A City Council veto override on Monday has set the scene for a showdown between local and national business interests vs. a labor-community coalition over San Diego’s Earned Sick Day / Minimum Wage ordinance.

Following months of public hearings and invitations (mostly declined) for local businesses to hammer out a compromise, the city council passed an ordinance providing access to five earned sick days and setting a local minimum wage increasing to $11.50 over three years.

This action makes San Diego the largest city in the nation to raise the minimum wage.

Mayor Kevin Faulconer–said to be one of the bright new faces in the GOP– then turned thumbs down on the bill on Friday, August 8th. Although the council was slated for vacation for the rest of the month, a special session was called by president Todd Gloria. The 6-2 vote upholding the ordinance surprised nobody.

It didn’t take but a few hours before a well-financed Chamber of Commerce-led group announced it would be collecting signatures to force a referendum on the ordinance, hoping to suspend (until the June, 2016 elections) an increase in pay for an estimated 172,000 local workers, along with denying access to earned sick days to 279,000 individuals.

They have 30 days to gather at least 33,866 valid signatures; National Petition Management has been reportedly hired to do the dirty work. If they fail to make that threshold, the first stage of the wage hikes will go into effect in January with an increase for local minimum-wage workers from $9 an hour to $9.75.

Decline to Sign Campaign

Funded by national restaurant chains and some of California’s biggest donors to Mitt Romney, the Chamber’s “Small Business Coalition” (managed by the right-wing Revolvis political consultancy) is facing off against Raise Up San Diego, which has called for a citywide decline to sign campaign, simply called “Don’t Sign It,” to defeat the referendum against the ordinance.

This attempt at forcing a referendum will be the fourth big dollar effort at overturning council-enacted legislation in the last two years orchestrated by conservative business interests who’ve long been used to getting their way in local government.

As San Diego has faded from being a solidly Republican town to having a Democratic majority among registered voters, the business as usual crowd has turned to well-financed misinformation campaigns run by right wing spin-doctors.

And until now they’ve been on a winning streak, enabled by local media either owned by financiers of these campaigns or incapable of reporting on issues outside the framing provided by the Chamber of Commerce and their allies.

Told, Sold and Lied To

Over the past two years San Diegans have been told, sold and lied to about:

**requiring impact statements on big box store construction,

**reinstating a linkage fee (tied to affordable housing funding) suspended for nearly two decades on big construction projects,

**and creating a barrier between residential and industrial projects in the neighborhood with the highest asthma rate in the state

Each campaign has used numbers pulled out of a bodily orifice to create the impression that people’s job’s would be in danger. The last campaign even went so far as spread stories about the US Navy (a major local employer) pulling out of town.

The local daily newspaper is owned by “Papa” Doug Manchester, known for his financial support of right-wing causes. He was a backer for Dinesh D’Souza’s smear-o-mentary, 2016: Obama’s America.  

The Sunday edition of UT-San Diego  featured a “news” story giving opponents of the increase major play.  

This time around, the Chamber types, hiding behind the ‘money is free speech’ notion, are out to claim they are the defenders of democracy. They are saying the referendum is needed since the City Council passed this ordinance without putting it up for a public vote.

It’s Orwellian beyond Orwellian; Big Money is trying to play the pity card because the City Council did the job voters elected them to do. And they’re claiming the “decline to sign’ campaign is a plot by labor bullies to harass business.

The Raise Up San Diego coalition is taking a stand on this issue. Two-thirds of voters – 63%, according to a recent Greenburg Quinlan Rosner Research poll – support the Earned Sick Days and Minimum Wage Ordinance.

When you have a local oligarchy capable of throwing hundreds of thousands of dollars or more on the table everytime they see something they don’t like, it becomes harder and harder to persuade people to vote in local elections.

And that, my friends, would be the point.

The Rise Up San Diego Coalition

In addition to faith, labor and community groups the Coalition fighting for this minimum wage increase has some high profile supporters in the business sector. Not every business in San Diego’s economy is dependent of a low wage model.

Irwin Jacobs, founder of Qualcomm (a major employer in the area) and Mel Katz (former Regional Chamber of Commerce Chairman) wrote a supportive op-ed, only to have it buried in the Saturday edition (lowest day for readership) of UT-San Diego.

The minimum wage and earned sick leave ordinance passed by a supermajority of the City Council establishes a basic standard of fairness for working people and their families. Our business experience here in San Diego tells us it makes good economic and business sense, too.

The high cost of living in San Diego is well-documented. Full-time work at the California minimum wage of $9 an hour pays $1,560 a month before taxes. In a city where the average one-bedroom apartment rents for $1,032, it’s unrealistic to support one’s self or a family on that wage. Our city minimum wage and earned sick leave ordinance gives an estimated 172,000 San Diegans a modest and gradual raise to $11.50 an hour by the year 2017 plus the ability to earn up to five sick days off per year.

Also well-documented is that increases in salaries of low-wage workers are spent close to home by these workers on basic necessities like food, housing and transportation. In San Diego, that means millions of dollars more circulating and recirculating through the San Diego economy each year and the associated multiplier effect of that spending. Earned sick days means millions more in improved productivity courtesy of a healthier and happier workforce.

Basketball great Bill Walton joined supporters at a press conference last week:

“We stand for a San Diego in which hard-working people aren’t locked in poverty and in which they can earn a few days off a year for when they get sick or need to care for an ill child or other loved one,” Walton said.  “We know the vast majority of San Diegans feel the same way, and we urge them to say no to the signature gatherers.”

It’s Time to Fight Back

Those seeking the referendum don’t care that they are literally taking away sustenance from those who need it most.

For Andrea Tookes, a minimum-wage security officer and mother in San Diego, this means another 20 months or more not having to choose between job security and a pay day, and taking care of one her four children when one of them becomes ill and can’t go to school.

“That’s a terrible choice,” said Tookes.  “You don’t want to send your kids to school sick.  You can’t leave them home alone.  And you can’t afford to forfeit pay or give your employer the impression you’re not a dependable employee.”

If you live in San Diego:

1.Take the pledge not to sign the anti-sick days anti-minimum wage petitions.

2. Inform as many people as possible that the earned sick days and minimum wage policy HAS PASSED, and that any signature gathering effort is an attempt to TAKE IT AWAY!! Tell your friends: DON’T SIGN IT!

3. If you see a signature gatherer, call or text the following hotline: (619) 930 – 3300

4. Volunteer.

Progressives in San Diego have used these recent challenges by reactionary elements in big business to increase organizing efforts throughout the community. Although we are outgunned, our numbers and commitment keep increasing; new alliances are being built on the shoulders of previous coalitions.

San Diego used to be a bright red city. Now it’s light blue and getting bluer. The minimum wage drive is just part of the shift. We will keep fighting until we’re BRIGHT BLUE..

Spread the word, my friends. This is going to be an epic battle.

This story was cross-posted at Daily Kos

Regarding the LA Stadium effort:

Senate President Pro Tem Darrell Steinberg (D-Sacramento) was talking to colleagues about extending the same proposal to other job-producing projects, possibly including sports facility projects in Sacramento, Santa Clara and San Diego, as well as renewable energy developments.

Anschutz Entertainment Group sought the special treatment after a competing stadium proposal in the City of Industry won an environmental waiver from the Legislature in 2009. Its backers argue that it deserves special treatment because it would create tens of thousands of jobs.

I’ve see articles (obviously from the right) claiming that Calirfornia is dominated by “Green Jihadis” and its destroying the economy.  Usually these articles call for the reform (mostly removal) of California’s environmental laws and link the 12% unemployment as justification. But based on what’s happening above are the Democrats coming around to that line? Do they see a link between enivornment and unemployment here?  Or are they desperate enough for votes in 2012 since California’s economy has barely nudged and the Democrats have a full sweep of state government?

A post was made on Calitics on February 28th concerning Lt. Governor Candidate Janice Hanh’s proposal to “lay off private contractors rather than lay off city workers.”  A case was made then that it was a mistake to throw private contractors under the bus without regard to the fiscal impact to the City of Los Angeles. Now the CEO of the Los Angeles Chamber of Commerce, in an article published recently in CityWatch with the heading Being Attacked Under Another Name, roundly criticizes Candidate Hahn and attempts to teach her a thing or two about the impact of her suggestion.

From the article…

In Los Angeles, some members of the L.A. City Council are also taking advantage of the “name” ruse. During last month’s debate over the city’s unsustainable budget, Councilmember Janice Hahn told a packed room that “It’s time for us to lay off private contractors and keep our city workers!” Councilmember Paul Koretz also wants the city’s independent contractors to take a 10 percent across-the-board cut before any layoffs of city workers.

That call to action may generate a brief standing ovation from city employees in Council Chambers, but it sends a message to hundreds of small businesses and their employees throughout Los Angeles that they are second-class citizens. Those independent contractors employ tens of thousands of Angelenos and are part of the private sector workplace in Los Angeles County that has already been forced to lay off nearly one-half million workers since the great recession started.

If “small business” had been substituted for “independent contractor,” these proposals would likely go nowhere and the rhetorical flourishes would have fallen flat. At the end of the day, this is about small businesses and jobs in Los Angeles and throughout the state.

So, when you hear elected officials piling onto “independent contractors” remind them that they are really talking about small businesses – perhaps even yours.

Gary Toebben is the President and CEO of the Los Angeles Area Chamber of Commerce … www.lachamber.com

One can only wonder the impact of Candidate Hahn’s proposal will have on voters who are small business owners and/or members of the Los Angeles Chamber, not to mention, an endorsement.

Link to full article by LA Chamber: http://citywatchla.com/index.p…

I mentioned this yesterday, but California lawmakers gave final approval to a bill that would ban the practice of rescission, where insurance companies drop coverage for policyholders after they try to use it based on alleged technical inaccuracies in their application form.  Here’s what AB2 would do:

AB 2 would require:

• Individual health care service plans to be subject to an independent external review before denying or rescinding coverage.

• The state to establish standard information and health-history questions to be used on policy applications.

• That intentional misrepresentation be shown before an individual health care service plan can be rescinded.

This language basically complies with what would appear in federal legislation before Congress banning rescission.

Now Arnold Schwarzenegger has a choice to make.  Does he side with people who are denied coverage after paying premiums for years?  Or does he side with his usual pals in the Chamber of Commerce who will push for anything, no matter how immoral, to maximize profits?

Everyone should know that Schwarzenegger vetoed a similar bill to this last year.  He’s always been a Chamber of Commerce sock-puppet and I don’t expect him to change now.  However, Schwarzenegger has been an alleged proponent of health care reform at the national level, and in a recent letter endorsed the concept of guaranteed issue of insurance, which obviously conflicts with allowing insurers to rescind policies.  He also supports continued state regulation of the insurance industry.

Well, here’s his chance.  The Legislature has acted to ban what I call insurer-assisted suicide, and Arnold can make his decision by either signing the bill or vetoing it.

The California Chamber of Commerce and 33 other business groups have basically stuck a knife in the Parsky Commission with a coalition letter opposing most of the tax reforms proposed.  I’m sure they’d still love to see a flat income tax and the elimination of corporate taxes, but since they have basically refused all revenue-raisers in this document, that won’t happen.

The coalition doesn’t like removing Proposition 13’s property tax limits from business property and a proposed new “carbon tax,” both of which have been promoted by the tax commission’s liberal bloc. But it also is warning about the potentially negative effects of a “net business receipts tax,” similar to a European-style value-added tax, that commission chairman Gerald Parsky champions […]

“The California business community has consistently stated that the solution to California’s revenue problems will only come from robust economic growth and job creation,” said today’s letter to Parsky. “We believe the proposed split roll property tax and the energy tax would be extremely detrimental to California’s economy. As for the business net receipts tax, we believe it is risky and inappropriate to move forward with dramatic changes to the tax structure without first fully vetting their impact on California jobs and the economy.”

The only way for the Parsky Commission to get an up-or-down vote for its recommendations is by making the package revenue-neutral.  The CalChamber document opposes all of the tax hikes while saying nothing about the reductions.  California Democrats can be squishy, but not squishy enough to eliminate corporate taxes in exchange for nothing.  Sen. Steinberg never agreed to bring the commission recommendations to a vote in the first place.  And without an offset, they will never see the light of day.

Arnold Schwarzenegger is a wholly owned subsidiary of the Chamber of Commerce.  Even in the unlikely even that the legislature ignores this letter and passes some plan including split-roll or a carbon tax or a business net receipts tax, there’s no way the Governor signs it.  The Parsky Commission is dead.

And I’m not really shedding a tear for it.  Forcing a revenue-neutral standard on how to fix the tax structure inevitably was going to shift the tax burden from the rich, who have the clout to shield themselves from the predations of lawmakers, to the middle and lower classes, who don’t.  The very structure was flawed, and the reforms sought of a lesser order than being able to properly fund government according to the wishes of the majority.

So we can move on to the next challenge.  Calbuzz has a good scene-setter on that, referring to something that Jean Ross mentioned in our Netroots Nation panel last week.  California Forward’s reform package may include, as a condition of repealing the 2/3 rule for passing a budget (and only the budget), a raising of the threshold to 2/3 for mitigation fees on businesses, which may extend to fees on alcohol, oil production and “anything else that carries a nexus to a public problem.”  In other words, while the budget would require a majority vote, revenue (which is 1/2 of a budget) would be subject to an even higher standard than it is now, and the legislature would be constrained in their ability to respond to the impact of corporate actions that harm the public good.  Actually it could go even further than that:

But Chairman Bob (Hertzberg) insists it would be a mistake to focus only on Sinclair as the key to business support for CF reforms. The only way some of the conservatives and business people on CF would “even consider” allowing 50% to pass the budget is if there’s a whole panoply of budget reforms – pay-as-you-go provisions, controls on one-time expenditures, two-year budgeting,  performance reviews, sunset provisions AND limits on what can pass with 50% as a “fee,” he said.

But will liberals – on CF and in the Legislature – agree to circumscribe their current authority to impost fees with a majority vote? Will they agree that there has to be a “clear nexus” between charges allocated to a polluter or manufacturer of polluty stuff?

As Jean Ross puts it, ever so succinctly, “California Forward?”  I concur.

So while we appear to have sidestepped the Parsky Commission (for now), California Backward’s set of “reforms” still lurk in the distance.

Last week, Robert Cruickshank offered the special election advocates some pretty good advice – focus on Prop. 1C, which covers 83% of the short-term budget hole that can be gained from the passage of the ballot measures, because the state party approved it, because it’s the only measure that matters in the near term, and because they need to focus their energies, since very little good is likely to come of the election at this point.  Of course, Arnold Schwarzenegger controls the Budget Reform Now Campaign.  And he has shown himself to be completely indifferent to the short-term needs of the state in favor of writing a long-term, right-wing spending cap into the state Constitution.  Because instead of abandoning all the other measures in favor of 1C, Budget Reform Now has jettisoned everything in favor of 1A & 1B.  I saw this ad a couple days ago, out of nowhere, and Budget Reform Now dropped it without a press release.  The ad tries to use the 2005 special election imagery which killed Arnold’s Prop. 76 (substantially the same proposal) in favor of this spending cap, with the firefighter warning of “$16 billion in cuts” without bothering to mention that those “cuts,” really lost revenues, would be two years off.  And the new “Yes on 1A and 1B” logo makes an appearance.

I think we can finally figure out what Arnold Schwarzenegger wants from this election.  He could care less about the $6 billion in short-term budget solutions – but his corporate partners want that spending cap, and his new pals in the CTA want their out-of-court settlement locked in (it would’ve cost them less just to take the Governor to court for falsely calculating Prop. 98 revenues, with more of a chance of winning).  So all this talk about how we have to vote Yes or the budget hole will grow deeper was a ruse.  The Governor clearly supports the deeper budget deficit, or at least he could give a crap with coming up with a solution.  He and his Chamber of Commerce puppet masters want that cap.  They have wanted it for four years.  Anyone lining up with these interests should understand what they really support.  Good job, Democratic leadership.

The Governor is “restarting” budget talks today.  Of course, “restarting” should read “using the same failed process that cannot possibly be successful.”  The Governor vetoed the only game in town because he’s controlled by strings held by the Chamber of Commerce, who suddenly looked favorably on the virtues of bankrupting the state, and Arnold had to follow.  The SacBee ed board puts it more judiciously.

Democrats agreed to a 2 percent cut in welfare grants, and some, but not all, of the environmental exemptions. They also have insisted that the governor first negotiate with unions before attempting to furlough state employees and eliminate some paid holidays.

In an interview and op-ed in The Bee Tuesday, Senate President Pro Tem Darrell Steinberg suggested the deal blew up not because of policy differences, but because of political pressure placed on Schwarzenegger. Steinberg says the governor got “cold feet” over the Democrats’ plan to raise taxes and fees through a majority vote.

There may be some truth to this. On Tuesday, the California Chamber of Commerce issued a statement urging the governor to veto the Democrats’ plan, saying it included “unconstitutional and discriminatory tax increases.” Since the chamber is one of the governor’s few political allies, their stern opposition to increasing taxes by a simple majority vote may well have led Schwarzenegger to backpedal.

The ed board goes on to criticize Democratic leaders for not wanting to cut enough.  You know, I thought a mid-year budget deal was designed to fix the budget for the current fiscal year.  If we have two-year budget cycles now, it’s news to me.  I understand the logic of a two-year cycle, but the desire to fill an 18-month gap in January puzzles me and seems designed to further more draconian cuts.

And the continued ignoring of the elephant in the room and casting this as a failure of both sides to compromise is truly absurd.  There has been nothing but compromise coming from the Democrats, not just now but for years.  “Bipartisanship” has always meant “do whatever Republicans want” to the Very Serious Media.  George Skelton today is lamenting the loss of Leon Panetta, as if a guy telling lawmakers they should have more drinks together is the answer to every problem the state faces.

This isn’t rocket science.  Lawmakers aren’t allowed to do their jobs.  We elect a representative government along majority votes, and them load them down with rules that prevent majority rule.  It doesn’t take a genius – or even Leon Panetta! – to fix that.  Just an acknowledgement of the problem.

(Incidentally, a judge threw out the lawsuit from the Howard Jarvis crowd attempting to rule the work-around budget unconstitutional, since it was vetoed and therefore not germane.  If it comes to such a work-around again, however, expect more lawsuits.)