Local Government

By Steven Mikulan
The Frying Pan

The skirmish of words in El Segundo over its city manager’s proposal to raise local taxes on that city’s largest business, Chevron Oil, has suddenly become a full-fledged legal war, with the official making explosive accusations against both El Segundo’s government and Chevron. The story, which Donald Cohen has been following for Frying Pan News, began with Doug Willmore’s efforts to bring the giant refinery’s taxes in line with the taxes paid by other California oil companies. Willmore was subsequently fired on February 9 by El Segundo’s city council.

By Stephanie J. Harker
Protect Plummer Park

In the small City of West Hollywood, the council has seen fit, even in these difficult times, with California on the brink of bankruptcy, to push forward with a $41.3M renovation of historic Plummer Park. The plan includes gutting the park to install a $10Million underground parking structure, netting 69 extra spaces and necessitating the demolition of Great Hall/Long Hall, the only two WPA (President Roosevelt's Works Progress Administration) structures in the city and decimation of Fiesta Hall designed by noted architect, Henry L. Gogerty.

By Joshua Holland
AlterNet

Occupy Oakland has been the target of a notably vicious smear campaign mounted by the conservative media. They didn't just offer the usual pabulum about how the occupiers hated America or were closet socialists. They painted them as sub-human: mired in filth and gripped by violent anarchy. One right-wing blogger likened it to "The Lord of the Flies." The campaign's racist and classist undertones were none too subtle.

When I first visited the camp on October 22, I found a very different scene. About 150 tents made up a small, self-sufficient community in Frank Ogawa Plaza, located steps away from City Hall. The kernel of truth behind the smears was that it was located in downtown Oakland, a city with some serious problems and a long history of distrust between the community and a police department tasked with serving and protecting it.

By Pedro Morillas
CALPIRG

AB 438, legislation that will help ensure proposals to privatize public libraries are a good deal for the public, is currently awaiting Governor Brown’s signature. Among other provisions, the bill requires any deal to have specific performance standards and a limit of 5 years. Generally, the point of privatizing community run services like libraries is to save those communities money. AB 438 makes sure that privatization deals deliver on what they promise.

By Patrick Porgans and Lloyd G. Carter

California’s 90 billionaires (according to Forbes Magazine) and 662,735 millionaires got rich in a lot of different ways. But, there are those billionaires that thirst for more, apparently, the Golden State’s record-breaking $2 trillion in gross annual production (GDP), in 2010, which makes the state the Eighth most productive economy in the world wasn’t quite enough. But let’s not forget California’s GDP is said to represent 13 percent of the USA’s GDP.

By Traci Sheehan

California's Sustainable Communities and Climate Protection Act, or SB 375, is the nation's first legislation to link transportation and land use planning with global warming. The bill, passed in 2008, has the potential to truly transform California’s development practices by requiring local agencies to coordinate land-use, transportation and housing planning in order to curb sprawl, reduce greenhouse gas emissions, lessen vehicle miles traveled, and promote social equity in our urban core. Such planning often happens in isolation in today’s regulatory structure.

By Peter Schrag

Among the classic examples of California’s convoluted governance structure few are as bizarre as that governing K-12 education.

Here, the independently elected state superintendent of public instruction is supposed to carry out policies set by the state board of education, which is appointed by the governor.

In turn, the governor, along with the legislature, controls much of the budget both for the badly under-funded Department of Education which the SPI directs and the 1000 or so local districts that actually run the schools.

But of course the board can’t fire or discipline the elected superintendent, though “State Board of Education v. Honig,” a wacky (and very political) court decision handed down in 1993, gives it the power to approve his or her choices for deputy and associate superintendents and set state policy.

By Tom Hogen-Esch

As the shock of the political corruption scandal in the City of Bell begins to fade, residents there face the task of rebuilding a viable local democracy.  Close examination of the Bell scandal reveals a number of important lessons and options for reform.

Ultimately, corruption in Bell and other California cities are symptoms of a systemic failure to integrate new immigrants into local political systems. Finding ways to engage communities to make politics work for residents is the key to establishing healthy local democracy.

The factors that allowed brazenly high salaries and other corrupt practices to take root in Bell are fairly well-understood.  During the late 1990s and 2000s ethnic change, deindustrialization, and the lack of community groups and a regular media watchdog allowed the city to devolve into the municipal equivalent of a failed state.  Without normal institutions of democratic accountability, Bell became ripe for the picking.

By Donald Cohen
In The Public Interest

Elected officials need to do a better job of asking the right questions before they make a decision that we'll live with for decades.

Too often, a mayor, governor or other public official proposes to sell off a public facility, privatize a public good or contract out a vital service, but fails to answer basic questions that decision makers and voters need to decide whether it's a good idea.

By Shane Brinton
Arcata City Councilmember

In these tough economic times, nothing is more important than continued public investment to stimulate growth, create jobs, and provide greater stability for communities. In California, we are lucky to have redevelopment agencies to help us meet this need at the local level. These unique agencies provide municipalities with the necessary funding structure to invest local property tax revenues directly in their communities.

Governor Jerry Brown’s proposal to eliminate redevelopment agencies has shocked local government officials and left a lot of us wondering how serious he is about his campaign pledge to “get California working again.” Across the state, local plans for affordable housing projects, cleanup of blighted areas, infrastructure improvements, and business development efforts now hang in the balance.