Malcolm Maclachlan looks at Speaker JohnPerez's big
end-of-session horse racing bill.
"Bo
Derek probably didn’t get upstaged much during her heyday in the 1970s
and ‘80s, when she was one of the world’s most recognizable sex symbols.
But when her name
goes before the Senate Rules Committee Wednesday morning,
she’ll likely be overshadowed by another appointee to the
California Horse Racing Board.
"That appointee would be the board chairman, Keith
Brackpool.
Neither actually has to show up for the hearing, but
Brackpool now finds himself in the middle of a bitter
fight over AB 2414, a bill authored by Assembly Speaker John Perez, D-Los Angeles, that would make huge changes in horse
race betting in the state — including authorizing a kind of betting that reminds
some of the complex financial instruments that nearly
brought down the economy two years ago.
"Brackpool is a former appointee in the Gray Davis
administration,
and a major player in past water battles in the state
via his company, Cadiz Inc. But it’s his lead role in crafting horse racing legislation
that has some privately wondering if he could face
a confirmation battle. Meanwhile, opponents of the
bill have launched a late-session ad buy in an attempt to stop it."
Gov. Schwarzenegger has picked up on an old idea -- lowering sales and income taxes, but spreading sales
taxes to apply to services.
Kevin Yamamura reports, "Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger
said Tuesday the state should lower
its sales tax rate and apply it to "all services" that
now go untaxed.
"The
Republican governor, speaking to business leaders
at the Goleta Valley
Chamber of Commerce, framed the change as a way to
stabilize
California's tax system, which he said relies too heavily
on income
taxes paid by wealthy earners.
"Schwarzenegger still opposes any
idea that would result in higher taxes overall. He
called for lower
taxes on income and corporations as part of the sales
tax change. He
wants some overhaul of the tax system as a condition
to signing the
state budget, which is now 56 days overdue.
"Let's broaden it to all services, so that everyone
pays taxes," he
said of sales taxes, "not just half of the people pay
taxes and the
other half doesn't. … We know that the economy now is a service-oriented
economy, but we really don't tax anyone that is in
this new economy."
Meanwhile, Democrats are expected to tweak their tax
proposal, lowering the tax burden on the middle class,
in the wake of feedback from the LAO.
Steve Lopez says independent voters still have not picked a candidate in the race for California governor.
"The choice is not very clear because I don't see a
candidate that
really has a plan for a better future for California
at this point,"
said Maureen Hayes, a Ladera Ranch resident and vice
president of a
construction company.
Hayes hasn't yet located the details in the limited
proposals from
either candidate, and to the extent that they do have
"plans," she's not
sure how either can expect to implement them given
the corrupted
political process.
"Is Jerry Brown even running?" asked Santa Monica physician Paul Song.
"Other than an occasional union-funded TV spot, I have not gotten the
impression from him that he is even running for office."
As for Whitman, Song said, "I find it amazing that
even despite putting
over $104 million of her own money into this race that she has
had to
continue to blast Brown rather than be able to successfully
define
herself and provide a real definitive plan for what
she will do."
Just be happy you don't have to write about the race
every day...
Council members in Bell were paid thousands to sit on boards that rarely met.
The LAT's Pulitzer team in waiting reports, "Bell
council members earned tens of thousands of dollars
over the last four
years as members of city commissions that rarely met,
records reviewed
by The Times show.
Bell's Surplus Property Authority, for example, met
once between January
2007 and July 2010, according to city minutes. The Public Finance
Authority met only three times during that period.
The Housing Authority
met four times in 2008. And the Solid Waste and Recycling Authority has
not met since January 2005.
The findings add a new twist to the Bell salary scandal,
which has
sparked several investigations and prompted the resignations
of three
top city administrators. Until they cut their pay last
month amid
public outcry, the council members were earning about
$97,000 a year,
making them among the highest-paid part-time council members in
California.
Jerry Brown got a fund-raising assist from President Obama Tuesday, and the flood of support crashed Brown's
campaign website.
Seema Mehta reports, "within minutes of Obama’s e-mail, so many people clicked the link that
Brown’s website crashed. Obama supporters looking to contribute
or
volunteer found this message: “The site is currently not available due
to technical problems. Please try again later. Thank
you for your
understanding.”
The U.S. Secretary of Education is pushing for schools
to release data that would help parents evaluate teachers.
U.S. Education Secretary Arne Duncan
will call for all states and school districts to make
public whether
their instructors are doing enough to raise students'
test scores and to
share other school-level information with parents, according to a text
of a speech he is scheduled to make Wednesday.
"The truth is always hard to swallow, but it can only
make us better,
stronger and smarter," according to remarks he plans
to deliver in
Little Rock, Ark. "That's what accountability is all
about — facing the
truth and taking responsibility."
You want the truth? You can't handle the truth...
The Chron weighs in on the CSU foundation secrecy issue.
"California State University officials, who
have fought to keep secret the financial details of
how $1.6 billion is
managed by campus foundations, now admit that they
have mixed private
and public dollars to the extent that they can't tell
the difference and
don't know how much money is involved.
"The sloppy accounting has raised new concerns about
the university's
insistence that the foundations are independent enterprises
and should
be exempt from public records laws.
Critics have long complained that the foundations have
been used as a
sort of secret checking account, at times allowing
officials to spend
lavishly and escape public scrutiny. They say the foundations'
books
should be as open as the public universities they serve,
and they've
pushed for a change in state law.
"The most recent controversy surfaced this spring when
the CSU
Stanislaus Foundation refused to say how much it would
pay former Alaska
Gov. Sarah Palin to speak at a June fundraiser. After
it came out that
university officials played a role in managing the
foundation's money
and that foundation offices were located on campus,
CSU revealed that
Palin received $75,000."
And finally, in honor
of the passage of Dave Jones's Pet Insurance bill (must be going for the uninsured gerbil vote in the
insurance commissioner's race), we bring you this from Reuters:
"A Labrador that ate a beehive containing pesticides
and thousands of
dead bees won an award on Monday that recognized the
most unusual pet
health insurance claim in the United States.
"Ellie, who fully recovered from her encounter with
the beehive in
southern California, beat a border collie that ran
through a window to
get at a mailman, and a terrier that bit a chainsaw.
"She won a bronze trophy in the shape of a ham, and
basket of toys and doggie treats."
Can a Dave Jones photo-op be far behind?
