NEXT ELECTION: WILL WE SEE ANOTHER BILLIONAIRE?

CALIFORNIA FOCUS
FOR RELEASE: FRIDAY, DECEMBER 28, 2012, OR THEREAFTER

BY THOMAS D. ELIAS

“NEXT ELECTION: WILL WE SEE ANOTHER BILLIONAIRE?”

          The moment one election ends, all politicians’ thoughts naturally turn to the next one. And California’s next vote, the 2014 run for governor – which has already informally begun – could be completely unique.

          There’s the good chance current Gov. Jerry Brown will try for a second term in his second coming. That would be a fourth overall, tying tie him with Earl Warren for the most often-elected governor in this state’s history.

          If the 74-year-old Brown opts to slip quietly into retirement – not the sort of thing that’s in his nature – Democratic Lt. Gov. Gavin Newsom stands panting in the wings, ready to jump in. No doubt, Brown will tantalize Newsom, the two-term San Francisco mayor and son of a close associate of Brown’s father, as long as he can, keeping him dangling in the wind as a sort of payback for an abortive 2010 primary election run in which Newsom sometimes suggested Brown was a has-been.

          Of course, if Brown leaves, there could be plenty of Democratic primary competition for Newsom, starting with Los Angeles Mayor Antonio Villaraigosa and Attorney General Kamala Harris and perhaps including state Controller John Chiang, who has developed a reputation as a rare sort of political straight-shooter and a responsible fiscal steward not afraid of challenging even his own party mates in the Legislature.

          But the chances are Brown will run again, leaving most of the others to play musical chairs among lesser statewide offices.

          In several election-season talks, Brown alluded to California’s future, calling it “dynamic” and saying his moves during the last two years have created a solid “framework for a very good credit rating.” Brown’s clear implication was that he’ll want to be around to enjoy the fruits of his very hard work in paring budgets and passing Proposition 30’s temporary tax increases.

         One person who certainly would not be scared off by a Brown reelection drive is Molly Munger, who refused to knuckle under this year when Brown tried to get her to give up or compromise on her school tax plan, which turned into last fall's Proposition 38. Billionaire Munger put about $20 million into the losing campaign for that one; imagine what she might spend on her own candidacy.

          “For sure, she has the ego for a race like that,” says one acquaintance.

          But the more interesting party in this nascent gubernatorial season may be the Republicans, who have no incumbents in statewide office and trail Democrats 44-29 percent in voter registration, with most other voters signed up with no party preference, today’s parlance for independent.

          Ever since then-Attorney General Dan Lungren lost badly to Democrat Gray Davis in 1998, the GOP’s gubernatorial runs have been dominated by billionaires and near-billionaires. Its last three candidates for the state’s top job fell into that category: financier Bill Simon, muscleman actor Arnold Schwarzenegger and businesswoman Meg Whitman, now the CEO of the seemingly ever-downsizing Hewlett-Packard Co.

          Whitman put about $150 million of her own funds into her 2010 run against Brown and lost handily.

          But friends of 2002 loser Simon say he’s contemplating another run in spite of the evidence that in order to win, a billionaire needs a measure of celebrity to go along with all that cash. Schwarzenegger had both a big name and big money, while Whitman and her primary opponent, former state Insurance Commissioner Steve Poizner, a near billionaire, for the most part had only big piles of cash.

          Poizner now says he might run again. The former state insurance commissioner founded and then sold a company that invented and designed the GPS chip for cellphones. He’s spent most of the last two years setting up www.empowered.com, an adult-oriented job-training and counseling business where he partners with UCLA, among others.

          “I haven’t decided to run or not to run,” Poizner says. Like other super-wealthy possibilities, he doesn’t have to decide soon, because fund-raising is no problem for him. He can write a check for whatever amount might be needed.

          Other Republicans thinking of running include Assemblyman Tim Donnelly, best known for getting arrested while trying to carry a gun onto an airplane, and John Cox, a real estate investor and former chairman of the Cook County (Chicago) Republican committee who now lives in Rancho Santa Fe, near San Diego.

          So there will be no dearth of candidates. The wild card here may be the new Top Two primary system, which got its first outing this year and saw more than 20 contests where the runoff election matched candidates from the same party. Could the next contest pit Brown against Molly Munger in an intraparty grudge match? Brown isn’t saying, but may still resent Munger’s commercials disparaging Proposition 30, while Munger knows Brown killed off her rival plan.

          That might be as bitter an election fight as California has seen, and it could happen.

-30-
        Email Thomas Elias at tdelias@aol.com. His book, "The Burzynski Breakthrough: The Most Promising Cancer Treatment and the Government’s Campaign to Squelch It," is now available in a soft cover fourth edition. For more Elias columns, go to www.californiafocus.net

PARCEL TAX PLANS PROMOTE UNFAIREST OF LEVIES

CALIFORNIA FOCUS
FOR RELEASE: TUESDAY, DECEMBER 25, 2012, OR THEREAFTER

BY THOMAS D. ELIAS
“PARCEL TAX PLANS PROMOTE UNFAIREST OF LEVIES”

          No sooner had the new Democratic supermajorities in the state Legislature been sworn in than some of their members began pushing to make the least fair of all taxes easier to impose.

          That's the parcel tax, the response of many California school districts to the 40-year-old Serrano v. Priest court decision that attempts to equalize per-student spending among all schools.

          Serrano mandates that every time a property tax-increasing override for schools is approved by local voters, most of the money goes to Sacramento for redistribution to districts whose per-student spending is in the lower half within California. The bulk of that cash usually goes to poor rural schools.

          For decades, this has discouraged school districts in wealthier areas from seeking tax overrides. Why exert the effort needed to get a two-thirds vote when you won’t see much of the money even if you win?

          Their answer for much of the last 20 years has been the parcel tax, the least equitable levy in America today. Schools officials love parcel taxes, no matter how unfair, because all the money they produce stays home. The end, they’re in effect saying, justifies the means.

          Why are parcel taxes unfair? Because they have nothing to do with the value or use of any particular property. Parcel taxes almost always assess owners an identical sum for each property they possess. That means the tax on a small one- or two-bedroom cottage is identical to the levy on a luxury hotel or a large shopping mall. The owner of a 33,000 square foot mansion pays the same as the owner of a property one-twentieth as large.

        While it’s true that some malls, car dealerships, factories, oil refineries and other large enterprises encompass more than one property parcel, that doesn’t make this tax fair. The few efforts to make things a tad more equitable by charging owners of commercial properties slightly more than residential have lately been rebuffed by a state appeals court.

          What’s more, parcel taxes are unlike the other significant form of uniform tax per property, the assessment district. There, no levy can be charged without the consent of a majority of owners of affected properties. But with a parcel tax, ownership doesn’t matter. Voters who don’t own property and may never be owners can impose a tax on everyone who does own land or buildings. A tax they’ll never have to pay, but others must.

        

 

          The irony today is that the lawmakers sponsoring plans to ease passage of these most regressive of taxes are Democrats who style themselves champions of fairness and equality.

          The positive part of this is that legislators themselves can’t pass a parcel tax, other than a statewide one. Nor can they change the rules by themselves. But they can present voters with ballot propositions aimed at making passage of unfair taxes far easier.

          Under terms of the 1978 Proposition 13, it takes a two-thirds majority to pass parcel taxes today. But state Sen. Mark Leno of San Francisco is working to put a proposition onto the November 2014 ballot that would lower that threshold to 55 percent of the vote. His idea is similar to the year-2000 Proposition 39, which lowered the margin needed for approval of school construction bonds from two-thirds to 55 percent. Before Proposition 39, about 60 percent of school bond proposals passed; since then, such plans have had an 80 percent success rate.

          Similarly, state Sen. Lois Wolk of Davis says she will push for another proposition lowering the threshold for passage of parcel taxes and bonds for public libraries from two-thirds to 55 percent.

          In both cases, there’s little doubt about the need. Schools have cut back programs from busing to college counseling, while many libraries have closed or reduced hours of service.

          But need for a public service does not justify an unfair, inequitable method of taxation like parcel taxes. To be fair, any levy on property must take value and uses into account; parcel taxes do not.

          Until Democrats won majorities of two-thirds or more in both legislative houses, it was impossible to get these proposals onto the ballot because of unified opposition from Republicans. That’s irrelevant today; the only real questions are whether Democrats will unify behind these planned propositions and whether Gov. Jerry Brown would okay them.

          And if voters pass those propositions – a simple majority is all it would take – can lowered thresholds for other parcel taxes to pay for fire protection, police, sewers and more be far behind?

          If the public believes all these types of services need more money, there are other ways to raise it, methods that are far more fair. No one forces a Serrano-like redistribution of ordinary property taxes earmarked for libraries or police, to name just two.

          The bottom line is that financing of public services must be done fairly, without favoring the wealthy, as parcel taxes do. Even if finding a fair method is more difficult than passing a parcel tax.

-30-
Elias is author of the current book “The Burzynski Breakthrough: The Most Promising Cancer Treatment and the Government's Campaign to Squelch It,” now available in an updated third edition. His email address is tdelias@aol.com

EXPECT CEQA CHANGES NEXT YEAR

CALIFORNIA FOCUS
FOR RELEASE: FRIDAY, DECEMBER 21, 2012, OR THEREAFTER

BY THOMAS D. ELIAS
          “EXPECT CEQA CHANGES NEXT YEAR”

          No law annoys California developers more than the California Environmental Quality Act and they figure to win at least some changes to its strict 42-year-old rules next year.

They almost sneaked through a major softening of the state’s premier environmental law last September in the waning moments of the last legislative session, but were forced to back off in the face of heavy objections to softening the law without any public hearings at all.

          CEQA requires sponsors of any building project or other development that will have a significant effect on the environment to write an environmental impact report assessing the effects of even its smallest aspects. Signed in 1970 by then-Gov. Ronald Reagan, the law was intended to supplement the National Environment Policy Act of 1969, signed by President Richard Nixon. That law demands an environmental impact statement for every significant action by any federal agency.

          The national law, for just one example, is the reason why the U.S. Navy cannot practice gunnery on the western side of the military-owned San Clemente Island without first making sure it won’t affect migrating whales.

          The state law has been used by environmentalists and others to obstruct countless projects, with legal challenges to the adequacy of EIRs often adding months and years to the planning cycle of projects as diverse as sports arenas and apartment buildings.

          Business and development interests maintain they respect the way CEQA provides the public with information about the effects of projects large and small. Effects measured by EIRs include everything from public health considerations – would a new freeway create health risks from vehicle exhaust? – to increased traffic and potential danger to wildlife. Once identified, adverse impacts must be mitigated, often adding large sums to project costs.

          No governor since CEQA passed has seemed more receptive to loosening its requirements than the current version of Jerry Brown, ironically taking a very different approach than he did in his first gubernatorial incarnation from 1975-83.

          In a news conference last August, Brown allowed that “I’ve never seen a CEQA exemption I didn’t like.” Later he remarked that “CEQA reform is the Lord’s work.” It was no surprise, then, when developer allies in the Legislature quickly sought to push changes through.

          Among the alterations attempted then and likely to return next year was an exclusion from CEQA for projects that already comply with local land-use plans previously certified as consistent with CEQA.

          Brown’s turnaround on this law stems from his experience as mayor of Oakland from 1999 to 2007, a time when several projects he saw as bettering blighted areas of that city were delayed or stymied by challenges under CEQA.

          In his first year back as governor, Brown signed one bill fast-tracking legal review under CEQA for a proposed football stadium in downtown Los Angeles and another speeding up big projects (costing at least $100 million) that incorporate high environmental standards. But he pulled back on a push to exclude high speed rail construction from CEQA. There has also been talk of excluding proposed water-transporting tunnels under the Sacramento-San Joaquin river delta.

          The entire picture dismays environmental leaders and excites development interests. “It would be really devastating for California and probably the rest of the nation for the kind of precedent this would set,” Jena Price, legislative director of the Planning and Conservation League, told a reporter.

          On the other side, the CEQA Working Group, a coalition of business, labor and affordable housing interests, claims that other laws like the Clean Air Act, the Endangered Species Act and a panoply of anti-smog laws make CEQA at least partially redundant, forcing developers to spend time and money going over similar sets of facts in excessive paperwork. This outfit maintains it wants to eliminate duplication and provide even wider environmental disclosure than CEQA now does.

          “Duplicative and overlapping processes often result in lengthy project-permitting delays and uncertainty,” said Bill Allen, CEO of the Los Angeles County Economic Development Corp., in a letter to lawmakers.

          But environmentalists point to a 2005 study by the nonpartisan Public Policy Institute of California indicating only one project in every 354 is ever delayed by CEQA-related actions.

          They contend business interests don’t really want to modernize the landmark environmental law, they want to gut it and deprive the public of an opportunity to force changes that have often cut many stories out of high-rises and created numerous small wildlife preserves.

          The strong arguments on both sides here make it obvious that changing CEQA should not happen in secrecy, but only with plenty of public input. But even at that, some softening of CEQA seems inevitable during the next legislative session.

-30-

          Email Thomas Elias at tdelias@aol.com. His book, "The Burzynski Breakthrough: The Most Promising Cancer Treatment and the Government’s Campaign to Squelch It," is now available in a soft cover fourth edition. For more Elias columns, go to www.californiafocus.net

HOMELESS VETERANS A HUGE, NEGLECTED PROBLEM

CALIFORNIA FOCUS
FOR RELEASE: TUESDAY, DECEMBER 18, 2012, OR THEREAFTER

BY THOMAS D. ELIAS
     “HOMELESS VETERANS A HUGE, NEGLECTED PROBLEM”

          You didn’t hear a word about homeless veterans in President Obama’s State of the Union speech last January and chances are you won’t hear anything from him about those vets next month, either, unless it’s a boilerplate homage for their contributions to American freedom.

          But homeless veterans are a major national problem, and an even larger one in California, where an estimated 18,000 live on the streets of Los Angeles County alone, perhaps as many as 40,000 statewide.

          And yet…hundreds of beds in veterans homes are empty today. It’s true those veterans homes, mostly run by the state Department of Veterans Affairs, are intended as both skilled nursing and assisted living facilities, not as homeless shelters. Nevertheless, it’s logical to wonder why those vacant beds can’t be pressed into service for veterans in desperate need of quarters.

          There are also open questions about whether the largest and most valuable piece of real estate in this state intended solely for the use of veterans will ever be used to anything approaching its capacity – or whether much of it will be sold off as a momentary deficit-easing tactic.

 

          More than 300 acres at the West Los Angeles Veterans Administration Center are used far below their capacity, something that has drawn the eye of Republican House Majority Leader Eric Cantor of Virginia, who tried to insert a selloff into this year’s budget negotiations.

          The draw for Cantor and others is that the mostly undeveloped VA land bounded by the I-405 San Diego Freeway and busy Wilshire Boulevard, with multiple high-rises soaring upward nearby, could bring at least $5 billion.

          This has long tempted a selloff, despite the terms of the original 1887 land donation by onetime Nevada Republican Sen. John P. Jones and his partner Arcadia B. de Baker, which required the land be used strictly “for the benefit of veterans.” Jones, a real estate developer and co-founder of the city of Santa Monica who made his fortune in silver mining, had Civil War veterans in mind, not knowing homelessness would be a major veterans’ problem 125 years later.

          But it is, and not even the new California Veterans Homes constructed over the last 10 years with a combination of federal funds and state bond money are helping much. As an example, only 87 of the 396 beds in the West Los Angeles CalVet home were occupied as of last month. Brand-new homes in Redding and Fresno, with 450 beds between them, were empty because state budget woes have prevented hiring any staff. No occupants are expected there until late this year at the earliest.

          Meanwhile, Los Angeles City Councilman Bill Rosendahl, himself a Vietnam veteran, and former Santa Monica Mayor Bobby Shriver, whose sister Maria was the state’s First Lady for seven years, several years ago identified three mostly derelict buildings at the West Los Angeles site that could be rehabilitated and used by homeless veterans with post-traumatic stress disorder and other mental and emotional ills. Only one of those buildings has seen any activity, with $50 million appropriated to fix it up, but no work yet done.

          Rosendahl blasted Democratic Sen. Dianne Feinstein and Democratic Congressman Henry Waxman of Los Angeles County – the ranking Democrat on the House Oversight and Government Reform Committee – in an interview. “They just have not done nearly enough either to save the VA land or to house needy veterans,” he said. “Someone needs to light a fire under them.”

          Waxman, whose district includes the West Los Angeles site, calls veterans’ homelessness “a huge problem and terrible.” He acknowledges that “We have failed our veterans.” But he insisted in a telephone interview that “the real threat we face is selling the land to reduce debt and not using it to help veterans.”

          He says a new law passed last August which some veterans’ activists claim allows selling off the land actually precludes ever selling it. “A lot of the veterans’ concerns are just inaccurate,” he said. “But I do share the worry about commercializing that land.”

          Veterans’ activists also complain that few of their fellow former soldiers even know about the CalVet beds now languishing. “There’s been almost no marketing,” complains John Aaron of Pacific Palisades. Echoing Rosendahl, he added that “The politicians just have not done enough.”

          Waxman says he’s “all for using the empty beds for homeless veterans. I will push the Department of Veterans Affairs to do it. We did get the VA to issue vouchers for veterans to use in the community and we were getting some into housing, but the VA has stopped issuing those recently. The gap is due to VA bureaucracy. We push and push, but they seem unable to move. It’s inexcusable that they’ve stopped issuing the vouchers.”

          The bottom line: There really is no excuse when politicians say they're trying to help veterans and then point fingers at others, while thousands of veterans keep living on California’s streets.

                   

-30-
Email Thomas Elias at tdelias@aol.com. His book, "The Burzynski Breakthrough, The Most Promising Cancer Treatment and the Government’s Campaign to Squelch It," is now available in a soft cover fourth edition. For more Elias columns, visit www.californiafocus.net