Recently in Sacramento Category

California lawmakers have missed the deadline to approve a state budget for the fiscal year that starts today.AP in the Daily News.

Republicans and Democrats in both houses of the Legislature remain far apart on how to close the state's $15.2 billion budget shortfall.

Republicans, including Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger, favor wide-ranging cuts to services and programs. Democrats want to raise taxes by anywhere from $6 billion to $11 billion.

Lawmakers are constitutionally required to pass a budget by June 15 and give it to the governor to sign by July 1. That's happened only a dozen times over the last 30 years. The last time lawmakers passed a budget by June 15 was 1986.

Maria Garcia hardly slept on the bus that left Los Angeles at midnight and brought her and more than 150 LAUSD employees to the state Capitol on Tuesday morning. Justine Agulia in the Daily News.

But once there, the Los Angeles Unified School District security monitor made sure her voice was heard, urging legislators to avoid deep slashes to the district's budget, which could mean the loss of her job.

As a mother of three with a husband who's found very little work in the construction business lately, she doesn't know how she'd survive if her job were cut.

"If I don't work, I can't feed my family," said Garcia, 46, an employee at Richard E. Byrd Middle School in Sun Valley. "I've been on the job for eight years and without my steady job, I really don't know what I'd do."

As part of her job as a special-education assistant at Byrd Middle School in Sun Valley, Desiree Young knows what it's like to change diapers every day.Justine Agulia in the Daily News.

But recently her focus has shifted, knowing similar jobs could disappear thanks to massive budget cuts that would cripple the school system she has believed in for nearly two decades.

"I just can't sit back," said Young, 40. "I've been doing this for 18 years, long hard years. This is not good for the kids. They're the ones who'll end up shortchanged in a big way."

Midnight Monday, Young was set to board a bus with several hundred people - 45 she personally rounded up - to Sacramento, where she vowed to give Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger some advice about cutting the Los Angeles Unified School District's budget.

Over the last two months, Sen. Alex Padilla, D Los Angeles, guided a controversial bill through the Senate committee process, with some help from Republicans and moderate Democrats. But Senate leader Don Perata intervened, citing a breech in senatorial decorum, and exiled the bill to legislative purgatory. Capitol Weekly.

The story of SB 1389 ultimately shows the power the Pro Tem has over the Senate. It is also a story about Padilla, a former president of the Los Angeles City Council and Sacramento freshman, who was tagged as a rising star even before he took office. The bill's Senate journey also raises issues of what some Senate observers say is an evolving set of rules of etiquette in the post term-limits era.

Senate sources say Perata killed the bill because its passage violated a fundamental rule of the Senate - defer to the committee chairmen. Padilla says he was in constant communication with the heads of both committees that heard the bill - Senate Energy Chairwoman Christine Kehoe, D-San Diego, and Appropriations Chairman Tom Torlakson, D-Antioch - and that any breach of etiquette was accidental.

The leader of the California State Assembly has warned legislators that they may not cast "ghost votes" on bills when they are not in the chamber. S.F. Chronicle.

Speaker Karen Bass, D-Baldwin Vista (Los Angeles County), told Democratic lawmakers at a caucus Tuesday that they may cast electronic votes for other members only when they are present on the Assembly chamber's green carpet but simply away from their desks.

"We are going to enforce the existing policy, which means that there will be no voting when a member is off the floor," Bass said in an interview later Tuesday.

The commission that sets state elected officials' salaries imposed a pay freeze Tuesday, but rejected an attempt to cut most legislators' wages 10 percent to help balance the state budget. AP in the Daily News.

Some commissioners, however, suggested that lawmakers and other elected officials should voluntarily give up some of their pay to help erase the state's red ink.

"We should send a message to our elected (officials) that we are concerned and that we do strongly recommend that they take a pay decrease so they can voluntarily share in this deficit like everyone else," said commissioner Kathy Sands, a former mayor of Auburn.

The Los Angeles City Council is canceling its Friday meeting in Van Nuys so its members can attend the celebration of Assembly Speaker Karen Bass, being sworn in to her new post at a Los Angeles ceremony.
Bass, the first African-American woman speaker, is hosting the event at Los Angeles Trade Tech to allow her constituents to be part of the celebration.

A state law proposed by Assemblyman Felipe Fuentes that would limit L.A.'s ability to control land use was sponsored by a developer whose Tujunga project would benefit from the legislation.Kerry Cavanaugh in the Daily News.

The move has infuriated Los Angeles City Council members, who voted last month to oppose the state intervention in local land-use decisions.

This week, some members said they are appalled that the bill appears designed to aid a particular developer.

Rep. Laura Richardson lost her Sacramento home in a foreclosure auction two weeks ago and left behind nearly $9,000 in unpaid property taxes. Gene Maddaus in the Daily Breeze.

Richardson, D-Long Beach, appears to have made only a few payments on the house, which she bought in January 2007 for $535,000.

After buying the home, Richardson hardly had time to live in it. Three months later, Rep. Juanita Millender-McDonald died and Richardson - then a freshman member of the state Assembly - launched a campaign to replace her in Congress.

PACOIMA - In what supporters of charter schools hailed as validation of their efforts, Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger on Friday announced $463 million in state funds will be made available for construction and modernization projects. Daily News.

The funding from Proposition 1D will help 29 charter schools throughout the state.

"This is exactly what the voters had in mind when they passed $10.4 billion for schools," Schwarzenegger said at an event at the Vaughn Next Century Learning Center in Pacoima.

The Los Angeles City Council is expected to take an official position today on a statewide initiative that would require youths as young as 14 to be tried as adults if charged with gang-related crimes. Daily News.

The proposed Safe Neighborhoods Act -- authored by Sen. George Runner, R- Lancaster, San Bernardino County Supervisor Gary Ovitt and Mike Reynolds, author of the "Three Strikes" law -- is expected to be on the November ballot. It would boost penalties for gang-related crimes and raise funding for criminal justice programs.

City Councilmen Bernard Parks and Tony Cardenas will urge their colleagues to oppose the initiative. They say the Safe Neighborhoods Act would cost too much, make prisons even more overcrowded and have a negative impact on youths.

Former Assembly Speaker Fabian Núñez, saying he now can speak more openly, is blasting accusations that he spent lavishly on overseas trips and retail purchases as racially motivated. Sacramento Bee.

Núñez, who is termed out of the Assembly in December, lashed out Saturday during an interview on Spanish-language television.

The Los Angeles Democrat said he has no regrets over his spending of campaign funds, despite controversy over tens of thousands of dollars spent on high-priced hotels, wine, gifts and other purchases.

The Legislature's budget analyst on Monday called Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger's lottery proposal "flawed" and warned lawmakers that money for public schools could fall short of current levels under the plan.Sacramento Bee,

Legislative Analyst Elizabeth Hill issued a critical reaction to the governor's proposal to obtain $15 billion from future lottery revenues over the next few years to help fill a widening budget gap, now at $15.2 billion.

Currently, lottery profits benefit public schools, from kindergarten to community colleges. Hill wrote that the Schwarzenegger administration made "overly optimistic" assumptions about the potential growth in lottery sales. She warned that public education funding "would fall well short of their current levels -- perhaps by $5 billion over the next 12 years combined."

Faced with a faltering economy and a worsening budget deficit, California Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger for the first time in his five-year tenure opened the door Wednesday to a potential tax increase in his proposed 2008-09 budget. Harrison Sheppard in the Daily News.

Schwarzenegger said he will first ask lawmakers and voters to authorize the state to borrow up to $15 billion against future state Lottery earnings over three years. But if that fails on the November ballot, it would trigger an automatic one-cent increase in the statewide sales tax for at least three years.

The proposal contrasts with promises Schwarzenegger has made from the beginning of his term to refuse to raise taxes, while also ending borrowing for normal government operations.

SACRAMENTO -- Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger on Wednesday released a $144.3 billion state budget that eliminates a massive deficit by selling lottery bonds and cutting billions in state programs. AP in the Daily News.

The spending plan for the fiscal year that begins in July is austere, a byproduct of a slowing state economy.

Tax revenue has been falling far short of what California needs to keep pace with spending obligations, leading to a $15.2 billion shortfall.

"As everyone knows, we are facing an extremely tough budget year," Schwarzenegger said during a news conference at the Capitol. "Our crisis is real, and it is very serious."