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 […]
Political Stories – Top stories Political Paradox: Proposition 59 asks Californians to condemn a big-money system long used here — Six years after Citizens United—the landmark U.S. Supreme Court decision that says corporations and unions have a 1st Amendment right to unlimited campaign spending—presidential candidates across the spectrum have condemned the campaign finance system it shaped. “Corrupt,” says […]
Political Stories Top stories Stymied in Legislature, school bond backers go their own way – Home builders, school construction companies and others, bypassing the Capitol, spent millions to gather signatures to qualify a $9 billion school bond for the ballot. Eleventh-hour Capitol negotiations to craft a smaller substitute bond in June went nowhere, securing Proposition […]
Political Stories Top stories Nine weeks before election, here are the 12 California congressional races we’re watching — Thirty of California’s 49 House incumbents secured more than 60% of the vote in the June primary. All were Democrats, except for Republican Reps. Tom McClintock of Elk Grove, Ed Royce of Fullerton, and Devin Nunes of […]
Political Stories Top stories George Skelton: The Legislature helped poor people and farmworkers but skipped the middle class — The California Legislature capped its two-year session by passing a load of liberal bills to help poor people, including farmworkers. That’s good, but what about middle-class folks? They were snubbed again. Ignoring the declining middle class […]
Political Stories Top stories Sacramento Bee: Some pressing ballot issues that aren’t about the White House — Hijacked by a poser, the nation has gawked at Trump’s antics like Sunday drivers passing a big-rig explosion. That’s normal; it’s instinctive to notice unusual behavior. But this ballot also asks serious policy questions that Californians don’t want […]
Political Stories Top stories California’s new climate change laws almost didn’t happen this year. Here’s how lawmakers pulled it off — For Assemblyman Eduardo Garcia, global warming conjured images of stricken polar bears floating away on melting ice sheets, a problem with little relevance to a politician from California’s bone-dry Inland Empire. But while attending […]
