n Tuesday, November 8th. a painfully small number of registered voters will turn out to vote in the Special Statewide Election. There are several important measures for our consideration on the upcoming ballot. The measures were placed on the ballot through the initiative process. Special statewide elections are not a common occurrence and generally fail to attract a large turnout. A pity, because this time the issues on the ballot affect educational, social, financial and educational issues. We have been bombarded with TV commercials for and against and these final days will see an increase in the deluge of "for" and "against" messages. The Jacksons will be voting and here are a couple of the choices we'll be making.

PROPOSITION 75
It applies solely to public employee unions. This election's version of "paycheck protection" is quite different than Proposition 226 back in 1988. That one sought to bar labor unions from spending a member's dues for political activities in the absence of that member's consent. The U.S. Supreme Court has ruled that union members cannot be forced to finance political activity, and this proposition simply requires that public employee unions get written consent from their members before their fees and dues are used for political purposes.
The opponents of Prop. 75 claim that this is an unfair proposal because there is no similar attempt to control the discretion of business lobbyists to invest shareholder money in politics. Not a fair analogy, because this initiative applies only to public employee unions and they don't sit across from private businesses at the negotiating table; it's the taxpayers and our elected representative, acting as stewards of the public interest.
Interesting to me is the fact that the Mayor, Antonio Villaraigosa, is against Proposition 75, but he is also the Mayor who recently stated it will take "a holy jihad" to assume control of the local school district because teachers unions are so extremely powerful in Los Angeles and the State's capital, Sacramento.
When public employee unions have and use the type of influence they now do in California, (as the L.A. Times put it)..."too much governing becomes an exercise in self-dealing". With their large political war chests public unions in the state of California have gained much leverage of both sides of the negotiating process.
I'm voting "YES" on Proposition 75.


PROPOSITION 80
How much do you know about energy policy? I sure don't know a sufficient amount and I'll wager that applies to most everyone who intends to vote on election day. In fact, I don't see how we should be expected to use the initiative process to write energy policy. Can't they do the job in Sacramento, without us?
Proposition 80 is the work of a San Francisco based consumer group called the Utility Reform Network. They point out, with real accuracy, that our state's experiment with deregulation has been a failure and mistake. But this is not the answer we seek; at the core of this ballot measure is a provision that would almost bar any local power companies' competitors from signing up any new customers; only users that already had long term "direct access" contracts which accounts for only 12% of the market for power, could continue to buy from competitors. The proposals solution is overly favorable to the utilities. And with our growing economy and population we have, consequently, a growing demand for power, yet the muddled energy policy in Sacramento has made it hard for utilities or their competitors to build new power plants to keep up with that growth. Many of the measures provisions would write into law, several steps that the PUC has already taken. The biggest move, to date, by the Public Utilities Commission has been requiring utilities and energy service providers to show that they can meet all anticipated demand for power ...while still retaining some in reserve.
And that's just a part of it, so I ask again, should we be called upon to write energy policy through the initiative process? I don't think so and...
I'm voting "NO" on Proposition 80.

We'll tackle the other propositions over the next few days.

Please vote,