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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. [go to Campbell index]
 No
Change In Sacramento
Democrats in the Legislature stall the Governor's plans....
[John Campbell] 5/17/04
Last
week, I told you all about the Governor's proposed repeal
of a law that is now in place and is hurting all employers and
killing jobs. That repeal failed on a party line vote in the
first committee 3 times.
AB 2992 (McCarthy-R): This bill, also sponsored by Governor
Schwarzenegger, would repeal SB 1412 (Alarcon-D) which prohibits
school districts from contracting out for any service that can
be provided by CSEA union employees in-house. This blatant anti-competition
bill is costing school districts around the state hundreds of
millions of dollars because they are not allowed to get the best
work at the lowest price.
In the Santa Ana Unified School District, for example, computers
for classrooms are sitting in boxes waiting to be unloaded by
school union workers. The computers were sold to the district
by a company that includes unboxing and installation as a no-extra-charge
benefit of buying the computers from them. But because of SB
1412, they were prohibited from unloading and installing the
computers, even for free, because they were not members of the
school employees union. So, Santa Ana Unified must pay regular
time plus overtime to employees to do something the vendor will
provide for free. Therefore, the computers remain in boxes waiting
for the overtime to be scheduled and for the budget to pay for
it. In the meantime, the school district is increasing class
sizes and reducing other educational programs because of budget
shortfalls.....all to allow a union to have no competition.
Capistrano Unified School Districts says they could save $3
million per year if this bill is repealed by being able to competitively
shop such services as bus driving, janitorial and landscape maintenance.
The bill to repeal this failed (twice) on a straight party line
vote as dozens of blue T-shirted union members packed the hearing
room saying that only union workers care about kids. As usual,
the cries of parents wanting their schools dollars to go farther
in teaching their kids went unheard by Democrats. Of course,
the union paid for its members to come to Sacramento to testify.
Parents would have to pay their own way.
If the public knew
about either one of these bills ( this one and last week's "bounty hunter law")
, as with worker's comp and other issues, the public would
want them repealed. The
laws that exist now were blatant handouts from Democrats to a
union and trial lawyers at the expense of taxpayers and parents.
The bottom line is
that the elected Democrats in Sacramento have not changed because
of the recall. They have not heard you
yet. To get these bills repealed will take the considerable strength
of the Governor's leverage and the determination of the public
to help him by continuing to make "noise" on these
issues. Then, it will take another message sent to Democrats
in this November's election and probably again in 2006 before
they will change.CRO
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