Free Republic

Anyone seen Steve Peace lurking around the Capitol? Peace, a Democratic state legislator in the 1980s and 1990s, was fond of floating big ideas, which usually involved big money. And some of them, unfortunately, were enacted into law, such as deregulation schemes for workers' compensation insurance and electric power. The latter, drafted during what lobbyists dubbed the "Steve Peace death march," was one of the biggest disasters in California history. But Peace continued to spout high-concept notions, the last of which cost Gray Davis his governorship. Peace was Davis' budget director when, in 2002, the newly re-elected governor unveiled a...

<p>Gov.-elect Arnold Schwarzenegger is preparing a push to deregulate the state's electricity markets -- a move embraced by business leaders and some energy analysts but criticized by many Democrats and consumer advocates as a return to the failed policies that sparked California's energy crisis.</p>

The purveyors of revisionist political history are back at work this week, inspired by the death of Enron Corp. founder -- and convicted felon -- Kenneth Lay to revive the myth that were it not for Enron and Lay, California wouldn't have experienced its 2001 energy crisis. ... --snip-- Attorney General Bill Lockyer had the good manners to remain silent about Lay's death from heart disease three months before he was to be sentenced for lying to mask the failing company's condition. It was Lockyer who in 2001 told an interviewer that "I would love to personally escort Lay to...

<p>LOS ANGELES (AP) - California's finance director told a budget study committee Tuesday that California took in more revenue than it spent in July and August, and said there is a public "misconception" that a $38.2 billion deficit still exists.</p>

<p>Exposing the strain of a 22-day budget impasse, Gov. Gray Davis' finance director exploded in a crowded Capitol hallway Tuesday, accusing "extreme forces" in the Legislature of thwarting approval of a state spending plan.</p> <p>"We need a budget! Send us a budget!" Steve Peace bellowed at Republican Assemblyman John Campbell, confronting him outside a briefing room as a GOP news conference came to a close.</p>

SACRAMENTO – Now that he no longer holds elected office, former state Sen. Steve Peace offers a surprising explanation for his notorious tendency to talk your ear off. The El Cajon Democrat suspects that the white knuckles on the microphone were not so much the death grip of an overbearing orator as the mark of a shy guy whose nervousness tended to make him talk too much. "I am not a very natural public person," Peace said recently. His energetic, 20-year legislative career seemed at times to be one long-winded trek, spiced with a dash of rant and tirade, through...

In an ongoing attempt to encourage new electric generation and speed up the process, California appears poised to enact a bill requiring developers to start powerplant construction within a year after a project is permitted and appeals are resolved. This month, Gov. Gray Davis (D) is expected to sign the legislation, which is intended "to make certain powerplants get built," says John Rozsa, an aide to state Sen. Steve Peace (D), the bill's author. Peace wants "to make the securing of a permit a little bit less of a speculative exercise," Rozsa says. But the legislation is drawing mixed reviews...