☆ Advice to Mahan: Bring DOGE to San Jose?

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Excessive biz regulations. Unfunded pensions galore. All while core services—and, um, individual liberty—go to the wayside. Should Mayor Mahan propose a local Gov’t Efficiency revival in his State of the City? An Opp Now exclusive with Peter Verbica, Starchild, and Johnny Khamis.

Peter Verbica, District 19 congressional candidate: Mahan might address a number of critical challenges which face the City:

• An untenable unfunded liability (reportedly +\- $4 B!) due to the weight of public employee pension obligations

• The impact of drug addiction, its intersection with homelessness, and the ineffectiveness of enabling policies

• Housing affordability due to CEQA forcing the next generation to move to more business-friendly states

• A Soviet-style approach to low-income housing by the State impacting the independence of local neighborhoods

• The need for DOGE-style review of city programs and processes, including permits, approvals, headcount, and pay-packages

• The continued distraction of radical Left-leaning agendas rather than on critical infrastructure and traditional basic services for taxpayers

Go Deeper:

• Do Bay Area politicians have an “other people’s money problem”?
• Slow progress for a fast train. Musk and the Internet mock CA rail authority’s “$36.96 billion per mile” overpass to nowhere
• SJ City Council's tax-happy posture out of step with vast majority of populace

Starchild, San Francisco Libertarian Party chair: Not holding my breath, but I’d like to see Mayor Mahan express a commitment to individual liberty, economic freedom, and the Constitution, and follow his words with concrete action to help get government off people’s backs.

This could include everything from cutting taxes, regulations, and fees—especially ones that are impediments to building much-needed housing, to address the region’s housing shortage and enable homeless people to afford places to live—to standing with groups like immigrants and transgender people who are under assault by the Trump administration, and refusing to cooperate with federal law enforcement in enforcing unconstitutional laws.

Johnny Khamis, former San Jose councilmember: This is what the mayor said on social media: "We shouldn’t have to wait until June to wait until September to get an idea of what we might do about cost of living in California. Government has to move faster at all levels. We also have to be honest about our limitations: government can’t just fix cost of living. What we can do is create the conditions for greater affordability: cut the red tape that makes it difficult and expensive to build housing, increase incomes by improving public education (60% of our third graders statewide aren’t even on grade level!), invest in infrastructure, stop recommending a new tax/fee/bond/regulation as the answer to every problem, remove the arbitrary state restrictions on investment of virtually every kind, from energy to data centers so we can have growing incomes and greater abundance. We don’t need more studies, we need more leadership."

I would like to know how we can move forward with his statement and if he can get cooperation from other levels of government.

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