"A GOP-backed
initiative to toss out California's winner-take-all system of assigning electoral votes was approved for circulation Wednesday, and Democrats immediately slammed it as a backdoor attempt to hand Republicans the 2008 presidential election.
"The initiative is a ticking time bomb for Democratic presidential hopes next year, which are pinned on winning all of the state's 55 electoral votes. The measure would award a single electoral vote to the presidential winner in each of the state's 53 congressional districts and two to the statewide victor.
"The approval Wednesday by the secretary of state's and attorney general's offices means supporters can begin gathering signatures to qualify the initiative for the June ballot."
The Merc's Steven Harmon reports on Democratic response to the initiative. "Democratic National Committee chairman
Howard Dean accused Republicans of trying to 'rig' the 2008 presidential contest and vowed Wednesday to do 'whatever it takes within legal boundaries' to stop a California ballot measure that would change how the state casts its 55 Electoral College votes.
"Dean, who called the initiative a '
Tom Delay/Karl Rove-type maneuver,' joined U.S. Sen.
Barbara Boxer, D-Calif., in a conference call to denounce the measure, whose title and summary were released Wednesday by the Attorney General's Office.
"'
If this gets on the ballot, the election in June would determine who's the next president of the United States,' said Dean, who would not divulge details of his strategy to defeat the proposal. 'So, we'll treat the election accordingly.'"
The U-T's Bill Ainsworth reports that
today is a critical day for one of the governor's health care financing ideas. "[O]ne proposal, the 2 percent fee on doctors' revenues, has been quietly pushed off the table by the powerful California Medical Association.
"The other, a 4 percent fee on hospital payroll, is very much alive. Hospitals will consider the fee during a meeting today.
"Backing from the California Hospital Association could provide crucial momentum for Schwarzenegger's drive to inject new money into California's ailing health care system and cover the state's 6.5 million uninsured residents.
"Supporters hope a health care deal – possibly a combination of legislation and a ballot measure – can be reached before the Legislature adjourns for the year Sept. 14 or in a subsequent special session.
"Schwarzenegger's plan would impose a disputed 4 percent payroll tax on employers with 10 or more workers who don't provide coverage.
"In addition, the plan would require everyone to buy insurance, make major changes in insurance regulations and provide subsidies for low-income citizens."
"Ending more than a year of impasse, a compromise has been reached on
wide-ranging legislation touted as a way to reduce flood risk and save lives in California's Central Valley," reports the Bee's Jim Sanders.
"The pact attempts to restrict development on flood-prone acreage without imposing building moratoriums or creating significant barriers to community economic growth.
"'We can't go back to what we've had before, which is local government sometimes making decisions without taking any kind of flooding concerns into account,' said Assemblywoman Lois Wolk, D-Davis.
"The linchpin, Senate Bill 5, would prohibit new development -- but not until 2015 -- in hazardous Sacramento-San Joaquin Valley flood zones that lack adequate protection."
And out in the Central Valley, Malcolm Maclachlan reports on
an emerging war between bee keepers and orange growers.
"
The orange growers say they're losing a third of their crops when their 'seedless' varieties of oranges are pollinated by bees and grow seeds. The beekeepers contend the orange growers are trying to unreasonably bar them from large sections of the Central Valley's most fertile land.
Freshman Assemblyman
Kevin De Leon, D-Los Angeles, attempted to end this dispute by introducing AB 771.
The Seedless Mandarin and Honeybee Coexistence Working Group Act would create a body under the secretary of agriculture to mediate this dispute and create a set of best practices. The bill is sponsored by California Citrus Mutual, a trade group, and is opposed by the beekeeping industry.
"They're putting a bunch of misinformation and spending a bunch of money to correct their poor business decisions," said Orin Johnson, president of the California Beekeepers Association. These seedless oranges need distance--two miles or more, depending on whom you ask--from some other varieties of citrus in order to avoid growing seeds. The "poor business decision," Johnson said, was to largely ignore this standard when planting new groves.
So what, exactly, does the Long Beach port have to do with health care? LAT's Patrick McGreevey explains. "Faced with a likely veto by the governor, a state lawmaker agreed Wednesday to
postpone a bill that would impose a controversial container fee at the ports of Los Angeles and Long Beach aimed at easing congestion and air pollution.
"State Sen.
Alan Lowenthal (D- Long Beach) agreed with Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger that consideration of the legislation should be delayed until next year, after the governor said
he wanted to allow concerns by Los Angeles Mayor Antonio Villaraigosa, environmentalists and the retail and shipping industries to be addressed."
Ah yes, the Big Three...
"One person familiar with the discussions said
the governor did not want to antagonize the retail industry, which opposes the container fee, while he is trying to get major employers to agree to a package of changes in the state's healthcare system."
We can't tell you what his name is, but it starts with an 'A' and ends with an 'lan Lowenthal...
Capitol Weekly has the
post-mortem narrative on the wild week for proponents of the term limits initiative now headed for the February ballot.
"
Last Wednesday evening, a wildfire of political whispers whipped through the Capitol's after-work cocktail scene. From Chops to the Esquire, the buzz was spreading that the initiative to alter the state term-limits law was in danger of missing the February ballot.
John Wildermuth reports on how
two counties reversed their signature counts, which allowed the measure to make the February ballot.
"A pair of Bay Area election officials said Wednesday that
mistakes by their offices - not political pressure - forced them to revise the signature count in the barely successful effort to instantly qualify a term limits initiative for the February ballot."The measure, which would allow several termed-out state legislators to run for re-election next June, would not have made that ballot if four counties - Alameda, Contra Costa, Riverside and San Bernardino - hadn't revised their counts last Friday to add a handful of signatures previously found to be invalid.
"We made a mistake; we went back and we corrected it," said Steve Weir, Contra Costa County's registrar of voters.
"
Weir said he rechecked the single signature card he had rejected as a duplicate after he was asked to look at it again by San Leandro attorney Robin Johansen, one of the backers of the term limits measure.
"In Alameda County, the signature totals were mistakenly sent to the secretary of state before they could be double-checked, said Guy Ashley, a spokesman for the registrar."
"The orchestrated plan to pass the initiative involved moving up the state's presidential primary and creating a separate election, in part so that current legislative leaders could hold on to their jobs."
The Bee's Andy Furillo reports on
a setback handed to the state prison guards union. "An arbitrator has ruled that the state's correctional officers are not entitled to a pay raise based on an increase the California Highway Patrol union negotiated for its members last year.
"In his Sept. 1 ruling, arbitrator
Norman Brand found that the state did not violate its since-expired contract with the California Correctional Peace Officers Association it when rebuffed the union's claim that a raise must follow the increase awarded to the CHP.
"The CCPOA filed a grievance last September saying members should have gotten the raise based on the union's old contract. The expired agreement established a methodology that paid the CCPOA members $666 a month less than CHP officers.
"'
The (memorandum of understanding) has expired,' Brand wrote. 'There is no language in the expired MOU that requires any further salary increases. Thus, none are required, unless and until the parties negotiate new increases.'"
"Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger on Wednesday appealed a federal court ruling that permanently
struck down the state's ban on selling explicitly violent video games to children, attempting to save a 2005 prohibition that has never been enforced," reports the Bee's Kevin Yamamura.
"The Republican governor signed the high-profile law two years ago blocking anyone under the age of 18 from purchasing or renting certain games that depict acts such as the 'needless mutilation of the victim's body.'
"But U.S. District Judge Ronald Whyte temporarily blocked the state from imposing its ban on First Amendment grounds in December 2005, days before it was scheduled to take effect, and made his ruling permanent last month."
