We are all familiar with the angst associated with the annual budget.  But this year is a cake walk as General Fund revenues are projected to increase by $325 million, accompanied by unanticipated pension savings of over $50 million.

But the Mayor’s budget that was approved by the Budget and Finance Committee on Wednesday is hardly balanced as the City once again has failed to provide adequate funding for its two severely underfunded pension plans and our failing infrastructure.  It even assumes that the civilian work force will forego a 5.5% raise in January and contribute 10% to the cost of its very generous health care benefit.

But little attention has been paid to the City’s governmental balance sheet, its $7 billion of debt, and its stated net worth of almost $5 billion.

However, when the balance sheet and net worth are adjusted for undisclosed liabilities of almost $30 billion associated with the City’s two severely underfunded pension plans and its massive deferred maintenance budget, the City’s net worth for its governmental activities shrinks to a NEGATIVE $25 billion.

The City also has significant investment in its “business type activities” that have a stated net worth of almost $17 billion after accounting for almost $18 billion of debt. These revenue generating operations consist of the three proprietary departments (Department of Water and Power, the Port of Los Angeles, and Los Angeles World Airports), the Sewer Department, and the Convention Center, the debt laden albatross.

However, the value of the business type activities needs to be dinged by about $4 billion to account for the DWP’s unfunded pension liability (based on realistic investment rate assumptions), thereby reducing the value of these revenue generating assets to $13 billion.

Overall, while the stated net worth on the City’s books is in excess of $21 billion, it is actually a NEGATIVE $13 billion when adjusted for all the hidden liabilities that our Elected Elite and their financial wizards have conveniently hidden from public view as they try to hide the fact that they have squandered the legacy created over the last two centuries.

Unfortunately, the Mayor, the Budget and Finance Committee, the City Council, and the Controller have their heads in the sand, unwilling to address the City’s pressing financial issues and operating inefficiencies in a realistic manner, fearing the wrath of the campaign funding union leadership and praying that the City will not blow up on their watch.

The fear of insolvency is real.  The City has a negative net worth, has over $25 billion of debt not counting the undisclosed liabilities, a budget that is out of control, and timid leadership that is clueless.

Fortunately, we have Mickey Kantor’s recently formed LA 2020 Commission to investigate the City’s financial situation and to make recommendations on how to stabilize and hopefully improve the City’s perilous financial condition.

The grown-ups on the hopefully independent LA 2020 Commission are also charged with the task of how to create jobs, attract investment and industry, and grow the economy.  But that is an academic exercise if the City does not get its act together, balance its budget, fund its pensions, rationalize its work force, and fix its streets and the rest of its infrastructure.

After all, who wants an insolvent partner?

So Mickey, the budget ball is in your court.

(Jack Humphreville writes LA Watchdog for CityWatch. He is the President of the DWP Advocacy Committee,  the Ratepayer Advocate for the Greater Wilshire Neighborhood Council, and a Neighborhood Council Budget Advocate. Humphreville is the publisher of the Recycler Classifieds – www.recycler.com. He can be reached at:lajack@gmail.com. Hear Jack every Tuesday morning at 6:20 on McIntyre in the Morning, KABC Radio 790. Originally posted on CityWatch.)

The scandal eruption currently surrounding the Obama regime was inevitable. The only question was when and what would finally break through the wall erected around the White House by the media. It has long been obvious to conservatives in America that Barack Obama and his fellow travelers are devoid of any honor or integrity and have been immersed in not only socialist/ Marxist philosophy but the belief that they are preordained to govern the masses. Therefore there is but one enemy — their political opposition, who must be defeated at any cost and by any means possible, ethical or otherwise.

This mindset was bound to lead to excesses that even the many sycophants in the mainstream media could not ignore or effectively sweep under the rug. The tacit alliance with a media not only infatuated with the historical nature of an Obama presidency but sympathetic to many of his policies also instilled in Obama and his cabal an air of invincibility. They could, therefore, do anything and get away with it utilizing the most ridiculous of explanations or excuses confident in the knowledge that they would not be pursued by the media.

(Read Full Article)

By Saturday, the expenditures had exceeded $33 million, with outside money playing a dominant role heading into Tuesday’s election. The biggest single donor is Working Californians, a pro-Greuel “super PAC.”

Spending in the hotly contested two-year race for Los Angeles mayor exceeded $33 million on Saturday, breaking previous records as unlimited outside money continued to play a dominant role in Tuesday’s contest.

(Read Full Article)

The California Dream of home ownership and speculative riches in land development died in 2008 in Natomas, the last undeveloped area of Sacramento.  It died not due to the concurrent bursting of the Mortgage Bubble. It died because the Federal government banned new constructionin 2008 until the region’s flood control levees could be further improved.

The levee was dry in Natomas not due to drought, or the economic depression, but to a shortage of pork barrel funding. The levees were dry because the tax levies were dry.

On May 15, 2013, U.S. Sen. Barbara Boxer, D-Calif., head of the Environment and Public Works Committee, cut a bipartisan deal to authorize $1.1 billion in Federal funding to fix the Natomas levees as part of a $12.5 billion package of public works projects around the U.S.  Boxer was able to get bipartisan sponsorship for her bill, S. 601, the Water Resources Development Act of 2013, from Senator David Vitter, R-Louisiana.

How funding died for Water Resources Development Act

The Water Resources Development Act was initially authorized in 1974 as a bi-annual appropriation of funding. But WRDA funding died between 1976 to 1986 when the U.S. House of Representatives, the Senate, and the White House could not agree about local cost sharing and environmental mitigation policies.

In 1986, 300 new funding projects were approved.  But for the first time, local sponsors had to pay a portion of the costs. This flood of projects created such a backlog that the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers still cannot handle them all.  The 2013 WRDA contains provision for a BRAC (military Base Realignment And Closure)-like commission to reduce the backlog of uncompleted projects. However, this new bill is likely to not reduce the backlog but increase it.

The WRDA funding “music died” again from 2008 to 2013, when the U.S. Senate refused to pass a federal budget and the Water Resources Development Act languished. 

Fishing for funding in a pork barrel

The Water Resources Development Act is what is commonly known as a political pork barrel of funding for huge water resource development, navigational, flood protection and environmental projects. Pork barrel projects typically contain funding for political “earmarks” and subsidies for projects that would otherwise be uneconomic on a “user-pays” basis.  By spreading costs over a large base of federal taxpayers, uneconomic projects can be made to look economic.

The 2013 WRDA cut out obvious earmarks of $2 million to repair the roof of the Smithsonian museum damaged from Hurricane Sandy and $7.3 billion to repair the New York transportation system damaged by Sandy. In both state and federal pork barrel legislation, the titles to large public works spending bills and bond issues often contain the word “water” as a way to sell it to voters.

The Boxer-Vitter bill comes along just as California is releasing its plans and environmental studies to “conserve” the Sacramento Delta. The Bay-Delta Conservation Plan is meant to re-engineer the huge Delta.  The hodge-podge of levees, dams, canals, sloughs, sunken island farms and tributary rivers have historically evolved has made the Delta politically unworkable. The Delta is still a vibrant eco-system for predator striped bass and ugly bottom feeder catfish. But it is not considered a politically correct ecosystem for pretty and tiny fish that can be sold to the public as “endangered” —  salmon, smelt, etc.

Illegitimacy of Northern Cal water opposition

Boxer’s bill could not come along at a worse time for Northern California water and environmental interests. This is because the bill takes the mask off of Northern California’s claim that the State’s new Delta Plan is a merely “water grab” by Southern California money interests that will harm fish.  Northerners claim that Southern California cities should eliminate all swimming pools and lawns before they get any more “Northern California water.” But this claim loses its political legitimacy if mostly what are behind the Natomas levee project are real estate, tourist and commercial fishing interests.

California has already spent $618 million on improvements to the Natomas levees from Proposition 1E and Proposition 84, both approved by voters in 2006, to be eligible for matching funds from the U.S. government.

To qualify Natomas for federal flood control funding, the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers and the Federal Emergency Management Agency downgraded the ratings of the Natomas levees. And of course there would be no flood hazard if the undeveloped portions of Natomas were left as is.

The state has completed 18 miles of levees and the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers has to complete 24-miles of levees.  U.S. Senator Dianne Feinstein, D-Calif., had also been seeking nearly $1 billion in funding for Natomas flood control improvements. Feinstein also advocated prohibiting vegetation on or near levees. But that would cost $7 billion to clear vegetation from 2,100 miles of levees, not including ongoing clearing costs.

Drove my Chevy to the tax levy

Rep. Doris Matsui, D-Calif., has been unable for some time to lift a levee repair bill out of the House because of Republican opposition.

So S.601, the Water Infrastructure Finance and Innovation Act of 2013, by Boxer, had to be initiated in the Democratic-controlled Senate through Boxer’s powerful committee. But the Senate Democrats had to buy off Republican opposition with promises of pork barrel funding.

Now that federal government revenues are increasing and the deficit is declining, there is political momentum to reopen the spending floodgates and breach the levees erected against pork barrel funding.

Boxer’s bill now proceeds to the House, where it faces stiff resistance from tax-fighting organizations, pro-business associations, and environmental organizations that oppose its fast-tracking provisions. California Real estate interests, environmental organizations, the building and construction industry, and unions in Central California are anticipated to favor the bill to complete the Natomas flood control improvements.

(Wayne Lusvardi is an investigative reporter for CalWatchdog.)

No sooner had Brown released his May budget revise Tuesday morning than Democrats were complaining that the governor’s plan just didn’t have enough spending.

They didn’t use those exact words, of course, since these are politicians. They each praised the governor for balancing the budget and agreed this is no time for unnecessary spending.

It just happens, however, that each legislator has pet projects that are not only necessary but also key to the future of California and its people.

For state Senate President Pro Tem Darrell Steinberg, it’s mental health programs and dental care for the poor. For Assembly Speaker John Perez, it’s college scholarships for middle-income students and increased court funding. State Sen. Mark Leno wants to “invest in other areas that are critical to our economic growth and social welfare” while state Sen. Leland Yee says, “It is time to undo the damage done to California’s most vulnerable citizens.”

You get the picture.

But here are two words for those Democrats upset with Brown’s budget: Gray Davis.

Heck, let’s make it four words: Arnold Schwarzenegger.

When Davis took office back in 1999, California was in the middle of the dot-com boom, which sent state revenue soaring. The governor and the Democrat-led Legislature, convinced the party would never end, started expensive new programs, boosted pay and pensions and signed off on budget hikes of 15 percent or so.

When the boom went bust, state finances were quickly awash in deficits and red ink and Davis got recalled.

Now Perez and other Democrats are complaining that Brown’s budget and its revenue forecasts are just too pessimistic and suggesting they will be using other, more spending-friendly numbers expected from the Legislative Analyst’s Office when it comes time to negotiate with the governor.

While the Davis years might as well be in the far, fuzzy past when dinosaurs walked the earth in these days of term limits, there are still plenty of legislators who were there when Schwarzenegger was proclaiming himself an eternal optimist.

It showed in his budgets, which too-often depended on a federal money fairy to arrive in Sacramento and sprinkle cash on a deserving California.

You may remember how that worked out.

Pessimism is a good thing when it’s time to draw up a budget. It’s unfailing optimism that gets legislators – and the state – in trouble.

It wouldn’t be a surprise if Brown and his finance team were cherry-picking the budget numbers and trying to cast the gloomiest light possible on California’s future finances. After all, the governor has been in and around state politics for his entire life and knows the unrelenting pressure to spend every available dollar on the unquestioned needs of the state.

“There’s a reason why this budget was always in deficit: Because there’s a lot of needs out there and there’s very articulate advocates,” Brown said at a news conference Tuesday. “And I’m trying to find the right balance between spending and holding the line.”

With the economy healing but not healthy, there’s every chance that the unexpected boost in revenues was a one-off that won’t be repeated next year. And Davis showed the disaster that comes when long-term obligations have to be paid with short-term – and fast disappearing — money.

That’s why one of Brown’s biggest new expenditure in the revised budget is $1 billion to help school districts prepare for implementing the new “common core” standards by buying new books, training teachers and providing the technology needed to improve and refocus education in the state.

It’s a one-time grant made with possibly one-time money.

But programs, even restored ones, have a life span that all too often outlives – and outgrows — the money to pay for them. And Brown has argued that it doesn’t make sense to bring back something like dental care for Medi-Cal clients if you just have to pull it away if the economy turns sour in a year or two.

“This is not the time to break out the champagne,” the governor said. “Anybody who thinks there’s spare change around hasn’t read the budget.”

Democrats are likely to test Brown’s resolve on issue after issue between now and the June 15 budget deadline and it will be interesting to see just how much of his plan the governor can hang onto.

One plus about a pessimistic outlook, though, is that any surprises are happy ones. And Californians are way overdue for a run of good news.

(John Wildermuth is a longtime writer on California politics. Originally posted on Fox and Hounds.)

The current draft of the Senate’s immigration overhaul appears to give some employers a $3,000-a-year incentive to hire a newly legalized immigrant rather than an American citizen in order to avoid the new employer mandates in the health care law.

“I think that is an issue, and I think that it needs to be addressed,” said Sen. John McCain, R-Ariz., a member of the bipartisan group of eight senators who drafted the bill.

(Read Full Article)

The ousted head of the Internal Revenue Service apologized to Congress on Friday for his agency’s tougher treatment of tea party and other conservative groups seeking tax-exempt status. He said they resulted from a misguided effort to handle a flood of applications, not political bias.

“I want to apologize on behalf of the Internal Revenue Service for the mistakes that we made and the poor service we provided,” Steven Miller, who has been acting IRS commissioner, told the House Ways and Means Committee as the panel held Congress’ first hearing on the episode. “The affected organizations and the American public deserve better. Partisanship and even the perception of partisanship have no place at the Internal Revenue Service.”

(Read Full Article)

Legislation passed by the Senate includes a measure requiring gun owners to keep firearms locked up if they live with someone prohibited by law from using guns.

State lawmakers advanced measures related to firearms and violence Thursday, including two introduced after the mass killing at Sandy Hook Elementary School in Connecticut.

(Read Full Article)

Photo courtesy of krazydad/jbum, Flickr.no guns

“California didn’t knowingly vote for centralized power,” said Sen. Lois Wolk, D-Davis, speaking about the passage of Proposition 13 in 1978, as she opened the committee hearing on the bills. Wolk, the committee chairwoman, echoed longtime critics of Prop. 13 that it reduced the ability of local governments to increase taxes, requiring the state government to step in and fund programs.

She said Prop. 13 has been around for more than 30 years, but it was time to change the law which has held property taxes in check since 1978. “Voters today ought to have a say,” she said.

Prop. 13 limited property taxes to 1 percent of the property’s assessed value, plus annual increases of up to 2 percent. When a property changes ownership, the new owner pays 1 percent of the newly assessed value.

Despite that, California by no means is a low-property tax state; it’s ranked 14th highest nationally, according to Jon Coupal, President of the Howard Jarvis Taxpayers Association.

Parcel taxes

Senate Constitutional Amendment 3 by Sen. Mark Leno, D-San Francisco, would lower the threshold for school district per-parcel property taxes from two-thirds to 55 percent. “SCA 3 provides parents, teachers and school districts with more local control and much needed flexibility in raising local education funding,” Leno said at the hearing. “The current two-thirds vote requirements for passage of local parcel tax allows a relatively small minority of voters to block a local education funding proposal that may have support of more than a majority of voters.”

All of the support for Leno’s bill came from other government agencies, associations, schools or public employee unions.

However, Leno did not address the influx of $7 billion in new tax revenue from Proposition 30, passed by voters in November, and sold as the fix-all to dwindling state education funds. Prop. 30 increased the income tax on individuals with income of $250,000 or more, and upped the sales tax on everybody in the state.

“We live in a state with the highest marginal tax rate, the highest sales tax, and we are not a low property tax state,” HJTA’s President Jon Coupal told the committee.

Coupal said SCA 3 is a direct assault on Prop. 13 because it makes it easier to increase property taxes above Prop. 13′s cap of 1 percent.

In a recent poll by the HJTA, more than 53 percent of voters oppose the parcel property tax vote change, and only 35 percent support it. Approximately 11 percent were undecided.

“Moreover, a majority of those against don’t just oppose the change — they oppose it strongly. The intensity of opposition to lowering the voting threshold was nearly double what it was for those in support,” the HJTA reported. “Forty percent of voters ‘definitely’ oppose the idea of lowering the vote requirement, while just 21 percent say they would definitely support the change.”

The HJTA also found that opposition to changing the voting threshold was broad-based: 68 percent of Republicans oppose it, along with nearly 53 percent of Decline-to-State voters, while 44 percent of Democrats also oppose it. Fifty percent of Democrat women also oppose the change.

“This poll mirrors what we’ve been hearing from our members who are Democrats, Republicans and Independents. They oppose any further money grab from politicians — whether from Sacramento or the local level — and they oppose it strongly,” said Coupal. “Prop. 13 was established to protect homeowners from outrageous property tax increases, and that includes parcel taxes, which local politicians now want to expand to pay for their local spending.”

“The tax-and-spend lobby has been emboldened by the passage of Prop. 30 and it’s clear that the $50 billion tax hike didn’t sate their thirst for more money,” said Coupal.

In the survey, the question was posed to voters: “Proposition 13 limits California property taxes to one percent of the taxable value of property. Parcel taxes are property taxes above the regular one percent tax and, under Proposition 13, these parcel taxes require a two-thirds vote of local voters to be passed into law. Do you support or oppose lowering the vote requirement for local parcel taxes from two-thirds to 55 percent?”

Taxes, taxes, taxes

In addition to Leno’s SCA 3, HJTA lists the following bills as major threats to property owners. As with SCA 3, the bills were passed by the Senate Governance and Finance Committee Wednesday:

• SCA 4, Sen. Carol Liu, D-La Canada, and SCA 8, Sen. Ellen Corbett, D-San Leandro: “Lowers the threshold for the imposition, extension or increase of local transportation special taxes from the Proposition 13-mandated two-thirds vote to 55%. Most transportation special tax increases consist of very regressive sales tax hikes. These add to the burden of California taxpayers who already pay the highest state sales tax in the nation.”
• SCA 7, Sen. Lois Wolk, D-Davis: “Lowers the threshold from two-thirds to 55% in order to approve a bond to fund public library facilities. Lowering the threshold for school facilities to 55% has already resulted in billions of dollars of additional property tax payments that otherwise would not have been approved by voters.”
• Senate Constitutional Amendment 9, Sen. Ellen Corbett, D—San Leandro: Lowers the threshold from two-thirds to 55% to increase special taxes to fund community and economic development projects.
• SCA 11, Sen. Loni Hancock, D-Berkeley: “Lowers the threshold to 55% to allow for voters representing ANY local government entity to approve a special tax for ANY purpose. This is far and away the broadest application, and thus the most egregious, of these constitutional amendments.”

(Katy Grimes is a longtime political analyst, writer and journalist, and CalWatchdog’s news reporter. Originally posted on CalWatchdog.)

When the Sixteenth Amendment was ratified 100 years ago, there was no concern that IRS abuses would extend to 501c4 applications for nonprofit status from groups “unfriendly” to the administration in power.  Such MEGO tax code proliferations were never anticipated.  Careful observers of the income tax from the perspective of American ideals and history, such as Frank Chodorov, focused on how income taxation would undermine Americans’ liberty.  As he put it in The Income Tax: Root of all Evil:

The American Revolution…[established] a government based on a new and untried principle, namely, that the government has no power except what the governed have granted it…in 1913, when the government was invested with the power to confiscate private property…this power…put into the hands of the American government a means of liquidating the sovereignty of the citizenry.

While Chodorov’s focus was on how the income tax would undo one of the American Revolution’s central protections of citizen’s property against federal violations, he also saw that enforcement of the income tax would bring evils in its train. And those evils coincide strikingly with the IRS’ targeting of groups whose views are at odds with the current administration.

[T]he Sixteenth Amendment, enacted to increase the government’s revenues, has spawned another police department, another means of forcing the citizen into line.

“The imposition of the [income] tax will…necessitate a swarm of officials with inquisitorial powers…and cannot be fairly imposed¼” -REPRESENTATIVE ROBERT ADAMS, January 26, 1894.

The Internal Revenue Bureau quite sensibly takes the view that every one of us is a potential lawbreaker, as far as the income-tax law is concerned …it must make use of…espionage, deception, and force…

[T]he inevitable consequence…is the use of income taxation to undermine the principles of republican government and to make a mockery of our tradition of freedom.

The Internal Revenue Bureau is a self-operating inquisitorial body. It has the means of harassing, intimidating, and crushing the citizen who falls into its disfavor...Therefore, whenever the Bureau has reason to “get” somebody it has ample means at its disposal.

This is what the late Senator Schall of Minnesota had to say…

“The one glaring governmental agency that constitutes a menace to the citizens is the Income Tax Bureau, which often goes outside the constitutional limitations and frequently harasses citizens by unjust exactions and by the oppressive conduct of its agents…it even dares to attack the citizens… without substantial pretext or cause¼The bureau is inquisitorial… Its forces swarm over the country…Agents, spies and snoopers annoy and plague the citizens…. [it] permits and promotes, if it does not direct, a species of blackmail against the American citizen.”

There have been cases…where citizens who have offended the party in power were suddenly visited by agents of the Bureau and subjected to interrogation and examination. Of course…there is no proof that the citizens’ views prompted these special investigations. It cannot be proved that the purpose was to silence opposition. But the practice is so well known that men of means have scrupulously avoided involvement in movements critical of the Administration, even though privately they are in sympathy with such movements.

if individuals persist in trying to circumvent the political establishment…or if they preach doctrines inimical to the interest of the ruling group, then…freedom of thought must be suppressed.

Despite all the denials, distancing and rhetorical dancing offered by the Obama Administration, it is clear that the IRS employed abusive and intimidating tactics against “Tea Party” and other groups unfriendly to the President’s agenda.  And it is hardly a surprise that the IRS’ power could once again be turned against those who disagree with the executive branch.  But we must remember that such abuses are just one of the evils arising from the income tax and its implementation and enforcement which, in Frank Chodorov’s words “reduced the American citizen to a status of subject.”

(Gary Galles is a professor of economics at Pepperdine University in Malibu.)

When voters passed Proposition 30 last year, they unwittingly accelerated one of the most perilous trends in California governmental finance – an ever-increasing reliance on income taxes from rich people to finance schools and myriad other state and local services.

When Jerry Brown became governor the first time in 1975, the broadly based sales tax was the biggest generator of state revenue.

(Read Full Article)

Even as Gov. Jerry Brown pledges to chip away at the state’s debt, his budget plan will leave California on the hook for billions more in school funding down the line.

I am writing this piece from Moscow, which gives me a different perspective on the U.S. media’s “falling out” with President Obama. Our newly invigorated press appears to have awakened to the fact – post election, of course – that Obama is not the flawless figure they thought him to be. They are beginning to question their narrative of a set-upon president who has done his best to compromise with intractable opponents.  They had interpreted criticism of Obama as partisan and without substance, driven in some cases by racism. Our press may have to rethink this paradigm.

The dam has broken. Credible witnesses testify that the administration knew almost immediately that the Benghazi attack was organized by al Qaeda affiliates and that the “disgusting” video was a convenient excuse consistent with the narrative of the Obama campaign (Al Qaeda is on the run). Previously ignored complaints from conservative groups about enemies’ lists and IRS audits, our press learns, have merit. And worst of all, as far as the press is concerned, is the wiretapping of the  Associated Press. (The AP has been one of the more friendly news services to the Obama administration). This is hitting them where it hurts.

(Read Full Article)

As bad as the political persecution of conservatives by the IRS is—and it is really bad—if the IRS were to replace half of its workforce with tea party members, problems would remain. Let me explain how I know this.

President Obama’s announcement that Acting Commissioner Steven T. Miller would take the fall for the IRS campaign against conservatives brought to mind decade-old memories of my experience with Miller.

In 2002 and 2003, I was a member of the 18-person Advisory Committee on Tax Exempt and Government Entities (They call it the ACT. I guess ACTEGE was too unwieldy or perhaps French-sounding.) We worked with the Exempt Organization Division of the IRS, of which Miller was then head. My first memory was hearing Miller and his colleagues regularly call taxpayers “customers.” I asked how I could shop at a different IRS if I didn’t like the customer service there

(Read Full Article)

House Republicans say they will not overreach on probing the Obama  administration, having learned lessons from investigating the Monica Lewinsky  scandal during the Clinton administration.

GOP leaders will help coordinate various  House investigations into controversies involving the Department of Justice  (DOJ), the Internal Revenue Service (IRS) and the State Department.

But the key Republican lawmaker with jurisdiction on all these matters said  that a rerun of the Clinton-era probes won’t occur.

“These are all different agencies of government. This administration owns the  failures, but not necessarily the direct blame … we’re looking at each  individual case so it’s very different than what you view historically as a  target where it [was] always about President Clinton. This isn’t about President  Obama,” House Oversight and Government Reform Committee Chairman Darrell Issa  (R-Calif.) told The Hill.

(Read Full Article) 

AB 1266 would require a student to be permitted to use the male or female bathrooms and locker rooms in public schools, based on the student’s gender self-identification.

Lawmakers who support this bill claim they are protecting civil rights by creating laws for transgender persons. However, the bathroom is usually a place where there is an expectation of privacy. So the question becomes: Whose civil rights are being protected and whose are being trampled?

Sponsored by the National Center for Lesbian Rights, Equality California, Transgender Law Center and Gay Straight Alliance Network, AB 1266 would also require students be allowed to participate in sports and programs as the gender with which they identify.

While the Los Angeles Unified School District and San Francisco schools have already adopted “Transgender and gender variant students, ensuring equity and nondiscrimination” policies, the LAUSD acknowledged Ammiano’s “legislation cannot anticipate every situation that might occur with respect to transgender and gender variant students.”

Is there a real need for this bill?

In the bill analysis, Ammiano said:

“AB 1266 clarifies California’s student nondiscrimination laws by specifying that all students in K-12 schools must be permitted to participate in school programs, activities, and facilities in accordance with the student’s gender identity. This bill is needed to ensure that transgender students are protected and have the same opportunities to participate and succeed as all other students.

“Although current California law already protects students from discrimination in education based on sex and gender identity, many school districts do not understand and are not presently in compliance with their obligations to treat transgender students the same as all other students in the specific areas addressed by this bill. As a result, some school districts are excluding transgender students from sex-segregated programs, activities and facilities.”

The requirement Ammiano makes of schools to treat transgender students the same as all other students is perplexing. That is exactly what most schools are doing. It’s only when parents and special interest groups sue that these issues escalate.

Washington State problems

Washington State passed such a law in 2006, and has run into a big problem.

“Parents in Washington state became outraged last year when their young daughters, who participate in their local swim club, discovered a male sitting naked in the sauna ‘displaying male genitalia,’” the Christian News Net reported last fall. However, police and school representatives of Evergreen State College alike said there wasn’t anything they could do about the situation because of state law.

The transgender “student” is 45 years old.

Child transgender cases

There is also the case of the first grade transgender girl whose parents allowed their six-year-old son to “come out” as a girl. The parents then filed a complaint with the Colorado Office of Civil Rights alleging a violation of the state’s anti-discrimination law because the elementary school didn’t allow the child to use the girls’ restroom. The school tried to accommodate the girl by allowing her to use the bathroom in the school office, but that wasn’t enough for the parents. With the help of The Transgender Legal Defense & Education Fund, the parents sued, and their child’s intensely personal story has been made very public.

Yet research suggests that many children gradually become “comfortable with their natal gender,” an American Psychiatric Association task force reported in 2011. But the goal of any treatment should be to help the child adjust to its reality, the APA says.

The transgender condition was added to the APA diagnosis manual in 1980. In the newest edition of the manual, the condition has been renamed Gender Dysphoria.

But many parents and students feel this very small group is being moved to the front of the civil rights line.

The Pacific Justice Institute is opposed to Ammiano’s bill, and is fighting hard to kill it. “Foremost among the bill’s many shortcomings is its complete disregard for the privacy of the vast majority of students who are not transgender or gender-questioning,” PJI said. “These students (and their parents) have reasonable expectations that they will not be forced to share intimate spaces with members of the opposite biological and anatomical gender. There are no safeguards whatsoever in the legislation that would allow responsible adults, including coaches, teachers, chaparones, school administrators and others to act in the best interests of all students.”

If AB 1266 is passed and signed into law, girls will be forced to use bathrooms, locker rooms and showers with anatomical males, and boys with anatomical females, because the transgender persons self-identify as a member of the opposite sex.

Legal issues

In the private sector, employers are required to make “reasonable accommodations” for persons of all legally protected categories. One reasonable accommodation for a transgender employee would be exactly what the school offered the Colorado first grader — allowing someone to use a private bathroom instead of the common facilities.

Protecting the privacy interests of minor students more than adults was supported in Doe vs. Clenchy, Maine Superior Court, 2012. The court ruled that a school district did not 
act discriminatorily by assigning a third grade male-to-female transgender student to use a faculty restroom rather than the female student restrooms.

Several federal and state courts have recognized the significant concerns of opposite sex entry into restrooms and other similarly sensitive, usually private facilities. In Etsitty vs. 
Utah Transit Authority, 10th Circuit Court of Appeals, 2007, a male-to-female transsexual was terminated by the Utah Transit Authority for entering women’s public restrooms while on the job because 
the UTA feared liability from patrons. In 
the ensuing unlawful gender discrimination suit, the 10th Circuit ruled in favor of the UTA, stating that requiring employees to use restrooms that match their biological gender is not discriminatory.

In Goins v. West Group, Minnesota Superior Court, 2001, a male-to-female transgender resigned from and then sued 
West Group after not being allowed to use the women’s restroom. The Court held that West Group’s policy of requiring employees to use the restroom assigned to their biological gender, rather than their self-image gender, was not discriminatory, stating that “the traditional and accepted practice in the employment setting is to provide restroom facilities that reflect the cultural preference for restroom designation based on biological gender.”

These legal cases support the common sense understanding that biological and anatomical gender still matter in certain intimate contexts.

Another concern is the insistence that gender should be entirely self-identified and divorced from anatomy.

The bill analysis claimed there was no fiscal component or issue with AB 1266. But if it is passed, expect to see public schools being forced to completely remodel bathrooms and locker room facilities to comply. Doing so also would deplete scarce school funds.

Ammiano’s bill establishes no standard to determine the veracity of a pupil’s claim to a particular gender identity. Without establishing any standard, the determination will be left to the pupil who may claim any gender identity at any time for any reason.

(Katy Grimes is a longtime political analyst, writer and journalist, and CalWatchdog’s news reporter. Originally posted on CalWatchdog.)