Orinda Mayor Steve Glazer won a convincing 54-45 victory over Concord Assemblywoman Susan Bonilla yesterday in a Dem-on-Dem battle royale that saw outside spending top $7 million. Alexei Koseff has the story for the Bee:
“The race attracted unprecedented levels of outside spending, with more than $7 million streaming into the district during the two-month runoff alone, more than three times what the candidates were able to raise.
“Labor unions backed Bonilla, while the business community, charter schools and Los Angeles businessman Bill Bloomfield supported Glazer.”
“With an eye toward influencing forthcoming issues at the Capitol, including new taxes and efforts to overhaul teacher tenure and dismissal laws, powerful political interests engaged in nasty battle, painting Bonilla as a union puppet and Glazer as an enemy of organized labor who would work to dismantle their benefits.
“The intraparty bitterness looks likely to continue, and Glazer could face a Democratic challenge when he is up for re-election next year.”
(Note to Capitol Weekly editors: add Bloomfield to short list for the Top 100?)
As his one-time political advisor trounced his opponent in the East Bay senate race, Jerry Brown met with leaders from 11 other states and countries to sign a (non-binding) agreement to combat climate change. Chris Megerian, Los Angeles Times:
“The agreement includes the states of Oregon, Washington and Vermont, as well as the provinces of British Columbia and Ontario in Canada, the states of Baja California and Jalisco in Mexico, and the British country of Wales. Also involved are states and provinces in Brazil, Germany, and Spain.
"’We will strive to bring more states into this agreement,’ Brown said at the event.
“Although the terms are not legally binding, by signing the agreement the leaders are committing to specific targets for reducing greenhouse gas emissions by 2050. At that point, emissions would either need to be at least 80% below 1990 levels, or less than 2 metric tons per capita…
“When detailing the state's climate change goals in Los Angeles, Brown said, ‘I’ve set a very high bar, but it’s a bar we must meet. It’s a bar not only for California, but it’s a goal for other states, for the United States as a whole, and for other nations around the world.’”
The California Medical Association has dropped its opposition to a proposed aid-in-dying bill, making them the first medical association in the nation not to oppose such measures. Melody Gutierrez, SFGate:
“The move comes as the doctors organization removed its opposition Wednesday to a controversial aid-in-dying bill that would allow terminally ill Californians to end their lives with doctor-prescribed drugs.
“The medical association recently changed its internal policies so that it is neutral on the issue, deleting language that referred to aid in dying as ‘physician-assisted suicide.’ The group has long opposed aid in dying on grounds that it violates doctors’ ethical and moral obligations to provide the best treatment possible…
“The move paves the way for the bill in the Legislature, although opposition remains in the Catholic Church and among some disability rights groups.
“’This is a major breakthrough,’ said Sen. Lois Wolk, D-Davis, a co-author on the bill. ‘Those members of the Legislature who had doubts about the legislation and concerns about the legislation based on physicians and their opposition will be reassured that the protections placed in the bill meet the standard set by the CMA.’”
A Public Policy Institute of California report finds that realignment – the policy whereby low-level felons are sent to county jails, or released – has not increased violent crime in the state. From Paige St. John, LAT:
“The report, released late Tuesday by the nonpartisan Public Policy Institute of California, relies on crime data from the FBI for 2013.
“The think tank notes the FBI's reported drop in violent crime in California to a 36-year low -- 396 violent crimes reported per 100,000 residents -- kept pace with a national decline.
“Gov. Jerry Brown’s 2011 prison policy, called "realignment," reduced the state prison population by about 27,000 inmates in its first year by having lower-level felons serve their sentences in county jails instead of state prisons. Crowded jail conditions resulted in widespread early releases. By the PPIC's estimates, some 18,000 offenders who in the past would have been in prison were on the streets in 2012.”
Over at KQED, John Myers has a fascinating piece on the mysterious legislative creature known as an “unbacked bill.”
“The work of the Office of Legislative Counsel is the ultimate seal of approval in Sacramento, an indispensable step for any proposal that becomes law in California — and perhaps why lobbyists and interest groups often privately ask legislators to have the taxpayer funded lawyers draft bills for them, too.
“Those requests are known as ‘unbacked bills,’ a term that broadly refers to draft laws with no guarantee of being introduced in either house of the Legislature. While some of these bills quickly find their way into the legislative bloodstream, others linger behind the scenes for weeks or months as part of the state Capitol’s opaque political currency, instantly ready for a public vote on any given day if the opportunity should arise.
“No one denies the existence of these bills, but few will discuss either their content or their frequency….
“Interviews with a number of Capitol insiders, none of whom would speak on the record, portray the unbacked bills system as one with very few limits and in which legislative staffers sometimes submit proposals for vetting that their elected bosses would never publicly endorse.
“As such, it’s also a system that neither the Legislature’s lawyers nor its two leaders will discuss.”
In other news, crayon-maker Crayola is asking –begging, really – people to stop using its art supplies as eyeliner and other beauty products. And they are being ignored.
“Despite… repeated warnings about the potential health risks involved in using their products as make-up, beauty lovers continue to encourage the trend, with many young YouTube bloggers offering tutorials on the best way to utilize the pencils in place of eyeliner.
“Budding beauty blogger Brooke Eve seems to have no problem sticking the Crayola pencil points her eyes and seems blissfully unaware of the potential health hazards, telling the viewers of her YouTube channel that 'it's easy, it's cheap and it's 100 per cent safe….'
“However, despite the insistence of almost every blogger encouraging this new trend, Crayola insists that, while its products are classified as 'non-toxic', the pigments used in their art supplies have not been approved by the FDA for use in cosmetics, meaning that there could still be several risks involved when using them in place of tested and approved make-up products.
“'As the manufacturer of children's products, safety is our top priority at Crayola,' a statement on the company's website reads.
“'Although our products are non-toxic, we do not recommend using them to make lipstick, eyeliner or other make-up and strongly discourage their use in this manner.’”
