By Joel Fox at Fox & Hounds
February 8, 2016
Property taxpayers are in the eye of a brewing storm whipped up by the contrasting efforts to pass a statewide school construction bond initiative and the Brown Administration’s insistence that future school construction bonds be funded locally. Depending on which way this wind blows, local residential and business property taxpayers could be hit with a higher property tax burden.
Read more at Fox & Hounds
By John Phillips in The Orange County Register
February 8, 2016
People tend to have more positive attitudes toward individuals, people they know on a personal level, and more negative attitudes toward large institutions that are distant and disconnected from our day-to-day lives. It’s a well-known psychological phenomenon.
But, on the issue of crime, Gov. Jerry Brown turns this conventional wisdom upside down.
Read more at The Orange County Register
By Jon Coupal at Howard Jarvis Taxpayers Association
February 7, 2016
Even if one lives in a cave, it’s hard to avoid the publicity surrounding the high profile presidential debates that are a reminder that this is an election year. And California taxpayers know, from hard experience, it also means that it is open season on taxpayers as local politicians rush to put tax increases on the ballot.
Emboldened by success in little-publicized 2015 off-year elections in which 29 out of 40 local tax increase measures passed, scores of communities and special districts are seeing this year as an ideal opportunity to raise your taxes.
Read more at Howard Jarvis Taxpayers Association
By Ryan Sabalow, Phillip Resse, and Dale Kasler in The Sacramento Bee
February 2, 2016
PHILLIPS
The snow keeps piling up, but the rules requiring water conservation aren’t going away.
California’s drought regulators agreed Tuesday to extend water conservation mandates through the end of October. The decision came in spite of increasing evidence that El Niño is delivering better-than-average precipitation, including an encouraging measurement of the Sierra Nevada snowpack recorded just hours earlier.
The new regulations adopted by the State Water Resources Control Board mean urban Californians will have to reduce their water usage between March and October by about 23.4 percent compared with the baseline year of 2013.
Read more at The Sacramento Bee
By Andrew McGall in the Contra Costa Times
January 30, 2016
Tax propositions might rain down on Bay Area residents like an El Niño downpour this year as cities, counties, school districts and agencies try to persuade voters to pay for improved transit, smoother roads, school repairs, city building rehab, and bay water and wildlife conservation.
Transportation authorities in Contra Costa, Solano, Santa Clara and Santa Cruz counties are planning sales tax elections. Santa Clara County is also talking about a sales tax to help the homeless.
By City News Service at nbclosangeles.com
January 13, 2016
A 12.6 percent rise in the number of crimes from 2014 to 2015 in Los Angeles was driven by increases in gang-related and domestic violence crimes, Mayor Eric Garcetti and police Chief Charlie Beck said Wednesday.
Violent crime alone was up 20.2 percent last year, while the number of property crimes was up 10.7 percent, according to Los Angeles Police Department statistics. The upticks followed a 12-year trend of declining crime in the city.
Read more at nbclosangeles.com
By Adam Millsap at U.S. News and World Report
November 17, 2015
The District of Columbia recently filed suit in D.C. Superior Court to use eminent domain to take control of a piece of land the city needs to placate D.C. United, the District’s major league soccer team. Without the land, D.C. United may leave for Virginia. This is just another in a growing list of local governments using the policy of eminent domain to enrich other private citizens, rather than for essential public uses. It’s a policy only big business or a government bureaucrat could love.
Eminent domain allows governments to acquire private property from unwilling sellers for public use. In many cases, however, “public use” has been ignored or twisted beyond recognition, as local governments use it to take people’s homes and businesses for different private uses, as long as these provide more of a “public benefit.” The subtle switch from use to benefit spells trouble for many.
Read more at U.S. News and World Report
By Joel Fox at California Political Review
January 31, 2016
At about the same time Gov. Jerry Brown was explaining his new initiative to reform the determinate sentencing law, Los Angeles County Sheriff Jim McDonnell was telling Town Hall Los Angeles that law enforcement was facing a losing battle with crime. The sheriff argued that ballot measures back to Proposition 36 in 2000 easing drug punishment through Proposition 47 voiding prison for some felonies and AB109 prison realignment have led to increased crime.
Will Brown’s new initiative proposal add to the crime problem by making it easier for non-violent offenders to gain parole?
Read more at California Political Review
By Ivan Penn in the Los Angeles Times
January 28, 2016
California utility regulators narrowly passed new rules that will increase costs for owners of rooftop solar systems, part of a broad reshaping of the state’s energy future.
The California Public Utilities Commission, on a 3-2 vote Thursday, stopped short of the even higher charges that the state’s investor-owned utilities wanted.
The opposing commissioners said they voted against the proposal because of the last-minute elimination of an electricity transmission fee, a move that they said made the overall arrangement too rich for the solar industry.
Read more at Los Angeles Times
By Scott Shackford at reason.com
January 25, 2016
In the era of media “clickbait” it’s probably pointless and self-defeating to get worked up over a headline, but nevertheless consider this from the Washington Post: “How an obscure legal issue found its way into the GOP race.”
The “obscure legal issue” referenced here is eminent domain, the government authority to take private property for public use, authorized by that ancient, yellowing document known as the Bill of Rights of the United States Constitution.
Read more at reason.com