News
Budget, Calls to Action: Legislators, Collective Bargaining For Public Employees
Gavin Newsom’s Extravagant Spending On Employees
Governor Newsom’s proposed budget for the next fiscal year includes $45 billion of spending on salaries and benefits for 255,000 state employees, which translates into $177,000 per employee. Questions legislators should be asking include the following…
David Crane
Updates
Questions For Gubernatorial Candidates
If you have the opportunity to speak with a candidate for governor, please consider asking the following two questions.
David Crane
Pension Spending
Stock Markets Don’t Cause Pension Problems
Earlier this week, a journalist asked me how a stock market decline this year would affect pension spending by California’s cities, schools and the state. He wondered if it “would produce a big or small hit.” The answer is that any decline this year would produce neither.
David Crane
Collective Bargaining For Public Employees
So long as transit boards are in the pocket of unions, there will be no end to the rising costs for worse service.
David Crane
Updates
Support Loren Taylor For Oakland Mayor
Please see the note below about a very important contest that could bring Oakland into alignment with San Jose and San Francisco where two pragmatic mayors (Matt Mahan and Daniel Lurie) have been elected. Please help add Loren Taylor to that mix.
David Crane
Pension Spending
CA’s Legislature Is Violating CA’s Constitution
The California Constitution prohibits the Legislature from creating any debt or liability exceeding $300,000 without a two-thirds vote from both legislative houses and voter approval, except in times of war. However, the Legislature routinely creates millions of dollars in new liabilities without public vote.
David Crane
Calls to Action: Legislators
SB 63: No new taxes without productivity improvements
Dear California State Lawmakers,
I am a proud Clipper Card carrier who rides BART and SF MUNI — and also I’m a taxpayer, so I write to you today about SB 63, which proposes a tax increase for public transit.
David Crane
Collective Bargaining For Public Employees, Taxes
Thirteen years ago, the California Chamber of Commerce and other big business organizations cut a deal with Governor Jerry Brown not to oppose a 30 percent temporary tax increase on individuals. Since then the state’s General Fund has extracted an extra $95 billion from individual taxpayers, including small businesses that pay business taxes at individual rates, and annual General Fund Expenditures have increased 165 percent.
David Crane
Calls to Action: Citizens
SF Standard: Opinion | Bursting the balloon of Ezra Klein’s ‘Abundance’ theory
Klein and his co-author Derek Thompson believe more of everything is the answer to what ails California. But bad governance will ruin it all.
David Crane
Collective Bargaining For Public Employees, Updates
SF Standard: Opinion | Newsom’s gambit: Talk like Bannon, act like Biden
Recent guests on Gov. Gavin Newsom’s podcast, such as MAGA influencers Steve Bannon and Charlie Kirk, might be stunned to learn about the policies the governor is pursuing between his stints masquerading as a friendly host for right-wing guests. So might Californians.
David Crane