Free Republic

State Senate President Pro Tem Don Perata, D-Oakland, who earlier this week was made a lame duck as voters rejected the term-limits reform measure Proposition 93, announced today he’ll kick off a gun-buyback event he helped organize by handing in his own shootin’ iron.

California voters' refusal to alter state legislators' term limits will force three of the Legislature's top leaders to give up their posts. It also will free candidates running for 34 legislative seats from having to face an incumbent this year. Proposition 93 aimed to trim two years off the maximum amount of time most legislators could serve, but it also would have given dozens of lawmakers a chance to extend their stays in Sacramento. It failed by about 7 percentage points, despite support from Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger and a who's who of labor unions, corporations and professional groups that poured...

Former San Francisco Mayor Willie Brown - whose new book includes an entire chapter on "Tricks the FBI Played to Try to Get Me" - found himself the other day in front of the federal grand jury investigating state Senate President Pro Tem Don Perata. The grand jury proceedings in Oakland are part of a nearly 5-year-old federal investigation into Perata's links to lobbyists, his payment of campaign funds to family members and his role in pushing for various contracts. Brown, who was known as the "Ayatollah of the Assembly" in his days in the capital, said it appeared from...

Jim Wilson/New York Times A cleanup crew collects oil-fouled sand Monday on Rodeo Beach in the Golden Gate National Recreation Area in San Francisco. As oil spill cleanup continued Monday on the San Francisco Bay, state Senate Leader Don Perata rebuked Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger for undermining the state agency charged with spill response. Perata, D-Oakland, seized upon a 2005 state audit that determined the Office of Spill Prevention and Response, or OSPR, was understaffed despite having a funding surplus. He said the situation has hindered the agency's ability to deter oil spills in advance and react quickly when disasters...

In a political move right out of "The Godfather," state Senate President Pro Tem Don Perata has ordered a hit on a former ally, Republican state Sen. Jeff Denham of Merced. Armed with $250,000, Perata launched a recall drive aimed at clipping the Central Valley lawmaker's wings just as he was getting set to run for lieutenant governor. Now, not only is that run in doubt, but Denham is also fighting just to hold onto his seat - all because of his vote against the state budget. A vote that, in Perata's view, was an opportunistic betrayal. "It completely redefines...

OAKLAND -- Now several years old, the sprawling federal corruption probe of state Senate President Pro Tem Don Perata has spurred him to spend more than $1 million on legal defense, clouded his two decades in public life and swept up close associates and his adult children. The investigation into the East Bay lawmaker's political and business affairs has largely operated out of sight in recent years, although FBI agents have searched his home and his son's. But public records, subpoenas and interviews with officials and others contacted by the FBI show that it has remained very much alive. A...

STATE SENATE President Pro Tem Don Perata, D-Oakland, called the budget impasse "a Republican problem." To be precise, it is the problem of a small group of Republican senators who have allowed their egos and ideologies to trump the public interest. Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger, also a Republican, expressed frustration with the holdouts during a news conference Thursday. The governor effectively gave them want they wanted - in terms of the budget - when he agreed to use his line-item veto to cut the remaining $700 million deficit when it reaches his desk. The budget contains the largest reserve in state...

SACRAMENTO -- A group advocating term limits complained today to the state about use of campaign funds by Democratic Senate leader Don Perata, an Oakland lawmaker activists are targeting as part of efforts to retain caps on politicians' time in office. Bob Adney, director of the California Term Limits Defense Fund, said papers filed with the Fair Political Practices Commission accuse Perata of using some of his political donations "as his own personal slush fund." Adney said in his statement that the complaint is based on portions of a weekly newspaper story, which partially overlap allegations under scrutiny for some...

State Senate boss Don Perata throws impressive parties, and this one was a doozy. The guests, some of Perata's best donors among them, feasted on buttery Dungeness crab and sipped California Chardonnay. Then they settled into their plush luxury box seats to watch the Oakland Raiders play the New York Jets in a game with playoff implications. It was mid-December 2000, and the state senator had just dropped $43,600 on an oversize luxury suite at the Oakland Coliseum for a single afternoon of festivities. At the time he said he was trying to convince East Bay business leaders to buy...

More than three state senators were temporarily locked out of their Sacramento offices this week. All Californians were, as Senate President Pro-Tem Don Perata, D-Oakland, declared freedom of thought will not be tolerated in his chambers. Perata deludes himself to think he is the elected dictator of the Senate. He is the presiding officer of the Legislature's upper house. Californians to Perata: You're merely a first among equals. Voters elected Democrats Ron Calderon of Montebello, Lou Correra of Santa Ana and Gloria Negrete-McLeod of Chino to represent their interests, not Perata's or even the Democratic Party's in the Senate. When...

SACRAMENTO — Senate President Pro Tem Don Perata has spent nearly $1 million defending himself against a federal probe into whether he illegally funneled money to family and close associates. But more than two years after the harsh light of suspicion first fell on the 61-year-old Oakland Democrat, the FBI investigation appears to have fallen quietly into a black hole of obscurity. The flurry of subpoenas flying out of FBI offices in San Francisco has slowed to an apparent stop. There haven't been any publicly acknowledged FBI interviews of witnesses since last summer. Images of FBI investigators carting off computer...

Lynda Gledhill, a longtime Sacramento bureau reporter for the San Francisco Chronicle is leaving the newspaper to join the communications staff of state Senate President Don Perata. Last year, Perata also hired Andrew LeMar, a capitol bureau reporter for the Contra Costa Times and the San Jose Mercury News. Gledhill will be working alongside LeMar, who is now Perata’s director of communications. Gledhill said her main function will be “writing op-ed pieces and speeches” for the state’s second most powerful politician. “I’ve been at the Chronicle for eight years,” she said. “This will be an interesting opportunity.” Neither LeMar nor...

Senate leader Don Perata has a plan to provide all uninsured working Californians with Health Insurance at an estimated cost of $5 billion to $7 billion without a tax increase. Okay... The Perata plan would force businesses that do not provide health insurance, and their employees, through a payroll deduction, to pay into a state agency that would attempt to negotiate for "affordable" coverage. When paying taxes, workers would have to show proof of medical insurance. This is just plain wrong on so many levels -- let me count the ways. A plan that is estimated to cost $5 billion...

Staking out the middle ground in the burgeoning health care debate, Senate President Pro Tem Don Perata on Tuesday outlined a plan to cover 4.2 million uninsured Californians, mostly the working poor. Perata's plan would require both employers and employees who do not now have health insurance to start paying for it. Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger, who is developing a health care reform proposal, has opposed making employers pay in the past. But Health and Human Services Agency Secretary Kim Belshe said Tuesday that he does not rule out the idea if it is part of a comprehensive health care reform...

Among certain radio talk show hosts, bloggers and their followers, being called a cracker was a high compliment yesterday. They seized upon a comment made Thursday by state Senate leader Don Perata, D-Oakland, who talked about “all these crackers down in . . . San Diego, taking on the governor” over immigration issues. Perata, who made the comment during a news conference, was referring to a forum in La Mesa with Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger last week where some accused him of being soft on illegal immigration. Schwarzenegger later said he was surprised at the “intensity of the prejudice” of some...

SACRAMENTO – Senate President Pro Tem Don Perata Thursday discussed the difficult political climate surrounding illegal immigration and as an example said “You've got all these crackers down in San Diego.” At a briefing with reporters, the Oakland Democrat was asked about the prospects of pending legislation to grant driver's licenses to illegal immigrants. Though a similar bill has passed the Legislature before – only to be vetoed – Perata said he was cautious about moving the current bill to the governor's desk in an election year. “Immigration is a red meat issue,” he said. “You've got all these crackers...

Senate President Pro Tem Don Perata sounded downright gloomy today as he discussed the fate of four bond issues on the November ballot. Speaking at a Sacramento Press Club lunch, Perata called the defeat of six local transportation bonds and the statewide library bond in this month's primary election "sobering." Other factors working against the bonds, according to Perata: continuing problems in launching stem cell research bonds approved by voters in 2004 and a cluttered November ballot full of spending measures, including a proposal to up cigarette taxes and one on oil. Frustrated voters may just say "no." Perata was...

SACRAMENTO—State Sen. Gloria Romero of Los Angeles was summoned Wednesday to appear before a grand jury in the FBI probe of Senate chief Don Perata's business dealings. Romero, a member of Perata's Democratic leadership team and one of his closest allies, said an FBI agent delivered a subpoena to her Capitol office requiring her to appear in July in Oakland, Perata's hometown. Romero said in an interview that she is being called to testify as a witness. She said she declined to be interviewed by FBI agents and asked that they issue the subpoena. "All along, I've thought this has...

Theeeeey're back! After months of relative quiet, the Justice Department has kicked its influence-peddling investigation of state Senate leader Don Perata into gear again, with FBI agents interviewing members of the Oakland City Council over the past couple of days. The interviews, conducted at council members' offices, appear to center on whether Perata, D-Oakland, was leaning on council members to vote in ways that would indirectly help his friends and relatives. "Basically, they wanted to know what kind of influence Don had on votes," said Councilman Larry Reid, who was interviewed by the FBI on Monday. Reid said the...

Ron Cowan wiped away his tears, but they wouldn't stop flowing. The flashy developer who once crashed his helicopter into San Francisco Bay held his breath and muttered "Goddammit" as he stepped up to the microphone. It was June 11, 2004, and many of his longtime friends were on hand to sing his praises and name a road after him. He had helped put most of them in office. But Cowan knew something many of those in the sizable audience did not: He'd paid a steep price to get his road, the Ron Cowan Parkway. The man had gambled everything...