Will Another Sales Tax Increase Really Help This Southern California City?

Will Another Sales Tax Increase Really Help This Southern California City?

The city of Westminster is pursuing the easy road to address its continuing fiscal mismanagement, again. It’s asking its residents to approve yet another sales tax increase, the second in the last two years. It’s much easier to tell those voting in Westminster that there will be more potholes and less public safety if they...

By John Moorlach

Do They Know It’s Christmas?

Do They Know It’s Christmas?

This month, second-graders at Valencia Elementary in Upland were met with unwelcome news: the Christmas songs that they’d practiced for weeks would be replaced with new-and-improved non-holiday songs. No matter that these children had actually voted for their favorite Christmas tunes, or that they would have to learn an entirely new songbook in a matter...

By Andrea Liu

Creating Water Abundance

Creating Water Abundance

In so many ways that it almost defies description, California’s lawmakers have relied on obtuse, punitive, flawed logic to justify recently passed laws implementing urban water rationing in California. Rather than undertake the Sisyphean task of enumerating them, let’s just focus on one critical factor: the opportunity cost. California’s urban water consumption is already down...

2 California Cities Still Late on Preparing Financial Audits for 2019

2 California Cities Still Late on Preparing Financial Audits for 2019

California has 482 cities and towns. They provide audited financial statements of their fiscal status every year, just like publicly traded companies and most businesses and nonprofits of significant stature. Finance hawks celebrated when the California State Auditor established a dashboard to review the fiscal status of the state’s cities and towns. The cheering subsided...

By John Moorlach

The Remedy to a Misinformed Populace Is to Inform Them

The Remedy to a Misinformed Populace Is to Inform Them

During an otherwise quiet September morning some years ago, I received a curious call from then-California Gov. Jerry Brown’s legislative team. We had just finished the legislative session, and this junior staffer was deciding on whether to recommend the governor sign or veto a bill sitting on his desk. I knew the drill after working...

By Lance Christensen

Eliminating Water Scarcity

Eliminating Water Scarcity

After the deluge that inundated California during our most recent water season, there is no chance Californians will confront a water supply crisis this year. Water levels, as reported by the California Data Exchange Center, are above the historical average for this date in every one of California’s major reservoirs. But storms of scarcity remain on...

By Edward Ring

The Role of Unions in a Perfect World

The Role of Unions in a Perfect World

The optimal public policy regarding unions may not be realistic in states like California, but that shouldn’t prevent us from performing an occasional what-if. For anyone even slightly right-of-center, what unions have done to this state is a catastrophe. And even for those to the left-of-center, many are realizing, for example, that California’s failing system...

By Edward Ring

Fiscal Rankings for Los Angeles County’s 88 Cities Finally Available, for 2020

Fiscal Rankings for Los Angeles County’s 88 Cities Finally Available, for 2020

The city of Huntington Park, California has finally released its Annual Comprehensive Financial Report (ACFR) for the year ending June 30, 2020. The audit by external independent auditors was finally completed on Aug. 10, but was not released until Dec. 5. Thus, Huntington Park won the race for dead last in transparency and accountability among...

By John Moorlach

How Alleged Corruption Can Stun a City

How Alleged Corruption Can Stun a City

In their book, “Bridgebuilders: How Government Can Transcend Boundaries to Solve Big Problems,” William Eggers and Donald Kettl make a simple observation: “Accountability and trust go hand in hand.” What if a government doesn’t provide transparency that allows for accountability? It makes building trust very difficult. What happens when a government is so shell-shocked from...

By John Moorlach

Battery Innovations for EVs and the Grid

Battery Innovations for EVs and the Grid

If there is anything that unites Californians it is a belief that anything is possible. How else to explain our state’s mad rush into renewables. Even a skeptic ought to be impressed. With massive wealth, a diverse and resilient economy, abundant sunshine and mild winters, and infinite reserves of imagination that define our culture, the...

By Edward Ring

Temecula Teachers Want Education, Not Indoctrination

Temecula Teachers Want Education, Not Indoctrination

Many teachers in California are fed up with the political activism of their teachers’ union that is not aligned with the interests of educators and students — and often disrupts and derails classroom instruction in favor of political agendas. A case in point is the United Educators of San Francisco, which recently issued statements calling...

By Andrew Davenport

The Newsom-DeSantis debate was over before it started

The Newsom-DeSantis debate was over before it started

The Thursday night debate between California Governor Gavin Newsom and Florida’s Ron DeSantis was over before the Klieg lights went up. The facts of California’s decline are evident to everyone but the most disingenuous. As the old saying goes, “Facts is facts,” and on the facts, DeSantis had the debate won by Wednesday.  All that...

By Will Swaim

Energy and Water Killing Legislation

Energy and Water Killing Legislation

As we move into the final month of 2023, it is appropriate to review recent legislative actions that will have a significant impact on California’s ability to deliver abundant and affordable energy and water to its residents. There isn’t much good news. Almost without exception, the California Legislature is making energy and water scarce and...

By Edward Ring

California Teachers Association is Losing Members

California Teachers Association is Losing Members

California’s political landscape is changing, and that’s cause for celebration. In 2018, the Supreme Court’s Janus ruling prohibited the collection of union dues from public employees as a condition of employment. Before that ruling, with few exceptions, no dues meant no job. By protecting a worker’s right to choose to financially support a union, Janus...

By Chris LaBella