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The state budget shortfall in California has increased dramatically in the last six months, forcing state officials to assemble a series of new spending cuts that are likely to mean further reductions to schools, health care and other social programs already battered by nearly five years of budget retrenchment, state officials announced on Saturday. Gov. Jerry Brown, disclosing the development in a video posted on YouTube, said that California’s shortfall was now projected to be $16 billion, up from $9.2 billion in January. Mr. Brown said that he would propose a revised budget on Monday to deal with it. “We...

In one choreographed appearance at the office of the Sacramento County Registrar of Voters, Gov. Jerry Brown's campaign to raise taxes appeared on Friday to take shape. A week after announcing he had collected enough signatures to qualify the initiative for the November ballot, Brown – accompanied by a new political consultant, the first lady and his dog – turned several boxes of them in. The event came just days before Brown is expected to propose deeper spending reductions in a budget revision Monday to deal with a deficit that likely has grown beyond $10 billion. The Democratic governor cast...

In a memo to members today, SEIU Local 1000 President Yvonne Walker said that she was consulted about Gov. Jerry Brown's plan to cut state employees' pay and that she drew a line at imposing unpaid time off on workers. "First let me say that I have made it clear that furloughs are not on the table," Walker wrote.

State workers' compensation is back on the budget chopping block. Brown administration officials met with the state employee union leaders last week, according to sources familiar with the meetings, to warn them that the next version of the governor's budget will include an unspecified cut in employee costs up to 10 percent. The administration in January estimated that California is confronting a $9.2 billion deficit through 2012-13, but a recent state analysis concluded the actual gap is considerably more. The sources, who declined to talk on the record because the administration asked all involved to keep the discussions secret, said...

Let's get ready to rumble. In this corner is California Gov. Jerry Brown. In that corner is Molly Munger, a very wealthy civil rights attorney. Brown and his union allies want voters to raise their own sales taxes, plus income taxes on the most affluent, to narrow a chronic budget gap. Munger and the state PTA want to raise income taxes on all but the lowest-income Californians to provide more money to schools. Brown, desperate to eliminate competition that might confuse voters, merged his initial tax proposal into that of a rival group that wanted to tax the rich even...

Bill Clinton feels Gov. Jerry Brown's pain. "I know what he's going through out here," said the former president after hearing Brown's litany of budget woes delivered at a conference of Bay Area business executives and public officials last week. "I said, 'How you doing, Jerry?' He said, 'This is tough.' I said, 'Yes, but I think you're doing the right thing. You have to live by the laws of economics and the money you've got.' " If it's any consolation, Clinton added, "the dilemmas that the governor and the Legislature, and the people who will soon vote on the...

The stage was set Friday for three revenue-raising measures to qualify for the November ballot after a group led by hedge-fund manager Tom Steyer submitted more than 900,000 signatures for a tax increase on out-of-state businesses. Proponents of two other tax initiatives, driven separately by Gov. Jerry Brown and civil rights attorney Molly Munger, said they have collected more than enough signatures to place their proposals before voters. The measures would generate billions in revenue for a state rocked by recession and cuts to education and public services in recent years. But Mitch Zak, spokesman for a coalition opposing Steyer's...

Gov. Jerry Brown warned this week that his administration's soon-to-be unveiled plan to tackle the state's water delivery challenges is "going to be controversial" but vowed he would "push it through." Saying that state leaders have failed for five decades to ensure water reliability in the Golden State, Brown told a group of about 900 business leaders in San Jose Thursday that his administration would soon announce its preferred plan - widely expected to be two giant pipelines that move water out of the Sacramento River and under the fragile Sacramento-San Joaquin River Delta to the Bay Area, Central Valley...

After years of being labeled the "Party of No" by majority Democrats, California Republican leaders stood under rainy skies Thursday outside the Capitol to dub themselves the "Party of Yes." The newly christened party kicked off its campaign by asking for a "no" vote on Gov. Jerry Brown's tax hike. California Republican Party leaders organized the press conference to launch a statewide whistle-stop tour just as Brown finished collecting signatures for his $9 billion tax initiative. "Jerry Brown is turning in his signatures as we speak to make that (top tax rate) the highest rate in the country," said California...

The tour guides at the old Governor's Mansion in Sacramento are trying to solve a mystery, one that involves a black cat. One of the guides, John Casey, is the grandson of former Gov. Pat Brown, the last governor to live in the Victorian mansion at 16th and H streets, and therefore the nephew of the current governor, Jerry Brown. Casey was given the black ceramic cat by his aunt, former Treasurer Kathleen Brown, with a story that Pat Brown used it to denote whether his conversations with reporters at the mansion were on or off the record. If the...

The topic was "States and competitiveness in a global economy," but first off, the panel's moderator wanted Gov. Jerry Brown to give us a "sneak peek" at his 2012-13 budget revision, scheduled for next month. Brown demurred, but said, "It will be very interesting." In fact, "You'll hear howls of execration over the next 30 days," he told a gathering of Silicon Valley CEOs on Tuesday. That is, when he lays out additional cuts - watch out health and social services - beyond the $4 billion he's already asked for. Basically, some cuts that Brown wanted have been delayed by...

SAN JOSE - Gov. Jerry Brown, who has personal reservations about the death penalty but enforced it as state attorney general, said this morning that he is glad a measure to abolish the death penalty will be on the November ballot, though he declined to say how he will vote. . . . Brown vetoed death penalty legislation in 1977, when he was governor before. The Legislature overrode his veto, and he said during the 2010 gubernatorial campaign that he would uphold it as governor.

It's easy to dismiss the dramatic fall of Alameda County Supervisor Nadia Lockyer as the failings of an addict. But it was much more than that. A system - our political system - created her. Our political system allows one person, like state Treasurer Bill Lockyer, to run for a statewide office, collect millions of dollars in donations and then bestow those funds like a kingmaker in lower-level races - like a county supervisor's race. Our system here in Alameda County allows one party - the Democratic Party - to declare for the rest of us who should be in...

Two years ago, when Jerry Brown was trying to reclaim the governorship he had left 28 years earlier, he often said that his age, maturity and lack of political ambition would allow him to succeed where others had failed. Brown said he would patiently attack the state's political issues, especially the deficit-ridden state budget, and "I will tell the truth in ways (that hadn't occurred) in years past." Those "years past" included his own first governorship, when Brown developed a reputation for saying whatever sounded politically advantageous at the moment, regardless of how it may have differed from what he...

Over the coming months of gestation about taxation, California voters will be inundated with claims, counterclaims and other forms of propaganda. We still don't know how many major tax proposals will be on the November ballot. It'll be at least one, but whether it's the one that Jerry Brown, other Democratic politicians and labor unions want, or the one that civil rights attorney Molly Munger and the PTA want, is still unknown. Most likely, it'll be both. Brown, having merged his original tax proposal with one pushed by a left-wing coalition, now wants to hike sales taxes by a quarter-cent...

Gov. Jerry Brown urged the Legislature on Friday to "man up" and make spending cuts, acknowledging the state budget deficit is likely larger than he previously thought. The Democratic governor, in an interview on Bay Area talk radio station KGO (810 AM), said the deficit is "probably bigger now" than the $9.2 billion he estimated earlier this year. "We're trying to be as prudent as we can," Brown said. "That's why the Legislature has to man up, make the cuts and get some taxes and we'll make it." Democrats this year have resisted Brown's proposed cuts to social services and...

As state leaders hope for a surprise uptick in revenues this spring, state Controller John Chiang reported Tuesday that California lagged last month by $233.5 million, or 4.2 percent. The state missed its target most in corporate income taxes, which were $125.8 million (8.2 percent) off the mark. Income taxes and sales taxes were each less than 2 percent behind Gov. Jerry Brown's revenue forecast. For the fiscal year that ends in June, the state is now trailing Brown's expectations by nearly $1.1 billion, or 1.9 percent.

Gov. Jerry Brown has agreed to extend the labor contracts of four state worker unions, pushing aside a potential obstacle to his quest for a tax increase later this year. The agreements affect roughly 24,000 state employees working under deals that expire July 1, extending their current terms for one more year. The governor's deals with labor are "mind-numbing," given the state's $9.2 billion deficit, said Senate GOP leader Bob Huff. The Diamond Bar Republican and three other GOP leaders last month put their names on a budget proposal that included cutting state workers' pay by about 5 percent. "It's...

Less than a week after Gov. Jerry Brown started using robotic telephone calls and mailers to gather signatures for his ballot initiative to raise taxes, the Howard Jarvis Taxpayers Association plans to launch its anti-tax campaign today on the conservative "John and Ken" talk radio show. The taxpayers group this morning posted a red banner on its website inviting viewers to join a "Don't Sign the Petition" campaign. The banner links to a campaign website opposing Brown's effort to raise the state sales tax and income taxes on California's highest earners.

Imagine you sign a contract to put down $9,000 on a $340,000 house situated on a beachfront in Laguna with a closing date of 12 months from now. Then imagine that a few months later, the seller tells you he has some changes to your contract. Your beachfront Laguna house will be located in Brawley, instead. And instead of $340,000, your house in Brawley will cost you $980,000. Just a technical change in the contract, the seller says. And, oh, by the way, your sale won’t close in 12 months, it’ll take a bit longer, 26 months instead of 12...