Rep. Darrell Issa, the chair of the House Oversight Committee, is at the helm of a business empire that even by the standards of Washington and Wall Street is glittering and dramatic. While some members of Congress downplay their business intrerests while serving in Congress, Issa does the opposite and revels in his burgeoning wealth.
The NY Times' Eric Lichtblau, who wrote a game-changer story in L.A. about Issa's background when Issa unsuccessfully ran for Senate in California in 1998, wrote a new tale this weekend on Issa and his business interests.
"Even as he has built a reputation as a forceful Congressional advocate for business, Mr. Issa has bought up office buildings, split a holding company into separate multibillion-dollar businesses, started an insurance company, traded hundreds of millions of dollars in securities, invested in overseas funds, retained an interest in his auto-alarm company and built up a family foundation."
"As his private wealth and public power have grown, so too has the overlap between his private and business lives, with at least some of the congressman’s government actions helping to make a rich man even richer and raising the potential for conflicts."
"He has secured millions of dollars in Congressional earmarks for road work and public works projects that promise improved traffic and other benefits to the many commercial properties he owns here north of San Diego. In one case, more than $800,000 in earmarks he arranged will help widen a busy thoroughfare in front of a medical plaza he bought for $10.3 million."
San Francisco's political landscape, full of curves and peaks, gets a another twist: The mayoral election will be the first race with public campaign financing in play.
From the Chnronicle's Heather Knight John Cote: "The city is seeing its first mayor's race with public financing in play, and Mayor Ed Lee threw a major curveball by entering the race after he promised he wouldn't and then declared he won't accept public financing, unlike nine other serious contenders."
"Lee's camp also said he won't be constrained by the $1.475 million spending cap in place for those accepting public money, which leaves him free to raise as much as he can."
"Ed Lee is opening up a spending arms race," said Jim Stearns, campaign manager for state Sen. Leland Yee, another candidate. "He is trying to use his wealthy donors and influential power brokers to get yet another unfair advantage in this race."
After all the talk about abolishing redevelopment agencies, many of those same agencies, one by one, are deciding to pay the money demanded by Gov. Brown and the Legislature and stay in existence. The latest example: Santa Clara, which wants to build a football stadium.
From Mike Rosenberg in the Mercury News: "The City Council on Tuesday is expected to approve the city manager's recommendation to "opt in" to the state's new optional redevelopment agency plan. The move allows Santa Clara to hold onto its precious property tax revenue, much of which is aimed at the stadium, but requires the city to reimburse the state for a share of the income the governor and Legislature are demanding."
"The new plan, then, will yield the city less redevelopment money than it used to -- but officials say it's better than nothing. "It's not ideal but to opt in is still the best way to go," said Pam Morrison, the administrative analyst to the Santa Clara city manager. Because "if the redevelopment agency goes away altogether, then it's questionable what we'll be able to do at all."
"It's a backup plan, as cities across the state wait for a California Supreme Court ruling on whether the state's plan to charge cities for redevelopment revenues is legal. The court agreed last week to hear the case and expects to make a ruling by Jan. 15.
A new review by the League of Cities takes a look at whether pensions promised current municipal workers can be reduced, a cost-cutting move widely believed to be prohibited by court rulings.
From CalPensions' Ed Mendel: "A look at the legality of reducing pensions that current workers earn in the future, while protecting pension amounts already earned through years of service, is similar to a recommendation from the watchdog Little Hoover Commission in February."
“Pension sustainability cannot be fully achieved without addressing the benefits of both current and future employees,” said the League of California Cities plan issued late last month and distributed at a pension workshop here last week."
"As pension costs soar, particularly in local government where most spending is on personnel, savings from clearly legal changes (mainly higher pension contributions from workers and lower pensions for new hires) are said to fall short."
From our "International Cooperation" file comes the story of the American crashed helicopter from the Osama bin Laden raid. It turns out that the Pakistanis showed the chopper, which carries loads of stealth technology, to the Chinese.
"Pakistan gave China access to the previously unknown U.S. "stealth" helicopter that crashed during the commando raid that killed Osama bin Laden in May despite explicit requests from the CIA not to, the Financial Times reported on Sunday."
"The disclosure, if confirmed, is likely to further shake the U.S.-Pakistan relationship, which has been improving slightly after hitting its lowest point in decades following the killing of bin Laden."
"During the raid, one of two modified Blackhawk helicopters, believed to employ unknown stealth capability, malfunctioned and crashed, forcing the commandos to abandon it. "The U.S. now has information that Pakistan, particularly the ISI, gave access to the Chinese military to the downed helicopter in Abbottabad," the paper quoted a person "in intelligence circles" as saying on its website."
With friends like that....