Aurelio Rojas and Judy Lin report on
agencies that are being squeezed by the state's budget impasse. "While most of the state's more than 200,000 workers are still being paid, the stalemate is beginning to take a toll on health care providers that rely on the state to meet financial obligations.
"
Michael Alward, who runs the Health for All facility in Auburn -- the nonprofit also has centers in the Meadowview area of Sacramento and in Lodi -- is fed up with bickering lawmakers in the Capitol.
"They're sitting there saying, 'We're not going to do this because yada yada yada,' and this is having a profound effect on our people," said Alward, who has a staff of 32 to pay and 130 mostly low-income patients to serve.
"Senate Republican leader
Dick Ackerman of Irvine said the GOP stands ready to propose emergency appropriations for vital health care services. The budget was due with the new fiscal year on July 1.
"The Republicans, who are holding out for deeper cuts in state spending, note that previous budget battles have dragged into September without debilitating state government."
Capitol Weekly's John Howard reports on
the connection between this year's budget and the 2010 governor's race.
"The stresses and tensions of the 2010 Democratic gubernatorial campaign have popped up in the state Capitol in the oddest place: the Senate Republican caucus. And it's Jerry Brown who put them there in a legal and political move that reflects a departure from his actions in Oakland.
"GOP Leader Dick Ackerman and his colleagues, angered at a greenhouse gas emissions lawsuit filed against San Bernardino County by the state Attorney General, demanded as part of any budget agreement that Brown be brought to heel and that limits be placed on his office's use of such suits. Republicans said Brown, a Democrat, former two-term governor and a likely statewide candidate in 2010, seeks to block development and gain political mileage by positioning himself as an environmental enforcer.
"
But Brown himself, as mayor of Oakland, sought earlier to make an end-run around CEQA, championed then what he opposes now, and sought exemptions from state environmental in order to boost development in downtown Oakland. Then, Brown argued that overly stringent environmental rules throttled development--similar to the position that Republicans are arguing now."
Speaking of 2010, Capitol Weekly reports on
the latest $1 million on behalf of a 2010 wanna-be.
"Reed Hastings, the founder and CEO of Netflix and a former state board of education member, has donated $1 million to an independent expenditure committee aimed at boosting state schools superintendent Jack O'Connell's gubernatorial hopes in 2010.
Of course, the race won't even begin for two more years. So what's the rush? O'Connell supporters are hoping the money will help elevate the state superintendent into the top tier of candidates when donors and political pundits begin their 2010 speculation. O'Connell is a Democrat."
"O'Connell, who served in the Assembly and Senate representing a Santa Barbara district, has talked openly about his desire to run for governor in 2010.
But he is often upstaged in media accounts by his more high-profile potential challengers - among them Attorney General Jerry Brown, Los Angeles Mayor Antonio Villaraigosa and San Francisco Mayor Gavin Newsom.
"Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger
has put a key banking oversight agency under the stewardship of an administrator who,
according to a bipartisan legislative investigation, helped arrange the misuse of millions of dollars of public funds and steered government contracts to friends," writes Evan Halper in the Times.
"
Michael A. Kelley, appointed commissioner of the Department of Financial Services by the governor in December, was a central figure in the scandal that ultimately drove former Insurance Commissioner
Chuck Quackenbush from office in 2000. Kelley, who was Quackenbush's top deputy, was found unanimously by a bipartisan legislative panel to have helped the former insurance commissioner divert public funds away from state coffers and into nonprofit foundations that were focused largely on promoting the commissioner's political career.
"The money, a total of $12.5 million, came from legal settlements extracted from insurance companies that failed to carry out their responsibilities to consumers in the wake of the 1994 Northridge earthquake. But not a single dollar ever made it to those consumers."
"Voting machine vendors and election officials at a hearing Monday
assailed Secretary of State Debra Bowen's 'top-to-bottom' review of electronic voting systems for failing to consider real-world responses to potential hacking and vote-rigging. Voting-rights activists, meanwhile, urged her to scrap all e-voting systems and return to paper ballots," reports Steven Harmon in the Merc News.
"Bowen has the rest of the week to sort it all out before she decides whether to decertify the three voting systems in use in California, place conditions on them, or leave them alone. A report filed last week showed that all three systems - Sequoia, Diebold and Hart InterCivic - were easily hacked by a team of computer experts Bowen had commissioned to probe the machines for weaknesses.
"Sequoia Voting Systems, which is used in Alameda, Santa Clara and Santa Cruz counties,
called the review an 'unrealistic, worst-case scenario' performed in a laboratory environment by computer security experts with unfettered access to the machines."
"
Matt Gonzalez, the former San Francisco supervisor who was city progressives' last hope for a big-name candidate to challenge Mayor Gavin Newsom in his re-election quest, said Monday he
will not run for mayor this fall," writes Cecilia Vega in the Chron.
"The decision follows weeks of serious consideration by Gonzalez, who narrowly lost to Newsom in 2003, and paves the way for the mayor to run for re-election in November without facing serious opposition.
"In an interview with The Chronicle Monday, Gonzalez said polling showed voters seem to be complacent about the problems the city faces and do not hold Newsom accountable for those ills -- two factors that would be nearly impossible to overcome as a challenger."
In the other city, "[t]he Los Angeles County district attorney's office said Monday it is reviewing allegations that Supervisor
Yvonne B. Burke is living in a gated Brentwood home rather than in her predominantly South Los Angeles district, where she must live by law," report Jack Leonard and Matt Lait in the Times.
"A district attorney's spokeswoman said the office has received at least one complaint after a Times report Friday that Burke has been staying overnight in a 4,000-square-foot residence with a swimming pool and tennis court, even though the supervisor said she considers a townhouse in Mar Vista, on the edge of her district, her principal residence.
"In an effort to defuse the controversy, Burke on Monday allowed The Times to review checks and other documents from a kitchen remodeling project at the 1,200-square-foot townhouse on busy Centinela Avenue in the 2nd District.
"She said the renovation — knocking down a wall and replacing cabinets and tile, among other work, prevented her from staying overnight at the townhouse."
Gov. Schwarzenegger released a statement this morning on the
California Transportation Commission's latest list of projects slated for bond funding.
"“I want to commend the California Transportation Commission for approving a balanced list of transportation projects that will improve the roads we drive on, relieve traffic congestion and increase capacity on existing freeways including HOV lanes. While it is unfortunate that some worthy projects were unable to be funded, I want to thank the commission for fulfilling the will of the voters and immediately allocating the entire $4.5 billion set aside by Proposition 1B. Because of our combined efforts, traffic congestion will be eased, air quality will be improved and most importantly, state government will continue to work for the people of California.”
"An online poker player who is well known as a jokester in the Internet gaming community
is wheeling and dealing for state government to set up an online version of the popular card game, with a huge pot on the table -- Californians' pocketbooks," writes Steve Geissinger in the Contra Costa Times.
"The Secretary of State's Office late Friday cleared
Anthony Sandstrom of San Diego, known as '
Tuff Fish' in YouTube.com poker comedies, to circulate petitions putting his proposed initiative on a statewide ballot, where voters could create an Internet poker gambling agency.
"By Monday, as they said in the Old West days of the game, the stakeholders had knocked over the table and were drawing their (political) six-guns over the proposal.
"Fellow Internet poker enthusiasts were divided, with comments on numerous blogs ranging from 'good work' to 'give me a break.'"
"Flatly opposed were card rooms in Los Angeles and the Bay Area, anti-gambling expansion activists and educators who fear diversion and loss of lottery funds."
And finally, the
fight over spaying and neutering may not be over in Sacramento. "A marble monument to service dogs, originally set to be displayed in Sacramento, California, may be on its way out of the golden state. The reason?
The statue's "manhood" is still intact.
"Proponents of the recently-tabled state assembly bill AB-1634, the so-called "California Healthy Pets Act", which would require that most of the state's dogs and cats over the age of 6 months be sterilized, claim that
placing the image of an intact male dog on public property is harmful and sends the wrong message to California pet owners.
"'It's not an appropriate display, in a state that carries out three million euthanasias a year.' said Dan Nender, a 1634 supporter who filed suit in Sacramento Federal Court to have the monument altered."
