Political Stories Top stories California bag ban: Voters to weigh industry’s fate at the ballot box — They lost in some of California’s biggest cities. They lost in the state Legislature. Now out-of-state plastic bag manufacturers are taking a final shot at keeping their product in the nation’s largest market, waging a high-stakes battle with environmentalists […]
Political Stories Top stories California voters oppose ending state’s death penalty — More than half of voters oppose a November ballot measure that would abolish the California death penalty, according to a new USC Dornsife/Los Angeles Times poll conducted by SurveyMonkey. LA Times article Two-thirds of Californians favor Gov. Jerry Brown’s plan to revamp prison parole rules — Gov. Jerry Brown’s […]
Political Stories Top stories Anger, passion drive the debate over more overtime pay for California farmworkers – Perhaps no place better captures the frustrations, tensions and emotions that remain over the issue than the San Joaquin Valley Cardenas calls home. The fight for farmworkers’ rights has roots in this 10,000-square-mile stretch of flatlands, orchards and vineyards, […]
Political Stories Top stories Gov. Brown signs package of climate-change bills in Fresno — A group of state lawmakers, guests and reporters gathered atop the spiral parking garage in downtown Fresno Wednesday morning to watch Gov. Jerry Brown sign a package of bills intended to help disadvantaged communities fight climate change and help Sierra communities […]
Political Stories Top stories As California moves to soften criminal penalties, sexual crimes are the exception — If you’ve sold your body, you deserve leniency. If your felony was low-level enough, you deserve to vote. If you sexually assaulted someone, you deserve to go to prison. Such was the message from Sacramento’s Capitol this year, as […]
Political Stories Top stories In historic move, California expands overtime to farmworkers — Farmworkers in the nation’s largest agricultural state will be entitled to the same overtime pay as most other hourly workers under a law that Gov. Jerry Brown signed Monday. Central San Joaquin Valley growers and farm groups, however, said the law will cost […]
Political Stories Top stories More than 235,000 ballots didn’t count in June U.S. Senate race, and some think ballot design didn’t help – A bumper crop of U.S. Senate candidates and the resulting challenge in designing ballots may be why more than 235,000 California voters had their selections for the race rejected in June. LA Times article (scroll to item) Californians worry about […]
Political Stories Top stories Dan Walters: California’s unfunded pension debts may be larger than acknowledged — The “unfunded liabilities” of state and local pension funds are California’s biggest unresolved political issue – at least in financial terms. Walters column in Sacramento Bee In California politics, Bay Area ‘controls everything’ — The Bay Area has emerged as a force in […]
Political Stories Top stories How California defines a ‘disadvantaged community’ to get state money — Yet exactly how to identify California’s most vulnerable areas remains a subject of disagreement, four years after a 2012 bill for the first time directed that some cap-and-trade money pay for projects in those places or somehow benefit them. During the […]
Top stories Brown signs major climate bill: ‘This is big, and I hope it sends a message across the country’ — Gov. Jerry Brown, holding California out as a beacon for the nation on efforts to reduce climate change, signed into law on Wednesday a sweeping expansion of California’s greenhouse gas emission standards, requiring the […]
