The Rose Report

On Thursday, April 12^th, the Rose Institute and the Kravis Leadership Institute jointly sponsored an Athenaeum talk and meeting with Rose and KLI students with Congressman and House Majority Whip Kevin McCarthy.  McCarthy spoke about his experiences in college, his early career and small business ventures, and his ascension to the California State Assembly, where he was the first freshman Republican legislator in state history elected to assume the top Republican post in the California State Assembly.

On April 3rd, the Rose Institute hosted an academic panel at the Marian Miner Cook Athenaeum entitled “As Texas Goes . . . How California Lost Its Edge.” The panel featured Chuck DeVore ’85, a Visiting Senior Scholar for Fiscal Policy at the Texas Public Policy Foundation; Erica Grieder, the southwest correspondent for The Economist; and Eric Helland, the Robert J. Lowe Professor of Economics at Claremont McKenna College. Focusing on policy and demographic differences between California—a state that has witnessed significant economic decline—and Texas, the panel aimed to facilitate a discussion about what California can learn from Texas’s pro-growth policy model.

On Saturday March 25th, Ray Remy (CMC ‘59) was awarded the Rose Institute Award for Excellence in Public Service. The Rose Award acknowledges an individual or organization that demonstrates an enduring commitment to exemplary public service. Honor, integrity, leadership, and a philanthropic spirit are among the defining characteristics of this individual or organization.

Final court-drawn plans that make minimal changes to current Minnesota congressional districts were released February 21, 2012, following nearly a year of stalemate between DFL Governor Mark Dayton and the Republican-held legislature that failed to produce a mutually agreeable map.

Kentucky lawmakers reached an agreement over new congressional districts on Friday February 10.  The original deadline for the map was January 31, but was extended to February 7. When the already delayed candidate filing deadline passed without a new map, the issue was taken to court on February 9 by attorney Scott White of Lexington. The potential for court-created districts likely spurred lawmakers to pass a plan that many remain unhappy with. The new congressional districts were passed in the House by a vote 58-26, and 29-7 in the Senate.

California’s pension problems are well-documented. According to a report by the Stanford Institute for Economic Policy Research, the state’s public employee pension system is underfunded by $535 billion.  $360 billion would have to be injected into pension and health care benefit systems immediately just to give California an 80 percent chance of meeting 80 percent of the obligations in 16 years.

The Voting Rights Act was enacted to make “the promise of the right to vote under the 15th Amendment of the U.S. Constitution a reality, ninety-five years after [its] passage”. Under the Voting Rights Act of 1965, sixteen states are required to submit any redistricting plans to the U.S. Department of Justice for preclearance. Preclearance is defined as the process of seeking U.S. Department of Justice approval for all changes related to voting. Section 5 of the Act requires that the United States Department of Justice or a three-judge panel of the United States District Court for District of Columbia “preclear” any attempt to change “any voting qualification or prerequisite to voting, or standard, practice, or procedure with respect to voting…” in any “covered jurisdiction”.

The Supreme Court decided on January 20th to stay the ruling of the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Fourth Circuit in the matter of West Virginia’s new congressional districts, meaning that upcoming congressional elections will be conducted in the new districts created by West Virginia’s legislature following the 2010 Census.

This year, the Rose Institute is proud to release an online preview of the 2011 Kosmont-Rose Institute Cost of Doing Business Survey Executive Summary. The annual Survey uses comprehensive data about fees, taxes, and economic incentives to analyze the relative cost of doing business in 421 cities across the country. The nine-page Executive Summary preview offers an overview of the Survey’s Highlights, discussion of the 20 Most and Least Expensive Cities, a sample of the Executive Summary’s in-depth individual county analyses and useful GIS maps, and excerpts from its big-picture analysis.

On January 17th, Arizona’s Independent Redistricting Commission (IRC) officially approved the state’s new Congressional districts.  The vote was a major milestone in this year’s particularly tumultuous redistricting process.  The Commission split along party lines, with the two Democratic members supporting the redistricting plan and the two Republican members opposing it.  Independent Chairwoman Colleen Mathis cast her swing vote in favor of the plan, making the final vote 3-2.

On January 20^th, the United States Supreme Court ordered a federal court in Texas to reconsider the maps it had drawn for the state’s legislative districts. The Court unanimously held that the lower court may not have used “appropriate standards” in drawing the new maps. Instead, the lower court had “substituted its own concept of the collective public good for the Texas legislature’s determination of which policies serve the interests of the citizens of Texas.” The Court remanded the case to the district court to draw new maps, this time starting from the plan created by the state legislature last year. Please see this earlier coverage by the Rose Report for a more in-depth analysis on the background of the case.

Attorneys representing Minnesota’s Republican and Democratic-Farmer-Labor (DFL) parties spoke before a special panel of the Minnesota Supreme Court on January 4 in a hearing concerning the placement of Minnesota’s new legislative boundaries.

The Supreme Court on Monday held 70 minutes of argument for three cases on the new state legislative and congressional districts Texas will use in 2012 and beyond. The three cases under review are Perry v. Perez (11-713) on redistricting the state house, Perry v. Davis (11-714) on redistricting the state senate, and Perry v. Perez (11-715) on redistricting the U.S. House. At issue is whether the San Antonio federal court had the authority to impose a new legislative district plan on Texas when the state legislature’s plan had not obtained the “preclearance” required under Section 5 of the 1965 Voting Rights Act. The cases focus on Section 5 issues, but have broader implications for the division of power between state legislatures and federal courts in redistricting.

On January 10th, the California redistricting process moves to the State Supreme Court. The Court faces a question it would undoubtedly prefer to avoid: the degree of involvement it will have in redistricting the State Senate.

[UPDATED 1/2/11]

Washington's state redistricting commission used almost every minute of the time it was allotted, settling on a final state legislative redistricting plan at 9:55 PM on January 1-- just two hours before its midnight deadline. The commission, which had already settled on a congressional map, finally agreed to create Washington's first Hispanic-majority state legislative district, with 54.5% of the total population of the new 15th legislative district centered in Yakima being Latino.

On December 5th, Governor Jerry Brown filed an initiative with the California Attorney General’s office which, if passed, would impose a variety of new taxes with the aim of raising nearly $7 billion in revenue. This money would be dedicated funding for education and public safety programs, which have seen enormous cuts as a result of the recent and ongoing budget crisis. If approved by the voters, the initiative would institute two new taxes. First, individuals making $250,000 or more would pay up to 2% higher income taxes for five years, and second, the state sales tax would be temporarily increased by 0.5%, up to 7.75%, through 2017. 

The Rose Institute is saddened to report that Honorary Board Member Jon Lovelace passed away on November 16.  Mr. Lovelace was among the Rose’s first board members when the Institute was founded in 1973.

On Monday, November 28, the Rose Institute released the 17th annual Kosmont-Rose Institute Cost of Doing Business Survey. The Rose, in partnership with the Los Angeles-based Kosmont Companies, gathers business fees and a variety of tax rates from 421 selected cities across the United States.    Rankings for each city are divided into one of five “Cost Ratings” groups: Very Low Cost ($), Low Cost ($), Average Cost ($$), High Cost ($$), and Very High Cost ($$$).

California can no longer afford its current retirement system. Estimates for unfunded pension liabilities range from 256 billion dollars to almost a trillion dollars. As a result, on October 27, 2011, Governor Jerry Brown introduced his 12-point plan to change pension and retiree health benefits for California’s state and local government workers. These changes mainly affect future employees by shifting more of the financial risk for pensions from public employers to the workers.

As Rose Institute Alumnus and recently published author, Patrick Atwater (Claremont McKenna College ’10), notes in his new book, A New California Dream, California is filled with contradictions. The state has the largest economic output ($1.9 trillion as of 2010) of the 50 states but ranks 7^th for income inequality. It has the most stringent environmental laws but eight of the ten most polluted cities. Perhaps most importantly, observes Atwater, California has a highly-publicized democratic initiative process but arguably the most dysfunctional state government in the United States. The problem of ineffective government seems so systemic in California that calls for a state constitutional convention in recent years are gaining support.