weird” and “bizarre” to attach to Republican political tactics. Attorney General and would be governor Jerry Brown received one of Poizner’s complaint letters. He’s probably using the letter to cover up his month so we can’t see his smile while he says he’ll keep an investigation alive until, oh let’s say, the first week in June.

The battle over California’s greenhouse gas regulations has shifted to the federal courts in an effort to slow down and shed more light on the issues surrounding the first in the nation mandates for cleaner, low-carbon fuels. Those regulations need to be vetted to understand what they mean to California consumers and the economy.

The way CARB regulations and other attacks on oil production are shaping up both consumers and the economy are bound to suffer.

Yesterday’s filing in the U.S. District Court in Fresno was the third lawsuit to challenge Low Carbon Fuel Standard regulations adopted by the California Air Resources Board.

The National Petrochemical & Refiners Association, American Trucking Associations, The Center for North American Energy Security and the Consumer Energy Alliance claim in the lawsuit that the regulations interfere with interstate commerce and do little to reduce the country’s greenhouse gases.

Governor Arnold Schwarzenegger complained that the legislature felt “no urgency” to get behind his job creation program in California. Schwarzenegger made the statement at the Quallion Company in Sylmar yesterday promoting one of the five legs of his job creation program, exempting sales tax on green manufacturing. Quallion develops and manufactures customized lithium ion batteries.

The governor said California couldn’t wait for Washington to help with job creation or for the economy to fully recover. California has to make moves to increase jobs. He has proposed a training and hiring incentive program, streamlining regulations, extending the homebuyer credit and eliminating frivolous lawsuits against small businesses in addition to eliminating sales tax on green tech manufacturing equipment.

The same day that Dan Walters questioned in his column whether or not green jobs can save the state’s economy, Secretary of Labor and Workforce Development Agency, Vickie Bradshaw, was on hand at the press conference pumping up the green job sector. She noted that California has more employers involved in the green economy and receives 60% of all venture capitol aimed at “green” job creation.

Looking at the PPIC poll ‘s score of the governor’s race in the Republican primary, some might wonder if Steve Poizner is finished. I’m not one of them.

Even though Poizner is 30 points behind Meg Whitman this is no time to close the books on the campaign. Voters don’t pay close attention until a month or so out from Election Day. The recent heralded victory of Republican Scott Brown in the Massachusetts U.S. Senate race is only the most recent example of a candidate coming from way down in the polls to snatch victory. Brown’s winning surge occurred over the last ten days of the campaign.

Richard Riordan, the former mayor of Los Angeles, was the prohibitive favorite to capture the 2002 Republican gubernatorial nomination. One month before the March primary election, Riordan was 33 points ahead of eventual winner Bill Simon.

The newly released PPIC poll shows not only do respondents support education funding, but also some of that education money should be spent on voters.
Delving into the poll reveals the decision-making by the voters on education funding is made on false assumptions.

The poll reveals voters are willing by a two-to-one margin to raise taxes for the purpose of maintaining school funding at current levels. At the same time, by 56% to 40% voters said that they did not think taxes should be part of the budget plan. That seeming dichotomy is not as glaring as first supposed when you look at the questions that prompted the responses.

The question, which rejected taxes as part of the budget plan, was related to the governor’s proposals expressed in his State of the State address. In that speech, the governor said he would not cut education. If voters believe from the speech that education is to be maintained, then those same voters who said they would vote a tax increase to maintain education might not feel the need.