News

West Contra Costa County Unified School District has received a “lack of going concern” determination from its county board of education. That means the district is unable to meet its financial obligations. But 60 percent of its deficit is accounted for by spending on an unnecessary insurance subsidy for retired employees known as “OPEB” (Other Post-Employment Benefits) that drains classrooms of resources while federal subsidies go unused.

Among the 2,167 bills we are reviewing are several dealing with mental health and homelessness. Recently the Newsom Administration issued a proposal to establish CARE (Community Assistance, Recovery and Empowerment) Courts “to deliver behavioral health services to severely ill and vulnerable individuals while preserving self determination and community living.” Yesterday we joined a webinar about CARE and will be paying close attention going forward.

GFC President David Crane walks through the surprising statistics and lesser-known history behind California’s state government and how the public can help to elevate the quality of their state government.

More than 30 open-seat races for the state legislature will be contested this year. Some of you have asked about our process for considering pre-election endorsements.

Dear Legislators,

Few services are more important than medical services yet due to efforts by the politically-active doctors’ lobby to limit supply, Californians have not always been able to get immediate access to such services. Your passage of AB 890 (Wood) in 2020 was a big step towards improving that environment but more must be done. A good review is provided by this excellent article in The Atlantic, which details the “costly, lengthy credentialing system” unique to the United States. With reforms, we can have not only more doctors but also more medical practitioners in aggregate.

State legislators introduced nearly 1500 bills this week, bringing the total number of bills submitted this year to 2103. Here’s a small sample of measures proposed this week:

Three years ago, a California businessman/philanthropist who had spent $19 million to help elect charter-school-friendly state legislators asked me why so many of those he had helped to elect had joined in passing anti-charter legislation. I responded that they couldn’t count on him to be there for them. When it comes to political power, reliability beats wealth. Just ask former state official John Chiang, who during a recent forum said that politicians “make calculations about which interests will be there for them through thick and thin . . . cycle to cycle,” or former US Senator John Kerry, who once told me legislators favor interests who “are always there” for them.

USC Center for the Political Future (CPF) Co-Directors Bob Shrum and Mike Murphy were joined by former California State Treasurer John Chiang and former Gov. Schwarzenegger advisor David Crane to assess California’s governance and government services amid rising housing costs and tax rates, and the future of the Golden State on Wednesday, February 9. In partnership with Govern For California.

We looked high and low for an article that exposed the poison pill buried in Section 100610 of AB 1400, a single-payer measure recently proposed and withdrawn in the California State Assembly, but found none. That’s worrisome. Typical single-payer systems are not governed by boards dominated by providers as called for by Section 100610, which would put the fox in charge of the henhouse. California already has a fox/henhouse problem on its public pension fund boards, which since Proposition 162 passed in 1992 must give precedence to beneficiaries, thereby delegating residents and taxpayers to subordinate roles. That’s how, eg, CalPERS’s board employed biased actuarial assumptions in 1999 to justify a retroactive pension increase the cost of which is still crushing services and taxpayers today.

It’s that time of year when California state legislators rush to introduce bills before a February deadline. Because it’s also an election year, many — including some to whom we give support from time to time — support bad bills that are good for them politically. We will work to defeat those bills but not to defeat those legislators unless alternative candidates from their districts are better bets for us.