From today’s Voice of San Diego…

Four San Diegans told the City Clerk on Wednesday that they intend to gather the signatures required to place four overlapping measures on the November ballot, similar to the workforce-reform initiatives being championed by Mayor Jerry Sanders.

The group wants voters to decide whether:

— Voters should be required to approve any increase to city workers’ pension benefits.

— City employees should evenly split the cost of their pension benefits with the city.

— The city can allow private businesses to compete over municipal work with city employees.

The four measures overlap each other in language in some cases and one provides the option of excluding public safety workers from a voters-decide-future-benefits proposition.

Sanders is currently asking the City Council to place two measures on the November ballot, one requiring the voters to approve city employee pension enhancements before they’re enacted and the other allowing the competitive bidding of city services. A council committee forwarded the two initiatives to the full council, which will… Read More

Santa Barbara County is entertaining a proposition from several County Supervisors to move the county seat north where real estate is less expensive and county workers can possibly afford a house. It would also involve selling the county administration builiding in Santa Barbara which is worthmillions of dollars. The possible shift is setting up a cultural battle between wealthy, resort like Santa Barbara and northern, more agricultural Santa Maria and Buelton. More than half of the county’s population lives in the Santa Inez/Santa Maria area, including county workers.Two editorials in the Santa Barbara News Press lay out the pros and cons to moving the county seat.Santa Barbara is also considering splitting the county to form a northern Mission County and a southern Santa Barbara County. The two editorials are below:

Con: http://www.newspress.com/Top/Article/article.jsp?Section=LOCAL&ID=564682501084283157 Pro:… Read More

Hemet Mayor Robin Lowe,candidate for the 65th Assembly District,announced a new group of endorsements today. The list is impressive and not surprising given all the local government Boards she sits on. The three major candidates in this race are all members of different City Councils in the 65th. I am looking for one to break out of the pack by using their local bully pulpit to implement conservative policy.

Dave Kelley, Former State Senator Ted Weggeland, Former… Read More

Local city governments throughout San Diego’s alleged Republican North County are on the march… for higher taxes. Last week I wrote about Vista Mayor Morris Vance (registered Republican) and his push to raise sales taxes in his city to pay for a new "community center" which would house (of course) new City Council offices. From the reaction to that post, I’m gathering that there might be some community opposition to former city manager Vance’s scheme. Then two nights ago what did I hear – the Solana Beach City Council talking about an increase to the TOT tax for beach sand preservation and business advertising (in the real world we call that paying off the business community). Something tells me though local hotel owners and their dependant businesses might not like having the highest TOT in San Diego County. These proposals demonstrate what the North County Times has been recently editorializing about: Republican local government does not mean fiscally conservative local government.… Read More

I received an e-mail today from OC Young Americans for Freedom, with a PDF attached (you can see it below).

It’s entitled "The Real Silva Bullet" — a play on The Silva Bullet, the campaign missive of the Silva for Assembly campaign. [Full disclosure: I created The Silva Bullet when I was part of Jim Silva’s re-election consulting team back in 1998.]

In any case, the YAF piece questions Supervisor Jim Silva’s conservatism and takes him to task for supporting a $4.50 tax on travelers flying out of John Wayne Airport. It was passed 4-1 in December, with Supervisor Chris Norby casting the lone dissent. The tax will finance a $512 million porject to expand JWA by 68%.

I’m a big fan of YAF, but this piece is obviously a component of Cypress Councilman Mike… Read More

That’s right Fabian thinks Arnold is asking for too much bonding authority. The rest of his comments are absurd of course. More bonds for affordable housing and the like. Jim Sanders of the Bee has it all right here.… Read More

I posted stories on the main page this morning so early, I missed this gem (it wasn’t up on the Sacramento Bee website yet).

In this column, Dan Weintraub focuses on the role of State Senate President Pro-tem in the BIG BOND$ process. He starts with the analogy below, and then details later in the column where Perata has staked out positions on some of the Governor’s demands. The two of them DEFINITELY do NOT see eye-to-eye.

The column starts:

The University of California‘s PR problem over compensation packages given to high-ranking employees doesn’t seem to be going away. And it shouldn’t. UC officials continue to give weak answers about why some employees have received such bloated compensation packages and why the public hasn’t been fully informed about the deals.

Senator Abel Maldonado (R-Santa Maria) held a hearing last week on the issue and will hold another one on Feb. 22. In today’s San Francisco Chronicle, the legislator says that UC President Robert Dynes has yet not provided clear answers to questions about UC employee compensation packages.… Read More