Why elected representatives thought it was a good idea to provide such generous pension arrangements, paid for by taxpayers, when the taxpayers themselves typically can’t receive them, still hasn’t been answered.

Meanwhile, Glendale might be on the hook for a portion of former Police Chief Randy Adams’ generous pension payout if it is calculated on the basis of the salary he received from Bell.

California city manager’s pension could top $30 million, Reuters, July 21, 2010

California’s Latest Pay Plunder: Outrage over lavish salaries and pensions in Bell, California, could fire up reform in public compensation laws and practices, Governing, July 26, 2010 – contains a suggested list of reforms and a contemptuous rebuttal to Rizzo’s claim that his salary was comparable to that of a private CEO.

Glendale seeking to block Adams’ pension benefits: City will be on the hook for $500,000 to $600,000, according to CalPERS, Glendale News-Press, July 28, 2010

City Managers Discuss Reforms in Wake of City of Bell Scandal, California League of Cities, July 30, 2010

Other cities stuck with the tab for Bell officials’ massive pensions, Los Angeles Times, August 1, 2010

Read states that building the tunnel will leave communities above ground “intact.” How can the largest tunnel ever constructed be carved out underneath San Gabriel communities without any impact? Where will all the dirt and rock go? What about necessary vents and side nodes? Where will the construction equipment be located? Even if the tunnel could be built with no impact, how will these communities fare if (when?) there is a major crash involving toxic materials inside it?

Read also states that the project “will reduce congestion more than will any other highway project in the county,” and “will benefit the environment by reducing air pollution and use of fossil fuels.” Freeway projects in Southern California don’t reduce congestion; they make it easier for more cars to get on the road. A light-rail freight transport alternative would do far more to reduce congestion, air pollution, and use of fossil fuels than Read’s exorbitantly expensive short stretch of underground freeway.

California taxpayers should not be asked to fund this project when low-cost, low-impact, 21st-century solutions must be out there. Comments to Read’s editorial echo these points:

Look for alternatives:

What impact will the exhaust fumes have on the surrounding homes and communities? Dig a little deeper and you will see that this project is far from perfect and will lead to problems similar to that of the “big dig” and will not solve traffic problems. Have we seen freeways extensions and additional lanes reduce traffic? That is like trying to cure obesity by adding more belt loops. You need to address the problems and increase light rail, bus lines, etc. This is a dangerous and costly project and will lead to unforseen problems in the future.

Inteurbans:

Shame on the MTA for spending billions dollars on this misguided project that needs to be stopped now and laid to rest before any more money is spent. Do we want another Boston Big Dig boondoggle that went way over budget and is costing millions annually just to keep it open?

Is this a 1960 solution to a 2010 problem? Building or even widening freeways do little to help congestion they only help the construction companies that design and build them. Is this really going to reduce congestion or just move it around? The wading of the 22, the 5 and some interchanges in Orange County at many billions of dollars did little to help with congestion. Within weeks of the completion of the projects traffic was back to its pre -improvement state. Will the 710 tunnel be any different? Even if it is built will it help?

lets be real:

What this does do is make it easier to drive from some Points A to some Points B. Mobility is generally a good thing. However, people move about based on how easy and expensive a trip is. Making automobile trips easier increases the number of automobile trips. There are real economic benefits to this new travel, but claiming that driving more is good for the environment undermines any credibility the author might have had.
Can we do a real analysis of opportunity costs for these billions of dollars?

Dean Serwin:

This tunnel (which looks to be potentially the largest ever undertaken) will simply concentrate emissions into vented plumes poisoning the community. The currently estimated 6 year construction time will hugely disrupt the local community, including nearby schools.

From Patterico:

So it’s “terrorism” to hold elected officials to their word??

She “guesses” it’s about free speech, but it’s “extremely unfair”?

This is the sort of attitude we’re seeing in Sacramento. They want to do what they want to do (raise taxes ad infinitum) — and they’re so very irritated at having to deal with petty annoyances like their signed pledges, and the voters’ wishes.

And from Hot Air Blog:

There’s a lot of stupidity and tyranny locked into those few words. The First Amendment guarantees the right to petition the government for redress of grievances, even apart from the “free speech” issues Bass casually discards. Elected politicians are accountable to the people who elect them in a free society. Politicians do not acquire lordly status when they go to the Assembly, or anywhere else.

Usually, politicians are smart enough to at least pay lip service to getting feedback from their constituents. Instead, Bass calls them “terrorists” for … what? Calling their representatives and telling them not to raise taxes even higher, in the state with the sixth-highest per capita tax burden in the nation? Expressing their opinions? Telling politicians they won’t get their support if they vote for a tax hike? That’s democracy, not terrorism, although I’m hardly surprised that Bass can’t tell the difference.

LA Now reported on another setback to California representatives: a state court of appeals ruling last week that they can’t appropriate transportation funds to cover budget shortfalls.

Carol Platt Liebau stands up to pitches against Prop 13 and the 2/3 majority rule by batting the arguments out of the park:

Ultimately, any honest assessment of California’s plight must assign responsibility for the state’s fiscal crisis – not to the taxpayers who voted for Prop. 13 three decades ago – but to the politicians who have subsequently exploited them without mercy. Indeed, if spending had simply reflected average population growth plus the average increase in the cost of living since 1991, there would now be a $15 billion surplus. After adjusting for inflation, the state now spends nearly 20% more per capita than it did 18 years ago; even as California’s tax revenues increased by 167% during that period, state spending exploded by 189%.

And Capitol Weekly reports on Governor Schwarznegger’s proposal to reduce budget shortfalls by cutting state employee benefits and pensions – a sore subject for California taxpayers who don’t enjoy nearly the amount of health care coverage or future retiree benefits their taxes support for state workers.

Evans’ Budget Blog update today briefly describes a Democratic budget proposal that will be submitted for a vote Wednesday. Along with cuts to programs, and $2.1 billion in “revenue acceleration and fees”, it includes $1 billion in new cigarette taxes and $880 million in oil severance taxes (whatever those are). Most comments on this post pick up John and Ken’s themes: Why hasn’t state government gotten the message that voters won’t accept more taxes? Further, why won’t legislators start renegotiating employment contracts that are far more generous than most private-sector packages? Excerpt from one comment:

…as long as public employees make more money on average, with more benefits than in the private sector, we have a reasonable expectation to ask them to make sacrifices first.

There’s nothing unreasonable about asking state employees to live in the same world as the rest of us, contributing some of our salary towards medical insurance and co-pays. There’s nothing unreasonable about asking state employees to live with the same retirement plans the rest of us have (401K plans, not pensions with 90% of our salary for life).

Here is Evans’ more detailed report on the proposal.

More taxes aren’t the issue. What California needs is more taxpayers relative to government workers and users of government services. There are not enough taxpayers in California to support the level of services, wages, benefits, and programs our state government has decided to provide.

Fox & Hounds opinion has a similar viewpoint, focused on business development:

Activists who want to lower the two-thirds vote and raise taxes will argue that a low turnout election really doesn’t represent the will of California’s people. Expect to see tax raising initiatives aimed for the general election in 2010 along with a measure to lower the two-thirds vote.

Voters rejected a move five years ago to reduce the two-thirds standard and their attitude on the issue seems more set in stone today. I doubt it will soften much in another year.

So, if raising fees, seeking tax increases via the ballot, and attacking the two-thirds vote requirement must not happen next, what should happen next?

Besides implementing restructuring that has been addressed by the California Performance Review and other studies over the years, the legislature should do everything it can to spur economic activity and create jobs. That’s how we can get out of this mess. Encourage the entrepreneur to lead the way.

University and State reveals that the majority of California voters want spending cuts instead of higher taxes, and insist on the two-thirds majority vote requirement preventing simple majorities from raising taxes. The problem, according to this blog post, is that the majority also opposes “cutbacks in ten of twelve major categories of state spending, including the three largest – the public schools, health care and higher education.” In other words, ordinary Californians don’t know exactly how to cut the budget, or they expect (as they well should) their elected representatives to make the tough budget choices.

Matthew Yglesias includes the two-thirds requirement in his list of California’s political and financial problems. His mention of population as a source of “dysfunction”, however, reveals the real problem: high demand for services that can’t be met with reasonable tax rates.

The crux of the matter, as best I can tell from the East Coast, is that California has a set of political institutions that don’t work. The 2/3 rule in the state legislation doesn’t make sense, the profligate use of the initiative process doesn’t work, the combination of the two is disastrous. There seem to me to be other sources of institutional dysfunction in California (LA County is almost twice as big as the country’s second-largest, and five of the fifteen top population counties form a contiguous belt in southern California) but those are the big obvious ones.

Calculated Risk’s readers, as usual, posted on-the-mark comments to “My Manhattan Project,” about the programmer who wrote software for securitizing mortgages. Among them: “Breaking news: engineer blames user!”

Ezra Klein’s blog essay argues for a specific capital limit to the future size of banks. David Goldstein, writing for the National Resources Defense Council blog, makes the case for government intervention in the market:

What has not been recognized is how regulation is always necessary to make markets work in the first place. Government regulation is not a move from capitalism to some form of socialism, instead, regulation is a necessary condition for capitalism and free markets to work.

An LA Times editorial admits we can’t solve California’s budget crisis by eliminating waste and nepotism, but says lawmakers pushing tax increases have little credibility when any amount of taxpayer dollars are being squandered.

The Wall Street Journal, defender of free markets, admits that growing income inequality, stagnant wages for all but the top 1% of earners (with the financial sector a very large part of that 1%), and a shrinking manufacturing base (as too many resources were diverted to finance) have contributed to justifiable public outrage. Its reasonable, in fact overdue, for the federal government to intervene in the “market,” eliminate perverse incentives, and address these problems:

In the long run, the administration is trying to tell the pitchfork brigades that it intends to use the power of government to try to reduce income gaps — raising taxes on the wealthy, cutting those on the middle class, giving refundable tax credits to the working poor. When Treasury Secretary Timothy Geithner was asked about income inequality on ABC’s “This Week” last weekend, he said explicitly: “It should go down.” The goal, he said, is a recovery in which “the gains are more broadly shared across the economy as a whole.”

For investors, ‘bloodbath’ reflects fear – USA Today, Tuesday, March 3, 2009
Belief in markets shaken as Dow hits 12-year low and closes under 6800.

U.S. Auto Sales Plunged 41% in February – Wall Street Journal, Wednesday, March 4, 2009
The title says it all. Who is buying cars now if they don’t have to?

Fed Moves to Free Up Credit for Consumers – Wall Street Journal, Wednesday, March 4, 2009
Let’s make it easier for people to borrow more money they can’t pay back so they can buy cars…

Daily Show vs. CNBC – The Big Picture, March 4, 2009
It looks as if the embedded video link has disappeared, but Ritholtz’s commentary is still worth reading. Try this instead: The Daily Show

According to Calculated Risk, “the four week moving average [for new unemployment claims in the U.S.] is at 607,500, the highest since 1982.” With just about every employer in Glendale either laying off staff or freezing new hiring, it is difficult to see the logic behind throwing money at job training programs.

The GNP article cites a Verdugo Jobs Center board member’s frustration at the situation:

..with the recession affecting nearly every sector of the economy, developing six-month or yearlong job training programs will present a new challenge for the job center, board member Rich Roche said.

“We’re sort of shooting at a moving target,” he said.

To this taxpayer, it seems as if they are shooting into thin air.

If at least half a million dollars of taxpayer money is going to job training programs here in Glendale, California alone, tell us how it should best be spent. Which jobs and companies here will the government be subsidizing so trained job seekers can find employment?

This is a big question for our local elected officials, many of whom have proposed new directions for the city. How will a new entertainment industry district, or green jobs and alternative energy investment programs be created, soon, in Glendale, to put talent here in the city to work?