It’s finally over. No more Meg Whitman commercials, tea party rallies, Barbara Boxer photo-ops. Is it just me or did this election cycle start the day President Obama was inaugurated? Don’t the politicians have anything else to do?
So, in the words of Bill Davis of the Southern California Contractors Association, “Now what?” Some of the state propositions will need time to shake out, but how about the passage of Prop 25? Despite the fact that we have a dominant and continuously Democratic majority in the Legislature, state budgets need a two-thirds majority to pass and the small group of Republicans we do have just don’t want to play. The budget was 100 days late this year, a record. Prop 25 gives the Legislature a simple majority vote to approve the budget. Now all we need is, well, tax revenue to spend.
Prop 23, the postpone-AB 32-until-unemployment-reaches-5.5%-for-four-quarters measure, also lost big, freeing, as Davis asserts, “the California Air Resources Board to pass 72 different regulations on every aspect of your life in the name of global warming.”
A local proposition in San Diego County that affects contractors – Prop A – won big and unions are not happy. This measure adds a permanent ban on project labor agreements, which non-union contractors now say levels the (slim and getting slimmer) playing field for public sector construction bids. The PLAs set a base pay and benefits for workers on public projects. Two San Diego-area cities, Chula Vista and Oceanside, have already passed PLA bans. This issue might go statewide soon.
And, finally, it’s good to see Jerry Brown back in the saddle. I remember him in the 1970s and early 80s as a kind of an intellectual/nerd/hippie, but it’s obviously his style and he’s grown into it. He won’t be harassing legislators by calling them “girlie men,” and I guess that’s a good thing. Also good is the defeat of Prop 19, the marijuana legalization measure. That’s all we’d need, Jerry hanging out with his Democrat buds smoking a bud. And you think things don’t get done now?
So, in the words of Bill Davis of the Southern California Contractors Association, “Now what?” Some of the state propositions will need time to shake out, but how about the passage of Prop 25? Despite the fact that we have a dominant and continuously Democratic majority in the Legislature, state budgets need a two-thirds majority to pass and the small group of Republicans we do have just don’t want to play. The budget was 100 days late this year, a record. Prop 25 gives the Legislature a simple majority vote to approve the budget. Now all we need is, well, tax revenue to spend.
Prop 23, the postpone-AB 32-until-unemployment-reaches-5.5%-for-four-quarters measure, also lost big, freeing, as Davis asserts, “the California Air Resources Board to pass 72 different regulations on every aspect of your life in the name of global warming.”
A local proposition in San Diego County that affects contractors – Prop A – won big and unions are not happy. This measure adds a permanent ban on project labor agreements, which non-union contractors now say levels the (slim and getting slimmer) playing field for public sector construction bids. The PLAs set a base pay and benefits for workers on public projects. Two San Diego-area cities, Chula Vista and Oceanside, have already passed PLA bans. This issue might go statewide soon.
And, finally, it’s good to see Jerry Brown back in the saddle. I remember him in the 1970s and early 80s as a kind of an intellectual/nerd/hippie, but it’s obviously his style and he’s grown into it. He won’t be harassing legislators by calling them “girlie men,” and I guess that’s a good thing. Also good is the defeat of Prop 19, the marijuana legalization measure. That’s all we’d need, Jerry hanging out with his Democrat buds smoking a bud. And you think things don’t get done now?
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