Small business nightmares obviate the California Dream

Oct 9, 2020
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John,

Trump spikes California pension bailout: This week, President Trump ordered ([link removed]) Senate Republicans to stop negotiating with Speaker Pelosi over another couple-trillion-dollar bailout package, which included more than $400 billion for state and local governments and their beleaguered public finances. Such funds would only reward California for its fiscal recklessness and refusal to recognize post-Covid financial realities. The scheme is little more than income redistribution from taxpayers in well-governed states to public-sector unions in poorly governed ones like California. In Trump’s words, “Nancy Pelosi is asking for $2.4 Trillion Dollars to bailout poorly run, high crime, Democrat States, money that is in no way related to COVID-19.”

Harris’s faux moderate act: The media has tried to rebrand Sen. Kamala Harris as a moderate to increase her appeal outside of the Golden State. Harris continued this liberal whitewashing ([link removed]) at the vice-presidential debate on Wednesday night. She ran away from the Green New Deal, which is one of the most radical pieces of legislation ever introduced, even though she is a Senate cosponsor. She pretended she wasn’t against banning fracking even though she’s on record promising to end it if elected. And she conspicuously ignored whether she’d try to take AB 5, which outlaws countless independent contracting jobs in the state, national given her support of it. Moderator Susan Page gave her an assist by not pressing her on these fundamental issues.

Ballots are out, how will they come in? This week, more than 21 million ballots hit mailboxes ([link removed]) across the state as part of California’s first-in-the-nation all mail-in voting experiment. Democrats and the media are downplaying widespread concerns, including from President Trump, that this ballot dump invites fraud.

Consider one example: my own. My household received multiple ballots in the mail this week, including one for the previous renter. What’s to stop me – or any of the millions of renters statewide – from filling out the ballots of previous tenants to our desired preference and mailing them in?

OC Register edit board endorses CPC Education Director Cecilia Iglesias for Mayor of Santa Ana: Writes the Register ([link removed]) ,

Iglesias has long been a consistent a reliable voice for fiscal responsibility in a city that needs such a message. While a lot of Republicans talk the talk of fiscal responsibility, Iglesias’ vote in 2019 against police raises of $25 million prompted a recall effort by the city’s police union. Iglesias, who vows to push for new negotiations with city employees to save taxpayer money, should be returned to City Hall, this time as mayor.

Goodbye, Golden State: Conservative media superstar Ben Shapiro explains in a Fox News op-ed ([link removed]) this week why he decided to leave California. He fingers public-sector unions, which he says “essentially make public policy, running up the debt while providing fewer and fewer actual services.”

Perspective on the CalExit: On this week’s episode of National Review’s RadioFree California, CPC President Will Swaim interviews ([link removed]) former California assemblyman Chuck DeVore talks about how California looks — from his new home in Austin, Texas. He highlights how California’s brand of progressive authoritarianism is coming for the rest of Americans and points out that most California transplants to Texas are conservative.

Why I’m driving my kids from Pasadena to Orange to go to schools: In a contribution ([link removed]) for CPC this week, Michael Davis, a partner in a small California tech company, explains why he’s commuting from Pasadena to Orange County so that his kids can escape failing government-run schools to attend the new Orange County Classical Academy charter school. He exhorts:

If parents wish to avoid the fate of my Pasadena district, they must fight to preserve what my district has lost. For parents in the city of Orange and everywhere it means learning who your pro-school choice candidates are and fighting for them. Unless you do, your future will be what we are fleeing every day when we commute to and from the City of Orange.

Indoctrifornia: In his latest analysis ([link removed]) , CPC contributor Larry Sand discusses Gov. Newsom’s recent veto of the state’s radical ethnic studies mandate for K-12 students. He argues that this victory will likely be short-lived. Yet we’ll take it and scoff at the overwrought responses of those who make a living peddling racial grievance. Among the most ridiculous reactions came from Theresa Montaño, a professor of Chicano Studies at Cal State Northridge, who claims that Newsom’s veto message was “painful ([link removed]) ,” adding, “White people in this society can still with the stroke of a pen say to children of color in this state that your history doesn’t matter and that the only way your history will be told is if we get to sanitize it, scrutinize it and approve it before it gets to you.”

Inform employees and employers about their Janus rights: Despite the U.S. Supreme Court’s Janus ruling, California government unions and the politicians they support have conspired to keep employees and employers in the dark about their new workplace rights and obligations. With your help, a grassroots effort by concerned California residents can fill the void created by the political establishment’s silencing of this issue. CPC created ([link removed]) new customizable documents to post in your workplace ([link removed]) , mail to government employers ([link removed]) , and mail to employees ([link removed]) to inform employees
and employers about their workplace rights regarding union dues and fees.

Facts on California wildfires, not climate change feelings: In a piece ([link removed]) this week in Fox and Hounds, State Sen. John Moorlach provides yet more data for why forest mismanagement is the main driver of California’s wildfires:

Underinvestment in and poor management of our forests is a massive contributing factor to the wildfires this state is experiencing. A fire science professor from UC Berkeley recently was asked how much climate change was to blame for California’s wildfires. “Less than 50%,” he said. “Maybe a third.” You don’t hear that from the governor, Democrats and California’s environmentalists.

Why is the Prison Guards Union Targeting Sen. Moorlach? In his latest analysis ([link removed]) , CPC contributor Edward Ring examines why California’s prison guard union is spending nearly one million dollars to unseat Sen. Moorlach in his tight reelection race:

Moorlach can explain why, in terms everyone can understand, public employee retirement benefits are unaffordable and unfair to taxpayers. And once you’ve created an extraordinarily privileged class of public employees, largely exempt from the economic hardship which is a direct result of policies it supported, financial truth is a dangerous thing.

The kicker? Moorlach’s challenger is a Newsom ally who would likely support the governor’s effort to close prisons, putting some of the union’s members out of work.

Why public-sector unions are behind the Prop 15 tax increase: Jon Coupal, president of the Howard Jarvis Taxpayers Association, explains ([link removed]) in the OC Register how public-sector unions are massively funding major tax increases for self-interested reasons so that they can improve their bargaining positions: “A recent publication from the United Teachers of Los Angeles (UTLA) reveals the true intentions of the public employee unions: ‘Passing [Prop. 15] in 2020 is key to winning the aggressive, comprehensive demands we will bring forward in 2022 full contract bargaining.’” California tax increases don’t so much fund government as they are funneled straight into unions’ pockets.

Prop 15 would devastate state small businesses: While the media and activists claim that the Prop 15 tax hike would only hit big businesses, Edwin Lombard, head of California’s Black Chamber of Commerce, explains ([link removed]) in CalMatters this week that the tax would – as usual – hit small and minority-owned businesses the hardest:

Prop. 15’s “small business” definition is so narrow that it’s virtually impossible for most small businesses to qualify for the full business personal property tax exemption the measure’s proponents tout as a “tax cut.”

Does a business have fewer than 50 full time employees? Is it independently owned and operated? Does the business own real property in California? Unless a company meets all three criteria, they don’t qualify as a small business and are taxed.

According to the National Federation of Independent Business, 78% of small businesses rent the properties on which they operate. Many of those small businesses have a “triple-net” lease, meaning the small business owner is responsible for paying all real estate taxes, building insurance and maintenance costs in addition to the normal components such as rent and utilities.

Prop. 15’s $11.5 billion-a-year property tax increase will immediately be passed on to these small business owners, further cutting into their ability to stay in business at a time they face rapidly rising costs for energy, fuel, rent, salaries and worker benefits.

Small business nightmares obviate the California Dream: Small businesses create two-thirds of new jobs, yet they are treated somewhere between pariahs and cows to be milked by California’s politicians and bureaucrats. This week the San Francisco Chronicle chronicled ([link removed]) the story of Jason Yu and his efforts to open up an ice cream store. All new small businesses in the state are forced to jump through similar hoops.

Yu submitted his plans to the Department of Building Inspection in mid-November 2019. But the first step was getting the OK from the Planning Department to operate the ice cream shop — even though a restaurant had already operated there and his shop fit the corridor’s zoning rules.

The Planning Department, like always, required him to notify neighbors of the plan and allowed any one of them within 150 feet to object. Neighbors learned about the project in late February and had until mid-April to complain. And someone did complain, triggering a hearing at the Planning Commission, which can take 12 weeks to schedule. That’s many months of rent flushed away because one neighbor doesn’t like what’s allowed by the city.

In Yu’s case, the complaining neighbor was a competing ice cream shop. It doesn’t take a genius to see why that shop might gripe, but nevertheless Yu had to hire a lawyer and wait until the hearing on June 11 to do any more work on his shop.

His file was assigned to a plan reviewer at the Department of Building Inspection in late June, and it took about two months for any response — compared with the usual response time of two weeks. The reviewer gave Yu’s architect 30 comments on the plans in late August, and about half of them have been dealt with, according to Daniel Lowrey, deputy director for permit services.

But even once those are resolved, the plans will still need approval from a mechanical plan checker at the Department of Building Inspection, the Fire Department, Public Works and the Department of Public Health.

Yu has asked for a rent break from his landlord, but no dice. He fears he’ll be in the hole by $200,000 or more by the time he can finally open. If that day ever comes.

California must protect and cherish its small business job creators to help the state’s economic recovery.

Step number one: Streamline regulations so that plain vanilla small business openings are a cakewalk.

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Jordan Bruneau
Communications Director
[email protected] (mailto:[email protected])


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