Free MTA rides for a week?

Mayor Antonio Villaraigosa has asked MTA staff to determine the cost of offering a free transit week on regional bus and rail lines. MTA ridership is up 7.3% versus last year, from 1.5 million in June 2005 to 1.6 million this June. Part of that increase is due to the nearly 20,000 daily boarding on the Orange Line. The mayor notes that a similar program up in the Bay Area caused a 10% spike in ridership during the free week, although the article does not detail whether or not this was sustained. Full story

More of the noxious but legal from Rep. Lewis

Jerry Lewis is back in the papers again. It turns that not only did he and his wife invest in the Security Bank of California, so did his campaign committee, to the tune of $25,000. This came on the same day the Lewises made their $22,000 investment. Full story

CA Assn. of Realtors is afraid of the market

Which means you should be too. California Association of Realtors chief economist, Leslie Appleton-Young, is no longer using the term "soft landing" to describe the market's future. The Association is dropping its sale forecast from a 2% decline in sales this year to a 16.8% decline. The new term: "a fairly significant shakeout".

Of course, irrational exuberance still rules for those hoping to get into the market. The Department of Real Estate reports that in May the number of agents in the state broke 500,000 for the first time, leaving one agent for every 55 adults. Full LA Times story

Of course, for those of us looking to break into the market, it will take some pretty significant price declines to cancel out the comparatively higher interest rates.

In related news, a Diamond Bar man was found guilty in the November 1st shooting of a real estate agent going door to door to drum up business. The shooter claimed he confused the agent with a man he had had a previous altercation with, thinking this justified the use of his shotgun. Full SGV Tribune story

Restaurant Thefts on the rise in the other Valley

According to the LA Times, the San Fernando Valley has seen rapid growth in the number of armed robberies of local eateries, perhaps triggered by tighter bank security measures. Full story

Arnold Says I'm Not Bush

Governor Schwarzenegger drew a clear distinction between himself and President Bush when he directed the state to loan $150 million to the California Institute of Regenerative Medicine, created by voters through Proposition 71 in 2004 (59% yes vote). The CIRM was created to fund stem cell research using bond money, which is currently held up in court. Full story

LA Times Covers Rapid Increase In Rent

We've all seen numerous stories about the continued and rapid increase in the cost of residential property. The Times takes a different tact today, writing about the rapid recent rise in the cost of rental housing. Full story

Contribute, or no referral

Beverly Hills workers' comp attorney Lawrence Stern has landed in the papers for threatening in a June 26 e-mail to not refer his clients to doctors who had failed to contribute at least $2,500 to the election campaign of Phil Angelides. Stern urged the recipients of the e-mail (known as Agreed Medical Examiners) to "stand shoulder to shoulder and to reach into their pockets, if necessary sell their Mercedes or not buy a new one for another year and help us get rid of Arnold". Full story

P3/HOT Update

CW Managing Editor John Howard updates us on public-private partnership and high-occupancy tolling legislation and projects. Particular item of interest: Australian investment firm Macquarie, which has financed toll projects worldwide, has retained Capitol Strategies as its Sacramento lobbyists, despite some public comments by one of its executives at last year's Mobility 21 conference that indicated California was not of interest to the company due to significant legal barriers. Full story

List of players

CW lists the key transportation players in Sacramento. Unfortunately, none of them is from the SGV. Full list

Lowenthal Opines Too

Senator Alan Lowenthal has a goods-movement related editorial in Capitol Weekly as well, outlining some of our problems (worst congestion, high housing pricies, severe under investment in infrastructure, etc.) and listing the good works the legislature has done to correct this deficiency (Prop 1A and the bonds). Lowenthal also puts in a plug for his container fee bill (SB 760) under the make the polluter pay rubric. Full story

Oropeza Editorial

Jenny Oropeza editorializes on the danger of diesel emissions. Full story

Some forward movement on high speed rail?

According to Capitol Weekly, momentum is going in the right direction for the California High-Speed Rail Authority, despite the fact that the appearance of the bond to build it has been delayed until 2008. The Authority received its full request of $14.3 million in the new budget, allowing it to proceed with needed design and planning work. The granting of the request also indicates increased gubernatorial and legislative support for the project. Full story

Investment Guidance In A Time of Crisis?

Slate columnist Daniel Gross writes about a new Citigroup index designed to measure Geopolitical risks. Full story

Irwindale To Be In Court Over Eminent Domain

Tim Simpson claims the city violated his rights when he was forced to relocate for a low-income housing complex. The City previously paid him over $10,000 to relocate from the mobile home he had been living in. Full story

Temple City Approves Mall Development

The City Council approved the developer's tract map, including a controversial 52 condominium units (average size, 900 sq ft). The Piazza Las Tunas mall will include over 100,000 sq ft of retail, specialty retail, and dining. Full story

Singhal Reinstated

Baldwin Park's City Council reinstated chief executive officer Vijay Singhal, taking him off administrative leave. Full story

In a word . . . disgusting

According to the Washington Post, the US Departement of Agriculture came up with an innovate way to relieve the suffering of farmers impacted by a Plains state drought in 2003: they released powdered milk stockpiled as part of a price support program, expecting that recipients would feed the milk to their livestock. Instead, farmers took the powdered milk (about 400 million tons, which would later sell for hundreds of dollars a ton) and sold it to brokers who flooded the domestic and international markets with the stuff. Full story

Maryland "Wal-Mart" Bill Struck Down In Court

Many of you may recall Maryland's bill mandating that employers of 10,000+ (i.e.: Wal-Mart) spend 8% of its payroll on employee healthcare or reimburse the state for any deficiency in its spending. The campaign spawned many copycat bills across the country, including a few here in California. This trend suffered a serious setback today in federal court, when a judge struck the bill down, ruling that it violates a federal law (the Employment Retirement Income Security Act) designed to guarantee universal healthcare requirements for multi-state employers. Full story

Walters Admonishes Sacramento Kings

Dan Walters takes a shot at proposed public financing of a new stadium for the Sacramento Kings. In the draft deal, a 0.25% county sales tax generating $60 million a year would pay for 3/4 of the construction costs, with the ownership group picking up the rest. Walters is right in lampooning the proposed tax structure (" A tax in Sacramento, raising about $60 million a year, would burden the poor to finance entertainment for those affluent enough to afford inflated Kings ticket prices", he writes) for this purpose, while also rightly lambasting the lack of any real public benefit arising from the new stadium.

Given all of the conflicting demands for municipalities and counties, its hard to imagine that the best use for a $60 million/year revenue in Sacramento is subsidized stadium construction (transportation infrastructure anyone?). But even if one offers that subsidizing new business facilities is ideal, I think there's plenty of new businesses you could work to attract that would do a whole lot more for the average citizen in terms of new job opportunities (i.e.: a relocated auto parts plant, for instance, with lots of assembly-line jobs vs. a stadium with a handful of players making most of the money and everyone else taking tickets for minimum wage). And if the goal is to make downtown more attractive, how about increased policing, new homeless shelters, or beautification of existing structures? All of these would do a lot more to make downtown Sacramento more attractive than building a new stadium.

One would hope that Sacramento would be wise enough to resist subsidizing the retailization of urban economies in California with taxpayer dollars. But perhaps not.

Full story

Angelides Attacks Guv On Power Issue

Angelides accused the Governor of playing "Russian roulette" with California's energy supplies by failing to attract new power plants to the state. Personally, I'd have to say I'm a bit skeptical on this one: while fewer than 1,000 MW of capacity are under construction, 30 projects totalling over 11,000 MW of capacity are in the permitting stages. While I'd be more than happy to see some permitting standards relaxed, I doubt that Angelides would seriously endorse the CEQA/permitting changes that would be necessary to expedite power plant construction. Full story