News

Last Wednesday, the Commerce Department reported U.S. GDP grew at a 5.2% clip in the third quarter. The next day, Governor Newsom told a debate audience that the economy is “booming.” But Friday, California’s Legislative Analyst’s Office said that state tax revenues are falling far short of forecasts. When combined with General Fund spending that has grown more than 50 percent over the last five years, the drop in revenues portends another large budget deficit for California.

When launching GFC in 2011 it was my hope that we would see meaningful pension reform by 2020, but we have failed to achieve that objective and the negative consequences for public services and taxpayers have been enormous. As evidence, just look at the four-fold explosion in annual pension spending by the Los Angeles Unified School District this year compared to ten years ago:

Last week I reported that Governor Newsom falsely told an interviewer that the state was unable to reopen schools during COVID because the state constitution requires local control of schools, which isn’t true. After my email, some local school officials contacted me to report that Mr. Newsom’s statement actually contained two fictions.

Earlier this week, students in my public policy class at Stanford talked about their experiences as high school students during COVID. Several attended California public schools that were shut down longer than anywhere else in the country. The consequences went well beyond learning loss to include depression and greater difficulties for poorer parents who relied on school lunches or could no longer drop kids at schools while they went to work.

I’m sorry to report that earlier today Governor Newsom signed Assembly Bill 1, which permits legislative staffers to form a union. In doing so, he sent a dagger into the heart of representative democracy in California as legislators already intimidated by government employee unions will soon be intimidated by their own staffers.

In 1968, Governor Ronald Reagan signed the Meyers-Milias-Brown Act establishing collective bargaining for California’s municipal, county, and local special district employees. Services for municipal, county and special district residents and taxpayers have been in decline ever since.

A grave threat to democracy in California is sitting on Governor Newsom’s desk. If signed by him, Assembly Bill 1 would allow legislative staff to form a government employee union. That means that the state employees who write and edit thousands of pieces of legislation every year and provide advice to elected legislators about those bills would become a special interest with business before the state.

Govern For California issues statement on proposed CCPOA Contract (Bargaining Unit 6)

As of June 30, 2018, California’s prisons (CDCR) incarcerated 130,317 inmates supervised by 56,538 correctional employees paid $4,985,455,000 in salaries.

The OC Register cited Govern For California in a recent editorial about cynical games being played by the Legislature and Governor in awarding excessive compensation to state prison guards.