Contributor

John Campbell

John Campbell (R-Irvine) is an Assemblyman representing the 70th District in Orange County. Mr. Campbell is the Vice-Chairman of the Assembly Budget Committee. He is the only CPA in the California State legislature and recently received a national award as Freshman Republican Legislator of the Year. He represents the cities of Newport Beach, Laguna Beach, Irvine, Costa Mesa, Tustin, Aliso Viejo, Laguna Woods and Lake Forest. He can be reached through his Assembly website and through the website for his California Senate campaign.

Sacramento's Back in Business
If the past week is any indication...Watch out...
[John Campbell] 8/23/03

Things are active in Sacramento again.....and on balance that is not a good thing. Here are some quick comments on events of the week:

Error Correction: First of all, I take pride in the accuracy of the information in this e-mail and I made a mistake last week which I want to correct. I said that every Democrat legislator had voted to increase the car tax prior to the Governor raising it administratively. There were several votes on the matter so it is not crystal clear, but I think the fairest thing to say is that out of 73 Democrat legislators, only 69 voted to triple the tax.

Financial Privacy: The legislature passed SB1 (Speier- D) a much debated and much changed proposal to give you more control over the privacy of your financial information. I voted for the revised bill and have long believed that we all need more control and protection over this information. This is a move in the right direction although I believe that some specifics in the bill will need to be perfected in the coming years.

Bustamante Budget: My vocabulary is generally adequate but I cannot find words to describe how bad the budget proposal made by Cruz Bustamante for next year is. My computer's thesaurus suggests "grim, grisly, gruesome, hideous, horrifying, horrible and macabre." All of those work. It is as thought he looked at all the bad stuff Davis did the last 5 years to kill jobs and the economy in this state and decided to do more of it. After raising taxes 10% in the last 3 years (and spending it all) he wants to raise them another 15% next year. He proposes raising income taxes, property taxes, tobacco and alcohol taxes, create a bunch of new inequitable tax traps, keep the car tax on most new cars, and make businesses fund a state run "Hillary-style" health care plan. His plan is so anti-enterprise if it were to become law along with the current worker's comp, energy rates, abusive lawsuits, etc., we might as well make the interstate 15 to Vegas a one-way street.

Bad Bills: The parade of bad bills is beginning as the majority party rushes to pass much horrible legislation before the Governor is recalled and the ability to get a Gubernatorial signature is impaired. Amongst the gems passed today is a bill that forces a property owner to continue renting property under certain circumstances even if they wish to pull the property off the market. When combined with rent control, this law in some jurisdictions means that you must rent your property and you must rent it at a price determined by the government. In my view, this should be an unconstitutional taking of the property. Another beauty is that foster parents will have to undergo "sexual orientation and gender identity" training before being allowed to care for foster children. Enough said.