A batch of bills aimed at reforming the mortgage industry have run into a Senate roadblock , reports the Mercury News's Edwin Garcia.
Yes, it's time for someone to put his foot down. And that foot is Mike Machado.
"Homeowner advocates
seeking to prevent another foreclosure crisis criticized
a Senate
committee Thursday for rejecting legislation intended
to protect
borrowers of subprime loans.
"Only two of the seven most far-reaching mortgage-reform
bills passed the Senate Committee on Banking, Finance
and Insurance in
a meeting that stretched into Wednesday evening. The
panel's chairman
insisted the measures were not in the best interest
of consumers.
"One measure - to give homeowners longer advance notice before their
monthly payments increase - was approved intact. But another bill was
so severely modified to satisfy committee Chairman
Mike Machado,
D-Stockton, that consumer groups turned their support
into opposition.
"That bill - AB 1830, by Assemblyman Ted Lieu, D-El Segundo - was the
most comprehensive: It sought to cap prepayment penalties, prohibit
loans based on stated income and ban loans that resulted
in negative
amortization. Those provisions were removed as a condition
of passage.
"Machado said the original bill would have overlapped
with pending
federal regulations that contain similarities. But
a coalition of
advocacy organizations, including the California Public
Interest
Research Group, or CALPIRG, said the federal rules
are much weaker than
the Lieu bill."
Meanwhile, the Chron's John Wildermuth reports that California's local officials are bracing for the implementation of new greenhouse gas emission rules.
"California's cities, counties
and public agencies got an early preview Thursday of
the ways they'll
be asked to analyze greenhouse gases in new construction
projects under
the state's first-in-the-nation emission rules.
"Although actual regulations won't be adopted until 2010, the
governor's Office of Planning and Research put out the technical
advisory to warn local officials and the development
community that the
new rules are coming and that they better be ready.
"People have been asking us for some kind of guidance," said Cynthia
Bryant, the office's director. "In many ways, we're repeating things we
already have said and restating the obvious."
"The move was prompted by a bill by Sen. Robert Dutton,
R-Rancho
Cucamonga (San Bernardino County), that required state environmental
impact statements to consider the effects of greenhouse
gases. Last
year, a landmark law took effect to curb greenhouse
gases in the state
by 30 percent by 2020.
"The advisory released Thursday urged agencies to determine
the
amount of greenhouse gases generated by proposed projects,
whether from
increased traffic, higher energy consumption, more
water usage or
diesel fumes, dust and other problems that come from
construction
activity.
Rising food prices doesn't mean all bad news for state workers. At least their pension fund is thriving!
The Bee's Dale Kasler reports, "Runaway oil and food prices are angering consumers but yielding sweet profits for investors such as the California Public Employees' Retirement System.
"CalPERS has racked up a 68 percent return playing the commodities market in the past 12 months.
Hey, that's a better rate of return than Dennis Cardoza's run playing the Estonian slots!
The California fund and other pension systems have done so well, in fact, that some in Congress want to ban them from the commodities markets or at least curtail their investments. The elected officials say the pension funds are playing a significant role in driving prices up simply by pouring billions of dollars into the markets."
And hey, PERS members will have to pay most of it in rising health care costs anyways...
Dan Walters reports on California's subterranean campaign finance system. "
Eight years ago, acting at the behest of the Legislature and then-Gov. Gray Davis, voters adopted Proposition 34, which imposed limits on how much money someone may contribute to a particular political campaign. It wasn't exactly a good-government crusade by politicians. Rather, it was an effort to undo much of a tougher campaign limit measure that voters had passed four years earlier.
Despite its unseemly origins, Proposition 34 did alter the campaign finance picture by making direct contributions to candidates more difficult, or at least smaller. But the underlying motivation among interest groups for affecting elections – those hundreds of billions of dollars in financial decisions – remains intact. And that's especially true for business interests because legislative term limits and gerrymandered districts have pushed the Legislature to the left, more hostile to business.
The relief valve for pressure to affect legislative elections – particularly primaries in Democratic districts being vacated by term limits – has become the so-called "independent expenditure" on behalf of favored candidates."
We thought the relief valve was Gigi Goyette...
"Since Proposition 34 was passed in 2000, the "IEs" have mushroomed to about $100 million, including nearly $12 million that various interests dropped into the June 3 legislative primaries, especially Democratic primaries, according to a new report from the Fair Political Practices Commission."
Looks like the cell phone ban while driving may soon extend to text messaging . The Bee's Jim Sanders reports, "California's ban on driving while talking on a hand-held cell phone does not extend to text messaging. Put simply, adult motorists who can't hold a phone to their ear beginning July 1 can use the same device to type out messages.
"But they'd better hurry.
"Legislation proposed Thursday by Sen. Joe Simitian, D-Palo Alto, would add texting to the cell phone ban he championed.
"Texting while driving is so obviously unsafe that it's hard to believe anyone would attempt it, yet every-day observation suggests there are an awful lot of folks who do," Simitian said.
Are charter schools better than regular public schools? That is the conclusion of one new education report, discussed by the Oakland Tribune's Katy Murphy.
"
"A
new report by EdSource, a nonpartisan educational research
group based
in California, found that public, independently run
charter middle
schools and high schools did much better than their
noncharter
counterparts on 2007 state tests.
The finding held true in
Oakland, where the three charter middle schools included
in the study
scored a whopping 210 points higher on the state's 800-point Academic
Performance Index (API), on average, than Oakland's noncharter middle
schools. And the city's five charter high schools scored an average of
61 points higher than its noncharter high schools. At
the elementary
school level, however, traditional public schools outscored
charters by
33 points, on average."
The New York TImes picks up on the state's new apple moth plans . "On Thursday, the California Department of Food and
Agriculture said
that advances in another type of reproductive chicanery
— the breeding
and release of sterile moths — would allow the state to avoid spraying
over urban areas.
“We thought it would take years,” said Steve Lyle, a spokesman for the department. “And it’s taken significantly less time than we anticipated.”
"The cancellation of spraying was met with cheers from several quarters, including nearly 30 cities and three counties that had passed resolutions against the department’s proposal. The spraying program also faced legal hurdles; in April, a county judge in Santa Cruz, one of the hot spots in moth infestation, ruled that the state needed to complete a fuller environmental review before spraying. Similar spraying there last November led to numerous complaints of respiratory problems.
"A native of Australia and an indiscriminate eater, the light brown apple moth was confirmed to be in California in March 2007 and is considered a major threat to the state’s $32 billion agriculture industry. Through June 6, more than 27,000 moths had been found in 12 counties, mostly in Northern California.
What do Laura Richardson and Phil Spector have in common? Neither one seems to be very good at paying their
bills?
"The LAT's Victoria Kim reports, "A downtown Los Angeles hotel that housed Phil Spector
and his defense
team during his six-month murder trial last year is suing the record
producer for $110,000 in unpaid hotel bills.
"Spector
stopped paying the bills for rooms four months into
his stay at the
Westin Bonaventure, a few blocks from the Criminal
Justice Center where
his trial was held, according to a lawsuit filed Wednesday
in Los
Angeles County Superior Court.
And from our Time Capsule files, Geraldo Rivera and Al Capone ain't got nuthin' on Fairhope, Alabama.
"The event was planned and advertised weeks ago: At the new Fairhope Museum of History, officials would open a city safe that had been abandoned and unused since 1971.
"What would be inside? Nothing? Old city records?
"This morning, a crowd of nearly 30 Fairhopers watched as a locksmith
lifted away its heavy, black door. A few called out
the obvious -- its
shelves were filled with marijuana. The safe apparently
had last been
used by the Police Department prior to 1971 to store drug evidence.
"Among the safe's items were a green diary with a peace symbol drawn
on
its front and several match boxes filled with dry,
37-year-old dope.
Why was this evidence left behind or forgotten?
"That's not the sort of historical question we'd wanted to have to
ask," said Donnie Barrett, the museum's director. "But it's better than
nothing."
