(November 16, 2009) -- The Howard Jarvis Taxpayers Association today (Nov. 16) released its annual report cards on state legislators...and LB area Assemblymembers Bonnie Lowenthal (D., LB) Warren Furutani (D., Carson-LB), and state Senators Alan Lowenthal (D., LB-Paramount) and Rod Wright (LB-Compton-Inglewood) all received "Fs."
The taxpayer watchdog group's grades weren't distributed on a bell-shaped curve; it handed F's to more than half of CA's incumbent state legislators.
HJTA annually analyzes the votes of legislators and assigns them a letter grade. Out of 120 members of the Legislature in 2009, 73 received a grade of "F"...while at the other end of the spectrum, 29 received a grade of "A." (LBReport.com provides a link to full list below.)
The group based its 2009 Legislative Report Card on legislators' votes on 35 bills; it identified some of them in its release...but not all of them. [LBReport.com has emailed the group, requesting the complete list of bills on which it based its grades; we'll add them here as received; check back with this page; click reload or refresh for updated text].
As HJTA has done in previous years, 14 bills were double-weighted, including all six constitutional amendments that attacked Proposition 13 or 218. Also, all legislators voting for February’s $12.6 billion in new income, sales and car taxes received an automatic 20 point deduction.
In a release, the Howard Jarvis Taxpayers Association said lawmakers had to work very hard to fail. "Voting for taxpayers' interests just over 30 percent of the time [based on the group's criteria] earned the lawmaker a better grade.
To view the Howard Jarvis Taxpayers Association's grades for all state lawmakers, click here.
