Republicans call for greater focus on public pensions

November 9, 2011 By CPR Editors Leave a Comment

From the Sac Bee:

Four Republican state senators, including Senate Republican leader Bob Dutton, are holding a presser under the dome to highlight what they see as the urgency of reforming California’s public pension systems.

Joining Dutton are Sens. Tom Berryhill, Tom Harman and Mimi Walters. Their news conference starts at 10:30 a.m. in the Capitol’s Room 305.

Gov. Jerry Brown‘s own reform plan got a mixed review from the Legislative Analyst’s Office on Tuesday, as The Bee’s Jon Ortiz reported. The LAO questioned whether Brown’s proposal to split pension costs equally between employers and current employees could be legally mandated.

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Oakland business owners fear they won’t recover

November 9, 2011 By CPR Editors Leave a Comment

From SF Chronicle:

Kevin Best and Misty Rasche remember when they had waiting lists for a Friday reservation at their bistro in the historic Old Oakland business district.

That was in 2007, before the recession hit and a series of angry protests that would come to define downtown Oakland.

Most recently, business at their B Restaurant & Bar has been harmed further since Occupy Oakland tents went up at City Hall on Oct. 10. Best and Rasche worry that the collateral damage from the protest may be the final blow for their restaurant.

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State lobby spending on pace to set records

November 9, 2011 By CPR Editors Leave a Comment

From California Watch:

Lobby spending in Sacramento already is on pace to touch new highs this legislative session, according to third-quarter filing totals released by the secretary of state’s office.

Interest groups last quarter spent more than $72 million lobbying state government, a dip from the $77 million they spent during the previous quarter but still enough to push lobby spending to a record high by this point in the legislative session.

During the first three quarters of this legislative session, which began in January, groups have spent nearly $216 million on lobbying services. That’s a 5 percent jump over the first three quarters of the 2009-10 session.

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Why natural gas beats wind power and other “green” experimental energy technologies

November 9, 2011 By CPR Editors Leave a Comment

From Hot Air:

Lost in the debate over fracking and drilling to extract natural gas in the US and abroad rather than pursuing supposedly clean renewables is this: natural gas is actually greener. New Geography’s Matt Ridley starts off by asking which view homeowners would prefer — a modest gas well or a towering, noisy commercial windmill — and then explains that choosing wind means you get both (via NewsAlert):

Wind turbines slice thousands of birds of prey in half every year, including white-tailed eagles in Norway, golden eagles in California, wedge-tailed eagles in Tasmania. There’s a video on YouTube of one winging a griffon vulture in Crete. According to a study in Pennsylvania, a wind farm with eight turbines would kill about a 200 bats a year. The pressure wave from the passing blade just implodes the little creatures’ lungs. You and I can go to jail for harming bats or eagles; wind companies are immune.

Still can’t make up your mind? The wind farm requires eight tonnes of an element called neodymium, which is produced only in Inner Mongolia, by boiling ores in acid leaving lakes of radioactive tailings so toxic no creature goes near them.

Not convinced? The gas well requires no subsidy – in fact it pays a hefty tax to the government – whereas the wind turbines each cost you a substantial add-on to your electricity bill, part of which goes to the rich landowner whose land they stand on. Wind power costs three times as much as gas-fired power. Make that nine times if the wind farm is offshore. And that’s assuming the cost of decommissioning the wind farm is left to your children – few will last 25 years.

Decided yet? I forgot to mention something. If you choose the gas well, that’s it, you can have it. If you choose the wind farm, you are going to need the gas well too. That’s because when the wind does not blow you will need a back-up power station running on something more reliable. But the bloke who builds gas turbines is not happy to build one that only operates when the wind drops, so he’s now demanding a subsidy, too.

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Fullerton officer charged in beating death gets big L.A. pension

November 9, 2011 By CPR Editors Leave a Comment

From the LA Times:

Los Angeles officials are calling for a review of the pension given to one of the two Fullerton police officers charged in the beating death of a homeless man.

Jay Cicinelli, a former Los Angeles Police Department officer who lost an eye when he was shot on the job in 1996 during a routine traffic stop, receives 70% of his salary as a disability pension. City officials approved the large sum because it was unclear at the time whether he could again work in law enforcement.

But Cicinelli soon got a job with the Fullerton Police Department, where he eventually earned $88,544 a year on top of his $39,625 in pension benefits from L.A.

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California is becoming ‘post-industrial hell,’ economist says

November 8, 2011 By CPR Editors Leave a Comment

From California Watch:

Since the recession began, times have been tough in California – everybody knows it. The economy is in a protracted stall.

But it took economists at California Lutheran University’s Center for Economic Research and Forecasting to describe, in hyperbolic language, the depth of the problems that have beset the Golden State since the stock market started to tank in the summer of ’08.

“California,” writes center director Bill Watkins, “is fast becoming a post-industrial hell.”

That’s true “for almost everyone except the gentry class, their best servants and the public sector,” he writes.

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Taxpayers Take On L.A. County’s Unconstitutional Grocery Bag Tax

November 8, 2011 By CPR Editors 1 Comment

From Flash Report:

With inflation eating away at Californians’ buying power, going to the grocery store has become an increasingly expensive activity for the average family. But in their quest to create an environmentally-friendly utopia, California liberals don’t seem to care that families are struggling to pay those hefty grocery bills. The most blatant example of this insensitivity is the imposition of a new grocery bag tax.

Several cities and counties across the state have passed or are considering plastic bag bans in order to placate the demands of the environmental elites. As part of the bans, local municipalities also impose a 5 or 10-cent tax per bag if customers fail to bring their own grocery bags to the store.  This tax increase was never brought before voters and as such is a violation of last year’s Proposition 26, which specifically precludes a new tax—or euphemistically referred to as a “fee” to skirt tax laws—without a two-thirds vote. Los Angeles County passed such an ordinance in its unincorporated areas and it went into effect July 1.

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San Jose faces December decision on pensions

November 8, 2011 By CPR Editors Leave a Comment

From the SJ Mercury:

The city of San Jose and its employee unions seem headed for a December showdown after months of talks produced no agreement on a pension reform measure that Mayor Chuck Reed wants to put before voters to deflate ballooning retirement costs.

With the Oct. 31 deadline for negotiations on ballot language passed, city and union leaders remain far apart. And it seems unlikely that mediation sessions will deliver an accord by early next month, when the City Council must decide whether to put a measure before voters in a March special election.

Union leaders have shown little interest in negotiating over ballot language that Reed and other council members have proposed. The union officials dismiss the proposals as an illegal violation of their “vested rights” to pensions. Union leaders argue that the proposals would be overturned in court, resulting in no savings and more layoffs.

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California Supreme Court takes on legal battle over redevelopment

November 8, 2011 By CPR Editors Leave a Comment

From Oakland Tribune:

With once powerful redevelopment agencies such as San Jose’s on the brink of extinction, the California Supreme Court this week will consider whether state lawmakers staged an unconstitutional raid on redevelopment coffers to help close a multibillion-dollar budget deficit.

The state’s high court will hear arguments Thursday in a lawsuit brought by redevelopment backers arguing the move to seize redevelopment money statewide violates a voter-approved ballot measure last year, which barred the state from taking away local government funding to pay its bills.

The prospects for California’s precarious budget and the future of the state’s 398 active redevelopment agencies hang in the balance.

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Seats in seven cities, 13 school districts and three water boards up for grabs

November 8, 2011 By CPR Editors Leave a Comment

From SGV Tribune:

San Gabriel Valley residents will go to the polls today to elect dozens of people to fill seats on seven city councils, 13 school boards, two community college boards and three water boards.

While local governments such as these are easily accessible to voters and often have a great deal of impact on their everyday lives, experts expect turnout to be low for the election.

“The perception is that these issues matter less,” said David Speak, chair of the Political Science Department at Cal Poly Pomona and former Claremont school board member. “People don’t pay attention.”

The Los Angeles County Registrar-Recorder/County Clerk’s office is not making any projections about what voter participation might be this year, but data from previous year’s elections support predictions of low turnout.

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