Gov. Jerry Brown seeks a power shift from the state to the local governments
over key services, rolling back the unintended consequence
of Proposition 13, which centralized power in Sacramento.
From the LA Times' Anthony York and Shane Goldmacher: "Heading into a meeting with local government officials
Tuesday morning, Brown said implementation of the property-tax limits that Californians hold dear has contributed
to the state's financial mess. The new governor said
his budget proposal next week would include plans to
return to cities and counties many government functions
that Sacramento took over after Proposition 13 passed."
"The measure "started the centralization of power,"
Brown told reporters before entering the closed-door meeting. Afterward, he expanded on that idea,
saying Proposition 13 "took away the power of counties to tax, for the most
part; it sent the decisions up to Sacramento. So we want
to redistribute all that."
Even as Brown began his first full day on the job,
the exit of predecessor Arnold Schwarzenegger left
a bad taste in the Capitol, says the Bee's Dan Walters.
"He also left behind a foul stench – and not from one his stogies. It came from a last-minute flurry of appointments of ex-legislators and other insiders to high-paying state boards and, most of all, from his indefensible
decision to lower the prison sentence of former Assembly
Speaker Fabian Núñez's son for his role in a senseless slaying."
"The appointments were outrageous, giving out-of-work politicians seats requiring little work but paying
over $100,000 a year on boards Schwarzenegger once said should be axed. But commuting Esteban Núñez's manslaughter sentence from 16 years to seven years was beyond the pale."
Speaking of Schwarzenegger, one thing he didn't do
was take away that 800-pound brass bear that he dumped in front of his Capitol
office door. The SPCA told Capitol Weekly's Malcolm
Maclachlan that it would like to adopt the beast.
"The Sacramento SPCA has offered to adopt former Gov.
Arnold Schwarzenegger’s grizzly bear. Well, his bear statue, to be more specific."
"When Schwarzenegger officially termed out on Monday,
he
left the 800-pound hunk of bronze in its familiar place in front
of the front
door of the main entrance to the governor’s Capitol office."
In a time of economic pain, it's hard to believe that
a band of public employees would threaten to sue unless they
got larger pensions. But that's what happened at UC.
On Tuesday, UC told them to get lost. The Times' Larry Gordon tells the tale.
"The University of California system's
two top leaders on Tuesday rejected a politically controversial
demand by some
of the university's most highly paid employees that
they should receive larger
pensions, based on a percentage of their total salaries,
not on just the first
$245,000.
"The dispute comes weeks after UC bolstered its
long underfunded retirement plans by cutting benefits
for all employees and
raising the minimum retirement age from 50 to 55 for those hired after 2013."
Proposition 8, the gay-marriage ban, continues its legal journey through the
courts. The latest move: An appeals court wants guidance from the state Supreme
Court to resolve the issue.
From Carol J. Williams at the LAT: "The state's highest court,
which has considered the issue twice in the last three
years, was drawn back
into the fray by a panel of federal appeals court judges.
The panel asked for guidanceon
the seemingly technical, but perhaps decisive, issue
of who has the legal right
to defend the ballot initiative on appeal, what is
known in court as
"standing."
"In August, U.S. District Judge Vaughn Walker ruled
that Proposition 8 violates the U.S. Constitution because it deprives
same-sex
couples of equal protection under the law. Former Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger and
then-Atty. Gen.Jerry Brown declined to appeal Walker's ruling, accepting his
decision to strike down the ban."
And now we peer into our "Computer Woes" file to learn a simple maxim: If you are going to give away a computer, first make
sure you wipe the child-porn images from the hard drive.
"The computer was reportedly given away at an estate
sale
in Chico last summer. The person who received it was
able to repair it and
called authorities when the images were found on the
hard drive."
"The FBI said the hard drive contained 450 still images,
250 videos, and portrayed 44 juvenile victims."
"Hernandez was due to leave on a cruise Monday which
includes several stops in Mexico. The San Diego Union-Tribune reported that
Hernandez talked online about how he had hired young
boys in Mexico for sex."
And so it goes...
