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Last Tuesday, the Public Policy Institute of California issued a new poll that found, among other things, just 17 percent of the state's voters like the Legislature's performance. Simultaneously, the Legislature's top leaders provided another reason for Californians to harbor such scorn. Assembly Speaker John Pérez and Senate President Pro Tem Darrell Steinberg announced that they would spend untold amounts of taxpayers' money on high-priced lawyers to sue state Controller John Chiang over his decision to withhold legislators' paychecks last year after they failed to enact a balanced budget. Chiang was merely enforcing a new provision of the state constitution...

SAN FRANCISCO -- Assemblywoman Mary Hayashi pleaded no contest Friday to stealing nearly $2,500 in clothing from the Neiman Marcus store on San Francisco's Union Square after a judge reduced the felony grand theft charge against her to a misdemeanor. Outside court, her attorney said Hayashi had been diagnosed with a benign brain tumor before the shoplifting, and that the condition may have influenced her behavior. Hayashi, 45, pleaded no contest to misdemeanor grand theft. She was sentenced to three years' probation, ordered to pay $120 to a restitution fund and $60 in court costs, and told to stay at...

Polls tell us that the vast majority of Californians believe their Legislature is ineffective and at least semi-corrupt.The 120 men and women who serve in the Legislature don't like being held in such low esteem.However, their poor image is enhanced when a legislator is arrested for drunken driving or nailed for sexual harassment, or when their leaders hand out fat raises to their staffers and deny media access to their financial records – to name but a few recent imbroglios. The public might be more tolerant of such hijinks if lawmakers were also doing their jobs – i.e., dealing with...

Ever since the Republican Red Tide that swept the country stopped at the Sierra Nevada in November, we've been wondering how California's GOP would attract new party members. (By the way, the Sierra also gave the Donner party problems in November, but that was a snowy winter nearly 165 years ago, and we digress.) The influence of Republicans, who hold just 43 of the Legislature's 120 seats, has been threatened again recently by newly drawn districts, particularly in the Senate. But judging by some votes cast in the Senate last week, members of the state's Grand Old Party aren't quite...

Numerous bills to crack down on California lawmakers have been shelved quietly by the Legislature in recent weeks. Casualties included proposals to bar middle-of-the-night legislative sessions, to restrict lawmakers from receiving pay for serving on state boards within four years of leaving office, and to require annual disclosure by public officials of their pay, benefits, travel and other compensation. Legislators opted not to dock per-diem pay for absences or to create a "do not call" list for campaign robocalls. Republican Sen. Sam Blakeslee said the death last week of his proposal to ban the flow of thousands of dollars' worth...

When Rep. Hilda Solis inserted remarks in the Congressional Record praising Los Angeles activist John Pérez as "an asset to the labor movement," she was recounting the life story of a man who would later become California's Assembly speaker. "After graduating from the University of California Berkeley, John began working on designing and organizing education programs," Solis, then a Los Angeles congresswoman and now U.S. secretary of labor, wrote in 2004. But the record is wrong: Pérez dropped out of UC Berkeley and never returned. For a decade, Pérez's designation as a UC Berkeley graduate went unchallenged in newspaper articles,...

SACRAMENTO, Calif. (AP) -- The California Assembly approved a bill Monday to prohibit openly carrying unloaded handguns in public after a debate that pitted gun rights proponents against chiefs of police. The bill, AB144, would make it a misdemeanor to carry an exposed and unloaded gun in a public place, street or vehicle except in some unincorporated areas. It was approved 45-29 largely along party lines and moves to the Senate.

Sacramento, Calif. (AP) -- Reflecting on lessons learned on a two-day trip to the Lone Star state, Assembly Republicans said Thursday California needs to follow Texas' model of lower taxes and fewer regulations and legal hurdles to keep the economy growing. GOP lawmakers led a delegation of California representatives to meet with Texas Gov. Rick Perry, a Republican, and spoke to business owners about why they left California last week. Assembly Minority Leader Connie Conway of Tulare said the trip affirmed her caucus is on the right track with a package of bills she says would help California companies thrive....

Eight names will be drawn at random Thursday from a pool of 36 finalists for positions on the state's new redistricting commission, and a Santa Monica College political science professor has calculated that there are 3.2 million possible combinations. What's more, Dr. Brain Lawson has figured the chances of names being drawn by gender, county of residence, income, ethnicity and what he calls being "incumbent friendly," basing his calculations on the detailed profiles of each finalist available on the Internet. He sees 11 of the 36 being "incumbent friendly" due to experience with redistricting and government, and names them in...

Democrats urge reelection of dead Long Beach senator October 29, 2010 | 3:18 pm A week after the death of state Sen. Jenny Oropeza (D-Long Beach), Democrats have sent mailers to residents urging them to vote to reelect her. That would trigger a special election and give the party a chance to put up a new candidate. The mailers featuring Secretary of State Debra Bowen and Democratic Party general counsel Martha Escutia do not say explicitly that Oropeza has died or that a vote for her will allow another Democrat to be considered. "Senator Jenny Oropeza’s illness has been a...

The name of Sen. Jenny Oropeza, who died last night, will remain on the Nov. 2 ballot as a candidate for re-election to the 28th Senate District, election officials said this morning The 53-year-old Long Beach Democrat died 12 days before the election. Her name is already on the ballot -- some of which have already been cast by absentee voters -- and state law prevents calling a special election to fill a vacant office within 68 days of an election. Oropeza was expected to win re-election in the district, where Democrats have a 20-plus point registration advantage.... If Oropeza...

Democratic Sen. Jenny Oropeza has died following a prolonged illness. She was 53. Oropeza had been largely absent from the Senate since her office announced in May that she had been diagnosed with a blood clot in her abdomen. The Long Beach Democrat, first elected to the Senate in 2006, had battled liver cancer and a tumor during her time in the Assembly. Her own battle with cancer inspired her to become a champion of cancer prevention in the Legislature.

In the wake of a pension deal Democratic leaders struck with Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger, California's prison guards union has dropped $215,000 to oppose Assemblywoman Anna Caballero's quest for the state Senate.Caballero, D-Salinas, is facing Ceres Mayor Anthony Cannella, a Republican, for the 12th Senate District, probably the most contested seat in the Legislature. The race is the top concern for both Senate President Pro Tem Darrell Steinberg, D-Sacramento, and his GOP counterpart, Senate Republican leader Bob Dutton of Rancho Cucamonga. If Caballero wins, Democrats would likely have 26 seats in the upper house, one short of the two-thirds majority now...

Though it has yet to pass a budget on time in the modern era, California was especially late in its annual appropriations this year - waiting 99 days to rangle a budget deal through the state legislature. Per usual, backroom wheelings and dealings secured a massive spending missive, totaling $87.5 billion for Fiscal Year 2011, which started July 1. Although lawmakers has waited 100 days to pass a budget, they were so eager to ram the spending through that they couldn't wait a few extra days to ensure there was time to actually read the bill...

Among the details that are just now starting to trickle out is that this so-called "no tax budget" includes loads of fee increases – which many believe are tax increases by another name – and at least one direct tax increase. Details remain sketchy, but sprinkled throughout the 22 bills in the budget package are increases to the alcohol and beverage catering fee, the liquor license fee, the enterprise zone application fee, some sort of parking fee and numerous judicial fees: a first paper filing fee, a telephonic fee, a summary judgment fee and a court security fee. Meanwhile, the...

California Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger is using his veto pen to push back on some bills that legislators passed ... On Thursday, he attached this veto message to Assembly Bill 2418, which would have removed the apostrophe in the “Contractors’ State License Law.” To the Members of the California State Assembly: I am returning AB 2419 without my signature … -Number of legislative committees that took time hearing this bill: 3 -Number of pages in this bill needed to remove an apostrophe: 184 -Taxpayer dollars used to pass this bill through the Legislature: $ thousands and thousands. -The outrage the public...

State Sen. Roderick Wright indicted on charges of voter fraud and perjuryThe Inglewood Democrat is accused of listing as his residence a home in the district he wanted to represent when his actual home was elsewhere. He has pleaded not guilty. By Jean Merl, Los Angeles Times September 17, 2010 A Los Angeles County grand jury on Thursday unsealed an eight-count felony indictment against state Sen. Roderick Wright (D-Inglewood), accusing him of filing a false declaration of candidacy, voter fraud and perjury beginning in 2007, when he changed his voter registration to run for the Legislature. Wright listed as his...

Los Angeles (AP) State Sen. Roderick Wright on Thursday was indicted on eight felony counts in connection with a probe into whether he lived outside his Southern California district since he was elected two years ago. An indictment unsealed Thursday charges Wright, 58, with five counts of voter fraud, two counts of perjury and one count of filing a false declaration of candidacy.

Tongue-lash, arm-twist and back-stab, sure, but no other California lawmaker has done this decade what Assemblyman Juan Arambula did last year – dump his own party. Arambula left the Democratic Party to become the state's first legislator not aligned with a major party since Audie Bock in 2000. His June 2009 defection has resounded far beyond his Central Valley district, echoing Field Poll findings that fewer than two of every 10 voters approve of the Legislature's performance. Explaining his decision, Arambula raises the same allegations of legislative game-playing and special-interest influence that critics have leveled for years. "You have to...

Two months after announcing he was gay, state Sen. Roy Ashburn of Bakersfield discussed his sexuality on the Senate floor and cast votes on two separate gay-rights bills. Ashburn was the only Republican senator to vote in support of allowing openly gay people to serve in the military, but he also voted against a bill that could remove a political obstacle to proposals to legalize same-sex marriage. Ashburn then took the unusual step of publicly explaining his votes on the Senate floor. "I would not have been speaking on a measure dealing with sexual orientation ever prior to the events...