Last Friday was the deadline for legislators to submit bills for the current legislative session. About 2400 were submitted. You can see a list of them here. But there is no list of donations to lawmakers from enterprises doing business with or regulated by the state who care a lot about those bills. That list won’t be made public until July 31 — legislators have voted on the budget and held countless committee hearings. Does that make sense to you?

We wish there was no money in politics. Until that changes, lawmakers should reject donations from any and all enterprises doing business with or regulated by the state.

Originally published at https://mailchi.mp.

Car dealers always say their cars are great, and once purchased, it doesn’t take long to find out. But political consumption is different. Legislators always say they’re great but consumers have a tough time evaluating performance. That’s bad, because the gulf between political words and deeds is wide.

Eg, State Assembly Member Rob Bonta frequently tweets progressive words to his progressive district yet ranks among the most prolific fundraisers from non-progressive interests on the receiving end of >$100 billion per year of state spending. In so doing, Mr. …

Recently, US Senator Bernie Sanders issued this surprising tweet:

It’s surprising because the top 7 countries operate under multi-payer universal coverage systems while the single-payer universal coverage systems favored by Mr. Sanders don’t show up until numbers 8 and 9. Is it possible Mr. Sanders doesn’t know the difference?

Either way, we hope CA legislators know the difference. If they don’t, they might read The Healing of America, by TR Reid, and/or Who Has The World’s Best Health Care, by Zeke Emanuel. (I’m happy to share my notes and/or to allow legislators to sit in on the Health Policy & Reform class I co-teach with former State Assemblymember Joe Nation at Stanford if that would be helpful.) With >90 percent of Californians currently covered, we need well-informed legislators to help get us to 100.

Originally published at https://mailchi.mp.

Recently the City of Chula Vista in California paid big fees to Wall Street firms and lied about the consequences of the transaction.

On February 12, Chula Vista issued $350 million in pension obligation bonds that it claims allow it to convert 7% debt to 2.54% debt. But no such conversion took place. As explained here, POBs don’t convert debt. They increase pension assets.

POBs are nothing more than interest-bearing and fee-generating accounting schemes. Local governments should just say no.

Originally published at https://mailchi.mp.

In case you missed it, be sure to see this New York Times article about the effort to keep Rhode Island’s schools open during the pandemic. An extraordinary lawmaker who even more extraordinarily walks her talk, RI Governor Gina Raimondo is the only non-CA lawmaker GFC has supported and is an exemplar for CA lawmakers, who she addressed at a GFC Retreat a few years ago.

Governor Raimondo would be the first to tell you that she could not have taken bold stands without support from people like us. Believe us when we tell you there are lawmakers serving in Sacramento who want to do the right thing. They need us to succeed. You can help here.

Originally published at https://mailchi.mp.

Yesterday’s opinion piece about California by Ezra Klein in the New York Times got a lot of attention, and deservedly so. But it missed a key point. Whether California’s progressivism is rhetorical or substantive, public sector employees always. They are the nomenklatura in California’s political system, beneficiaries of spending and services regardless of ideological direction. That’s why prison guards benefited from both the rush to incarcerate that commenced in 1976 and the steeply progressive tax increase enacted in 2012. Like all smart special interests, they pay attention to what legislators , not what they say or tweet. …

The Governor’s Budget projects deficits down the road but that’s no reason not to enact worthy programs with savings from eliminating unworthy programs, and especially those contributing to the structural deficit to which Governor Newsom refers in his budget message.

For example, Senator Nancy Skinner has introduced a spot bill to establish Universal School Meal and Out of School Nutrition programs, both of which seem awfully worthy to us. Cost estimates haven’t yet been provided, but even with deficits on the horizon such services surely could be funded with savings from eliminating redundant programs or crony subsidies such as health…

A recent SF Chronicle includes this frightening headline:

Oakland cut active policing to save $20 million per year. But those cuts aren’t necessary! That’s because the city is spending nearly twice that much unnecessarily to provide health insurance to retired police and other employees who aren’t making use of Covered California. Eg, a 53 year old retired Oakland police officer with a $90,000 annual pension, spouse and two kids could get $22,000 per year in federal and state insurance subsidies via CoveredCA. …