News

Three critical seats on the San Francisco Unified School District (SFUSD) Board are up for grabs this fall. Whether or not you have a child in SFUSD, you should care about who wins.

Before the 2008 housing crash, some deceptive mortgage lenders lured borrowers into unaffordable mortgages by offering artificially low initial “teaser” interest rates without disclosing the consequences when the artificial caps were removed. Some California state legislators have taken a page from that deceptive book.

Dear Assembly Members McKinnor, Addis, Ahrens, Alanis, Ávila Farías, Boerner, Calderon, Castillo, Chen, Connolly, Flora, Hoover, Krell, Nguyen, Ortega, Pacheco, Patel, Patterson, Ramos, Ransom, Sharp-Collins, and Solache and Senators Cortese, Gonzalez, Grayson, and Pérez:

Earlier today, every state legislator received the following letter signed by 400 members of the GFC Network. Votes are expected before August 31.

On a recent public radio show about California’s budget, one participant challenged my use of the phrase “legal corruption” to describe campaign contributions made to elected officials by recipients of government funding.

What’s the average period of time from when a pension benefit is promised to a California government employee to when the benefit is paid out? That period of time is the duration over which a public pension fund must earn the rate of return it assumed when the promise was made to the employee.

The California State Senate is considering a pension increase bill, AB 1383. Some journalists have been comparing AB 1383 with another pension increase bill, SB 400, signed into law in 1999 by then-Governor Gray Davis.

At 10 a.m. Monday, the ​​California State Senate Appropriations Committee will hold a hearing in Sacramento on Assembly Bill 1383, which would boost pension promises to certain government employees without requiring sufficient funds to be invested upfront to meet those promises. That would be a disaster.

Recently I participated in a public radio discussion in San Francisco about California’s state budget that was all too often handicapped by a stunning lack of knowledge.

Last Thursday, GFC delivered letters to the State Capitol from 337 members of the GFC Network opposing AB 1383, a bill that would boost pension promises to government employees without setting aside sufficient funds to meet those promises.