Correspondence

E-mail Correspondenc about articles or issues raised in California Political Review or
CPR Online to: Editor, California Political Review. Correspondence may be condensed.

Posted: August 19, 2003

Well done!
CPPF’s web site is attractive, well ordered, and informative. Well done!!

Paul McCauley
Van Nuys

Posted: July 23, 2003

When business ignores politics

Many thanks for William E. Saracino’s “Business’ Stake in the Budget Battle” (CPR, May/June). Mr. Saracino accurately describes many of us business owners as almost exclusively focused on the nuts and bolts of our businesses while paying little or no attention to politics. Mr. Saracino then powerfully lays out the enormous snare that our inattention has sucked us into: an economic downturn, in the midst of which state government is piling on taxes and, especially, regulations which have hit us like a two- by-four over the head.

The article lays out a road map for change. Political ideas and philosophy have consequences. The success of 21st Century Insurance’s strategy should inspire California business leaders to get in the game in a principled, effective way. I do think that, as a practical matter, the established business groups are ill-equipped to play hardball partisan politics in California. They typically hate to go against incumbents. But what that means is that new groups are needed, set up by business people and pro- business politicians with the guts and smarts to win.

Geoffrey Vanden Heuvel,
dairy farmer
Chino

Prison Guards, Gray Davis and the Budget Crisis

An element in California’s “Contrived Budget Crisis” (CPR, May/ June) that ought to be highlighted is Governor Gray Davis’s pay hike/ campaign donation interplay with the state prison guards union [California Correctional Peace Officers Association]. During the 2002 campaign, Davis received financial contributions in the seven figure range from the CCPOA union. The governor also approved a very generous salary increase for the guards plus fringe benefits, more paid sick leave days per year, and monthly stipends to maintain physical fitness (completely unmonitored).

The cost to the state of this new financial package for the union guards has far exceeded the negotiator’s estimates. Now the prison guards use their increased sick leave days as supplemental vacation, which must be covered by replacement guards who receive overtime pay. This unholy alliance, in effect, made California taxpayers subsidize the governor’s re- election campaign by paying more to operate our prisons. This union contract has already become so expensive the governor has tried to renegotiate it. So far, the union has refused to consider doing so.

California voters who wish to reduce such state government waste and the influence of special interest groups over politicians might consider a simple solution: a ballot initiative to prohibit state employee unions from contributing to state elected officials or political parties. This would be true campaign finance reform, eliminating a glaring conflict of interest for politicians who, when they negotiate public employees’ salaries, are supposed to represent the taxpayers who pay those salaries.

This measure would protect taxpayers against exploding state operating costs, reduce workers’ union dues, and free politicians to serve the public interest who are now too often beholden to special interests.

Edward F. Cross
Los Angeles

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