Congress District 24

Each Candidate received these instructions.

Please return the questionnaire below by Wednesday, January 22, 2020 so we can share your

responses with the taxpayers of San Luis Obispo County before the upcoming March election.

Thank you for your participation.

The Questions are below the Candidate(s) Responses for easy reference.

Andy Caldwell

1. Yes

2. Retain current Prop 13 unified roll.

3. No

4. Yes

5. I oppose these energy conversion laws and forcing people off of natural gas.

6. I support our existing historic private franchise agreements and completely oppose CCAs.

Kenneth Young

Item 1) Yes, Keep Prop 13 as is

I support Prop 13 as is. Howard Jarvis corrected a problem that was haunting the Californian taxpayer and harming the citizens of California. Before 1978, California Property owners suffered from an irrational property tax scheme, which regularly forced the sale or forfeiture of property because the governments insatiable tax and spend policies. Today Californians no longer have to meet the moral hazard of opening up their property tax bill. Property tax liability today is effectively set the day of purchase and does not change at the whim of the

County assessor’s office, nor by market volatility.

Prop 13 set up a model Budget that serves the citizens well when Government officials are honest enough to follow the law that the people wrote. Property tax collected in California now tracks inflation and not some unsustainable multiple that only encourages Bureaucrats and Politicians to spend on projects and programs that only benefit a select few. Changing Proposition 13 would cause instability in household and corporate budgets.

Item 2) No Split Roll

Commercial buildings are where people have jobs, do business, and rent housing. Prop.13 allows these businesses to provide more jobs, goods, and services for the marketplace. Placing a higher tax burden on commercial buildings negatively affects their operations, ultimately passing the cost onto the consumer, the renter, and the job seeker.

Item 3) No, Which projects is the money going to

I do not support the School and facilities bond, because after reading the measure, the Department of General Services has not defined a list of Shovel ready projects. Instead, after approval of the ballot initiative, they will prioritize where the money goes, this is laziness and just a blank check for more of government waste, have the General Service Department present a list of needed infrastructure improvements before raising a Bond. I am for Infrastructure improvements but not for needless resources spent on deciding where to spend the money, also known as bait and switch. Californians spend over $70 Billion on Schools each year. The bureaucrats and politicians fail to put money in much-needed maintenance of existing facilities and fail to deliver a well-developed Capital improvement Program that can then be approved by the taxpayer, or a legislative body. The Department of Education is always trying to convince the voters that they have no money; they don’t have a money problem but an ethics problem. Ballot initiative windfalls that do pass only amount to Budget shifts in the educational budget. These funds do not contribute to education, athletics, nor the arts for our youth or higher learning in our deteriorating universities.

More infrastructure and building better schools is a great idea. Still, this method of delaying maintenance on buildings and crying poverty is not the way for California’s educational system to balance its budget, nor a way of leading by example for the next generation. Which buildings need Seismic Retrofits? These structural retrofits for Seismic forces were completed in the early 1990s. And the buildings built since then are designed to meet California Building Codes to withstand some of the highest seismic forces known to man.

How individuals are educating themselves has radically changed over the last twenty years during the internet age. The educational system needs to grow up and quit asking the taxpayer to pony up, especially if they don’t even know which Infrastructure projects are in greatest need of funding. Using deteriorating Roads and Schools as a way to raise money is the oldest trick in the book, California needs to start spending the money the way the taxpayers intended.

Item No.4 ) Misuse of Public Funds for Ballot Measure Campaigns.

Keep the same legislation but start enforcing existing laws when Public Funds are misused in ballot measure campaigns. Most jurisdictions are within the bounds of the Fair Political Practice Commission guidelines.

Item No.5) Forced Energy use conversion.

I oppose forced energy conversion laws.

Natural gas is the cheapest form of energy that we have available today in California. Heating by electricity is much more expensive, and forcing electrical heating hurts the poor and creates more strain on households and business budgets.

An actual case study of the Economics of Energy is already underway as the most fragile of industries; the restaurant industry is going through the legal system to protect their right to use cheap natural gas. Replacing Cheap energy with Expensive Energy will hurt our economy and job creation going forward. Natural Gas providers are the unsung heroes of our modern quality of life.

Item No.6) Community Choice is the wrong approach, and government take over of existing utilities is just wrong.

I support the existing system, and direct California State Government take over of these utilities would put us back to 2003 all over again and probably much worse.

The Utility users need both experienced and knowledgeable hands at the helm to prevent both power failures and costly experiments in Renewable energy programs – which currently don’t appear to be genuinely cost-effective due to energy storage issues. If we look at the power mix in California, we see that we end up buying energy produced by sources out of state to make up for the disaster of Renewable energy and its intermittency problem. The Los Angeles Department of Water and Power buys power 9 % of its electricity from the Palo Verde Nuclear Generating Plant in Arizona. When California loses its last Nuclear Power plant, Diablo Canyon, in 2024, expect the cost of electricity to go up.

The sad fact of the matter is those in local agencies who are writing the municipal codes to join in on multi-agency efforts to buy power are neither Energy Economist or Engineers, both fields of knowledge needed to understand the dynamics of energy production and distribution. Hence, the utility user once again ends up in a situation where regulation leads to ever-increasing energy costs.

Salud Carbajal (No Response)

1. Proposition 13 was passed by voters in 1978 to protect homeowners and property owners from runaway property taxes. It requires a 2/3ds vote of the local electorate to raise property taxes on residential and commercial properties and limits annual reassessment and adjustment of property taxes to 1% of assessed value. If a property is sold or transferred to new ownership, property may be reassessed to current value. Proposition 13 prevented millions of property owners from losing their homes over the past 4 decades, but remains a target of groups seeking to raise additional revenues for government programs. Proposition 13 also prohibited the Legislature from raising non-property taxes without a 2/3ds vote of the Legislature. Do you support retention of Proposition 13 as is?

2. Split Roll – Currently, 2 proposals are pending for the November 2020 general election ballot, to modify Proposition 13’s protections to eliminate the equal treatment of residential and commercial properties and allow for additional taxes to be imposed on commercial properties by a lower vote threshold than 2/3ds. This has been referred to as “the split roll,” because the measures would retain the current Proposition 13 property tax roll rules for residential homeowners but would allow for a new, different tax roll for commercial properties. State and local governments are awash in revenues from recent raises of income tax rates and the booming economy but face budget pressures from government employee pension benefit obligations and a Legislature that wants to spend additional money to fund new or increased government benefit programs. Do you support retaining the current Proposition 13 unified roll for residential and commercial properties or a new “split roll” to raise government revenues?

3. Proposition 13 on the March 3, 2020 Ballot – There is a different Proposition 13 on the March 3, 2020 Ballot. This measure would authorize $15 billion for school and college facilities in California, including $9 billion for preschool and K-12 schools, $4 billion for universities, and $2 billion for community colleges. California voters have approved nearly $45 billion in bonds for schools, colleges and universities since the year 2000, and this measure would raise the total to $60 billion in two decades. In addition, this measure would nearly double the current limits on bonded indebtedness for local school districts from 1.25% to 2 % of assessed property valuation and similarly for community college districts to raise bonded indebtedness from 2% to 4% of assessed valuation. Do you support raising an additional $15 billion in bond funding for schools and community colleges and nearly doubling their bond debt limits?

4. Public funds for ballot measure campaigns — State law prohibits public officials from spending tax dollars to conduct election campaigns to raise taxes and bonds. However, penalties for violation of these laws are rarely enforced, and although public officials may be personally liable for approving such illegal expenditures, the Fair Political Practices Commission (FPPC) has only recently fined public agencies for breaking these laws, and the Legislature has blocked efforts to give the FPPC and district attorneys greater authority to enforce these laws. Los Angeles County in 2016 spent over $1.5 million on campaign materials to successfully promote a $2 billion homeless housing bond measure. In SLO County, the local transportation agency spent nearly 3/4 of a million dollars on an unsuccessful campaign to promote a 1/2 cent transportation sales tax measure. Do you support tougher legislation and enforcement efforts to enforce current law prohibitions against our government spending taxpayer dollars on such election campaign materials?

5. Efforts to convert from natural gas to electric energy – Recently, the City of SLO considered adopting a law to require all new residential and commercial buildings either to provide for alternate (electric) energy to replace natural gas for heating and cooking or an excise tax to fund promotion of conversion from natural gas heating to electricity alone. The State Legislature also enacted new legislation to promote such local energy conversion efforts. Restaurants and natural gas providers have opposed such conversion laws and recently the state restaurant association sued the City of Berkeley over the law enacted in that city. Do you support or oppose such energy conversion laws, even if their financial and efficient heating effects have not been fully analyzed?

6. Community Choice Electricity and Government Takeover of PG & E – Recently, communities in various parts of the state have voted to participate in multi-agency efforts to act as middleman agencies to provide energy to their communities. These programs are permitted by the state Community Choice Act. The agencies do not produce or own energy production and distribution facilities themselves. Additionally, cities such as San Jose, Berkeley and San Francisco and Governor Newsom have proposed that the state and/or local governments should acquire and operate PG&E’s energy production and distribution systems. The costs and feasibility of such government takeover of energy production are unknown, but in 2003 California state government’s effort to “deregulate” energy prices led to widespread energy price spikes, power outages, and insolvency for the state’s major utilities (PG&E, So Cal Edison and San Diego Gas & Electric). Public power systems have operated more successfully in the Sacramento area (SMUD) and Los Angeles (DWP). Do you support generally the maintenance of California’s existing