"The California Nurses Association
demanded Tuesday that Assembly Speaker Fabian Nunez abstain from voting on health-care legislation because his wife works for a nonprofit agency bankrolled by the hospital industry," writes the Bee's Jim Sanders.
"'Californians can no longer trust that he will represent the public interest and not the financial interest of a large industry that has put his wife on their payroll,'
Zenei Cortez, spokeswoman for the association and for the National Nurses Organizing Committee, said in a written statement Tuesday.
"The Bee reported Tuesday that Nunez's wife,
Maria Robles, was hired at a six-figure salary in January to serve as president of Californians for Patient Care, a Sacramento-based nonprofit agency that receives nearly all its funding from the California Hospital Association."
With revenues falling below projections and a recent ruling requiring $500 million in back STRS contributions, California's budgeteers got more bad news yesterday.
"California taxpayers
are on the hook for as much as $500 million in interest that a judge says the state owes to thousands of property owners whose assets were taken into trust under a troubled state program that manages abandoned property, officials acknowledged Tuesday," reports Tom Chorneau in the Chron.
"A federal judge in San Jose ordered state officials last week to begin paying interest to property owners whose assets were returned after being held in the state's unclaimed property program. The ruling overturned a 2003 law that had halted interest payments.
"Officials in the state Department of Finance and the state Treasurer's Office have estimated that the liability could exceed $500 million, while the attorney who won the case against the state estimated the cost of back interest to be as much as $1 billion."
On the bright side, a
campaign to shame people into paying past taxes appears to be working. The AP's Aaron Davis reports: "Answering machine messages, warning letters and liens have long been the discreet, if ignorable, weapons of the tax man.
"Now, California officials are beginning to think a high-tech, public flogging may prove more effective.
"The state's Franchise Tax Board launched a Web site last week listing the names, addresses and past-due amounts of its worst 250 scofflaws. Among California's most delinquent: singer
Dionne Warwick, comedian
Sinbad and
O.J. Simpson.
"As of yesterday, those three remained on the list -- and into the state for at least $1.4 million each. But for dozens of others, the threat of public humiliation has had the desired effect."
"A Sacramento judge
has ruled that California can sell billions of dollars in lease revenue bonds to finance its massive prison expansion program," reports the Bee's Andy Furillo.
"Taxpayers for Improving Public Safety, a local activist group, sued to stop the bond financing on grounds that the state's repayment plan did not have a dedicated funding source and was therefore unconstitutional.
"Sacramento Superior Court Judge Loren McMaster rejected that argument, saying in a ruling Thursday that the state Supreme Court already has upheld the lease revenue financing mechanism."
In other pokey news, "California corrections officials
have "temporarily deferred" a plan to add beds to a Fresno County prison where at least 12 inmates have died of valley fever since 2004," writes Andy Furillo in the Bee.
"While the state is holding off on a construction program at Pleasant Valley State Prison, the corrections agency still intends to go ahead with expansion plans at four institutions in Kern County where three other inmates have died of the disease during the same time span.
"The temporary scrapping of the program at Pleasant Valley was welcomed by
Jesse Garcia, a Fresno man whose 37-year-old son, Javier, a former inmate at the prison, died Friday of valley fever meningitis.
"'I'm glad to hear they are going to stop it,' Garcia said. 'It's a horrible thing to have to see.'"
"California families
must earn far more than the minimum wage and in some cases as much or more than the median hourly income just to keep up with the bare-bones expenses of living, a report released Tuesday said," writes John Hill in the Bee.
"A family of four with two working parents needs a yearly income of $72,343 just to cover such costs as housing, medical care, transportation and food, according to the report, "Making Ends Meet," by the California Budget Project, a nonprofit public policy research group that advocates for working Californians.
"That figure doesn't even include putting away savings for retirement or college, or extras such as cable television, an Internet connection or vacations, the report said.
"The median hourly wage in 2006 was $17.42. But to make ends meet, two working parents in a family of four would have to each earn $17.39, just three cents short of the median, the report said. The median is the point at which half make more and half make less."
Meanwhile, state workers
are spending a lot of time editing Wikipedia. The Bee's Phillip Reese and Carrie Peyton Dahlberg report: "As the online reference Wikipedia soars in popularity, Sacramento government workers are doing their part to shape how we all see the world -- inflating reputations, dabbling in pornography and whiling away work hours."
"California Department of Justice computers were used to alter Wikipedia entries about submarines, battleships and vintage airplanes roughly 1,100 times, a Bee analysis found.
"Someone from the state Legislature thought it was a good idea to remove a reference to state Sen.
Leland Yee's 1992 booking in Hawaii on suspicion of shoplifting.
"Another of the Legislature's computer users prettied up a section on Assembly Speaker
Fabian Nunez, citing his penchant for creating budgets that are "lean but not mean" and deleting a summary of his conflicts with Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger."
Wonder if there's been any recent amending to that entry.
Matier and Ross offer
the portrait of a photo-op. "Quite a scene behind the scenes at Monday's big ferry bill signing in Alameda.
Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger asked everyone to get together just the day before, then arrived 20 minutes late, having jetted up from Los Angeles. Arnold immediately got into
an animated conversation with 71-year-old Oakland Mayor Ron Dellums on their respective workout regimes.
"Meanwhile, state Senate President Pro Tem
Don Perata - still steaming at the governor for having vetoed his water bond plan - barely spoke.
"And San Francisco Mayor
Gavin Newsom, called in to lend his environmental credentials to the photo op, stared at his shoes.
"
But when the time came, it was all smiles for the cameras. And with that, Arnold was back on the jet and gone."
And for all you Cal football fans out there,
this correction in the New York Times offers little salve to the wounds from last weekend. "A sports article in some editions on Sunday about Oregon State’s upset victory over No. 2 California on the same day that No. 1 Louisiana State lost misstated the last time Cal was ranked No. 1 in college football. It was October 1951, not “70 years ago.” (The Golden Bears were also No. 1 in 1937.)"
Hope that helps.
For Years, you've relied on our Roundup Religion Desk to go out and asks the big questions. Today's sermon: Is there
room for The King in the Catholic Church? One priest sure thinks so.
"
Romanian-born Antonio Petrescu believes you can worship God and Elvis at the same time: as a Catholic priest and Elvis Presley impersonator, he finds his spiritual inspiration in the late rock legend.
"People ask me 'How can you reconcile Elvis impersonations with your choice of professional work?'" said Petrescu, who puts on his glittery suits and swivels his hips when not working as a parish priest in the Italian town of Avezzano.
