Free Republic

We at the California Endowment have dedicated our organization to creating healthy communities within our state. In doing so, we have sought to broaden the discussion beyond health insurance and access to health care, which capture most media and public attention. True community health is created by a broad spectrum that includes affordability and access to wholesome food; parks and play areas for children, adults and seniors; and public safety so residents feel comfortable in leaving their homes to lead active lives, to name a few. Tolerance, too, plays a key role in fostering healthy communities, and the current H1N1...

SACRAMENTO Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger on Friday handed out hefty pay raises to 11 of his closest advisers, including a $32,000 boost to Chief of Staff Susan Kennedy. Kennedy remains the highest paid member of the governor's inner circle, although some of his cabinet secretaries make more. With the latest raise, Kennedy's taxpayer-funded salary will be $175,000 a year. The other 10, including Deputy Chief of Staff Adam Mendelsohn and Daniel Zingale, chief of staff to first lady Maria Shriver, will see their salaries increase 11 percent to $147,900. The pay raises come a week after Schwarzenegger signed a $145.5 billion...

SACRAMENTO — He was booted out of the Capitol three years ago, but when former Gov. Gray Davis returns today to watch the man who replaced him sworn in for a second term, he'll find an eerie resemblance to what he left behind. Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger has entrusted onetime Davis aides with his administration's success, appointing them to top jobs. He has embraced policies that Davis favored and settled into a similar governing style. The Republican incumbent is even beginning to sound a bit like his Democratic predecessor. --snip-- "If you look at where I come down on issues and...

Yesterday Arnold Schwarzenegger announced a number of changes in key senior positions in his administrations. A number of them represent great moves, and a few of them are, frankly very disturbing. Let's start with the great news! First and foremost, the Governor's elevation of conservative Dan Dunmoyer to the position of Cabinet Secretary is outstanding news for all of us. Dan is capable, smart and effective. In this key position which acts as a liaison and coordinator between the Governor and all of the Agency heads will be in good hands. Undoubtedly this will be a big relief for former...

As Governor Schwarzenegger prepares for a second term in office, he's bringing in a few new faces and shuffling some of the current folks to new positions. Dan Dunmoyer becomes the governor's new Cabinet Secretary, the main liaison between Schwarzenegger's inner circle and the myriad of state agencies. Dunmoyer, who has been on the governor's staff for the past year, is best known in Capitol circles as the former head of the Personal Insurance Federation of California-- the lobbying association of the "property-casualty" insurance industry. Dunmoyer becomes Governor Schwarzenegger's fourth Cabinet secretary in the past three years. Meantime, the governor's...

As Republican Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger looks toward a second term, he has vowed to make access to health care a top priority. Schwarzenegger intends to unveil a major health-care plan in January, if re-elected. In preparation, Schwarzenegger has hired a top-level staff to actually write the proposal that includes ranking health-care experts from former Gov. Gray Davis' administration. Richard Figueroa, a veteran health-care consultant and go-to person for health issues on Davis' executive staff, is joining Schwarzenegger's team next week, according to Capitol and private sources with direct knowledge of Figueroa's new position. They confirmed that Schwarzenegger intends to release...

As Republican Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger, looks toward a second term, his administration has vowed to make access to health care a top priority. The govenror hopes to unveil a major health-care plan that he hopes to unveil in January if he is re-elected. In preparation, Schwarzenegger has hired a top-level staff to actually write the proposal that includes ranking health-care experts from former Gov. Gray Davis' administration. Richard Figueroa, a veteran health care consultant and go-to person for health issues on Davis' executive staff, will join Schwarzenegger's team next week in the Department of Managed Health Care, according to Capitol...

Heading into their state convention this coming weekend, Republicans continue to grouse about Governor Arnold Schwarzenegger’s shift to the left. Now it’s the other former Gray Davis official at the center of things Schwarz. Not controversial new Arnold chief of staff Susan Kennedy, but Maria Shriver’s chief of staff, Dan Zingale. There’s unhappiness in conservative ranks over Zingale’s role in Schwarzenegger’s core because some have discovered that he is the man said to have advised former Governor Davis to sign the ill-fated drivers license bill for illegal immigrants. Davis’s decision to sign the bill by state Senator Gil Cedillo (D-Los...

After suffering an overwhelming defeat of all four of his "year of reform" measures in the November 8 special election, California's Republican governor, Arnold Schwarzenegger, decided he had to shake up his cabinet. His appointment of Susan Kennedy as his new chief of staff registered a 9.9 on the political Richter scale & may have started a tsumani that will have enornous impact on Golden State politics. "The Governator" would have been hard pressed to find any candidate more certain to inflame & alienate the people who elected him to office. What's so significant about Susan Kennedy? Here are a...

Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger's ballot call for California to live within its means is triggering questions about whether his own administration is living within its means -- especially when it comes to his wife, Maria Shriver. Shriver doesn't hold elected office, but records show she does command a half-million-dollar-a-year staff -- which, depending on how you cut it, is anywhere from $60,000 to $180,000 more than what her predecessor, Sharon Davis, had. Recently, Daniel Zingale -- a Democratic gay rights advocate who had been working on Controller Steve Westly's gubernatorial campaign -- was appointed Shriver's $123,255 chief of staff. When he...

Given the polarized tenor of politics these days, you would think that being a Democrat, or even an independent, in the inner sanctum of Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger's Republican administration would feel like sneaking behind enemy lines in war or, worse, working for the other side. But a funny thing keeps happening as California moves closer to the Nov. 8 special election and Democrats seek to characterize Schwarzenegger as a right-wing partisan trying to impose the Bush agenda on the Golden State. The more Democrats accuse the governor of veering to the right, the more he keeps hiring, and promoting, Democrats...

<p>Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger didn't have much good to say about Gray Davis during the 2003 recall campaign, so eyebrows raised last week when first lady Maria Shriver hired a Davis lieutenant as her chief of staff.</p> <p>Democrat Daniel Zingale, who had been Davis' Cabinet secretary, starts his new job in November. He'll join Cabinet Secretary Terry Tamminen, education adviser Bonnie Reiss and Shriver as resident Democrats in the upper levels of the GOP administration.</p>

SACRAMENTO — California First Lady Maria Shriver named as her top aide Tuesday a former senior official to ex-Gov. Gray Davis, the Democrat her husband tarred in the 2003 recall campaign as the symbol of ineffectual government. Daniel Zingale, who served under Davis as the link between the governor's office and the vast state bureaucracy, will be the new chief of staff to Shriver, a Democrat. He will return to the governor's suite of offices on the first floor of the Capitol, this time surrounded by many Republicans who labored to oust Davis. Zingale has also been an unpaid political...

SACRAMENTO - Attorney General Bill Lockyer has denied a Reedley grower's request for permission to sue a state board member who earned money on the side as a consultant. Lockyer determined Thursday that Daniel Zingale, a member of the Agricultural Labor Relations Board, should not be removed from the board for earning $50,000 last year campaigning against a November ballot initiative. State labor code Section 1150 states ALRB members are not to engage in any other business, vocation or employment outside of their work on the board. Farmer Dan Gerawan - whose family business has had cases before the ALRB...