There’s nothing like Sacramento in August: Stifling heat, frantic lobbyists, late-night sessions, pain, general angst – and Capitol Weekly’s Top 100 list. Fits right in. This rundown represents our view of the unelected Capitol community’s inner workings.
For months, Gov. Brown has signaled his dislike for borrowing new money for school construction. This week, key lawmakers agreed, derailing a bond that had been aimed at the November ballot.
An artist's rendering of the California bullet train. (Photo: HSR)Dan Richard, the chair of the California High Speed Rail Authority, is a man in the middle. The middle of court fights, the middle of political fights, the middle of a fight over California’s future. “The rest of the developed world has moved energetically to adopt high-speed rail. We will too,” Richard says. He may be right.
Flanked by legislative leaders, Gov. Jerry Brown signs the bill putting a $7.45 billion water bond on the November ballot. (Photo: AP/Rich Pedroncelli)After five years and two postponements, state lawmakers Wednesday night approved placing a $7.45 billion water bond before voters on the November ballot. The drought-era plan, backed by Gov. Brown and the Legislature, dramatically scales back and replaces the $11.14 billion borrowing that originally faced voters. Brown signed the legislation shortly after the vote.
The dry bed of Ivanpah Lake in San Barnardino County, which had been filled by the 2004-05 rains. (Photo: Ed Berlen)The governor, up for reelection in November, announced the plan on his campaign web site in an open letter to voters. If approved by lawmakers, it would replace the $11.14 billion water bond scheduled to go before voters in November. That bond, delayed for years, was approved in a bipartisan vote in the Legizslature and signed by former Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger.
Mariano-Florentino Cuéllar, 41, a Stanford Law School professor who was born in Matamoros, Mexico, and walked across the border each day to go to school in Texas, has been appointed to the California Supreme Court by Gov. Brown, the governor’s office announced today. Voters will be asked to approve the appointment on Nov. 4
California motorists in a traffic jam. (Photo: Shutterstock)Currently, fuel is about $4 per gallon and California burns about 14 billion gallons annually. Estimates of the magnitude of a potential hike vary widely, but most range from 15 to 20 cents per gallon, which would raise perhaps $2.1 billion to $2.8 billion annually. Efforts are under way in the Capitol, led by the petroleum industry, to exempt transportation fuels from the auctions until 2018.
A bill that started out as Gov. Brown’s proposal to restructure the CalPERS board emerged from the Legislature last week as a more modest change: a requirement that CalPERS board members receive 24 hours of education in pension fund operations.
Hetch Hetchy Reservoir in Yosemite, which prvides water for San Francisco. ((Photo: Nickolay Stanev)After months of negotiations to rewrite the controversial $11.1 billion water bond on California’s November ballot, a compromise has been reached on a $10.5 billion plan that includes $3 billion for reservoirs and groundwater storage, and $1 billion for groundwater cleanup in the L.A. basin. The big question is whether Gov. Brown will approve the deal — and so far he’s not saying.
A computer-generated image of the proposed California bullet train. (Photo: High Speed Rail Authority)Hundreds of millions of dollars from California’s auctions of carbon emission credits are being tapped to help finance the $68 billion bullet train project. In subsequent years, a fourth of the auction money will go to the train. The budget requires the governor’s signature to take effect.