According to the Phoenix Business Journal, Arizona is trying to keep up with California’s tax incentives:

An expanding research and development tax break has made it into budget plans being finalized by the Legislature.

The R&D measure expands Arizona’s tax credits bringing them more in line with other states such as California.

Here is the video of Governor Schwarzenegger’s appearance on “Meet the Press” this past Sunday with Tom Brokaw:








Some key quotes:

“We see other states are struggling, the country is struggling, people are struggling, and I think we see it now all over the world. And I think the key thing for it is to again, bring everyone together and just start right away with an economic stimulus package, which of course is done on a national level, but also each state has the responsibility to do that.”

“Well, first of all, let me just say that it is sad when you see the kind of people that are unemployed, and how tough it is to get a job, and this is why we want to pump in as quickly as possible the billions of dollars to get people back to work, especially in the construction business.”

You can find the whole transcript here.

Phew!  The company that hosts EZ Policy Blog must have had some very serious server malfunctions.  Hopefully all is well at this point.  It’s good to be back.

Breaking news from the Sacramento Bee:

Legislative Analyst Elizabeth Hill announced Thursday that she will retire at the end of the year.

Hill, who served 22 years as the Legislature’s non-partisan budget analyst, was the fourth legislative analyst in the office’s 67-year history. She will be replaced by the Joint Legislative Budget Committee.

From the Associated Press:

At a cost of nearly $42 million, the IRS wants you to know: Your check is almost in the mail.

The Internal Revenue Service is spending the money on letters to alert taxpayers to expect rebate checks as part of the economic stimulus plan.

Here is the full text to the Governor’s 2008 State of the State address delivered earlier today.

A good deal of Board of Equalization work, including several pending cases dealing with Enterprise Zones, is being delayed because of a mold problem. As reported in the Sacramento Bee:

The state Board of Equalization has moved employees from two floors of its downtown high-rise headquarters after finding “a variety of molds” growing in the walls.

A memo sent to BOE staff members Monday said the 22nd and 23rd floors of the 24-story building at 450 N St. are off-limits to everyone but construction workers.

Beth Mills, a spokeswoman for the state Department of General Services, said the mold found last week between two layers of gypsum wallboard includes Stachybotrys chartarum, the “black mold” that has been the subject of numerous legal claims and reports of illness nationwide.

BOE says they cleared the two floors because they discovered the mold during repainting. But an attorney pointed out that the move came less than two weeks after he filed claims on behalf of four BOE employees who say that they’ve been sickened by working in the building, and that BOE management has covered up problems stemming from extensive water leakage into the high-rise.

We are hearing that work papers must be tested for mold before they can leave the building. If that wasn’t bad enough, the building is also hosting some endangered species. The Sacramento Bee, via the California Taxpayer’s Association explains:

Interim Deputy Director David Gau (told) BOE employees not to do anything to disturb the creatures. “If any bats should be seen in the building in the future … do not attempt to capture or harm the bat,” Mr. Gau wrote. “Bats are an endangered species and are protected.” The BOE hired a company called United Bat Control to capture the five flying mammals and, at the same bat-time, to inspect the building for clues as to how they entered. “After inspecting the penthouse, roof, and the 12th floor, the contractor was unable to locate any possible, obvious, point of entry,” Mr. Gau wrote. “The contractor also noticed nothing to indicate that there is a colony of bats living in the building.”

Don’t forget to register for the CAEZ Annual Conference, this year in Modesto from October 24-26. Here is the draft of the agenda.

I am proud to present this new and improved version of EZPolicyBlog.com. The response to the blog since its launch over a year ago has been tremendous.

Please explore the new site, there are a number of valuable new features such as a feed of headlines from major California newspapers and the categorization of blog posts.

Equifax is now in the tax credit business after shareholders of TALX Corporation approved the takeover today.

Don’t forget to sign up to receive daily email updates from EZ Policy Blog. And I still have a few mugs left.

From The Sacramento Bee:

When the fruit trees blossom, the color of green returns two ways to the Sacramento landscape: with spring and the arrival of $60 billion in California tax returns.

I just have a few more of these great, stainless steel EZ Policy Blog travel mugs left. I’d like to give them away to people who can give me a good reason why they would like one.

If you are interested, click this link and fill out the form. At the end of the form, complete the sentence “I would like to have an EZ Policy Blog travel mug because…” I’ll choose from the best responses and send you a mug absolutely free.

The front page of this morning’s Los Angeles Times (Tuesday, Feb. 27) has an extraordinary photograph of some audacious criminal “tagging” a bus window. The photographer managed to take the picture of the perpetrator from the inside of the bus. Why was the photojournalist on the bus?

On Monday, Brewer, Los Angeles Mayor Antonio Villaraigosa and other officials trumpeted a new tactic to ease the fears: locating a bus stop directly behind the school so students don’t have to navigate through a gang-plagued neighborhood.But just as officials were applauding their accomplishment, they got a fresh perspective on campus security problems when their bus got tagged.

While the crowded Metro bus carrying Brewer, Villaraigosa and a crowd of journalists was stopped at Washington Boulevard and Maple Avenue, an unidentified youth believed to be a Santee student dashed up and scrawled graffiti on a side window.

Mayor Villaraigosa was ON THE BUS. No, they didn’t catch the thug. The incident, which the article states took place at the intersection of Washington Boulevard and Maple Avenue, occurred in the Enterprise Zone.

Update 2/28/2007
The Los Angeles Times today provides the update that the vandal above was eventually caught:

Carbino said Tuesday that school officials had identified the youth, spoken to a parent and agreed to meet with them. He described the boy only as “having achievement issues in school.” The boy’s name, which was not made public, was turned over to the Los Angeles County Sheriff’s Department. Sheriff’s Det. Michael Shaw said the boy would likely face a misdemeanor charge of vandalism.Still, the principal assured students in an intercom address Tuesday that he was less interested in punishing the student than in helping him. On Monday, he had said the brazen act appeared to be a “cry for help” from a troubled youth who needs counseling.

Zoner’s brush with infamy occurred as the mayor and superintendent were inaugurating a Metropolitan Transportation Authority bus stop at the school that would eliminate a two-block walk that exposed students to dangers of life in the area. When the bus stopped one block from the school, the youth struck.

I’m not sure if “counseling” is going to be an effective disincentive. But the real question is why was the City’s response to a “two-block walk that exposed students to dangers of life in the area” (described in yesterday’s article as “[navigating] through a gang-plagued neighborhood”) to just move the bus stop?

I’ve installed a new feature on EZ Policy Blog to enable readers to receive updates as email. I know there are a lot of readers out there who just don’t get the chance to check for new posts as often as they should; I’d hate for anyone to miss anything, so be sure to sign up.

Just enter your email address into the box on the right that looks like this:

Then a new window will pop up and ask you to type in a code to confirm your subscription (this is meant to help prevent junk-email):

Then you will receive an email asking you to click on a hyper-link in order to confirm again that you indeed want to receive the emails.

There has been a major brouhaha in Los Angeles over a so-called “living wage” increase for hotel employees near LAX. A compromise has apparently been reached that will avoid a ballot measure on the problem. I noticed the item because the Los Angeles Daily News reported that part of the compromise would include the creation of an enterprise zone around the hotels near the airport. But the Los Angeles Times seems to have a clarification on the terminology:

The new legislation would create an “airport hospitality enhancement zone” that would make the hotels eligible for a variety of public incentives for infrastructure, marketing and neighborhood beautification. By tying the living wage to a zone whose businesses receive public benefits, the city could put the provision on a firmer legal footing.

But it is the fine print of the agreement that could have its greatest effect on the economy of the city. In essence, the legislation would establish a new system for considering expansion of the living wage, with the council having to study the economic effect under an elaborate process that would involve at least two economists, one selected by the chamber of commerce and one by the Los Angeles County Federation of Labor.

The California Budget Project has an interesting new report contending that job growth is much stronger within California’s inland counties versus the coastal counties:

While California has lost hundreds of thousands of manufacturing jobs in recent decades, manufacturing has expanded in inland counties. Between 1990 and 2005, the number of manufacturing jobs in inland counties increased by nearly 50,000 (19.4 percent), reaching more than 300,000 jobs in 2005. In contrast, the number of manufacturing jobs in coastal counties declined by more than half a million (30.8 percent) over the same period. The greatest gains in inland manufacturing jobs occurred in Riverside County, which added 18,400 jobs (55.3 percent), and San Bernardino County, which added 23,900 jobs (53.6 percent).

Update: The Jan 26, 2007 Los Angeles Times is reporting on the CBP study.

I heard some radio news bites that Senate Republicans blocked the increase in the federal minimum wage. But looking into it, there is no news here. What Republicans blocked was passage of the House bill as it originally passed the House, but this was never going to happen. As I reported earlier, the Democratic chairman of the Senate Finance Committee Max Baucus is the one who wants the tax breaks included in the package; that amendment passed out of the committee last week.

Reuters reports that Nancy Pelosi isn’t happy about the vote:

“There is no doubt in my mind that we will get together quite quickly,” said Senate Finance Committee Chairman Max Baucus, a Montana Democrat. But Brendan Daly, an aide to House Speaker Nancy Pelosi, a California Democrat, said: “We should not delay a minimum wage increase another day in order to negotiate a tax package.”

There is no indication here, however, that House Democrats might actually reject the Senate’s additions and thus cause even further delay.

(Economist Thomas Sowell on the minimum wage.)

The next CAEZ quarterly board meeting will be January 31, 2007, 10:00 a.m. to 3:00 p.m. in Sacramento. If you would like any further details, email me at max@ezpolicyblog.com.

From the Los Angeles Business Journal:

Buoyed by seasonal hiring in the retail sector, L.A. Countys jobless rate in November fell to its lowest level in at least 30 years while wage and salary employment in the county edged closer to an all-time high, state figures released Friday show.