The
City of Los Angeles’ gross receipts tax is a major obstacle to
attracting and retaining job creators in the City.

That’s why the
proposal by Mayor Antonio Villaraigosa and motion by the City Council
to provide a three-year tax holiday for new businesses is an important
step in the right direction. It also dramatically reinforces the need
for comprehensive tax reform to encourage all of our existing
businesses to retain and grow new jobs in Los Angeles.

Los Angeles has
the distinction of having the highest gross receipts tax rate of all 88
cities in L.A. County and one of the highest of any major city in the
United States. In our information-driven economy where customers are as
likely to be overseas or across the country as they are to be next
door, many businesses are very flexible about where they locate their
offices.

The battle is on over the state budget due July 1 and the fireworks could shed light on an initiative measure on the November ballot. Designated as Proposition 25, the measure would reduce the legislative vote requirement to pass a budget from two-thirds to a simple majority.

Assembly Speaker John Perez’s budget plan is built on borrowing, although the plan includes a tax increase the speaker believes he can make happen with a majority vote.  The attorney general says the plan may be in violation of state law. The treasurer says Wall Street will not buy into the plan because of the attorney general’s opinion letter.

The governor has gone out of his way to point out flaws in the plan, going as far as sending out a press release citing sharp attacks against the plan by newspapers around the state.

Dear Meg,

Your campaign is so terrific and represents such a public service to California that it’s hard to choose my favorite thing about it.

But I think I’ve finally decided. It’s your commitment to making sure that Californians hear all sides of the story.

It was particularly refreshing to see you defend this principle by asking the California Nurses Assn. for permission to mail information to their lists. I, like you, was surprised and outraged when the nurses’ union didn’t open up its list to you.

Sam Blakeslee’s strong showing in the June 22nd special election for California’s 15th Senate District has led to some of the least credible spin seen by political observers in many years – and that’s saying a great deal.

Republican Blakeslee received 49.5% of the vote in a four candidate field, narrowly missing an outright victory by only a few hundred votes. Former Assemblyman John Laird trailed by almost 8 percentage points – a profoundly disappointing showing for the Santa Cruz liberal.

Pundits were surprised by both the strength of Blakeslee’s support and the weakness of Laird’s. Yet Laird is ridiculously attempting to declare victory on a liberal blog with the justification that he barely avoided complete defeat. Laird’s claim to be the winner on June 22nd after losing by 8 points undermines both the Democrat’s credibility and grasp of basic math skills  – but it might explain the fiscal chaos that resulted during his tenure as the longtime Chairman of the Assembly Budget Committee. 

Last week, my Off the Presses radio co-host Damian Jones and I spoke with LAUSD board member Tamar Galatzan
about her lone vote against a motion for the cash-strapped school
district to boycott non-union carwashes (yes, carwashes).

We also spoke
with economist John Husing about how west coast seaports are
recovering from the recession and creating jobs in new sectors related
to international trade and goods movement.

Click here to tune in! And don’t forget to listen live this Thursday at 10 a.m. via www.LATalkRadio.com as we talk to Joel Fox, as well as Rob Stutzman who most Fox & Hounds readers will recognize as Meg Whitman’s policy advisor.

The nurses’ union asks what Meg Whitman is afraid of in not agreeing to meet union members in a conference set up and controlled by the union. The question can be turned around and the union leaders can be asked why they are afraid of their own members.

The nurses union opposed Prop 75 in 2005, the paycheck protection measure, which would allow individual union members to decide it they want to give a portion of their union dues for political purposes. Union leaders opposed that measure because they were concerned about the answer they would get from individual members.

Just as Whitman’s polls show that many members of the nurses’ union support her positions, polls at the time indicated that many public union members wanted to make a choice on whether to dedicate dues for political purposes.

The
‘LegisWeb Eye’ is a new legislative information service, launching on
July 1st.

The LegisWeb Eye presents news, opinion, discussion, and the
latest official status on the policies of the State of California.
People who are interested in the developing laws of California will get
concise summaries from multiple points of view. News is gathered from
dozens of respected sources. Diverse opinions from Fox&Hounds,
other prominent bloggers and columnists, and the politicians that
represent California are presented together. Links are provided back to
the sources for the complete stories.

The site includes free basic bill tracking so that readers can follow the policies and issues as they develop.

Will Hiring Ever Return in California?

That’s a question policymakers, job seekers and friends and relatives of job seekers are asking in the wake of the recent state unemployment numbers released a few weeks ago. Despite some attempts to put a positive spin on the numbers (the unemployment rate went down from 12.6% to 12.4%, the payroll jobs increased by 28,300) the numbers showed an economy that remains sluggish in terms of hiring.

The payroll job gain was the result entirely of additions in federal government employment, which were the temporary census jobs. Private sector jobs showed a net decline, as did jobs in state and local government.

Cross Posted on NewGeography.com

For some time, theorists have been suggesting that it is time to
redefine the American Dream of home ownership. Households, we are told,
should live in smaller houses, in more crowded neighborhoods and more
should rent. This thinking has been heightened by the mortgage crisis
in some parts of the country, particularly in areas where prices rose
most extravagantly in the past decade. And to be sure, many of the
irrational attempts – many of them government sponsored – to expand
ownership to those not financially prepared to bear the costs need to
curbed.

But now the anti-homeowner interests have expanded beyond reigning
in dodgy practices and expanded into an argument essentially against
the very idea of widespread dispersion of property ownership. Social
theorist Richard Florida recently took on this argument, in a Wall Street Journal article entitled "Home Ownership is Overvalued."