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California State University East Bay professors who played hooky to protest state budget cuts - but then put in for a full day's pay - are getting a pass from the system's chancellor. "Following the California Faculty Association's one-day strike at California State Universities Dominguez Hills and East Bay on Nov. 17, 2011, faculty on your campuses were asked to properly report their time for that day," CSU Chancellor Charles Reed wrote in a Feb. 13 memo. At CSU Dominguez Hills in Carson (Los Angeles County), where there was a sign-in system, 359 faculty members did not work that day...

The state of California has made a full-blown commitment to reducing reliance on fossil-fuel energy and other limited resources. Utilities are required to use solar, wind and geothermal sources for a third of their electricity supply by 2020, while owners of homes and businesses are being urged to install solar panels. The state is mandating that automakers dramatically ramp up sales of battery-powered and other low-emission cars. It is imposing new cap-and-trade emission controls on business with hefty fees. Essentially, the state is trying to force California into an entirely new economic structure, claiming, in Gov. Jerry Brown's words, that...

FRESNO – Two homeless men in Fresno have called for an ambulance an average of nearly twice a day for more than a year, racking up hundreds of thousands of dollars in costs – and even more when they get to a hospital. They are Fresno County's highest-volume ambulance users – "frequent fliers" as they are called in the business – and their 1,363 combined trips made up 1.34 percent of all American Ambulance calls in the county last year. "I call all the time," Cesar Arana, 41, said while sitting on a bus-stop bench downtown. "I have a major...

Critics have called it the train to nowhere and a $98 billion boondoggle. As concerns mount over the practicality and affordability of California's plan to build a high-speed rail system, even many former supporters are beginning to sound skeptical. Not so Gov. Jerry Brown. He has emerged as the most vocal cheerleader of a project that is as risky as it is ambitious. Building a first-in-the-nation project would provide a lasting legacy for the 73-year-old Democratic governor as he moves into the twilight of a long political career. His father is revered for promoting the construction of California's comprehensive water...

Senate President Pro Tem Darrell Steinberg said today that it's time to end sparring over competing measures and rally behind Gov. Jerry Brown's tax initiative for the November ballot. The Sacramento Democrat, in what he characterized as a "clarion call," said that Brown's tax initiative appears to be the state's best alternative. Placing competing measures on the ballot could hurt its prospects, he said. "It's time to get behind the governor's tax initiative," Steinberg said. "If you have two or three of them on the ballot at one time, they're all at risk of losing," he said. Brown's proposal would...

We're in the ballot initiative wing of the California Political Causes Morgue. On the table, two public pension reform plans that died last week. Scalpel, please:Poisoning. The official language issued last month by Attorney General Kamala Harris to describe the measures' tainted public opinion.The AG picked "teachers, nurses, and peace officers" as public servants affected by the measures and implied that public employees and their families could not receive death and disability benefits. Voters polled by California Pension Reform, the group that wrote both measures, said the descriptions were a huge turnoff. Newspapers around the state blasted Harris, but it...

CalPERS is going to look again at adjusting its investment forecast, a move that could increase taxpayer contributions while ramping up the political heat on public pension funds in California. Just a year ago, the board of the California Public Employees' Retirement System ignored recommendations from senior staff to cut its forecast a quarter-point, to 7.5 percent. Yet on Tuesday, senior actuary Alan Milligan said CalPERS staff will make another recommendation to the board next month. He didn't say what the recommendation will be. But other big public pension funds have been cutting their forecasts in recent years to reflect...

TULARE, Calif. -- Newt Gingrich's presidential campaign has a history of near-death experiences and he insists another resurrection is on its way. "I'm very happy to continue this campaign based on real solutions that ... are going to attract a lot of Americans," Gingrich said Monday during a fundraising swing in California. "We've done it twice and I suspect you're about to see us do it again." The third time may not be the charm. Gingrich sustained a string of disappointing performances in several state contests last week and has watched rival Rick Santorum emerge as the leading conservative opponent...

When Jerry Brown goes into his bunker – or monk's cell or man-cave – and issues cryptic messages, you know he's up to something. California's governor did it again last weekend during a brief appearance before a state Democratic convention in San Diego. He could have used his time to give Democratic activists a compelling argument why they should get behind his plan to raise Californians' taxes to balance the state budget – the plan that he's been trumpeting day and night, publicly and privately, for weeks. Instead, he barely mentioned taxes, saying, "Look, we've got some issues. We've got...

Republican presidential hopeful Newt Gingrich is spending Valentine's Day in the Central Valley. Sure, the former House Speaker is looking to woo California Republicans, whose votes he's hoping will still make a difference by the time the state's June primary rolls around. But the real object of desire for this trip is cash to fuel his campaign fund. The GOP presidential candidate is holding an evening reception at the Fresno home of Wendy Turner, daughter of former Secretary of State Bill Jones, and her husband Ryan as part of a fundraising swing through California. Gingrich is no cheap date. Spending...

With a $15 billion budget deficit, $500 billion in unfunded pension liabilities, a tax and regulatory climate that drives businesses away, wasteful and ineffective use of California tax dollars and a political system unduly influenced by special interests, the mismanagement of California and the pursuit of harmful policies have led to the following realities:1. California has the 3rd highest income tax in the nation. Even worse, the 9.3% tax bracket starts at $46,349 for people filing as individuals. We also have a punishing 10.3% tax rate on income over $1,000,000.2. Our state sales tax rate (7.25%) is the highest in...

A massive plan to turn Lamorinda cities into Fruitvale Transit Villages to force drivers out of their cars and rely more heavily on public transportation was unveiled Thursday, February 9 at a joint meeting of the city councils of Orinda, Lafayette, and Moraga. The plan proposes a major reconfiguration of the layout of all three cities. The plan was unveiled by Martin Engelmann of the Contra Costa Transportation Authority, a public agency formed, in 1988, by the voters of Contra Costa County. The agency is charged with county-wide transportation planning. The plan proposes to concentrate housing and population growth near...

Contract talks kicking off this month between the state and four employee unions present Gov. Jerry Brown with a political dilemma: How does he deal fairly with his key labor constituency without exposing himself to charges he's kowtowing to them? The 73-year-old Democrat needs labor's continued backing if he decides to run for another term, but California's $9.2 billion state budget deficit limits what he can offer at the bargaining table. Beyond that, Brown wants to put a tax increase before voters in November, but employee contracts that don't share the fiscal pain would give opponents plenty of ammunition to...

SAN DIEGO – Gov. Jerry Brown acknowledged Saturday that his tax proposal for the November ballot has a "few issues," but he sidestepped the controversy in a high-profile speech at the California Democratic Party's annual convention. A growing rift between Democrats about competing measures to raise taxes was evident at the gathering, where supporters of a competing "millionaire's tax" waved banners outside the San Diego Convention Center. Brown referred only in passing to his tax plan, a major part of his agenda this year. "Look, we've got some issues. We've got a tax measure, we have a little, few issues...

It looks like Gov. Jerry Brown will not get his wish, and his tax plan will not be the only one on the November ballot. Multimillionaire Molly Munger, with her income-tax increase for education, and the California Federation of Teachers, with its millionaires tax, show no signs of backing down. Unlike the governor, who fears that multiple measures will amount to a circular firing squad, I say choice is healthy. Let's be honest - all the tax plans are set up to pay for the interests of their backers. Munger and the teachers are all about money going to education....

San Diego, CA (AP) -- Even with Democrats supporting higher taxes on the wealthy this November, Occupy protesters still found fault with California's majority party at their annual convention in San Diego on Saturday. About 100 Occupy members protested outside the San Diego Convention Center, where the state party was holding the convention, sounding off on themes similar to those being discussed inside. But protesters said some Democrats had let them down by supporting the indefinite detention of terror suspects and spending millions on political campaigns. "Don't just watch us, come and join us," and "Get up, get down, there's...

San Diego – Van Jones, the former Obama Administration green czar who resigned in controversy, appears on the fast track to a political comeback — emerging as a star at this weekend’s California Democratic convention and lauded by House Minority Leader Nancy Pelosi as a “leader of the future.” Jones, who as head of an activist group called “Rebuild the Dream” has become a leading voice of the Occupy movement, was given the star speaking slot to address hundreds at the kickoff Friday night reception here sponsored by state party chair John Burton. To the cheers of the grassroots activists,...

SAN DIEGO -- Assembly Speaker John A. Pérez may be nowhere more popular than at a labor caucus meeting at a Democratic convention, and so it was that he received a standing ovation here this afternoon and tried out a one-liner on the crowd. "This year you've seen Mitt Romney and others talk about the fact that corporations are people," the former labor organizer said. "I won't believe corporations are people until Texas executes one of them."

California revenues last month lagged 5.5 percent behind what Gov. Jerry Brown expected in his just-proposed January budget, a development that Controller John Chiang termed "disappointing." Though the big spring revenue months and Facebook's public stock offering are still to come, the latest report may provide a cautionary signal for Democratic lawmakers who think Brown's forecast is too pessimistic. According to Chiang's office, the state fell $528.4 million behind the governor's latest projection for January, including a $525 million (6.3 percent) shortage in income tax collections. After the first seven months of the fiscal year, the state is $694 million...

We hear often from drivers who suffer sticker shock when they're pulled over by police and handed a ticket for a moving violation. The actual cost is far more than many drivers had thought it was going to be. Take, for instance, when the state passed its handheld cellphone ban a few years ago. Officials trumpeted the fine as $20. More than a few drivers think: What the heck. Worth the risk. But $20 is just the base fine. They call us screaming when they discover the real cost: $166. When you pay a citation, you aren't just paying for...

The Susan G. Komen for the Cure foundation's efforts to defuse the controversy over its funding dispute with Planned Parenthood hasn't done much to improve its standing with the California Legislative Women's Caucus.Sen. Noreen Evans, D-Santa Rosa, said this week that the caucus has no plans to restore its partnership with the breast cancer charity. The Komen incident left lingering questions about "whether their highest priority is women's health care," Evans said in an interview. "Basically, the fundamental problem is this incident politicized women's health care. And I don't believe that should be a political football," she said.Evans had announced...

Sacramento, Calif. (AP) -- Roseanne Barr's name is on California's primary ballot as a Green Party candidate for president. Secretary of State Debra Bowen announced Monday that Barr is among 24 candidates she intends to place on the June 5 ballot.

If the subject is the state budget, you know what follows: What will be cut this time? This has been an annual discussion ever since California's economy imploded and tax revenues dried up. It was the central topic of state Sen. Mark DeSaulnier's town hall meeting in Concord last week, where he gave a primer on the arcane process by which Sacramento balances income and outflow. He talked about Gov. Jerry Brown's proposed budget for 2012-13, his planned cuts, projected revenues, assumed tax hikes, triggered cuts if the taxes do not pass, and the many meetings that will take place...

Gov. Jerry Brown and his fellow Democrats in the Legislature settled on a hastily revised state budget last June – after Brown had vetoed legislators' first version – and pronounced it to be balanced and timely. "My colleagues and I have voted on a responsible budget," Assemblyman Roger Dickinson, D-Sacramento, told constituents in a newsletter, adding, "While we have projected additional revenues, we have also identified further tough cuts if these revenues are not realized. We are charged with the responsibility to pass a balanced budget on time. Democratic lawmakers have done so." Dickinson wasn't alone in crowing to constituents...

Contra Costa County's finances resemble those of a family that ran up astronomical credit card debts by spending beyond its means. It's not a unique story. Local governments throughout the East Bay face similar problems. Contra Costa leaders deserve credit for starting to adjust their spending about five years ago, earlier than many other public agencies. They began trimming employee salaries, reducing benefits and significantly cutting the size of the workforce. These were painful, but essential, cuts critical to bringing annual expenses in line with income. For next fiscal year, county officials feel confident they have a balanced budget that...

Rose Ann DeMoro is always ready for another fight. And why not? During the past decade, the leader of the California Nurses Association has won so many of her battles. Largely because of CNA efforts, California is poised to become the first state where registered nurses make an average salary above $100,000. The union helped defeat gubernatorial candidate Meg Whitman in 2010 and has become a political force, throwing financial support behind candidates for offices ranging from Santa Rosa City Council to state attorney general. ...California's nurses have done plenty to increase demand and their own bargaining power. In 1999,...

When teachers unions and education groups backed Proposition 98 nearly a quarter-century ago, they told voters it was "a well-thought-out plan for California's schools to once again be among the very best in the nation." But as public schools pack more than 30 students into kindergarten classrooms, cut a week of instruction and shutter campus libraries, education advocates wonder to what extent Proposition 98 has served its purpose. The state ranks among the worst in students per teacher and spent 12 percent below the national average per pupil even before the recession. Compared to their high-water mark in 2007-08, K-12...

House Republicans late Thursday night adopted an amendment that would prohibit California from receiving any high speed rail money in a huge five-year transportation bill headed to the House floor next week. The $270 billion bill also eliminates bicycle and pedestrian programs and detaches urban mass transit funding from its traditional revenue source. The underlying bill did not include any high speed rail funding to begin with, and indeed would cut Amtrak by 25 percent, so the prohibition serves mainly as a stick in the eye to California’s plan for bullet trains. The action is part of a continuing effort...

Many years of partisan wrangling over the state budget reached a climax in 2010 when public employee unions and Democratic politicians persuaded voters to pass Proposition 25, eliminating the two-thirds vote for budgets. It gave the Legislature's majority Democrats the power to pass budgets without having to garner Republican votes. But that's not all it did. Worried that voters might see it as a political power play, the measure's sponsors added a political sugarplum, one declaring that if legislators didn't pass a budget by June 15, the constitutional deadline, their salaries would be cut off. ...The Legislature is now suing...

Gov. Jerry Brown laid out a detailed plan to alter California's state and local public retirement systems on Thursday – and immediately drew fire from his core labor constituency. The details delivered to the Legislature on Thursday generally tracked with an outline he unveiled in October. Representatives of a union coalition hoped to negotiate what they consider a less severe package. On Thursday, they said they felt blindsided. "To launch this bomb in the early stages of the legislative season can only be counterproductive," said Steve Maviglio, spokesman for the union coalition . . .

Caltrans' recent decision to "unfire" an employee who admitted falsifying structural tests and let him retire may leave you wondering, How hard is it to fire a state worker? So let's take the aforementioned Duane Wiles. The state Transportation Department fired him in November after The Bee's Charles Piller started asking questions about Wiles' job performance in testing the new Bay Bridge span and other projects. As was his right, Wiles appealed his termination to the State Personnel Board. Caltrans and Wiles settled on an agreement that scrubbed the termination from his file and let him retire. In return, Wiles...

Lt. Gov. Gavin Newsom, who pops up from time to time to snipe at Gov. Jerry Brown, suggested today that his fellow Democrat lacks a "vision for greatness" and is "not necessarily the most collaborative executive," and he criticized social service cuts Brown has proposed. "We've got a governor who is doing a very good job focusing on solvency," the former San Francisco mayor, who dropped out of the gubernatorial race in 2010, said on KQED Radio's Forum. "But what we need is a vision for greatness again." Brown and Newsom have a distant relationship, . . .

The Hercules Redevelopment Agency is in default on a $2.4 million bond interest payment due today. "It was inevitable there would be a default because there's not enough tax increment," City Manager Steve Duran said late Tuesday after a session in Contra Costa Superior Court in Martinez with the bond insurer, Ambac Assurance Corp. The redevelopment agency's bond debt obligations have exceeded revenue from property tax increments in recent years, and as of this week, the agency's non-housing component was $3.8 million underwater, Duran said. "You can't get blood from a turnip," he said. Ambac's suit accuses Hercules of misappropriating...

Gov. Jerry Brown is scaling back the state's highly controversial bullet train project to keep it alive. Just three months ago, his administration unveiled – with great fanfare – a revised "business plan" for building the north-south bullet train system to answer the embryonic project's many critics. The project would be slowed down and stretched out timewise with a new and supposedly more realistic cost structure, officials declared. It would be, California High-Speed Rail Authority chairman Tom Umberg said at the unveiling, "a new time, a new day and a new beginning." But the revised cost, about $100 billion or...

Gov. Jerry Brown is raising hundreds of thousands of dollars for his tax campaign from California Indian tribes at the same time many tribes are seeking to renegotiate lucrative gambling compacts with him. The Democratic governor, who proposes increasing the state sales tax and income taxes on California's highest earners, is considered more accommodating of tribal interests than his predecessor, Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger, and his administration is in compact talks "on various levels" with 15 to 20 tribes, Brown's tribal negotiator, Jacob Appelsmith, said Tuesday. Any compacts Brown signs could significantly affect a gambling industry that generates more than $7...

California's redevelopment agencies officially are out of business, effective today. But that doesn't mean that the future of affordable housing is wiped out in the state. The loss of new tax funds will make the process of providing future low- and moderate-income housing for the state's residents much more difficult – but not impossible, experts say. The end of redevelopment money for housing "has everybody in the affordable housing community working to figure out how we continue to do the projects that we've been doing," said Steve Gall, senior vice president in Roseville for USA Properties Fund, "especially since economic...

California state and local government employees remain among the highest-paid in the nation, according to revised 2010 data released this month by the U.S. Census Bureau. Full-time monthly pay for March 2010 in the District of Columbia averaged $5,900, followed by California at $5,774 and New Jersey' s $5,540. Nationally, the average pay for full-time state and local public employees was $4,388 for the March 2010 period sampled by the bureau.

California will run out of cash by early March if the state does not take swift action to find $3.3 billion through payment delays and borrowing, according to a letter state Controller John Chiang sent to state lawmakers today. The announcement is surprising since lawmakers previously believed the state had enough cash to last through the fiscal year that ends in June. But Chiang said additional cash management solutions are needed because state tax revenues are $2.6 billion less than what Gov. Jerry Brown and state lawmakers assumed in their optimistic budget last year. Meanwhile, Chiang said, the state is...

CalPERS refuses to sell its long-term care insurance to the same-sex partners of state workers, on the grounds that federal law doesn't allow it. Now a judge in Oakland seems ready to overturn that federal ban. Last week, U.S. District Judge Claudia Wilken refused to dismiss a class-action lawsuit against CalPERS and the U.S. government over the California pension fund's long-term care program. In her ruling, she suggested the ban could be unconstitutional. While the California Public Employees' Retirement System extends most benefits to same-sex couples, it has denied long-term care coverage to the same-sex spouses or domestic partners of...

California has a huge state debt and Washington has a huge national debt. But that does not discourage either Gov. Jerry Brown or President Barack Obama from wanting to launch a very costly high-speed rail system. Most of us might be a little skittish about spending money if we were teetering on the brink of bankruptcy. But the beauty of politics is that it is all other people's money, including among those other people generations yet-to-be born. The high-speed rail system proposed for California has been envisioned as a model for similar systems elsewhere in the United States. A recent...

When a political party achieves dominance of any government, one expects that it would use its hegemony to enact its public policy agenda. That's the way democracy is supposed to work. Using dominance to change the political system with the aim of perpetuating control is another matter. It fixes the game and undermines democracy. The most obvious example is redrawing legislative and congressional districts to ensure that particular parties or politicians will win subsequent elections, a practice called gerry- mandering that was common in California until voters created an independent redistricting commission. Gerrymandering, however, is not the only way dominant...

Jon Fleischman, the conservative blogger, was brooding the other day on Facebook, underwhelmed by the presidential candidates he has left to choose from. It's "pretty alarming to me," the former executive director of the California Republican Party wrote, "how dispassionate, or non-interested I am in this new battle for the Republican nomination between Mitt Romney and Newt Gingrich." For like-minded Republicans – a cheerless majority of the party in California, according to a recent poll – a virtual therapy session ensued. One friend recommended a prescription for Xanax, another a vote for Ron Paul. Joe Ludlow, who helps run a...

In his State of the Union address, President Barack Obama ratcheted up his class warfare rhetoric, calling for an America "where everyone gets a fair shot" and "everyone does their fair share" – his latest attempt to blame upper-income Americans for our economic problems and hike their taxes. In his State of the State address, Gov. Jerry Brown called for closing state budget deficits by increasing income taxes on the "wealthy" and hiking the sales tax. It's only "fair," he said. "Fairness" – code for income redistribution – will be the theme of the 2012 elections. All year we will...

The California Republican Party keeps making matters worse as it struggles against what seems inevitable. On Friday, the California Supreme Court unanimously decided to leave in place state Senate district maps drawn by the voter-created California Redistricting Commission. This was the second time the GOP turned to the court for help, and the second time it was slapped down. The Republicans spent – and probably wasted – $2 million on its drive to qualify a referendum challenging the maps. It's not certain that the measure will qualify for the November ballot.

OAKLAND -- Police have fired tear gas and flash bang grenades at Occupy Oakland protesters as they marched near the Oakland Museum of California. As marchers walked up Oak Street near 12th Street, a line of police blocked the path and declared it an unlawful assembly. Police then fired tear gas and some protesters tweeted rubber bullets were fired into the crowd. The marchers turned around and began marching in the opposite direction, and are headed back to Frank Ogawa Plaza. Occupy protesters had planned to take over a vacant building to house their headquarters and hold a two-day party....

A California Supreme Court ruling Friday significantly raised Democratic Party prospects of gaining the supermajority needed in the state Senate to pass tax or fee increases. The high court decided that Senate maps drawn recently by a 14-member citizens commission will be used for this year's legislative elections, even if a pending referendum qualifies for the ballot. The decision brought certainty for dozens of prospective Senate candidates awaiting final adoption of the maps as they begin their campaigns. And it offered the commission at least temporary validation that it performed its job as the voters intended. Political analysts of both...

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...

The California Supreme Court ruled today that state Senate maps drawn by a citizens commission will be used in this year's elections, despite a pending referendum to overturn them. The issue came before the High Court after a Republican-backed group, Fairness and Accountability in Redistricting, filed more than 711,000 signatures with county elections offices in a referendum to overturn Senate maps drawn by a 14-member citizens commission. Californians will decide the fate of the newly drawn Senate districts in November if 504,760 of the signatures are from valid voters. Legislative candidates must file and run their campaigns before then, however,...

SAN FRANCISCO (AP) -- California air regulators passed Friday sweeping auto emission standards that include a mandate to have 1.4 million electric and hybrid vehicles on state roads by 2025. The California Air Resources Board unanimously approved the new rules, which require that one-in-seven of new cars sold in the state in 2025 be an electric or other zero-emission vehicle. The plan also mandated a 75-percent reduction in smog-forming pollutants by 2025, and a 34 percent reduction in greenhouse gas emissions over roughly the same time. Automakers worked with the board and federal regulators on the greenhouse gas mandates in...

Planners want to direct Bay Area residents to live in existing communities to cut back on greenhouse gas emissionsCONCORD -- A Bay Area plan for where to build new houses, shops and offices in a way that helps cut greenhouse gases relies on increased population concentrations some communities may reject, a state homebuilding industry representative told Contra Costa business and political leaders Thursday."My concern is that we are way down the road in this process, but not a lot has been explained to the public," California Building Industry Association attorney Paul Campos said. "There is a near-poetic discussion of the...