Letter to the Editor:
The Internet and local mass media outlets regularly manipulate the public’s attention. Few industries are better placed to instigate contrived Internet and broadcast “news” than California’s professional politicians.
So, it was a surprise when Assemblyman Nick Schultz, from the 44th District which entails at least nine contiguous cities, including Burbank, voted “Absent” on SB 79. Previously, as our City’s Mayor, he appeared sympathetic to local apartment renters as well as the City’s struggling business community. However, he moved on to higher office, his present-day role in Sacramento, before any important City Council vote was done on the still pending matter of a locally approved “rent cap” and “renoviction protections” for Burbankers. In other words, his work in Burbank was made moot by his own self-serving actions!
Now, as a member of the California State Assembly since November 2024, he has gone on record in October 2025–in the history books–as uninterested in Burbank’s sovereignty maintenance difficulties caused by Sacramento’s increasingly intrusive planning authorities!
What’s the upshot for Schultz and other professional politicians? Broadly, it is the marginalization of an entire industry characterized as Local Professional Politics! As planning powers become more centralized in Sacramento, local political campaign donors will exit the local market, upcoming politicians, for the seat of real power in California. In other words, Schultz, among others, are attenuating the source of local voices through the shriveling of locally financing for vote seekers in local elections. Isn’t that called killing the goose that lays the Golden Eggs?
Richard B. Cathcart
Burbank
