A Californian casts a ballot. (Photo: Vepar5 via Shutterstock)Democrats are traversing the 4th Assembly District, seeking support in the sprawling district that stretches from the Bay Area to Sacramento and even further north into the Sacramento Valley and North Coast mountains. The big money from Sacramento hasn’t dropped in yet and might not, depending on whether special interests feel they have a candidate they really want.
Recent research is focusing new attention on an asbestos-like mineral, blamed for staggering rates of a deadly cancer in Turkey, that also is found in the rocks and soil of 13 Western states, including California. The U.S. Geological Survey has identified 95 sites where the mineral, erionite, exists. Nine of the identified locations are in California.
Patty Lopez and Raul Bocanegra (Illustration by Tim Foster/Capitol Weekly)If someone comes to you and says, “I won my election because I was the first name on the ballot,” you should immediately check for the tinfoil hat — and then show them the door. The notion that a democratic election for something as important as a legislative or congressional seat, or even a city council, can be decided by the order on a ballot is the domain of wild conspiracy theorists. Until it actually happens.
School kids at work in a California classroom. (Photo: Monkey Business Images)OPINION: California voters passed Proposition 2 last November to establish a statewide “rainy day” fund. Unfortunately, a one-size-fits-all law, SB 858, also passed last year as part of the state budget process. SB 858 prevents school districts from saving adequately to prepare for their own rainy day by setting a maximum average “reserve cap” of 6 percent on school districts reserves.
A classroom teachers helps a young student with Latin. (Photo: Goodluz, via Shutterstock)The retirement security of California’s retired, current, and future teachers and the stability of the state’s pension fund for educators would be put at risk if a ballot measure addressing those issues is approved by California voters next November, according to an internal analysis by CalSTRS that I requested as chairman of the Assembly’s Committee on Public Employees, Retirement, and Social Security.
Obit: In his three decades on the federal bench, Lawrence Karlton presided over many high-profile cases including several involving California’s troubled prison system. In 2009 he forced the overhaul of California’s prison health care system and ordered the state to reduce prison overcrowding.
Candidates in the 7th Senate District: Orinda Mayor Steve Glazer and Assemblymember Susan Bonilla, D-Concord. (Photo illustration, separate images combined: Tim Foster, Capitol Weekly)Welcome to the 7th Senate District, where money and hardball politics came together in the primary election. The runoff likely will not be much different. Even in a state now accustomed to seven-digit spending in legislative campaigns, the 7th District showdown in May is likely to set records. And powerful interests that weighed in during the primary – organized labor, business interests, the dentists, the doctors and the fire fighters, for example – are all but certain to pony up again.
Islands in the Sacramento-San Joaquin River Delta, an aerial view. The Delta is home to about half of California's drinking water. (Photo: Worldislandinfo.comCalifornia’s top water official told a key gathering of south state water interests that “hard-earned progress” is being made on the Brown administration’s controversial plan to build twin tunnels through the Sacramento-San Joaquin River Delta. The comments by Mark Cowin, director of the state Department of Water Resources, were aimed in part at dispelling rumors that the project had run aground, perhaps permanently.
A stealth move to rewrite state law to allow the newly elected Long Beach mayor to hold a seat on the California Coastal Commission has emerged in the final days of the legislative session.
An abstract rendering of multi-faceted California. (Flip Bjorkman)While most indicators signal an economic upswing in California, the reality facing many residents of the Golden State is simple: On the ground, the recovery is still sluggish. Nowhere is that more apparent than in a newly developed database that includes detailed economic information on each of California’s 120 legislative districts and 58 counties.