All the
officers that guard the security of the Assembly -- the Sergeants at Arms
-- are now
going to be armed. It's not clear why, and the most senior of the
Legislature's sergeants -- the Senate's Tony Beard -- is a bit baffled. He's
not the only one.
From
the Bee's Torey Van
Oot: "Please be advised that as of March 31, 2011,
the Assembly Sergeants-at-Arms Security Division will be carrying
department-issued Smith & Wesson .40 caliber semi-automatic
weapons full-time while they are on duty for the Assembly," Assembly Chief
Sergeant-at-Arms Ronald Pane wrote in a March 31 letter to
Senate Chief Sergeant-at-Arms Tony Beard, Jr."
"Sergeants-at-arms,
whose duties include protecting legislators and monitoring
floor sessions, are
far from the only layer of security at the Capitol. California
Highway Patrol officers are already stationed at
the Capitol, patrolling the building and grounds 24 hours a day, and
visitors and staff must go through metal detectors and screenings
upon entering the Capitol."
"Pane
said the move is not a response to current threat levels
or a demonstrated need
for more security, but meant to establish continuity
in security
policy and enhance "safety here at the Capitol." He said
the Assembly's security personnel are already armed during large
events at the Capitol and times when threat levels are high."
Speaking
of guns, an
attempt to make it easier for lawmakers to go around
armed -- now
there's a frightening thought -- didn't make it out of a legislative
committee. The LAT's
Patrick McGreevy tells the tale.
"A
bill that would have streamlined the state's gun permit
process for them was
stripped of that controversial provision Tuesday, before
a legislative
committee passed the rest of the measure. Sen. Roderick
Wright (D-Inglewood),
author of the bill, said he hoped to revisit the idea
later."
"State residents who apply for a permit to carry a
concealed weapon must
show good cause for one. That can include dangerous
work or threats of
violence. Wright's measure would have established that
good cause existed in
elected officials' need for "for protection or self-defense."
"Some legislators objected to special treatment for
lawmakers over people
in many other professions, including teachers and parking
enforcement officers,
who could make the same case for good cause.
There's a
joker in the deck in all this struggling to get a balanced
budget: Even
if Brown gets his entire package of taxes and cuts,
a shortage is poised to
emerge.
From HealthyCal's
Dan Weintraub: "Gov.
Jerry Brown and state lawmakers last month passed what
might have been the
biggest package of spending cuts in state history,
more than $11 billion in
reductions to almost every part of the government.
But when the next fiscal
year ends less than 15 months from now, many of those cuts will have failed
to
deliver their promised savings."
"As a
result, even if Brown gets the entire combination of
spending cuts and tax
increases he is seeking from the Legislature and the
voters, a new shortfall
will likely emerge unless the economy outperforms projections
and the state
collects higher tax revenues that expected."
"That’s
been the pattern in Sacramento for many years. And
while Brown appears to have
tried harder than his predecessors to rely on realistic
projections, the
savings expected from many of the spending cuts he
has embraced appear to be
overly optimistic."
One of the
painful cuts looming in California is the closure of
state parks, and
the Brown administration is keeping the hit list a
tight secret, reports veteran environmental writerPaul Rogers in the Mercury News.
"In
January, Gov. Jerry Brown unveiled his proposed budget
and announced that
California would, for the first time in history, have
to close state parks as a
cost-saving measure."
"Brown
instructed the state parks department to draw up by
mid-February a list of
parks to be closed to save $11 million this year and $22 million next
year."
"But
today, three months later, as millions of Californians
prepare for summer
vacations to state beaches, forests and historic sites,
the names of the parks
to be closed remain a tightly held secret. The lack of disclosure has
rangers anxious, legislators uninformed and parks advocates
frustrated."
Whatever
the budget's problems, Brown says the spending document
he unveils at the May
Revision will be balanced -- which
means that it will contain billions of dollars in new
cuts, absent a
dramatic change in the Legislature. Capitol Weekly's John Howard has the story.
""We're
going back to that traditional process," Brown said,
"and we'll be
ready by May 14," he noted. Brown has made little secret of his intention
to sign an all-cuts budget absent new revenue. The May Revision is
a formal
step in that process."
"The "traditional process" is that a governor proposes
a budget
in January, the Legislature rewrites it, the May Revision
tweaks the numbers
and the Legislature approves it in June. The governor
signs it into law by July
1, the beginning of the new fiscal year."
"That
rarely happens. In recent years, the problem has been
exacerbated by a
hyper-partisan divide in the Legislature."
And from
our "Public Transportation" file comes the tale of a woman who
lost her pet cobra on the train, got the snake back
later but now refuses to
reimburse the city for the cost of cleaning up after
the pet. This comes from
Boston.
"The
T sent Melissa Moorhouse a letter Feb. 14 seeking $650 for the
"unanticipated clean-up costs" to rid the subway of any germs that
Penelope, a Dumeril's boa, might have left behind.
The Allston woman
disregarded the letter, prompting the T to send a follow-up late last week
again requesting payment."
"Moorhouse said today that she cannot afford to pay
the bill and would not
pay it even if she could, feeling disrespected by the
MBTA."
"I'm in no position to pay for that . . . and if the
T officials had given
me any respect or listened to me in the first place,
this wouldn't have
happened," said Moorhouse, who lives on disability
payments, and whose
husband works in a warehouse. She said the transit
authority did not take her
seriously when she reported the missing snake, and
that the non-venomous Penelope
posed no threat to riders."
Melissa's
the threat...
