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California is in the forefront of the nation’s new health care insurance reforms and is following its own drummer, such as when it decided not to go along with the president’s call to give certain policyholders a year-long delay from being kicked off dubious health insurance plans. But the political forces surrounding the Affordable Care Act in California are profound and are all but certain to play a role in campaigns, including the potential reelection of California’s powerful insurance commissioner and whether Californians will approve a high-stakes initiative to regulate health insurers’ rates. (Above, left to right: Covered California’s Peter Lee, Diana Dooley and Susan Kennedy.) Photo: Rich Pedroncelli/AP)
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From the PPIC survey on how Californians view their government: Most people without health insurance intend to get coverage via the new law, even though skepticism runs deep over the ACA itself. The state’s fiscal condition is a mixed bag — the recession is weakening, but the widening divergence between those with resources and those without is a major concern. Support for Gov. Brown is strong as next year’s elections loom, bust Congress and President Obama are getting poorer reviews.
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More California voters are becoming critical of the job Barack Obama is doing as President. The latest Field Poll finds that while 51% of California voters approve of the President’s overallerformance, a growing proportion (43%) disapprove. This represents an increase of 8 percentage points in the proportion disapproving since July. While the growth in the number of Californians disapproving spans most demographic subgroups, some of the greatest increases have occurred among voter segments who have been among the President’s strongest supporters.
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Buoyed by a soaring stock market and rising home prices, personal income tax receipts are flowing into the state treasury at a rate exceeding all expectations. But one big question looms as lawmakers and the governor consider how to spend the government’s new found riches: what will happen when the music stops?
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California’s TV and film tax incentive appears as popular as ever, despite a rash of negative news coverage of an FBI undercover sting of a state senator in which an industry tax break figured as a lure. “The FBI could have picked any topic from any industry to mount a sting,” Assemblymember Raul Bocanegra, D-Los Angeles, said recently at the Hollywood Chamber of Commerce’s 2nd Annual State of the Industry Conference.(Photo: Stan Rudich)
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The rapidly growing cost of state worker retiree health care, a more generous benefit than received by active state workers, soon could be taking a bigger bite out of the state general fund than pensions. As if trading places, a new forecast expects the annual general fund payment for state worker retiree health care, now $500 million less than the payment for pensions, to be $500 million more than the pension payment in six years.
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CAPITOL WEEKLY INTERVIEW: Assembly Speaker John Pérez would like to stay in the Legislature but he’s got a problem: The law won’t let him. He’s termed out next year under voter-approved term limits and it’s time to move on. Pérez heads into the controller’s race with a $1.5 million campaign war chest. He likely will face fellow Democrat Betty Yee, a former chief deputy in the Finance Department, the office that writes budgets for the governor. Yee currently serves on the state Board of Equalization.
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The governor, who has described himself as tight with a buck, set out to prove it before the UC Regents when he said they needed to bite into a “reality sandwich” if they were thinking of getting more than a 5 percent hike in state funds. The increase Brown granted in this year’s budget was relatively modest but desperately needed to fill some gaps for UC.
