Free Republic

Bowing to pressure from within their party, Democrats in the Legislature on Monday abandoned an attempt to repeal California’s voter-approved ban on affirmative action in the state’s higher education system. Assembly Speaker John Perez said he does not have enough support to place the constitutional amendment before voters in November. Instead, he said lawmakers will form a task force to study the issue of access in higher education. California voters passed Proposition 209 in 1996, banning the use of race and ethnicity in public university admissions, state hiring and contracting. The amendment, SCA5, was initiated to address the drop-off in...

(Maywood, CA) Hews Media Group – Community News has obtained an audiotape that details how the Office of California State Assembly Speaker John Perez collaborated with former Assemblyman Tom Calderon and officials with the Central Basin Municipal Water District in an attempt to coerce three Maywood Mutual Water Districts (MMWD) into taking on unwanted projects that if they did not accept, the districts, as Calderon said, would be “dissolved with a stroke of a pen.” The “stroke of a pen” meaning legislation that would be championed by Speaker Perez and passed in Sacramento to “dissolve the water companies.” The entities...

For more than a year, Assembly Speaker John Pérez dated a Hollywood funeral director who faces fraud allegations in one of the biggest financial scandals to rock the U.S. funeral industry. During their relationship, Pérez, a Los Angeles Democrat, mixed political business with his personal life in ways that showed poor judgment, ethics experts say. A Pérez spokesman said the lawmaker conducted himself appropriately during a casual dating relationship. Tyler Cassity, proprietor of a boutique cemetery called Hollywood Forever as well as a Mill Valley cemetery, and defendant in a $600 million fraud lawsuit in his native Missouri, accompanied Pérez...

Reporting from Sacramento — Textbooks and history classes in California schools would be required to include the contributions of gays, lesbians and transgender Americans under a proposal given final legislative approval in the Assembly on Tuesday and sent to Gov. Jerry Brown. The measure sparked a spirited debate, including personal pleas from two openly gay lawmakers — Assembly Speaker John A. Pérez (D-Los Angeles) and Assemblyman Tom Ammiano (D-San Francisco). They said the bill would reduce the bullying of gay students and correct an oversight by history books. "I don't want to be invisible in a textbook," Ammiano told his...

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 -- Democrats angrily rejected a long list of demands -- 53 issues in all -- that Republicans made Friday in budget negotiations with Gov. Jerry Brown, and are now amping up threats to go around the minority party to ensure a special election on tax extensions. Senate Republicans turned in their proposal to Brown on Friday afternoon after he complained he had yet to see a "term sheet" outlining their wishes. With time running out to get a special election on the ballot, Brown has pleaded with Republicans to lower their asking price for an agreement to allow voters...

California Assembly Speaker-Elect Pérez Has Ties To Deep Pockets The legislator, who has cultivated an image as a crusader for the marginalized and powerless, has also advocated for the powerful. Patrick McGreevy and Jack Dolan February 28, 2010 Reporting from Sacramento - Supporters of incoming Assembly Speaker John Pérez say his rapid climb from rank-and-file lawmaker to one of the most powerful offices in the state is due to his intellectual prowess and unwavering commitment to the working poor. But Pérez, a Democrat who was chosen as speaker in December and will be sworn in Monday, has something that left-leaning...