"Riding high on a global warming action plan he wants to take statewide, California Attorney General
Jerry Brown said Wednesday he's
thinking about running for governor when the job opens up again in 2010," reports Andy Furillo in the Bee.
"'The thought has certainly crossed my mind, but I haven't really come to any conclusion,' Brown said over coffee in a meeting with The Bee's Capitol Bureau staff.
"Meanwhile, Brown said, he's moving. He and his wife are in escrow on a house in the Oakland hills, he said, above the flats near downtown where they live in a one-room loft. Helping prompt the move: Ten homicides within five blocks of his residence since he's lived there.
"'Some people would feel it's a little dangerous,' he said of his current neighborhood."
If he runs, the former mayor can expect to see that in a campaign commercial.
"Listed as perhaps the top Democratic gubernatorial prospect in two polls, Brown said, 'I take note of that, but not with any great interest.' The door is 'open' to him for a possible run, he said, but 'I'm not even going to think about it for the next year.'"
Capitol Weekly's John Howard also catches up with Brown, and
talks about his role in the recent budget standoff.
"'It is unfortunate that the budget got stalled over this issue,' Brown said. 'It ended up being a straw man. This was a specter conjured up in the Republican caucus in the dead of night. It was a Republican bogeyman that was created for their own purposes.'
"'I am not itching to bring lawsuits,' Brown added.
Brown has submitted formal comments to a total of 13 cities, counties or developers 'pointing out their obligations under [the California Environmental Quality Act].'"
"Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger
took a firm stand Wednesday against the Democratic healthcare proposal moving through the Legislature, saying for the first time that he would not support an expansion of medical insurance if it were financed solely by new requirements on employers," writes Jordan Rau in the Times.
"The Democratic proposal would require employers to spend at least the equivalent of 7.5% of their payroll on their workers' health.
The governor insisted that the plan also must require all Californians to have insurance, an idea at the core of his January proposal."Democrats omitted that concept, believing that many people would be unable to afford the premiums.
"Schwarzenegger's program would have given employers the option of providing insurance or paying into a state fund that would offer it to uninsured workers and those who couldn't afford individual policies. It also would have spread the responsibility of paying for expanded healthcare to doctors and hospitals, an idea that was rejected by Democrats as politically infeasible.
"Taxes on healthcare providers would require the support of Republican legislators, who strongly oppose both the governor's approach and that of the Democrats.
"'We have a good shot of getting it done, not exactly my way but a compromise way,' Schwarzenegger told several reporters called to his office in the Capitol. 'But those elements have to be part of it.'"
The Chron's Tom Chorneau
writes: "Senate President Pro Tem
Don Perata, D-Oakland,
expressed skepticism that such an enormous task could be done before the legislative session ends Sept 14.
"'The time is working against it,' Perata said. 'We should have been working on this every day this month. We haven't been. We've been tied up with the budget stalemate. Now we have to kick it into gear.
When we try to do things fast around here, we usually make mistakes that we regret.'
"With the time crunch, Perata said he would focus on a bill that could be moved to the governor without the two-thirds majority - and without Republican votes. He acknowledged that such a bill might not include all the changes the governor would want.
"
Perata said one option could be for the governor to call a special session of the Legislature to work on the health care bill - a move that would require lawmakers to remain in the Capitol past Sept. 14."
"For a state with so many traffic problems,
transportation ended up getting little respect when lawmakers forged a budget compromise in Sacramento," report Rong-Gong Lin II and Jeffrey Rabin in the Times.
"The budget takes $1.3 billion of the sales tax on gasoline revenues away from local transportation agencies to balance the general fund budget.
"The cuts could imperil a variety of transit projects, most notably the Exposition Line light rail from downtown L.A. to the Westside, extending the Orange Line busway from Warner Center to Chatsworth, and building the Gold Line from Pasadena to San Bernardino County, said Roger Snoble, chief executive of the Metropolitan Transportation Authority.
"'As far as improving transportation here, it's really a big setback,' Snoble said."
"One day after putting to bed another budget, California's political leaders
began mulling ways to fix a 'fatally broken' spending schedule that tends to keep them up late at night -- sometimes until the crack of dawn," writes the Bee's Judy Lin.
"Senate Democratic leader
Don Perata is asking Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger to convene a bipartisan budget revision panel to develop a multiyear plan to restore on-time budgets. In a letter sent Wednesday, he said leaders needed to decide on the state's core responsibilities and get revenue in line with expenditures.
"'
The panel's objective shall be to propose changes necessary to align the state budget with contemporary fiscal and political realities, and the expectations of those we serve,' Perata wrote in his letter circulated in the Capitol. The panel would include the four legislative leaders, the governor's finance director and the legislative budget analyst.
"Schwarzenegger and Republican lawmakers welcomed talks of changing California's budgeting process. During a meeting Wednesday with The Bee's editorial board, Schwarzenegger said 'everyone agrees we should sit down and look at the budget system' after this year's 52-day stalemate."
George Skelton
offers his own budget postmortem. "The whole ugly exercise represented an abuse of California's rare requirement for a two-thirds majority legislative vote to pass a state budget. City councils, 47 states and Congress all pass budgets by simple majorities.
"
Sen. Tom Torlakson (D-Antioch), chairman of the Appropriations Committee, said he'll introduce a constitutional amendment to reduce the budget vote requirement to a simple majority. He wouldn't try to change the two-thirds rule for a tax increase.
"'
All the countries on Earth that are democracies use the simple majority. Why can't we do that in California?' he asks. 'Local business people are just incredulous and frustrated to see government stumble so. We've caused a lot of people to lose money.'
"Inevitably, there were vows from Democratic and Republican leaders to "reform" the budgeting process -- to commence serious negotiations earlier in the year, to not lollygag into summer. But that was an easy promise to make Wednesday. It had the ring of a hung-over reveler swearing off booze on New Year's."
"The state
made a new contract offer Wednesday to the California correctional officers union, which all but rejected the proposal out of hand," reports Andy Furillo in the Bee.
"Under terms of the three-year proposal, the 31,000 members of the California Correctional Peace Officers Association would receive annual 5 percent raises through the 2009-10 fiscal year.
"It would increase a top-scale line officer's pay to $84,755 a year, but a union spokesman declared it "regressive" from the state's previous offer because it would dissolve the formula that links CCPOA pay to the salaries of California Highway Patrol officers.
"'
It's our view that the offer is nothing more than a portrayal by this administration that the men and women we represent are nothing more than greedy prison guards,' CCPOA Vice President
Chuck Alexander said in an interview. 'For us, it's never been about money. It's about working conditions.'"
"The California Supreme Court
took up San Francisco's program of preferential treatment for companies owned by minorities and women Wednesday, agreeing to decide whether the city can override a voter-approved ban on granting advantages to contractors based on their sex or race," writes the Chron's Bob Egelko.
"In taking its first affirmative action case in almost seven years, the court said it would hear appeals by two companies that accuse the city of violating Proposition 209, the 1996 state initiative that outlawed preferences in public contracts, employment and education."
"In a sharp critique of University of California operations, Board of Regents Chairman
Richard C. Blum called Wednesday for a major overhaul of the 'outmoded and dysfunctional' way the UC administration operates," writes Richard Paddock in the Times.
Blum, the husband of
Dianne Feinstein, delivered the news to
Robert Dynes of his ouster over dinner last month.
"In a six-page paper sent to his fellow regents, Blum called for restructuring the UC president's office to eliminate arcane procedures that have existed for decades and often hinder decisions, costing the university millions of dollars.
"'Why is it so hard to make broad-scale progress toward our goals?' Blum asked. '
I believe the fundamental problem is an overgrown UC administrative infrastructure that substitutes motion for progress.'
"He also proposed creating a scholarship fund of up to $1 billion to help students cope with rising fees and called for improving UC's relations with the governor and Legislature, who have steadily reduced the university's share of the state budget. The state budget finally approved Tuesday by the Legislature after a 51-day deadlock calls for raising student fees at state colleges and universities as much as 10%."
California's Secretary of State has a problem with touch-screen voting machines.
The state's voters? Not so much.The Mercury News reports, "California voters generally have confidence that their touch-screen votes are accurately counted, though most prefer that their votes are counted on paper or punch card ballots.
"In a Field Poll released today,
44 percent of voters said they have a great deal of confidence in election results, while another 41 percent said they have some confidence. Another 14 percent said they had little or no confidence."
Could globalization be leading to the demise of redheads? Some say yes.
"Redheads are becoming rarer and could be extinct in 100 years, according to genetic scientists.
"The current National Geographic magazine reports that less than two per cent of the world's population has natural red hair, created by a mutation in northern Europe thousands of years ago.
"
Global intermingling, which broadens the availability of possible partners, has reduced the chances of redheads meeting and producing little redheads of their own."
