From the CDP:
As you may have heard, legislative leaders and the governor have reached a tentative budget deal that the Senate and Assembly could vote on as soon as tomorrow.
One part of the package is a Republican-written bill that would allow offshore drilling in state-controlled waters off California’s coast for the first time since the devastating 1969 oil spill off the Santa Barbara coast. This proposal is an affront to all Californians and we must urge lawmakers to vote it down.
* This sweetheart deal for one oil company was negotiated behind closed doors, without any legislative hearings to allow public comment.
* It strips the State Lands Commission – which has approved or rejected oil leases for the past 150 years – of this power and gives it to a commission controlled by the governor’s administration. This commission would have unlimited authority to rewrite the lease to benefit the oil company.
* The offshore drilling plan does not solve either this year’s budget problems or systemic problems. That’s because its promises of future revenue are not actually written into law.
This Republican offshore drilling scheme endangers California’s environment. It would further pad the pockets of oil executives. And it does virtually nothing to solve the state’s current or future budget problems.
Ironically, the same Republican legislators who support this sweetheart deal are the ones who refused to vote for our Democratic leaders’ proposal for an oil-severance tax like the one levied in every other oil-producing state.
Please call your local lawmaker and urge him or her to say NO to new offshore drilling. Say NO to jeopardizing our coastline for minimal budget help this year or in the future.
Please call them today to protect California’s coastline. Tell them to vote against allowing new offshore oil drilling.
This scheme reminds us again why it’s so important to have a majority-vote budget in California so Republicans cannot hijack the budget process to make bad policy changes that are extraneous to the state budget.
Peace and friendship,
John
1 comment:
"This scheme reminds us again why it’s so important to have a majority-vote budget in California so Republicans cannot hijack the budget process to make bad policy changes that are extraneous to the state budget."
I'm sorry, did you think that the dems over the past decade have made good policy? A decade and a half of liberal spending policy at the hands of a dem governor, a rep governor, and a dem legislature has resulted in a literal implosion of state government. It has gotten to the point where it affects the everyday quality of life in California. And you're answer is to give dems complete carte blanche?
The time comes when one has to pay the piper; and it has to come from somewhere. Obviously California's new aristocracy, the labor elite otherwise known as public employees, are untouchable. And the citizens of CA won't stand for more taxation, so extreme cuts need to be made and new revenue sources utilized.
Its too bad you're little west coast haven where every dem constituency gets everything they want wasn't tenable. Another welfare state bites the dust...
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