FOR PUBLICATION: Ed Ring Response to CalPERS' disastrous 2015-16 earnings report
FOR PUBLICATION: Ed Ring Response to CalPERS' disastrous 2015-16 earnings report
For Immediate Publication July 18, 2016 California Policy Center Contact: Will Swaim Will@CalPolicyCenter.org (714) 573-2231 Latest earnings report is more evidence California retirement agency will reform or die By Ed Ring | California Policy Center The officials who run California’s public-employee retirement system should have released today’s earnings report with sound effects – a flugelhorn, maybe,...
By Will Swaim
How Public Officials Can Reduce the Burden of Unionized Firefighters
How Public Officials Can Reduce the Burden of Unionized Firefighters
What started in Stanton, California as an anomaly is spreading quickly across North Orange County – the push to create local sales taxes in order to pay off the rising pay and benefits of public employees. Stanton voters passed a one-percent sales tax in 2014, giving residents in one of OC’s poorest cities the county’s...
By Will Swaim
Despite the Threat of Bankruptcy, Stanton Is Spending Millions to Build One Park
Despite the Threat of Bankruptcy, Stanton Is Spending Millions to Build One Park
CHAPTER 1: PIGS (ala Portugal, Italy, Greece & Spain) In March 2011, facing a $4 million deficit, panicked Stanton City Council members met in special session and voted unanimously, dramatically to declare a fiscal emergency. It was the sort of thing we’d been hearing from Portugal, Italy, Greece and Spain for months—a government’s tax revenues...
By Will Swaim
Stanton officials launch propaganda war on tax-repeal effort
Stanton officials launch propaganda war on tax-repeal effort
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...
By Will Swaim
Stanton is Your Kind of Town
Stanton is Your Kind of Town
Kobe lives here – the NBA star, not the beef, though that’s often what’s starring for dinner. And Gwen Stefani grew up here. Orange County has the NHL Ducks and baseball’s weirdly named Los Angeles Angels of Anaheim. Television has honored this place (and mocked it) with Arrested Development, Laguna Beach: The Real Orange County,...
By Will Swaim
'Outsiders': The powerful government unions that brought OC's highest sales tax to Stanton are at it again
'Outsiders': The powerful government unions that brought OC's highest sales tax to Stanton are at it again
Stanton city officials have taken to the streets to fight a November ballot measure that would repeal the city’s one-year-old sales tax. In 37 community meetings and in a stream of communications from City Hall, officials tell residents the tax is essential to the city’s survival – and that its victory at the polls in...
By Will Swaim
Tax hike masks Stanton's public-safety pay problem
Tax hike masks Stanton's public-safety pay problem
Stanton has become the stage for a political brawl: in one corner, city officials and the public employee union leaders who backed the measure to give Stanton – Orange County’s smallest city and one of its poorest – the county’s highest sales tax; in the other, residents and business owners working to repeal Measure GG,...
By Will Swaim