Governance and Fiscal Issues

February 2011

The League of Women Voters of Marin County and Dominican University are co-hosted a presentation on solutions to the state’s current governance dilemma by Mark Paul, co-author of California Crackup:  How Reform Broke the Golden State and How We Can Fix It, on Sunday, February 13.

Paul discussed what California needs to do to free itself from the gridlock that has stifled its progress in recent years and prevented it from solving its continual budget crises.  His book has received positive reviews from the Los Angeles Times, Wall Street Journal and American Prospect.

Paul has served as senior scholar and deputy director of the California Program at the New America Foundation.  He is currently a visiting scholar at the Institute of Governmental Studies at U.C. Berkeley.  He was formerly the deputy treasurer of California.  He also was the national editor of the Oakland Tribune and a columnist at the Sacramento Bee where he won the 2000 Best in the West award for his editorials on the Gray Davis administration.

September 2010

At LWVMC’s Fall Kickoff in September, guest speaker Fred Silva addressed governance issues raised by a number of upcoming November ballot measures. Silva is senior fiscal policy adviser to California Forward. Having spent 40 years in the development of public policy in state and local government, Fred is an expert in state and local finance, government operations, and the history of the state and local fiscal relationship in California. Following are some excerpts from his talk.

Introduction

Propositions 20 and 27

Proposition 21

Proposition 22

Proposition 25