Anti-Choice Teachers Unions Want to Take Control of the OC Board of Education

By Craig Alexander
04/28/2016
Everyone agrees that education for our children is a critical pathway for those children to grow into adults who are ready to earn a living and become responsible members of our society. Unfortunately labor unions including teachers unions have a different focus – to benefit their union bank accounts with your tax dollars more than...

TAGS: education, Santa Ana Educators Association, teachers unions

Sonoma and Marin county officials voted to hike their own retirement pay

By California Policy Center
04/28/2016
For Immediate Release April 29, 2016 California Policy Center Contact: Will Swaim Will@CalPolicyCenter.org (714) 573-2231   Retroactive pension bump likely violated multiple state transparency and accounting laws Sacramento — County supervisors members and other senior county officials in Marin and Sonoma may have violated state law when voting for massive retroactive pension increases for themselves and...

TAGS: pension, Section 7507

Union Backed Legislative Bills May Kill "Gig Economy" Through Regulation

By David Kersten
04/27/2016
Sacramento politicians cannot resist the urge to “regulate” the “gig economy” to impose arduous work rules, regulations, and a whole host of bureaucratic red tape on one of the most successful economic enterprises to surface in the past few years. People here in the Bay Area love Lyft and Uber, not the heavily regulated taxi...

TAGS: California Public Utilities Commission (CPUC), collective bargaining

Union In The News – Weekly Highlights

By Sean O’Striker
04/26/2016
$15 Minimum Wage Sends California Businesses Fleeing By Connor D. Wolf, April 26, 2016, Daily Caller California businesses are already starting to move out of state less than a month after lawmakers raised the minimum wage to $15 an hour, according to reports Monday. California beat New York by a couple hours April 4 to become...

The Bell Syndrome Afflicts More Cities Than Just Bell

By Edward Ring
04/26/2016
Remember Bell, California? Back in 2010 the Los Angeles Times reported that Bell city officials were receiving unusually large salaries, perhaps the highest in the United States. For example, Robert Rizzo, the City manager, had received $787,637. By September of that year, as reported on CNN, the California Attorney General filed charges against eight former and current city officials....

TAGS: John Moore, unfunded pension liability

Let’s Deep-six Prop. 30

By Larry Sand
04/26/2016
The signatures for an initiative that would extend 2012’s “temporary” tax increase in California are due today. Four years ago Californians voted in Prop. 30, a “temporary” tax, to pay back schools “from the years of devastating cuts.” But as I show here, there was hardly any devastation; in fact, our spending had continued to...

TAGS: Andrew Coulson, Ben DeGrow, California Teachers Association, Cato Institute, EdSource, education spending, Eric Heins, Jason Bedrick, John Fensterwald, Larry Sand, Mackinac Center for Public Policy, pension tsunami, Prop. 30, Randi Weingarten, teachers union

Transparency organization wins 'total victory' in Lynwood records case

By California Policy Center
04/25/2016
For Immediate Release April 26, 2016 California Policy Center Contact: Will Swaim Will@CalPolicyCenter.org (949) 274-1911 SACRAMENTO  – The city of Lynwood will pay $22,000, part of a judge’s decision that city officials failed to disclose to the California Policy Center the names and salaries of Lynwood public employees. You can read the April 22 judgment here....

TAGS: California Public Records Act, Edward Ring

The Pension Scandals in Sonoma and Marin Counties

By John Moore
04/21/2016
Two Case Studies on How Two Counties Purchased Outside Legal Opinions That Delivered Aggressively Self-Serving Interpretations of the Law in Response to Grand Jury Reports That Found That Substantial Pension Benefits had Been Granted Illegally. Introduction In California, public pensions are guided by different divisions of the government code. The largest administrator is CalPERS which administers...

TAGS: unfunded pension liabilities

Stanton officials launch propaganda war on tax-repeal effort

By Will Swaim
04/21/2016
Downtown Stanton, 1913: More innocent times. STANTON, Calif. – It was a Wednesday afternoon in early March, a more innocent time in Stanton, California. Gathered in the community center of the Plaza Pine Estates, we were like Adam and Eve in the Garden of Eden before they ate the apple that gave them a second-grader’s...

TAGS: bonds, debt, pensions, Stanton