Tax campaign targets Capitol’s inside game
More often than not, big money players with high-priced lobbyists win the inside game, especially when the stakes reach $1 billion.Lobbyists for New York-based tobacco giant Altria, Detroit-based General
Motors and New York pharmaceutical behemoth Bristol-Myers Squibb converged in the California Capitol in September on the final night of the legislative session.
By midnight when the gavel fell ending the Legislature's work, a bill to close a corporate tax loophole worth more than $1 billion a year to out-of-state corporations was dead.
“It's unbelievable that so many politicians in Sacramento would choose to protect cigarette makers and out-of-state corporations to the detriment of California jobs,” Gov. Jerry Brown, who had pushed for the legislation, said in a statement that night.
Join the Conversation