With only three weeks to go in the legislative session,
hopes are dimming for a health care deal, reports the Merc's Mike Zapler.
"Expectations are dimming by the day.
Rather than joining the governor's call for shared sacrifice, lawmakers and interest groups are zeroing in on aspects of his plan they dislike, and there is no clear path to a middle ground.
"'We started in January with an amazing amount of hope,' said
Dustin Corcoran, a lobbyist for the California Medical Association, which opposes a key part of the governor's plan. '
And now, here we are three weeks out from the end of the session, and the sides are farther apart than they ever were.'"
This as
the eyes of the nation are on California, according to the Washington Post's Christopher Lee.
"California did not start the current wave of efforts to overhaul the American health-care system, but what happens in Sacramento over the next few weeks could have a big impact on whether the drive gains momentum or peters out.
"With three weeks remaining in the state's legislative session, Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger (R) still has nothing to show for the grand proposal he made in January to create a system that would guarantee health insurance for all Californians. But with the resolution of a nearly two-month-long state budget impasse last week, the focus is turning back to health care, with hard-to-predict results."
Dan Weintraub reports
a key opponent of the employer-based mandate for heath care is backing a new funding source to pay the state's health care bills.
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The group's board of directors voted privately last week to propose a sales tax increase to finance health care for the uninsured, and to pursue the idea of placing an initiative on the 2008 ballot to make it happen. In an interview, the restaurant association's top executive told me he thought his board might also consider crossing an even brighter line, backing a small payroll tax if that were the only way to win broad support for a comprehensive program to address the issue.
From our
Blue Pencil Files, we've got a wrap-up on
the governor's coloring book known as the state budget. "Making good on a promise to trim the state budget, Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger
eliminated a $55-million program Friday that advocates say has helped thousands of mentally ill homeless people break the costly cycle of hospitalization, jails and street life," reports Scott Gold, Lee Romney and Evan Halper in the Times.
"The program was one of many high-profile initiatives left in the ashes of the Legislature's bitter budget dispute, which stalled Sacramento for much of the last two months.
"The impasse lifted Tuesday after Senate Republicans ended their blockade. They won few concessions, except a promise from the governor to veto $700 million from the general fund in an effort to address the state's operating deficit.
"Schwarzenegger delivered Friday, citing the state's need for a "prudent reserve," then signing the $145.5-billion budget -- more than seven weeks past the state's July 1 deadline."
"After suffering through 52 days without a budget, state Democratic leaders
are itching to change California's unusual two-thirds vote requirement to a simple majority for passing its annual spending plan," writes the Bee's Judy Lin.
"Last week Senate President Pro Tem
Don Perata sent a letter asking Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger to convene a budget revision panel to look at all the possible solutions for getting an on-time budget. Assembly Speaker Fabian Núñez went further, calling for a voter initiative to be placed on next year's ballot.
"But one analyst advises lawmakers to proceed with caution.
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Arturo Pérez of the National Conference of State Legislatures, which represents state lawmakers, said California is one of three states that have a two-thirds majority requirement on budgets. Arkansas and Rhode Island are the others.
"'Simple majority is the rule of the land,' Pérez said. Even Congress passes budgets with a simple-majority vote, as do most cities and counties.
"With Republicans the minority party in California for most of the past several decades, the higher voting threshold for budgets has given them a say on the state's annual fiscal plan. This year, Republicans used that power to delay passage of the budget for 52 days.
"Pérez cautioned, however, that a simple majority will not ensure an on-time budget. He pointed to North Carolina, Pennsylvania and Illinois as three simple-majority states that failed to pass their budgets on time this year."
The Fresno Bee's Jim Boren has an idea:
get rid of the Legislature all together.
"
If both parties aren't doing their jobs in the Legislature, is there any reason for it to exist? Some people say going to a part-time Legislature would make sense. I say that's just humoring problem children."
"It's time for drastic action. We don't need a stinking Legislature."
Dan Walters writes: "Process reform is one thing, but if California is ever to regain control of its finances,
we need fiscal reform even more, with honest and realistic revenue and spending numbers rather than the Enron-like suppositions that are now employed, and an enforceable commitment to bring those numbers into synch, whatever political pain that may cause.
"Make no mistake; California is on a pathway to fiscal ruin as it continues to produce budgets based on fantasy rather than reality and postpone the day of reckoning through backdoor borrowing -- such as diverting money meant for mass transit into the general fund and then replacing it with bond borrowing. And budgetary dysfunction is the harbinger of the larger crisis of governance facing this state, one that threatens its economic and social future."
"A Democracy Corps poll from the Washington firm of Greenberg Quinlan Rosner suggests
voters ages 18 to 29 have undergone a striking political evolution in recent years," reports Carla Marinucci in the Chron.
"Young Americans have become so profoundly alienated from Republican ideals on issues including the war in Iraq, global warming, same-sex marriage and illegal immigration that their defections suggest a political setback that could haunt Republicans "for many generations to come," the poll said.
"The startling collapse of GOP support among young voters is reflected in the poll's findings that show two-thirds of young voters surveyed believe Democrats do a better job than Republicans of representing their views - even on issues Republicans once owned, such as terrorism and taxes.
"And among GOP presidential candidates, only former New York Mayor
Rudy Giuliani registers with more positive views than negative with young voters, the poll shows.
"The anti-GOP shift for this generation - which is expected to reach 50 million voters, or 17 percent of the electorate, in 2008 - represents a marked contrast from their predecessors, the Gen Xers born in the mid-'60s to mid-'70s whose demographic represented the strongest Republican voters in the nation, pollster
Anna Greenberg said."
"A California congressman who recently won House approval of a bill that
would prevent federal legislators from placing spouses on their campaign payrolls has joined advocates for clean government in calling for the state to also prohibit the controversial practice," reports Patrick McGreevy in the Times.
"
More than a dozen state lawmakers, including top legislative leaders, have paid $1.12 million in campaign cash -- raised from special interests -- to spouses, sons, daughters and companies that employed them during the last seven years, records show.
"The spouses' income is on top of the state legislators' more than $113,000 annual salary.
"Defenders of the practice say it is legal in California. It is proper as long as the spouse does the work paid for, they say.
"But critics say that allowing campaigns to hire the wives or husbands of lawmakers can give special interests more influence by allowing them, through political contributions, to help fatten the wallets of elected officials.
"Rep.
Adam Schiff (D-Burbank) won House approval of a bill last month that he said would end the 'potentially corrupt practice' of members of Congress writing big checks from donor funds to their spouses for services."
Speaking of which, looks like LA Councilman
Richard Alarcon is
using City Hall to help the traffic on his street, reports the LAT's David Zahniser.
"Los Angeles Councilman Richard Alarcon quietly drafted a measure two months ago to deal with a tiny piece of that traffic, calling on the city bureaucracy to downgrade a street in his district from a busy highway designation to a quiet 'collector' street.
The proposal affects just one block of one street in Panorama City. And that block of Wakefield Avenue happens to be the place Alarcon lists as his home -- a 1950 tract house belonging to Flora Montes de Oca, the woman Alarcon plans to marry today.
"The councilman's proposal seeks to 'preserve the residential character' of Wakefield. But
the plan could provide another benefit to Montes de Oca, who plans to tear down her rental house and replace it with as many as nine homes."
"At the behest of Los Angeles County Sheriff
Lee Baca, [Assemblywoman
Julia] Brownley is sponsoring legislation -- Assembly Bill 920 -- to
make it a crime for any deputy, police officer, jail attendant or other criminal justice employee to sell photos or videos taken in secure areas of jails or courthouses," reports Peter Hecht in the Bee.
"'Anybody who wants to take a picture of Mel Gibson driving down the street in his car is free to do so,' Brownley said. 'What this bill addresses -- and would make a misdemeanor -- is to sell or solicit for financial gain a photo taken inside a secure area" of a law enforcement facility.'
"The bill would also prohibit law enforcement personnel from selling police reports that aren't authorized for release or accepting payment for leaking evidence in criminal investigations that isn't in public records.
"The legislation wouldn't outlaw the leaks themselves -- only the profit. Violators could face fines of $1,000 per offense."
And as we approach Labor Day weekend, all you campers might want to
heed the warning of a group of campers in Portland, Oregon and remember a rope.
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A group of campers tied a peeping Tom suspect to a tree, keeping him bound until police arrived.
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Richard H. Berkey, 63, was charged with private indecency, a misdemeanor, by sheriff's deputies who were called to the Big Fan Campground near Bagby Hot Springs last weekend, according to Clackamas County Detective
Jim Strovink.
"Campers told deputies they recognized Berkey from a similar incident at the campground last year and wanted to make sure he did not get away."