Sacramento follies

Maybe it was the pressure of long days of no budget. Or, it's a precursor of future battles, but Assembly Speaker Fabian Nunez accused fellow Democratic Sen. Gill Cedllo of being "misguided" and "disingenuous" in a letter sent on Tuesday. Sacramento Bee Capitol Alert.

The story said:

"The scuffle between the two prominent Los Angeles Latino leaders was
ignited by a candlelight vigil once scheduled for this afternoon, in
which students planned to deliver "thousands" of letters to the
speaker's L.A. office demanding he take action on legislation to make
illegal immigrants eligible for state financial aid at California
colleges.

Cedillo introduced his so-called California Dream Act, Senate Bill
160, in the Senate earlier this year, but it stalled in committee.
Cedillo amended the language of the stalled bill into new legislation,
Senate Bill 65, which now sits in the Assembly, awaiting assignment to
a committee.

"I am deeply disappointed and severely troubled by your disingenuous
characterization of the circumstances surrounding the failure of SB
160," the speaker wrote, in the letter sent Tuesday.

"For you to distort the facts about the demise of SB 160 and engage in
a misguided effort to use students as pawns for you own failure and
having them write letters and hold a candlelight vigil to place
pressure on the Assembly and me in particular - to move a bill that
you could not steer through your own house - is disrespectful and
unconscionable. Even with our years of friendship, I can't permit such
an overt misrepresentation of facts to go uncorrected and
unchallenged."

The candlelight protest, which has since been postponed, was not
organized by Cedillo, but by a University of California, Los Angeles
student group that advocates for undocumented students.

Ernesto Rocha, a member of UCLA's Improving Dreams Equality Access and
Success, said the group's postponement had nothing to do with Núñez's
letter. "We are still planning some events next week," Rocha said.

In a phone interview, Cedillo said he planned to respond to Núñez's
letter in person, not through the media. "We're friends and allies and
to that extent I am not going to talk about that (letter), I am going
to talk to him in person," Cedillo said.

He added, "I took the letters back to his office and left them there
for him. I want to talk to him in person."