Some thoughts after reading today’s news…

RENTING TO ILLEGAL ALIENS
Assemblyman Charles Calderon has introduced legislation (Assembly Bill 976) that, according to the bill, "Would prohibit cities and counties from requiring landlords to ‘compile, disclose, report, provide or otherwise take any action regarding the characteristics of a tenant or a prospective tenant that is not expressly required by state or federal law.’
 
He has introduced this legislation in response to the recent goings-on in the city of Escondido in northern San Diego County, where the City Council passed a local ordinance to prohibit landlords from renting to illegal aliens.  After facing an avalanche of legal challenges, the Council actually yanked their landmark regulation.  Apparently Calderon doesn’t want it happening again.
 
I think that if we are going to have state legislation come about as a result of all of this, how about allowing landlords the right to use legal residency as a legitimate screening issue when selecting their tenants?  If I own an apartment building, I think it is fair to say, "Hey, I only want to rent to people who have followed our nation’s laws and are in their country legally."
 
I’m waiting for Assemblyman Calderon to author THAT bill…
 
TERM LIMITS TANGO
There is nothing that is less appealing to me than an incumbent state legislator who derides our current voter-imposed term limits (two four-year terms in the State Senate, and three two-year terms in the Assembly) when it is overwhelmingly likely that without the current law, they never would have had a chance to serve.

Assembly Speaker Fabian Nunez, who faces the daunting challenge of working in the private sector come the end of the next year, has placed a measure on the ballot that is designed to allow he and his other colleagues who face a prohibition from further service to spend even more time in the legislature.  They mask their ‘legislative career extension’ measure by calling it part of a ‘reform of term limits’ that amends term limits so that instead of serving the terms I described above, a politician is limited to twelve years of service but only in one house.  Never mind that a ‘designed loophole’ in this ‘reform’ allows a bunch of ‘termed-out’ politicians to stay in office, the practical reality is that this measure will significantly lengthen the average stay of politicians in the state legislation.
 
Nunez likes to throw out there that his measure would actually somehow make term limits more strings by shortening a theoretical 14 year legislative career (if you served in both chambers for the maximum number of terms in each) to just 12 years.  That is the lamest argument of all time.  A significant majority of current State Legislators do not serve 14 years.  If you think about it, the State Senate only has 40 members, as compared to the Assembly’s 80.  So already, only half of Assemblymembers, in theory, could move to the Senate.  But not even half do as a fair member of Senators are elected straight into the upper chamber.
 
The electorate is not stupid, and the latest statewide survey by PPIC has shown that Californian’s support our current term limits.  One could have easily made the case, even if this measure did not contain the ‘loophole’ that allows termed-out incumbents to stick around, that this measure is a severe loosening of our current law.  But with the loophole in there, proponents are out to lunch if they thing voters will support this.

This entry was posted on Sunday, April 1st, 2007 at 12:00 am and is filed under Blog Posts.