Tag: California

Categories
too much government

The Maywood Solution

What do you do when your town’s politics has been bitter and internecine for years, when your police force is best known for hiring disgraced cops from other departments, and when your town budget is nearly half a million bucks in the red?

Give up.

Well, not quite. The town of Maywood, not far south of downtown Los Angeles, was in just such a pickle, and resorted to a rather extreme solution: The elected officials, town manager, and city attorney kept their positions, but everybody else was let go.

The move was forced by the fact that no insurance company would guarantee the burg. The town had grown so iffy on all counts that it would have been crazy to bet on it. Thus placed in legal jeopardy, the town’s leaders decided that the only way to keep their jobs was to get rid of all others.

No. Wait. That’s too cynical. With a civic culture so corrupt something had to be done to move forward.

That makes Maywood’s next step almost sheer genius: Contract police, fire, everything else to neighboring, better-​run jurisdictions. The county Sheriff takes over police patrols. Bell, a neighbor city, takes over the bulk of municipal services.

The new arrangement begins July 1. This makes Maywood one city to watch. Could it be a bellwether? In collapsing California, very likely.

And what about other cities in other states? It might mean a revolution: Economic competition for public services.

This is Common Sense. I’m Paul Jacob.

Categories
ballot access initiative, referendum, and recall term limits

The One-​Man Petition Drive

Hurray for John Smelser!

After five months of unfailing footwork, in late February, the 67-​year-​old celebrated his 5,500th signature for a petition to limit the terms of council members in Menifee, California. That’s over 2,000 more than the 3,382 he needed to qualify the measure for the ballot. But he didn’t rest on his laurels. He kept working right up until the March 12 deadline, submitting nearly 6,000 signatures.

Smelser believes every elected official’s tenure in office should be limited. If his term limit measure passes in November, Menifee council members would be able to serve only two four-​year terms consecutively. They would be able to run for office again after two years out of office. Smelser believes it’ll pass with an 80 percent majority. 

He may be right. He’s certainly taken the pulse of the town on this issue.

Incumbent Menifee Mayor Wallace Edgerton insists that regular elections are all you need to bring new blood into government. But he admits that Smelser has a point: Two terms should be enough to achieve what you ran for office to achieve.

Smelser’s one-​man show is obviously not a feat you could replicate in Los Angeles or New York City. But it’s still pretty impressive. It shows not only the dedication and conviction of Mr. Smelser, but also the enthusiasm for term limits of so many voters.

This is Common Sense. I’m Paul Jacob.

Categories
initiative, referendum, and recall tax policy too much government

Legislative Dreamin’

California voters love their state’s process for placing initiatives and referendums on the ballot. 

Legislators? Most take a much dimmer view. This year they’ve been blaming voters for spending the state into bankruptcy through the initiative. Additionally —  and please hold your laughter — they claim that initiatives have tied the hands of legislators who would otherwise have better managed the state’s finances.

Enter Bob Stern of the Center for Governmental Studies. At a recent public hearing of the Senate and Assembly Select Committees on Improving State Government, Stern told legislators, “Most of the ballot-​box budgeting has come from you.”

Stern was referring to a Center study that looked at all ballot measures over the last 20 years that required additional spending. Stern found that three out of four measures costing money were put on the ballot by legislators, not through the citizen initiative. He also found that the legislature’s own ballot measures cost the state $10 billion, while citizen initiatives cost only $2 billion.

Of course, an even bigger issue is the wild spending spree by California politicians with no ballot box input from voters at all. While state tax revenues have increased a whopping 167 percent over the last two decades, government spending shot up 181 percent.

Voters aren’t perfect, but anyone with a lick of common sense knows the answer to controlling government spending isn’t to free the politicians from voter restraint.

This is Common Sense. I’m Paul Jacob.

Categories
initiative, referendum, and recall

Dysfunctional Judgment

The Chief Justice of the California Supreme Court recently declared the state’s government “dysfunctional.”

But Judge Ronald George didn’t bother to tell this to his employers, the people of California. Instead, the judge delivered his speech all the way across the continent, in Massachusetts, at his induction into the American Academy of Arts and Sciences.

Judge George specifically blames Golden State voters as chief culprits in California’s severe budget woes. While admitting that legislators lack the “political will” to make the tough spending cuts or tax hikes that he believes necessary, George nonetheless says there may have to be “some fundamental reform of the voter Initiative process.” 

What the judge doesn’t tell his earnest East Coast audience is that less than 10 percent of amendments to the California constitution come through initiatives. 

The voters, he claims, are over-​influenced by special interests. But he neglects to mention that the much-​loved, much-​hated tax-​cutting Proposition 13 — and Prop 140, the measure placing term limits on legislators — were both heavily outspent by the state’s most powerful lobbies. Both nevertheless prevailed at the ballot box.

Lastly, his Honor bellyaches that he and fellow jurists are “called upon to resolve legal challenges to voter Initiatives” and sometimes “incur the displeasure of the voting public.” 

My heart bleeds for them, of course, but isn’t adjudicating disputes sort of expected of judges?

This is Common Sense. I’m Paul Jacob.

Categories
ballot access initiative, referendum, and recall insider corruption tax policy

Ballot Box News

With all that’s going on in Washington, don’t forget: There’s a lot happening on state and local ballots. Consider these recent newsline items from Ballot Box News:

Miami-​Dade County Mayor Carlos Alvarez is under fire for giving big-​ticket raises to favored insiders while calling for steep budget cuts. A day after a poll found that 58 percent of registered voters favor the recall of Alvarez, another local mayor filed a lawsuit to undo controversial requirements that make it much more difficult to recall sitting politicians.

There’s a link to the rest of the story at the Miami Herald

.Republican lawmakers are lining up against a citizen initiative effort to impose stringent ethics guidelines on the Utah Legislature. Complained the state senate’s majority leader, “If there are people out there who have political intentions they will use this as a club time and time again.” 

Uh, sir, that would be the idea. Without people clubbing politicians on ethics, how can we root out corruption in politics? Can we trust you to do it, based on your good word as an incumbent?

Full story in The Salt Lake Tribune.

We’re told California’s cash-​strapped state government would be virtually wallowing in piles of cash if a proposed wealth tax makes it to the ballot. And is approved by voters. And survives legal challenge. I don’t support it. Tax-​the-​rich schemes are unjust, and don’t work.

But I do support BallotBoxNews​.com, where you can find out more about this proposed tax, and many other hot-​button issues.

This is Common Sense. I’m Paul Jacob.

Categories
Common Sense

Craigslist, eBay and Twitter

Could California’s budget crisis be solved by a triumvirate of Internet services, Craigslist, eBay and Twitter?

Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger is raiding the state’s storage sheds to sell off unneeded items on eBay and Craigslist. His signature on a California fleet car adds, it is estimated, $400 to its auction value.

He got the latter idea from one of his million Twitter followers.

Wow. I have nowhere near a million Twitter followers. I’m told that I should envy the governor’s Twitter cred, but … I’m not the jealous type; I won’t seek any “Tweet” revenge. Still, I’d be happy if all my listeners joined, and I got some usable ideas for raising money.

Unfortunately, neither I nor my sponsor, Citizens in Charge Foundation, have a vast resource of unneeded inventory to sell off. Nor do I have the cachet of the actor-​turned-​governor: My signature won’t add much value to a Ford Focus. 

Yep. Someone paid $1,625.01 for a state-​owned Focus with over 110,000 miles on the odometer. The governor signed the visor.

That’s better than a car once owned by Jon Voight!

The only new thing here, really, is using Craigslist and eBay. This isn’t a singularity in the progress of civilization. From this no miracles follow. But it is a healthy sign of thinking slightly outside the proverbial box.

This is Common Sense. I’m Paul Jacob.