Talk about deja vu all over again: There was Jerry Brown in a jogging suit looking for an apartment near Capitol Park. The Bee's Bob Shallit has the story.
"Brown - wearing a jogging suit - visited the loft apartment building at 1530 J street on Wednesday morning, and reports are he and his wife, Anne Gust Brown, are considering it for their Sacramento home."
"We hear the state's soon-to-be first couple also are considering Sotiris Kolokotronis' eight-story condo complex at 1818 L St. The upscale J street units sit on the third and fourth floors of a building that's considered a key part of midtown's renaissance."
Another piece of California's political-reform puzzle has survived a legal test -- for now.
From the Chronicle's Bob Egelko: "The state Supreme Court allowed California on Wednesday to go ahead with a voter-approved overhaul of primary elections, putting all candidates on the same ballot in the first round and matching the top two vote-getters, regardless of party, in the runoff. The justices unanimously denied a request to block the measure, Proposition 14, which takes effect in January."
"Prop. 14, which passed with a 54 percent majority in June, eliminates party primaries and instead requires all state and federal candidates, except those for president, to run in a single primary for each office. The top two finishers, who could both be from the same party, compete in the general election."
It's hard to imagine that with the state's budget in such a precarious position, the details of a multimillion-dollar prison health care contract are being kept secret because of language in the Public Records Act. Capitol Weekly's Jennifer Chaussee has the story.
"The contract and its fiscal details are secret because of an exemption related to health care information within the state Public Records Act, said Liz Kanter, a spokesperson for the California Prison Health Care Services, the government body that awarded the contract to Health Net Federal Services, an outside HMO and subsidiary of Health Net."
"Some details will be released after a year has passed,
she noted...The non-partisan Legislative Analyst’s Office found a “dramatic increase in spending on adult prison health
care: from $1.2 million in 2005-2006 to $2.5 billion in 2008-2009,” according to the March, 2010 report on adult inmate health care costs."
Meanwhile, CW's Malcolm Maclachlan examines the Bill Postmus case in San Bernardino, focusing on a person listed in an indictment only as "No. 2"
"State Fish and Game Commissioner Dan Richards also is a developer with a history of clashing with environmental groups."
Now those groups are trying to play hardball to get
him removed, alleging undisclosed conflicts of interests
— and an intimate involvement in the saga of disgraced
San Bernardino County assessor Bill Postmus. The environmentalists'
initial attack was dismissed in the courts, but they
say others are coming. Richards, meanwhile, has denied all wrongdoing."
The long-standing dispute over medical malpractice insurance may be coming back to the Capitol, reports CW's John Howard.
"The deep-pockets political dispute over medical malpractice insurance has a long and stormy history in the Capitol. The blurred battle lines include the trial bar and some consumer activists on one side confronting doctors, insurers, clinics and other providers of medical care on the other. The fight is over money as much as medicine."
"The crux of the issue is simple: In September 1975, Gov. Jerry Brown signed the Medical Insurance Compensation
Reform Act, or MICRA, which limited pain-and-suffering awards in malpractice cases to $250,000. Other awards – future lost wages and medical costs, for example – were left untouched, as were punitive damages."
And from our "In From the Cold" file, a burglary gang only hits homes with hot tubs so they can relax before grabbing the loot. We're not making this up.
"There have been at least four similar incidents at homes with hot tubs in and around Oswaldtwistle, in Lancashire. It is understood the gang has stolen thousands of pounds worth of expensive goods and cash."
"In one case, the raiders took a late-night dip in a hot tub before leaving their wet underwear on the side of the middle-aged couple’s outdoor spa."
"Sergeant Simon Holderness, from Lancashire Police, said: “We understand there has been some unusual activity in the gardens of the homes in recent weeks related to the hot tubs."
Oswaldtwistle? Really?...