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New Post has been published on http://beta.citizensjournal.us/initiative-filing-fee-hike-inspires-wave-of-unconventional-proposals/

Initiative filing fee hike inspires wave of unconventional proposals

By John Hrabe

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A tenfold increase in the initiative filing fee was supposed to reduce the number of long-shot proposals in circulation.

“The updated filing fee set by this bill will deter frivolous submissions,” Assemblyman Evan Low, author the new initiative fee increase, said in a September press release. “We live in California, the cradle of direct democracy, but we also need a threshold for reasonableness. And this bill will do just that.”

It’s had the opposite effect, as dozens of proponents of unconventional ideas rush to file their initiatives before the end of the year.

Among this year’s unconventional proposals: a 1,000 percent tax on political advertisements, a 5-cent tax on bottled water, a statewide ban on shellfish and a plan for California to declare independence from the United States.

“For the privilege of influencing public elections and political issues, a sales tax of 1,000% (one thousand percent) is hereby imposed upon Political Advertisements,” a statewide ballot measure, proposed  by Terrance Lynn of Portola Valley, states. “The proceeds of which shall solely benefit California public education.”

And if the courts try to strike down the measure, Lynn’s prepared for that, too. “If a Federal District Court or Supreme Court of the United States find this tax to be too high, then this law shall immediately ratchet down to the highest acceptable level and remain in place,” the measure states.

Republished with permission by Cal Watchdog.com

10x Filing Fee Hike

On January 1, the cost of proposing a statewide ballot measure for circulation will increase from $200 to $2,000. The new law, authored by Democratic Assemblymen Evan Low of Campbell and Richard Bloom of Santa Monica, was intended to reduce the number of proposals given a ballot title and summary.

“This significant fee increase could greatly reduce the number of initiative proposals submitted for title and summary, and thus reduce the AG’s workload in this area, in addition to that of the Legislative Analyst’s Office and the Department of Finance, which jointly prepare a fiscal estimate of proposed initiatives,” states the state Assembly’s legislative analysis of AB1100 published in July.

Yet, the fee hike itself has likely spurred more frivolous measures. Often times, the text, title and summary are enough to generate free publicity for an idea, including outrageous and blatantly unconstitutional measures.

Subhendu Das of West Hills wants to see California lawmakers adopt a secret ballot for legislative business. Joe Decker believes the state should make “the sale or consumption of shellfish a serious felony punishable by a $666,000 fine per occurrence and/or prison sentence of up to six years, six months, and six days.”

Citing Aristotle’s philosophy of human association, Louis Marinelli of San Diego wants California to declare its independence from the United States.

“Do you agree that California should acquire the exclusive power to make its laws, levy its taxes and establish its own relations abroad — in other words, sovereignty — and at the same time to maintain with United States an economic, political, and military partnership?” he proposes in the “California Nationhood” initiative.

If that idea fails to gain support, he’s also asking California residents to impose a 5-cent tax on bottled water

Fee Hike to Deter Frivolous Submissions

Since 1943, any Californian with $200 has been able to obtain the necessary paperwork to begin collecting signatures to put their proposal on the ballot. The reasonable filing fee has allowed average citizens and grassroots organizations to shape the political debate.

From 2009 to 2013, the state Attorney General’s Office has drafted titles and summaries for 315 measures. Just 27 ultimately qualified for the ballot.

Low’s office noted that, as of August 2015, 58 proposals had been submitted for the 2016 November ballot. By December 14, that figure had doubled. The California State Attorney General’s Office has received 118 requests for a ballot title and summary — double the average number of initiatives from the previous decade.

State legislative analysts say that the number of initiative petitions have been gradually increasing. Over the last half century, proponents filed the following number of initiatives:

47 from 1960 to 1969

180 from 1970 to 1979

282 from 1980 to 1989

391 from 1990 to 1999

647 from 2000 to 2009

240 from 2010 to April 21, 2015

Proponents of the new higher filing fee say that it will help offset the cost to taxpayers. The AG’s office estimates that it takes 56 hours of staff time to prepare each ballot measure, at a cost of $8,000. Under the new state law, proponents get their money back only if the measure qualifies for the ballot.

Some state political observers say the filing fee hike undermines citizen engagement in the process.

“The initiative game in California is entirely for the rich and powerful,” argues columnist Joe Mathews, who also serves as a board member of Democracy International. “What we need are alternative ways to get measures on the ballot that are based on the quality of the idea and on public support.”

Republished with permission by Cal Watchdog.com

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New Post has been published on http://beta.citizensjournal.us/ca-attorney-general-wants-confidential-koch-data/

CA Attorney General wants confidential Koch data

By James Poulos

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Pressing for access to confidential lists kept by the Koch brothers, U.S. Senate candidate Kamala Harris injected another note of politics into her tenure as California Attorney General.

Harris “has a fight on her hands trying to get the brothers’ Americans for Prosperity Foundation to give her access to the same confidential data it already provides to the Internal Revenue Service,” Bloomberg Politics reported. That organization has labored in court to maintain control over information about its contributors, arguing that they and it face routine threats of violence.

“Grotesque threats have been leveled against known associates of the foundation, ranging from threats to kill or maim to threats to firebomb buildings,” the Foundation alleged, as Courthouse News reported. “More mundane threats abound too, including boycotts, firings and public shaming, all of which are now demonstrated components of the playbook of the foundation’s more extreme opponents.”

Pressed on the prospect of public disclosure by judges at a recent hearing in federal appeals court, “Deputy Attorney General Alexandra Gordon told the judges that new regulations to prohibit such disclosure are in the making, though she didn’t know when they would be enacted,” the site added. Gordon waved away claims that Foundation contributors could be put in peril by the disclosure of their information. “We have basically some anecdotal evidence of threats, mostly arising from the founders of this foundation, the Koch brothers’ very public presence and very public events held by the foundation,” she said, according to Courthouse News Service. “That has nothing to do with whether this type of disclosure requirement is actually going to lead to harm.”

Republished with permission by Cal Watchdog.com

The legal battle between the Kochs and the state Attorney General began in December 2014, when Americans for Prosperity sued Harris for violating its First Amendment rights to free speech. Although California law requires all charitable organizations to register with the state and furnish copies of their public IRS filings, as the Los Angeles Times then noted, the so-called “Schedule B” filing, which lists the names and addresses of donors giving over $5,000 each tax year, is “kept confidential and not available to the public.”

While Americans for Prosperity “said they have been registered with the state since 2001 and had never before been asked for its list of donors,” the Times reported, a Harris spokesman said the Foundation “has been out of compliance with the law for a number of years” and “did not receive a communication previously from our office for one simple reason: the section responsible for enforcement has been chronically underfunded for years.”

By this year, however, the Kochs had gained the upper hand in court. This February, U.S. District Judge Manuel Real blocked Harris from pursuing the list “until the legality of the request has been resolved,” as Bloomberg Business observed, citing “a separate case in which the U.S. Court of Appeals in San Francisco halted the attorney general from enforcing the demand on the Center for Competitive Politics while that case was before that court.”

“Real rejected Harris’s argument that her office won’t publicly disclose the donor information, saying that California doesn’t have regulation preventing such disclosure and that, as such, it was left to the attorney general’s discretion whether to make it public. The judge agreed with the foundation that the attorney general’s office won’t be harmed by an injunction because it hadn’t had the donor information for the past decade.”

Whatever the outcome of the case, Harris stood to gain politically from putting the heat on Americans for Prosperity and the Kochs, who are reviled by Democrats as big-money GOP puppet masters. Of late, Harris has had to weather criticism of her own campaign spending, “using her campaign account to fund stays in upscale hotels and first-class airfares during her nearly five-year tenure as state attorney general,” as the Hill recently reported. “A review by The Hill of California campaign finance records reveals that Harris’s expenditures follow a pattern: The Democratic candidate regularly charges thousands of dollars in luxury travel and hotels to her campaign.”

Republished with permission by Cal Watchdog.com

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New Post has been published on http://beta.citizensjournal.us/san-bernardino-attacks-shape-presidential-race/

San Bernardino attacks shape presidential race

By James Poulos

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Presidential candidates in both parties have found challenges and opportunities in responding politically to the recent terrorist attacks in San Bernardino, California.

In the wake of Tashfeen Malik’s attack, carried out with her husband Syed Rizwan Farook, controversy and criticism has centered around the way federal officials screen foreign immigrants for entry into the U.S. “In the aftermath of terrorist attacks in San Bernardino and Paris, this screening process has been singled out as a major vulnerability in the nation’s defense against terrorism,” the New York Times observed. “Lawmakers from both parties have endorsed making it harder for people to enter the United States if they have recently been in Iraq or Syria.” President Obama himself “has ordered a review of the K-1 visa program, which allows foreigners like Ms. Malik to move to the United States to marry Americans, putting them on a pathway to permanent residence and, ultimately, citizenship,” the paper added.

But San Bernardino has given presidential candidates in both parties more of an occasion to sharpen their disagreements than to play up their common ground. While Republicans shared their disappointment over the rare Oval Office address delivered by President Obama to calm the nation’s nerves, they split dramatically over how to respond on the campaign trail.

Republished with permission by Cal Watchdog.com

Donald Trump had already heightened the debate by pushing against stricter gun controls in the wake of the terrorist attacks on Paris. “You look at Paris, no guns — nothing. And you look at California, no guns. I can tell you one thing, if I’m in there and had a gun, we’re going down shooting. We’re going to knock them out, okay,” he said on “Face the Nation” on CBS, according to the Washington Post.

Offense and defense

After the San Bernardino attacks, he called for an immediate freeze on the entry of foreign Muslims, leaving several rivals to attempt what the Los Angeles Times called “the difficult balance of rebuking Trump while still trying to copy some of his appeal.” Jeb Bush, for instance, told ABC’s “This Week” that Americans shouldn’t “target the religion” of Muslim immigrants. “We just have to target those that have co-opted the religion and make sure that we’re fully aware of the radicalizations taking place, not just here but all around the world,” he said, according to the Times.

In New Hampshire, Bush tried to shift the issue’s center of gravity away from national security toward foreign policy, less divisive this year but still politically salient. “If this is a war, and I believe it is since they have declared war on us, we need to declare war on them,” he said, Reuters reported.

Candidates in both parties have found campaign value in denigrating Trump’s approach. Chris Christie, for instance, flatly ridiculed Trump’s proposal. “You do not need to be banning Muslims from the country,” he said, echoing Democrats’ criticisms; in a Tweet, Hillary Clinton called it “reprehensible, prejudiced and divisive.” The Clinton camp appeared to make some calculations similar to Bush’s campaign, shifting the weight of her rhetoric toward America’s response to extremist Islam beyond U.S. borders. “Clinton has been speaking about combating terrorism at length since terrorists killed 130 people in Paris and 14 in San Bernardino,” CNN noted, although, more recently, “the former secretary of state argued that she is the ‘only candidate that’s been outlining a specific plan’ to defeat ISIS.”

A shifting mood

Nevertheless, the psychological fallout from the San Bernardino attacks has been strong enough to shift public opinion further in Trump’s direction than many might care to admit. “From the Capitol to the campaign trail, from Mr. Trump’s childhood neighborhood to the suburbs near the Islamic State-inspired killing of 14 people in San Bernardino, Calif., voters acknowledged, almost despite themselves, the gnawing sense of insecurity that has fueled Mr. Trump’s vision and persistent appeal,” the New York Times concluded from a series of interviews with Americans conducted in and around New York City and early-primary states.

Republished with permission by Cal Watchdog.com

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New Post has been published on http://beta.citizensjournal.us/warriors-face-fight-over-move-to-san-francisco/

Warriors face fight over move to San Francisco

By Chris Reed

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The record-setting Golden State Warriors, the defending NBA champions, have become one of the most beloved sports teams in recent California history. San Francisco politicians have embraced the team’s planned move from Oakland to San Francisco’s Mission Bay area, especially because the team’s wealthy owners are willing to pay for 97 percent of the $1 billion cost of a new 18,000-seat arena (illustration at right). On Tuesday, the city-county’s Board of Supervisors unanimously approved the project’s environmental impact report, and the team hopes to have the area built in time for the 2018-19 NBA season.

So everything is looking positive for the Warriors coming back to San Francisco? Not exactly. Critics have assembled a multimillion-dollar legal fund to fight the project at every turn, and a classic NIMBY battle between well-funded interests looms.

The main opponent “came out of nowhere” in April. The San Francisco Business Times had details:

A group of University of California, San Francisco, donors is threatening to sue or push a ballot measure against the Warriors’ potential Mission Bay arena over parking and traffic concerns. …

The group, a nonprofit called the Mission Bay Alliance, worries that arena traffic will bottle up to ensnarl ambulances headed to nearby UCSF Medical Center and threaten the neighborhood’s ability to grow as a biotechnology hub. Its proximity to AT&T Park and possible overlapping game days will exacerbate that, the group says.

Sam Singer, who is representing the alliance’s public relations efforts, [said], “The alliance wants to see the (arena) and office towers halted completely. If that doesn’t happen through the EIR and public participation process, the alliance will consider a lawsuit and going to the ballot to stop the stadium.”

Republished with permission by Cal Watchdog.com

Poll suggests public not sold on arena

On the eve of the supervisors’ vote, the Mission Bay Alliance released a poll of 540 voters that showed much less support than the Warriors have asserted. This is from a statement on the alliance’s website:

Based on what they know today about the proposed arena plan in Mission Bay, fewer than half of voters say they support it:

 Support – 49 percent

 Oppose – 42 percent

 Don’t know – 10 percent  …

Once voters became aware of the facts surrounding the proposed arena and the expected regional impacts, including traffic gridlock, the lack of parking and clogged emergency access for adjacent UCSF hospitals, support for the arena plummeted even more:

 Support – 38 percent

Oppose – 59 percent

Don’t know – 3 percent

Parking and traffic ranked as the two most problematic impacts, with 65 percent of voters concerned about traffic gridlock and 67 percent about a lack of parking in and around the arena. … [The project] does little to alleviate the burden the arena will put on regional transit like BART and CalTrain.

Being a popular champion helps sway debate

But the Warriors and the city leaders who back them up on the planned move could benefit tremendously from timing. San Diego voters agreed to help pay for PETCO Park for the Padres in the city’s downtown area in November 1998 — a month after the team won a rare National League title and advanced to the World Series.

The contrast is sharp with present-day San Diego and seemingly broad opposition to having local governments help the Chargers pay for a new NFL stadium. Other factors certainly come into play. San Diego’s reputation as “Enron by the Bay” has faded, but the city’s years of financial struggles have left scars. The city is debating a huge infrastructure program, prompting questions about why $200 million that might go to fix pocked roads and add fire stations would instead help a billionaire build a stadium. But it hasn’t helped the let’s-hold-our-noses-and-accept subsidies crowd that the Chargers have been hugely disappointing since their 14-2 season in 2007, rarely living up to expectations.

The Warriors, by contrast, sharply exceeded expectations in 2014-15, when they won their first NBA championship in 40 years. This season, meanwhile, they got off to the fastest start of any team in NBA history. That could be an ace in the hole for team owners Joe Lacob and Peter Guber.

Republished with permission by Cal Watchdog.com

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New Post has been published on http://beta.citizensjournal.us/pot-initiatives-join-forces/

Pot initiatives join forces

By James Poulos

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Skittish at the thought of divided loyalties leading rival pot initiatives to defeat, two major marijuana legalization groups united behind the well-funded effort associated with Silicon Valley heavyweight Sean Parker.

Concentrated support

His initiative, which counts Lt. Gov. Gavin Newsom among its supporters, brought on the Coalition for Cannabis Policy Reform. “Coalition board member Antonio Gonzalez, who is also president of the Latino Voters League, said the coalition withdrew its rival initiative after Parker’s measure was modified to protect children, workers and small businesses,” Reuters reported.

“In California, amendments filed this week to Parker’s proposal would allow local governments a greater say in where marijuana can be sold, toughen protections for children, including a ban on marketing to minors and explicit warning labels on marijuana products, and require safety standards and enforcement of labor laws for people who work in the industry.”

Republished with permission by Cal Watchdog.com

In another victory for the Newsom-Parker proposal, some of California’s so-called “legacy activists,” among California’s early major medical marijuana players, threw their support behind the effort. “The members include Richard Lee, the founder of Oaksterdam University in Oakland and proponent of 2010’s unsuccessful Proposition 19 legalization effort; Neill Franklin, executive director of Law Enforcement Against Prohibition; Stacia Cosner, deputy director for Students for Sensible Drug Policy; Nate Bradley, executive director of the California Cannabis Industry Association; and David Bronner of Dr. Bronner’s Magic Soaps, a top-selling brand of natural soaps,” noted the Sacramento Bee.

Activists have nursed concerns that big corporate interests, backed by regulators, could swoop in and squeeze them out of the medical pot industry. “[G]rowers and marketers on the pot-rich North Coast are waiting to see how much the massive regulatory structure will cost them and whether to stick instead with the prosperous but risky outlaw status they have lived with for nearly two decades,” as the Press Democrat recently observed.

Bracing for change

The prospect of statewide legalization has also accelerated the push in some municipalities for fresh local restrictions. Input has been sought from law enforcement in states where marijuana decriminalization has already had time to take effect. After a recent visit to Colorado, where “law-enforcement groups such as the Rocky Mountain High Intensity Drug Trafficking Area continue to portray the situation in sky-is-falling terms,” officials from the City of Indio drew up an ordinance, ready for a vote in January, that would ban medical marijuana cultivation, according to Westword. “While medical marijuana has been legal in California since 1996, not every city allows cultivation and/or dispensaries that would sell it,” as the Desert Sun noted.

In fact, with a raft of new state laws aiming to bring marijuana fully within officials’ regulatory reach, the League of California Cities has set forth new guidelines for cities “within their legal rights to enact total bans on medical cannabis cultivation,” according to Cannabis Now. “Citing a 2014 case in which the California Supreme Court upheld a decision to permit local cities and counties to ban personal cultivation, Maral v. Live Oak, the organization reiterates that these bans can prevent the cultivation of small amounts of medical marijuana for personal use by qualified patients.”

At the same time, officials have begun eyeing new technology that would enable law enforcement to crack down on impaired driving. In conjunction with UC Berkeley researchers, Oakland outfit Hound Labs has begun work on a breathalyzer that detects marijuana, according to Inquisitr. “Initially the new handheld marijuana breathalyzer device will be tested by law enforcement agencies in the San Francisco Bay area and Lynn says depending on the results, will eventually be used across the country,” the site noted.

Republished with permission by Cal Watchdog.com

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New Post has been published on http://beta.citizensjournal.us/ca-gun-laws-back-in-crosshairs/

CA gun laws back in crosshairs

By James Poulos

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The Golden State’s strict approach to gun control has come under intense scrutiny in the wake of the San Bernardino shootings.

Recent curbs on access to firearms and limitations on certain gun features appeared to have made little or no impact on the terrorists’ ability to obtain and use their arsenal. The closure of the so-called “gun show loophole,” for instance, didn’t stop legal guns from illegally winding up in their hands. Enrique Marquez, neighbor of killer Syed Rizwan Farook, “bought the two semiautomatic rifles legally, authorities say. But the weapons were later given to Farook without a recording by a federally licensed firearms dealer, as required under California law,” the Los Angeles Times reported.

California’s special protections against arming the mentally unwell did not come into play either. “The FBI said Farook legally bought the two handguns used in the attack — purchases that would have required a background check. And there is no indication he or Malik had any criminal record or history of mental illness that would have triggered California’s unique law allowing authorities to seize weapons from those who aren’t allowed to own them,” noted ABC News.

Republished with permission by Cal Watchdog.com

Golden State gun laws fell short of expectations in another way as well. “While California laws typically forbid the sale and possession of rifles of the sort used by the shooters, the assault-style rifles in Wednesday’s attack had a button mechanism to release their ammunition magazines, which made them legal to possess in California — an exception sometimes referred to as the ‘bullet button loophole,’” according to the Huffington Post. ” Some gun makers in California specialize in manufacturing assault-style rifles that comply with California state law,” added HuffPost. “But even if the bullet button loophole did not exist and possessing assault-style rifles of any kind had been illegal from the get-go, the shooters could have saved themselves the trouble of trying to modify their weapons by simply traveling to a different state.”

Across state lines

That dynamic quickly became a point of contention between California and Arizona officials. In France for the Paris climate talks, Gov. Jerry Brown slammed Nevada and Arizona lawmakers for creating a “gigantic back door through which any terrorist can walk” with “wide open” gun laws. “Because guns used in the attack were purchased legally in California, Arizona Gov. Doug Ducey immediately shot back, calling Brown’s comments an ‘out of bounds’ attempt ‘to politicize a tragedy,’” the Phoenix New Times noted. “Not only will we be ignoring Brown’s advice, but I call on him to retract his incredibly thoughtless and ill-advised comments,” said Ducey. Although the number of so-called “crime guns” flowing into California from neighboring states has doubled in a decade, “the vast majority of guns used to commit crimes in California originate in the state,” the Huffington Post observed.

Constituencies on both sides of the gun debate have responded true to type. While supporters of light or moderate restrictions suggested that the facts of the San Bernardino shootings underscored the fruitlessness of tougher rules, advocates of stronger gun controls pushed for more federal regulations. House Minority Leader Nancy Pelosi, D-Calif., told PBS that “we need a national gun law so that there is no thought that even though one state may have good laws you can buy guns in another place.”

Self defense

Meanwhile, gun purchases have risen among Southern California residents themselves. “As politicians and gun-control advocates have seized on the San Bernardino shooting as a reason to restrict firearm access, many of those on the front lines of the tragedy are seeking to arm themselves,” the Times reported.

“San Bernardino County Sheriff’s Deputy Adam Cervantes said 75 applications for concealed-weapons permits were submitted last weekend, about seven times the department’s normal application volume. Orange County Sheriff’s Department Lt. Jeff Hallock said his office saw 130 applications for concealed-weapons permits last weekend, up from the roughly 30 applications that typically come in.”

Republished with permission by Cal Watchdog.com

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New Post has been published on http://beta.citizensjournal.us/massive-transportation-bill-has-no-for-ca-bullet-train/

Massive transportation bill has no $ for CA bullet train

By Chris Reed

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California’s controversy-plagued bullet train project got a major boost from the Obama administration and Congress in 2009 when more than $3 billion in federal stimulus funding was sent to the state government to buttress the $9.9 billion in bond seed money that state voters had allocated to high-speed rail in 2008 by passing Proposition 1A.

Since then, the California High-Speed Rail Authority has been unable to attract outside investors and doesn’t have even 40 percent of the money it needs to complete the initial 300-mile, $31 billion segment — much less the $68 billion needed to build a rail line linking San Francisco and downtown Los Angeles. This has led bullet-train advocates, starting with Robert Cruickshank of the California High Speed Rail Blog, to repeatedly urge Congress and the Obama administration to provide more federal dollars. In planning documents from three years ago, state officials said they were hoping on $42 billion in federal help.

But Republicans took control of the House in the November 2010 election, and they have repeatedly denounced the state’s project, led by Rep. Jeff Denham of Turlock. And the office of House Majority Leader Kevin McCarthy, R-Bakersfield, has confirmed there’s not a dime for the state’s bullet train in the gigantic, five-year, $305 billion transportation bill that Congress approved last week in an overwhelming bipartisan vote.

Republished with permission by Cal Watchdog.com

CA Democrats fought for bullet train funds in 2012

In 2012, during negotiations on a similar omnibus transportation measure, California’s House Democrats were strongly critical of the bill for, among other things, blocking new federal funding for the Golden State high-speed rail project. But Nexis and Google News searches show no similar pointed criticism of the new transportation bill. This 2013 analysis by Governing magazine shows why enthusiasm has waned among federal lawmakers:

In California … if the feds were to pony up the rest of the $42 billion the state is expecting, it would be more than the federal government spends nationwide on grants for new subway, light-rail and bus rapid transit lines combined. … At a time when Congress has canceled White House tours in order to reduce spending, it’s hard to envision Washington lawmakers making that sort of long-term commitment anytime soon. …

  In a budget deal struck with Republicans in April 2011, the administration lost funding for its [high-speed rail] program, and it hasn’t come back since. … Meanwhile, despite all his calls for high-speed rail spending, Obama hasn’t developed a concrete proposal on how to provide an ongoing, dedicated revenue stream for those projects, which advocates say is key. Even the nonpartisan GAO warns that counting on future federal funding for projects like the one in California is highly speculative. Joshua Schank, head of the Eno Center for Transportation, says it’s unlikely at this point that the administration will continue to throw its full weight behind high-speed rail because so far the program “hasn’t yielded much dividend politically. Nor,” he adds, “has it yielded much in terms of high-speed rail.”

Cruickshank, however, thinks there’s a maniacal quality to GOP opposition. “To Republicans, of course, the risk to the taxpayer isn’t based in fact but in ideology. They believe nobody rides passenger trains in America, so any such attempt to fund one is doomed from the start. They mention that government might have to subsidize its operating costs and even though the global experience suggests they don’t, they’re ignoring the fact that government massively subsidizes roads without any expectation that they’ll cover their costs,” he wrote in 2013.

Nevertheless, aides to President Obama say he will sign the transportation bill, perhaps this week.

Republished with permission by Cal Watchdog.com

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New Post has been published on http://beta.citizensjournal.us/harris-campaign-makes-moves-to-reduce-costs/

Harris campaign makes moves to reduce costs

By James Poulos

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Photo courtesy of atlantablackstar.com

The Senate campaign of California Attorney General Kamala Harris has displeased Democratic insiders, who worry that their leading candidate to replace Sen. Barbara Boxer hasn’t run a tight enough ship.

Spokesman Nathan Click recently admitted the operation was “changing campaign managers and making moves to reduce costs,” after what the Sacramento Bee reported was “unusually heavy spending in recent months.”

“Click said the campaign was making spending cuts involving consultants and staff but declined to detail them,” the Bee noted, although the resignation of campaign manager Rory Steele — replaced by senior adviser Juan Rodriguez — was not as easily concealed.

At issue was the campaign’s eyebrow-raising spending, which included repeated, relatively lavish expenditures on Harris’s hotel accommodations. “Cam­paigns typ­ic­ally shell out big bucks on me­dia buys, staff salaries and ex­pens­ive fun­draisers. But spend­ing it on hous­ing, par­tic­u­larly when far cheap­er op­tions are avail­able, is atyp­ic­al, cam­paign vet­er­ans say, and even Har­ris’s fel­low Demo­crats have taken no­tice,” according to National Journal:

“It’s not as if the Cali­for­nia at­tor­ney gen­er­al had money to burn, either. She’s already spent more than 40 per­cent of the $6 mil­lion she’s raised since be­com­ing a can­did­ate in Janu­ary, an alarm­ing burn rate for a can­did­ate who is also on her second cam­paign man­ager and third fin­ance dir­ect­or. In her latest fun­drais­ing re­port, cov­er­ing the peri­od of Ju­ly through Septem­ber, the dis­crep­ancy between money com­ing in and money go­ing out was es­pe­cially acute: $1.8 mil­lion to $1.4 mil­lion.”

Republished with permission by Cal Watchdog.com

Champagne tastes

Compounding the problem, Harris’s taste for high-end living recently landed her in a crisis of a different sort — a state ethics probe involving the Fair Political Practices Commission.

“A $21,000 spruce-up of her San Francisco loft by designer-to-the-stars Ken Fulk wound up putting state Attorney General Kamala Harris under the microscope for possibly accepting an illegal gift,” the San Francisco Chronicle reported. “The A.G. eventually ended up in the clear — but not before cutting a check for more than $10,000.” After the FPPC made some inquiries, “Harris asked Fulk for an accounting for any money she still owed on the job and sent in a final check for $10,245,” the paper added.

California law bars elected state officials “from receiving a gift or gifts totaling more than $460 in a calendar year,” according to the Los Angeles Times, “with a few exceptions.”

Even with her name cleared by the FPPC, Harris has faced a difficult time turning the page on the broader pattern of conduct underscored by her relationship with Fulk. “Har­ris’s frivol­ous spend­ing on air­fare, lux­ury cars, and ho­tels is highly un­usu­al for a Sen­ate can­did­ate that has a re­l­at­ively com­pet­it­ive race,” one nation­al Demo­crat­ic strategist told National Journal. “And the cam­paign is in the fin­an­cial mess that it’s in be­cause of its de­cision to do those things.”

New vulnerability

The scrutiny directed at Harris would be significant regardless of her position heading toward the state primary election. But with California’s new top-two runoff system, known as the “jungle” primary, her missteps have taken on much greater significance. Rep. Loretta Sanchez, who also wants to succeed Boxer, has been running a less polished underdog campaign. But she has begun to expand her base of support beyond Southern California, where it remains very strong. According to the Orange County Register, Sanchez recently roped in Central Valley endorsements from Rep. Jim Costa, D-Frenso, and former Lt. Gov. Cruz Bustamante, and even made inroads in Harris’s San Francisco backyard with a nod from Silicon Valley Rep. Anna Eshoo.

With Republicans divided and the state GOP occasionally willing to simply sit out an election in the hopes of helping control the winning Democrat’s agenda, Harris has looked increasingly vulnerable. “Sanchez is more of an ideological centrist, as shown by her most recent spate of endorsements, and thus would more naturally draw support from business and conservative groups, as well as Republican voters,” Dan Walters noted at the San Jose Mercury News. In addition to wiping out a gender gap, “Sanchez could pull Latino votes away from Harris.” The momentum has California’s Northern California liberal establishment on edge, fearing the specter of the more left-leaning candidate losing out in yet another runoff election.

Republished with permission by Cal Watchdog.com

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