Earlier this year Arnold made
a big fuss about how his Jobs Commission would be bringing businesses
back to California. He held a press conference in Long Beach announcing
his Commission; he unveiled the Commission’s billboards in Vegas; he
even had the Commission literally move a business back into the state
in a truck dubbed "Arnold’s Moving Company."
The Commission’s website http://4cajobs.com highlights "A Message from the Governor."
But now that California’s political watchdog agency has asked the Gov’s
Commission to file conflict of interest disclosures because of the
close ties between the Commission and Arnold, the Gov is nowhere to be
found. His staff wouldn’t even return phone calls on why they are
fighting the Fair Political Practice Commission’s request for financial
disclosures from the Jobs Commission, according to the Associated Press.
Why is Arnold suddenly distancing himself from this group that he
originally introduced as "the team that will help me bring jobs back to
California?" Why won’t the governor — who campaigned for more openness
in government — have his Jobs Commission fill out Conflict of Interest
disclosures? What’s he hiding?
Could it be that his Jobs Commission is just a special interest end-run
around the public process for developing state policy? Or maybe we’d
learn that the Commission is really just another one of Arnold’s many
campaign committees out there to burnish his image. Maybe Arnold’s
afraid that if voters figure out how strong a grip the special
interests have over him, they’d pack him into the moving van.
Read the Associated Press story at:
http://sfgate.com/cgi-bin/article.cgi?file=/news/archive/2004/10/21/state1810EDT0113.DTL
