California Voices

Belatedly – and only after they had lost control of Congress to Republicans – the national Democratic Party grasped the impact of how state legislatures redraw congressional districts after each decennial census. A consortium of Republican and conservative interest groups had methodically set out to capture state legislatures and governorships in anticipation of redistricting after […]

Gov. Jerry Brown traveled two not always parallel paths to win legislative approval for extending California’s cap-and-trade approach to shrinking its carbon emission footprint. Publicly, he depicted it as a moral imperative because carbon-caused climate change, he says, poses an existential threat to humankind. Last week, he described an apocalyptic future of massive social dislocation, […]

To put it mildly, the elected members of the state Board of Equalization are unhappy that the huge tax collection agency is being dismantled. Last month, in response to revelations in numerous audits and journalistic investigations, the Legislature and Gov. Jerry Brown stripped the board of about 90 percent of its authority over sales and […]

Much has been said and written – mostly negatively – about the effects of Proposition 13, California’s iconic law limiting property taxes. Its critics say that Proposition 13, which restricts taxes to 1 percent of property values and caps increases in those values at 2 percent a year, has starved schools and local governments of vital […]

The last three California election cycles demonstrated that at the political margins, voter turnout can have a major impact. Democrats achieved long-sought two-thirds “supermajorities” in both houses of the Legislature in 2012, lost them in 2014 when a few seats changed partisan hands, then regained them last year, albeit very narrowly. The ups and downs […]

“Desperate” may be too strong a word, but Gov. Jerry Brown, who aspires to global leadership of the climate change movement, very badly needs to renew “cap-and-trade” controls on California’s greenhouse gas emissions that will expire in 2020. However, it’s one thing for Brown to join international leaders in issuing high-minded declarations on existential climate […]

Earlier this year, the Public Policy Institute of California issued a warning about a looming collision between California’s demographic and economic trends. Baby boomers, a huge proportion of the state’s workforce, are retiring in droves. The oldest are at least 70, the youngest in their early 50s. By 2030, the vast majority will not be […]

Voice of San Diego, a journalistic website that covers local politics, published a remarkable article late last month about financial shenanigans in the San Diego Association of Governments, a regional planning and transportation agency. Twelve years ago, the article said, SANDAG, as it’s known, decided to invest – or wager – millions of dollars from […]

The Wall Street Journal often features stories about multimillion-dollar homes and estates as they change ownership. One recent article should disturb California politicians, particularly Gov. Jerry Brown and legislators who recently enacted a new state budget. Here’s why. About 70 percent of the revenue for the $125 billion “general fund” portion of the budget – […]

For months, California’s Republican leaders had, with fingers crossed, hoped that the state’s top GOP officeholder, San Diego Mayor Kevin Faulconer, would change his mind. They wanted him to run for governor in 2018, contending that with Democrats drifting leftward in reaction to President Donald Trump, a centrist Republican would have a chance to win. […]