California Cities Are BROKE

[00:00:06] If you're a California conservative, a libertarian, a moderate Democrat, believe in common sense, or just the same person, this is the political podcast for you. It's the California Underground Podcast.

[00:00:27] What's going on, everybody? Thanks for tuning into another episode of the California Underground Podcast, the most trusted podcast for all things California. I am your host, Phil. And as always with me, my trusted co host, the best, the fastest researcher in the West. Camille, how are you doing? I'm good. How are you?

[00:00:44] Not bad. It's finally nice here in Southern San Diego or Southern California. I know we always start off by talking about the weather as if there's anything to talk about in California besides the weather, but when it drastically changes, we feel like we have to kind of talk about the weather. We don't have weather. We have to talk about the weather. It's like, we also wouldn't. Yeah, a weather shift is like a big deal in California.

[00:01:08] To go from one week, it was like two weeks ago, it was rainy and cold all week, and now it was in the 70s. It's quite a shift. I know a lot of people are better. It's a lot of people are up here. You know, you're closer to the coast. I'm a little more inland. And so it's actually like when it hits 74 degrees, it's like hot if you're spending the day outside.

[00:01:30] Like my kids just went with my mom to Knott's Berry Farm, and they were all prepared for a cold day. And I'm like, no, you're gonna be hot. You're walking around. You're in the sun. It's hot. It's beautiful. And it means eggs, more eggs for me because my chickens appreciate the warm weather. It's layers weather. And your chickens are contributing to bringing, making eggs great again here in America. Egg prices have gone down, which is exciting. I guess we've, maybe we've gotten over the egg hump.

[00:01:58] Who knows? Gas is going down everywhere except California because why not? California has to keep everything high artificially because that's California for you. Um, I don't know. I haven't been to a gas station in months though. So because I drive, look at you, look at you. I can say the same. My husband always fills up my car for me. Oh, well, that's different. That's when, when you have somebody actually going to do it for you, as opposed to you do not actually have to do it.

[00:02:25] Um, all right. Tonight's episode, we're going to be talking about two big topics. Uh, California insurance commissioner, Ricardo Lara, who is kind of an MIA for most of the wildfires and all this stuff. Also been MIA basically since he started this job in 2019. I'm going to be talking about where he's been. Why was he in Bermuda? What door and all of this, um, we're going to talk about how California cities are absolutely broke and not like just a little broke.

[00:02:55] Like, can you lend me $20 broke? Like, Holy crap. Like we're really, really broke. Um, but we're going to start off with our cringe moment of the week and I have to get this queued up. You're familiar. Deliberally. You're familiar, but we, we talked about this. You're familiar with the get ready with me craze. Correct? Of course. Okay.

[00:03:20] Um, so Sarah Jacobs, if you know, we've, we've talked about her before. She's a San Diego congresswoman. She has this kind of thing where she does a get ready with me and she's all like, Hey, get ready with me while I explain complicated foreign policy and why my grandparents corporation has to drop bombs on people in the middle East.

[00:03:40] Um, and she's been doing this. I guess that's her new, her new thing to try and catch, like get the younger crowd. But, um, yeah, we're going to take a second and watch one of her, her videos and listen to her talk. Uh, all right.

[00:04:01] Let's watch Sarah Jacobs get ready with me and explain. This is a specifically from December of 2024 about the shutdown that was coming up and how it's Donald Trump's fault. So good morning. Congresswoman Jacobs here and I am heading to the Capitol today to figure out how we avoid government shutdown. Get ready with me and I'll explain to you what's going on.

[00:04:25] Well, the Republicans decided because they're in charge of the house to do what's called a continuing resolution. That continuing resolution expires on December 20th. And if we don't pass anything until then, the government will shut down. We had made an agreement with house Republicans to avoid that shutdown.

[00:04:46] And it included some really good things like disaster assistance. It also included some pretty random things at the last minute, Elon Musk and then Donald Trump decided they didn't like this deal. They are not going to be impacted by government shutdown. You know, who will be impacted by government shutdown? Regular Americans. Everyone who's trying to fly home or to see loved ones for the holidays is going to have extra chaos at the airport because TSA agents, they all be working without pay.

[00:05:14] It would mean that our service members would be working over the holidays without pay. It would mean that if any of you have plans to go visit a national park for the holidays, that would be closed. And actually, government shutdowns are really bad for our economy. That just seems like not in the holiday spirit. But unlike House Republicans whose need to answer to their masters, Donald Trump, we only care about doing what's best for the American people. And that's what we're going to keep trying to do. Thanks for getting ready with me.

[00:05:44] You're welcome, Sarah Jacobs. Thank you for explaining what happens when a government shuts down. Sounds great to me. I mean, why, you know, government spends too much money. We've already talked about this. I don't think the government does a good job of any of this anyway. A couple of things. I enjoy that we get to watch her be chauffeured around. So that's a really good way to connect with the youths is to show her being chauffeured around in her secure SUV by her private security. That's really the first thing I noticed.

[00:06:13] Like, get ready with me while I get chauffeured around because I'm a congresswoman and my grandparents are worth billions of dollars. That was the first thing I noticed. Not very. I don't know how that connects with people like everyday people. She threw out the same sort of tired old excuses about a government shutdown. Well, if there's a government shutdown, then you won't get to go to a national park. Okay. Like, is that the big thing is we can't go to national parks?

[00:06:39] Like it could be disappointing if you were planning on camping in Yosemite that weekend, which you can't camp in Yosemite in December. I don't believe because you'd freeze to death. But anyway, it'd be a little cold to be going to national parks, a lot of national parks in December. But it's always the national parks. They often shut down when there's, you know, storms, snow conditions. Right. Especially snowstorms. They don't want to have to come rescue you from. It's always the parks. They always want to hold the parks hostage.

[00:07:07] Their logic is basically, do you want to keep parks open so that we can continue all this waste, fraud, and abuse? Or do you want to miss out on the opportunity to see these parks? You decide. All right. Because if not, these parks may be closed and, you know, we won't be able to continue our waste, fraud, and abuse. So that's, and then the, well, government people won't get paid.

[00:07:36] Well, they get furloughed. They get their money back when they actually do pass the budget and the continuing resolution. But that happens when businesses go under anyway. They don't get paid. There's a difference there. Government gets paid when they reopen because the government never closes. But if a business goes out and goes under, especially around Christmas, I don't hear her crying the blues about a business going under there. But what about your thoughts?

[00:08:03] Any thoughts that you picked out from Sarah Jacobs lecturing about the government shutdown from the back of her chauffeured security car? So the chauffeur part was number one. Second of all, all these videos that people do for social media like hers. So they'll be like, there's the get ready with me. And then there's the, I'm such a busy mom. And here's how I manage my mornings. You freaking had time to set up your phone. Like you secured it somewhere.

[00:08:33] You got the angle. You or a tripod or whatever. And so all that is like, social media is fake. It's just like, obviously you and I are very active on social media, but it is so fake. Every, like, get ready with me. I just happen to be here putting on some makeup and in my chauffeured car where I set up my phone and now I'm going to complain about my job.

[00:09:00] I get to go and like, what, what were her words about? And, you know, blah, blah, blah to Donald Trump. Like, I feel like we've talked about this before with other videos where she complains about her job. And we're like, you don't have to work. One, be grateful you have a job. But two, like, you could get a different job. And three, you don't have to work. We know that you have a trust fund. Like, just shut up. Like, of all people, her, no. You are very set for life. You don't have to do this.

[00:09:31] But I'm sure that Jacob's family is happy that you are in Congress on the, what is it? Maybe she does have to do it. Maybe they're like, you have to keep getting reelected to, you know, so that we get these government contracts and the kickbacks and then we'll keep funding your trust fund. Maybe she does have to do it.

[00:09:47] Well, I mean, it's not a coincidence that Sarah Jacobs, who is the granddaughter of a company, a technology company that gets a ton of defense contracts and billions of dollars from the government, all of a sudden ends up on the committee that determines defense spending. No conflict of interest there? Sure. Why not? But you've got to remember the parks. If you plan on, you know, having Christmas in a park somewhere where it's 20 below, you might not be able to because the government's trying to figure out what we're spending our money on.

[00:10:16] That's Sarah Jacobs' whole thing. And so she does a lot of those. If you like Get Ready With Me, which Sarah Jacobs, you're more than welcome to go follow her. Next, I'm sure she'll be doing it from like her penthouse in D.C. with her butler in her background. So just trying to connect to the youths. That's all Sarah Jacobs is trying to do. Connect with the youths. All right.

[00:10:40] Any other comments about Sarah Jacobs Get Ready With Me before we jump into why our insurance commissioner was in Bermuda? Let's jump into Bermuda, and I really wish we had queued up the Beach Boys song. Maybe we can add that in post. We'll add a little Beach Boys or a little tropical music. All right. So Ricardo Lara has been the insurance commissioner since 2019. I had to double check because I was like, how long has this guy actually been doing this job?

[00:11:10] And I use the term doing the job loosely. He doesn't really do anything. If you know anything about insurance in California, all the insurance companies are fleeing towards the exit. And he really hasn't had an answer. So this past week, there was a hearing in the state Senate, and they wanted him to be there because they were like, what's going on? A special hearing just for him, like just for insurance. They were like, we need to talk about insurance here in California.

[00:11:38] And he was not in California. So let's watch the video real quick. KCRA3 doing some excellent reporting as always. So let's watch that first, and then we'll comment, and then we'll watch the next video where he does follow up. We were curious. Where is Ricardo Lara during all of this? Capital correspondent Ashley Zavala continues our team coverage with what she has learned. Well, Curtis, tonight we're learning California Insurance Commissioner Ricardo Lara has been in Bermuda this week for a conference with the insurance industry.

[00:12:07] It's not clear if he's even back yet. We've reached out to his office several times over the last couple of hours, and we can't get a response. Now, according to Bermuda Insurance Magazine, Ricardo Lara was at this conference that ran from March 10th through the 12th. This was apparently the scheduling conflict that kept him from testifying at this hearing in the state Senate on Wednesday. It was the first hearing at the state capitol on the state's insurance crisis after those Los Angeles wildfires.

[00:12:35] His office was not forthcoming about this publicly in the hearing, and his spokesman, Michael Soller, did not mention Bermuda at all when we reached out for more details that day. Lara had been scheduled to headline that conference since late February. We've asked the lawmaker in charge of Wednesday's hearing, State Senator Susan Rubio and Senate President Pro Tem Mike McGuire, why they would schedule this hearing while he's in Bermuda or if they even knew. No one is yet responding tonight.

[00:13:05] Back to you. Yeah, with these really important decisions playing out, these are important questions to ask. Ashley, thank you. All right. So he was in Bermuda at a summit, which this is a legit thing. I actually looked it up. It is an actual insurance summit. To give you an idea, it's still pretty nice to go and check it out.

[00:13:30] If I can just give you guys an idea of how beautiful this is, the Hamilton Princess, which is where this was being held and where people were staying. So not bad. You know, this is where Ricardo Lara was. He's having his next vacation with his wife right now. Yeah. I'm like, oh, this actually looks pretty nice. They got a beach club, the marina. They got lots of meeting spaces. You got some art. Really nice place.

[00:13:58] I'm sure the state paid for it because it was part of his job duties to go out there and do that. But they had no idea where he was. They scheduled this not knowing that he was going to be gone. So I don't know whose fault it was. I'm going to go with it was Ricardo Lara's fault because he doesn't really do his job anyway. Do you have any comments before we hop into the next video? Yes. Okay. I was looking at fact checking as well.

[00:14:27] Like, I wasn't sure how long Ricardo Lara, I can't pronounce it correctly, had been our insurance commissioner. And he has, if you go and like read his resume on paper, very impressive. That's what always confuses me about so many of these positions where these people, like, it's not like he just like came out of nowhere and was like, I want to get into politics and I'm running for insurance commissioner. He was, I believe, in an assistant position before that.

[00:14:56] He was in the Senate, the state Senate and state assembly before that. So he's got like all kinds of experience that he's come, that he's brought in. And there's even things that he did that I think I agree with during COVID where he was fighting for people to not lose their home insurance and even health insurance in situations. And I was like, yeah, I agree with this.

[00:15:20] I think I didn't go into a deep dive into that, but I was like, just reading some of the things I'm like, yes, this, this sounds, this sounds good. So I'm kind of like sitting here going, how did he drop the ball so badly in this position? And I don't have the answer to that or anything. I mean, we're going to dive in more into what's going on with him, but I just want to tell everyone we're actually an Ashley Zabala fan club now.

[00:15:47] That is what our podcast is dedicated to, because I think even our next subject, which we're not there yet, but I think we've been having more videos of her and we love her. Um, she does fantastic work and, and I'll talk more on her. And in the next video, we'll, we'll keep talking about the insurance commissioner. Yeah. We were joking about it. Cause I was like every, it feels like every story that's worth talking about is all Ashley Zabala. She's all there. She's all there.

[00:16:12] And she's the one going out there and like, she, she's putting out a ton of stories all the time. Um, she's really the only one. I feel like she's just putting out all this stuff. Like I feel like there's other capital correspondents who just aren't doing the job that she does. So yeah, if it seems like we're the Ashley Zabala fan club. Well, it's because she's the only one out there actually doing her job and asking these tough questions. A lot of capital correspondents in Sacramento.

[00:16:38] If you're, if you're active, like on social media, definitely follow her on Instagram. All right, let's hop into this next video. Cause Ricardo Lara did come back. The summit eventually ended. He did have to come back. He had to leave the beach and come back to California. So this was him coming back and testifying in front of the legislature and then answering some questions about where he was and what was he doing.

[00:17:06] California insurance commissioner, Ricardo Lara, testifying at the state Capitol day for the first time after the January Los Angeles wildfires. That hearing focusing on the state's insurance crisis. And I'm sure, you know, there was an urgency to this work as Californians are either paying more and more every year for their coverage or finding they can't even get insurance companies to cover them. KCRE3's capital correspondent, Ashley Zabala covered that hearing. She also had her own questions for the insurance commissioner. So let's check in. And what did he have to say, Ashley?

[00:17:36] Edie, in that hearing today, the insurance commissioner was candid about this crisis. He has a sweeping set of reforms that are going into effect right now that he expects to stabilize California's insurance market. But it's expected to overall make the cost of insurance more expensive. And he owned up to not acting as quickly as he should have to address the market. And he acknowledged there are challenges ahead. I'll start with the biggest question. Why has it taken this long?

[00:18:04] California insurance commissioner Ricardo Lara in the hot seat in front of the state assembly's insurance committee. The campfire was in 2018. Okay. The year before that, we had the Sonoma North Bay fires. So my frustration is with the lack of real urgent action. And now only now are we finally getting these regulations. Could I have moved quicker? Absolutely. But at the fear that I might lose this in court over process.

[00:18:34] Lara's new regulation started a few months ago. But he told lawmakers it will be another year before California's insurance market is stabilized. The new rules are meant to bring insurance companies back to California by allowing them to consider new factors when they set rates. That includes the likelihood of catastrophe and the cost insurance companies pay to insure themselves. In exchange, these companies promised to cover more properties in high wildfire risk areas.

[00:19:01] Lara told lawmakers insurance companies assured him the L.A. wildfires won't affect the reforms. Coming in with 22 percent, which is less than they asked for. Lawmakers asked how he can make sure they won't lead to even more constant, bigger rate hikes. And are we kind of hostages in this situation? Hopefully, the big increases will stabilize after now with the insurance companies getting some market certainty in California through our new reforms.

[00:19:30] But also, you know, I don't have a crystal ball and I don't know what the future holds if we're looking at floods, earthquakes. When I talk to constituents, the two things they want to know is, number one, am I going to get canceled? And number two, how much are my rates going to go up? So help us simplify this and set those expectations. Absolutely. This is going to be painful because we should have done these changes years ago. Right. And so now I'm.

[00:19:59] I got to pause there because he goes, we should have done these changes years ago. You've been in power or you've been elected to this position since 2019. That's six years. That's six years. He was like he won election in 2018. Right. So he. Right. He's then sworn in like early January.

[00:20:24] So you've been in power under this position for six years. And this is not this is not like a new thing. It's not like, oh, gosh, this new thing called wildfires is happening here in California. What is this? What is this? We don't know. You can smell. You can. Well, if it wasn't for her telling us that, you know, after fires, it smells like smoke. We would never know. It smells like smoke after fires.

[00:20:53] But yeah, I heard this. And when I was watching it myself before the episode, I literally shook my head. I was like, you've been here for six years and now you're acting like, well, this should have been done years ago. Right. Six years in and you're just doing this. Didn't do it. How is this my problem? I don't whatever. And I also think they've twice now said something about it could be a year or so before things are stabilized. Stabilized.

[00:21:22] And I want to know what that means. I don't mean the word, the definition of the word stabilized. I know what that means. But what are they talking about? Because I feel like what's going to happen is we're going to have these massive rate hikes and then we all just kind of then like, okay, that happened. And then we don't. And so what? Then the next year we're, it's still at that, that hike. We're still paying that rate.

[00:21:48] But then for a few more years, it's, we don't have rate hikes. I don't know. I don't know what that means. Like that's not stable. That's just means we might just get hit with a bunch of rate hikes. And then maybe we won't for a little bit after that. And we all just adjust as we do to not affording anything anymore. This is why we can't have nice things. Yeah. And he says, well, there's going to be some pain before it gets better.

[00:22:17] And it's like, okay, well, what's that pain? Is the pain we're going to let people back into, or we're going to work with insurance companies to come back into the state, but it's going to be expensive because now we're going to allow them to factor in wildfires and stuff like that and allow them to look at the state overall and go like, y'all got to get better at protecting your state because we're going to insure the hell out of you. So is that what he means? Like, is it a lack of insurance?

[00:22:47] So he's not very clear. This is, of course, Ricardo Lara. Like he's been here for six years. He's just now acting like he's taking strong action. And it's like, could he use this about six years ago before, you know, half of LA was wiped away by wildfires and people don't have insurance. But let's keep going. My insurance bill just came. I just opened it last night. And I know I actually have never really looked through these thoroughly. I'm not going to lie.

[00:23:16] I'm like, my husband takes care of this stuff and it gets done. And so I just started, you know, obviously with all this insurance talk, I just started going through this yesterday. And I didn't fully understand because there's numbers in here of, you know, what's covered. And there's value of what's covered. And I'm like, but my home is worth twice as much as what's covered. Now, I didn't buy it for what it's worth.

[00:23:45] It's worth, its value has gone up. But like we were talking on the last episode with Luke Melcher, and he was talking about all, you know, the increase in everything that, now my home didn't burn down. I'm sitting in and I've lived here for nine years, but I actually am in an area that frequently does have fires.

[00:24:07] And so far, so good, you know, but I am concerned if with all the, the cost of everything, you know, increasing, I'm sitting here going, so if my home burns down, am I even going to be able to rebuild? Like, do I need to get more insurance and pay higher rates anyway? It's something I have to think about. Yeah.

[00:24:34] So first thing when you said that about what Luke said is a lot of these people are in LA are probably going to get half of what their home is valued at. And they might just take that money and go, eh, I'm not going to rebuild because my house was worth twice as much. It's, that's a whole other issue. I mean, if you want to hear more about that, go check out our last episode, but it's, this is a mess.

[00:25:00] And it's almost like someone woke up Ricardo Lara one day off his beach chair in Bermuda was like, Hey buddy, uh, people got questions about like what's going on with insurance here in California. Uh, maybe you should show up to the Capitol and answer some of those questions, but, um, he gets some tougher questions from Ashley's. One more comment. Okay. Just because I wanted to just point out, we are in this insurance crisis as, as displayed there on the screen, California's insurance crisis.

[00:25:30] Um, he advocated for universal healthcare. California can't even get it together. With this, this, this homeowner's insurance issue. We cannot give them more. Like we know you guys just say no to universal healthcare. Like we, we have too many problems that it is. And obviously like they can't even get it together with this. Don't give them one more thing. It's just stop. No.

[00:25:59] Well, not, not even that. And before we go off on tangent two episodes ago, we talked about how Medi-Cal, which is basically slowly trying to become universal health insurance. And it is $3.2 billion in the red as of that episode. And then they asked for another $2.8 billion. So they're $6 billion in the red just to cover bills for this month.

[00:26:29] So like this is not for the rest of the year, folks, this is like the month they have to pay bills. So they're borrowing money from the general fund, which they have to pay back because they're borrowing it from our tax dollars. And if you want an example of why universal healthcare doesn't work, Medi-Cal is a good example. And it's not even universal yet. Like we're still a lot of people in the private sector are still paying a lot of money for health insurance. But anyway, if you want to learn more about that, you can go two episodes ago and listen

[00:26:59] to us talk or me talk about the Medi-Cal crisis. So I'm responsible now. And so I'm going to do these, these changes right now. The last thing I need is to make sure. And I tell them the last thing I need is an insurance company to go and solvent. And then we're on the hook. State lawmakers and the governor also have the ability to make changes that could help. I asked Lara about this after the hearing. Do you need the legislature and governor to do more?

[00:27:29] Maybe not necessarily directly with the regs that you're dealing with, but with, you know, these regulations overall statewide and how we do basically everything here in California. We need, if we don't make, I can make other regulatory changes in the world, but if we don't get the legislature, the governor and all the state leaders, even local governments to focus on mitigation and fire hardening people's homes, we're going to be here in another two, three, four years.

[00:27:57] Now, he urged lawmakers not only to invest in those efforts, but to cut red tape, rethink some of the state's environmental laws, land use and building codes. He said states like Alabama and Louisiana are leading on this. And now California is in a position where it's trying to catch up. And Ashley, we should mention people may remember your coverage last week. There was a hearing like this in the Senate that he missed because he was in Bermuda. Did he address that today? Yeah, actually, he brought it up without even being asked about it on that panel.

[00:28:27] That conference in Bermuda was held by the reinsurance industry. Those are the companies that insure insurance companies. Again, the cost of having that coverage is something insurance companies can now factor into rates here in California under those new reforms. Sometimes reinsurance companies are not regulated by any state. So the commissioner said it was important to engage directly with them. He said he I mean, his his office has noted that 40 percent of those companies are actually located in Bermuda. And so it was important to engage.

[00:28:55] He said he'll go anywhere globally to be able to talk about this issue. As for today, it seems like he came ready to answer. He was he seemed very prepared. Yes. All right. Thank you. Well, probably because he fully expected that he was going to be asked about. Why he was in Bermuda when there was a state Senate hearing and he was not there, which I guess we had to give him credit for being prepared for that, because going back to the homeless audit, remember where they were just like. I don't know.

[00:29:26] Yeah, I do my job. At least he showed up with whether they're BS answers or not, and he's blowing smoke up everyone's butt. At least he showed up with something resembling an answer better than the people at the homeless department who were like, that beats me. I have no idea where all the money went. Who cares? Yeah. I know we were called to testify in front of the legislature, but none of us are ready and none of us prepared a report.

[00:29:54] It's like when you're a little and you didn't show up with your homework or a presentation. The teacher like reamed you out in front of class. That's what happened to those homeless employees. Another episode we covered way back when. Another episode. This stuff is all cyclical. We do stuff that's trending, and by trending I mean it's what's relevant in the news right now. This stuff all becomes cyclical.

[00:30:19] Not to toot our own horn, but we did an episode about abolishing the Department of Education how many months ago? Episode 283. It was a very. Like what, September? It was before the election. It was before the election because he had promised. Trump had promised back then in the election he was going to abolish the Department of Education, and we had Lance Christensen on. And basically we're like, Lance, explain to us how this works if he actually does it. So if you're interested in that. We do have merch to fund public education.

[00:30:49] Is that what it is? We do. We have merch to fund public education. So this is all cyclical. You know, this all connects together. It's not, you know, this doesn't happen in a vacuum. But anyway. All right. Ricardo Lara back. Not really a lot of answers explaining why. Why he was in Bermuda. What his plans are.

[00:31:13] So I had to pull up an article because it's good to remind everybody, like, why are we in this place to begin with? This was an article from Money Wise that as of like a couple days ago, Governor Newsom's banning insurance companies from canceling home coverage on for L.A. wildfire victims. And then it goes on to say, explain, like, why have they dropped so many? Why have so many people dropped their coverage between 2020 and 2022?

[00:31:43] Insurance companies declined to renew more than 2.8 million homeowners policies in California, according to CNN. In recent years, many insurers have scaled back operations or exited the state entirely. These include all state, American National, AmGuard, Nationwide, State Farm, Travelers and Safeco. So NBC's Bay Area response team spoke with Maria Espada, an East Oakland resident insured by Safeco insurance for 12 years. She recently learned that Safeco is dropping her policy.

[00:32:12] Quote, why did they choose me? Because I'm a good customer. I pay regular pay regularly my policy. Espada told reporters. State records show Safeco dropped 75 customers in a spot of zip code and 955 customers across the Bay Area. While Safeco declined to comment on a spot as case, the company cited the Bay Area's significant earthquake risk and resulting home fires as a factor in its decision.

[00:32:35] The rising threats of wildfires, earthquakes and other natural disasters have led many insurance companies to withdraw coverage in large parts of California. This has created a crisis for homeowners statewide, forcing many to go without insurance. According to LendingTree, more than 10% of all California homeowners lack homeowners insurance. So it's because of... You couldn't... I thought you like had to have insurance, homeowners insurance. That's what I was...

[00:33:04] I was under the assumption that when you have a house, when you have a mortgage, I think you have to have... Right? Isn't that the rule? I don't know. I don't own a house. I think if you have a mortgage, it's required by the bank that you have to insure it because they hold the note on it. So they don't want your... They don't want what their... Homes paid off? I mean, we don't know. Just throwing that out there at me because maybe someone that watches this will know. So yeah, I'm confused. I know people are getting dropped.

[00:33:34] But I don't understand how you can be without. I think it's if you're paid off and you hold it. Maybe you don't have... You could probably go without it and not get in trouble. But I know that you can't have a mortgage without insurance. The bank won't allow you to have a mortgage without insurance. Okay.

[00:33:56] So I imagine that 10% is all people who've paid off their homes and probably have the most to lose because they probably bought their homes for like two wooden nickels or something and traded in a horse or something for it. And now it's worth $4 million. Yes. No, just quick story. I have my parents' neighbors. So my parents have lived in their home. They bought it like a year before I was born. So they've owned their home. And of course, it's paid off at this point. They've lived there forever. And they have a neighbor, the same situation. She's like two doors down.

[00:34:26] They bought their home eons ago. I'm sure it's paid off at this point. But I know for a fact that her insurance dropped her. And they dropped her because of the next door neighbor's tree that was encroaching into her property. And she couldn't get the next door neighbors to cut back the tree. And I think that she even went and like was able to cut what was hanging over into... I think it was an avocado tree. Hanging over into her yard.

[00:34:54] And this specific avocado tree is very old because where they live was an avocado grove 100 years ago, 90 years ago. My parents have really old avocado trees on their property that are still producing, but they're like 90 years old. And it was literally an avocado grove. So anyway, she has been like constantly dealing with this for months now, trying to get her home reinsured.

[00:35:21] And yes, it's a fire zone. But at the same time, there's never been a fire in that area my entire life. Like I said, my parents bought their home a year before I was even born. They were evacuated once ever and the fire didn't actually get there. But anyway, she's in a situation where she's fighting to get reinsured. And you would think that people like take my money. I'm trying to pay you.

[00:35:50] I'm trying to give you money. And they won't over a stupid tree, apparently. Yeah. Well, to kind of summarize it simply, why insurance companies are fleeing for the exits in California, it's very simple. Insurance companies have actuaries who look at risks based on what they are insuring. So they have to decide like how much is it going to cost to insure X?

[00:36:16] And they look at all the factors and actuaries are very good at looking at every single risk factor that could possibly potentially hurt your car, your health, your property, all of this stuff, everything you insure. And at a certain point, California, in their infinite wisdom to try and create a utopia where they're fighting for the little man, when in reality, they've now ended up screwing the little man. They put caps on how much a lot of these insurance companies could raise their rates.

[00:36:46] And they said, well, we don't want you raising your rates too much because that hurts the little common man. What then happened was the insurance company said, well, if you're not going to let us insure based on wildfire risk and earthquakes and everything like that, what it actually costs to do this, because we're looking at how badly you're failing at protecting homes from wildfires and earthquakes. Sacramento, this is what you should be doing. They said it's not economically feasible for us to do this anymore. Or ergo, we're going to leave.

[00:37:18] That's basically the nuts and bolts of it. If you prevent an insurance company from charging what they need to properly charge to insure a product, they're going to leave because they're like there's no reason. They want to be in California. Like Luke said on the last episode, they want to be here. They want to insure this stuff. Obviously, they don't want to give up on the market that is California.

[00:37:38] But if it's not economically feasible, they're not going to carry insurance at lower rates, artificially lower rates for all these properties that are worth way more with higher risk value. So this is sort of the situation they've created. And now they have to get out of their own way and be like, they have to backpedal and say, no, just kidding. Now you can actually start to base your rates on wildfire risk and earthquake risk and all that stuff.

[00:38:07] But a lot of harm has already been done because there are so many people who don't have insurance. And then LA wildfires have a lot. Which is a lot. It's a lot of people. It's a lot of homes. May I get philosophical for a moment? Sure. Why not? Because you said, you talked about trying to create this utopia. And that actually is a thing. California is trying to create this universal utopia.

[00:38:36] There is no such thing as a universal utopia. And so I am so tired of them trying to push that on us because it doesn't exist. It never will exist. Everybody's personal idea of what their utopia would be is different. I'm sure if you and I were to sit down and discuss what your ideal world of life looked like, it wouldn't line up with mine. I mean, there would be things that we would agree on, but there would be so many things of like, no, that's not what I want for my life.

[00:39:33] You know? We just have this crazy super majority who is really trying to push and push every limit and every boundary and everything. And I mean, it's just like, and it's bursting and it's breaking and it's drowning us. And so I just, I just really want to clarify that, that I don't hate Democrats because I think sometimes I sound like I do.

[00:39:55] And what my, my hatred or anger or disagreement is literally just with the super majority of Democrats in California that are running the state and ruining the state. So yeah. Another, another product drop. We also have that shirt that says if, if progressive policies work, California would be a utopia. Um, so we're just dropping product knowledge all over you guys. Shout out merch.

[00:40:23] Um, so actually shout out merch, shout out merch, shout out Ashley. Um, no, I, I agree with you. It's people will always, it's so funny how we we've created such a, a bicameral tribalistic society of like, you know, if you're not with us, you must be a knuckle dragging MAGA Trump supporter. And that's always like, that's always the retort of like, Oh, how dare you criticize Democrats? But like, what about Trump at the price of eggs?

[00:40:52] And it's like, bro, we're talking about like, what's going on here in California. Not about Trump and the price of eggs. Like people, it's always the first go to, they always go right to like, you know, why don't you go defend Trump on this random thing that has nothing to do with what your video is talking about. It's like, what, like we weren't, we're not even talking about that. Gavin Newsom just announced that he's like teamed up with America is all in, which is some climate change thing.

[00:41:20] And, and I commented and I'm like, are you, are you still our governor? Like between this and the podcast, you just, hello, you, you have two years left here. And, and immediately I get all these like, okay, Trump sympathizer, Trump apologist. And I'm like, wait, what? What? And also, I mean, these people don't know me and they're just kind of, I don't know, assume whatever, but I criticize Trump constantly.

[00:41:48] So yeah, there's plenty of things that this is about, but on social media, I criticize Trump and his policies. Yeah. That's like, I forget what, there was an Instagram. We're really going down the rabbit hole, but there was somebody on Instagram and they were like, it would have nothing to do with Trump. And they were like, why don't you talk about El Rey Payaso, which is like the clown king and dropping bombs on Israel.

[00:42:14] And I'm like, uh, the video was about like rebuilding in LA or something. Like I had nothing to do with Israel, but you know, okay. I oppose all war. Right. Okay. What else do you want? Like, I think it was like, well, I don't know one of our rules and they would just like, well, why aren't you blah, blah, blah, blah. And it's, well, okay. That had nothing to do with this topic.

[00:42:39] And it's not like we can't care about two things at once, but yes, our podcast is focused on California. But I just always love when someone will be like, you're not a legit podcast unless you talk about this issue. And I'm like, will you please send me your podcast episode about that issue? I will gladly take a look at it. And then that usually kind of silences on me because you're, you're, you're not blogging about it. You're not podcasting about it. Like why are you, why do I have to be?

[00:43:06] You know, the one area that we've really severely dropped the ball in terms of podcasting, we have not reported on chemtrails. What are, what's going on with chemtrails? Why are we not reporting on chemtrails? Um, I don't, stop asking me about chemtrails. I don't know anything about chemtrails, but anyway, that's not the point of today's episode. Um, so yeah, Ricardo Lara came off the beach in, uh, Bermuda. I forgot. I was like Bahamas. All tan. All ready to go.

[00:43:37] Um, does he have answers? I guess we're going to have to wait and see whether, what's going to happen with insurance companies. Whether they do him out. He must term out, right? I think, yeah, I think it's his second term. So he'll be gone 20, 28 is no 26 coming up. Yeah. I think he's coming up on his election. Um, hopefully somebody better will run for insurance commissioner. Somebody who actually shows up and doesn't spend all their time at the Hamilton princess hotel in Bermuda.

[00:44:07] But, um, anyway, so we'll keep an eye out for what's going on with Ricardo Lara, whether the insurance companies and the regulations get. What's going on, everybody? But I want to take a quick minute and talk about today's sponsor for our show, Stopbox. If you're not familiar with Stopbox, it is a firearm retention device. No electronics, no biometrics, nothing like that that can get in the way if there's an oncoming threat. And you need quick and easy access to your firearm.

[00:44:34] It is literally just this finger combination on the top. You push it in, boom. Hear that nice little click. And it is wide open for you for your firearm. Uh, it can fit compact, subcompact, even full-size pistols, which is nice. They have added this new magazine, extra magazine holder. Also very nice. My wife and I both have our own Stopbox because we both know that when there's an oncoming threat in seconds count, you don't want to be fumbling around with electronics or keys or biometrics or anything like that.

[00:45:03] So now listeners of this show can enjoy 10% off their order at Stopbox if they go to stopbox.com forward slash California underground. They'll get that discount. Support the show. You can support Stopbox. And this is proudly made in the good old U.S. of A. So go to stopbox.com forward slash California underground for your discount. And let's get back to the show. Fixed. Obviously a big story here in California, but I think even even bigger story.

[00:45:30] And we've been talking about this pretty regularly because the news has kind of been coming out in drips and drabs. We've talked about it in San Diego. I think we've mentioned it in San Francisco in L.A. But huge news came out just recently that L.A. is facing a $1 billion budget shortfall. So we had originally thought that it was going to be a $300 million budget shortfall.

[00:45:55] It turns out it is going to be closer to $1 billion. And this is in conjunction with the fact that San Francisco is about almost a billion. I think it's like $880 million budget shortfall. San Diego is $300 plus budget. I mean, the numbers keep changing as these come out, but it's around $300 million for San Diego. So I tried to ask Grok how many cities in California are facing a budget deficit.

[00:46:25] Yeah, I also tried. And Grok came back with a weird answer of like, well, technically there's no such thing as a budget deficit because they're all required to have a balanced budget. I'm like, I know, but that's why it's a big issue is because they're spending more than they're taking in. But Grok didn't quite understand that. I think I asked something about the top cities facing a budget deficit. And I believe it was Los Angeles, Oakland, San Francisco, and San Diego.

[00:46:56] And I don't have it in front of me. Otherwise, I could pull up the history real quick. And I don't know if you got my email about the Los Angeles budget deficit. Okay. Because I asked Grok about that to basically break it down for me. Yeah. We'll get into that. I wanted to talk about this article that sometimes I pull articles that I see and I throw them in the show notes. And then they kind of just hover around.

[00:47:22] They just kind of hang around like that one friend at a party that you want to leave so you can turn the lights off and go to bed. But this article was kind of floating around. I was like, oh, this would be a really interesting article to talk about. And then this new news came out about Los Angeles facing a billion dollar shortfall. I was like, oh, this is a perfect, perfect intro to a billion dollars in a billion dollars for for the year. So that's how upset when he is about it. She's upset about the billion dollars. She gets it. She's stressed.

[00:47:52] I don't know what she's stressed about. She just woke up from a nap. Anyway, this is from Cal matters. California cities and schools face big budget gaps. Here's a few options. California state budget is mired in what fiscal authorities call a structural deficit, meaning its revenues cannot keep up with spending mandated by current law, meaning that there's not enough revenue, not enough money coming in. We voted in all these crazy things. And now we don't have money to pay for it.

[00:48:22] Simply put. For several years, Governor Gavin Newsom and the legislature have papered over the chronic gap between income and outgo with gimmicks, including on and off budget borrowing and creative accounting. Plus dips into rainy day funds set aside for emergencies. The state's dilemma has several roots, most notably an erroneously high multi-year revenue forecast in 2022 that led to the belief that there would be immense budget surplus into sharply increased spending.

[00:48:49] The administration later pegged the revenue error at one hundred and sixty five billion dollars over four years. The factor was exasperated by what Patrick dubbed a sluggish economy. Quote, outside of government and health care, the state has added no, no new jobs or no jobs in a year and a half. Patrick noted in November fiscal overview.

[00:49:12] Similarly, the number of Californians who are unemployed is twenty five percent higher than during the strong labor markets of twenty nineteen and twenty twenty two. State government is not alone in facing chronic budget deficits. The state's major cities and many school districts are also feeling the pinch of stagnant revenues and inflation, especially especially with rising worker salaries. At the horrendous Los Angeles wildfires in President Donald Trump's potentially huge federal spending reductions and the budget gaps could be even wider.

[00:49:44] San Francisco's new mayor, Daniel Lurie, says he wants to eliminate one billion dollars in overspending to cover eight hundred and seventy six million dollar budget deficit over the next two years. The error of one time or bandaid solutions is over, Lori told other officials. And this was old news because Mejia, the controller of City L.A., said they overspent by three hundred million. Now we know it's one billion.

[00:50:09] And yeah, so things are not going so well in terms of California overspending over promised. And now they don't have any money for it. So thoughts? I just keep thinking about what Newsom bragged a few years ago about our huge surplus. And I like, was that just a lie? Did that surplus ever even exist? I mean, I don't want to put my tinfoil hat on here.

[00:50:35] He did brag about that around the same time the federal government was throwing out trillions of dollars. That's so it, you know, a lot of people will say, well, no, it didn't. It didn't come from COVID relief. I'm like, maybe not directly. But a ton of money. I mean, we've discussed so many times salaries, you know, state salaries.

[00:51:01] And I haven't like sat down and done a deep dive into comparing a ton of salaries of pre-COVID to now. But it does kind of seem like, you know, maybe this surplus did exist. And it was very exciting. And instead of being like, well, we should save for our kids' college tuition. Let's spend it all, you know, like on new cars. Trips to Bermuda. Yeah, trips to Bermuda.

[00:51:29] No, but like really it just seems like maybe they got a little too excited about this money that not thinking about like this is temporary and going to run out. And they increased salaries on many positions. And put money where maybe we weren't going to see a good investment in it necessarily. I don't know. I'm not saying all the money went and was spent poorly. But it just it's like somebody who gets excited about like maybe a work bonus.

[00:51:57] And instead of thinking long term about it, you go out and you spend it all. And then all of a sudden you realize like the following year, you're like, oh, we can't afford the overhead of this year. And it just kind of feels like that's maybe what. OK, now I have a cat meowing. I'm fostering a stray cat basically that's like walked in the bathroom and now he's mad. Yeah, so you probably heard your talk. So we have like a battle of like a cat and a dog here. We got animals going back and forth.

[00:52:25] Yeah, it's it's I think it was the high point of the budget surplus gave them this idea that they had so much money to spend. And then they promised the world on a whole bunch of things. And now because of California's budget is so it's so incumbent on the fact of like revenues and tax revenues. And whether the economy is doing well or not doing well, revenues start to fall. And that's not a great way to to your point.

[00:52:54] It's not a great way to manage even your own personal budget. Like just because you come into more money doesn't mean you should start flashing more money and start spending lavishly. It means, OK, you're making more money. Maybe do something else with it. But that's sort of appreciated if they had like put more into the general fund, the rainy day fund, whatever, you know, and and maybe obviously there was some issues that I'm sure that the money went to for good things.

[00:53:21] But it you know, because now we're talking about these things with they're pulling all this money out of the general fund. Yes, it's supposed to be repaid. But when is it going to be repaid? How is it going to be repaid? Yeah. You know, six billion for Medi-Cal. Yeah, it's yeah, it's it's I was going to make a point now. I completely forgot about how I was going to make it. No, it's OK. It's something about overspending and getting too crazy with your money. Yeah, they could have sat down and said, like, look, we finally have a huge surplus.

[00:53:50] Why don't we why don't we do all the basics that we're always promising the people of California? Why don't we just hit those basics that, you know, we always are begging you for more taxpayers like, oh, yeah, let's fix all the roads. Let's start there. Let's make really, really nice roads. Let's make it a project. We'll make it a huge project to beautify all the roads and modernize all the roads. No. Let's see if we can put money into beautification of public works. No.

[00:54:20] Let's see if we can figure out where the money should go to fix any part of our crumbling infrastructure. No. And that's where we're at instead of, you know, facing to put it back into like a personal perspective. It's like if you came into a whole bunch of money and the roof on your house was leaking instead of fixing the root, the leak in your roof, you're going. Now, let's go to Bermuda leaks, not going to fix itself.

[00:54:47] But, you know, that's sort of where we're at is we could have fixed a lot of things. Find out it rained and that your house flooded and you spent all your money on Bermuda and now you can't even fix your house and it's worse. I know we're picking on Bermuda a lot, but, you know. I mean, I would choose to go back to Europe, but whatever. Well, Ricardo Lara just loves Bermuda. So.

[00:55:10] So they mentioned in that article about how L.A. was facing $300 million shortfall, but this came out in the Los Angeles Times this week. It says L.A. city budget shortfall grows to nearly $1 billion with layoffs nearly inevitable. It says L.A.'s financial problems exploded into a full blown crisis on Wednesday with the city's top budget official announcing that next year's shortfall is now just shy of $1 billion, making layoffs nearly inevitable.

[00:55:40] Sazbo, Sazbo in his presentation. I don't know how to say his name. Presentation to the council Wednesday. Zabo. Because I know someone who's in the last name. Okay. So. Sazbo in his presentation to the council Wednesday attributed the city's financial woes in part to increase spending on legal payouts, which have ballooned over the last few years. Tax revenues have been coming in much weaker than expected and are expected to soften further in the upcoming budget year, which starts July 1st.

[00:56:08] Pay raises for city employees that are scheduled to go into effect in the coming budget year are expected to consume an additional $250 million. On top of that, Zabo said the city needs to put hundreds of millions into its reserve fund, which has been drained in recent months in an attempt to balance this year's budget. I want to talk about that, that they have scheduled pay raises. Now, I haven't worked for a long time with like outside the home.

[00:56:36] I've been a stay home mom for 19 something years. But I remember working. I didn't have scheduled pay raises. I got raises as I earned them. And our California government employees, I would say mostly, are not earning these raises. Not all. Not all. But mostly.

[00:57:03] And I think it's unfortunate that people are going to be laid off because I don't want anyone to have to lose their job. But when it comes to government, I am like, whatever. See ya. No. Not like that. Not because I don't have compassion. But because we talk about how the government is so overinflated, especially here in California. And if they are going to do these layoffs and continue to work without these employees, then we don't need them. We don't need to be paying these salaries. But scheduled pay raises is so ridiculous to me.

[00:57:31] That is the stupidest thing I've ever heard. Yeah. Most private companies, if they don't have the money to afford raises, then they don't afford raises. And then they go, sorry, we can't do raises this year. But for the government, when they get in these contracts with unions, which, again, we get back to the whole unions have a lot of power here in California.

[00:57:53] In the article, it actually says David Green, president and executive director of service employees, international union, local 721 calls as those remarks, quote, short sighted and irresponsible. Before laying off employees, the city needs to take a hard look at reining and spending on private outside contractors. So it's not the public employees in the public unions fault who demand pay raises every single year for whatever the heck it is. Most of them do.

[00:58:21] It's these greedy private outside contractors who just do the job, whether it's fixing roads or picking up your trash or something like that. It must be those darn private outside. It's definitely not the public unions. It's not the public union. So don't point the finger at us. So. So private sector just can't even if they weren't for the government, none of us would. We'd all we'd all be sitting here just trying to figure out how to even, you know, make a meal, feed ourselves. Right. We wouldn't know how to nuggets.

[00:58:51] Wouldn't wouldn't you know how? We wouldn't have any idea if it wasn't for the government and public employees and public unions telling us how to do all this stuff. Um, my here, who is the controller, said the budget woes were not sparked by an outside crisis, but rather decisions made at City Hall. Quote, we don't have a covid or a global recession. Mejia said this is something that is happening from inside.

[00:59:16] So, uh, speaking of Mejia, he is a younger controller and he's a little bit of an influencer. If you've seen him, he's been on the, been on the socials, been on the ticky tock. Is he doing a Get Ready With Me video every day? I don't know. Maybe he might be doing Get Ready With Me videos, maybe on his personal account, but I don't know about here. He's doing his best to kind of explain a job that's probably really boring to the outside viewer.

[00:59:45] What is going on? So here's him explaining what you should be looking for in 2025 to give people an idea of where L.A. is spending all its money. So. Hey, everyone. This is Kanta Mejia here with your controller 101. So on April 21st, the mayor is going to drop her proposed budget. But I want you all to be prepared before it comes out.

[01:00:09] So that way, when it does come out, you all know what to look for and where your money or your tax dollars are going to go for next fiscal year. So one of the things I want you to look at in the proposed budget when it drops is go to Exhibit G. Now, when you go to Exhibit G, you will be able to see how much a department, mostly departments, will be budgeted to get when it comes to all the spend related to them.

[01:00:34] Whether that's their budget appropriations or their operating budget or their pensions and retirement benefits or their HR benefits or even their liability claims. You can see here we made a bar chart of Exhibit G here. So you can see how much money is going to where. All right. You can also overspend and underspend, too, as we all know. All right. I appreciate it. I appreciate it. I do appreciate that.

[01:01:02] You know, he's trying to offer it in a digestible way that people can understand and people can remember. I think he wants people to care. Like, this is a position. This is what we're doing. And like, yeah, I appreciate that. So good for me here for doing the work to get the word out there. You had done a little bit of research about L.A. and what they're spending money on. So I'll let you talk about that when I take a break. Oh, don't do that.

[01:01:32] I send it to you so that you can. Oh, so I can talk about it. It's in front of me. I basically asked for a breakdown of the Los Angeles City budget 2024 because that goes to, like he just talked about, until July 21st or June 30th, sorry, of 2025. And then the new budget starts for the 25 to 26th fiscal year.

[01:01:55] So let's see, the Los Angeles City budget for 2024 to 2025 was adopted at $12.8 billion, reflecting roughly 2% decrease from the prior year's $13 billion budget. And some little window just popped up in front of me. Okay. So they did a revenue breakdown here. Let me scroll. Let me scroll.

[01:02:23] This city's budget, I'm not going to read everything, don't worry. Lies on a mix of unrestricted revenues. Yada, yada. Okay. So property taxes is the largest chunk that typically they get 35 to 40% of unrestricted revenues. So that's anywhere from like $2.4 to $2.7 billion. And sales taxes is around 15 to 20%. Business taxes is roughly 10 to 15%. And utility users tax is about 10%.

[01:02:52] Then there's like license permit fees. This is all, so this is revenue, just to specify, 10 to 15%. And then there's other sources of like government transfers and stuff like that. So as far as exponential breakdowns go. So it says here, you, and this is probably why people are always talking about like the police.

[01:03:13] Like whenever you talk, I'm sure if you went on like LA Times or LAist on Instagram and saw this story, 60% or 70% of the comments are all like, did we spend it on police? Because a $3.3 billion total. So that's the largest amount out of the entire budget is spent on police. I mean, to be fair, they're LA is kind of going through some stuff right now. They have a new DA. So maybe you guys need some more police. But that is a lot of money.

[01:03:42] And it's the largest line item thing that they're spending money on is the police followed right behind by the fire department, which it's not even close because the fire department is only $814 million. Right. As opposed to $3.3 billion. So police far and away eat up a lot of the contract in Los Angeles. And again, not saying it's good or bad. I'm just saying that's the fact is that it does. Emergency responders, first responders, all that.

[01:04:08] I mean, those things are very important. Homeless programs spending was third, about $950 million. Public works, such as street services, score under $6 million. Recreation and parks, $247 million. And then other departments, which includes stuff like library, city attorney, sanitation, animal services, is $252 million.

[01:04:39] You can touch on it. You have an article for the breakdown. Yeah. I was just looking at it. Okay. So homeless, we've talked about plenty of times. $950 million. That's including this Inside Safe program, which is Karen Bass's program. Poor cat. Poor cat's even upset about the budget deficits here in Los Angeles. He said public services. And the cat is an anarcho-capitalist, too.

[01:05:08] The cat's like, no. But he was a cat. He's a gorgeous cat. I'm literally temporarily fostering this cat anyway. That's not what this podcast is about. Yeah. It also says here, police versus social services. LAPD is 25% share of dwarfs, homelessness and infrastructure. but the one thing that stuck out at me like right at the beginning of this breakdown was that the

[01:05:34] budget for 2024 and 2025 was adopted at 12.8 billion dollars and it was a two percent decrease from the prior years 13 billion dollar budget and they describe this as the bare bones spending plan how in god's name is 12.8 billion dollars the bare bones can someone explain that to me explain

[01:05:58] to me why that's the bare bones the bare bones to me is like okay we have to make sure our city isn't overrun with crime we have firefighters to fight fires and the water turns on and the electricity turns on when you want it to turn on does it well i have a thousand people in the palisades that might disagree with you on that yeah some people in the palisades might disagree about the whole

[01:06:24] turning the water thing on and whether it actually turns on but to me that's you know whoever this councilman blumenfeld is uh we have a big difference of opinion on what bare bones is when it comes to the government and and if he thinks that this is like the bare bones then he's got a long way to go i i would wholly disagree with it it's like i said there's certain things obviously in the city you do

[01:06:50] need i just clarify the city not county city right this is not the overall county which i'm sure the county is probably going through problems as well because the the overriding i guess message you can see here and this is a statewide trend revenues are down for cities and the state overall in california and they're all facing this and now with president trump in office they're not getting bailouts they're

[01:07:18] not getting what they think in terms of you know federal slush funds to try and fix up their budgets like they're gonna have to figure it out um it's it's gonna be tough for them i i was laughing because you know san diego we're facing our own problems down here the first thing i saw this in the article also for la the first thing they always go to is garbage collecting fees of we have to raise garbage

[01:07:48] collecting fees that's how they're gonna raise like hundreds of millions of dollars i guess that's the only thing they can think of parking meters like that's the thing now in san diego they've doubled parking meters it was 125 an hour now it's 250 an hour if that's gonna make a huge difference i don't know but like they don't know the solution to any of their budget problems besides raising money and maybe they can't maybe they can't cut enough to come up with that one billion dollar shortfall

[01:08:16] i would probably disagree that you could probably find a billion dollars of waste in overspending in los angeles but again i'm sure you and i could find that this weekend if we wanted to i'm sure i'm sure we could probably look and be like yeah you don't need this maybe we should start getting rid of this um but that's the only way they know how to fix these budgets is raise money and raise taxes and when they don't have the ability to raise taxes then they got to figure

[01:08:41] out how to really cut down these budgets any thoughts well okay so have you seen um like it's been it was all over x the last couple days the city of los angeles has spent 160 million dollars to collect 100 million in um unpaid parking fees have you seen that no i didn't see that well

[01:09:06] that was all over so there was like a backlog owed of 100 million in unpaid parking tickets and they spent 160 million to collect that 100 million so okay i seems like that that was a waste that was not i feel like maybe 60 million was wasted right there yeah um i i don't want to say like i mean i know that

[01:09:33] they're a little bit crazy with parking tickets and so i don't want to say that all those parking tickets weren't legitimate but at some point you just kind of have to be like you know maybe maybe some of our cops did get a little too excited about parking tickets people maybe like that isn't our biggest issue and if it's going to cost us almost twice as much just to collect on it maybe we

[01:09:58] let that one go a little bit yeah i mean we're facing a billion dollar deficit maybe this is one area we can start to clear that down here's 10 percent is that how it works what is i don't even know a billion dollars like i don't know that number it's 100 million 10 percent what billion i don't even know here's a calculator um not stupid but like a billion dollars is the number i can't

[01:10:24] fathom so yeah it's i i don't think there's enough money you can raise and this might be the hard lesson a lot of these cities and the state has to realize i don't think there's enough money you can raise to fix these shortfalls um you can scrimp and figure out do we charge more for picking up your

[01:10:46] garbage or parking tickets or whatever the bottom line is is like you gotta face the harsh reality of like you spend way too much damn money like that's the bottom line and like la existed before they spent 13 billion dollars in their city budget i'm sure they could find waste you gotta start

[01:11:10] fit you gotta start facing the reality in the mirror which is your budgets are just way overblown i think daniel lurie up in san francisco realizes this i think he's really understood that like you know he's new coming into this he's a new he's not a politician um he's coming into this and going like look we got to start slashing and burning here like we cannot continue to do what we're doing here karen bass on

[01:11:35] the other hand she's been around a little bit so she you know she's trying to play ball and keep everyone happy in the public unions todd gloria doesn't like to make any controversial decisions so he's going to be in trouble as well but the harsh reality is you spend too much damn money and you gotta you gotta cut it somewhere and you gotta cut it fast because we can't afford it so excuse me

[01:12:02] all right any final thoughts on our cities in our state being absolutely broke this actually makes me want to go down the rabbit hole really looking at la spending i'm actually curious now i'm curious too because i want to see how much they're spending on what they're spending on i bet there's programs deep in the budget that you're going to look at and be like probably don't need to spend 12 million dollars on this so um but that may be for another day when we we find more of that stuff

[01:12:31] really for another day all right on that note we'll uh we'll finish there for today uh make sure you like share subscribe review hit that notification bell all those things helps with the algorithm helps people find us if it's on spotify or apple or google make sure you leave a review reviews help us as well gets more people to tune in and the best thing that you can do to support the show that

[01:12:56] is 100 free is share it with somebody else and we'll see you on the next one later thank you for listening to another episode of california underground if you like what you heard remember to subscribe like and review it and follow california underground on social media for updates as to when new episodes are available