The Governor
made his way onstage at last night's Golden Globe awards, writes Geoff Boucher in the Times. "Schwarzenegger handed out the night's final trophy to "Babel." The movie's Mexican director,
Alejandro González Iñárritu, joked when he took the stage: '
I swear I have my papers governor, I swear.'
Earlier, the governor was also name-checked by
Warren Beatty during his acceptance speech for the Cecil B. DeMille Award for career achievement. Beatty, who has flirted with a bid for office, joked that he had told Schwarzenegger to become a Democrat.
In the audience,
Donald Trump clapped loudly for the governor. 'I can tell you this, there's a great excitement about California since he became governor. He's brought a vitality and energy. He's a star, but he's also a leader. I'm a big investor in California.'
Maybe the governor should invest in a speech writer who isn't stuck on 1980s movie dialogue. To close the show, he said that next year '
We'll be back.'"
Meanwhile, there's an agenda to tackle. The Chron's Tom Chorneau writes "Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger is
getting high marks nationwide for setting a bold second-term agenda that would overhaul the state's health care system, promote clean energy, fix a troubled prison system and provide billions more dollars for public works projects.
More than just putting big ideas on a list, Schwarzenegger is also showing a willingness to confront -- and even unite -- vested interests resistant to the kind of audacious change the governor has in mind.
But there are also growing questions about whether there is the political and popular will to sustain his vision. In the 1970s, grand schemes to revitalize the state's water supply system dissolved when heavy rains ended a statewide drought, and a push for alternative energy transportation faded when cheap fuel wiped out memories of gas shortages and long lines at the pump. For his plans to succeed, Schwarzenegger must engineer a tectonic political shift that holds despite the ebbs and flows of political and daily life."
The Daily News's Troy Anderson looks at
the state's growing pension obligation.
California
taxpayers forked out $10.2 billion for public employee pensions in 2003-04 and are likely to face even greater liability in future years, according to a study released Monday.
The study prepared for the Howard Jarvis Taxpayers Association by the Center for Government Analysis at Newport Beach analyzed 130 public pension systems statewide and found taxpayer outlays doubled from 1997-98 to 2003-04.
"'State and local governments are going to have to put more money into these systems and that means less money for police, less money for teachers, less money for schools, less money for roads, less money for parks and less money for libraries,' said
Steve Frates, president of the center."
The LAT's Christian Berthelson writes that
local and state elected officials are getting younger.
"Although no one appears to have collected data documenting the youth movement, sociologists, political scientists and political pros agree it is taking place. They offer myriad explanations for the trend, including a generational power shift, the notion of California as a clean slate making it more hospitable to fresh leaders, and a renewed interest by young people in public service.
But all agree that term limits have played a significant role.
'Term limits have definitely opened it up,' said
Art Torres, chairman of the California Democratic Party. He was elected to the Assembly in 1974 at 28 but says, 'There wasn't then a whole group of young people like we see today.'
The trend is particularly pronounced in areas where middle-class whites have been replaced by Latino and Asian immigrants, leaving a political power vacuum. Members of this new generation of young politicians, Republican and Democrat alike, are often the first in their families to grow up in the United States and to attend college. They are filling the void.
'In the southeast cities of Los Angeles [County], they're getting elected in a new demographic environment, which means it's a relatively new political environment,' said
Jaime Regelado, executive director of the Pat Brown Institute of Public Affairs at Cal State L.A. 'You're getting a demographic shift that decades later is playing out politically,' he said."
The Bee's Judy Lin reports that "Chevron, ConocoPhillips and industry representatives
are expressing support for the governor's plan to cut by at least 10 percent all the greenhouse gases released by the state's transportation vehicles over the next 13 years.
In coming weeks, administration officials say the governor will issue an executive order laying out a framework for meeting that goal by promoting alternative and cleaner-burning fuels.
Administration officials and environmental leaders say Schwarzenegger's proposed low-carbon fuel standard isn't expected to meet as much opposition as other environmental mandates because it allows market-based solutions.
Petroleum firms can formulate cleaner-burning gasoline or develop alternative fuels. And they can be exempted from state emission standards if they purchase "carbon credits" from other companies that are exceeding the compliance standards."
Andy Furillo reports for the Bee that "[c]ounty officials in California
are expressing concern to the Department of Corrections and Rehabilitation over a proposal by Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger to raise the minimum state prison term from one to three years.
Under California's current sentencing and incarceration arrangement, convicted criminals who are sentenced to 12 months or more are ticketed for a state penitentiary. But in an effort to reserve limited prison space for the worst convicts in California, the administration is asking the Legislature to lift the jail-prison cutoff and shift some of the offender population to the counties, even though 20 of them are already operating their lockups under court-imposed population caps.
'The three-year threshold is more than a little cause for concern,' said Sacramento County Sheriff
John McGinness. 'We've still got issues associated with the fact that so many of the county jail facilities are at max right now, and others are rapidly approaching max.'
State Sen.
George Runner, R-Lancaster, said he views the notion of a county-state sentencing bifurcation as a reflection of "an arbitrary system" that should not be cast in concrete. He envisions a compromise to a two-year sentencing cutoff if the state follows through with the jail construction plan for the counties.
'It may work,' Runner said.
Assemblyman
Mark Leno, D-San Francisco, the former chairman of the Public Safety Committee who is now the head of the Appropriations Committee, said the move to a three-year minimum state prison sentence 'is going to be a huge imposition on the counties.'"
And in
Junior Pokey news, the LAT's Jennifer Warren writes: "Two years ago, Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger stood inside one of California's most violent youth prisons and pledged to turn the state's disgraced correctional system for the young into a national model. To reach that goal, the governor now
wants to radically shrink the population, shipping about half the state's inmates to county lockups.
That provocative policy shift, which must be approved by the Legislature, was unveiled as part of the governor's budget last week.
Details are sketchy. But a summary provided by Schwarzenegger's office shows that he wants to reserve state youth prisons, which now house 2,800 inmates, for violent male offenders only.
By mid-2008, the governor would relocate about 1,340 youths — nonviolent parole violators, all female offenders and virtually all those convicted of drug and property crimes — making them the counties' responsibility.The plan has already raised concerns among corrections experts, county officials and others who have worked for years to improve the state's floundering system, which has become the receptacle for California's most violent and troubled youths."
Much of
California's citrus crop has been destroyed in the last week, due to record low temperatures up and down the state.
The LAT reports, "It will take days to make a full assessment of the losses to the $1.1-billion orange crop. But the state's top agriculture official said Monday that damage to fruit and vegetable crops overall will be greater and more widespread than in the devastating freeze of 1998, which destroyed $700 million worth of produce across California.
"
'This cold incident will surpass the 1998-99 freeze,' said
A.G. Kawamura, secretary of the California Department of Food and Agriculture. Losses, although greatest in the San Joaquin Valley, seem to be spread through many parts of the state that typically have been immune to freezes, he said, 'from San Diego … to the coast.'"
Finally from our
Is That A Cell Phone in Your Pocket? Files: A cell phone in the front pocket of
a Vallejo man's pants spontaneously combusted, quickly ignited his clothes and left the man with second- and third-degree burns across at least half his body, according to investigators.
"Luis Picaso, 59, was apparently sleeping on a white, all-plastic lawn chair in his room late Saturday night and was awakened as he was ablaze, said Vallejo Fire Department investigator and spokesman Bill Tweedy.
By the time authorities arrived shortly before midnight, Picaso was on the floor of the bathroom. He was in stable condition Sunday, Tweedy said Monday night. The plastic lawn chair -- a petroleum product causing a high-heat fire -- had melted. Picaso's soccer jersey -- made of quick-burning nylon -- was almost completely burned away."
We're sure there are at least four bill ideas from this unfortunate situation.
