Better late than never, California lawmakers seem to be waking up to the reality that the illegal “Fire Prevention Fee” they enacted nearly two years ago is a complete fiasco. Even so, they are refusing to repeal it. Instead they are scheming up ways to replace the tax with yet another tax that’s even bigger than the first.

Where else but Sacramento would someone think the answer to a bad tax is to replace it with one even worse?

Assemblyman Wes Chesbro, who represents many rural taxpayers on California’s North Coast, is leading the charge to reinvent and expand the fire fee. His proposal (AB 468) would replace the fire fee with a 4.8 percent “surcharge” on all insured homeowners and businesses in the State of California, regardless of location.

A similar concept was proposed by Governor Schwarzenegger in 2009 but was rejected by the Legislature.

These payments, averaging $48 per policy and totaling an estimated $480 million per year, would find their way to a “Disaster Management, Preparedness, and Assistance Fund.” The fund would benefit bureaucracies, like Cal Fire, that are involved in the state’s disaster preparedness… Read More

In response to Jon Fleischman’s August 23rd column entitled “AB 1215 – Mandating That a Fee Cannot Be Called a Fee – Seriously”, I would like to offer a different opinion. Although I’m a four-term Congressman, in a prior life I owned and operated a number of new car dealerships in California and am very familiar with California’s “price control” on the amount a dealer can charge to perform a host of work required by the state.

AB 1215, a bill currently before the California Legislature, would for the first time in 5 years raise the statutory cap the Legislature imposes on private dealer businesses to perform state-mandated title and registration paperwork, in addition to a plethora of other state-mandated requirements (for example, providing consumers “free” credit scores, other credit disclosures, tire chain notices, license bracket notices, etc.). Even with the increase, California would still have the second lowest cap in the country – most states have no cap at all. California imposes no such… Read More