LA Times

Republican stonewalling won't close the state budget gap

The GOP's opposition to letting voters decide on Gov. Brown's proposal to extend tax hikes looks less like an expression of their certitude that his plan would fail than a sign of their fears that it would pass.

The role that Republicans in the Legislature play in the great scheme of California government is becoming harder and harder to discern.

They do not legislate; neither do they allow the people of California to legislate at the ballot box. The Republicans are giving negation a bad name.

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How do I, a card-carrying liberal — if only liberals had it sufficiently together to issue cards — think my way through this year's crop of California ballot measures

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In 1911, Gov. Hiram Johnson was able to make far-reaching political reforms in California. Both Meg Whitman and Jerry Brown could learn from him.

Of all the California gubernatorial polls taken this year, the one that tells us most about the state didn't pit Jerry Brown against Meg Whitman. In July, the folks at Public Policy Polling decided, presumably just for the heck of it, to see how Arnold Schwarzenegger and Gray Davis would stack up if they ran against each other today.

Davis won.

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Los Angeles is behind the curve in adopting a local preference ordinance, which would give local businesses an edge in landing city contracts. Washington should also act to keep jobs onshore.

It's taken awhile, but Los Angeles is at last beginning to do things that would help Los Angeles.

Last week, the mayor and two members of the City Council — Bernard C. Parks and Paul Krekorian — proposed a "local preference" ordinance that would give L.A. businesses a modest advantage over outside firms when bidding for city contracts. Modest, in this instance, is defined as 8%. If a company meets the city's definition of a local business, that company would get an 8% advantage on its bids for contracts. In the case of contracts awarded based on the lowest bid, the cost of a million-dollar bid would be listed as $920,000. In a "request for proposal" situation, if the city determines that a proposal is worth 100 points, that figure would be boosted to 108 points.

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What better way to solve the state's employment problem than spending on critical infrastructure?

So how are California's workers faring on this, the day after their Labor Day weekend?

Abysmally. God-awfully. Consider a few grim particulars:

California ranks third among the 50 states in the percentage of its workers without work. On average, the unemployed Californian is jobless for a record-high eight months, according to a new report from the California Budget Project.

Some key sectors of the California economy have all but vanished. Housing construction, the primary engine of the Southern California and the inland California economy for much of the last decade, leads the list. Between 2005 and 2009, the number of residential construction permits fell by 83%. The number of employed residential construction workers plunged from 487,000 to 77,000. And over just the last two months, the number of home sales has again declined sharply, now that federal stimulus benefits for buyers have trickled to a halt.

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Labor's campaign in California has been an ambitious mix of trying to persuade swing voters while at the same time trying to mobilize those Democrats who don't often vote in nonpresidential elections.

Just how blue will California be this November? Will this Democratic state return Barbara Boxer to the Senate and Jerry Brown to the statehouse, or will their mega-funded GOP opponents ride the red tide of what's looking to be a strong Republican year into office?

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