All posts by Brian Leubitz

Arnold Schwarzenegger, Budget

Arnold Sues Chiang

3 Comments

The gloves are off between John Chiang and the Governor.  Today, Arnold filed for an injunction requiring Chiang to not issue the full paychecks to state workers:

The Schwarzenegger administration submitted a court petition Tuesday in Sacramento County Superior Court seeking an injunction to force state Controller John Chiang to slash the wages of roughly 200,000 state workers.

Schwarzenegger has ordered the wages of state employees cut to $7.25 an hour until a budget is signed. A state appeals court agreed that the governor had the authority to do so last week, but Chiang, a Democrat, has continued to fight the directive. (LA Times)

Chiang has been fighting this for a number of years now, but the Supreme Court has yet to way in decisively one way or the other. Chiang has been arguing for years that unless the computer system is upgraded the pay cut will wreak havoc upon the payroll system.

In the end, the cut simply isn’t necessary. It’s just Arnold playing games with the state’s workforce.  But, it seems anything goes with state workers these days. Name a method of attack, and it’s pretty much a lock that some Republican (or Democrat/Green) will try it.

Arnold Schwarzenegger, Budget

Chiang Comes Out Swinging Against Governor

9 Comments

On Thursday,I wondered what John Chiang’s response to the Governor would be.  Would he stand up to him like he did last year? Or comply with the minimum wage order.  The answer? A strong no:

In a strongly worded rebuke, state Controller John Chiang said Thursday that he would defy Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger’s order to slash the pay of state workers until “the courts hand down a final resolution.”

Chiang, a Democrat, said the pay cuts will “do nothing to solve the budget deficit” because state employees are entitled to their back pay once a budget is in place. “In the absence of the leadership needed to bring the Legislature to an agreement on his budget, the governor again resorts to political tricks,” Chiang said in a statement. …

“Again, absent a final court ruling, I will continue to protect the state’s finances and pay full wages earned by state employees,” Chiang declared. (LA Times)

Good for Chiang. This is a political stunt by the governor, and isn’t necessary for purposes of the state budget.  Honestly, there have been few batter allies for state workers than John Chiang. While maintaining a steady hand at the fiscal controls, he has managed to be a counterbalance to the Governor’s brinskmanship.

Arnold Schwarzenegger, Budget

Arnold Lashes Out at State Workers

4 Comments

Well, here he goes again…

The Schwarzenegger administration today ordered State Controller John Chiang to reduce state worker pay for July to the federal minimum allowed by law — $7.25 an hour for most state workers.

The instructions from the Department of Personnel Administration exclude roughly 37,000 state workers in six bargaining units that recently came to tentative labor agreements with Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger.(Aac Bee)

Is this necessary? Of course not. We are late every year. We aren’t hitting rock bottom on our cash reserves quite yet, and we could continue to fulfill our obligations.  But this is within his power under a court ruling from a few years back, so he’s going to start early.

Of course, this money is going to be paid back once the budget, but this is for show anyway, right? Now, it’s Controller John Chiang’s play.  Last time he tried this, the Controller refused, concerned about legal and technical ramifications.

So, Controller Chiang, what say you?

Uncategorized

What to do with the 12K Ballots in Riverside County?

4 Comments

If you haven’t been paying attention to the SD-40 race, you may want to take another look.  The lead for Juan Vargas (boo) over Mary Salas is now sitting at 12 votes.

The votes are pretty much done being counted in the three counties in the district, San Diego, Imperial and Riverside.  But, there’s one big hitch: Riverside County has 12,000 votes that they’ve not yet counted because they were picked up from the post office late.

The Riverside County Democratic Party and three voters filed a lawsuit today over the more than 12,500 ballots that have not been counted in the June 8 election.

In the lawsuit, Moreno Valley residents Naomi Ingram, Sherry Lynn Riegel and Jennifer Christina Riegel contend they mailed ballots on time. But the registrar of voters failed to pick up their ballots from a U.S. Postal Service facility in Moreno Valley due to a miscommunication, they said in the lawsuit. (Riverside P-E)

Interestingly, Republican Supervisor (and former Senator) John Benoit said that he was lining up a plantiff to sue if nobody else did.  If the allegations are true, which are essentially that the elections department failed to do one of their basic tasks, picking up the completed ballots.

While it isn’t clear how many of those votes are in the district, but with only 12 votes separating the two, it won’t take that many.  Of course, we just might see a recount on this race as well.  And if the separation stays this low, who knows what we’ll get a final answer here.

UPDATE: The court has set July 9 as the date for a hearing.

Uncategorized

Assault Weapons Carly

4 Comments

Yesterday, Carly Fiorina was in the business of praising Sen. Feinstein. Then only hours later, she got all up into the business of trashing one of her main policy prerogatives, the assault weapons ban.  Oh, and she went further, pretty much pretending that she was still in the Republican primary.  

Republican Senate candidate Carly Fiorina said Tuesday that she opposes a ban on assault weapons and supports a U.S. Supreme Court decision this week affirming a constitutional right to bear arms.

In a 45-minute question-and-answer session with reporters here, the former Hewlett-Packard CEO also repeated her backing of Arizona’s controversial immigration law and said she would support efforts to repeal the federal health care reform measure. But the fundamental issue in the race against three-term Sen. Barbara Boxer, Fiorina contended, will be whom voters trust more on the economy, and she said the contrast between the two could not be more stark. (SJ Merc)

Wow, I certainly hope for her sake that getting a bunch of Latino votes wasn’t a part of her electoral strategy, because this repeated outpouring of support for Arizona’s law won’t win her that support.  While Carly might criticize Whitman for appearing on Hannity the day after the primary, at least eMeg has the smarts to quit it with the anti-immigrant talk.  Perhaps Carly thinks it will bring in some money from the anti-immigrant crowd, but will it really be enough money to make up for the loss of the votes she’s going to get from that part of the interview?

At any rate, back to the assault weapons ban, Carly might want to take a look at who wrote that legislation. And who has been its strongest supporter throughout the last 20 years. Yup, that would be Dianne Feinstein. The very same senator that she was so effusive about yesterday.

It’s funny how facts can unmask a candidate.

Uncategorized

Fiorina: I love DiFi, just not the real DiFi

3 Comments

Sen. Feinstein isn’t always our favorite around here, but she hardly resembles Carly Fiorina. Yet, in comments today, Fiorina tried to snuggle up to Feinstein:

And she also continued a tradition of past Boxer opponents – she talked about how great senior Sen. Dianne Feinstein is and attempted to drive a wedge between the two. By the way, Feinstein is Boxer’s campaign chairman.

“I think Dianne Feinstein has accomplished a great deal on behalf of the people of California and I admire and respect her for that,” Fiorina said. She called Feinstein “a pragmatic voice on issues that matter to the people of California.”

In comparing California’s two senators, Fiorina said “if you look at her voting record verses Barbara Boxer’s you’ll see that they disagree on virtually everything.”

When it was suggested to Fiorina that the two actually voted the same most of the time – Boxer says it’s 90 percent – Fiorina backed down a bit.

“Well virtually everything is an overstatement,” she said. (OC Register)

Well, facts are annoying, aren’t they?  At any rate, Sen Feinstein put out a statement in full support of Sen. Boxer today after the comments:

Senator Boxer and I have worked together for 18 years, as partners, in Washington — and there is no daylight between us on the issues that matter most to Californians. We have worked together to create jobs and keep them in California.  We have strongly defended a woman’s right to choose.  We believe that urgent action is necessary to halt climate change and create clean energy jobs, and we support permanently protecting California’s coast from offshore oil drilling.  In a time of serious terrorist threats to the homeland, we believe it is important to keep guns out of the hands of people whose names are on the terrorist watch list.  And we both worked to get more water transfers in the Central Valley so that farmers could plant, hire and harvest this year.  Let there be no doubt that I believe California needs Barbara Boxer in the Senate, now more than ever.

Jerry Brown

Whitman FAIL: Prefers To Buy, Not Debate

1 Comment

Meg Whitman has lots of money, so she’s been able to buy all the TV time that she would want. Why would she accept debates when she could just buy all that?

Well, that doesn’t mean that she isn’t worried about appearances of rejecting all those debates. So, she’s gone on the offense.

The two have tangled publicly over debates, with both accepting one appearance together. Brown, a Democrat, has challenged Whitman to nine more.

“We’ll look at some of these other debates. But I’ve got to tell you, he is talking about 10 debates. I would be glad if he had 10 ideas to fix California,” Whitman said to applause from the 75-strong audience. (LA Times)

Meanwhile, what are her ideas? Well, I’ll let Arnold Schwarzenegger summarize her “bogus talk.”

He didn’t mention her name, but in brief remarks at the Los Angeles Press Club’s annual awards gala on Sunday night, Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger swiped at Republican gubernatorial candidate Meg Whitman, calling her proposal to eliminate 40,000 state worker positions “bogus talk” and praising journalists for asking where those cuts would be made.(SacBee)

Whitman doesn’t have the ideas, and that which she has are “bogus.” Sounds about right.  Nonetheless, she’s got money, so the whole Buy It Now Plan is still in operation.

Uncategorized

More Transparency, Not Less

Yesterday, I mentioned Sarah Palin’s little attack on transparency and disclosure.  At the same time, the Legislature was looking in another direction: more disclosure during budget negotiations:

The Senate approved a measure that requires disclosure of contributions of at least $1,000 within 24 hours when they are made between the date in May when the finance director issues a revised revenue estimate and the date when a budget is adopted for the fiscal year beginning July 1.

The new disclosure requirements, approved on a 29-3 vote and sent to the Assembly, also would apply to the 15 days before the end of the legislative session and, for the governor, during the 30 days after adjournment of the Legislature when he signs or vetoes the bulk of bills.(LA Times)

Now, this is not going to actually change the world, but if it’s good enough for the election cycle, it’s good enough for the budget. After all, most elections are well ahead of the time that the big decisions are made.  The real power that special interests seek to influence is all about the budget.  Why not have the same kind of strict rules?

My guess is that if this passes through the rest of the legislative hurdles, Arnold signs this.  He won’t have to deal with the consequences, and he gets to look like the goo-goo impresario that he has always wanted to be. It isn’t going to change the power of the two weeks surround the budget negotiations, but it just might be a little bit of sunshine-y fresh disinfectant.

San Francisco

Healthy San Francisco Legal Challenges End

2 Comments

San Francisco is a crazy political town on any number of levels, but we can get some really good progressive changes started right here. One of the best pieces of legislation we’ve crafted here is “Healthy San Francisco”, something of a universal health care plan.

It’s not what you typically think of as universal health care.  It isn’t insurance per se, rather it is just a funding mechanism that works on a sliding scale. It only works within the county, and it’s far from perfect. But, the brain child of current Asm. Tom Ammiano has been a great way to experiment with health care funding in the real world.  Mayor Newsom worked with Ammiano to get it passed, and as a result, a lot more of the community has come on board.

But, of course, all are not happy.  The restaurants of SF are the most aggrieved, apparently.  Basically the rule calls for employers to either provide insurance or pay 4% of wages to the city to pay for Healthy SF.  The Golden Gate Restaurant Association (GGRA) sued to block the measure.  

Not only that, but they also tried one of the cheesiest bits of PR that I’ve ever seen. Many eateries across the city started passing the cost directly on to the customer.  Now, that’s fine and all, I’m accustomed to paying for their expenses, but this was both dishonest and a moneymaking scheme. First, they charged a flat 4% of the bill, which really exceeded the cost of the new fee by quite a bit. But the larger issue was that they were trying to pit customers against employees by embittering customers with the 4% fee.  Do they charge 10% extra for rent? or 1% for silverware? These are the costs of doing business. And hey, guess what, you have to pay for health care for workers in SF. Suck it up and charge me an extra 50 cents for my garden burger, but don’t try to get me pissed off at my server.

And now…the end is here.  The Supreme Court today rejected GGRA’s appeal:

The U.S. Supreme Court has declined to review San Francisco’s Health Access Law that forces most employers to contribute to a health care plan for their workers. The decision ends a four-year battle to uphold the law’s legality.

When Healthy San Francisco was enacted it was considered groundbreaking; the city offered local health plans to the uninsured with funding through employer contributions.

Now the US Supreme Court has refused to consider a lawsuit filed by the Golden Gate Restaurant Association when the law went in effect. Deputy City Attorney Vince Chabria says this is great news for 53,000 beneficiaries of the program. (KCBS)

In the end, I wholeheartedly agree with Asm. Ammiano:

Today’s Supreme Court decision is an affirmation of San Francisco’s landmark efforts to provide affordable health care to the uninsured. With over 50,000 people receiving health care services and prescription drugs, Healthy San Francisco is a national model for what can be accomplished when the public and private sector work in partnership towards a common goal.