The assault on the governor's budget spending control initiative is about to begin, as the Ventura County Star reports on "a little-known provision" in the measure that could
restrict the flow of special tax dollars for several public safety, social service and mental health programs.
Time to rally those cops and firefighters again.
"The initiative would impose a spending cap on the state's general fund and limit education spending mandates. It also would apply to so-called special fund taxes, which has not been widely publicized.
This includes Proposition 172, a half-cent sales tax that goes to the Sheriff's Department, District Attorney's Office, Probation Agency and Public Defender's Office. In 2003-04, the county received $50.2 million in Prop. 172 dollars, according to the Auditor-Controller's Office."
Why do we see a campaign commercial coming on this one?
Silly us. Yesterday, we wrote that Speaker
Fabian Nuņez was going to "a school" to make his big tax-hike-for-education announcement. Of course, now it is revealed that the school wasn't just any old school. It was the very school where Gov. Schwarzenegger stood with education leaders last year and announced his "deal" that educators now say the governor broke.
Dan Weintraub was all over it yesterday complete with photographic evidence, while we were asleep at the switch, still recovering from our long, holiday weekend.
Of course, now, the cat is out of the bag. Here's how the LA Times
described the proposal: "Democrats announced the idea of an income tax hike on single
taxpayers earning more than $143,000 a year and couples earning more than $285,000 as part of their alternative to the $115.7-billion budget drafted by Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger. His proposed spending plan would
withhold billions of dollars schools are owed under voter-approved funding guarantees that he and the Legislature suspended last year.
In an effort to blunt any criticism on education policy in today's headlines, the governor headed to Irvine
to read aloud from his budget proposal, re-announcing his initiative to get public universities to train more math and science teachers. "Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger has included $1 million for the new program in this year's proposed budget, and several companies have pledged to contribute $4 million over the next five years," reports the Contra Costa Times.
"If California is to be a leader in tomorrow's economy, we need to put more emphasis on science and math instruction," Schwarzenegger said at UC Irvine as he announced the program before executives from more than a dozen businesses that have donated to the effort.
The Merc News reports the governor will join the nation's mayors in San Francisco today to
boost his environmental credentials. "This afternoon, Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger is expected to appear at San Francisco City Hall to announce new targets for California to reduce greenhouse gases."
Reports that he will arrive in
John Burton's Toyota Prius are unconfirmed.
Finally from our Toughest Beat Bureau, the California Correctional Peace Officers Association (CCPOA) is
battling the administration over the number of hours of "release time" available for conducting union business. "A CCPOA spokesman, however, said the state is wrong on the number of hours contractually set aside for its members to spend on union activity. Moreover,
the union contends the state's move was designed to counter the attacks the CCPOA has launched against the Schwarzenegger administration over the past year." The issue will be decided by an arbitrator on Friday.
In other news, federal judge
Thelton Henderson appears one step closer to appointing a receiver to take over the correctional medical system. "I can see myself appointing a receiver to stop 60-some people a year from dying[.]"
Finally, the Senate
approved a bill clearing the way for greater media access to prisoners.The Chronicle's John Hubbell focuses on this week's deadline for bills to move out of their house or origin, specifically on
Patty Berg's right-to-die bill, and Mark Leno's gay marriage proposal. Hubbel reports the votes on both bills "appear so close that their outcomes could rest on a sole lawmaker's last-minute deliberations on morality, faith and the role of government in society, according to interviews with several undecided Democrats." After all that soul-searching, both bills are guaranteed to get vetoed by Gov. Schwarzenegger.
Meanwhile, the Bee focuses on the Senate's
passage of Sheila Kuehl's universal health care bill, also sure to get a little taste of the business end of the governor's veto pen. "
Senate Bill 840 by Sen. Sheila Kuehl, D-Santa Monica, would create a new state health insurance agency that would be led by a new elected health commissioner. The bill does not include a funding solution. Kuehl asked her colleagues to approve the bill to keep the proposal active."
From our
Echo Chamber files, yesterday, we linked to a story in the Bakersfield Californian about a potential showdown between
Nicole Parra and
Dean Florez. The story references a mention on our sister site, Aroundthecapitol.com, which states that were Parra to run, she would be "the first sitting Democratic Assembly member to challenge a sitting Democratic senator in the era of term limits." Actually, that's not correct, as one particularly astute Roundup reader reminds us. In 1996, termed-out Assemblyman
Curtis Tucker, Jr. unsuccessfully challenged Sen.
Teresa Hughes in the Democratic primary. But if Parra were to beat Florez, she would be the first Assemblymember to
successfully challenge a Democratic incumbent in a Senate primary.
From our the More Things Change Files, the OC Register reports that the governor
appointed another former lawmaker to a $100,000 per-year state gig. Pacheco responded to accusations of the appointment being a political payoff, "People will say that no matter what you do,' he said. 'I think I'm qualified."
With all of the public griping of the salary increases for legislators, the raise was actually
quite small by Alameda County standards. The county finally released the names and salaries of employees making over $100k, pursuant to a court order. From the Merc News: "The salary information shows that County Administrator
Susan Muranishi is the highest paid county employee, earning $231,274 last year. The other highest paid employees were Sheriff
Charles Plummer, $210,671; District Attorney
Tom Orloff, $209,468; health director
Dave Kears, $195,499; and county counsel
Richard Winnie and public defender
Diane Bellas, who each made $191,110."
In other news, the sport of politics got a little less fun yesterday when it was revealed that
former G-Man W. Mark Felt is indeed Deep Throat, thus ending American Politics' greatest parlor game. In other news, Rosebud is a sled, Darth Vader really
is Luke's father, and that chick from The Crying Game is really a man. Good to know that Felt was forced out of his anonymity by his cash hungry family, eager to cash in on the stroke victim's secret before Woodward gets to hog the limelight after Felt's death.
