The former summer doldrums
Normally, when summertime comes, the living is easy, particularly if you’re writing about politics. Typically, not much is happening but that is simply not the case this year.
On the national level, California is pretty much a dead bang certainty for the Democrats, which means the national campaigns don’t want to spend any money here. They’re saving it all for the battleground states like Ohio, Virginia and Florida. This really impacts all the down ticket races and affects turnout.
There are lots of ways this may play out locally. We have a number of propositions on the ballot, particularly Governor Brown’s Proposition 30 to raise money for education. If it fails, the schools are going to take another major hit on their funding. This, to my mind, makes it absolutely inexplicable why the Santa Monica-Malibu Unified School District Board of Education decided to put a $385 million bond issue on this November’s ballot. These guys must have cotton in their ears. In a weak economy, with a very slow recovery that might take a year or two more, I can’t imagine voters taking a long-term view about updating facilities when we’re not sure if they’re going to have to lay off teachers.
I haven’t seen the latest numbers, but I suspect that Proposition 30 is struggling for several reasons. First, although it only needs 50 percent plus one for passage, that is a tough number in tough times.
Also, there is another conflicting plan on the ballot, which happens because we have a bunch of billionaires, or children of billionaires, each with their own little plan. Thanks to the U.S. Supreme Court, you’re going to see a lot of these dollars flowing into politics. It’s amazing how many opinionated billionaires there are in this world who seem to believe they have a better way. I predict that in a few years campaigns like Meg Whitman’s, which spent $150 million in her losing campaign for governor, will be considered modest by future standards.
Lastly, bad publicity has been breaking surrounding money stuck into cubbyholes in the state government. Initially, it was $54 million in California Parks and Rec., and then after they took a look at all the state agencies, it rose to about $250 million that was salted away.
However, $250 million in a state as big as California, which has an annual budget of about $120 billion ($120,000,000,000), the money they found amounts to about 1/5 of one percent. To put it into perspective, if you earn $100,000 per year and you misplaced 1/5 of one percent, you would have misplaced $200 dollars. Still, it doesn’t look good, and in a tight contest it could hurt.
Locally, on the brighter side of things, the real estate market is beginning to really heat up. Recently, I attended the Malibu Association of Realtors annual beach party, and I saw a bunch of Realtors actually smiling. The last few years have been quite dour, and it’s good to see things beginning to hum again.
The rest of the economy must be improving, because clearly some people have money to burn. Recently the Malibu Township Council and the Preserve Malibu movement filed a suit against the city to try and stop the installation of the lights at Malibu High School, or at least cut them down in size or in the number of nights that will be allowed. They hired the very excellent real estate law firm of Cox, Castle and Nicholson, and the lead attorney on the case is Stanly Lamport, who is one of the best in the business. Since I suspect both the Malibu Township Council and the Preserve Malibu are nonprofits without the proverbial pot, it’s clear someone is writing checks, and probably very substantial checks. We don’t yet know who, but that kind of thing usually comes out in time.
Lastly, our local governmental majesties have been up to their old tricks. Joe Edmiston of the Santa Monica Mountains Conservancy is blocking the installation of the new skateboard park up at Bluffs Park. What’s Big Joe’s position? Well, it appears that the 90 plus acres of wild park owned by the conservancy, which is next to Bluffs Park, is entitled to access to the parking. No argument there. What the city wants to do is install the skate park on part of the existing parking and extend the parking lot a bit on city land, but at the same time adding some additional parking spaces.
Not good enough, says Joe, which when translated into Joe language means: you don’t get anything from me for nothing so what are you willing to pay. They’re currently negotiating.