All posts by Brian Leubitz

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Do We Need a Write-in Line on the Ballot?

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AB 1413 makes “technical changes” to election law

by Brian Leubitz

A bill by Asm. Paul Fong would eliminate the write-in line on the “general” election ballot next November. From Ballot Access News:

On January 10, at 1:30 p.m., the California Senate Elections Committee will hear AB 1413. The bill abolishes write-in space on general election ballots for Congress and partisan state office. It also makes various other technical changes that will alter the top-two system passed by the voters in June 2010, when they approved Proposition 14 by a 53.7-46.3% margin.

Existing law says the ballot should contain write-in space, but that write-ins cannot be counted. It is wildly irrational for the existing law to leave write-in space on the ballot and yet say they can never be counted. There are two obvious ways to fix this: either repeal the law that says write-ins can’t be counted; or change the law to eliminate write-in space on ballots. The author of AB 1413, Assemblyman Paul Fong, has chosen the more repressive choice. (Ballot Access News)

Clearly we don’t need to have a line on the ballot that we aren’t going to count.  And you can understand the logic that since we are doing a “top-2” election system we don’t need that line.  The proponents of Prop 14, certainly argue as much.  However, what if there are changed situations which make the two candidates unacceptable.  It gives no opportunity to change our minds from June to November.  So…recall it is then?

Anyway, it is an interesting question to consider as you enjoy some unseasonably warm weather.

Budget, Jerry Brown

Brown’s New Budget Slashes Deeper, Tells Awful Truth

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Cuts would deal with triggered cuts and $13B 18 month deficit

by Brian Leubitz

What some are calling a “ransom note” others call the terrible truth.  Jerry Brown’s budget proposal sets a dark scenario for the state.  And yet, somehow we have gotten to the point that a dystopic future with three less school weeks is somehow optimistic.

Gov. Jerry Brown unveiled his new budget plan, calling for a painful $4.8-billion cut in public school funds if voters reject a proposed tax hike that he hopes to put on the ballot in November.

Despite the possible reduction – the equivalent of slashing three weeks from the school year – the spending blueprint Brown released Thursday is a relatively optimistic document. It assumes he will have to close a $9.2-billion deficit, a vast improvement over last year’s $26-billion gap.

Half of the deficit would be wiped out through the temporary half-cent sales-tax hike and increased levies on the wealthy that Brown wants voters to approve – or by the schools cuts. The remainder would be eliminated with reductions in welfare, Medi-Cal and other programs. (LA Times)

The plan calls for cutting three thousand state workers at a time when jobs are already scarce.  It calls for additional Medi-Cal cuts, which frankly, I didn’t think possible and might end up in court. And at this point our welfare system is essentially dead.  So, optimism abounds.

Over [in Bloomberg, Dan Schnur http://www.bloomberg.com/news/… a Republican and former FPPC chair, has this to say about it:

“It’s the most expensive ransom note in California political history,” Dan Schnur, a former aide to Republican Governor Pete Wilson and now director of the Jesse M. Unruh Institute of Politics at the University of Southern California in Los Angeles, said yesterday in a telephone interview.

Which is really rather rather funny because how often legislative Republicans have played the ransom game.  Try doing a search on Calitics for ransom note, you get lots of results.  Like this one from March with their 57 requests. Or this one from 2009, where Sen. Hollingsworth wanted to do Intuit’s bidding and get rid of a tax simplification tool. The hits just keep on coming.

But here’s the thing, education is 40% of the budget, and we can’t pretend that we can keep making cuts forever without touching education. Call it whatever you want, but unless we get revenues, it ain’t going to be pretty.  Telling voters the truth isn’t a ransom note.

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Matt Rexroad: GOP Got Out-Hustled, Not Cheated

GOP Consultant and Supervisor Says Pro-Publica Story “Something about Nothing.”

by Brian Leubitz

Robert challenged the ProPublica story very effectively, but today we here from an involved Republican consultant (and Yolo Cty Supervisor) that there really was no there there.

Matt Rexroad has been involved at many levels in the GOP establishment. He writes prolifically online as well. His work has appeared on FlashReport many times, but he’s a GOP consultant as a day job.  In his latest bit of writing, he called out the ProPublica for the snow job that it was.

When you start the process telling people not to be involved and then end the process complaining that others were too involved, you have created your own emergency. In the end, the ProPublica story was something about nothing.

Did Paul Mitchell and the Democrats win in redistricting? Maybe, but it was not because of some corrupt process. It was because they showed up and engaged with good data when the issues were presented to the commission. Meanwhile, the only active Republican engagement with the commission was actually from the business community with little or no involvement from either the party or the legislative caucuses.  

As Republicans, if we did get beat at redistricting, we should blame ourselves for being outworked by people that engaged the process while our party stood by waiting for things to happen. (Capitol Weekly)

As Robert has said many times, and I have commented in the same vein on Twitter, there really wasn’t anything here.  Did ProPublica expect both parties to simply stand down? Democrats organized. Republicans well, they did something, but as Rexroad says, if “you haven’t used an astroturf organization, you aren’t a professional.” Both sides knew the game coming into the process.  Democrats did a better job organizing.

Olga Piere and Jeff Larson wrote a splendid hit piece, but I suspect that rather than exposing the Commission for any sort of scheme, other than mere good government hopefulness, the only targets that they really hit were their own careers.  

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Blakeslee Won’t Run Unless District Changes

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New Central Coast district strongly favors Democrats

Photobucketby Brian Leubitz

There were winners and losers in the redistricting process this year. Certainly Howard Berman and Brad Sherman were none too pleased to be forced to go around collecting endorsements right around now.  And Elton Gallegly and Lois Capps won’t be thrilled with their new toss-up seats either. (Gallegly has been talking retirement for years, so that may happen now.)

But the new Senate map draws more ire than any of the other maps.  Partially because Democrats are so close to getting a 2/3 majority, but also because a few gerrymandered seats were redrawn that will make them hard to keep in the GOP column.  Chief among those is the seat of Sam Blakeslee, who recently defeated friend of Calitics John Laird last year in a special election to replace temporary LG Abel Maldonado.  His seat was a toss-up, with a slight Democratic registration advantage.  The low-turnout special election obviously favored conservatives (and thus his victory), so even if he were running in the same district he would face a tough challenge against Asm. Bill Monning.  

PhotobucketBut that is just the beginning for Blakeslee. The 17th Senate District is now essentially a Safe Democratic seat, with a 16pt Democratic registration advantage. (For more on safe/toss-ups, see this excellent CaliGirl in Texas diary.)  In a presidential year, with the expected high turnout, Blakeslee faces very long odds.

And give Blakeslee credit for acknowledging as much.

“I want my community to understand that by making this decision, I’m not walking away from a fight,” Blakeslee told The Tribune. “But I’m not willing to lose the entire last year in office in (a vain) pursuit of office. I’m 100 percent engaged to make sure this last year is the most impactful as it possibly can be.”(SacBee)

Now, Blakeslee did leave the door open if the district is more friendly when it is decided upon by the Supreme Court in San Francisco soon.  But, unless the district changes soon, it looks like we have a couple of good opportunities to pick up the 2/3 vote in the Senate

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Senate GOP to look for a new Bob. Kind of like the old Bob

Senate Minority Leader Bob Dutton left leadership post recently, Bob Huff expected to replace him

by Brian Leubitz

Bob DuttonRepublicans don’t often break out of their molds, but, wow, they outdid themselves this time.  They found a SoCal Senator from the outer burbs named Bob to replace a SoCal senator from the outer burbs named Bob. Really quite amazing.  On the right you see Bob Huff, the incoming Bob, and Bob Dutton, the outgoing Bob is on the left.

Bob HuffToday is their first day back in recess, so the official word should come down soon. Now is also the time where you can also expect to hear something from them about how great term limits are, or something like that.  That would be particularly awesome because Dutton is now seeking to return to the Assembly, where he has two terms left.  

From a perspective of actual differences? Well, don’t hold your breath.  At this point, they are simply in desparation mode to try to retain any relevancy.  Under the new maps (which they are attempting to put to a referendum), there is a very real chance of a 2/3 Democratic majority. If the Senate Republicans do find themselves below the 1/3 mark, they’ll find themselves watching as the Assembly Republicans are the only Republican source of power in the Capitol.  

Now, I’m not sure that means much, what with the Republicans pretty much saying no to all revenue measures and the budget now requiring only a majority vote.  But, nonetheless, meet the new Bob!  

Budget, Jerry Brown

A New Year, Anything New?

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3 Areas to Watch

by Brian Leubitz

If you care to look, it seems that the Sacramento press corps (all three to five of the hardy souls) have just written either a wrap up of 2011 or a preview of 2012.  You basically get a few points with slightly different order depending on the writer(s), but here are a few points worth noting:

1) Jerry Brown is just Jerry Brown

That isn’t to say he’s any worse than any other governor that we could have ended up with, but that he’s not some super hero who can ride in to save the day.  Even with all of his experience, he can’t magically do Jedi Mind Tricks on the Republicans to somehow be reasonable. I think there was a lot of hope this time last year that Jerry Brown, with all of his experience a generation ago, would be the adult in the room for the bunch of children in the legislature.  But I suppose sometimes the delinquents win.

2) 2012 will be a make or break year for Brown and California generally. Or not.



This is sort of a funny one. Because, really, the same thing has been said about our situation for the last four years or so. Really, ever since the worst of the budget mess began, we have been playing with fire. So, in that sense, yes, every year is really important, but somehow we’ve been able to find some way to make the cuts, cuts, cuts and more cuts into our budget to avoid any real decision-making. Yes, those cuts are a real decision, but more in the passive sense.  We have left the decisions for a few whims of whomever gets the last word at the dais of the respective budget committees, or whomever manages to catch the leaders at an opportune moment.  

They say that budgets are a statement of our priorities. But I hope, for all of our sakes, that isn’t true of the past five years.  Is it really our priority to make the school year shorter? Or to abandon our sick and elderly? Or to cut fire protection services? It is hardly any robust statement of priority when there is a gun at your head.  Our system is so skewed towards one particular priority, taxes, that we have lost all sense of everything else.

Perhaps this is the year that changes that, but from the statements of Sen. Steinberg and Spkr Perez, I wouldn’t expect much from the Legislature. They seem content to wait back for the Novemeber election and to satisfy the budget deficit ($13B-ish) with cuts alone until then.  

“My view is you always have an open door and outstretched hand, but I don’t think we do anything as our main strategy that requires a two-thirds vote,” Steinberg said. “We’re gone down that path far too many times.”(SacBee)

So, perhaps we’ll see a fairly standard legislative year. Maybe something happens with pensions, but more likely, we are in a holding pattern until something is determined at the ballot box with a revenue measure of some sort in November.

3) New Districts and Top 2 Will Bring Changes to Composition of Legislature



At the very least, we will see something new here.  There will, most certainly, be several Dem-on-Dem elections in November. Laura Richardson and Janice Hahn, Howard Berman and Brad Sherman seem destined for some expensive races.  There may be a few Rep-on-Rep, but the numbers and costs will likely be far fewer.  The thing is that there is usually enough Democratic support to get one Dem in a deep Red district top 2, but that isn’t always the case in some of the Bluest seats. Or to flip that, the Deepest Blue is darker than the deepest red.

Now, as to the districts, well, there is still the question of the Senate district referendum.  There is still no word as to whether it will qualify (but expect some sort of word within a few weeks as to whether they will need a full count verification). But, with the signatures out there, the sponsors of the referendum (GOP Senators for the most part) are trying to get some other map more to their liking. The Supreme Court will likely decide on that fairly soon as the SoS needs to prepare for the elections.

There is a very real chance that the Democrats get 2/3 in the Senate (and take away whatever power the Senate GOP caucus had), but it is extremely unlikely that the Assembly Dems are able to do the same. (Cali_girl_in_texas has the over/under at 50).  I’m skeptical that situation would really bring all that much change. Democrats would just be paying more attention to the Assembly. Just a few different, slightly more radical, people in the position of blocking action.

Well, it’s about time to get rolling into a new Legislative year, should be fun!

Marriage Equality

DTS voters continue to shift towards marriage equality support

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Support for marriage equality continues to grow

By Brian Leubitz

My apologies for being away for a while. I’ve been traveling, and is often the case after traveling, I got sick. So, as I try to ward off this nasty head cold, here’s some food for thought on the subject of marriage equality.

As you might remember, we were polling we’ll on prop 8 several months before the election. Then the nasty (and untrue) ads about forcing your kids to get married to a gay, or something like that, started appearing. We had no coordinated response, and ultimately that became the story. But in the marriage debate, time is our friend. And as every year passes, the electorate becomes more favorable.

And California’s great population of Decline to State voters are moving in the same way.  Last week, the CA League of Conservaition voters released a poll focusing on DTS voters, and the results were quite positive.

By a 2-to-1 margin, three out of five (60 percent)” decline-to-state “voters support allowing gay and lesbian couples to marry legally, with a resounding 44 percent who strongly support legal avenues to marriage. In contrast, less than a third (30 percent total oppose) oppose legalizing marriage for gay and lesbian couples and less than one out of ten is undecided.

In a July 2009 poll commissioned by Love Honor Cherish, Equality California, Courage Campaign and more than 30 other organizations to determine when to seek repeal of Prop 8, decline-to-state voters favored marriage by 49% with 18% undecided and 33% opposed.(LoveHonorCherish)

Now, to be clear, this is far from conclusive proof of anything. LHC has a ballot measure submitted in Sacramento, and is trying to rally support. However, as of yet, there hasn’t been any institutional support for the measure while the legal case is outstanding.  With that case expected to drag on for months/years, it seems unlikely that a consensus will be formed around the November 2012 date for a measure. No matter when it goes on, a ballot measure would be extremeley expensive. Now, that isn’t to say that I don’t support the concept, because I think we really need to win one at the ballot at some point to give the Supreme Court some courage.

And all the numbers are there, we can win in 2012. But from where we stand right now, we have a lot of work to do before we are ballot ready.

Budget, Jerry Brown

Revised Budget is Bad, Just Not as Bad as Originally Thought

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Brown’s revised budget decreases hit to K-12

by Brian Leubitz

Another round of cuts is hardly worth celebrating, but Brown seems to have at least saved the 175 day school year.

K-12 school districts were at risk of losing as much $1.5 billion – the equivalent of seven instructional days – under the budget Brown and lawmakers enacted earlier this year. But they will face a smaller $79.6 million reduction in general funding. That should avert massive reductions in the school calendar or other drastic measures for most districts.

“It turns out the cuts are far less than they would have been,” Brown said.

Districts will still face a $248 million elimination of school bus funding, however. Jill Wynns, president of the California School Boards Association, said districts will cut somewhere other than buses because they are mandated by federal law to provide transportation for students with disabilities.(SacBee)

Also getting big cuts? Higher education. UC, CSU, and the community college system all lose $100 million.  Community College Chancellor Jack Scott has indicated that will mean a $10/unit fee increase for community colleges, and UC and CSU will likely see another round of fee hikes.

You can check out a more exhaustive list of the cuts here.  

Budget, Jerry Brown

Pulling the Trigger on California’s Future?

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Director of Finance to hold meeting at noon regarding the “trigger cuts”

by Brian Leubitz

Today’s the day. If you remember back to the disaster that was last year’s budget there was a $4B mystery source of revenue that was basically a cross your fingers and hope real hard kind of thing.  The legislature then asked the Controller (John Chiang), the Legislative Analyst (Mac Taylor) and the Director of Finance (Ana Matosantos) to track how much revenue was coming in, and then if that $4B did not come in, “pull the trigger” on cuts of up to that amount that were already determined.

Well, today is that day, and Matosantos, Brown (and formerly Schwarzenegger’s) Director of Finance has to decide how much will be cut for the 2012 part of the current fiscal year.  Don’t expect much good news, as the Controller’s office already released data indicating that we weren’t going to hit that target.  Oh…and we spent more than we projected.

After accounting for November revenues, total year-to-date general fund revenues are now behind the budget’s estimates by $1 billion, but expenditures for the year are over projections by $1.95 billion.  It turns out that during a bad economic period, people need more services, but in the current climate in Sacramento, getting the legislature to approve the revenues for those services is an impossible feat even for somebody with the experience of Jerry Brown.

And so we go to the people, I suppose.  According to a new PPIC poll, Californians are not particularly interested in a cuts only budget.

A new poll shows 60 percent of California voters, weary of state spending cuts and unsettled by the prospect of more, are ready to support Gov. Jerry Brown’s plan to raise taxes. … When asked about those automatic spending reductions, part of the budget package signed last summer, a plurality of likely voters – 45 percent – say they would prefer a mix of spending cuts and tax increases to address the shortfall, according to the poll.

Brown, a Democrat, is seeking to raise the statewide sales tax a half-cent and increase income taxes on people who make $250,000 or more a year. He opened a campaign committee last week, and his political adviser, Steve Glazer, has started fundraising for the effort.(SacBee)

There is a long time between now and November 2012, and a lot of painful cuts remain no matter what happens at the ballot box.  But as we continue this slow motion take-down of the California Dream, we’ll need to consider what our values really are.  Perhaps we really are a state that is only concerned about our present day self-interest, but I have higher expectations for Californians. We can, and will, break out of this viscous cycle of cuts.

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Darrell Issa teams with Ron Wyden to Protect the Internet

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Republicans and Democrats join together to pursue a more balanced legislation toward piracy.

by Brian Leubitz

They say that even broken clocks are right twice a day, and perhaps that is what this is about.  However, Rep. Issa managed to hit upon a topic that is near and dear to my heart to be on the right side of the issue.  Who knows, maybe there is something pecuniary in it for him, but I’ll just go with the fact that he is right on the issue and move along.

So, what exactly is Rep. Issa, a target for much scorn around here, being a solid leader for?  Well, that would be the legislative question surrounding copyright and the Internet.  Specifically, a Senate bill called the “Stop Online Piracy Act” (SOPA) and its House counterpart, the PROTECT IP Act.  Here’s a quick summary about the Internet Blacklist legislation from the Electronic Frontier Foundation:

The “Stop Online Piracy Act”/”E-PARASITE Act” (SOPA) and “The PROTECT IP Act” (PIPA) are the latest in a series of bills which would create a procedure for creating (and censoring) a blacklist of websites. These bills are updated versions of the “Combating Online Infringements and Counterfeits Act” (COICA), which was previously blocked in the Senate. Although the bills are ostensibly aimed at reaching foreign websites dedicated to providing illegal content, their provisions would allow for removal of enormous amounts of non-infringing content including political and other speech from the Web.

The various bills define different techniques for blocking “blacklisted” sites. Each would interfere with the Internet’s domain name system (DNS), which translates names like “www.eff.org” or “www.nytimes.com” into the IP addresses that computers use to communicate. SOPA would also allow rightsholders to force payment processors to cut off payments and advertising networks to cut ties with a site simply by sending a notice.

In the end, these bills could mean that America will have, much like China, a different internet than the rest of the world. Each of these two bills would endanger sites like DropBox or Box.net and even artist sites like Etsy.  Innovating new companies are likely to meet massive resistance from the oligopolies that run the copyright industries, and there is very little due process.  Domain names can simply be turned off at the drop of a hat, and you have to find a way to talk to somebody to get the site turned back on after the fact.

In other words, these two bills are an unworkable solution.  So, Rep. Issa and Sen. Wyden worked together to find a concept that would protect innovation while still working to protect rights holders and have released a concept bill called OPEN.  The bill might not be perfect, but it is a pretty good start.  Basically, the International Trade Commission would serve as a clearinghouse to review claims under OPEN.  Under SOPA, well, that would be banks and ISPs, large corporations that are entirely unaccountable to the people.

However, rather than dealing with OPEN honestly, the backers of SOPA resort to saying that OPEN “goes easy” on piracy. In response, Issa and Wyden launched KeepTheWebOPEN.com to solicit comments from the public, and in fact even invited the MPAA to mark up the bill.

“I’ve heard MPAA’s response to the #OPEN Act. I believe American artists and innovators – not to mention you, the digital citizen – deserve better than soundbites,” Issa said after the movie industry lobbying group argued the bill “goes easy on Internet piracy.” (The Hill)

DNS is too important to the Internet to monkey with, and the Internet is too important to our economy to rush into something before we know the consequences of those actions. We have a lot of legislation on online piracy already on the books, much of which was placed there in a pretty one-sided process. This time, let’s be sure to bring in all stakeholders in the issue to get a piece of balanced legislation that doesn’t “break the internet.”