Waiting To See Agenda 2011

JAN. 7, 2011

Tucked away under the authority of the California State Library, the California Research Bureau “provides nonpartisan research services to the Governor and his staff, to both houses of the legislature, and to other state elected officials.” In a questionable move in 2009, the CRB went out on a good-sized limb and predicted that the foreclosure crisis “would end in 2010, when employment losses bottom out and housing prices start rising again.” Did they use a Ouija board?

Last year Senate President Pro Tem Darrell Steinberg, D-Sacramento, touted Agenda 2010, a legislation package that claimed to create 140,000 jobs in the state, based on research provided by the CRB. “Agenda 2010 represents a real, nonpartisan, empirically supported effort to help create jobs for Californians,” said Steinberg in a press release.

The CRB concluded in 2010 that the jobs package “would create 100,000 jobs, create $6.7 billion in economic activity per year, save the General Fund approximately $2.3 billion in increased revenue and avoided costs, and result in a net increase in employment of approximately 300,000 jobs- reducing unemployment by 275,000.”

But unemployment in the state is up, now topping 12.6 percent.

In a February 2010 press release about Agenda 2010, Steinberg said, “I have been through enough budgets to know that the only way to increase and sustain the tax base is to create high wage jobs.”

I wasn’t aware that lawmakers established the creation of high wage jobs… unless perhaps they are expanding government and union jobs.

Bills in the Agenda 2010 package included SB 77 (Pavely), which stated that it would create 10,500 jobs by allowing business owners to receive state-funded loans for energy retrofits. But the repayment process is a little trickier, through assessments on owners’ property tax bill. This bill’s “research” was provided by the decidedly liberal group Next 10.

Another beauty in the bill package was SB 964 (Alquist), which appropriated $500,000 from the High Speed Rail bond funds to pay for research to determine what skills are necessary to build the state’s high speed rail system. The bill was supposed to “train 5,000 Californians” for employment.

The stated primary purpose of the Agenda 2010 was “investment of public funds to create jobs.” There were no bills offering tax cuts to business owners for job creation, or to the state’s taxpayers in order to create incentives for personal spending. Democrats apparently think that spending more state money is what creates jobs, only proving once again that California has too many lawyers in charge, and too few economists.

The fallacy of Agenda 2010’s bills is that new jobs will be created because of additional state spending. Legislators think that jobs will be created to retrofit business owners’ buildings, or that new consultants will be hired to help the High Speed Rail Authority decide what job skills are needed by its employees.

Nothing could be further from the truth. Business owners will hire existing contractors to perform the energy retrofits. Those contractors will not hire new people, but will use existing staff and familiar subcontractors. Consultants will not hire new employees – particularly since one person can determine in about 30 minutes what job skills are needed for employment with the High Speed Rail Authority.

The Democrats’ bill package is designed for only one purpose – to spend public money on unionized employees at the expense of the taxpayer.

Steinberg claimed that the High Speed Rail Authority would create 50,625 jobs, and the Multifamily Housing Program at the Department of Housing and Community Development would create 2,965 jobs. Democrats insisted that spending federal transportation funds on shovel-ready projects to improve highways, streets and roads, as well as public transit systems would create 54,000 jobs. They also said the “Gas Tax Swap” would save 18,000 jobs.

Who writes this stuff? Only people with no private sector experience could live in such an economic Shangri-La.

In his Jan. 2 op ed in the Sacramento Bee, Steinberg continued his advocacy for “pushing the budget down to local governments,” echoing the phrase used by nearly all Democratic candidates and legislators.

The state Democratic leader has been saying for months that he wants to not only push some state services down to the local governments, but also to make it easier for counties to collect taxes.

“The only alternative in this difficult fiscal environment is to rethink the roles of government at both the state and local levels and shift programs, along with the dollars to run them, closer to the people served,” Steinberg said last year when he first began the push for “local control.”

And Governor Jerry Brown echoed the theme in his campaign commercials: “We’ve got to take power from the state capital and move it down to the local level, closer to the people.”

This just sounds like more double-speak from state leadership.

“We need to “devolve” some services and funds to local growth,” claimed one editorial.

Devolve?

A favorite phrase of many Democrats’ is “empowering local government to do a better job.” Then there’s “replacing top-down, silo-based governance with community approaches.”

The carefully worded expressions used recently by Democratic players include, “Regional collaboration,” “We need a community dialogue,” and “Bringing government closer to the people.”

But if you read what Democratic legislators and leaders are really saying, then the agenda is quite clear: Unless the state raises taxes, California will become insolvent.

So which taxpayers should receive tax increases? The wealthy? The already stressed middle-class employed workers who are still losing homes and scrambling to keep jobs? …or the underemployed who take any job just to keep from going on the public dole?

According to most elected Democrats, the best place to find more tax “revenue” is from property and business owners. Democrats charge that property owners have not been paying a fair share of taxes for more than 30 years, thanks to Proposition 13, and business owners can and should pay more.

And to get Californian’s attention, they will order services cut.

Brown is already threatening drastic cuts to crucial services in the state – or we all can pony-up with more tax money next election in order to keep our police and sheriffs, teachers, water and sewer services. The talk never turns to substantive cuts to the cost of ever-growing government pensions, benefits, salaries and entitlement programs.

Steinberg said that legislators cannot right the budget with cuts alone, but when added up, the additional spending in their Agenda 2010 bills would save the state more than enough. Or, they could just cut the High-Speed-Rail-to-nowhere program.

Legislators claim they can “save” by spending, proving that they just don’t want to have to stop spending. I wonder what Agenda 2011 will bring.

-Katy Grimes