An L.A. CITY Tax Hike proposal held off for now.

The L.A. Times reports that the city will hold off on its attempt to get the the city property owners to vote to quadruple their storm water pollution fees (aka "tax") over next 5 years in a story by David Zahniser, "Los Angeles tables storm-water fee hike plan; A plan to ask city voters to approve a quadrupling of storm-water pollution cleanup fees on property owners is shelved over council concerns that it had been rushed and might not pass," 7:43 PM PDT, April 27, 2009. http://www.latimes.com/news/local/la-me-stormwater-fee28-2009apr28,0,1689138.story

The City of L.A. is holding off on the move that would give the Department of Public Works more money besides the $500 million that was approved by voters in 2004 for storm water clean up. Was the reason maybe that it's too much for an already heavily taxed population of property owners? Of course not.

Mayor Antonio Villaraigosa's appointees on the Board of Public Works voted last week to move ahead with the mail-in ballot plan, which would have asked property owners to hike their storm-water fees from $23 per year for the average parcel to $99 per year in 2013.

The idea was scrapped because it was considered to have a weak chance of passing. The idea came to light last week, and the story provides more details. Board President Cynthia Ruiz will work on the P.R. and it's going to come up again. From the story, it looks like Ruiz was looking for some more money to avoid the layoffs that the Mayor's budget reduction would require. This is one of the more simple examples of the never-ending need for tax dollars that politicians look to property owners for to satisfy the budget shortfalls.

Maybe the spending has been too high over the past years. Maybe the expenses chosen to be made were done without much thought to necessity of the expense or to the most economically beneficial supplier used. A lot of reasons to how the deficits arose can be found, but the politician is over that and they simply need the money ASAP to plug the financial hole in their dike. All the P.R. in this case is with that in mind. They just are regrouping their troops. It's really a war of the spenders versus the property owners- who they apparently and mistakenly view as all being rich.

You need to remember that the politicians, when they "brag" about California or Los Angeles being a leader in this or that, they will leave out the part about how much of an additional load that they cause to be placed financially on the citizens by the trailblazing ways toward a "green" society or to some other progressive goal. One other example of the trend: The state passed a measure for a change in the gasoline that will be used in the future and that is going to make the already expensive California gasoline cost us even more. But, to them, that's o.k. since it's a cleaner environment that's being produced. I dare say that it's at a big cost for that result, and at a cost that the public has not any choice at all in so choosing. Why do we HAVE to be FIRST all the time? Has anyone considered what efforts CHINA is making along with us? THEY should be the ones to act, having the largest impact and having the most damaging methods employed in industry. No one mentions those things.

More of the "revenue" generation moves will be forthcoming by our politicians, something that they do well, second only to their ability to burn up tax dollars with all due haste. When you see the Mayor and others say L.A. is going "green" and all the steps that cost us have to be endured, remember that they are working to continue development of the city, not in the sense of evolving the quality of life to an improved state, but quite the opposite. They continue actions that boost building to put more people in less spaces- "densification" as I and others call it. And as they cram more into smaller spaces, the quality of life is sliding downhill just as fast.

You in Lincoln Heights see that honeycomb construction of housing off I-5 just south of the Pasadena Freeway as a big example of this. All that was done with changes in the parking spaces for the units changed to a lesser number. That's why you have so many cars all over the residential streets where there was ample parking before. As well as the increasing practice of not including parking spaces with residential units but charging like a separate property, you have already made conditions deteriorate, and that falls out to the neighbors of these projects and will continue to be seen as more happens.

If you live near a bus route or rail line- like the Gold Line for the Lincoln Heights example- you can see relaxed treatment of codes to enhance the payday for developers while the rest see the quality of life disappear more with each structure built, no matter how "green" they make it. Remember that "run off rain water" is happening because the ground is disappearing and replaced by concrete and steel, and that doesn't allow the earth to soak up the water.

At the bottom of it all are the Council members who facilitate this movement and do nothing to put the brakes on the strain to our city by their actions. They will get their campaign contributions and they will get to go to dinners and be congratulated as people with vision. All that will be done by the people who really see the awarding of contracts as builders and, as Ed Reyes, CD-1, constantly says, these are jobs for our people. Any job gets him excited, I've noticed. The consequences of deals made or the costs spent to get that job don't much matter to him. Jobs are what count for stats, and any jobs will do.

We have a water shortage. OK, so city council makes regulations cutting down the water that can be used or you pay penalties. If they did not push development, there would be less demand for water. The same in the demand for police and the need for fire department services, both already strained past any financially reasonable limit. Remember the Fire Department overtime story? That's overtime more and more because there's a need that's not going away, and development strains it even more, wouldn't you say? Then WHY don't Council Members and the Mayor see it? Actually, they must, but they can't stop the gravy train now.

Sewers, streets, traffc congestion and the crime that denser living generates instead of a traditional style where more people know their neighbors.

Read the story to see what you have been spared for now, and I will leave things at that for the moment. People have said that politicians are able to talk out of both sides of their mouths at the same time- and you have the example of that in City politics.

Government in Sacramento playing Shell Game at your expense.

"The shell game (also known as Thimblerig, Three shells and a pea, the old army game) is portrayed as a gambling game, but in reality, when a wager for money is made, it is a confidence trick used to perpetrate fraud" (an excerpt from Wikipedia's description).

The state government in California is about as full of it as the L.A. City government, with a whole different cast of characters. Don’t worry if you don’t know them, they really don’t care about that just as long as they (a.) continue to be re-elected, (b.) are able to collect more money from people and businesses in California so that they can cover their bad money management decisions, and, (c.) continue to get paid all the benefits that they can from their elected post.

The other thing about the politicians at all levels you can note again is that they like to handle money in large sums, the larger the better. It looks to me to be an ego thing or some sort of an establishment of a pecking order among politicians- a kind of game: “Who can squeeze the most money out of what you already have” It also makes for increasing the opportunities to waste more money and victimize taxpayers at a higher rate.

Yesterday’s plan was another adventure by the Democratic majority into victimization of taxpayers along the way to the reaching a budget. The L.A. TIMES accurately labels their story , “California Democrats devise plan to hike taxes,” http://www.latimes.com/news/local/la-me-budget18-2008dec18,0,1785472.story The story gives the details and background, as well as views on the moves involved in achieving the plan, and what you can expect to happen now.

And here's a reminder of the size of the pot of money they affect. When they speak of a "billion dollars" that means "a million one-thousand dollar bills."

Or you could look at it like this: Put a THOUSAND millionaires into an arena and that would equal the wealth of ONE billionaire.

The plan that Governor Arnold already said he will veto, was to increase taxes, most of which they called “Fees,” which was done by majority vote by lawmakers instead of two-thirds vote that the State Constitution requires in matters of taxation. The proposed changes were as follows: INCREASE State Sales tax by 3/4%, ADD a “fee” to the 2009 State Income Tax bill for everyone, INCREASE gasoline tax by 13 cents each gallon.

The problem with getting more money was that the taxing power is limited. So what do they do to get around that limitation? Simple. “Let’s call the increased charges ‘FEES’ and you only need to have a simple majority, not a two-thirds vote.” The word they should have used was “disingenuous” because you can call an elephant a cow all day long, but you still won’t be getting any steaks or hamburgers to barbecue from that mislabeling.

Fees, in general, mean some service is done and there is a related price for it, like a "copy fee" for documents or "entrance fee" for city or county beach parking lots. You get the idea. The point here is that you are paying for a service and there is a set price to cover the value of it, so it's an actual FEE.

Now taxes just happen to be unrelated to the benefit you receive and more related to how much money your governing politicians need to pay the bills they were supposed to be managing. The amount is set most commonly in terms of a percent of something, like your income, your gasoline purchase or other unit of measure. Usually, when there is an increased FEE charged, there has been some increase in the real cost of the service.

If you see a cost to you that is going up and the amount of that increase is set by a vote of politicians without any real relation to the COST of doing the service itself, and it's a percentage rate, then you can be fairy certain it is really a TAX.

Well, the Governor’s veto, as the story includes, is not due to the legal terms “shell game” of the legislature, but by the fact that Arnold did not get all he wanted into the bill, including an ability to lay off more state workers which bothers employees unions quite a bit.

Read the story for more of their manueverings. And that’s just at the State level. More misdeeds are happening at the city level- but they are on their break until January when they come back and make the mess worse as they so typically do.