Author: Michael D. Antonovich

Releasing inmates is a threat to public safety and state taxpayers. Instead of releasing prisoners, Sacramento needs to cut the fat out of the state’s bloated bureaucracy.

While the number of Corrections Department administrators grew by 32% over the last four years, the inmate population grew by just 2% and the number of youth inmates fell by 41% while the Juvenile Justice System added 50% more administrators.

According to a University of Chicago study, for every criminal that remains behind bars, there are five or six fewer crimes reported. Bureau of Justice statistics show that stronger sentencing laws over the past 30 years – including Three Strikes — have clearly spared countless Americans from being assaulted, robbed, raped, and murdered. Violent crime has plunged by more than 59 percent since the mid-1990s — from 51 crimes of violence per 1,000 US residents in 1994 to 21 in 2005. In I973, 44 million crimes were committed. By 2007, that number dropped by nearly 23 million — even as the population grew by more than 75 million.

The budget deal that came out of the legislature was a missed opportunity. Taxpayers will have to pay increased taxes but will not get enough in return.

What is missing is a comprehensive package of structural reforms including eliminating or consolidating overlapping departments and high-paying political commissions — limiting stipends for members of necessary commissions to $150 per meeting. Also needed is a 2-year state budget, a part-time legislature and abolishing term limits.

Imposing one of the highest tax rates in the nation is a tax-and-spend orgy that further drives businesses, individuals and jobs out of state. It is also another raw deal for County and state taxpayers who are currently subsidizing excessive state spending, government growth, entitlement programs and over $1 billion a year in benefits for illegal aliens in Los Angeles County.

While there are some positive elements to the package such as an effort to control spending and to encourage business, particularly incentives to keep more movie shoots in their home grounds of Los Angeles County and all of California, in the end this package did not add up for the taxpayers.

The crisis our state faces in Sacramento highlights the need for structural reform. That includes a 2-year budget, a part-time legislature, an end to legislation that costs more to pass than the recipient receives – as well as an end to term limits.

A two-year budget provides local government a consistent funding stream for it to prepare its own financial agenda for public safety, schools, libraries and parks.

In addition, a part-time legislature would enable citizen lawmakers to bring valuable professional experience to the legislative process. Term limits have created instability to the process and an inexperienced legislature that is unable to govern effectively.

The MTA tax measure currently being championed by the City of Los Angeles is dead on arrival in many parts of Los Angeles County, and will not come close to meeting the two-thirds threshold for voter approval in November.

Placing a flawed sales tax measure on the ballot with no chance of passage is the ultimate waste of taxpayer dollars. My constituents, cities and unincorporated communities in the San Gabriel, San Fernando, Crescenta, Santa Clarita and Antelope Valleys–which make up 20% of the County’s population–have already begun registering their vocal opposition to the sales tax measure.

Our long-term transportation needs do require significant public investment in mass transit alternatives, as well as highway improvements, public-private partnerships, and other congestion relief measures like traffic signal synchronization, inland intermodal freight transfer facilities, highway-rail grade separations, and regionalization of air traffic to LA/Palmdale and Ontario Airports.