News

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article that exposed the poison pill buried in Section 100610 of AB 1400, a single-payer measure recently proposed and withdrawn in the California State Assembly, but found none.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.

The quality of government services in California declined because for decades there was little resistance in the legislature to special interests who profit from providing those services. That started to change in 2011 with the launch of GFC to support legislators who serve the general interest.

Dear Legislators,

At $7.3 billion, current year salary spending on Corrections employees is 33% higher than forecast by last year’s budget and nearly 50% more than the prior year.

Earlier this week DOF released the Governor’s Proposed Budget for the fiscal year starting July 1. At 400 pages it takes time, a process we have now completed. Some initial thoughts follow:

Tomorrow the CA Department of Finance will release the “Governor’s Proposed Budget” for the 2022-23 fiscal year that commences July 1. At nearly 300 pages, it is one of two documents providing deep insight into the state government.* I’ve been reading them for nearly two decades now and offer a few tips:

This report examines the compensation of California state correctional officers relative to several other groups. It examines wages in detail because of the richness of available data. It examines benefits in less depth because available data are far less comparable and detailed.

Last June, the governor and legislature granted a $500 million salary increase to state correctional officers without complying with Subsection (c) of Gov. Code Section 19826, which requires the state to produce a study of salaries of employees in comparable occupations before awarding a new contract. So Govern For California commissioned such a study, an advance copy of which is being made available to you in your capacity as a member of a Budget or Public Safety Committee. Its conclusions are stark:

Whenever I use Medicare, the government pays a health provider of my choice even if the provider is not operated by the government. The same goes for Medicaid, which uses public funds to pay for the care of 15 million Californians.