Contra Costa Times
Los Angeles voters took two steps toward reforming Department of Water and Power operations by handing early leads Tuesday to ballot measures that would create a DWP ratepayer advocate and make the agency’s budget process more transparent. The first returns in the city election showed majorities favoring Charter Amendments I, which would set up a DWP Office of Public Accountability, and J, which would require the department to submit its spending plans to the City Council earlier than it does now.
In an otherwise historically low-turnout election, Vallejo’s Measure A might be one of the larger voter draws on Tuesday, the county’s assistant registrar of voters said Friday. Measure A is a proposal to remove from the City Charter a 40-year-old binding arbitration provision that mandates how deadlocked employee contract disputes are resolved. “I think if people have been paying attention, Measure A may bring them out more than in other areas of the county, where they don’t have any measures,” Solano County Assistant Registrar of Voters Lindsey McWilliams said Friday.
The Alameda City Council has come out in favor of Measure E, the parcel tax to support local public schools. The mail-in only ballot will go out to Island voters May 25 and will be due June 22 at the Alameda County Registrar of Voters. It will need a two-thirds majority to pass. Supporters say the tax ”” which is expected to generate $14 million annually ”” will prevent teacher layoffs, allow smaller class sizes and help keep music, art and other classroom programs.
A program boosting services that help seniors get around Marin was embraced by county transit officials this week, but funding for improvements could hinge on voter approval of higher vehicle registration taxes. Plans under review by the Transportation Authority of Marin could result in a ballot measure this fall calling for a $10 hike in vehicle fees, and county transit officials informally agreed Monday that some of that money should be used to increase transportation services for seniors.
A Lancaster ballot measure asking voters to approve city officials’ policy of opening meetings with prayers appeared headed to a solid victory in early returns Tuesday.
Proponents of a California ballot initiative that would end state raids of city, redevelopment and transit money predict they will collect sufficient signatures well ahead of a May deadline. “It’s the most popular initiative on the street,” said Chris McKenzie, executive director of League of California Cities. “It leads with the three most popular three words in California, ‘Prohibits the state … .’” The Local Taxpayer, Public Safety and Transportation Protection Act of 2010 would strip the state of access to all tax dollars earmarked for local non-education agencies.
Got $200 and a postage stamp? Then you, too, can try your hand at being a California lawmaker. Since 1911, Californians have been able to write and pass laws by going directly to the ballot box instead of through the state Legislature. The ballot initiative process takes months and, for the successful few, loads of money, but politicians, political observers and even unsuccessful amateur lawmakers see it as a necessity, even if many proposed laws seem harebrained.
Legislators love to gripe about how California’s wildly popular ballot initiative process ties their hands on the state budget. But a preliminary analysis from the nonpartisan Center for Governmental Studies shows that the legislators ”” not the public ”” put on the ballot most of the measures requiring additional funding.
As disgust with the California Legislature continues to grow to record levels, a ballot initiative entered circulation this week to revert state legislators back to part-time status. ”California’s experiment with a ‘full-time’ Legislature has failed,” the initiative’s proponent, Citizens for California Reform CEO Gabriella Holt, wrote in her filings. “The result has been a Legislature dominated by career politicians beholden to special interests.”
Like many cities before it, Pomona has placed a measure on the Nov. 3 ballot that if approved would update the city’s utility users tax. Measure PC, the city’s Telecommunications Utility Users Tax initiative, focuses on modernizing language in the telecommunications portion of the utility tax ordinance. “Our belief is the nature of this legislation is to maintain what we have,” City Manager Linda Lowry told a group of residents who gathered at the Willie White Park Community Center recently.
A California pension reform watchdog group is adding language to its ballot initiative that would prohibit double-dipping, the practice of retired public employees who return to government jobs and simultaneously collect taxpayer-funded retirement benefits and paychecks. The revised measure also will ask voters to ban spiking, a legal means under which employees inflate their retirement through the addition to their pension formula benefits such as car allowances, unused vacation or sick leave.
The Walnut Creek City Council voted Tuesday to repeal its May approvals of the Broadway Plaza expansion project ”” set to house a Neiman Marcus store. This means the fate of the planned downtown Neiman store is in the hands of voters when they cast ballots Nov. 3 on Measure I. The council had little choice after a judge on Sept. 1 ordered the council to either place the referendums on the same ballot as Measure I or repeal their approvals. The referendums were based on the council’s approval in May of the Neiman Marcus project.
Rival mall owners have spent nearly a half-million dollars combined in support of ballot measures that could decide the fate of a Neiman Marcus store in downtown Walnut Creek. Walnut Creek has been rocked over the past several months by a proposed 92,000-square-foot Neiman Marcus at the corner of Mt. Diablo Boulevard and South Main Street. Mall giants Macerich Co., which owns Broadway Plaza and Taubman Centers, owners of Sunvalley mall in Concord each spent more than $200,000 since January, according to campaign finance documents filed with the city.
A California pension reform group that believes taxpayers ought to know the names of retired public employees who collect generous retirement checks has hit a legal snag. A retired Contra Costa deputy sheriff has filed a legal challenge to stop the release of names and pension amounts of former county employees who collect $100,000 or more per year.
If opponents of a planned downtown Neiman Marcus store succeed in putting the project on the ballot this fall, they can at least partly thank a 67-year-old balladeer from Monterey.