Long Beach Reform Coalition General Election Ballot Recommendations for November 5 2024 general election (Long Beach, Los Angeles County)
Re-posted from here
NO on Long Beach
Measure JB
JB would burst open the floodgates to exponentially greater corruption in city
administration by effectively eliminating Civil Service safeguards against a
quid pro quo municipal workforce. The City of Long Beach has a payroll of well over $1
billion annually, with approximately 6,000 positions. JB would eliminate
the independent Civil Service Commission (composed of appointed residents
rather than politicians) which serves as a check and balance to ensure that
only the most qualified are hired according to testing and Civil Service
procedures. In its place, the City's non-independent Human Resource Dept.
would control all hiring, putting these decisions under the official authority
of the City Manager and the de facto authority of the Mayor.
The Mayor supports JB in order to take Long
Beach back to a 19th Century style political spoils
system, where he can reward any political supporter, special interest crony, or
even personal relative with a high-paying, unaccountable City job. For
more on JB (or to get your free No on JB yard sign today!) go to NOonMeasureJB.com.
NO on Long Beach Measure HC
Measure HC is the twin sister to Measure JB, except that it would have the same
corrupting effect on the workforce at the Port of Long Beach.
HC would disempower the independent Long Beach Harbor Commission and, as JB
centralizes all hiring power in the hands of the City Manager, HC would
centralize all hiring power in the hands of the Port Director, who similarly
works at the de facto behest of the Mayor. By controlling a City Council
majority politically, as the current Mayor does (as the leader of the Long
Beach fiefdom of the greater LA County Federation of Labor big money machine,
which buys and owns so many candidates in the region), the Mayor effectively
has the power to dismiss the City Manager or the Port Director at any
time.
Thus the City Charter form of government, where these two positions are
supposed to function as independent chief administrators of City operations,
accountable to the City Council as a whole, would be effectively
curtailed. By giving direct hiring power over the 650 Port positions, a
payroll of $100 million, to the Port Director, it effectively takes hiring out
of the light of day of a public commission and hands direct hiring power to the
Mayor. For more, see the sample ballot arguments here.
NO on Long Beach Measure LB
Measure LB would lift a longstanding exemption form the City Utility User Tax
enjoyed by two gas-fueled power plants, the facilities owned respectively by
the Los Angeles Dept. of Water & Power (Haynes Plant) and AES which
straddle the San Gabriel River just north of 2nd Street and east of
Studebaker. Measure LB is part of the Mayor's push to paper over
projected budget deficits as far as the eye can see due to his inability to
take on the special interests who paid for his campaign and got him elected
Mayor. This measure would generate an additional $15 million per year to
the City.
The City staff report (analyzed and linked to in this LBRC email update, under the section
entitled "Removal of Utility Tax Exemption for Power Plants")
contends that removal of this exemption would not increase Long Beach ratepayer
bills more than $0.50 per year per person because LADWP does not service Long
Beach and AES power goes to the whole 15 million residents of the SCE service
area. However, LADWP has challenged the ability of one City to tax
another, and more worrisome, SCE has already vowed to challenge LB, if it
passes, at the California Public Utilities Commission (CPUC), where they will
ask that the full burden of Measure LB be born solely by Long Beach ratepayers.
Therefore, while Measure LB may sound tempting as a source of revenue, the Long
Beach Reform Coalition believes the Council should have asked for further
review by outside legal experts. Should it pass, the City will have to
spend millions on legal fees just to find out whether it will survive review by
the CPUC or not. This assessment needs to happen before Long Beach residents are
asked to vote on it.
The Good News on the Local Front: We Already Beat Back
Three Tax Measures!
Your Long Beach Reform Coalition already saved local taxpayers tens of millions
of dollars a year by challenging the Mayor on his egregious proposed tax grabs,
which would have affected homeowners (and renters eventually), small business
owners, and electricity ratepayers. We challenged the City Manager and
City Attorney on his corrupt ballot wording scheme, and we won! These three tax proposals
didn't even make it onto the ballot. It was a quiet but enormously
impactful victory for LBRC.
NO on Long
Beach City College Measure AC
In 2008, voters handed LBCC a nearly half-billion dollar bond measure (an
increase to property taxes) called Measure E. In 2016, voters approved
another $850 million for LBCC in the form of Measure LB (2016), a further increase to
property taxes. Measure AC would be another $1 billion. These bond
measures are like home mortgages in that they take decades to pay back, via
ever-increasing cumulative increases to property tax bills, and by the time
they are paid back, as much or more money has gone to paying the interest on
the debt as the principle.
And yet where is the accountability for these billions of accumulated local
debt? Are we getting value back for our dollar? LBCC has a
"Citizens' Oversight Committee" which holds a few perfunctory meetings a year, certainly
not the kind of scrutiny required to ensure that this money is going toward
essential projects rather than into the unseen pockets of contractors and
consultants. And the elected Long Beach City College Board of Trustees
has been distracted for years by the tyrannical rule of the Mayor's ally, Trustee
Ntuk, who has used it as a platform to attack his political enemies.
This is not the time to hand billions more to LBCC. First, we need to
elect Dick Gaylord to begin the reform process on the Board of Trustees before
LBCC can begin to make the case for more money from the taxpayers.
VOTE for Dick Gaylord for LBCC Trustee (Area 4)
Dick Gaylord, a long time Long Beach
resident, realtor, and civic leader, would be a refreshing breath of fresh air
and would deny Trustee Ntuk his majority, restoring the functionality of the
LBCC Board of Trustees. Here's his campaign site.
NO on Los Angeles County Measure
A
County Measure A represents a doubling down on the failed and graft-riddled
current approach to homelessness in LA County. It would double the County
Measure H (2017) quarter-cent sales tax, making it a full half-cent on every
dollar spent, and removing the ten-year sunset provision, rendering it a
never-ending infinity tax. This would take Long Beach
up to a cumulative 10.75% sales tax, thanks to a bill in Sacramento allowing LA County cities to
surpass the state sales tax cap (in anticipation of Measure A).
Measure H has made homelessness worse, not better, by wasting hundreds of
millions of (regressively collected) tax payer dollars, enriching developers,
consultants, and nonprofit execs while feeding into the failed Housing First
(rather than shelter first) model and hardly adding any new shelter units or
substance abuse / mental health / life recovery services.
The solution to homelessness isn't more taxpayer money (especially not a sales
tax, which burdens the homeless and low income residents disproportionately)
when already billions are being spent, mostly in federal and state grants, and
wasted. We need to change how the money is being spent, and we
need to begin with a massive audit of homeless spending (as a federal judge has already ordered in the
City of Los Angeles).
Neutral on County Measure G (no endorsement)
Currently the Los Angeles County Board of Supervisors wields enormous power
largely under the radar of public scrutiny. Measure G would increase the
five-member board to nine, reducing the size of each district by nearly a
million constituents from the current 2 million-person supervisorial
districts. Perhaps even more significantly it would shift the governance
model from the current board-appointed County CEO
managing the bureaucracy to a countywide elected CEO, effectively an elected
'mayor of LA County' for the first time ever.
There are pros and cons to Measure G, including the possibility of electing one
or two more supervisors who might be more independent of the LA County
Federation of Labor controlled county political machine. And an elected County CEO
might draw more public and media attention to the functioning of county
government, with all its sprawling responsibilities and bureaucratic
dysfunction. On the other hand, an elected CEO would be an incredibly
powerful position, which might overshadow the Board of Supervisors,
concentrating political power to an even greater degree, rather than
democratizing it.
YES on California
Prop. 36
We all know that property crime, especially retail smash and grabs, are out of
control due to Prop. 47 (2014) making theft under $950 a misdemeanor.
Prop. 36 is polling with overwhelming public support for obvious reasons,
despite passive opposition from Gov. Newsom. Restoring felony status for
property theft crimes is essential for bringing back order to heavily impacted
localities like Long Beach.
VOTE for Nathan Hochman for Los Angeles County District
Attorney
Prop. 36 reforms the disastrous Prop. 47, which was co-authored by the current
District Attorney, George Gascon. For over a decade, he has been part of
the movement to tie the hands of local prosecutors rather than addressing the
root causes of crime. Gascon's own prosecutors, along with families of
crime victims, have been up in arms that they aren't being
allowed to do their jobs.
Plus, the Public Integrity Division within the DA’s office—supposedly the cop
on the block to prevent corruption in local government and among local elected
officials—has seemingly been effectively decommissioned. Gascon took
personal control over the unit, and you never hear of any prosecutions of
elected officials by the DA’s office (not that we have seen any action out of
that unit since the days of DA Steve Cooley, when he famously prosecuted the
City of Bell
officials). All the prosecutions in LA in recent years (three City
Council members and Supervisor Ridley-Thomas) have been by the feds, the FBI
investigating and the US Attorney’s Office, not the DA. Gascon is a Long Beach resident (Naples)
and chummy with local politicos, like former Long Beach police chief, Sheriff Robert
Luna.
Hochman, when personally questioned by LBRC’s executive director, emphasized
the importance of the Public Integrity unit and pointed to his experience
leading the LA City Ethics Commission. He has made reversing the extreme
non-prosecution policies of Gascon his centerpiece and vows to be a moderate,
even-handed crime fighter, who would value fairness for the accused without
condoning lawlessness.
NO on California
Prop. 33
Prop. 33 is yet another attempt to unbalance the housing market by opening the
door to potentially extreme versions of local rent control, a demagogic ploy
for the votes of renters who would be its main victims in the long run.
In particular, Prop. 33 would allow for vacancy decontrol, meaning a city could
pass an ordinance permanently converting units to non-market rate, even when
the tenant moves out. This would completely destroy the mom & pop
housing provider industry, which provides the vast majority of the most
affordable housing locally. Rather than leading to lower rents, it would
lead to many units being removed from the housing market entirely and greatly
increasing the cost of rental housing, whatever is left of it.
YES on California
Prop. 34
Prop. 34 would end the loophole allowing the sponsor of Prop. 33 to abuse its
nonprofit status, continually pumping millions of dollars into trying to pass
state propositions election cycle after election cycle.
Long Beach Accountability Action Group™ LAAG | www.LAAG.us | Long Beach, CA | A California Non Profit Association | Demanding action and accountability from local government™ | click here to receive LAAG posts by email
