With the tax receipts coming in after the mid-April filing deadline, the flow appears to be about $2 billion above projections. That would appear to be good news, although in the Capitol one is never quite sure. The LAT's Shane Goldmacher has the story.
"State officials are reporting an unexpected $2-billion surge in tax receipts that will help lawmakers close the remaining $15-billion budget deficit, and the Capitol is humming with hope that more is coming."
"But the windfall could complicate Gov. Jerry Brown's push for tax increases, which he says are needed for California's longer-term financial health."
"Some analysts say the surprise — the sign of a brightening economy — could be just the beginning. Revenue has crept up incrementally for months and jumped in April, when people paid their taxes. It may be time to raise projections, they say, with the potential for billions more to flow into state coffers."
A nonprofit group that has taken the lead in the battle against government workers' pensions says the state's five pension funds are in financial peril.
From Marc Lifsher in the L.A. Times: "According to the study, to be released Thursday, California's five biggest pension funds are in precarious financial conditions. Last year, they had only enough money to cover 61% to 74% of their obligations to current employees."
"Without a significant scaling back, "public employer obligations for retirement benefits will rise sharply over the next decade, further squeezing government budgets that are already facing enormous pressures," the study said."
"The proposals, the primary efforts statewide to curtail public pension benefits, have prompted labor unions to dispatch so-called truth squads to the state Capitol this week to debunk warnings that the cost of public pensions would saddle future California generations with billions of dollars in debt."
"Teachers, police officers and retirees are telling lawmakers that state workers already have made pension reduction concessions and get only modest benefits."
Public employees, meanwhile, tired of being identified with pension spikers and other abuses, are pushing back, reports Steve Harmon in the Contra Costa Times.
"One longtime teacher's aide at the news conference accused "out-of-state billionaires and corporate interests whose greed led to California's budget mess" of leading attacks on unions to divert the blame from themselves."
"They selectively draw attention to headlines about the few inexcusable cases of abuse," said Martha Penry, a special-education teacher's assistant who said she will be "very lucky" to collect $800 a month from her pension when she retires after 25 years. "And they continue to spread myths and falsehoods about public employee pensions."
"In actuality, Penry and others said, most public workers receive modest pension benefits after long public service."
Meanwhile, an anti-pension spiking bill was moving through the Legislature. The Ventura County Star's Timm Herdt has the story.
"Furutani's bill, AB 340, was approved with bipartisan support, and with the backing of labor groups. It was one of several measures the panel dealt with on Wednesday as it moved through an agenda of pension reform."
"Among other actions, the committee approved a bill that would prohibit government agencies from taking a "pension holiday" by suspending contributions to their retirement systems during years of bountiful investment returns and rejected a measure that sought to eliminate pensions from issues subject to collective bargaining agreements with public employee unions."
"Those final-year pay boosts, known as "pension spiking," have long been banned among state employees and those who work for local government agencies that are part of the California Public Employees Retirement System. But they continue in some of the 20 counties that operate independent retirement systems under the provisions of a 1937 state law."
Another wrinkle in redistricting: How do you count prison inmates, by where they are located or by where they come from? Capitol Weekly's Malcolm Maclachlan tells the tale.
"California’s 80th Assembly District has another claim to fame besides being vast and largely empty: One out of every 11 people in it is a prison inmate who didn’t choose to be there."
"If Assemblyman Mike Davis gets his way, in a decade, the 80th AD would get even more vast empty land — because those prisoners wouldn’t count when it comes to drawing new political districts."
"The Los Angeles Democrat has authored AB 420, which would change the state’s reapportionment procedure to count prisoners in their districts of origin, instead of where they are incarcerated. In the Census, inmates currently are counted as citizens of the districts where they are imprisoned — even though they can’t vote and aren’t there on purpose.
If passed, the new law wouldn’t go into effect until the next redistricting, which will be based on the 2020 census."
Californa's Voting Rights Act is prompting many school districts to change the way they elect their trustees and is making lawyers a lot of money.
From Greg Lucas in Capitol Weekly: "Much of the activity on the issue is instigated by the San Francisco-based Lawyers Committee, which has filed five lawsuits and sent numerous warning letters to cities, special districts and school boards - many of them in the Central Valley with a large Latino population."
"Besides Madera, the Lawyer’s Committee has filed against the cities of Modesto and Tulare, Ceres Unified School District and the Hanford Joint Unified School District."
"Rubin says he’s just ensuring the voices of minority voters aren’t silenced or diluted – as at-large elections sought to do in the South."
“All we’re talking about here is the ability of a community to elect candidates of their choice,” Rubin said in an interview with Capitol Weekly."
