Brian Leubitz Posts

Funding Levels Unlikely to Reach 90s Levels Again
by Brian Leubitz
The AP's Lisa Leff has a great story today about the rise and fall of the class size reduction program for grades K-3. During the boom times in the 1990s, the state invested heavily to reduce class sizes down to 20-1. In the successive busts since then, funding has been eliminated for CSR, and seems unlikely to return:
California embarked on an ambitious experiment in 1996 to improve its public schools by putting its youngest students in smaller classes. Nearly 17 years later, the goal of...

Rove to headline CRP convention
by Brian Leubitz
The California Republican Party (CRP) may love the old Michael J. Fox movies, but, if they are interested in returning to electoral viability, this doesn't seem quite the ticket. It seems they loved the Bush years, and his "Ohio out...

Brown looks to the future in annual speech to legislature, outlines plans for water, education, and jobs
by Brian Leubitz
State of the State speeches are always remarkable, if only for the purpose of marking another new cycle of budget disputes, legislation and strife. Yet, with last year's passage of Prop 30, giving the government ...

by Brian Leubitz
In a bit of good news, tax receipts for the end of 2012 came in substantially higher than expected.  But there's a caveat:
The state is poised to finish January about $4 billion ahead of what forecasters expected in income taxes, according to the Legislative Analyst's Office - the biggest one-month overage that state fiscal experts can recall in recent memory.
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The one-month boom likely comes from a perfect storm of tax changes at the state and federal level, and budget experts urge restraint because a dollar re...

Aims to define crimes more narrowly
by Brian Leubitz
You've likely heard the tragic story of Aaron Swartz, the co-founder of Reddit and something of a legend as an internet activist. He helped found DemandProgress, and also worked with Lawrence Lessig's

Sen. Mark Leno's bill would lower vote requirement for tax increases to 55%
by Brian Leubitz
The lowering of the vote threshold for local taxes has been an early subject of conversation since the Democratic supermajority appeared on the horizon. Sen. Mark Leno's bill was introduced in early December to do just that.
Today, George Skelton, joins the call to do just that:

Top 5 Most Polluted American Cities are in California
by Brian Leubitz
This is actually pretty old news, but I bumped upon a chart from the Economist and thought it worth going back over.  You'll see from the chart to the ri...

Courts are looking at a $200 million cut over the next two years
by Brian Leubitz
Justice is a funny thing. It is hard to define, and everybody has a slightly different concept of what they mean when they use the word. Generally, to me it means the swift administration of our system of laws. That is important for criminal defendants, victims, and to the many civil litigants who rely on a functioning court system.  That is why these numbers are very worrying:
The Judicial Council notes that as of October, six out of 10 counties in California have had...

Legislature reconvenes with some big questions
by Brian Leubitz
I've been traveling for a while, but, perhaps my timing was perfect. The 2013 legislative session just reconvened last week, and the issues are still being sorted out.  A few obvious pieces of legislation, such as closing the "impersonating a boyfriend"

New Brown appointment could signal willingness to look at reform
by Brian Leubitz
Gov. Brown's pick to run the prisons system, Jeff Beard, has some experience in the field; he ran Pennsylvania's system for more than nine years.  That's all well and good, but there is an interesting note in his background:
Beard is not shy about voicing opinions on where the criminal justice system fails. He told Pennsylvania lawmakers that heavy reliance on incarceration of low-level offenders "has proven to have limited value in maintaining public safety."
In a ...

Journalist with a keen insight on California politics moves on
by Brian Leubitz
Prop Zero, the insightful blog from NBC and Joe Matthews, is calling it quits:
Over the past three years, we've offered thousands of posts from leading authorities on California within the NBC universe (your lead blogger has contributed 1,512 posts, the NBC computers tell me). Terrific editors...

FPPC looks to clean up the initiative gathering money bonanza
by Brian Leubitz
It was rule-making week over at the FPPC, and they served up a few rules of note. Starting with something on the initiative front:
The people who pay for petition drives in support of statewide ballot measures can no longer hide their identity, thanks to a regulation adopted by the state's Fair Political Practices Commission on Thursday.(SDUT)
Anybody who drops mo...

From the comments on yesterday's post about demographics, an interesting article from the LA Times explaining some of these shifts. California, like New York a century ago, is a "gateway" state, where people come when they immigrate and then transition to other communities.
"People see that so many people are leaving the state, and they think 'oh, it's because California business is ...

Net loss? Hardly.
by Brian Leubitz
Over the last few days, you may have read a few breathless stories about how Californians are moving out of the state. We're having a mass exodus apparently!
Exodus: California, once a magnet for the enterprising and ambitious, is losing residents. There's not so much a giant sucking sound coming from the Golden State as there is the hiss of a balloon losing its air.
The Census Bureau says that California had a net loss of 100,000 people last year. Many headed for Texas (58,992), while Arizona (49,635), Nevada (40,11...

How do we work to address overpopulation at jails and prisons?
by Brian Leubitz
Sometimes you'll see some unlikely collaborations, and just kind of look askance at the written words. Sometimes you do a true double take, and that is exactly what happened upon reading this op-ed by Tim Silard, President of the Rosenberg Foundation, and Mike Jimenez, president of the California Correctional Peace Officers Association (CCPOA).
Counties also are tasked with dealing with California's recidivism rate, one...

Supreme Court takes on marriage equality, Prop 8 and DOMA
by Brian Leubitz
Mark your calendars for June 2013. That's the close of the current Supreme Court session, and by that time we should have a decision on marriage equality. On Friday, the Court announced that it would hear cases on both Prop 8 and the so-called "Defense of Marriage" Act. But there is a caveat in the Supreme Court's order:
About two decades after the campaign to win the right to marry for same-sex couples began, t...

In an era of nonpartisan districting, what is a safe seat?
by Brian Leubitz
Much will be written about what brought Steve Fox to the Assembly. The unlikely Assemblyman from the normally solid Republican foothills of LA County was shall we say, not expected to win. The area's voting history made most observers inclined to believe that it would be a relatively easy Republican victory for Ron Smith, the Republican in the top-2. And that was shown in stark relief by Fox's website and the seeming lack of interest in the race by the us...

Sen. Ted Lieu's bill barring anti-gay conversion therapy from being practiced on minors was blocked by a federal judge Monday.

Assembly Stunner
by Brian Leubitz
Suffice it to say that Steve Fox was on nobody's radar this year. You can tell that he wasn't on the Assembly Democratic Caucus target list, as the SteveFox4Assembly website is pretty, um, atrocious. That is unless you are into free geo-cities type websites with a bunch of talk-to-camera videos with interesting messaging.
But, be that as it may, Steve Fox looks set to win a stunner of a race in the new AD-36 over Republican Ron Smith. While he was down on election day by over 2000 votes, h...

Supreme Court to decide on future of Prop 8 litigation
by Brian Leubitz
It has been over four years since Prop 8 passed in November 2008. Though it would now appear as pro-equality forces are on the march nationally, and could have flipped the 2008 final tally this year, we are still waiting for news from the Supreme Court.
In theory, that should come today. While the court could possibly hold over a final decision, that's the luxury of being the nation's highest court, I suppose. However, the justices were to discuss the case and announce a decision on whether to grant...