A group tied to the neo-Nazi and white supremacist movements found itself at the center of a bloody political firestorm in Sacramento, heightening election-year populist and nationalist tensions. A few dozen members of the Traditionalist Worker Party did battle with left-wing antagonists from a counter-protesting group many times larger in size, the Los Angeles Times noted. 

“The incident may fuel concerns about the potential for violent protests outside the major party conventions in Cleveland and Philadelphia this summer and in the run-up to the Nov. 8 presidential election,” Reuters suggested. 

The aims of the Traditionalist Worker Party have raised alarm among anti-hate organizations who track fascist and racist groups around the country. “We reject anti-white social engineering projects like forced busing, the ‘disparate impact’ shakedown racket, and the numerous other ways that our government is stacking the deck against white families,” the TWP platform reads, according to The Advocate. 

Under attack

But observers have noticed that the street battle mirrored the dynamic of a similar riot in Southern California, which far-right protesters did not instigate either. “The Sacramento stabbings came several months after another violent confrontation between members of a Ku Klux Klan group and counter-protesters at an Anaheim park,” the Los Angeles Times noted. In that ordeal, five out of 12 protesters arrested were let go “after police determined that they were acting in self-defense against counter-protesters,” the Orange County Register reported. Some conservatives groups have alleged that the unrest is part of a calculated plan by far-left organizations to foment violence. 

Although the Klan group, like the far-right group in Sacramento, has been suspected of willingly courting attacks, counter-protesters in both cases appeared to have planned for a bloody encounter in advance. “When six Klansmen pulled up in a black SUV about noon Saturday, about 30 counter-protesters were there waiting for them, police said,” according to the Register. CHP Capitol Protection Service spokesman George Granada told Reuters that, in Sacramento, “counter-protesters immediately ran in — hundreds of people — and they engaged in a fight.” 

The Trump factor

Trump supporters have pointed to the similarities as evidence that violence at their candidate’s rallies comes more from outside sources than from Trump fans themselves. “In recent months Trump has blamed ‘professional agitators’ and ‘thugs’ for violence that has broken out at many of the Republican candidate’s rallies,” Reuters added. “In Albuquerque, New Mexico, last month, anti-Trump protesters threw rocks and bottles at police officers who responded with pepper spray. A month earlier, some 20 demonstrators were arrested outside a Trump rally in Costa Mesa, California.”

But the Trump campaign appeared not to have anticipated that the TWP would respond to their newfound fame with a pledge to provide volunteer security at the Republican nominating convention in Cleveland. 

Spokesman Matt Parrott told McClatchy some 30 members planned to “show up and make sure that the Donald Trump supporters are defended from the leftist thugs.”

“You’re going to have a relatively civil event where you’re going to have the leftists protesting Trump and you’re going to have us arguing up against the leftists. And you’re going to have the police there ensuring that you’re going to have a first world situation and not some sort of ‘Gangs of New York’ knife fight.”

• Clinton, Sanders tied in CA, both lead Trump
• San Jose Senate race splits Democrats
• Cap-and-trade credits ain’t selling
• High-speed rail behind schedule, short on funding
• Presidential circus

Good morning! Happy Thursday.

Hillary Clinton and Bernie Sanders are virtually tied in their quest for the Democratic presidential nomination among likely voters in California, with both leading the prospective Republican nominee, Donald Trump, according to a Public Policy Institute of California poll released Wednesday night.

Meanwhile, according to the poll, the Republican brand is falling in California, even among Republicans, although neither party’s voters are widely satisfied with their choices for president.

And while it’s unclear how Californians will vote in November, they are currently rejecting by a wide margin Trump’s immigration positions to build a wall along the U.S./Mexico border and to deport all or many of the estimated 11 million undocumented immigrants in the country.

CalWatchdog has more. 

In other news:

• A San Jose Senate election highlights a rift in the Democratic Party between environmentalists and the more business-friendly wing, reports The Sacramento Bee. 
• Proceeds from the latest cap and trade auction fell woefully short of expectations, leaving financial uncertainty for many state programs including high-speed rail. The Los Angeles Times has more. 
• Speaking of high-speed rail, the timeline for completion of the first segment was pushed back four years. CalWatchdog has more. 

And here’s a quick roundup of the presidential circus:

• 16 protesters were arrested in Anaheim yesterday at Trump events, according to The Orange County Register.
• A Clinton event in Buena Park was much more subdued, although two men got topless, writes OC Weekly.
• And this wasn’t just any two men, writes The Daily Caller.
• The Trump candidacy has sparked an increase in Latino voter registration and citizenship in Fresno, with the latter increasing by around 25 percent in 2015, writes The Fresno Bee.  
• But not all Latinos dislike Trump, writes the AP/SF Gate.

Assembly:

• Budget Committee hearing on the budget.

Senate:

• In at 9:30. No hearings scheduled.

Gov. Brown:

• No public events scheduled.

Tips: matt@calwatchdog.com

Follow us: @calwatchdog @mflemingterp

New followers: @MrStudioCity @Reston_Station

But the honeymoon could be over for millions of Southern California residents served by municipal utilities. Moody’s Investors Service warns they will be hard-hit by the state’s latest edict on increased use of renewable energy to supply electricity:

On Oct.. 7, Gov. Jerry Brown signed a bill requiring all California utilities to generate 50 percent of the electricity they sell to retail customers from renewable energy by 2030. The legislation will be credit negative for municipal utilities if ratepayers balk at higher prices that come with the transition to renewable energy from coal-fired generation.

 

Municipal electric utilities in Southern California would be particularly affected given their reliance on coal-fired generation. Coal-fired generation has historically supplied cities like Los Angeles and Anaheim with more than 40 percent of their electricity. In contrast, Northern California cities such as San Francisco and Sacramento derive all of their electricity from sources other than coal such as solar, hydroelectricity and natural gas.

 

The Los Angeles Department of Water and Power and other Southern California municipal utilities have thus far managed the shift to other sources from coal without major ratepayer protest, allowing them to increase rates and maintain a sound financial performance. But Los Angeles ratepayers are facing a likely 3.4 percent annual water and power rate increase over the next five years to help support the further transition to cleaner energy.

 

For utilities, the Clean Energy and Pollution Reduction Act of 2015 increases the percentage of electricity coming from renewable energy to 50 percent by 2030 up from the current 33 percent by 2020. We expect the utilities will meet the 33 percent requirement. However, ratepayer affordability and technical challenges will become increasingly difficult as utilities reach towards the more significant 50 percent renewable standard.

Infrastructure costs also likely to buffet ratepayers

Moody’s says another factor could also yield future rate shocks:

[Municipal] utilities will face another major challenge in whether the transmission grid can adequately handle the intermittent renewable resources that will begin to dominate California’s power supply mix. LADWP benefits from owning and operating its transmission system and has variable resources such as a pumped storage facility and gas-fired units to balance the system. The city of Anaheim recently added the Canyon natural gas fired unit and Southern California Public Power Authority financed the Magnolia unit in Burbank to help compensate for shortfalls in solar or wind energy. In the long term, the need to successfully integrate more renewables into the grid will likely require similar additional capital investment.

But while customers of the region’s two giant investor-owned utilities — Southern California Edison and San Diego Gas & Electric — won’t be as hard hit by the latest state edict, they will also pay unique bills in coming years not borne by customers of municipal utilities. Unless a California Public Utilities Commission decision is overturned, customers of the two utilities will pick up 70 percent of the $4.7 billion cost of shuttering the broken San Onofre nuclear power plant. SCE owns 80 percent of the plant, SDG&E 20 percent.

Opponents say they’re killing neighborhood quality of life by bringing a never-ending series of loud, rude, drunken visitors to once-quiet communities. Defenders say they’re an economic engine and a bulkhead in the new sharing economy that can be made more tolerable and less disruptive with proper regulation.

But the loudest critics don’t want a compromise. They generally want a ban on rentals of less than three weeks, and some also urge limits on how many such rentals are allowed.

In Los Angeles, the leading concern is that the city won’t enforce existing rules that make short-term stays illegal in most residential communities. The Los Angeles Times reported last week on Venice residents who provided vast evidence that a home was being used as a de facto hotel — including a short-term rental contract for the property — only to have the city decline to pursue the matter:

As Airbnb and other platforms make it easier to rent out rooms or whole homes for short stays, the debate over regulating such rentals has revolved around what kinds of rules Los Angeles should enshrine. But for many Angelenos, the bigger question is whether the rules will have any teeth.

 

“They’re talking about writing a new law, when all they need to do is enforce the existing law,” said Patricia Rickles, one of the Venice Canals residents. …

 

The lack of action has convinced some critics that the online platforms need to lend a helping hand. “No city has the resources to send inspectors to all these properties,” said Judith Goldman, one of the co-founders of Keep Neighborhoods First, a group concerned about “commercialized” short-term rentals.

Goldman and others want a stern, Santa Monica-style assault on such rentals.

Anaheim passes restrictions, considers crackdown

In Orange County, Anaheim has emerged as ground zero in battles over short-term rentals. This is from a Sept. 15 Orange County Register story.

ANAHEIM – The City Council voted 4-1 Tuesday night to temporarily stop accepting applications from Anaheim homeowners wanting to join the lucrative business of renting out their properties to tourists bound for Disneyland, local conventions or Angel Stadium.

 

Dozens of residents complained about noise and the rapid proliferation of these short-term rentals, prompting the council to approve the so-called “urgency ordinance” for the next 45 days, with an option to extend the moratorium.

 

City officials said that the permit moratorium will give them time to study how to better regulate the businesses, which may include an increase of the current $250 registration fee charged annually to homeowners renting their properties. A report is due back to the City Council on Oct. 20.

 

Councilwoman Lucille Kring suggested that the city’s code enforcement officers crack down on unpermitted short-term rentals, revise the city’s occupancy limits for rentals and place a cap on the number of vacation homes allowed in each neighborhood. …

 

Anaheim police have responded to about 300 calls for service at short-term rentals over the past year, mostly to deal with complaints of loud parties and parking issues.

San Diegans complain about disrupted neighborhoods

In San Diego County, complaints are most common in the coastal strip from Ocean Beach north to Mission Beach and Pacific Beach. One Republican City Council member, Chris Cates, warns against making regulations too strict. Another, Lorie Zapf, sides with those who say their quality of life is under assault. This is from a story posted Sept. 21 by the Union-Tribune.

The widening debate over the proliferation of short-term vacation rentals intensified Monday as a newly formed residents group called on the San Diego City Council to significantly tighten restrictions on who can rent out their property and how often.

 

The latest proposal, offered up by a group calling itself Preserve Our Communities, comes as the council prepares to take up the increasingly contentious matter later this year.

 

At issue is the growing number of property owners who are renting out their entire homes or a single bedroom for short-term stays, thanks to the huge popularity of online platforms like Airbnb and HomeAway. …

 

“The biggest problem is not knowing what you’re going to get day to day: a peaceful family, a drunk person on the street, a bachelor’s party, a Marine Corps graduation party, people parking in other people’s driveways,” said Scott Gruby, a resident of the Bay Ho area and spokesman for Preserve Our Communities. “We wouldn’t be in this situation if this was just a few bad apples.”

 

Under the proposal offered up by Gruby’s group, in cases where owners are renting out entire homes but are not present, the minimum stay permitted would be 21 days or more. And for those renting out a room in their homes, stays of no less than 7 days would be permitted.

What if  beach neighborhoods are all short-term rentals?

A writer for an Ocean Beach-centric website and publication, the OB Rag, worries about more than neighborhood disruption. Frank Gormlie says the attractiveness of the San Diego beach lifestyle and the easy money to be made with short-term rentals could hollow out communities.

The problem occurs when for residents and local small property and home owners develop the motivation to turn their condo, cottage, second unit, apartment or house over to short-termers who will pay big bucks instead of keeping the interests of the community over that of the immediacy of cashing-in.

 

If there’s no one left to care about the community or that section of it, then there is no community. … [Take] a walk or bike ride along the boardwalks that run along Mission Beach and Mission Bay. Try to count the buildings where actual residents live. It’s depressing.

 

This is the same threat, now, aimed at Ocean Beach. If enough little cottages, homes, apartments are turned into vacation rentals, then this is a larger threat to the culture of Ocean Beach than gentrification. …

 

OBceans need to be vigilante on this issue. It isn’t over yet. Along with gentrification, short-term vacation rentals have the ability to undermine parts of the community, change the character of the neighborhood for the worse and turn a vibrant village into a beach resort for vacationers.

But Ocean Beach and other communities aren’t likely to get clarity soon from San Diego City Hall. The City Council has been considering updating short-term vacation rental rules for months, and nothing close to a consensus has emerged.

That lasted until current owner Arte Moreno bought the team and in 2005 renamed it the “Los Angeles Angels of Anaheim.” Arte said he complied with the contract because “Anaheim” still was in the title. The city sued, but lost in a jury trial.

The idea was that, by putting “Los Angeles” in the title, the team would gain a vast following in more populous Los Angeles County.

An interesting new New York Times national map of fan loyalty, using data from allegiances fans express on Facebook, shows that his strategy totally failed. Angels fans almost exclusively are in Orange County and parts of Riverside County. Except for the Padres areas around San Diego, everywhere else in Southern California is Dodger Country.

If you play around with the map, even Zip Code 90720, Los Alamitos in Orange County, has more Dodgers fans. So does Catalina Island; which, although part of L.A. County, is closer to Orange County. Maybe if Arte emphasized Orange County instead of Los Angeles, he might gain those fans.

Instead, with the 20-year contract about expire in 2016, Arte reportedly is considering moving the team to a new stadium — in Tustin. Maybe then he could rename them the Los Angeles and Tustin Angels Formerly of Anaheim.

Check out the map here. Below is a screen capture of the area discussed in this article.

The early conventional wisdom was that the clear favorite was Republican Kevin Faulconer, 47, the longest-serving council member and a community figure since his election as president of San Diego State University’s student body a quarter-century ago. Not only was Faulconer like the congenial moderate Republicans who have led San Diego for much of the last four decades, his opponent was a neophyte.

Democratic Councilman David Alvarez, 33, only became a public figure in 2010 when he beat out scions of two local political dynasties to win a seat representing a largely Latino district south of Interstate 8 — the dividing line in city politics between blue-collar communities nearer the Mexican border and the affluent neighborhoods from La Jolla to inland Rancho Bernardo.

That conventional wisdom has given way to a new assumption: Faulconer may win, but it will be very close — and he may be the last Republican that San Diego elects as mayor.

Given the Democrats’ hold on nearly all of California’s 10 largest cities, Faulconer might be the last big-city GOP mayor to be elected in the Golden State — barring a change in our political dynamics or demographics.

GOP held sway in San Diego not long ago

Although Democrats had long enjoyed a voter-registration edge in California’s second-largest city, Republicans did surprisingly well until 2012. It was that year that Filner, an abrasive 20-year paleoliberal congressman, edged out GOP Councilman Carl DeMaio, a small-government crusader who helped win huge changes in city compensation practices in his one term in office.

Many observers credited Filner’s 51 percent to 47 percent win to the strong turnout triggered by President Obama’s re-election campaign among Latinos and African Americans — 29 percent and 7 percent of the city’s population, respectively — and young people of all races. Also seen as a factor was DeMaio’s combative manner; the gay libertarian, the theory held, turned off the independent voters that Jerry Sanders attracted in his successful mayoral campaigns of 2005 and 2008.

So when Filner resigned in August, Republicans were confident after DeMaio decided instead to run for Congress and the well-liked Faulconer emerged as the sole credible GOP mayoral candidate. In the first special election, in November, Faulconer led with 42 percent, with Alvarez second with 27 percent, and Republican-turned-independent-turned-Democrat former Assemblyman Nathan Fletcher third with 24 percent. In this week’s runoff special election — runoffs typically have light turnout — the assumption was that reliably Republican absentee voters would carry the day.

Instead, the last published poll showed Faulconer only ahead 47 percent to 46 percent, within the margin of error. Millions of dollars in campaign spending by the national chapters of local unions — most of it for negative ads trashing the GOP candidate — had taken their toll.

But Republican insiders — and scores of business executives — are worried about much more than just this election.

The “Los Angelization” of America’s Finest City

It’s not just the usual concerns of GOP operatives in California: that the party’s hot-button social issues turn off young voters and that Latino voter turnout is steadily increasing. It’s that San Diego’s politics are undergoing what might be called a “Los Angelization.”

The city’s school board was taken over by the local affiliate of the California Teachers Association in 2008, when union muscle elected a new board majority that instituted policies that drove away an acclaimed reformer superintendent and yielded an operating budget in which an astonishing 92 percent of funds goes to employee compensation. The CTA control of the school board only increased with the 2010 and 2012 elections.

Now the same thing is happening with the City Council. Union-favored Democratic candidates — such as Alvarez — are increasingly likely to beat Democrats with independent streaks. As recently as 2011, there were Democrats on the council who occasionally would take on unions — politicians with backgrounds in engineering and small business, as well as party members who appeared eager to hear out business interests’ concerns.

But now the union muscle-flexing not only has Alvarez near an improbable mayoral victory, it has prompted hard-left decisions by the City Council in the months since Filner quit — decisions supported by formerly semi-independent Democrats who see the writing on the wall.

Last fall, on a party-line 5-4 vote, City Council Democrats approved increasing fees on commercial development by at least 377 percent to provide more funds for affordable-housing programs — even though the programs have a horrible record of actually getting people in homes.

And on another party-line 5-4 vote, council Democrats approved a restrictive new master plan for a job-rich shipyard industrial area adjacent to the Barrio Logan neighborhood in Alvarez’s district. They did so despite dire warnings from many CEOs and business owners that it would give leverage to environmentalists and community activists to shut them down.

No more independent Democratic voices

The contrast between the current council Democratic majority and past Democratic majorities was striking. In 2007, an effort to punish Wal-Mart for the sin of being anti-union died when then-Councilwoman Donna Frye — the most popular Democrat in San Diego — changed her mind and opposed an anti-“big box” ordinance. Frye candidly admitted that her constituents liked Wal-Mart and didn’t want it punished.

Present council Democrats appear incapable of such candor. In voting for the massive fee increase on commercial development, Council President Todd Gloria — the interim mayor since Filner’s resignation — repeatedly insisted that not only would there be no negative economic fallout from the hike, it would help the local economy.

The same Gloria once stood up to unions by backing a “managed competition” process in which groups of city workers vied against private businesses for the right to provide city services — a reform strongly endorsed by voters.

Alvarez has made clear he plans to nullify voter-backed reforms. Will Gloria stand up to him? Maybe he would have a year or two ago. But now that San Diego politics are becoming as union-dominated and doctrinaire as those of Los Angeles or the California Legislature, probably not.

A Faulconer victory in Tuesday’s mayoral election may quiet GOP worries about the radicalization of San Diego City Hall — but not for long.

By Chris Reed

The latest Californa-based green energy fiasco took center stage in the House Committee on Oversight & Government Reform on Wednesday. It is Anaheim-based Fisker Automotive. This is from the Washington Post’s Wonkblog:

“It’s time for another round of scrutiny over the Obama administration’s clean-energy programs. On Wednesday, House lawmakers held a fractious hearing over federal loans that had been made to struggling electric-car manufacturer Fisker Automotive.

“There’s no doubt that Fisker is in serious trouble. The Anaheim-based company hasn’t built a vehicle since last summer after running into battery-supply issues and other problems. To date, the company has sold just 2,000 Karmas worldwide — a plug-in hybrid sports sedan that retails for $100,000. The Karma never really found a mass audience beyond Justin Bieber, Leonardo DiCaprio, and a handful of other A-list drivers.

“The Department of Energy finally halted all further loans to the company in June 2011 after having disbursed $192 million of a planned $529 million. (Since then, the government has seized some $21 million from Fisker’s accounts.)”

I love this part. As the kids say, epic fail:

“In the spring of 2012, Consumer Reports gave the Karma a failing grade after it died on the track. ‘This is the first time in memory that we have had a car that is undriveable before it has finished our check-in process,’ said Tom Mutchler.”

A fiasco for venture capital investors as well

An article on the Gigaom tech news site makes another interesting point. This wasn’t just a debacle for the Obama administration. It was a debacle for Silicon Valley venture capital investors who put tens of millions into Fisker:

“The heart of Fisker’s business model was in that early deal with Quantum. The idea was to design a gorgeous car, and have suppliers like Quantum provide the technology because off-the-shelf parts from suppliers would help keep costs down.

“But there were problems with this strategy: Sometimes, those parts had to be custom-made to fit the design vision, which resulted in higher prices for Fisker. Other times, parts were delivered late or, worse, faulty, but Fisker was locked in to those supplier relationships. Sources close to Fisker have also said that many of the parts were owned by the suppliers themselves, so Fisker didn’t own a lot of the internal technology. …

“Indeed, Fisker’s business model wasn’t the type that funders in the Valley typically like — it’s the polar opposite of the ‘Intel inside’ approach. That so many investors were so eager to back the company has left many in the electric car and tech industries scratching their heads over the years. ‘It would have only taken a couple a phone calls to industry veterans to have prevented all of this,’ says electric car advocate Chelsea Sexton, adding ‘there’s no excuse for not doing homework. It appears none was done.’”

But at least the venture capital investors lost their own money — not taxpayers’.

April 11, 2013

By Ed Ring

“Forget about logic,” Jack advised. “My analytics instructor says that all logic is mere tautology. She says it is impossible to learn anything through logic that you did not already know.”

— Robert A. Heinlein, Tunnel in the Sky

What about facts? There are certainly facts we don’t already know. According to the logic of the labor union spokespersons who relentlessly lobby and negotiate for higher wages and benefits for public sector workers, they are still underpaid because they have higher levels of education than the average worker.

According to the logic of AFSCME Local 3336, the only reason anyone might think public sector employees are overpaid is because of right wing propaganda. Yet it seems the many studies that fund their own analyses come from taxpayer-supported institutions staffed with unionized faculty, or think tanks funded by grants from public employee unions.

But why impugn the sources? Why consider their logic? Why not just present the facts and let journalists, policymakers and voters employ their own logic to form an opinion?

That is what compensation studies from the California Public Policy Center have attempted to do. They have now done public employee compensation studies on four California cities, most recently Irvine, along with Costa Mesa, Anaheim and San Jose. Not only have they presented the data objectively. But for anyone to verify the data and the assumptions, they have made the payroll spreadsheets and analysis available for downloading by anyone who wants to review the data themselves; here are these spreadsheets: Irvine, Costa Mesa, Anaheim, and San Jose.

Here are some facts on total compensation (direct pay plus employer funded benefits) for full time employees of these four cities:

TOTAL COMPENSATION — FULL-TIME CITY EMPLOYEES

Irvine: Total compensation average = $143,691, median = $133,782.
Costa Mesa: Total compensation average = $146,863, median = $146,378
Anaheim: Total compensation average = $146,551, median = $138,442
San Jose: Total compensation average = $149,907, median = $139,634

TOTAL COMPENSATION — FULL-TIME CITY EMPLOYEES NOT INCLUDING PUBLIC SAFETY

Irvine: Total compensation average = $127,115, median = $120,063.
Costa Mesa: Total compensation average = $103,755, median = $95,526
Anaheim: Total compensation average = $122,717, median = $110,792
San Jose: Total compensation average = $120,092, median = $114,923

These figures are for full time workers, unlike the numbers provided by the State Controller on their “transparency” website. Those averages not only fail to include all employer provided benefits in the numerator, but they include every part-time worker in the denominator. Not surprisingly, these “facts” reveal much lower averages. Here are the “average wages for all employees” according to the California State Controller’s transparency website:

CALIFORNIA STATE CONTROLLER’S “AVERAGE WAGE” FIGURES

Irvine: Average wage = $48,506
Costa Mesa: Total compensation average = $72,177
Anaheim: Total compensation average = $56,850
San Jose: Total compensation average = $68,339

Why not let the reader determine which of these “averages” is more representative of reality? For any readers who might argue that the cost of benefits don’t belong in calculations of average or median earnings, we invite them, out of their direct pay, to start paying for 100 percent of their pensions, 100 percent of their retirement health care, and 100 percent of their health insurance, disability insurance, life insurance, 401(k) plan, and Social Security and Medicare premiums.

More facts

Here are some additional facts:

Using California’s Employment Development Department’s 2010 report, “Labor Market Trends,” (ref. figure 1), it is evident there are 2.4 million Federal, State and Local employees in California; 12.2 million full-time private sector employees who work for an employer; and another 1.4 million “self-employed” private sector workers. According to the California State Department of Finance, in 2011 the state’s Gross Domestic Product was $1.96 trillion.

So what if every one of California’s 16 million full-time workers was earning total compensation of $143,691 per year — the lowest of our four cities under consideration? Multiplying this average by the number of full-time workers in the state, and comparing the result to the state’s entire economic output might help us ascertain the feasibility of such a feat, would it not?

As it turns out, if every one of California’s 16 million full-time workers earned $143,691 per year in total employer paid compensation (pay and benefits), it would amount to $2.3 trillion, 17 percent in excess of California’s entire economic output. This means that if California had no net exports and no business investment — elements that typically comprise at least 30 percent of GDP — paying everyone what the average local government worker makes would still consume 17 percent more than the state’s entire economic output.

Average total compensation

Here’s another fact:

AVERAGE TOTAL COMPENSATION, FULL-TIME, CALIFORNIA, PRIVATE SECTOR: $63,361

According to the U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics, and as reported in the Sacramento Business Journal, the average annual salary for a worker in California was $51,910 in 2012. To convert this into total compensation, using generous assumptions, add 7.5 percent for employer contributions to Social Security and Medicare, plus a 3 percent matching contribution to a 401(k), plus $500 per month for health insurance benefits, and you get $63,361 per year (don’t forget there are 2.4 million government workers who pulled the BLS statistics upwards). That is an absolute best case.

This means that the average worker for the City of Irvine, which has the lowest paid workforce among the four cities considered in the CPPC studies so far, is making $143,691 per year in total compensation, compared to the average Californian, who makes at most $63,361 in total compensation.

At the risk of Robert A. Heinlein turning in his grave, let’s now indulge in some logic.

Maybe, just maybe, their allegedly superior levels of overall educational attainment don’t justify municipal bureaucrats (not even including public safety) making average total compensation that is approximately twice as much as the total compensation earned by the average full-time private sector worker in California.

Maybe, just maybe, when public sector unions clamor for even higher levels of compensation and benefits because “public employees need to be able to afford to live in the communities they serve,” they might consider the fact that their relentless lobbying and negotiating for more pay and benefits, combined with their relentless lobbying and negotiating for more laws and regulations in order to expand their membership base of public employees, is the reason that nobody can afford to live in these communities.

And maybe, just maybe, public employees will renounce their union agenda of more taxes, more regulations, and more benefits for themselves, just enough to allow California’s economy to recover. Maybe they will take it upon themselves to oppose their union agendas that, if unchecked, condemn California to an immediate future where the rich play with movies and software, the poor collect entitlements, and the government employees are the only middle class left.

After all, despite Heinlein’s nearly 60-year-old vision, there is no tunnel in the sky, at least not yet. No M-class planets to escape to. For that matter, there are still no blue water floating city states beckoning just off the coast. But the interstate highway system is alive and well.

Ed Ring is the research director of the California Public Policy Center, and the editor of UnionWatch.org

By Michael Warnken

Sept. 10, 2012

Until the public shooting of two Hispanic men by local police just a month ago, Anaheim was mostly known for the Anaheim Angels, Gene Autry and Disneyland. Today, we are well aware it is not the happiest place on earth. Anaheim, like many other parts of the state, has a gang problem and it seems to a have a police problem, too, as the recent shootings by police occurred in broad daylight under questionable circumstances.

Mayor Tom Tait called for an investigation into these incidents by the offices of California Attorney General Kamala Harris and U.S. Attorney General Eric Holder. However, local residents were not satisfied, and many felt that the police had crossed the line, especially since there had been six other similar events this year, five of which were fatal.

Most of the police brutality was focused around Hispanic citizens, who make up half of city residents. However, because many residents are immigrants who are not citizens, perhaps about one third of the city’s eligible voters are Hispanic.

The council’s current makeup is: Lori Galloway, half Hispanic, half Filipina; Harry Sidhu, a Sikh immigrant from India; and two Anglos, Gail Eastman and Kris Murray.

So Hispanic activists began calling for changes in the city’s electoral system. Along with others, the activists believe there is a connection between the electoral system in Anaheim and the violence.

The Orange County Register also reported:

“Those pushing for change point to the elegant neighborhoods of Anaheim Hills. The city’s current voting system has concentrated overwhelming political power there: Four of the city’s five council members are residents.

“That far exceeds the percentage of city voters who live there, a disparity that districts would remedy — according to their supporters — by more evenly distributing council seats. A review of voter-registration numbers by ZIP code shows that the Anaheim Hills area accounts for less than a fourth of the city’s voters.

“By comparison, the central part of the city — including Disneyland but also the hard-life neighborhoods at the heart of recent protests — has more than a third of the city’s voters but only one resident council member. And the west side of Anaheim accounts for about 40 percent of the city’s registered voters, but is home to no council member.”

On August 8, the Anaheim city council held a special hearing where a proposal by Tait was considered to raise the number of council members from four to six, with calls for an increase to as many as eight. Calls also went up to switch from the current system of at-large elections for council members to a system in which members are elected by geographical district. The council did not vote to send the proposal to the voters, but tabled it for further investigation.

At-Large Elections

An at-large electoral system exists when all the representatives in a city are elected by the entire populace. The alternative to this is known as “district elections,” in which city council members are each elected from different geographical districts of the same population.

District elections give smaller areas of people direct access to a representative. The people of that district knows who represents them, and are able hold them more directly accountable for their actions and decisions. Representatives in at-large districts are less accountable and like to claim they “represent everyone,” but in actual practice, they tend to ignore everyone equally, except those who are celebrities, powerful special interests and large campaign donors.

At-large electoral systems are dubious to begin with, as they have long been used to suppress minority political participation. This  practice was mastered in the American South, where cities with black populations of 40 percent to 50 percent or more would not have a single black city council representative.  The problem was so bad in the South that the Voting Rights Act was passed by Congress in 1965 to address this and other voting-rights problems. The act forced cities in the Southern states to hold single-member district elections.

As the largest city in Orange County and the 10th largest city in the state, with a population of about 340,000 people, Anaheim should have single-member district elections. A move to such a system would open the city up to more electoral diversity.  Just as juries and grand juries should reflect a cross section of a community, any properly formed electoral system should reflect the participants that they represent in a meaningful way.

Local Representation

In a reader rebuttal in the Orange County Register, council member Kris Murray justified the tabling of the proposal of moving to six members elected by district:

“There are still many questions to be answered surrounding those shootings, and several independent investigations are already underway to do so. Although some have asserted that there may be a correlation between the two issues, the city would be irresponsible to undertake wholesale change of its entire electoral system without first providing an opportunity for extensive citizen dialogue, careful legal analysis, and consideration of the options available to meet voters’ concerns for fair representation.”

But Police officers, judges and city administrative employees are added to governmental institutions without much thought. It’s silly to suggest that moving to district elections and adding more city councilors to the most important branch in a representative republic requires months of review. So, let’s indulge Murray on that point and consider the proposal for an increase in members and single member districts.

Currently, each of the four council members in Anaheim represents all 340,000 residents of Anaheim. If single-member districts were implemented without increasing the number of council members, each of four district would comprise about 85,000 people. An increase to six members would create districts of just under 60,000 people. (In both cases, I’m assuming the mayor, who sits on the council, would continue to be elected at large.)

But in evaluating this proposal, one simple question that needs to be asked is this: Is that real representation? Is that truly adequate? Can anyone even begin to honestly suggest that a city councilor can represent 60,000 or more people? So, why stop at just six members? At some point, the fundamental question needs to be asked: “How many people can a single city council member adequately represent?”

True representation means agency, direct contact and access by all. This might mean proper representation leads to significantly more elected council members (or their equivalents) Consider, for example the fact that Chicago has 50 aldermen and New York City has 51 city council members. More is not a problem; in fact, from a legislative standpoint, these cities work quite well.

More decentralization is needed

In the end, representatives are elected to resolve problems. More representatives would indeed help address Anaheim’s current problems — challenges that are not limited to gang violence and police brutality. If the city council had enough representatives, they could hold their own hearings investigating the police, like a state legislature or congress would and try to work them out rather than depending on the state and federal attorneys general. This amounts to self-government.

Further, at-large elections serve to protect incumbents from challengers because of the influence city employees have on such elections. Through their unions, city employees (including police) are more able to concentrate their influence and back their slate of candidates in at-large elections. The fewer representatives, the fewer votes on the council are required to raise taxes and spike employee pensions. The fewer representatives, the less accountable they and their employees are to the citizens.

Anaheim’s city council is not going to want to implement any changes. It will likely continue to put the matter off as long as it can because the reform needed is a direct threat to the current council’s power. The longer they are able to delay a change, the more they can maintain the status quo.

However, the citizens of Anaheim need to be vigilant. They need to keep pushing for more representation and single member districts. The thoughts and ideas of the representatives should be as broad and diverse as the people they represent. More representatives would achieve that goal as well as level the political playing field and lead to less violence and more accountability.

(Editor’s note: This is a revision of an earlier piece on the same subject.)

(Michael Warnken is an expert in the field of political representation and American electoral history.)

By Steven Greenhut

SACRAMENTO — After Tom Tait was sworn in as mayor of Anaheim in November 2010, he issued a statement announcing the city’s commitment to “kindness and freedom.” One reader — knowing this to be the type of governmental hubris that’s almost too easy to lampoon — urged me to reach for the poison pen. I declined. Although the statement struck me as naïve, I cut Tait some slack because of his apparent sincerity.

Two years later, as Anaheim makes national news because of riots sparked by police shootings, Tait is in an unexpected situation of having to put his well-intentioned rhetoric into practice. How he and his city resolve the conflict — whether officials can maintain civic order and dispel violent, chaotic images that seem out of place in the home of the “Happiest Place on Earth” — might offer lessons for cities throughout the country.

As Tait told me in an interview Wednesday, his original intent was to spark a cultural change within city government that encouraged employees to help residents navigate the bureaucracy. He sees kindness and freedom as closely related — i.e., a government that kindly serves the people also is one that creates the broadest latitude for its citizens to live their lives as they choose.

He offered examples of where the two concepts intersect. Shortly after taking over as mayor, Tait learned of a plan by residents in the Colony District to host a Fourth of July parade that included not just the wealthier historic neighborhoods but also a nearby apartment complex. It was a nice idea to bring people together even though they are divided by economic and ethnic differences.

“Someone calls the city, and the official there said they needed a permit, and that’s a fee and a certificate of insurance and approvals,” Tait said. “The parade didn’t happen. … On the other end of the phone, there’s a guy who works for the city, and he has a check list. He goes into government probably to help people, but he has a tight fence put around him.”

Tait also told of how a city security guard gave an elderly man a ride home from City Hall after seeing him struggling in the heat. Tait learned about it because the employee’s supervisor wrote him up — the guard was being punished for doing something outside of procedure. Tait was appalled and was thankful that a department head recognized that the guard should be praised, not punished.

Bureaucratic culture

Changing a bureaucratic culture sounds naïve, perhaps, but, beginning in 2002, Anaheim had gained national attention for putting into place some unusually kind and freedom-friendly public policies that no other major U.S. city had embraced.

Like many older cities, Anaheim wanted to encourage new tax-generating developments. Most cities adopted the government-driven redevelopment approach, in which politically favored businesses are subsidized, and others are driven off their property by eminent domain.

Instead of taking the heavy-handed “hatched in City Hall” redevelopment approach, Anaheim officials banned the use of eminent domain for economic development purposes and then “upzoned” targeted areas, meaning zoning rules were relaxed so that owners had more latitude on what they could do with their land. As a result, the Platinum Triangle area near Angel Stadium boomed as property owners found great value in selling their low-rise warehouses to condo and office developers. It was a market-friendly approach that did not violate anybody’s property rights.

The city also reduced regulations on businesses, issued a business-tax holiday, stopped prosecuting minor code violations as crimes, reduced some misdemeanors to infractions and worked on fostering a more helpful attitude among city workers. Tait, then a councilman, helped build a bipartisan council agenda to advance the reforms.

2000s Motels

In the early 2000s, I wrote for the Orange County Register about Anaheim’s nonsensical rules that forced people who lived in low-cost motels to move out every 30 days.

Officials didn’t like that these old motels were turning into low-income apartments and were making life difficult for some of the city’s poorest residents, even forcing some of them into homelessness. The then-new freedom-friendly city administration took a different approach by working with the motels to assure safe and sanitary conditions and bringing in the Rescue Mission to administer services.

That’s an example of how a changed governmental approach can expand freedom and kindness, Mayor Tait argues.

“I don’t think people are free to be kind in the city because of all the rules, because of the culture and the bureaucracy,” he said. “It’s not about changing the rules, but about changing the culture.” He wants to allow city employees to “use their brains” and not just follow the rules.

Unfortunately, in my view, the city’s Police Department has embraced the wrong kind of policing methods — ones that are unkind and tend to undermine people’s freedom. I don’t see police officials there using their brains to handle a situation resulting, in part, from overly aggressive policing tactics and insufficient police accountability and transparency.

Clearly, the cultural changes the mayor is trying to implement in the city bureaucracy need to filter into the police department — a point Tait also makes. Cops need to get out of their cars and get to know members of the communities where they patrol. They need to put down the riot gear and recognize that, in a free society, police are supposed to protect and serve the public — and must respect the inherent rights of all residents.

I never thought that Tait’s seemingly naïve statement upon becoming mayor would have taken on such significance, but life is funny that way. Despite my cynicism, I agree that reforming a rigid governmental and policing culture is exactly what’s needed in Anaheim, and elsewhere. Fortunately, I can’t think of a more sincere mayor to advance those ideas.

Steven Greenhut is vice president of journalism at the Franklin Center for Government and Public Integrity; write to him at: steven.greenhut@franklincenterhq.org