Dan Walters' Capitol Q&A
Category: Politics
Expert: Dan WaltersVeteran political journalist Dan Walters fields reader questions on California politics
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Most Recently Answered Questions
Questions 1 - 12 of 229 (Page 1 of 20)Q: Thank you for answering my question so quickly. What I'm wondering about is all the services and priveleges (i.e. healthcare, cable T.V., extensive libraries) that it seems the prisoners are receiving. Is a certain level of "service" mandated to be given? It seems that there is no such mandate for education and if we keep cutting education, then pretty soon all of our students will be better served in prison. What do I not understand?
A: Don;t disagree on priorities but one must keep in mind that prisons spending small compared to schools, so big savings in prisons would be small potatoes to schools.
Q: I apologize if you have answered this question before, but would you mind telling us again why it is that the prison system never seems to be mentioned as a place for cutting expenses in our debt-ridden, broken-budget state?
A: In theory, prison costs will decrease under "realaignment" which diverts low-level felons into county jails, but that won't happen, if it does happen, until sometime in the future as prison populations drop and the state is able to shut down prisons. The governor's new budget does close one old prison.
Q: The State of California pays the entire cost of medical insurance for State workers until their death, according to a friend of mine who works fairly high in the State Governemnt. If this is true, have you ever written about the huge unfunded liability that no one seesm to want toi address ort talk about, when everyone else cannot afoord this?
A: A state cmmission has estimated the unfunded liability for retiree health acre at about $100 billion, half for state and half for lcoal govt. And yes, I have written about it several times.
Q: Hi Dan,
I read today that the fair political practices commission is going to allow the political class to accept more bribes that they don't have to report. With so many elected officials asking for tax increases is this really the time to allow more graft and corruption? It would seem to me that smart politicians would be calling for ann ravels head. What is the story on this new ruling.
Thanks for being a reliable source of information.
Libby
A: Jerry Brown created FPPC as a ballot measure in 1974 to capitalize on Watergate and help him win the governorship and his hand-picked FPPC chairwoman now appears to be softening up its regulation of political conduct. I would suspect that it has to do with his advancing age, his status as a political insider and his desire to curry favor with those in the Capitol to advance his political agenda. That's just my surmise. It is an interesting phenomenon, however, and one on which I intend to write.
Q: Dan, your column is always filled with a great deal of insight and I appreciate the information and analysis you provide. This raises a question to me. If Dan Walters were beginning a four year term as Governor, what would be your priorities and more importantly, how would you set out to achieve them?
A: Balance the budget, first and foremost, by doing top-to-bottom review of spending for savings and then seeking new revenues, if needed, by closing unjustified tax loopholes. And if closing loopholes provides more money than necessary to finance a reasonable budget, I'd create a healthy reserve and then reduce tax rates with an eye toward encouraging wealth-producing private investment. I'd do it by creating a comprehensive, long-term financial plan and then marshaling public support to get the Legislature to adopt it with a ballot measure drive as the backup.
Q: An inmate at Avenal State Prison tells me that some prisoners shipped out of state are now being returned because California is not paying the out of state prisons in a timely manner. Have you heard anything to this effect?
A: No but we;ll check it out
Q: Enjoyed Sep 3 article in S.D. U/T. During previous Contitutional Conventions or any other time has CA considered a simple unicameral legislative body such as the State of NE has?
A: It's been talked about at numerous academic conferences and hearings but never has moved beyond the talking stage.
Q: Why are we not hearing anything about the California budget? I would appreciate being kept informed through the paper but barring that is there some place I can go to see what they are doing? It is becoming a common repetitive story that we are still in the red each time they come up with a solution. The additional fees added to services instead of tax increases doesn't seem to work nor have the furloughs or other tactics our governor and legislators have taken to bring us back in the black. There was an article a few weeks back that the budget wasn't doing very well...down $12B (probably more like $20B) and they were back in special session but there hasn't been a peep about it since then. Where can we get up to date information on what they are doing?
A: The Bee and my column frequently update budget crisis when there's something to report but since governor and legislative analyst revealed that state faces new deficits nothing has happened. The Legislature is out of session and is not expected to address budget again until January, when governor unveils his proposals for handling current shortfall and projected deficit in 2010-11 budget. So the precise answer to your question is that they are not doing anything so there's nothing to report.
Q: I am almost 50 and was born in this state.
A guy from the LAT named George Skelton is credited with giving us the estimate that illegal aliens cost our state $5B per year annually more than they pay in in taxes. I have heard it quoted by the governor so it's being used as the basis to shape public policy at least to some extent.
My sense is that Skelton's number is low by a factor of 5 and that he didn't include all the costs in his number, but maybe in fact he is correct. I have asked him several times to publish his assumptions and so far he hasn't.
Why haven't any other journalists demanded that the assumptions be published and evaluated by the public?
Public policy based on garbage in yields garbage out doesn't it?
A: Actually George wasn't first to mention $5B figure. I was, based on the one and only study ever conducted by the state of such costs. And I stick by it.
Q: We had been led to understand that the furloughs were not effecting CALPers retirement benefit calculations.
However, the Caltaxletter E-Edition notes that:
Furlough Days to Count Toward Pensions.
AB 399 (Brownley), dealing with public employees' retirement plans, was amended August 27 to allow current public employees to calculate their future retirement allowances based on earnings had they not been subject to mandatory furloughs in 2008-09 and 2009-10.
Do furloughs effect pension benefits, or is this law change needed so that they will not?
Thanks!
A: Obviously there's some uncertainty, or the bill would not have been introduced. It may depend on individual circumstances - whether the year on which pensions were to be calculated were also furlough years, which may be true of older employees contemplating retirement. For younger employees who wouldn't be retiring for some years to come, furloughs may have no effect. But that's a horseback response, not something one should take to the bank.
Q: mr. walters
regarding your July 14th column regarding revenue.
the state gets 43 billion from personnal income taxes and 12 billion from corporate taxes. do you know the total amount of income the 43 billion was taxed from? and the total amount of revenue from business that the tax was
taken from? just curious about the percentages of each!
thanks,
stan ayers
A: Actually, personal income taxes are now estimated at $48.9 billion for the current fiscal year and the corporate tax at $8.9 billion. Total personal income (not taxable income) is about $1.5 trillion and corporate profits about $160 billion.
Q: Why can't/won't state government rein in the spending on lobbyists, plush home/car allowances, six-figure salaries, and duplicity of positions in the CSU overall and local campus administrations? Seems that would be better than long-term economic ramifications of lost faculty and students who can't pay the fee increases.
A: CSU is owned by the state but not under the direct control of the governor or any other elected official. The Legislature prefers to make "unallocated cuts" when it reduces higher education spending and allow CSU and the UC system to decide how to make the specific reductions.
