Gov. Jerry Brown at a Capitol briefing last year on his revised state budget. Photo: Rich Pedroncelli/APGov. Jerry Brown delivered an impassioned defense of his ambitious plan to drill huge tunnels through the delta east of San Francisco to move more northern water south, saying California’s economic well-being depended on it.
Street art in Santa Barbara., August 2011. Philip Bird OPINION: Since 2003, California’s Governors and the Legislature have allocated $1.1 million annually to the Arts Council, the bare minimum necessary to qualify for a $1 million National Endowment for the Arts grant. This lack of foresight has put California dead last among all 50 states in per capita funding for its arts agency.
OPINION: With this proposal, the Governor, who has shown recent leadership in stabilizing revenues and beginning to restore programs cut during the recession, is calling for a restructuring of the state’s existing rainy day fund, known as the Budget Stabilization Account (BSA). (An alternative proposal approved by the Legislature in 2010 is scheduled to appear on the statewide ballot in November.)
The campus of the University of California, Berkeley. Photo: LAgirl5252A move is afoot in the Capitol to bring back a higher education watchdog and restore a data trove of 1.7 billion records on public colleges and universities that were placed in limbo by Gov. Jerry Brown.
Voter approval of the job that Democrat Jerry Brown is doing as Governor has reached a new high. At present, 59% of registered voters approve of his performance in office, nearly twice the proportion (32%) who disapprove. Brown also holds a huge preference lead when likely voters in the June open primary election are asked whom they would support if the election were being held today.
OPINION: Public employees have shown they are willing to do their part to help balance government budgets. We may not have liked the pension system overhaul Governor Brown signed in 2012, but once it became law our union leaders helped to implement the changes, which will amount to a reduction of more than $77 billion to public workers’ retirement and health care benefits.
Pumpjacks in a Kern County oil field, November 2013. (Photo: Christopher Halloran)It has been killed repeatedly in the state Legislature or at the ballot box, but the backers of an oil severance tax hope 2014 is the year to get it done, to the tune of $2 billion annually. But history is not on their side. Above: Pumpjacks in Kern County, November 2013. (Photo: Christopher Halloran)
Two years after Gov. Jerry Brown and the Legislature dismantled California’s $5 billion-a-year redevelopment program, Brown wants to bring some elements back — but he’s offering less money, a different name and a change in local voters’ approval. The crux of Brown’s plan is to expand the reach of the rarely-used, little-known Infrastructure Finance Districts. The districts, or IFDs, have taxing authority and are created with voter approval. They function on property tax dollars and focus on highways, transit and sewer projects, libraries, parks and child care centers.
Willie L. Brown Jr. Former Assembly Speaker Willie Brown made it official Tuesday, hosting a ceremony celebrating the western span of the bay Bridge bearing his name. Brown, who turns 80 on March 20, chose the day because it would have been the 105th birthday of his mother, Minnie. “I’m deeply honored,” Brown said a at a podium in front of Treasure Island’s Administration Building with “his” bridge over his left shoulder and San Francisco’s’ skyline behind him. (AP Photo: Eric Risberg)
A major Sacramento-based lobbyist and his firm have been fined a record $133,500 for throwing fundraisers for politicians and candidates – parties that violated the state’s laws governing gifts and campaign donations to public officials. The enforcement arm of the state’s Fair Political Practice Commission posted the settlement with lobbyist Kevin Sloat and the firm, Sloat Higgins Jensen and Associates, on the FPPC web site on Monday.