Gov. Brown, bolstored by the results of the Nov. 6 election, is looking to make major changes in school funding that include greater local control.
From the Bee's Kevin Yamamura: "After California schools eliminated art programs and increased class sizes to survive budget cuts, they are finally on the verge of getting more money thanks to voter-approved taxes and economic recovery. But K-12 districts may not share equally in the expanding budget pie."
"Gov. Jerry Brown is pushing hard to overhaul California's convoluted school funding system. His plan has two major objectives: Give K-12 districts greater control over how they spend money, and send more dollars to impoverished students and English learners."
"Studies show that such children require more public help to reach the same level of achievement as their well-off peers. But as rich and poor communities alike clamor for money in the wake of funding cuts, Brown's plan could leave wealthy suburbs with fewer new dollars than poorer urban and rural districts."
A push for new development in the Lake Tahoe area is gaining momentum, and the two-state lake-protection agreement between California and Nevada may be at stake.
From the LAT's Bettina Boxall: "Lake Tahoe towns will grow taller and denser under a new regional plan that supporters hope will quell a rebellion by Nevada against land use regulations that have restricted development in the basin."
"The new plan is intended to rid the area of some of its midcentury strip development and turn town centers into more inviting, greener destinations that will revive the area's ailing economy."
"But the success of the strategy is far from guaranteed. Some traditional environmental defenders of the lake — one of the world's deepest and clearest — endorsed the plan primarily to persuade Nevada to remain in a 1969 compact with California. The pact created the Tahoe Regional Planning Agency and set the framework for strict environmental controls in the basin, which straddles the two states."
The federal health care reform law constitutes a leap into the unknown in California, which is on the cutting edge of the national overhaul.
From the LAT's Anthony York: "The program, intended to insure millions of Americans who are now without health coverage, takes states into uncharted territory. California, which plans to expand coverage to hundreds of thousands of people when the law takes effect in 2014, faces myriad unknowns. The Brown administration will try to estimate the cost of vastly more health coverage in the budget plan it unveils next month, but experts warn that its numbers could be way off."
"Officials don't know exactly how many Californians will sign up for Medi-Cal, the public health insurance program for the poor. Computing the cost of care for each of them is also guesswork. And California is waiting for key rulings from federal regulators that could have a major effect on the final price tag, perhaps in the hundreds of millions of dollars."
"No one has ever tried to do anything like this before," said Michael Cannon, director of health policy studies at the Cato Institute, a libertarian think tank. "Any numbers attached to this are just a guess."
Tough gun-control laws do make a difference, despite complaints from critics that such laws have little impact on gun-related deaths.
From the Chronicle's Bob Egelko: "Connecticut has more restrictions on gun ownership than most states, so gun-rights advocates argue the Dec. 14 schoolhouse massacre there illustrates the futility of gun control."
"But a new study by a San Francisco organization reaches the opposite conclusion: States with the most restrictive laws, including Connecticut and California, have lower rates of gun-related deaths, while states with few limits on firearms have the highest rates."
"In 2009 and 2010, the most recent years for which information is available, California had the nation's strongest gun controls and the ninth-lowest rate of gun deaths, according to the Law Center to Prevent Gun Violence, which favors firearms regulation. Connecticut had the fourth-strongest gun laws and was sixth-lowest in gun deaths, while Hawaii ranked fifth in gun control and had the lowest death rate."
Scores of people who have committed crimes got a holiday present from the governor -- pardons.
From the LAT's Paige St. John: "Wilson-Banks, 77, was among 79 people for whom the California governor on Sunday signed full pardons, giving clemency to more people in a single day than some California governors have in their entire tenure."
"The list was released Monday, but word had not yet reached all recipients. Wilson-Banks said his hopes lifted recently, when he heard Brown's office had called the warden at the Cummins Prison Unit in Arkansas, where he is chaplain."
His road to clemency started with release from prison in 1974, after serving time for a robbery in Alameda County in which he drove the get-away car. He began to work for criminal justice programs, from a university program for parolees to working as a chaplain and advisor in California prisons. An Alameda County court in 1980 endorsed him for a pardon, and when that wasn't enough, Wilson-Banks began soliciting letters of endorsement, including those from a judge and a congressman."
