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In The News
The Republican Liberty Caucus of California is dedicated to bringing our message to the public and keeping activists informed. We will work to make the text of our press releases and relevant news articles available to the public from our website. Keep checking back here for the most current information.
Tax revenues dip, state says
February 7th, 2007
California's troubled real estate and construction sectors are likely culprits for state income taxes falling $1.3 billion below projections in January, state Controller John Chiang said Tuesday.

Chiang noted the revenue shortfall at a news conference highlighting changes that will affect state residents as the tax preparation season gets under way.

Last year 15 million individuals and 1 million businesses paid nearly $49 billion in income taxes, the state's largest single source of revenue.

The tax slump, first reported last month by Legislative Analyst Elizabeth Hill, signals potential trouble for Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger's $103 billion general fund budget recently proposed for a new fiscal year beginning July 1.

The controller's office said the governor's budget proposal may already be $710 million short on revenue.
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Balanced budget teeters on wordplay
February 2nd, 2007
State finances are notoriously bewildering. But they'd be easier to understand if officials stuck to playing with the numbers instead of the language.

Last month, Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger made a show of announcing that his latest budget proposal calls for California to spend no more money than it brings in.

"I'm very happy to announce today that in this new budget our new operating deficit has been reduced to zero," he said. "You heard me right. We have reduced the operating deficit to zero."

This was monumental news for a state that for years had been living beyond its means. Most Capitol reporters, including me, dutifully reported the claim.

But the governor's own numbers show it's not exactly true. As state Finance Director Mike Genest later revealed in the same news conference, the budget "spends $1,863,000,000 more than it takes in."
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O.C. assessor accused of cover-up in lawsuit
February 2nd, 2007
Allegations of doctored evidence and cover-ups have enveloped the reverse discrimination lawsuit targeting Orange County Assessor Webster J. Guillory, the only African American holding countywide elected office.

The assessor is accused of promoting a black employee over a more experienced white worker, who alleges that he was passed over for the job of managing auditor even though, he says, he received a higher score in interviews.

The lawyer representing the white employee, Ronald Cooper, on Thursday told a jury during closing arguments in Orange County Superior Court that Guillory "embarked on a campaign to cover up the truth" by manufacturing personnel documents and hiding interview records after he learned that Cooper planned to challenge the promotion of an African American colleague.
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Assembly speaker pushes plan for panel to redraw district lines
February 2nd, 2007
Assembly Speaker Fabian Núñez said Thursday he will push for a plan to create an independent citizens' panel to redraw legislative district lines that is not linked to the loosening of term limits for state legislators.

"This issue stands on its own," the Democrat from Los Angeles said as he unveiled a list of principles that will be part of a bill proposal to redraw boundaries of Assembly and state Senate seats. He is still considering whether congressional districts should be included as well.

But Núñez did say he would like to see both term limits and reapportionment measures considered in next year's California presidential primary, which he and Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger are pushing to move from June to February.
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Clerk protests gay marriage ban
February 2nd, 2007
In a slap at California's ban on gay marriage, the elected official who oversees civil marriages in Yolo County will distribute "certificates of inequality" to same-sex couples on Valentine's Day.

Freddie Oakley, Yolo's clerk-recorder, said she designed the certificates herself as a way to ease her soul over having to deny marriage licenses to gays and lesbians.

"We don't discriminate against people on the basis of age, or health, or disability, or race, or ethnicity, or religion, but we do on the basis of gender in this matter," she said. "I feel it's inappropriate."
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See the light, ban old bulbs, lawmakers say
January 31st, 2007
The common light bulb may be headed the way of penny candy, dime stores and eight-track rock 'n' roll tapes -- extinct.

More than 100 years after Thomas Edison perfected the incandescent light bulb, two lawmakers are pushing to make California the first state to ban it.

Assemblyman Lloyd Levine, D-Van Nuys, said he plans to call his bill the "How Many Legislators Does It Take to Change a Light Bulb?" act.
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County urged to keep benefit
January 31st, 2007
More than 200 Sacramento County employees and retirees packed the supervisors' chambers Tuesday evening, many passionately asking them to reject a proposal to cut medical and dental benefits for some Sacramento County retirees.

Holding back tears, Kay Ceragioli displayed a plastic bag filled with pill bottles.

"These are the medications I take every day," said Ceragioli, who worked for the county 10 years before she retired in March 2006 to fight breast cancer. She urged the county to continue the benefits. "We are people out here."

For the past 27 years, the county has voted each year to help pay for those benefits. The program pays retirees up to $244 a month for medical expenses and $25 a month for dental care.
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State pensions called a time bomb
January 31st, 2007

Although out of office for two months, former Assemblyman Keith Richman is still sounding the alarm about the "ticking time bomb" effect of public employee pensions, calling it the greatest fiscal issue facing the state.

Richman told a group of Ventura County taxpayers advocates Tuesday that unless changes are made, the pension debt will overwhelm the state's ability to fund higher education, build roads and develop technology.

Some estimates show the state has promised its government workers at least $100 billion more in cash payments and healthcare benefits than its pension funds are projected to be able to cover. Billions more are owed to local government employees statewide, Richman said.
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State panel clears way for use of plastic pipe
January 30th, 2007
A state panel voted Monday to allow unrestricted use of plastic water pipes in houses, a potential end to a quarter-century fight over requirements that builders use copper pipe, which acidic Inland soil and water can corrode.

"We've never been this close before. The state has taken a step forward to giving people the option of copper or plastic," said Jeff Cash of Noveon, a company that produces the resin used in plastic pipe made from chlorinated polyvinyl chloride, or CPVC.

Acidic soil and water have been blamed for eating away traditional copper water piping in hundreds of Inland homes, forcing expensive repairs. Lawmakers and others from the region have long tried to ease state rules on the use of plastic pipe as a corrosion-free alternative. Plastic pipe costs several thousand dollars less in a typical home than copper piping.
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Sacramento County faces retiree health squeeze
January 30th, 2007
Today the Board of Supervisors in Sacramento County is scheduled to confront an issue with which government agencies across California and the nation will soon be grappling: the long-term cost of health benefits for retired public employees.

Unlike most private employers, most public agencies in California subsidize the medical insurance of employees who retire before they turn 65 and become eligible for the federal Medicare program. But few of those agencies have set money aside to cover the cost of their retirees' insurance. As more employees retire and draw on that benefit, and as health care costs increase, the costs are growing.
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Justice Department broke rules by hiding contracts
January 30th, 2007
The California Department of Justice concealed tens of millions of dollars worth of contracts with lobbyists, consultants, legal firms -- even couriers and parking garages -- in violation of its own confidentiality rules, an Associated Press investigation has found.

An internal agency review, conducted at AP's request, found information on scores of contracts, many of them no-bid contracts, were erroneously labeled ``confidential'' and omitted from computerized state records, shielding the agreements from public view.
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Dan Walters: ‘Balanced’ budget is very shaky
January 30th, 2007
Three weeks ago, Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger unveiled a new state budget for the 2007-08 fiscal year and declared that after a half-decade of multibillion-dollar deficits, "our new operating deficit has been reduced to zero."

The Republican governor made his assertion the centerpiece of the media and public reaction to the budget, but since the unveiling, it's become increasingly evident that the claim of fiscal solvency is, to put it mildly, premature.

The term "operating deficit" itself is something new. Budgets are either balanced -- spending no more than what's available in revenues -- or not, but it's not unusual for governors to fudge on the definition. The state constitution requires proposed budgets to be balanced, although there's no such requirement, oddly enough, on the final budgets.
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Gonzales says the Constitution doesn’t guarantee habeas corpus
January 24th, 2007
One of the Bush administration's most far-reaching assertions of government power was revealed quietly last week when Attorney General Alberto Gonzales testified that habeas corpus -- the right to go to federal court and challenge one's imprisonment -- is not protected by the Constitution.

"The Constitution doesn't say every individual in the United States or every citizen is hereby granted or assured the right of habeas,'' Gonzales told Sen. Arlen Specter, R-Pa., during a Senate Judiciary Committee hearing Jan. 17.

Gonzales acknowledged that the Constitution declares "habeas corpus shall not be suspended unless ... in cases of rebellion or invasion the public safety may require it.'' But he insisted that "there is no express grant of habeas in the Constitution.''

Specter was incredulous, asking how the Constitution could bar the suspension of a right that didn't exist -- a right, he noted, that was first recognized in medieval England as a shield against the king's power to dispatch troublesome subjects to royal dungeons.
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Court case could disrupt governor’s health plan
January 23rd, 2007
A federal appeals court based in Virginia might have done Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger a big favor last week when it ruled against a Maryland law that sought to force Wal-Mart -- or any other employer of more than 10,000 people -- to provide health insurance for its workers.

The decision by the 4th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals clarified that federal law prohibits the states from requiring businesses to provide benefits for their employees. That's true, the court said, even if a state allows business owners to opt out of the requirement by paying a tax instead. The federal law, known as the Employee Retirement Income Security Act, was passed in 1974 so that national employers wouldn't have to offer a different set of benefits for their workers in every state.
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Senate bill aims to repeal ‘Real ID’ law
January 23rd, 2007
Faced with having to pay $500 million for federally mandated driver's licenses aimed at identifying illegal immigrants, California officials are looking to the new Democratic Congress for financial relief.

And they may find it in a Senate bill that essentially would repeal the so-called "Real ID" law, condemning it as an "unrealistic and unfunded burden on state governments."

Introduced by Sens. Daniel Akaka, D-Hawaii, and John Sununu, R-N.H., the bill would eliminate a cascade of federal driver's license standards that Congress passed last year and states must implement by May 2008.
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