politics

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Listen to Regents Meeting of Nov. 14, 2013

Byuclafaculty

The November 14 meeting of the Regents opened with public comments.  These included concerns over staffing and safety at UC hospitals, a Berkeley city councilman who called for pension caps on high-paid UC executives, students advocating fossil fuel divestment, concerns about student costs and debt, and spending on “amenities” for students at UC. The Committee on Finance approved budgets for operations and capital after extensive discussion and back-and-forth with Governor Brown who said that UC was asking for $120 million more than it was going to get.  There was a bit more push back from Regents and administrators with regard…

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Listen to the Regents Morning Session: Nov. 13, 2013 (including the Napolitano speech)

Byuclafaculty

As noted in prior posts, yours truly is out of town and behind on listening to, and recording, the Regents meeting.  I am now current through the morning of Nov. 13.  That was the morning in which UC president Napolitano gave her speech on her goals for UC.  Blog readers will recall that there was supposed to be a similar unveiling of goals in a speech awhile ago, but that turned out to be a booster/dud.  This one was more significant, but more on that below. Again, we provide audio archives of Regents meetings because regental policy is to preserve…

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Clock is ticking away on chance to get UC out of anti-pension initiative

Byuclafaculty

Previous posts on t his blog have noted the filing of an anti-pension initiative, fronted by some mayors, that would include UC along with other state and local plans.  We have noted that it would be best if UC were omitted from the initiative on the rationale that the Regents have implemented their own plan for modifying their retiree programs (back in 2010). We have also noted that once an initiative gets on the ballot, it cannot be amended.  However, groups filing pension initiatives sometimes file amended versions.  The group behind the initiative has now filed a second version, illustrating…

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State Cash

Byuclafaculty

The latest cash statement from the state controller is out and covers the fiscal year through October.  It shows revenues to the state running about $600 million ahead of the forecast incorporated into the state budget last June.  Blog readers will recall that Gov. Brown insisted on what might be described as “conservative” estimates of revenue – over the objection of legislative Democrats – as a kind of hedge against possible bad news on the economy.  If the estimates prove to be below the actual receipts, there will simply be that much more cash in the general fund than otherwise….

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Response Would Be a Slender Reed (Pun Intended), But Why Not?

Byuclafaculty

Prior posts on this blog have noted that there is an anti-pension initiative that has been filed by a group whose front man is San Jose mayor Chuck Reed.  The proposition, if it got on the ballot, would cover UC.  It would require plans do be drawn up, presumably by the Regents, to deal with retirement underfunding.  The plans would be different than what the Regents developed on their own in 2010.  In theory, the Regents could draw up the plans and ignore them.  That would create political problems for the Regents and UC, however. Bottom line: We would be…

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Things to Come?

Byuclafaculty

Events at this week’s CSU Trustees meeting suggest what may occur at next week’s Regents meeting, especially if the governor shows up, as he has been doing. From the LA Times: (excerpt) A committee of the Cal State Board of Trustees on Tuesday approved a $4.6-billion budget plan that includes money to hire faculty and increase student enrollment. The 2014-2015 proposal seeks an increase of $237.6 million in state funding. Included in that total is about $80 million to increase student enrollment by about 20,000; $13 million to hire more than 500 new, full-time faculty members; $15 million to finance…

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Looks like the Regents Will Have to Continue to Grin and Bear It

Byuclafaculty

…The Democratic governor said of his own time in office, “I’m working pretty darn hard, and yet I can’t spend a lot of time on getting into the intricacies of government. So that, over the next year, that’s something that interests me, to try to understand … to get a real world feel of what’s under my responsibility, and I don’t think many governors have ever done that.” Brown said doing so will allow him to “think and imagine and come up with things.” Full article at http://blogs.sacbee.com/capitolalertlatest/2013/10/jerry-brown-seeking-real-world-feel-of-government.html

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The Anti-Pension Initiative: What Can UC Do?

Byuclafaculty

The State Worker blog of the Sacramento Bee carries a piece on what the political campaign against the anti-pension/anti-retiree health care initiative will likely look like.  Excerpt: Chuck Reed’s public-employee pension initiative is a long way from making it to a statewide vote – money being the biggest hurdle – but labor unions have already started blasting the proposal. The San Jose mayor’s measure would, among other things, change the California Constitution to explicitly allow state and local governments in a fiscal emergency to cut future retirement costs by lowering current employees’ benefits prospectively but leave accrued benefits untouched. Right…

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And still more on the pension cabalistas…

Byuclafaculty

From Salon.com:  [excerpt]  10-23-13 Less than a year ago, the Wall Street Journal alerted its national readership to what was happening in the tiny state of Rhode Island. In a story headlined “Small State Gets Big Pension Push,” the paper noted that the state’s “rollback of public-employee retirement benefits has turned (it) into a national battleground over pensions.” With the help of billionaire former Enron trader John Arnold and his partnership with the Pew Charitable Trusts, conservative ideologues and Wall Street profiteers who engineered Rhode Island’s big pension cuts were looking to export those “reforms” to other states. Now, after…

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More on the pension initiative “coordination”

Byuclafaculty

Leone Baxter and Clem Whitaker, founders of Campaigns, Inc. You probably have never heard of the couple above, Clem Whitaker and Leone Baxter, who founded what some regard as the first modern political advertising firm – Campaigns, Inc. – right here in California in the early 1930s.  You may not have heard of the great “EPIC” campaign of 1934 – their first big target.  (They ran the opposition.)  I will leave it to you to read up on the history of all of that which you can find in http://www.newyorker.com/reporting/2012/09/24/120924fa_fact_lepore?currentPage=all  However, a key tactic they developed was distributing information favoring…