All posts by Brian Leubitz

San Francisco

Whoops! Redistricting Commission Flubs Scheduling

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Take a look at the Redistricting commission’s schedule. Specifically, look at the end of June, where you will find the final Sunday’s meeting is in San Francisco.  If you happen to know much about San Francisco, you’ll also think to yourself, isn’t there some big event in the Civic Center that weekend?

Well, you are a pretty sharp cookie.  Because June 26 happens to the San Francisco Pride event which attracts hundreds of thousands of LGBT locals, visitors, and their friends, to the Civic Center.  Note that the Civic Center also happens to be where meetings like the redistricting commission typically meet. So, it is even doubtful that people could get into the building.  All in all, probably not the best time for a meeting.

The Alice B Toklas LGBT Democratic Club sent a letter to the commission noting the issue, and pointing out both the importance of SF Pride and of the openness of the redistricting commission’s hearing.  The latest update is that the Commission is now working to reschedule the meeting (likely to the following Monday, 6/27).

So, hooray for local Democratic clubs who pay attention to redistricting.

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Redistricting Commission Wants to Have San Francisco Hearing on Pride Sunday

So, I mentioned yesterday that the redistricting commission released their schedule for public hearings.  One thing I didn’t see was the timing of the San Francisco hearing date: June 26.

That would be Pride Sunday.  You know, when hundreds of thousands of people descend on SF’s Civic Center.  Given where these sorts of hearings tend to take place in San Francisco, at the state building  

Budget, Jerry Brown

Sen. Dutton Upset that Gov. Brown’s Wife “Yelled at him”

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Nope, not an April Fool’s joke.  Anne Gust, who has always been a powerful advisor to Jerry Brown since they met back in the early nineties, doesn’t really suffer fools.  Apparently, she wasn’t really liking what she saw out of Senate Minority Leader Bob Dutton.  Dutton went crying to the media:

Dutton said first lady Anne Gust Brown “yelled” at him in one meeting with the governor last Wednesday over a lack of cooperation.

“Frankly, I was yelled at more than I was talked to,” Dutton said, “and mostly by Mrs. Brown, not even Gov. Brown.”

Brown press secretary Gil Duran blasted Dutton later.

“And the dog barked at him, too,” Duran said. “Big girls don’t cry. The real issue here is the fact that schoolchildren, the elderly and the poor are going to be crushed if these reckless Republicans don’t get their act together and make a reasonable deal for the good of the people. Given the magnitude of the situation, we really don’t have time for Bob Dutton’s feelings.”(SacBee)

Is this supposed to make Californians like him better? Respect Jerry less? What? I’m just not sure what the gain for Dutton is with this story.

At any rate, at this point it doesn’t even seem to matter.  Jerry is working on addressing some of the issues in the ransom note in his own manner, and just leaving the Republicans behind.  Some of the issues need to be addressed, and others are something of a red herring trumped up for political reasons. As for the budget, it looks like we’ll be heading for a bloody May revise through the traditional budget schedule.

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Redistricting Commission Releases Public Comment Schedule

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Have some time to talk with the 14 member redistricting panel? Well, they have some time for you! Over the next two months, the band will be hitting the road for a series of public input sessions across the state. You can get that schedule at their website.

But, the GOP isn’t waiting, they’re going on the offensive!  See, they are still really peeved that their choice, the Rose institute, was dinged for not releasing their donors.  But, you know, they had trust in the firm, as the main consultant in the form had previously worked for Republicans and was actually a registered Republican himself.

And they aren’t being shy in the media:

“The commission was asked by myself and others not to pick that underqualified firm,” said California GOP Chairman Tom Del Beccaro. “The decision to hire Q2 may very well undermine the trust of voters in this entire process.” (MediaNews)

They even tried to compromise, you see.  They wanted the nonpartisan Q2, whose main consultant on the project is a DTS voter, to work with the Republican Rose Institute.  See, that’s how they are used to balance, and that’s how FoxNews tells them it works. 1 DTS + 1 Republican= World Harmony!

Except that it doesn’t.  Fortunately for now, the Redistricting made the right call and hired the nonpartisan Q2 firm.  But, as for the actual lines, well, they’ll be coming from the commissioner input.  AND your input.  So, make sure you get to those hearings across the state.

What are you going to say?

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Jerry’s Message and a Rambo Take on the Budget?

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Well, the concept of a June election is now dead. So where do we go from here?  We don’t have a lot of time, even qualifying a ballot measure to get on a November special doesn’t offer a ton of time.  So, in theory, Jerry could get to work on getting his deal on the budget right now. And in the video (to the right) that seems to be what he’s after.

But the folks at CalBuzz have a different scenario in mind:

Here’s how it would work: Set things up so that the Democrats  approve, with a majority vote, a conditional all-cuts budget that presumes no tax extensions. (We wonder if Republicans would vote for it.) Then gather signatures to place that on the November ballot, with a provision that if the measure fails the cuts will not occur because the 2009 taxes and fees will be re-instated for five years. As a practical matter, cuts can be delayed to occur after November. And costs can be shifted to local government for local responsibilities whether the measure wins or loses.

Then let Grover Norquist, Jon Fleischman, radio heads John and Ken and the rest of their not-our-problem cadre be forced to argue for the budget ballot measure while Democrats and labor argue against it.

In other words, make the “yes” position a vote for cutting programs for widows, orphans, fish and fawn and the “no” position a vote for freedom, justice and common decency on our streets and in our homes. Recall: in the history of ballot propositions in California, “no” beats “yes” 67% of the time.

Of course, there are a lot of interesting moving parts in this scenario, some that will probably require some legal approval. But why not go for something that will a) work and b) might be something that progressives can really support.  

Now, I tend to think that the CalBuzz/Jerry Brown revenue package proposed is hardly progressive.  In fact, I can’t really see any way to argue that it is.  It takes money disproportionately from those that can’t afford to save money.  So, why not put on a revenue package, either in addition to, or instead of, that at least includes some sort of a fair share for corporations and resource hogs.  Why not put that oil extraction on there? Or an overhaul of the income tax system that actually provides for more than two tax brackets.

There are more that we all could think of if we brainstormed, but maybe a little creativity here could be beneficial.

Budget, Jerry Brown

R.I.P. Any Hope For a Functional Budget System. Gov. Brown halts budget talks

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I’ll admit it, I’m something of a cynic.  I was always worried about the budget process and whether we would get the 2 votes necessary for the supermajority.  I pretty much knew that the Republicans wouldn’t put straight taxes as an option, but maybe, just maybe, they would consider some sort of deal for an election.

Well, time’s up on that:

Gov. Jerry Brown announced this afternoon he halted negotiations with legislative Republicans over a deal to place taxes on the ballot to help resolve California’s remaining $15.4 billion deficit.

A June election appears to be off the table entirely. Brown is no longer pursuing a two-thirds vote for a June tax election, while Senate President Pro Tem Darrell Steinberg, D-Sacramento, told reporters he will not pursue a majority-vote option, either.

“Yesterday, I stopped the discussions that I had been conducting with various members of the Republican party regarding our state’s massive deficit,” Brown said in a statement this afternoon. “The budget plan that I put forth is balanced between deep cuts and extensions of currently existing taxes and I believe it is in the best interest of California. Under our constitution, however, two Republicans from the Assembly and two from the Senate must agree before this matter can be put to the people.”(SacBee)

The Governor also sent a letter to Republican Senate Leader Bob Dutton asking him to “get working” on something, and to pair his reform requests down to spending cap, pension reform, and “regulatory reform.”  You can view the letter here.  But in the end, I struggle to see how anything gets done at this point without signatures.  It is just unfortunate that now we’re going to have to wait to get that done.

This is truly a bad day for California, and a sad statement for our government.

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Don’t You Dare Negotiate

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It was enough that the Norquistians were threatening anybody who would vote for taxes.  And then they moved on to voting for putting them on the ballot.  And now we have moved further down the rabbit hole: the David Koch backed group “Americans for Prosperity” is going after two Republicans who dared to negotiate.

A conservative taxpayers group backed by major GOP donors has launched a new radio spot targeting two Republican senators who have been involved in ongoing negotiations to put Gov. Jerry Brown’s tax proposal on a June ballot.

The ad, aired by the California chapter of Americans for Prosperity, urges listeners to tell GOP Sens. Tom Berryhill, of Modesto, and Anthony Cannella, of Ceres, to oppose any vote for an election on maintaining higher tax rates.(SacBee)

Not for nothing, but Anthony Cannella’s father, Sal Cannella, was a Democratic Assemblyman from the area back in the early 1990s.  Of course, apparently that hasn’t meant that much thus far in his legislative career, other than a few bipartisan nods, he hasn’t been any different than any other Republican in the Senate.

But the fact that this is where we have gone, to the point where even attempting to negotiate is verboten, it makes one cringe for our future.  How can we really have a workable state if we can’t even work together.  David Koch and the California chair of his organization, Ventura Supervisor Peter Foy should be ashamed of themselves.  Or proud, if you live a broken government.

Budget, Jerry Brown

Obama, Brown, and the Budget

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Peter Schrag has a column in the Bee that is an interesting comparison of Gov. Brown to President Obama:

What is a little surprising is that Brown, surely aware of what the Republican minority in Congress did to Barack Obama in the first year of his presidency in 2009, would allow himself to be played in very much the same way.

Yes, Brown is up against the constitutional requirement, enacted with Proposition 13 in 1978, that tax increases may be enacted only with two-thirds majorities in each house of the Legislature. He thus needs a couple of GOP votes in each house. But by now it should have been clear that all the talking with the five Senate “traitors” who’ve sat down with the governor was going nowhere.(SacBee)

Really, from day 1, the Republicans haven’t been negotiating in good faith.  They’ve been dragging their feet, trying to either get permission from their anti-government overlords (that wasn’t going to happen) or just delay long enough to make the people of California distrustful of any plan that comes out of Sacramento.  In fact, Joe Nation sums this up well in an op-ed in the Chronicle:

What is strange about the current debate is that it is not about taxes but about voter choice. Even more bizarre, it contradicts the state GOP’s position as stated on its website: “Republicans believe individuals should control both their own and their government’s pocketbook – the people should authorize all tax increases.”

In short, the people should authorize all tax increases. We just shouldn’t give them the opportunity to authorize them.

That convenient position may permit some lawmakers to avoid the political death penalty. But in its place, lawmakers are imposing a civic death penalty on voters, who no longer have a choice on the kind of California in which they choose to live.((SF Chronicle)

The Republicans live in an ever-present state of terror with their base.  Might this change with top-2 and the lack of a true primary? Well, perhaps but not likely. As we saw with the special election to replace Dave Cogdill in SD-01, there are few districts in California that a Democrat can’t at least come in second place.  So, essentially you have a primary election, with one member of each major party advancing.  Now, that isn’t true in a few Democratic districts, San Francisco and Alameda counties come to mind, and you might find a situation where two republicans advance here and there.  But, fundamentally, it is doubtful all that much will change.

So, we continue to negotiate with ourselves.

On a related note, I was on KPFK’s Uprising Radio to talk about the budget. You can find the audio of that interview here.

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Skelton: Electeds Should Do Their Jobs

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There are a multitude of problems with Prop 13.  You won’t have to read this site very long to learn my opinion on that 1978 initiative.  However, one of the long-term consequences of the measure, that perhaps was not really envisioned, has been away from all accountability on behalf of elected leaders.

Republicans simply throw their hands up in the air in public, saying the Democrats control the legislature. Meanwhile, in private, they are making up wish lists of stuff they want.  For their part, the Democrats say that they can’t act because of the supermajority rules.  Now, that might be reduced with the new majority vote budget measure, but when we need to raise revenue, that doesn’t really matter all that much. In the end, everybody has an excuse for why stuff doesn’t happen.  

But, that is really a problematic situation.  And instead of decisive leadership, we get elected officials who defer to the people, because they/we are the only legislative body that doesn’t need a supermajority.  In his column today, George Skelton decries this notion that somehow our elected leaders aren’t up to the task of solving our budget issues.

The governor, with legislative help, has the power to stop the bleeding and the weeping. Too bad he’s trying to abdicate it to voters.

Despite what he says, Brown is big enough for the job and capable of making the hard choices. And that’s what “we the people” expect. (LA Times)

Now, while saying this, he also blames unions for not compromising on the GOP demands and says there are a few “sensible” Republicans willing to bargain for other reforms.  Now, as I mentioned earlier today, that’s not what the budget process is for. It’s not designed to reform CEQA or our greenhouse gas pollution regulations, it should be about the budget.

Fortunately, Skelton brought in legal counsel to explain the sitch, UC-Irvine School of Law Dean Erwin Chemerinsky:

“We elect representatives to make the laws,” (Chemerinsky) said. “It should be their responsibility to act in the best interests of the voters. If the voters don’t like what they do, they can be voted out of office.”

“It is unnecessary and undesirable to go to the voters,” added Chemerinsky, who worries particularly about a small turnout in a special election and potentially poor prospects for passage of the tax extension.

“The idea of cutting another $12 billion would be truly devastating to the state of California. And it’s the responsibility of the governor and Legislature to protect us from that.”

It is a broken system, and one where nobody takes responsibility.  I don’t know how that changes anything in the short term. But in the long-term can we really continue to have these same anti-democratic fights every year?