November 4, 2010, The
Orange County Register - Capistrano Unified School District is
becoming infamous for recalling school board members and changing
the direction of the board almost every election cycle. Tuesday,
voters in the 52,000-student district spread over seven South
County cities and unincorporated areas recalled two trustees and
defeated another incumbent. The self-titled reform faction will
keep a majority on the seven-member Board of Trustees because two
other of the faction's incumbents retained their seats, and two
others were not up for election this year. While our Editorial
Board would have preferred a different outcome in the Capo recall
and election, it is time for animosities to subside and for rival
community factions to come together to responsibly govern the
district...
October 21, 2010, The
Orange County Register - The recall of elected officials should be
reserved for egregious behavior – abuse of office, fraud, illegal
dealings – not for differences in political ideology or to shift
political power or to stir public ire. In the proposed recall Nov.
2 of two Capistrano Unified School District trustees, the evidence
falls short. We urge voters in the South County school district to
vote against the union-backed recall of two of the seven trustees,
Ken Lopez-Maddox and Mike Winsten, and prevent a possible union
takeover from the board...
October 1, 2010, The
Orange County Register - What principles are likely to guide a
candidate's decision-making when in office? The Register's
Editorial Board asked as many as six questions of 177 Orange County
candidates in 42 races their thinking on subjects such as the
appropriate role of government, taxation, spending, regulating and
more...
September 27, 2010, The
Orange County Register - There are arguments on both sides of
elections that are "at large," which gives everyone a say, or "by
trustee area," which makes a trustee concentrate on his or her
particular area. It depends on a situation which is best.For Capo
Unified, the current system – at-large – definitely is better ...
Although usually not stated so candidly, public-employee unions
know that, by electing particular candidates, they can sit on both
sides of the bargaining table: as employee and employer. That's
exactly what they have done at the state and local levels, with
disastrous results...
June 11, 2010, Steven
Greenhut, Investors Business Daily - A political candidate can take
on the public-employee unions in a nasty street rumble and emerge
bloodied but victorious. That's the message from Tuesday's election
to fill a board of supervisors seat in Orange County, Calif. It was
a race that could have statewide and even national implications
because of the particularly gutsy role the Republican Party played
in directly challenging union power…
June 11, 2010, The Orange
County Register - Orange County voters won the first battle, in
what could be a long war with public employee unions, when they
soundly defeated union-backed candidates in the races for
sheriff-coroner and 4th District supervisor. In both cases, voters
turned down union-backed candidates by ample margins despite
combined county union spending of nearly $1 million...
June 9, 2010, Daily News
- Flores has done more to push LAUSD toward reform in the last
three years than even Villaraigosa and his well-funded Partnership
for Los Angeles Schools. She created the School Choice program that
puts the management of new and low-performing schools up to the
best bidder. The program has the potential to transform the
district by introducing competition and parental power into the
management of local schools. To make make School Choice a reality,
Flores bucked enormous pressure from the district administration,
and teacher and employee unions - special interest groups that
wield such political power that their welfare is often put ahead of
the children they serve. Leaders willing to offer creative
solutions to entrenched problems, and who have the fortitude to
persevere in the face of opposition, are too rare on the Board of
Education and other elected bodies…
May 25, 2010, The Orange
County Register - Education reform advocates should have been
encouraged Monday as the Supreme Court announced its intention to
decide a case where the 9th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals called
into question the constitutionality of a Arizona school-choice tax
credit program that provides mostly disadvantaged students with
scholarships to private schools. Arizona's 13-year-old program is
pretty straightforward. Private donors are given a
dollar-for-dollar state income tax credit for contributions made to
school-tuition organizations. These private, not-for-profit STOs
distribute the money as scholarships to students interested in
attending private schools, some of them secular and some
religious…
May 14, 2010, The Orange
County Register - In the delusional world of the state Capitol,
Wall Street shoulders the blame for pension-fund shortfalls – not
the unions or pension funds or legislators who boosted pensions
retroactively and missed the mark by a country mile on their
investment projections. Taxpayers will have to pick up the slack
for low-performing pension funds. Programs will also need to be
slashed. It says much about the California Legislature that the
dominant party would rather embrace those choices than to pass
modest reforms to excessively generous pensions for future
hires…
May 7, 2010, The Orange
County - Prop. 14 does little to change the status quo. Electoral
districts in California are so gerrymandered – drawn to give
overwhelming advantage to one party – that the eventual winner
often is chosen in the primary, and the general election doesn't
matter. What supporters of Prop. 14 miss is the need for the
electorate to have clear choices among philosophical visions for
California. Creating an open primary this way, thus encouraging
moderate, middle-of-the-road candidates, essentially amounts to
elections between candidates with few policy differences where
personality trumps substance. If you seek to encourage more
candidates like Arnold Schwarzenegger to run for office in
California, vote for Prop. 14. Otherwise we invite you to join us
in opposing Prop. 14.
May 5, 2010, The Orange
County Register - What's worse than being last? California is. In
its annual survey, Chief Executive magazine ranked California 51st,
earning it the distinction of being the worst state in the nation
for business. Even the District of Columbia ranked higher, which
explains the ranking of 51. Despite being the world's
eighth-largest economy and having had the nation's fastest growth
rate in the 1950s and 1960s, California has "become the Venezuela
of North America," according to the magazine.
May 2010, Ron Bennett,
The Fiscal Report - Unions have no legal responsibility for the
solvency of the district; their duty is to their dues paying
members. The School Board has full accountability for the solvency
of the district and must take whatever action is necessary to meet
its legal responsibilities and protect the students and
taxpayers...
April 27, 2010, The
Orange County Register - Teachers strike ends, underlying power
struggle between board and union remains. After three days of an
emotional strike, teachers in the Capistrano Unified School
District returned to work Tuesday after the school district and
teachers union reached a tentative agreement late Monday. An end to
the strike is good for students and parents, but wider issues
involving the district, and the undue influence of teachers unions,
have been further highlighted, at least from this vantage
point.
April 23, 2010, The
Washington Times - Usually it takes a national government to spend
itself into a debt measured in the trillions. Yet it comes as
little surprise that the same profligacy that pervades the
corridors of federal power infects this country's 87,000 state,
county and municipal governments and school districts. By 2013, the
amount of retirement money promised to employees of these public
entities will exceed cash on hand by more than a trillion dollars …
California's public-employee retirement system stands in the most
perilous condition, facing a half-trillion in unfunded
liabilities...
April 23, 2010, Updated
April 25, 2010, The Orange County Register - State employees want
to raise your taxes by $40 billion so they won't be crimped.
California's public employee unions have proposed their solution to
the state's enormous budget deficit. They want taxpayers to cough
up an additional $40 billion to avoid cuts in spending and to
balance the budget for years to come.
February 23, 2010, The
Orange County Register - Story Highlights: Citizen group, with
union support, goes after two trustees who support school choice.
After talking to all parties, this imbroglio seems to us to be more
about political power than job performance issues with the current
board. Parents for Local Control says it is a grass-roots
organization of local citizens concerned about the school district,
but it consists of a relatively small group of residents and the
teachers. They want a "by local area" election method – where
trustees are not elected districtwide but by smaller,
neighborhood-like areas – so they are able to oust certain trustees
and install others.