The state reports that it is getting more cash than it expected through January, a good bump that couldn't come at a better time.
From the Bee's Kevin Yamamura: "The state is poised to finish January about $4 billion ahead of what forecasters expected in income taxes, according to the Legislative Analyst's Office – the biggest one-month overage that state fiscal experts can recall in recent memory."
"California also set a single-day record Jan. 16 when the Franchise Tax Board received $2.2 billion in taxes, mostly in payments from the 6 percent of filers who pay quarterly rather than have money deducted from paychecks..."
"With fiscal experts unsure whether the tax burst is real, Gov. Jerry Brown and state lawmakers will be hard-pressed to have serious budget conversations until after his May budget proposal. The extra January money is roughly 4 percent of what the governor expects the state general fund to receive this fiscal year."
Despite the budget woes of many California school districts, the superintendents' pay in some of the hardest-hit district continues to go up.
From Peter Erikson in the Bay Citizen: "In the 2012-13 school year, a record 188 districts – with about 2.6 million students – have landed on a special California Department of Education list designed to sound the alarm on possible financial peril."
"One is the Los Angeles Unified School District, the nation’s second-largest district, which has been buried under a cumulative $2.8 billion deficit for the past five years and has eliminated more than 12,000 teaching and staff positions."
"Los Angeles Unified pays Superintendent John Deasy $384,948 a year, about five times the salary of the average teacher. Deasy turned down an increase in his base pay, from $275,000 to $330,000, when he became superintendent in 2011, but accepted the raise in 2012."
In the Capitol's new political landscape, the key to power may rest with the moderates. In the past, "moderates" often referred to moderate Republicans. Now, however, the tag aptly applies to moderate Democrats.
From Capitol Public Radio's Ben Adler: "The most important members of the California legislature this year might not be the two Democratic leaders - despite the two-thirds supermajorities they hold in each chamber."
"And it almost certainly won't be the Republicans. They've been courted for key votes in recent years but now don't have the numbers to block any bills on their own. The leverage in this legislative session may well lie with a newly-critical voting bloc: moderate Democrats."
Jot down Feb. 17 on your calendar. That's the day the Sierra Club, for the first time in its history, will engage in civil disobedience to fight the Keystone pipeline project.
From the Chronicle's Joe Garofoli: "With Nebraska Gov. Dave Heineman approving the pipeline’s route through his state Tuesday, Sierra Club President Michael Brune hopped onto Facebook to announce that the San Francisco-headquartered Club is “for the first time in our 120-year history….be engaging in peaceful civil disobedience to help stop the dirty and destructive Keystone XL tar sands pipeline. We’re all in!”
"Now, Club officials point out that the Feb. 17 rally is separate from the act of civil disobedience, which they are not releasing information about."
"This is a major symbol of how The Club — and enviros in general — are jacking up pressure on President Obama. Yeah, they say, he gave a major shout-out Monday in his Inaugural Address to taking on climate change, but now is the time to back up the talk with action, they say."
A federal court has rejected a billion-dollar claim from the sprawling Westlands Water District involving farm-belt drainage.
From the Bee's Michael Doyle: "Wading carefully into one of the West’s muddiest controversies, a U.S. Court of Federal Claims judge rejected arguments by Westlands, the nation’s largest water district, that the federal government should pay for failing to build a drainage system that carries away used irrigation water. The failure has vexed farmers and officials alike for several decades and incited multiple lawsuits."
"In her 56-page ruling, U.S. Court of Federal Claims Judge Emily C. Hewitt largely avoided the immense political, agricultural and environmental consequences. Instead, Hewitt reasoned that Westlands’ lawsuit, filed last February, failed for a combination of technical legal reasons, including her court’s limited jurisdiction and the expiration of a six-year statute of limitation."
“All the events that would fix the liability of the government with regard to any breach of the (contracts) ... would have occurred before 2006, outside the limitations period,” Hewitt said at one point."