Budget and Finance
Back to homepageAre Split Rolls Coming Soon?
NOV. 16, 2010 By KATY GRIMES The recent passage of Proposition 25, which allows legislators to pass a budget with only a simple majority vote, could have an impact on the future of property tax increases, according to Jon Coupal,
Read MoreBusiness Property Not Under-taxed
NOV. 12, 2010 By WAYNE LUSVARDI A rebuttal is required to Lenny Goldberg of the California Tax Reform Association who contends that small business properties are overtaxed and large corporate and franchise business properties are under taxed by Prop. 13
Read MoreBrown's Job Got Twice as Hard
NOV. 12, 2010 By JOHN SEILER Less than a month ago, on Oct. 18, Moody’s Investor Service issued a report calculating California’s situation as “at least $12 billion in future budget gaps.” Now, the nonpartisan California Legislative Analyst’s Office released a
Read MoreIs Prop 13 Hurting Small Businesses?
NOV. 11, 2010 By KATY GRIMES On the corner of a major intersection in Menlo Park, a small, independently owned gas station owner pays $30,148 a year in property taxes. On the other corners of the intersection, gas stations owned
Read MoreDems on Budgetary Hot Seat
NOV. 3, 2010 By ANTHONY PIGNATARO Five of the nine ballot measures on Tuesday’s ballot dealt with taxes or the budget. The biggest one, Prop 25, replaced the Legislature’s required two-thirds vote of budget approval with a simple majority. It
Read MoreLockyer, Others Deny Pension Crisis
NOV. 1, 2010 News Analysis By BRIAN CALLE Apparently the ideological left, public employment unions and some the state’s top financial officials still don’t get that we have a public employee unfunded pension liability crisis, or they are just in
Read MoreCA Unemployment System Is Broke
OCT. 29, 2010 By WAYNE LUSVARDI U.S. House minority leader Mitch McConnell, R-Kentucky, quipped in June of this year that the only way to solve the chronic national unemployment fund deficit in each state is to pass a bill called
Read MoreLooking Back At Absurd State Budget
This article was first published in City Journal. OCT. 28, 2010 By STEVEN GREENHUT Smoke and Mirrors in Sacramento: California’s latest state budget is a fraud. Even before Governor Arnold Schwarzenegger signed California’s state budget on October 8—100 days late—it
Read MorePublic Pay Study Seems Bogus
OCT. 21, 2010 By STEVEN GREENHUT The media have been providing serious reporting about a “UC Berkeley” study showing that public employees earn a total salary and benefit package that’s about the same as those in the private sector. This
Read MoreState Pension Meltdown Coming
OCT. 21, 2010 By WAYNE LUSVARDI The independent Milken Institute has just released a report “Addressing California’s Pension Shortfalls” that has an alarming finding: assuming no corrections are made, the combined liability of the three major state pension funds (Cal-PERS,
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