Free Republic

Assemblyman Roger Niello, who cast a key vote to pass a state budget that raised taxes this year, has been replaced as the GOP's point man on the Assembly Budget Committee. The Fair Oaks Republican will hand his committee post to Assemblyman Jim Nielsen, R-Gerber, who is a freshman in the lower house but served a dozen years in the Senate, leaving in 1990. The switch was made by the Assembly's new Republican leader, Sam Blakeslee of San Luis Obispo, who has stressed that taxes cannot be raised again in tackling a $24.3 billion shortfall.

Assemblyman Roger Niello is the thinking man's Republican. If that sounds like an insult directed at some Republicans, it is. The man from Fair Oaks, a car dealer by trade, is a bit of an outcast in his own party for daring to put duty above orthodoxy. One of six Republican "yes" votes on a torturous state budget that raised taxes, brought needed reforms and prevented California from running out of cash, Niello should be hailed. Instead, he is vilified, as he was on conservative talk radio last week, for believing that statewide insolvency was worse than raising taxes. Over...

State GOP won't pay to support tax backers By Peter Hecht California Republican Party delegates passed a resolution Sunday to deny funding for campaign mailers for six state lawmakers who voted for a budget with tax increases. But the party action, approved in a voice vote at the Republican's state convention in Sacramento, didn't include a formal censure of the lawmakers as originally drafted. The vote may be mostly symbolic because only two of the six targeted legislators are eligible to run for re-election in 2010. But Jon Fleischman, a state party officer and a conservative firebrand who publishes the...

Republicans have been the only party in Sacramento offering real solutions to our budget crisis to get Californians working again. While Democrats play political games, Republicans continue to show that we are prepared to give Californians the responsible budget solutions they deserve. Senate and Assembly Republicans yesterday proposed an honest and realistic budget plan that will allow California to solve its current budget crisis and invest in the priorities of working families, while also addressing the structural budget problems looming on the horizon. The Republican budget plan includes $22 billion in budget solutions – which is more than either the...