My apologies — I am running around a bit today and not by the computer much. A quick data-download. The Senate and Assembly passed out two bills today, on votes of 54-0 in the Senate, and 69-0 in the Assembly, which include a few billion in cuts. No where near the $24 billion that needs to be cut to see California State government not end up back in a crisis-mode sometime in the upcoming fiscal year.

The argument that Assembly Republicans make in supporting these particular bills is that they represent cuts that need to be made in the current fiscal year budget (so within the next five days). Cuts made to some areas, such as education, have extra impact as the required levels of funding for some areas in next year’s budget are based on what those areas received this year.

The argument against these bills made by the Governor (who has pledged to veto the bills) and State Senate Republicans (except for a couple who bolted the caucus to vote with the Dems) is that it is imperative that we pass a comprehensive solution only, and nothing that allows Democrats to push out the tough cuts until later — when it is harder to have the impact of… Read More

This photo, taken by one of FR’s state legislator friends in the Capitol, clearly shows a sign for a committee meeting that was canceled by the Democrats. The lost words make the sign VERY appropriate indeed, and more correct. If you don’t think that liberal policies coming out of Sacramento are "canceling jobs, economic development and the economy" — click here.… Read More

Yesterday was a pretty good day. The Fourth Circuit Court of Appeals upheld a charter amendment I wrotefor the City of Newport Beach in a unanimous decision. The charter amendment locates the future City Hall building on city-owned property adjacent to the Newport Beach Central Library at Fashion Island.

Initiative proponents William Ficker, Jack Croul and Marian Bergeson were responsible for qualifying the initiative for the ballot in February, 2008, but were opposed in the campaign by a majority of the City Council, who had other ideas about where the City Hall should be.STA Campaignsmanaged the effort for the proponents. After a spirited campaign, the voters decided by a 53% to 47% vote to pass the initiative. Opponent Allan Beek, an "open space" advocate,waged the campaign against the measure, and filed pre-election and post-election Superior Court challenges, losing on all counts. He then took his appeal, and now the decision of the three-judge panel at the Court of Appeals willmost likelyclose this chapter in Newport Beach history.

The Court’s memorandum on the decision has some… Read More

I’m watching the Senate and Assembly Floor sessions at www.calchannel.com. Assemblyman Jim Nielsen just delivered a powerful speech on the Assembly Floor highlighting the flawed process that has the legislature considering a major policy proposal that no one has been able to even read. Over on the Senate side, Republican Bob Dutton is dicing up the content of the proposal — noting at this moment the gimmick financing of sliding the state’s June 30 payroll by one day, into the new fiscal year, in order to paper-over well over a billion of the shortfall.… Read More

This morning the Democrats implemented their budget drill — and I am happy to report that all of the Republicans in the State Capitol, whether in the Senate or the Assembly, voted against it (well, with what we call the "Maldonado Exception" — which means he doesn’t play well in the sandbox with fellow Republicans so he was on the Senate Floor, but abstained. The held the bill "open" so I suppose he can drop in a vote later. Unfortunately we don’t have an FR psychiatrist to help us understand the inner-workings of that guy).

Senate President Darrell Steinberg has challenged Republicans, saying that we don’t have a plan. To this, I would say, as I have said before, let’s put Governor Schwarzenegger’s proposed fixes up for a vote. Of course there are some items in there that I don’t like — but on balance, it is vastly better than what the Democrats put forward today. Put up Arnold’s proposal, and let’s have a vote!… Read More

You just can’t make this stuff up. Another one bites the dust. … Read More

I am looking to create a FlashReport/Twitter users list, specifically because we’re in the process of doing some exciting new programming integrating Twitter into the FlashReport, and I want to get input and advice from Twittering Politicos. If you are interested in helping out (not much time involved – mainly contributing ideas and such) — just drop me an email here. We’ll probably cut off the group fairly quickly since I don’t need thousands of helpers, maybe a dozen or two.… Read More

It has been some time since we here at the FlashReport have bestowed the infamous “Golden Trashcan” award. As long time readers know, it takes a particularly onerous piece of legislation, or in this case a regulation, to “get the can” – but the dubious honor goes to the California Energy Commission’s (CEC) proposal to ban big screen televisions.

If you are like me, you may have heard a rumor about this, and dismissed it as being nonsensical. That’s what I did after I read a brief item written about this by Orange County Register editorial writer Steven Greenhut back in March. In his posting, Greenhut cited a statistic that under the proposal, as many as 25% of big screen televisions today would no longer… Read More