A measure on the November ballot that would double LA County's quarter-cent homeless sales tax does not yet have enough support to pass. Doug Smith reports for the LA Times.
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The Los Angeles City Council approved a motion last Friday allowing the immediate towing of illegally parked vehicles, including RVs, across large areas of the city. Previously, the LAPD was required to ensure vehicles were unoccupied and to offer housing outreach services before towing. The always-enlightening Westside Currents reports.
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What was the BAHFA board thinking when they tried to muscle through RM4--a clearly misguided and mis-timed mammoth new tax? Marc Joffe of the California Policy Institute suggests arrogance and hive-mind may have blinded the board from what citizens were really thinking.
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The defeat of RM4 showed that regular people of all political stripes can come together in the Bay Area and defend taxpayers from poorly designed policy measures, says Gus Mattammal, President of 20BillionReasons, the victorious grass-roots group that opposed RM4. {Ed. note: And let's ponder this: just one Bay Area resident found an embarrassing math error that played a huge role in knocking RM4 off the ballot.} In this Opp Now exclusive, Mattammal stresses how important it is for concerned Bay Areans to organize across party lines early and build a strong ground game.
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In honor of CSO Long Pham's life and service, the office of Councilmember Bien Doan will be holding a candlelight vigil on Thursday, August 22, at 7:30 PM at the Vietnamese Heritage Garden, located at 1499 Roberts Ave, San Jose, CA 95112. Below, comments from Doan.
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While local pols, SJ City staff, and housing 'advocates' clamor for more and more destructive rent control, the facts on the ground undermine their arguments. Newsweek reports on how the reform-minded admin in Argentina put a chainsaw to the country's pernicious rent control regime, and affordable housing flourished.
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A critical new federal audit calls out California for doing too little to prevent fraudulent spending of homelessness funds. Nearly $320 million was at risk. Calmatters explains.
Read MoreEven though County Supe Susan Ellenberg is peddling wild conspiracy theories to explain the demise of the ill-conceived regional housing bond, RM4, the reasons for why it was pulled from the ballot are pretty straightforward: Bay Area voters are already taxed to the breaking point. The bond wouldn't make much of a dent in local affordable housing. And most of the huge monies requested wouldn't even go to building new housing. Thomas Buckley explores in California Globe.
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In a clear defeat for tax-happy city councils like San Jose's, and the local Housing Industrial complex, the Bay Area Housing Finance Authority bowed to the inevitable and yanked its deeply flawed housing bond from the ballot. Press release from leading, multi-party opposition group, www.20bilionsreaons.com, below.
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Obvious and pronounced tax-fatigue among Bay Area residents (who are some of the highest-taxed people in the country) is at the core of BAHFA's decision to pull RM4, notes Ben Christopher at Calmatters. Which makes one wonder what kind of bubble BAHFA's board was living in such that they couldn't see citizens' financial pain until the election was nigh.
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During the SJ City Council's debate about taking positions on ballot measures, D10 DM Batra warned the Council they were moving too fast and deciding without adequate input. The recent admissions by BAHFA that the RM4 ballot language (which the City Council endorsed) was inaccurate confirmed Batra's concerns. His original comments from the 6.04 council meeting, below.
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At the 6.04 SJ City Council meeting, CM Doan probed city staff about the many unanswered questions regarding the mammoth RM4 regional housing bond (which the Council endorsed). Last week, a discredited BAHFA acknowledged that their ballot language had a whopping mistake in it--lowballing annual costs to taxpayers by more than a eye-popping $240 million per year. Transcript from the 6.04 Council meeting (edited for clarity) below.
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