"Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger
wants to boost spending on his personal office next year by more than 5 percent, even as a lean budget prompts him to limit welfare grants and ask college students to pay higher tuition," reports Kate Folmar in the Merc News.
"For the second year running, the Republican governor seeks to peg spending on his 185-person staff to an inflationary formula that dictates spending for the state Legislature and some courts.
"And, Schwarzenegger's budget simultaneously expects others - notably welfare recipients and public university students - to take hits. California's revenue projections are cooling due to lackluster home sales and lower-than-expected tax payments.
"The call for more spending in the governor's office leaves
Mike Herald, a legislative advocate for the Western Center for Law and Poverty, 'dumbfounded.'
"'
They don't think a cost-of-living adjustment is appropriate for the poorest people in the state, but it's perfectly fine for the people making $100,000 in the governor's office?' he said. 'I just can't reconcile that.'"
"A modern-day Gold Rush has erupted over $43 billion targeted for California public works projects, with legislators
crafting dozens of bills to affect how the money is spent," writes the Bee's Jim Sanders.
"Voter passage of the record bond package last November has spawned a frenzy in which communities and their officeholders are fighting for a piece of the massive pot.
"'It's kind of like the heirs to the estate of some very wealthy person,' said
Darry Sragow, a Democratic strategist. 'People fight over money -- and they fight especially hard over a lot of money.'
"Some new bills aim to siphon money from one potential use to another, such as proposing to make port security or dam construction or energy conservation projects a priority.
"Other measures tackle major public policy issues to lay a foundation for funding, such as whether growth areas should receive priority for levee projects or whether landowners should help pay for flood-control work."
"The state is facing the
hottest clash in years over the emotional issue [of assisted suicide], which touches on everything from fears that the law would be used disproportionately on the poor and disabled to religious beliefs that suicide is a sin.
"The edge this year is support by Assembly Speaker
Fabian Nuņez, a Los Angeles Democrat in a Legislature dominated by his party. The bill needs only a majority vote, and a push by the Assembly leader could finally put it over the top.
"But already Nuņez is feeling the heat. Physician-assisted suicide foes picketed outside the Capitol and in front of his Los Angeles office Wednesday.
"Republican Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger has indicated he would like voters to decide, but hasn't ruled out considering a bill on doctor-assisted suicide - the term originally adopted by physicians."
"Nearly two decades after California began regulating for-profit colleges and vocational schools to weed out "diploma mills," the state is not free of institutions that dangle exaggerated promises of better careers before students who end up jobless and deeply in debt.
Yet state oversight of the schools, which enroll more than 400,000 students a year, could soon end," reports Jordan Rau in the Times.
"The law that establishes the rules for 1,800 schools -- including hundreds in Los Angeles County -- will expire July 1. In anticipation of that, many of the state employees who administer the law have left their jobs or have been transferred to other parts of the Department of Consumer Protection.
"Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger and the Democratic-led Legislature are trying to reach an agreement on how to refashion the law, but none is on the horizon.
"The issues in dispute include how aggressive a regulatory role the state should have and what to do between July and January, the earliest that a new law could be enacted.
"The Assembly's higher education panel plans to hold a hearing Tuesday on draft legislation to help bridge the six-month gap."
Steve Weigand
writes in The Buzz: "
Mitt Romney and
John McCain may as well pack it in, at least as far as the California GOP presidential primary is concerned. Why? Because
Rudy Giuliani has been endorsed by ... Michelle Steel. And who, you may ask with good reason, is
Michelle Steel? Only "the highest-ranking elected GOP woman politician in California," according to a press release from Giuliani's camp. She is? Uh, yeah. She's on the state Board of Equalization. Not only that, she's "the highest-ranking elected Korean American official in the United States," according to her Web site. And not only that, in conservative GOP circles, she's considered the highest-ranking true Reep official in the state, since Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger and state Insurance Commissioner
Steve Poizner are "RINOS" -- "Republicans in Name Only." Which of course begs the question of why she's endorsing the Reep who is arguably the most liberal of the big three GOP hopefuls."
But really, it appears the fight for the hearts and minds of the GOP is between ...
Arnold Schwarzenegger and Rush Limbaugh?
The American Enterprise Institute's Kevin Hassett writes, "he content of their exchange was surprisingly important. Indeed, this squabble may well receive extensive treatment in the history books.
The Republican Party is at a historical crossroads. If you are Republican, the odds are you're ideologically either with Rush or Arnold. Only one side can win. And as is so often the case, California is the canary in the political coal mine of America.
This movement to the left has boosted his popularity. Schwarzenegger's latest job-approval rating is 48 percent, a considerable climb from 37 percent in 2005. . . . But popularity might come at the expense of principle.
Republicans seeking to run the federal government are bedeviled by the opposition of Democrats. In California, it's much worse. Someone is going to try Schwarzenegger's approach of bipartisan governance at the federal level, and soon.
If you are a conservative governing California, you face an almost impossible challenge. A large proportion of the political might in the state is held by those whose views are closer to those of a typical labor union representative than those of, say, a scholar at Palo Alto's conservative Hoover Institution. So you have to choose between approaches."
If you think it's still early to start handicapping the 2008 presidential field, Matier and Ross have just the thing for you --
poll numbers for the 2010 gubernatorial primary.
"When it comes to Democrats in California,
nobody beats Jerry Brown -- who, believe it or not, aces a number of oft-mentioned party contenders for the next governor's race in a new statewide poll."We know it's early. But the poll of 400 registered Democratic voters, conducted by J. Moore Methods of Sacramento from March 8-18, shows
the governor-turned-presidential contender-turned-Oakland mayor-turned-state attorney general would clock in at 31 percent if the 2010 primary were held today.
"That far outpaces some of the party's supposed rising stars.
"Brown's showing is almost twice that of his nearest rival, Los Angeles Mayor Antonio Villaraigosa, who comes in at 17 percent. He's also well ahead of San Francisco Mayor Gavin Newsom, at 12 percent. Speaking of 2010, in an interview with the New York Times,
Jack O'Connell publicly plans his run for governor. O'Connell's wife,
Doree, has undergone treatment for brain cancer. The state superintendent was interviewed for a story discussing one spouse working after the other has been diagnosed, in the wake of the news about
Elizabeth and John Edwards last week.
"'There was no discussion,' said Mr. O'Connell, who describes himself as a workaholic. 'I dropped everything for three weeks to be with her full time.' He had his staff find substitutes to appear for him at all his scheduled events, sometimes as many as three speeches in a day.
"'It was just understood that I'd be there, and she'd be there for me,' he said.
"But after three weeks, he said, both felt he should return to his work and campaign. Mrs. O'Connell used the public exposure to raise awareness of health issues.
"
Mr. O'Connell won re-election in June, and he said he was now considering a run for governor. Mrs. O'Connell's cancer has not returned; if it does, he said, he does not know how it will affect his plans. 'Taking care of her is first. But would that preclude me from running? We'll have to see.'"
Dan Walters writes that Proposition 99's opponents
were correct when they warned that the cigarette tax would lead to a black market. "The state Board of Equalization, in a 2003 report to the Legislature that is now being updated, estimated that the state was losing $292 million per year in taxes on black market cigarettes, mostly those brought in by organized smuggling rings. There was also so-called "casual evasion" by individuals buying cigarettes in nearby states, from Indian tribes and through Internet sales.
"The report helped persuade the Legislature to pass bills to tighten oversight of cigarette retailers and wholesalers -- laws that state tax officials hope will reduce the traffic in black-market smokes.
"Nevertheless, the lucrative trade in untaxed cigarettes proves that the 1988 campaign claim was on the mark. As with liquor during Prohibition and illicit drugs today, when government makes a commodity illegal or expensive, it creates a market that criminals will supply."
Assembly Republican Leader
Mike Villines will face off with
Speaker Fabian Nunez in a sushi smackdown Tuesday in Sacramento to showcase California-grown rice. The speaker responded to Villines' challenge with a set of haikus:
"Land locked Clovis man
Makes worst Republican Rice
Since Condoleezza"
Results will be posted here later this week.