The Legislature's Democrats, burned before by Schwarzenegger
in budget deals, are in no mood to hammer out a new budget in a special
session called by the governor.
The L.A. Times' Shane Goldmacher reports: "Steinberg and other
Democratic leaders have accused Schwarzenegger of breaking
handshake agreements
on the last two budgets by wielding his veto pen heavily
after lawmakers sent
him the spending plan."
"The nearly $1.5 billion the governor has cut since
2009 includes funding for workers who help abused and neglected
children, day
care for parents working their way off welfare, domestic-violence shelters, and
AIDS treatment and prevention. The reductions were
needed to shore up the
state's reserve fund, Schwarzenegger said."
Meanwhile, Gov.-elect Jerry Brown is in the midst of his transition
to form a new administration. But the changeover involves more stealth and less shakeup, reports Capitol Weekly's John Howard.
"Thus far, he has made no across-the-board board demands
that ranking state officials submit their resignations
then reapply for jobs in
the new administration – a common practice of an incoming governor, as in the
case of George Deukmejian's governorship after Brown
left office the first
time, or Ronald Reagan's administration following Pat
Brown."
"Capitol sources say that weeks before the Nov. 2
election, Brown privately visited a number of ranking
state and elected
officials, in part to pick their brains, in part to
ask that they remain in a
Brown administration. Since the election, his staff
has continued to deliver a
similar message: There will be little bureaucratic change in the immediate
future."
"Live from New York, It's Saturday Night!" Wait, that's
not right. "LIve from San Francisco, it's Proposition 8!" Now that's right. The Bee's Susan Ferriss tells us why.
"A dramatic new chapter in the legal fight over Proposition
8 opens today, with debate
over the purpose of marriage, the power of social convention
and the rights of
gay individuals televised live from federal court for
the first time."
"First, however, a three-judge panel of the 9th U.S. Circuit
Court of Appeals in San Francisco will hear an hour of debate over
whether backers of California's Proposition 8 even have the right to
defend the voter-approved measure."
The outlook for California's public education system
is not pretty, as lawmakers struggle to close a huge budget deficit.
From the Mercury News' Sharon Noguchi: "Here's the likely result: "Schools will become more and more like prisons
and less and less like schools," said David Plank,
a professor of
education at Stanford University. "You'll have huge
classes, restive young
people and overworked teachers.""
"Sound drastic? So is the budget crisis."
"Soon after he is sworn in next month, Governor-elect
Jerry Brown will have to present a budget for 2011-12, a year that likely will
be worse than any that California schools have endured
in modern history. The
deficit is so huge that educators and officials either
can't think about it or
can't believe it."
As for the schools themselves, L.A. Times columnist
George Skelton gives the schools a better-than-passing grade,
"With 1,000 districts, 9,900 schools and 6 million
students — the largest K-12 system in the country — there is inescapably a
scattering of winners and losers. "We're not where
we ought to be,"
acknowledges veteran education consultant John Mockler,
a Capitol legend who
wrote the complex school finance law, Proposition 98.
"But the 'California schools suck' industry
is just full of it," he adds. "When these guys start
talking about
how California's schools used to be great and today
they're going to hell in a
hand basket, they're just wrong. Our students are making
incredibly consistent
academic progress."
Speaking of tight money, children and the poor aren't
doing any better than the schools, and Democrats want to revive programs the governor cut
earlier. The Chronicle's Marisa Lagos tells the tale.
"Democratic lawmakers, still fuming over Gov. Arnold
Schwarzenegger's decision to eliminate child care subsidies
for poor
families, will hit back today with a bill that would
restore funding to the
program and guarantee day care for about 55,000 children."
"Speaker John Pérez, D-Los Angeles,
authored the measure, which relies on a number of sources
to pay for the
program through June 30, the end of the fiscal year. Lawmakers will take up
the
bill next month, when Democrat Jerry Brown takes office as governor - with Pérez
hoping Brown will be more sympathetic than Schwarzenegger,
a Republican."
And now, from our "Cheers and Beers" file, we find the case of the happy group that was
snowed in for nine days -- count 'em, nine. Everybody take notes: This is how you handle a snowstorm.
"Five staff members and two local residents were
barricaded in the Lion Inn in Blakey Ridge, Kirbymoorside,
North Yorkshire from
November 26, but under the most optimal of conditions: plenty of food and drink
and since the pub is also a bed and breakfast, there
were even beds to sleep
in, the Mail on Sunday said."
"A snowplow finally made its way over the North
York moors to the pub on Saturday, allowing those inside
to leave, the BBC
reported."
"It was really novel at first and quite
exciting," the Mail quoted waitress Katie Underwood, 18,
as saying before they finally made it out. "It's been
freezing, but we've
been lucky that it's a pub and B&B we're trapped in."
Lucky, indeed....
