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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...

The Ten Scariest DMV Horror Stories There is a dark side to driving in the US, and it is known as the DMV. Listen to these ten tales of woe from Jalopnik readers and you'll get a taste of American bureaucracy at its worst. 10.) Counterfeiters get Mustang GTs Suggested By: frankiepoops What happened: Worst experience that I ever had was when the NY DMV decided that my title for my 1996 green Mustang was counterfeit, not the first time I registered it, but when I went back to put it back on the road after parking it for a...

California is struggling to emerge from the worst recession since the Great Depression and has more than 2 million unemployed workers, plus countless others who have given up seeking work out of frustration and/or have fled to other states. Clearly the state needs many billions of dollars in job-creating investment. But its attractiveness to that investment is, to say the least, problematic, given its relatively high tax burden, its dense regulatory structure, its deficiencies in education, transportation and water supply, and its tangled government finances. Chief Executive magazine's most recent survey of corporate leaders finds that California ranks dead last...

The "60 Minutes"-style video climaxes with an assemblyman hustling through a Capitol corridor and down a flight of steps, trailed by a constituent asking where the lawmaker stands on controversial mortgage legislation. Assemblyman Felipe Fuentes, the Sylmar Democrat who is the subject of "What Legalized Bribery Looks Like," says the piece produced by liberal activists is a "lie." It also highlights how the pitched political struggle over the future of California's mortgage law has roused labor and activist groups into using guerrilla tactics to call out moderate Democrats in an election year. . . . The issue is tailor-made for...

WASHINGTON — With financial losses mounting, the nearly bankrupt U.S. Postal Service is urging the House to quickly pass legislation that would give it wide authority to close thousands of low-revenue post offices, reduce labor costs and end Saturday delivery. At its meeting Friday, the Postal Service's board of governors said that a bill passed by the Senate last week doesn't go far enough to give the agency the latitude it needs. That bill would provide the Postal Service with an $11 billion cash infusion to help pay down ballooning debt but halt the immediate closing of up to 252...

To the folks at Weston Wear, it was like getting salt rubbed in their wound. The day after a marauding band of Occupy protestors smashed the Valencia Street clothing store’s windows, the owners got another jolt – a city citation notice for having graffiti on the plywood they had put up over the vandalized windows. “It was just a head scratcher to us,” said Bridget Moore, the store manager. “It seemed there was no thought why we had a bunch of plywood up.” The store’s four windows were smashed in the Monday night protest – ostensibly held over income inequality...

Senate President Pro Tem Darrell Steinberg, D-Sacramento, said this week that public pension reform legislation is still on track for this year, although he wasn't sure about the timing.

California State University faculty announced today that they have approved a measure to give their union leaders the power to authorize a strike next fall that could delay the beginning of school for thousands of students across the 23-campus university system. At a noon press conference at Cal State Long Beach, the California Faculty Association announced that faculty had approved the measure by 95 percent of those who voted . . .

NASHVILLE – The state Senate gave final legislative approval this afternoon to a bill allowing the Memphis suburbs to hold referendums and school board elections this year on new municipal school districts, despite charges that the bill is “part of a growing trend…of apartheid in Shelby County.” The bill now goes to the governor for his signature, which is expected soon. The House approved the same measure Friday, which was the critical vote. The Senate, which had approved virtually the same language in the bill last week, followed suit today, approving the measure on a 22-9 vote that was largely...

For the first time, California would ask its contractors if they are gay under legislation passed Monday by the Assembly. The measure, Assembly Bill 1960, would enable the owners of businesses that contract with the state to identify themselves as gay, lesbian, transgender or bisexual. It would not require them to do so. The Assembly vote was 47-24, with only one Republican supporting it. The Department of General Services currently is required to collect data on contractors by race, ethnicity and gender. AB 1960 would add LGBT-owned businesses to that list. The bill by Sacramento Democratic Assemblyman Roger Dickinson seeks...

The day began with a drive across the desert, checking the snares he had placed in the sagebrush to catch coyotes. Gary Strader, an employee of the U.S. Department of Agriculture, stepped out of his truck near a ravine in Nevada and found something he hadn't intended to kill. There, strangled in a neck snare, was one of the most majestic birds in America, a federally protected golden eagle. "I called my supervisor and said, 'I just caught a golden eagle and it's dead,' " said Strader. "He said, 'Did anybody see it?' I said, 'Geez, I don't think so.'...

One of the biggest mysteries at the Capitol these days is whether lawmakers are really going to make any substantive changes in the pension system for public employees. This week didn't do much to answer that, even though there were hearings on bills that were taken word-for-word from proposals Gov. Jerry Brown had sent to the Legislature. The apparent problem? Republicans introduced the bills. They deal with a host of issues, but the two most contentious are increasing the retirement age and creating some kind of hybrid system that includes a traditional pension plus a 401(k)-style plan. Republicans were ready...

With tax revenue slowing to a trickle as the end of April draws near, the state's top fiscal analyst predicted late Wednesday that California would be "a few billion dollars" shy of Gov. Jerry Brown's budget projections through June 2013. The nonpartisan Legislative Analyst's Office said total personal income tax collections would likely be more than $2 billion below Brown's expectation of $9.4 billion for the month. Because the state was already running behind, it would mean the take from income taxes would be $3 billion shy for the fiscal year that ends June 30 compared with Brown's updated January...

Although a new law to govern bankruptcy filings by local governments is just four months old, Democratic legislators and labor unions are lining up behind a major revision that local officials say would tilt the playing field. . . . The League of California Cities and other local government groups are crying foul, saying it undoes major portions of last year's compromise and gives unions a leg up in pre-bankruptcy negotiations. The City of Stockton is one opponent, telling the Assembly Local Government Committee in a letter that "these changes would dramatically increase the likelihood that mediations will be prolonged...

Egyptian husbands will soon be legally allowed to have sex with their dead wives - for up to six hours after their death. The controversial new law is part of a raft of measures being introduced by the Islamist-dominated parliament. It will also see the minimum age of marriage lowered to 14 and the ridding of women's rights of getting education and employment. Egypt's National Council for Women is campaigning against the changes, saying that 'marginalising and undermining the status of women would negatively affect the country's human development'. Dr Mervat al-Talawi, head of the NCW, wrote to the Egyptian...

A Sacramento Superior Court judge has tentatively ruled that the state controller has no authority to judge whether the state budget is balanced or block lawmakers' pay as he did last June. In a bitter feud during last year's budget battle, Controller John Chiang determined that the budget passed by legislative Democrats was not balanced. Using new powers he believed he had under voter-approved Proposition 25, Chiang then blocked lawmakers' pay and expense money for 12 days until they cut a budget deal with Gov. Jerry Brown. In a tentative ruling today, Judge David I. Brown said that the controller...

Last month, we told you about the sex/drugs/beating/cheating/porning scandal surrounding the daughter of Santa Ana community activism royalty and wife of California Democratic politics royalty. This weekend, it was not only reported that the scandal led to Nadia Maria Davis-Lockyer's resignation as an Alameda County supervisor but an eye-opening interview where the 41-year-old claimed state Treasurer Bill Lockyer angrily told her to "go ahead and commit suicide" and her rehab lover "bashed my head into the stone floor."The seventh child of the late Wallace R. Davis, one of Santa Ana's first Latino lawyers to stand up for immigrants, Nadia Maria...

A tussle between preservationists and UC Berkeley over a decadelong development project in Albany erupted into a pitchfork protest Sunday, when activists planted a renegade farm on a plot of land known as the Gill Tract in an effort to keep it agriculturally pristine. Timing their action to Earth Day, about 200 members of Occupy the Farm to Take Back the Gill Tract broke a lock on a gate, rototilled the soil and planted carrot, broccoli and corn seedlings on part of the 10-acre site at Marin and San Pablo avenues. The Albany tract is owned by UC Berkeley, which...

Senate President Pro Tem Darrell Steinberg pledged today to put forward for the 2014 election a package of major changes to California's initiative process, including a provision to make it easier for legislators to place tax measures on the ballot. The Sacramento Democrat, speaking at a Sacramento Press Club luncheon, outlined a trio of initiative reforms he said "will both strengthen California's tradition of direct democracy and empower the people elected by their communities...to make clear choices." He said he plans to put the proposals on the 2014 ballot either through a vote of the Legislature, a task he said...

City council members are clearly bracing for choppy waters when a public hearing begins with a request that no one jeers. "Some people might be on one side of the issue, some people on the other," Pinole Mayor Peter Murray said. "What I want is that everyone pledge that we're going to respect everyone's opinion and there will be no catcalls from the audience." Taking center stage Tuesday night in the Pinole Council Chamber was a slugfest that needed only a ring announcer. "In this corner, wearing red-white-and-blue trunks and still upright after 221 years, is the Second Amendment, guaranteeing...