The state budget was completed including about 27 trailer bills this early morning. It came over from the Senate as they got done first, whwere it was 29-11, with 10 Republicans "No", 5 "Aye" and oneDem voting no.

On the Assembly side, after much waiting around,it was passed about 63-9, don’t have final count asthere were folks still adding on. The trailer bills were a mixture, with most passing. That’s all for now.… Read More

Over the weekend I was in Washington, DC, to attend Family Research Council’s Values Voter Summit. Now in its third year, the conference drew over 2,000 pro-family “values” voters from all across America to the Washington Hilton for three days of conservative speakers, networking and informative break-out sessions.

Keynote speakers for the event included Newt Gingrich, Mitt Romney, and Sean Hannity, among other conservative commentators, political leaders and policy experts. As a group of credentialed bloggers (new media) typed away in the back of the convention hall, Hannity boldly declared that 2008 is the year journalism officially died in America. “Journalist” Charlie Gibson’s embarrassing gotcha interview of Governor Palin two nights before was certainly the death knell.

As you can imagine, California was the topic of many speeches and private conversations. After all, the most critical battle for traditional marriage is taking place in our state with Proposition 8. In a break-out session about the marriage issue, Alliance Defense Fund attorney (and my Constitutional Law professor in law… Read More

The buzz in the capitol is that Governor Schwarzenegger is going to announce his veto of the budget passed early this morning by the legislature. We’ll find out at 3pm when he holds a press conference. There’s probably a legislative override coming if the veto does happen. Maybe if the governor knew the names of the Republican Caucus members he could call them to find out just how firm they were on their budget votes…

Watch the press conference live here.… Read More

In the wee hours this morning, the California State Assembly, following behind the Senate who had done so hours before, passed along to Governor Schwarzenegger a budget that represents the collision of two immutable forces — Democrats who simply refuse to reduce state spending to a reasonable amount, and Republican legislators who finally have said "enough is enough" and refuse to raise taxes any longer to feed the overspending.

The result is, as Jon Coupal of the Howard Jarvis Taxpayers Association calls it in a column on the FlashReport today, a budget that is ugly, but holds the line on taxes. And we agree, this budget is an unfortunate one, because it doesn’t represent what Californians deserve, but it likely represents the best that they are going to get, given the dominance of the radical left in the building.

It is widely accepted that one of the items that actually moved the budget negotiations away from a "Democrats with Arnold" model to a "Big Four" legislative leader model… Read More

In the wee hours this morning, the California State Assembly, following behind the Senate who had done so hours before, passed along to Governor Schwarzenegger a budget that represents the collision of two immutable forces — Democrats who simply refuse to reduce state spending to a reasonable amount, and Republican legislators who finally have said "enough is enough" and refuse to raise taxes any longer to feed the overspending.

The result is, as Jon Coupal of the Howard Jarvis Taxpayers Association calls it in a column on the FlashReport today, a budget that is ugly, but holds the line on taxes. And we agree, this budget is an unfortunate one, because it doesn’t represent what Californians deserve, but it likely represents the best that they are going to get, given the dominance of the radical left in the building.

It is widely accepted that one of the items that actually moved the budget negotiations away from a "Democrats with Arnold" model to a "Big Four"… Read More

If you need the case for reforming the budget-drafting process, then take two minutes to read the budget bill here. Good luck though, it would take a seasoned state policy expert a much longer time to even delve into this document. And it doesn’t even include the 27 trailer bills.

If the process is working correctly, authentic budget negotiations (you know, between Republicans and Democrats) would take place in the normal Budget Committee process. But of course that doesn’t happen now, as the majority party rams through "their" budget through committee on a majority vote — disregarding the fact that it takes a 2/3 vote to pass the budget in each chamber. It’s worthy of note that Senator Jeff Denham introduced legislation to do just this — which was voted down by Democrats.

So now just about everyone has to play "catch up" and figure out what the heck is in this mammoth and recently released budget language.… Read More

Legislative Democrats for about two minutes today were given a big disincentive to override a pending Gubernatorial veto of the just-passed state budget. Just minutes ago the Governor made it clear in prepared remarks at a press conference that he will not sign a budget that is absent real structural budget reforms. Of course we here at the FlashReport feel that we need a true Gann-style spending cap in place if we are going to have real reform. While legislative Republicans support that, it has not been introduced by the Governor. But even the "lite" version of budget reform, championed by the Governor, was gutted by the Democrats.

The Governor actually said that if the legislature overrides his veto (which can be done with the same 2/3 vote in each house that just passed it), that he will respond by using his veto pen on all of the nearly 900 pieces of legislation sitting on his desk! This really throws down the gauntlet at Perata, Bass and their other Democrat legislators, since virtually any piece of meaningful legislation on the Governor’s desk is something they put there.

My mind started to race… Republican legislators… Read More

I am pleased to announce that today we the FlashReport Website on California Politics is launching FRMobile, a version of this website that is optimized for use with your Personal Digital Assistant (PDA). Whether you are using a Blackbery, iPhone, Treo, Palm, Q or other mobile platform, you will now be able to enjoy some of the main feature of the FlashReport with ease! For the thousands (and we have heard from many, many of you) who have tried or who have struggled with trying to read the FR on a PDA these past nearly three years, we commend you for your patience, but we dedicate this new easy-to-download, easy-to-read FRMobile platform to you…

While not every aspect of the FlashReport is optimized on FR Mobile, we have placed FR’s most popular features there. When you go to the site with your PDA, you will get the FR main news page.… Read More