Free Republic

Gov. Jerry Brown and state lawmakers have reached a deal that will alter pensions for hundreds of thousand of local and state workers. Brown will announce an agreement that promises future employees less and requires many of them to pay more for it than their tenured colleagues, according to details of the plan leaking out this morning. Brown is scheduled to talk about pension reform tat an 11:30 a.m. Los Angeles press conference. The Democratic governor made cutting public pension costs a key piece of his administrative agenda and has insisted that voters insist on reform before they'll embrace a...

Media including the Los Angeles Times are reporting on New Jersey Gov. Chris Christie’s tirade against California Gov. Jerry Brown this morning as he addressed California’s delegation to the Republican National Convention in Tampa, Fla.: “California made the bad choice by going with an old retread,” Christie told California’s delegation to the Republican National Convention here, a crowd that lapped up his message. “Let me tell you this – I cannot believe you people elected Jerry Brown over Meg Whitman. … Jerry Brown. Jerry Brown? I mean, he won the New Jersey presidential primary over Jimmy Carter when I was...

Democrats are working to make a Missouri congressman's controversial comment about rape an issue in the heated 7th Congressional District race. Republican Rep. Todd Akin has come under fire from politicians on both sides of the aisle for saying in a televised interview that a woman's body has the ability to block pregnancy in cases of what he called "legitimate rape." He has apologized for the remarks, but rejected calls from Republican leaders and politicians, including presumptive Republican presidential nominee Mitt Romney, to drop his U.S. Senate campaign against Missouri Democratic Sen. Claire McCaskill. Rep. Dan Lungren, R-Gold River, denounced...

For the second time in as many business days, a major credit-rating agency said it expects more municipal bankruptcies and bond defaults - particularly in California, where cities have less flexibility to raise revenue or cut spending and face little intervention from the state.On Monday, Fitch Ratings said in a report that it "anticipates an increase in defaults and bankruptcies, although it does not expect them to be widespread." It said that recent bankruptcy filings by Stockton, San Bernardino and Mammoth Lakes "reflect perhaps the most difficult local government fiscal environment in the U.S.," adding that "fiscal crises are more likely in...

The Howard Jarvis Taxpayers Association is up with its second radio advertisement against Gov. Jerry Brown's November ballot initiative to raise taxes, comparing Brown's tax campaign to street robbery. "Hey, lady, hand over your purse or the schools get it," a voice at the top of the ad says. The ad, an issue-advocacy spot running statewide beginning today, comes as the Democratic governor begins in earnest to campaign for Proposition 30, his proposal to raise the state sales tax and income taxes on California's highest earners. The Democratic governor has characterized the election as a choice between higher taxes and...

Extraordinarily smart people at the California Air Resources Board have taken to using the term "leakage" as they go about devising the experimental cap and trade system for reducing greenhouse gases. Homer Perez, head boiler mechanic at Pacific Coast Producers' tomato cannery off East Main Street in Woodland, might use a word that is more familiar to the rest of us: "layoff." The cannery has been operating under one owner or another since the 1920s. A cooperative of 16 growers in Yolo, Solano and Sutter counties owns it now. Perez has worked there for 28 of the past 29 years....

Democrats say voters need look no further than California's $91 billion general fund budget to see how dramatically they have cut. That spending total is 11 percent below the state's pre-recession peak. But the number can be misleading. While California has cut education and services for the poor, budget writers also have relied on creative revenue streams and accounting maneuvers to move programs off the general fund books rather than cut them. That has made comparisons difficult and, experts say, contributed to state bookkeeping disparities that have emerged in recent weeks. "We've been through a period of extreme financial difficulty...

In a pointed letter critical of Gov. Jerry Brown's tax rival, California's two U.S. senators along with state legislative leaders called Thursday for a cease-fire from campaigns backing the two multibillion-dollar tax hikes on the November ballot. U.S. Senators Dianne Feinstein and Barbara Boxer, as well as Senate President Pro Tem Darrell Steinberg and Assembly Speaker John A. Pérez, said in a letter to the California State PTA that the Proposition 38 campaign has "become increasingly negative" and "engaged in personal attacks against Governor Jerry Brown and Prop. 30." The PTA has joined wealthy attorney Molly Munger in backing Proposition...

Let's not mince words about what the state Senate's Democratic leader did Wednesday. It was self-serving censorship, the sort of thing that one expects from tinpot dictators, not from those who fancy themselves to be progressive civil libertarians. Someone acting for Senate President Pro Tem Darrell Steinberg suddenly cut off cable television access to a legislative hearing to air facts and arguments about pending ballot measures. The Senate Governance and Finance Committee called the hearing – as required by law – into three tax increases (Propositions 30, 38 and 39) and altering the state's budgetary procedures (Proposition 31). As it...

Two days after toxic black smoke from the Chevron refinery fire enveloped Richmond, a second phenomenon swept through the city: the rush for money. More than 1,000 residents claiming to have coughs, nausea, scratchy throats and psychological trauma visited a downtown law office Wednesday in hopes of receiving a payout for their suffering. Another 1,000 contacted Chevron directly. Chevron was so overwhelmed, it set up a storefront downtown to accommodate the claims and answer questions. But what claimants are likely to receive - at the most, a few thousand dollars each - is not enough to buy a long-term solution...

The back-to-back bankruptcy filings of Stockton and San Bernardino, following Vallejo's insolvency a few years earlier, have sparked finger-pointing about causes and speculation about whether more cities may go under. Those on the political right say the bankruptcies resulted from local politicians' caving in to pressure from unions for higher pay and more generous pension and health benefits. Those on the left – unions particularly – contend that the collapse of the real estate market, caused by rapacious Wall Street bankers, is to blame. The reality is more nuanced. All three cities on the suburban peripheries were facing urban decay....

California drivers pay fees for smog checks, vehicle registrations and new tires, all supposedly for programs that benefit roadway use. Consumers pay fees to recycle beverage containers, televisions and computers. Doctors and accountants pay license fees to regulate their industries. But for more than a decade, the special funds collecting these dollars have served a second purpose: helping California pay for schools, social services and prisons that are supposed to be funded by general taxes. California has 560 funds deemed "special" because in theory they're walled off from general state expenditures. In the face of two recessions, however, California reached...

As Los Angeles Mayor Antonio Villaraigosa prepares to take the gavel for the Democratic National Committee’s national convention in Charlotte this summer, Yahoo! News asked whether the termed-out mayor could be the nation’s first Latino president. Villaraigosa assured his interviewer that he has no interest in national office, but he does have another job in mind after 2013, when he will be forced from Getty House. "The job I've said to people I would like is I would like to be governor of the state of California," he said.

Gov. Jerry Brown released an Internet ad the other day, asking voters to embrace his multibillion-dollar tax increase. But the word "tax" is nowhere to be found. The closest Brown or other speakers in the tightly scripted ad come to the T-word is "new revenues." Mostly, it touts Brown's efforts to cut state spending and declares – wrongly – that the state's credit rating has improved. "We've made progress, but we still have very serious budget problems in California," Brown says in the ad. "We simply have to take a stand against further budget cuts for schools or for our...

Finance officials are now trying to piece together why the balance sheets for "special funds" are off by $2.3 billion -- money that appeared to be right under their noses amid California's financial meltdown. The fund that gives restitution to violent crime victims was off by $29 million. The one that provides children with low-cost health insurance was $30 million out of balance. The fund that rewards people for recycling bottles and cans was $113 million off. "Where are these dollars?" asked state Senate budget chairman Mark Leno, D-San Francisco, who said it was a "big problem" that the special...

Between the new congressional district lines and the new open primaries, people who hold elected office in California are running for their lives. In previous years, maybe 10 percent of congressional and legislative districts were competitive. Now everybody thinks they're at risk. Even well-known incumbents in Democrat-dominated districts - people like Reps. Barbara Lee and John Garamendi - fear they might get beat. As a result, they are scooping up and holding onto as much campaign cash as possible. It's all putting a pinch on Rep. Nancy Pelosi's hopes of the Democrats retaking the House. You see, in the past...

SACRAMENTO, Calif. -- As state mental health services have crumbled under budget cuts, tens of millions of dollars raised through a tax designed to help the mentally ill have gone to "wellness" programs like horseback riding for teens and yoga classes for city workers. And that's by design.Voters approved Proposition 63, the so-called "millionaire's tax," in 2004 to make up for decades of mental health cuts. The ballot summary said it would "expand services and develop innovative programs" for the mentally ill and the text of the measure stipulated 20 percent of the funds would go to programs "effective in...

Betrayed by the discovery of $54 million hidden in two state parks accounts, groups that donated money to keep California state parks from closing this year now say they want a refund -- or at least a binding promise from lawmakers to spend the extra money on parks. "They sort of came to us under false pretenses. They cried wolf, and we responded," said Reed Holderman, executive director of the Sempervirens Fund. "An elegant solution would be for them to refund the nonprofits, and put whatever is left into parks." State Parks Director Ruth Coleman resigned Friday and her top...

State Parks Director Ruth Coleman resigned this morning and her second in command has been fired after officials learned the department has been sitting on nearly $54 million in surplus money for as long as 12 years. The moves come in the wake of a scandal, revealed by The Bee on Sunday, in which a deputy director at State Parks carried out a secret vacation buyout program for employees at department headquarters last year. That buyout cost the state more than $271,000. The Bee began inquiring about rumors of a surplus when it learned about the buyout, and submitted a...

San Bernardino’s City Council voted to become the third California city this year to file for bankruptcy, as it struggles with declining tax revenue, growing employee costs and accounting discrepancies in its ledgers. The council voted 4 to 2, with one abstention, last night to authorize a filing under Chapter 9 of U.S. bankruptcy law. The city of 209,000, about 65 miles (105 kilometers) east of Los Angeles, is so broke it can’t make its Aug. 15 payroll, interim City Manager Andrea Travis-Miller said. “If the employees are not paid on Aug. 15, on Aug. 16 there will be a...