Split roll rolls on The Alliance for a Better California, the labor group formed in opposition to Gov. Schwarzenegger's potential special election agenda, has come out in support of a measure that would
increase commercial property taxes. The
California Teachers Association and
Rob Reiner scrapped an earlier plan in 2004 that would have raised property taxes to pay for preschool programs.
AP reports: "A labor-backed coalition announced a signature-gathering drive yesterday for an initiative that would
increase business property taxes by an estimated $2.8 billion a year to aid schools, transportation, local public safety and senior citizen tax relief."
Finance Director Tom Campbell
continue to toe the party line against taxes at a meeting of the Inland Empire Economic Partnership.
Keep this Inland Daily Bulletin Story in mind if Reiner
ever decides to run for governor. "Awash in money from the Proposition 10 tobacco tax engineered by actor-director Rob Reiner, California's early-childhood commissions have
spent more than $164 million in the last six years on public relations and advertising, state documents show."
"
Roy Behr, a partner at GMMB and a longtime advisor to California Democratic politicians, said his firm was hired to produce TV, radio and billboard ads focused on convincing parents and expectant parents to stop smoking and educating them about the importance of preschool and early-childhood brain development."
We know this is going to shock a lot of you, but Behr is
also a political adviser to Reiner. In a recent LA Times story, Behr said, "The odds are that by the time election day rolls around, Schwarzenegger will look a lot more vulnerable than he does today," Behr said. "But I don't think he is more vulnerable to a
career politician'" adding that
Phil Angelides is "'clearly the master of Democratic red meat rhetoric and will play very well at the [Democratic] convention, but he's probably not what voters are looking for.'"
Hmmm, so the governor can be beaten by a Democrat who is not a career politician. Pray tell, Roy,
who did you have in mind?Bay Bridge Update: Speaking of shocking news, looks like
tolls on the Bay Bridge are heading up. The question is not will they increase, it's
how high they'll go. "Our objective all along is to postpone the tolls for as long as we can and to limit it to a $1 increase," said Randy Rentschler, a spokesman for the Bay Area Toll Authority.
The Contra Costa Times reports: "Closed-door negotiations between Bay Area lawmakers and Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger are expected to resume this week and a budget hearing is scheduled for Wednesday, but both sides have kept quiet on the details of paying for billions of dollars in overruns since 2001."
The price of public service The LA Times takes a look at local elected officials who can
no longer afford to live in the cities they serve. "[Half Moon Bay councilman
Sid McCausland, 64, announced that he was retiring from his day job at the end of March and would have to resign from the City Council because he no longer could afford to live here.
A lifelong public servant who
plans to live on his pension, the workaholic McCausland said he faced a tough choice — putting his retirement income into a huge mortgage and staring at the walls or buying a lakefront house in Alaska for $250,000 and traveling with his wife,
Suzanne."
Luckily, with six-digit salaries, another $30,000 in tax free per diem, and most with jobs on the side, our beloved legislators will never have this problem. Or, at least that's what their financial advisors would say.
Speaking of servant wannabes that won't have any financial worries,
Steve Poizner's consolation prize appointment to the PUC is
running into some conflict of interest problems. Apparently, the
"old and ambiguous" (as Poizner calls them) rules against voting on things in which you have a financial interest are getting in the way. The former Assembly candidate has holdings in SBC, BellSouth, Verizon, Motorola, Qualcomm and other wired and wireless-related companies.
It's the integrity, stupid, as
Jim Hahn and
Antonio Villaragoisa square off in another mayoral debate. "Hahn sought to raise doubts about Villaraigosa, portraying him as a shifty politician prone to inconsistency.
'This is about trust, Antonio, and people don't trust you,' said Hahn, who accused his rival of using 'double talk.' Villaraigosa, for his part, cited investigations into the mayor's fundraising and city contracting.
'We can't afford four more years of corruption probes and stagnation,' he said. 'We need a mayor who will restore trust and confidence in City Hall again.'"
In "Giving Her the Finger" News, a San Jose woman took to the airwaves after
getting a human finger in her cup of chili that she ordered from a local Wendy's. "The Las Vegas woman, who was visiting San Jose relatives during the dining ordeal last Tuesday, told ABC she'd crumbled crackers into a bowl of chili and was just digging in." (We'd publish the quote that follows, but we realize some of you, like us, haven't even had breakfast yet.
Click at your own risk!)
The
U.S. Supreme Court has decided to intervene in a pair of cases in which the
9th Circuit Court of Appeals overturned earlier death sentences. "In two cases, the Ninth Circuit panels had ordered new penalty trials, but the high court in one of them granted prosecutors a hearing and told the appeals court to reconsider the other in light of a recent decision restoring a California death verdict," reports the Chron's court watcher, Bob Egelko.
Finally, as our legislative readers return from yesterday's holiday and our state employee readers look forward to Thursday's holiday, the Sacramento Bee says
"stop the madness." The governor has a solution.
Get rid of two state holidays and
let each collective bargaining unit determine which holidays to observe. Now, that should be fun to watch.
