VIDEO: Dan Walters warns Californians in today's video report that Gov. Jerry Brown's revised budget won't be pretty.
SeaWorld San Diego is in town. Call it SeaWorld's annual effort to convert the Capitol into a zoo to highlight animal care and conservation. Check out the lemurs, penguins and reptiles on the north steps from 10 a.m. to 3 p.m. The menagerie moves to the Senate lounge from 2 to 3 p.m., then to the council room in the governor's office from 3 to 4 p.m.
Gov. Jerry Brown will be elsewhere, at least in the morning. He and supporters of his ballot tax measure will deliver signed petitions to the Sacramento County Registrar of Voters office on 65th Street at 10 a.m.
Back at the dome, both the Senate and the Assembly have set floor sessions for 9 a.m.
One bill that's drawn the attention of Mothers Against Drunk Driving is Assemblyman Roger Hernández's Assembly Bill 2127 to allow a sheriff or other official to let a participant in a work release program to get credit for participating in educational, substance abuse and other programs.
AB 2127 has a long list of supporters, including the California State Sheriffs' Association, and the Senate Public Safety Committee passed the measure Tuesday, 5-2. One of the no votes came from Sen. Joel Anderson, R-Alpine, who has signaled that other Republican senators aren't going to be fans of the measure either.
Alert readers will recall that Hernández, D-West Covina, is facing drunken driving charges in Contra Costa County.
Meanwhile, Attorney General Kamala Harris is heading to the Capitol to testify before a conference committee on mortgage and foreclosure matters. Click here for the agenda. Several budget panels will also convene. Click here for the Senate's daily file, and click here for the Assembly's.
PRAYER BREAKFAST: Senate Republican leader Bob Huff, R-Diamond Bar, Sen. Ted Gaines, R-Rocklin, and Assemblywoman Shannon Grove, R-Bakersfield, are co-chairing the 51st annual California Prayer Breakfast at the Sacramento Sheraton Grand. The keynote speaker is Patrick Lencioni, author of "The Five Dysfunctions of a Team." The program begins at 7 a.m.
POTUS: President Barack Obama will be in California air space, with Air Force One scheduled to touch down at LAX at 6:20 p.m. Obama is hitting the Golden State's ATM with a fundraiser with actor George Clooney. Obama is scheduled to leave LAX at 10:15 a.m. Friday.
THINK TANK: Sen. Sam Blakeslee, R-San Luis Obispo, has announced that he's launched a new think tank called the California Reform Institute. Billed as being bipartisan, it will be seeded with $750,000 from wealthy Republican activist Charles Munger Jr., who had backed giving the job of drawing political districts to a citizens commission.
NEW GIG: State Controller John Chiang has appointed Julio Martinez as his director of legislative affairs. Martinez most recently was chief of staff to Assemblyman Mike Eng, D-Monterey Park.
PHOTO CREDIT: Bakari, a 10-year-old lemur, sits on the shoulder of David Jackson, director of the SeaWorld animal ambassador team. SeaWorld San Diego returned to the Capitol with a team of educators, animal ambassadors and a bevy of exotic animals on Thursday, May 12, 2011.
Randy Pench / Sacramento Bee file, 2011.
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