After a 13 hour delay Thursday, the five-member Board of Supervisors Budget and Finance Committee concluded its deliberations over Mayor Ed Lee’s $6.8 billion budget at 2:30 a.m. “This is the culmination of a very long budget process,” committee chair Supervisor Carmen Chu said when the committee began its postponed 1 p.m. meeting later that night at 1:55 a.m.
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Using video of the tough language President Obama directed at congressional Republicans during his Wednesday press conference, the National Republican Senatorial Committee has posted a devastating new web ad titled: Actions Speak Louder Than Words, Mr. President. Watch:
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Supervisors are in talks behind the scenes as the Board of Supervisors Budget and Finance Committee is set to finish up its deliberations on Mayor Ed Lee’s proposed $6.8 billion budget. Among the talks, whether to fund a police academy class, which can cost about $5 million. The committee has about $17 million in a pot of money they can relocate after reviewing the budget during the past two weeks and making cuts, as well as from unexpected revenues.
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San Francisco shoppers are in store for some wallet relief when the sales tax drops by 1 percent Friday, but the full discount might be short-lived.
One percent of the state sales tax is set to expire today after Gov. Jerry Brown and other Democrats abandoned hope of persuading Republican lawmakers to allow a vote on extending the tax. The move lowers San Francisco’s sales tax from the current 9.5 percent to 8.5 percent.
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Don’t look now, but Gov. Jerry Brown is morphing into Arnold Schwarzenegger before our very eyes.
Once again, a governor has come into Sacramento promising to change the way things work in the Capitol, to make the tough decisions to make state government fiscally solvent. And once again, we are stuck with a state budget based on unrealistic revenue assumptions that avoid necessary spending cuts.
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When governors and legislators face seemingly big budget deficits, they often turn to gimmicks to balance income and outgo on paper.
The most creative have been what cynics call “rosy scenarios.”
California politicians conjure up some new source of revenue, swear it is legitimate and then use the projected windfall to close their gap.
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President Obama, in his first solo news conference at the White House in more than three months, used his bully pulpit Wednesday to press Congress "to seize this moment" and broker a deficit deal about a month before the U.S. faces default on its loans to global partners.
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A budget with nearly $20 million in cuts was approved Tuesday night by the San Francisco Unified School District Board of Education.
Anticipating more cuts to come from state funding next year and in future years, the district opted to cut $19.3 million from its $622 million operating budget through trimming transportation, issuing staff furloughs and employee layoff, among other ideas.
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Sir Walter Scott wasn’t writing about politics when he sagely observed two centuries ago, “Oh, what a tangled web we weave, when first we practice to deceive.”But he could have been — and his poetry perfectly describes the ironic consequences of two deceptive California ballot measures drafted by Democratic politicians and their allies.
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A study by the Phoenix Center that was published in April received too little attention in the nation’s mainstream media. With the most recent data showing the economy is clearly stagnating, and with the federal budget talks on Capitol Hill similarly stumbling along, it’s time that the Phoenix study of the impact of federal regulation on private-sector job creation gets the notice it deserves.
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