"As leader of the California Assembly, Speaker
Fabian Nuņez has traveled the world in luxury, paying with campaign funds for visits to some of the finest hotels and restaurants and for purchases at high-end retailers such as Louis Vuitton in Paris.
"It is not clear how these activities have related to legislative business, as state law requires, because the Los Angeles Democrat refuses to provide details on tens of thousands of dollars in such expenditures.
"The spending, listed in mandatory filings with the state,
includes $47,412 on United, Lufthansa and Air France airlines this year; $8,745 at the exclusive Hotel Arts in Barcelona, Spain; $5,149 for a 'meeting' at Cave L'Avant Garde, a wine seller in the Bordeaux region of France; a total of $2,562 for two 'office expenses' at Vuitton, two years apart; and $1,795 for a 'meeting' at Le Grand Colbert, a venerable Parisian restaurant."Nuņez also spent $2,934 at Colosseum Travel in Rome, and paid $505 to the European airline Spanair.
"Other expenses are closer to home: a $1,715 meeting at Asia de Cuba restaurant in West Hollywood; a $317 purchase at upscale Pavilion Salon Shoes in Sacramento; a $2,428 meeting at 58 Degrees and Holding, a Sacramento wine bar and bistro; and $800 spent at Dollar Rent a Car in Kihei, Hawaii.
"Asked in an interview about his foreign travel in general, Nuņez said: '
For me, it's a question of: Is my perspective on issues broad enough? Do I have enough context when I make decisions? This is a big state to run. You've got to know what you're doing.'"
"With time running out to get a water bond on the Feb. 5 ballot, Assembly Democrats
said Thursday that it might make more sense to wait until the June or November elections," reports E.J. Schultz in the Bee.
"'We probably have one chance to put something on the ballot and have it pass,' said Assemblyman
John Laird, D-Santa Cruz. 'We shouldn't feel pressure to do something by a deadline.'
"Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger - who called a special session to address the state's massive water needs - is still pushing to get a bond before voters in February. But to do so, lawmakers must beat an Oct. 16 deadline.
"Laird, a leader in water negotiations, said lawmakers are not giving up on the goal. But more than two weeks into the session, it's not clear how much progress, if any, has been made."
"The money spent in an
attempt to oust state Sen. Jeff Denham, R-Merced, keeps growing, though the Republican camp said the recall effort makes little sense," writes Scott Jason in the Merced Sun-Star.
"A Sacramento-based committee that aims to increase voter registration has spent $41,490 on the effort led by the Democratic Party in August, according to recent state filings.
"Wayne Johnson, who's advising Denham on the anti-recall campaign, wouldn't say what the next move would be, but pledged they'd fight hard.
"He admitted that the effort needs be taken seriously. "If you pay enough money to people on the street and people are disingenuous enough in what they're saying, you can collect enough signatures to qualify a recall," Johnson said.
"The political strategist said the voter registration committee is Perata's slush fund, adding that he predicts some donors will be upset to see their money used for such a partisan effort. '
(The recall) almost smacks of a vendetta,' he noted. 'But (Denham) is not a divisive personality.'"
"State legislators
have sent several bills to Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger that would expand the scope of California's family leave laws to cover siblings, in-laws and grandparents. A spokesman for the Republican governor said Thursday that he has not taken a position on the bills, which would give California the most far-reaching family leave policy in the country. He has until Oct. 14 to decide whether to sign them," reports Ilana DeBare in the Chron.
"Supporters say the bills are a compassionate response to the needs of today's diverse families - where most adults are working, families are often spread across the country, and caregiving responsibilities can easily fall on in-laws, grandchildren or siblings.
"'These bills grew out of heart-wrenching calls to legal hot lines where people would say their brother was dying of cancer, and they were the only family member around,' said
Netsy Firestein, director of the Labor Project for Working Families, a Berkeley nonprofit group. 'They'd ask how to apply for paid family leave, and we'd have to say, 'You can't.' '
"But opponents, led by the California Manufacturers and Technology Association, say California already provides enough family leave. They say the bills would increase staffing hassles for employers.
"'It has become increasingly difficult to replace these workers,' said association spokesman
Gino DiCaro. 'California already is one of the most expensive places to do business. These bills are going to have some pretty significant impacts on human resource departments and production abilities.'"
Dan Walters
reviews a new book on direct democracy by Mark Baldassare and Cheryl Katz.
"Baldassare and Katz take a fairly positive view of the ballot measure phenomenon, saying it could transform California into a "hybrid democracy" they describe as "a combined use of the legislative process and the ballot box to make public policy."
"A less benign view is that it symbolizes the continued devolvement of California into a collection of mutually hostile clans, defined by economic standing, ethnicity, culture, ideology and/or geography, that use politics, and especially ballot measures, to battle rival clans.
"Even under the best circumstances, the ballot measure is a blunt, single-purpose political weapon, written privately by those willing and able to spend millions of dollars to qualify and enact it, without regard to ancillary consequences. The three decades of increasing ballot measure activity have seen countless examples of single-purpose measures interacting with each other to make effective governance of California even less viable.
"For instance, were a measure to be placed on next year's ballot to raise taxes for health care, as Schwarzenegger and his allies may do, the union-dominated "Education Coalition" would claim about 40 percent of the proceeds under a ballot measure that it got enacted in 1988. Health advocates will thus be forced to make the tax boost much bigger than they need -- risking voter rejection."
"On Saturday, in honor of the nation's Archives Month -- there really is such a thing --
the public is invited to free 'behind-the-scenes' tours of the vast California State Archives," writes the Bee's Peter Hecht.
"From 4-8 p.m., state archivists will introduce a few hundred visitors at the California Museum of History, Women and the Arts to the state's vast stash of documents, maps and photographs.
"The 98,000 cubic feet of files include material ranging from Spanish and Mexican land grants to the 1849 and 1879 California state constitutions and from police files on the 1968 Robert F. Kennedy assassination to decades upon decades of legislative records."
"After rolling onto a Malibu beach Thursday morning,
the rotting remains of a 60-ton blue whale were towed out to sea hours later -- the third time in less than two weeks that officials have tried to find a permanent resting place for the corpse.
"To the relief of residents in the nearby star-studded Malibu Colony, Los Angeles County lifeguards towed the putrefying mass of flesh 15 to 20 miles offshore -- just as they had four days earlier.
"'We don't weigh it down,' said Los Angeles County Fire Capt.
Terry Harvey, a spokesman for the lifeguards. 'We let it be in its natural environment and decompose naturally.'
"The dead whale initially was found in the Santa Barbara Channel and towed to a beach at Naval Base Ventura County on Sept. 22 for detailed examination by scientists.
"At day's end, the cut-up carcass, depleted of natural gases and many of its internal organs, was dragged from the beach at Point Mugu and out to sea, where scientists presumed it would sink.
"They were wrong.
"The odoriferous hulk washed ashore at Malibu's Broad Beach on Sunday.
"It drifted onto a sandbar near shore Thursday morning.
"'It's the same old whale,'
Joe Cordaro, a biologist with the National Marine Fisheries Service, said Thursday. 'It just won't sink.'"
