There's more money in the kitty now, but with Democrats holding supermajorities in the Legislature, their watchwords are temperance and caution. Maybe.
From Steve Harmon in the Mercury-News: "Apart from some targeted spending increases, however, lawmakers appear to be sticking to the disciplined approach that Gov. Jerry Brown has championed, even as he plans to announce in his revised budget Tuesday that tax revenues are $4.6 billion more than he predicted in January."
"Indeed, most Democrats seem to be sounding more like their conservative Republican counterparts. Assembly Democrats are even circulating a document titled "Blueprint for a Responsible Budget" that highlights calls for "fiscal responsibility, a stronger middle class and less government red tape."
"Every one of us, those who've been here and were architects of the cuts, would love to see things restored," said Assemblyman Rich Gordon, D-Menlo Park, a member of the budget committee. "But the majority of us in the Democratic Assembly caucus feel we have to be cautious with this money."
With all this talk about changing the California Environmental Quality Act, one would think the debate is over environmental protections. In fact, potential changes to CEQA also would benefit a couple of NBA teams -- the Sacramento Kings and the Golden State Warriors.
From the Chronicle's John Diaz: "It's merely "a happy coincidence" that Sacramento's drive to build a downtown arena to keep the Kings from moving to Seattle would be enhanced by a bill (SB731) that would streamline litigation against urban-infill developments under the California Environmental Quality Act, said state Senate President Pro Tem Darrell Steinberg, D-Sacramento."
"I admit I have touted 731 (to NBA owners) to help Sacramento's case," Steinberg said, explaining that the league was very concerned about the perils of building an arena in a hostile regulatory atmosphere. "It's the community I represent. It's not another California city trying to relocate our team, it's the state of Washington. No apologies there."
"But he added: "It has never been about basketball and the NBA, it's about infill development. It's about a billion dollars of private investment in downtown Sacramento."
Speaking of the Kings, there's a new twist in the tug-of-war with Seattle over the ultimate location of the team, an issue that has obsessed Sacramento for four months.
From Bob Condotta in the Seattle Times: "The current owners of the Sacramento Kings have told their fellow NBA owners that they will not sell the team if a deal with a Seattle group to sell and relocate the team is not approved."
"Instead, the Maloof family has reached agreement on a "backup" plan to sell 20 percent of the team to the Seattle group led by Chris Hansen and Microsoft CEO Steve Ballmer, a league source confirmed to The Seattle Times."
"ESPN.com, which first reported the story, said that Hansen has also offered to pay a $115 million relocation fee that would give each of the 29 other owners roughly $4 million apiece. The group that moved the Sonics to Oklahoma City in 2008 paid just $30 million."
Yet another piece of the pension debate: Are the costs exaggerated in order to put a bigger burden on workers?
From Ed Mendel in Calpensions: "A large technical-worker union that plans a strike at five University of California hospitals next week opposes the next phase of a pension reform, arguing that costs have been overstated to get workers to pay more toward their pensions."
"Public pension systems, such as CalPERS and CalSTRS, are often accused by critics of using overly optimistic investment earnings forecast to keep employer costs low and conceal massive “unsustainable” long-term debt."
"In a contrarian view, an actuarial consultant hired by unions contends the other large state pension system, the UC Retirement Plan, uses conservative methods that keep short-term pension costs high to justify employee rate increases."
Live by by the suit, die by the suit: JP Morgan Chase, which sued thousands of people to collect debts, is itself being sued by the state attorney general over its debt-collection practices.
From the Bee's Phillip Reese: "JP Morgan Chase sued thousands of Sacramento-area customers as part of what California Attorney General Kamala Harris calls a barrage of inadequately researched debt collection cases."
"Harris sued the banking giant Thursday, contending that it haphazardly filed about 100,000 debt collection lawsuits between 2008 and 2011 in California."
"(Chase) cut corners in the name of speed, cost savings, and their own convenience, providing only the thinnest veneer of legitimacy to their lawsuits," the state said in its complaint.
And from our "Strange, Very Strange History of World War II" file comes the tale of the only time that Americans and Germans fought on the same side: They were defending a medieval castle against an attack by SS troops.
"The most extraordinary things about this truly incredible tale of World War II are that it hasn’t been told before in English, and that it hasn’t already been made into a blockbuster Hollywood movie."
"Here are the basic facts: on 5 May 1945 — five days after Hitler’s suicide — three Sherman tanks from the 23rd Tank Battalion of the U.S. 12th Armored Division under the command of Capt. John C. ‘Jack’ Lee Jr., liberated an Austrian castle called Schloss Itter in the Tyrol, a special prison that housed various French VIPs, including the ex-prime ministers Paul Reynaud and Eduard Daladier and former commanders-in-chief Generals Maxime Weygand and Paul Gamelin, amongst several others."
"Yet when the units of the veteran 17th Waffen-SS Panzer Grenadier Division arrived to recapture the castle and execute the prisoners, Lee’s beleaguered and outnumbered men were joined by anti-Nazi German soldiers of the Wehrmacht, as well as some of the extremely feisty wives and girlfriends of the (needless-to-say hitherto bickering) French VIPs, and together they fought off some of the best crack troops of the Third Reich."
Definitely, the movie is coming...