Capitol Alert

A Sacramento Superior Court judge on Friday blocked the Secretary of State's Office from assigning ballot numbers for the November election while the court examines recent election procedures and a new law signed by Gov. Jerry Brown.

The campaign for a rival income tax initiative, funded by attorney Molly Munger, filed suit Thursday to prevent Brown's measure from appearing on the ballot ahead of hers. Under the order from Judge Timothy Frawley, Secretary of State Debra Bowen must now wait until after a July 9 hearing to set the ballot numbers.

She had otherwise planned to do so Monday, her office said.

Munger's "Our Children, Our Future" campaign believes that its initiative should have qualified ahead of Brown's because it submitted signatures before the governor did -- and had fewer to count as a statutory change rather than a constitutional amendment. In past elections, qualifying order determined where initiatives appeared on the ballot.

The campaign also alleges that Brown and lawmakers illegally enacted budget-related legislation this week that moves the governor's initiative to the top of the ballot, presuming lawmakers delay a water bond.

If California Treasurer Bill Lockyer runs for public office again, in 2014, it will likely be for state controller.

But a more immediate opening may have piqued his curiosity.

Lockyer, 71, has privately expressed interest in potentially becoming chancellor of the California State University system, according to a source who is familiar with the search process but not authorized to speak publicly about it. It is unclear how serious the former state attorney general and longtime legislator is about the job.

Lockyer spokesman Tom Dresslar declined to comment beyond writing in an email Wednesday, "There's nothing to talk about."

Chancellor Charles Reed announced his retirement on May 24, and the CSU board's search committee has launched its efforts. The university system includes 23 universities and some 427,000 students.

A chancellorship would likely pay multiples of Lockyer's current salary, just more than $139,000. Last year, the CSU chancellor was paid $421,500, plus $30,000 from the CSU Foundation.

In December 2010, after being elected to his second term as treasurer, Lockyer opened a campaign account to run for state controller in 2014. At the time, Dresslar said, "If Lockyer decides to continue in public service after his term as treasurer expires, state controller is the office he is interested in seeking."

PHOTO CREDIT: Treasurer Bill Lockyer speaks to the Sacramento Press Club on June 21. The Sacramento Bee/Randy Pench

The California Department of Parks and Recreation said today that all but one state park will remain open past this weekend, sparing four more locations whose fate was unclear as of yesterday.

The Benicia State Recreation Area, California Mining and Mineral Museum, Gray Whale Cove State Beach and Zmudowski State Beach will continue operating "for the very near term," according to Natural Resources Agency spokesman Richard Stapler. The four state parks lack interest from outside partners, but Stapler said the hope is that they can find donors or nonprofits in the coming days to spare them.

That leaves only Providence Mountains State Recreation Area in San Bernardino County. Stapler said the park has been closed since March and will not reopen unless it can find a partnership.

Sen. Noreen Evans, D-Santa Rosa, who slammed Gov. Jerry Brown on Thursday for vetoing $31 million that could have gone toward park operations, said today on Facebook, "While this is good news, it is at best a temporary reprieve for state parks. We have more work to do!"

The word "California" appears nowhere in the 596-page transportation package slated for congressional approval Friday. Nonetheless, the bill that's ridden a Capitol Hill roller-coaster for many months has a definite Golden State tinge.

The bill, for instance, includes a National Flood Insurance Program phase-in pushed by lawmakers including Rep. Doris Matsui, D-Sacramento. To prevent sticker shock among homeowners caught up in newly mapped flood zones, the provision phases in higher insurance rates over five years. Matsui called the result "real savings."

Politically, the 27-month, $120 billion surface transportation reauthorization bill is an achievement for Democratic Sen. Barbara Boxer, the chair of the Senate Public Works Committee. Formally, it's called the Moving Ahead for Progress in the 21st Century Act, or MAP-21.

The bill does not include funding for high-speed rail, but neither does it include language championed by Rep. Jeff Denham, R-Turlock, in the original House effort that would have specifically blocked federal dollars from going toward California's high-speed rail project. Denham is trying to put similar language on other transportation-related bills.

Both House and Senate are slated to approve the legislation Friday before lawmakers depart for the Fourth of July recess.

Dan Walters says a report on implementing California's law curbing greenhouse-gas emissions deserves a second look.

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VIDEO: Dan Walters says in today's report that California lawmakers should look at whether implementing the state's greenhouse-gas emissions law will affect its economic recovery.

Now that Gov. Jerry Brown has signed the state budget and penciled out some funding for state parks, child care and Cal Grants, the Legislature doesn't have floor sessions scheduled until Monday.

This, of course, leaves lawmakers free to flee the Capitol.

Assemblyman Henry T. Perea, D-Fresno, is headed home to host a forum on the state's cap-and-trade program regulating greenhouse gases. Representatives of the California Air Resources Board, the Legislative Analyst's Office, the California Trucker Association and the National Resources Defense Council are among those invited to participate.

Others include local food processors, agricultural interests, energy companies and large energy users. The forum runs from 2 to 4:30 p.m. at Fresno City College, 1101 E. University Ave., in the Old Administration Building, Room 251.

This weekend, Democratic Sens. Joe Simitian and Curren Price as well as Assemblywoman Betsy Butler are holding events in their districts ranging from sidewalk office hours to town halls to community coffees.

Next Friday is the last day for policy committees to pass bills. With the Fourth of July falling in the middle of the week, legislators are going to have their hands full tackling big issues that remain: pension reform, mortgage and foreclosure legislation, the high-speed rail project and the governor's government reorganization plan.

Lawmakers also need to act quickly if they want to take the water bond off the November ballot and delay it until 2014. They're set to start their summer recess at the end of next week.

NEW GIG: Democratic political strategist Sky Gallegos has joined StudentsFirst as director of national electoral initiatives. Gallegos, who helped start EdVoice, will oversee the group's "candidate and initiative electoral strategy, identifying and supporting the election of strong, reform-minded candidates to public office," says the news release announcing her hiring. StudentsFirst is the Sacramento education advocacy group headed by Sacramento's first lady, Michelle Rhee.

CAKE AND CANDLES: Assemblyman Das Williams, D-Santa Barbara, turns 38 today, while Assemblyman Henry T. Perea celebrates his 35th birthday while hosting that cap-and-trade forum in Fresno. Meanwhile, Assemblywoman Linda Halderman, R-Fresno, turns 44 on Saturday. Birthday wishes to all.

University of California President Mark Yudof said today that he will ask UC's governing board to freeze tuition for the coming school year, responding to the state budget just as Gov. Jerry Brown had hoped.

Brown and lawmakers added provisions to the state budget this week that would give an additional $125 million to UC and the California State University in 2013-14 if the systems didn't raise tuition for this year -- and if voters approve the governor's tax initiative in November.

"The budget legislation signed by the governor is a significant step toward bringing stability to public higher education funding in California," Yudof said in a statement. "Based on the incentives in this budget package, I intend to recommend to the Board of Regents that our current tuition levels remain in place for the upcoming year."

Previously, UC officials had said they would consider a 6 percent tuition increase this summer.

The situation is more complicated at CSU, whose trustees have already approved a 9 percent tuition hike that has been collected from current students. If CSU wants the $125 million Brown promised, it would have to issue refund checks to students after the election in November.

California's popular Department of Motor Vehicles' website, which allows motorists to register their vehicles and renew licenses online, has been down sporadically since Monday, DMV spokesman Mike Marando said today.

Marando said the site is working for most customers today, and that the agency is working with the California Technology Agency to find a permanent solution. He added that the agency is 95 percent of the way to fixing the problem.

A message on the DMV's website attributed the problems to an "ongoing internal connection issue" and directed customers to a toll-free number and self-service terminals inside DMV offices. Marando said the problem was caused by a "larger than normal influx of website traffic," the cause of which is unknown.

Marando said that the DMV would work with individual customers who believed they may miss renewal deadlines and be penalized as a result of problems with the site.

"For those individuals who believe they may incur a late fee, we are willing to work with them on a case-by-case basis," Marando said.

After the site went down Monday, the DMV announced the difficulties occurring via Twitter. The Department has continued to provide Twitter updates to its customers.

After Gov. Jerry Brown and Democratic lawmakers enacted legislation that should push the governor's tax initiative atop the November ballot, a rival campaign filed suit Thursday to block his measure from taking first position and appearing ahead of its own income tax proposal.

Brown signed Assembly Bill 1499 late Wednesday to redefine how the Secretary of State's Office orders ballot measures, having the likely effect of pushing Brown's tax plan to the first position.

A rival campaign to raise income taxes on all but the poorest Californians for education filed suit against Secretary of State Debra Bowen to block AB 1499 from taking effect. The suit also claims that the competing initiative by attorney Molly Munger deserves a higher placement on the ballot because its campaign submitted signatures before Brown did.

Under AB 1499, that initiative would appear near the bottom of the ballot as a statutory change that made the ballot near the end of qualifying season -- albeit on the same day as Brown's. The rival initiative has been financed by attorney Molly Munger.

The Brown administration said today that it is rapidly moving ahead on California's health care expansion following the U.S. Supreme Court ruling upholding President Barack Obama's signature law.

"This is a very great day," state Health and Human Services Secretary Diana Dooley said. "California has been a leader in health care reform for a very long time. We've had many starts and stops, and we are now in the full go mode here."

At stake for California was billions of dollars in federal aid for the state's expansion of coverage.

Under the Affordable Care Act, the state is expected to receive $45 billion to $55 billion from the federal government from 2014 to 2019 to expand Medi-Cal, California's version of Medicaid. An additional 1.2 million to 1.6 million Californians are expected to be newly covered under the program.

In addition, through the California Health Benefit Exchange, a public health insurance marketplace prescribed by the federal overhaul, officials estimate about 2 million Californians -- many of them currently uninsured -- will obtain insurance beginning in 2014.

"This ruling removes a distraction from the job that thousands of Californians have come together to address," said Peter Lee, the exchange's executive director.

Lee said the state is "moving full-speed ahead" to establish the exchange, including a "major media and outreach campaign" next year.

"We look forward to making the purchase of insurance through California's exchange as easy as buying a book on Amazon or shoes on Zappos," Lee said.

Gov. Jerry Brown was among state Democrats celebrating the ruling. He said in a prepared statement, "Today's dramatic Supreme Court ruling removes the last roadblock to fulfilling President Obama's historic plan to bring health care to millions of uninsured citizens."

Assemblyman Dan Logue, citing a finding in Thursday's U.S. Supreme Court ruling on health care, vowed to begin organizing an initiative drive to keep California from implementing the federal health care reform.

The Marysville Republican objects to the plan, pushed by President Barack Obama, that would require nearly every American to buy health insurance or pay a penalty under a program to be launched in 2014.

Logue contends there is room to kill the program in California because the Supreme Court ruled Thursday that the federal government cannot strip states' existing Medicaid funding for opting not to take part in the law's expansion of that program.

Medicaid is a giant federal program that provides health-care assistance to seniors, the poor and people with disabilities. In California, it's called Medi-Cal.

"There's a real good chance that we could put this to a vote of the people," Logue said of implementing Obama's health care plan.

Logue vowed to launch legal research into specifics of a ballot initiative and to talk with potential financial backers.

"We're just starting it up," he said. "But I believe you're going to see thousands of doctors in California step up to the plate and say, 'You know what? I can't stay in the game unless this thing is revoked.' "

Two years ago, Logue helped lead a successful drive that placed a measure on the ballot proposing to suspend a state law requiring major reductions in greenhouse gas emissions. Proposition 23 was soundly rejected in November 2010.

Nearly all of the 70 California state parks originally slated for closure Sunday will remain open for now, despite a line-item veto of parks funding by Gov. Jerry Brown, state parks officials said today.

The Department of Parks and Recreation has already struck deals with private donors, foundations and non-profit groups to continue operating 40 that were on the endangered list, including the Governor's Mansion in Sacramento. At the direction of Brown and lawmakers last year, the parks department had targeted the parks for closure based on attendance and how much revenue they generated.

Because the state has found outside partners interested in sparing an additional 25 parks, it will keep them open using a sliver of special funds that Brown retained in the budget he signed Wednesday night, parks officials said. Democratic lawmakers added $41 million back into their budget to keep parks open, but Brown line-item vetoed $31 million of it.

That leaves five parks for which the state has struggled to find donors or other agencies willing to chip in: Benicia State Recreation Area; the California Mining and Mineral Museum in Mariposa; Gray Whale Cove State Beach near Montara; Zmudowski State Beach near Moss Landing; and Providence Mountains State Recreation Area in San Bernardino County.

It remains to be seen what will happen to those parks come Sunday, but at least one - the Mining and Mineral Museum - is planning to shut its doors and pack up more than 13,000 objects in its collection, according to curator Darci Moore.

"At this point, we have no choice," Moore said. "We will be packing up the mineral collection and putting it in storage."

Even if they face closure, the two state beaches on the endangered five-park list would remain open to visitors but without trash pick-up and restrooms, said Natural Resources Agency spokesman Richard Stapler.

Natural Resources Secretary John Laird said today he still sees a path to keep all of the parks open using $10 million that Brown agreed to restore as a stopgap measure. Stapler said the department is examining possibilities over the next 24 hours that could save the last five parks without donors.

"What this does is give us the money to allow us to focus on the next 30 without a tight June 30th deadline," Laird said. "We will work through every agreement that is possible with a proposed stakeholder. And then when we get to the end, I expect that there will likely be a few parks for which nobody has stepped forward, and then we will cross that bridge with what we do at that point."

An initiative that seeks to regulate health insurance rates will not qualify for the November ballot, but proponents say California voters will have a say on the measure in 2014.

"We're disappointed, but we're also hopeful that the extra time will make the cause even greater," said Jamie Court, president of the initiative's backer, Consumer Watchdog.

"The Supreme Court's upholding of the mandate today made this more crucial than ever," Court added. "It just means the finish line is postponed a little bit."

The initiative's fate was determined this morning when Los Angeles County submitted its random-sample count of valid signatures. The county reported that 66.6 percent of signatures were valid, falling short of the 69 percent threshold necessary to have enough valid signatures statewide to avoid a full count.

Court said delaying the measure until the 2014 ballot will give his organization more time to raise money to "make sure this gets done right, no matter how much the health insurance companies spend against us."

"We have a better chance of victory by gathering resources over the next two years," he said.

He also said the delay may wind up helping his cause because the individual mandate part of the federal Affordable Care Act, which the U.S. Supreme Court today ruled constitutional, will require all Americans to buy health insurance by 2014 or pay a penalty in 2015.

"So voters will be really educated about the cost of health insurance at that moment," Court said.

When movie star Arnold Schwarzenegger was governor three years ago, he and the Legislature enacted a five-year program of tax credits for film production in California, aimed, he said, at curbing runaway production to other states and nation.

Although the credit, as much as $100 million a year, still has two years to run, legislation is moving to extend it for another five years.

Today, the Senate Governance and Finance Committee, on a bipartisan, 5-1 vote, approved Senate Bill 1167 by Sen. Ron Calderon, D-Montebello.

While film industry groups, including its unions, have lined up behind the extension bill, it's being opposed by education unions and health care groups because it would divert state funds that otherwise would be spent on schools and social and health services.

SB 1167 includes new layers of oversight aimed at determining what effect the tax credits have on bolstering the state's film industry.

The Assembly rejected legislation Thursday to permanently exempt BMW from a state law requiring automakers to provide locksmiths with electronic code information enabling production of replacement keys.

Senate Bill 750, needing 41 votes to pass, died by a vote of 29-25, with 26 abstentions. Both Democrats and Republicans were split on the measure, proposed by Sen. Ed Hernandez, D-West Covina.

"This is preferential treatment," Ben Hueso, D-San Diego, said of the legislation to accommodate a single foreign car maker.

Assemblyman Charles Calderon countered that allowing BMW to withhold code information from locksmiths would not be a big financial windfall to the foreign car maker.

"How much money could they make if they doubled the price of the key?" the West Covina Democrat said.

"Besides," added Calderon, a BMW owner, "it's kind of nice to know that your car is secure."

Six years ago, BMW received a temporary exemption from legislation passed to require automakers to provide electronic key code information to locksmiths so that stranded motorists could receive immediate assistance.

The exemption applied to any automaker that was the sole source of replacement keys for its cars in 2006 and that operated a telephone or electronic request line to serve customers' needs within 24 hours.

SB 750 would have made permanent the temporary exemption, which is due to expire in January.

Only BMW was actively seeking a permanent exemption, though automakers qualifying for the temporary exemption included Mercedes Benz, Jaguar, Land Rover and Porsche, according to a legislative committee analysis of SB 750.

BMW contends that its 24-hour key replacement request line is a suitable alternative and eliminates the possibility that its key codes could be stolen and used by theft rings.

The California Locksmiths Association counters that locksmiths carry $1 million in liability insurance and that transmittal of key code data is tracked, so an unscrupulous locksmith who made a duplicate key for theft could be identified quickly. For some luxury vehicles, key code data can be transmitted wirelessly, so locksmiths never see it, the group added.

Gov. Jerry Brown used his line-item veto authority to strike $128.9 million in spending from the $91.3 billion general fund state budget he signed, his office reported today.

Brown vetoed another $66.8 million in spending from special funds and federal funds, for a total veto amount of $195.7 million.

The Democratic governor's cuts affect child care and preschool for low-income children and Cal Grant scholarship aid at private schools, two areas that Brown wanted lawmakers to slash deeper than they did.

Those receiving Cal Grants at private schools face 5 percent award cuts in the 2012-13 school year. Brown's vetoes also result in an additional loss of 3,400 child care openings for low-income families, for a total of 14,000 fewer because lawmakers had already cut slots.

"It could have been, as with everything, it could have been much worse, could have been much deeper," said Senate President Pro Tem Darrell Steinberg, D-Sacramento. "I don't like it, but I'm prepared to move on."

The governor used his line-item veto power to cut $31 million in special funds that Democrats tapped to keep state parks open. Department of Finance officials said about 30 parks lack deals with other government agencies or private entities to remain open, but that negotiations are continuing. The latest state park to be spared was the Governor's Mansion in downtown Sacramento.

Brown did keep $23 million for state parks in the budget beyond what he proposed earlier this year. Natural Resources Secretary John Laird said those extra dollars will buy the state more time to find outside deals to keep the 30 parks open beyond the slated July 1 closure date - and he still sees a path to avoid any closures.

"What this does is give us the money to allow us to focus on the next 30 without a tight June 30th deadline," Laird said. "We will work through every agreement that is possible with a proposed stakeholder. And then when we get to the end, I expect that there will likely be a few parks for which nobody has stepped forward, and then we will cross that bridge with what we do at that point."

But Sen. Noreen Evans, D-Santa Rosa, said the parks veto was "really inexplicable to me." She was among the Democrats who pushed to use off-road vehicle, water board and energy accounts to keep parks open.

"The veto is extremely disappointing and is really a slap in the face to Californians who love their parks," she said.

Evans added that Brown's decision "means he obviously wants to continue with the closure of the parks or at least turn them over to private operators. My suspicion, my belief, is that this is being done in an effort to privatize the state parks system."

Read the final budget summary from the Department of Finance. The line items are at the end of the document.

Kevin Yamamura and Torey Van Oot reported details for this post. Updated throughout the morning with lawmaker and Brown administration reaction and clarification that the $66.8 million includes special and federal funds.

Legislation to expedite the process of firing teachers for sex, violence or drug offenses involving children was killed Wednesday by an Assembly committee after sparking strong opposition from the state's largest teachers union.

Senate Bill 1530, by Democratic Sen. Alex Padilla of Los Angeles, was rejected by the Assembly Education Committee.

The measure was proposed in the wake of a scandal surrounding Mark Berndt, a third-grade teacher at Los Angeles' Miramonte Elementary School who was arrested in January on 23 counts of lewd conduct.

Padilla said the vast majority of teachers "take seriously the sacred trust we put in them." But some, very few, have "engaged in conduct so egregious that it warrants immediate action," he said.

"We have to do right by children and families," said Monica Garcia, president of the Los Angeles Unified School District, in supporting Padilla's bill.

SB 1530 would modify the current process for dismissing teachers -- or administrators -- after they have engaged in sex, violence or drug offenses with children.

Today's U.S. Supreme Court decision upholding a key part of the federal health care law has sparked strong reactions from both sides of the debate.

A collection of statements and responses from California officials and groups is posted after the jump. You can send your statement to hmadans@sacbee.com. Read more coverage of the decision at SacBee.com.

Dan Walters says that the dozen or so "heavyweight" measures crowding onto the California ballot in November will give voters plenty to ponder.

Have a question you'd like Dan to answer? Post it on our Facebook page.

See other Dan Walters Daily clips here.

VIDEO: Dan Walters says in today's report that the dozen or so "heavyweight" ballot measures coming up in November will provide "a bonanza for campaign consultants."

Now that Gov. Jerry Brown's deadline for signing the budget has come and gone, what got whacked at the last minute?

As Kevin Yamamura, Torey Van Oot and Jim Sanders report in today's Bee, the $91.5 billion spending plan that the Legislature passed not only relies on voters passing Brown's ballot tax measure but contains some optimistic assumptions. Come back to Capitol Alert later today as we continue to comb through the fine print.

Meanwhile, today's the much-anticipated day that the U.S. Supreme Court is expected to release its ruling on President Barack Obama's health care law. The SCOTUS Blog says the high court will start issuing its decisions at 10 a.m. EDT -- that's 7 a.m. Pacific Time -- with the health care ruling "probably" about 15 minutes after. The SCOTUS Blog's Lyle Denniston -- who has reported on the Supreme Court for 51 years -- summarizes the four issues before the court in this post. He's also written a primer on how to read the opinion.

You can also read up on how Californians may be affected in this story by The Bee's David Siders.

Back in Sacramento, both houses have scheduled floor sessions for 9 a.m. Click here for the Senate's daily file, and click here for the Assembly's.

Meanwhile, the California Air Resources Board is holding a public hearing on a proposal to let California and the Canadian province of Quebec link their cap-and-trade programs on greenhouse gas emissions. That meeting starts at 9 a.m. at the Cal-EPA building, 1001 I St., Sacramento. Click here to read the agenda.

CAKE AND CANDLES: Assemblyman Marty Block, D-San Diego, celebrates his 62nd birthday today.

Editor's Note: This post has been updated to reflect that the press conference scheduled by Assemblywoman Nancy Skinner has been cancelled. Updated 10:10 a.m. June 28, 2012.

After wrangling with legislative Democrats earlier this month, Gov. Jerry Brown signed a new California budget late Wednesday that slashes courts and state workers while assuming voters will pass a multibillion-dollar tax hike in November.

The signing came hours before Brown's deadline to sign or veto the main budget bill that legislative Democrats sent him 12 days ago. Lawmakers moved the bill to the governor without a deal as they faced the threat of losing pay if they had waited beyond June 15.

Both houses held floor sessions Wednesday to pass a series of "trailer" bills that contained the guts of the compromise between Democrats and Brown. They also amended the main $91.5 billion general fund budget bill.

The 2012-13 spending plan is intended to bridge a $15.7 billion deficit.

Brown did not release details of his line-item vetoes, which he is expected to make public Thursday.

The owner of a Sacramento vocational school that can no longer accept Cal Grant money because of cuts in the state budget says his company will find another way to provide the scholarships to needy students, using private instead of public funds.

"We're going to come up with something so that our students will know no difference," said John Zimmerman, president of MTI College, which will be eliminated from the state's Cal Grant program this year based on new performance standards established in the budget. "Instead of the check coming from the state of California, it's going to come from us," he said.

Zimmerman said he plans to move $1 million from his company's reserves to a scholarship fund that would support about 200 students who qualify for Cal Grants because of their low incomes.

MTI College is in the same situation as the vast majority of for-profit colleges in California, which do not meet new criteria the state is establishing for schools to receive Cal Grants in 2012-13. The state is allowing only those schools with graduation rates of at least 30 percent and loan default rates lower than 15.5 percent to participate in the Cal Grant program for the coming year, a move that will eliminate Cal Grants to some 11,000 students statewide.

Zimmerman said he expects his school will be eligible to accept Cal Grants next year because its loan default rate is improving.

Editor's note: This post was updated at 4:45 p.m. to clarify the state's performance standards.

There's still one potential November ballot measure pending - one that would subject health insurance rates to state regulation - and with only hours before the qualification deadline, its fate is up in the air.

Santa Monica-based Consumer Watchdog, a veteran of several high-profile ballot measure battles, and sponsored the initiative measure after the Legislature blocked a rate regulation bill that Insurance Commissioner Dave Jones had sought.

Consumer Watchdog submitted more than 800,000 signatures in May, and midnight Thursday is the deadline for counties to report whether validation sampling indicates that a full count would generate the 504,760 registered voter signatures needed to qualify. If it doesn't make it, the measure will proceed to a full signature validation count, but even if successful would not appear on the ballot until 2014.

To date, validation is running just under 70 percent and it would have to maintain that level, assuming all counties complete their processing, to make it to the ballot this year.

It all hinges on Los Angeles County, which has yet to submit any validation data. "It's going to be close," Jamie Court, Consumer Watchdog's president, said Wednesday.

If the measure qualifies, it will spark a multi-million-dollar shootout pitting Court's organization and its allies, including labor unions, against the huge health care insurance industry, medical care providers and business groups.

Twelve measures have already qualified for the ballot, including two high-profile tax increase measures, but the Legislature may remove an $11 billion water bond it had placed before voters.

California cities are considering legal action over a new budget provision that allows the state to garnish local tax revenue if it believes governments are keeping too much money formerly dedicated to redevelopment.

Assembly Bill 1484 gives the California Department of Finance new ability to withhold money from cities if it determines they have not returned enough dollars to state coffers. The new budget relies on $1.4 billion in revenues from former redevelopment assets, as well as $1.7 billion in property tax dollars that would have otherwise flowed to redevelopment agencies had the state not shuttered them last year.

Under the elimination of redevelopment, cities generally took over the payments of debt still owed by redevelopment agencies and are allowed to keep as much as is necessary to retire the remaining borrowing. Those making the debt payments are called "successor agencies."

But cities disagree with the state about how much money they need to retire debt, and the League of California Cities fears that AB 1484 gives the state too much power to keep sales tax money. The bill also allows counties to withhold property tax revenues for the same reasons.

The Senate passed the bill this afternoon and sent it back to the Assembly.

"I suspect the stakes will be very high, and you might see some lawsuits," said Chris McKenzie, executive director of the League of California Cities. "There are serious disagreements between Finance and successor agencies how much they should be receiving for debt service payments."

McKenzie said he believes the blockage of sales and property taxes would violate voter-approved initiatives that local governments won to block state transfers.

The issue bogged down the Senate budget committee on Tuesday night and prompted a meeting of Democratic lawmakers in Senate President Pro Tem Darrell Steinberg's office to assuage concerns. Steinberg agreed to send a letter to Gov. Jerry Brown asking for a "fair and open review" that gives local governments advance notice of their redevelopment calculations.

Legislation aimed at protecting California homeowners facing foreclosures cleared a key hurdle today, winning approval in a joint committee created to hammer out the details of the proposal.

The two identical bills approved by a two-house conference committee today - Senate Bill 900 and Assembly Bill 278 -- are part of a larger package of bills Attorney General Kamala Harris has been pushing to put provisions of a national foreclosure settlement with major lenders into state law.

The language approved by the committee ends the practice of "dual tracking" by forcing lenders to halt the foreclosure process while a loan modification is being negotiated and provides some legal recourse for borrowers, allowing them to get an injunction to stop the sale of their home or seek damages if their property has already been sold. It also limits the use of robo-signed documents in the foreclosure process and requires some institutions to provide affected borrowers with a single point of contact.

The conference committee was created to craft compromise language after opposition from business and banking groups threatened to derail the original proposal in committee.

Supporters said the new version, while more narrow than the original language, makes major headway in helping homeowners in the state. They say California would be the first state to enact such a large portion of the settlement into law. Nevada has also passed legislation addressing the robo-signing issue.

More than three-quarters of California's public school students who entered the 9th grade in 2007 were awarded diplomas four years later, the state Department of Education reported today.

The 76.3 percent graduation rate in 2011 was up 1.5 percentage points from the previous year, and gains among Latino, African American and "English learner" students were somewhat higher, state schools Superintendent Tom Torlakson said.

"Every graduate represents a success story in one of the most effective job and anti-poverty programs ever conceived, our public schools," Torlakson said in a statement. "These numbers are a testament to the hard work of teachers and administrators, of parents and, most of all, of the students themselves. While they are a great illustration of all that is going right in California schools, they should also remind us that schools need our support to continue to improve so that every student graduates prepared for college, a career, and to contribute to our state's future."

Torlakson said that the remaining 23.7 percent of 2007's 9th graders who did not graduate in 2011 were not all dropouts. Using the state's new computerized tracking system, the Department of Education calculated that 14.4 percent were dropouts and 9.3 percent were either still enrolled in school, were special education students or had passed a high school equivalency examination.

Asian-American students had the state's highest graduation rate at 89.7 percent while blacks had the lowest at 62.9 percent. Filipinos, at 89 percent, were second highest, followed by non-Latino whites at 85.5 percent, Pacific Islanders at 74.3 percent, Latinos at 70.4 percent, and American Indians at 68 percent.

The new data are broken down not only by ethnicity, but by grade, county, school district and individual school.

Dan Walters says that yes, having a simple majority instead of two-thirds vote on the budget and its "trailer" bills allows majority Democrats to give "goodies" to interests they favor.

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See other Dan Walters Daily clips here.

VIDEO: Dan Walters, in today's report, wonders what "goodies" are buried in the budget trailer bills now before the California Legislature.

Gov. Jerry Brown has until midnight tonight to sign the budget, and both the Senate and the Assembly have scheduled sessions at 9 a.m. to vote on legislation needed to finalize it.

Click here to see the list released Tuesday of 21 updated measures they're expected to consider. Brown may be sharpening his blue pencil already.

Other votes are scheduled even earlier today on mortgage and foreclosure legislation being considered by a joint legislative committee chaired by Assemblyman Mike Eng and Sen. Noreen Evans. That meeting starts at 8 a.m. in the Capitol's Room 444.

The Senate Rules Committee, meanwhile, takes up the governor's appointments, starting at 1:30 p.m. in the Capitol's Room 113.

Those required to appear include Denise Brown, director of the Department of Consumer Affairs; Brent Barnhart, director of the Department of Managed Health Care; and Charlton "Chuck" Bonham, director of the Department of Fish and Game.

Outside the building, practitioners of Falun Gong gather on the west steps at noon to urge legislators to help stop what they characterize as their persecution in this country and in others.

Then, members of the Communications Workers of America protest AT&T's conduct during ongoing contract negotiations during a rally on the north steps at 4 p.m.

California voters heading to the polls in November will consider a package of proposed fixes for state governance that includes changes to the budget process.

The constitutional amendment, backed by the California Forward Issue Action Fund, would switch the state to a two-year, performance-based budgeting process and allow the governor to make cuts on his own in times of fiscal emergency. It would also enact legislative transparency measures and let local governments change and opt out of certain laws and regulations if they enact an alternative local rule that achieves the same goal.

Supporters of the measure, which was certified for the ballot today by Secretary of State Debra Bowen, turned in more than 1.2 million voter signatures to qualify for the ballot. The qualification campaign was aided with a major contribution from billionaire investor Nicolas Berggruen, who has pledged to spend $20 million to address California's governance issues.

A coalition of labor and environmental groups and Democratic leaders in the Legislature tried to persuade the measure's backers to ditch their efforts this spring, vowing to launch an opposition campaign.

An attempt to craft a compromise measure that could be placed on the ballot by the Legislature has been unsuccessful.

Twelve measures are slated to appear on the November ballot, though the Legislature is expected to move an $11 billion water bond currently on the list to a different election.

RELATED POSTS:
California forward turns in signatures but continues talks

Editor's note: This post was updated at 11 a.m. on June 27 to reflect that an alternative local rule to a state law proposed by a county must meet the goal of the law in question.

New ammunition emerged Tuesday for a behind-the-scenes political battle shaping up over California's multibillion-dollar system of compensating workers for job-related injuries and illnesses.

The Workers' Compensation Insurance Rating Bureau reported that the insurers who provide coverage for most employers collected $10.4 billion in premiums in 2011, but paid out $7.7 billion in support benefits and medical care, and had expenses of $5 billion and thus lost about $2.3 billion.

It fuels the nascent campaign of insurers to increase premiums and suggests that they may form an alliance with unions, medical providers and attorneys for injured workers to overhaul the workers' compensation reforms enacted eight years ago. That would create conflict with employers, who enjoyed sharp premium reductions after the reforms were enacted.

Historically, the contending factions have formed alliances and fought pitched battles in the Legislature about once a decade. Lobbyists are anticipating that a new outbreak of political hostilities is coalescing.

The new report said that losses on workers' compensation coverage were greater than those experienced in 2010.

Insurers, the report said, paid out $4.4 million for medical care of disabled workers and another $3 million in direct support benefits to workers. The report, however, does not include data from large private and public employers who typically self-insure for job injuries rather than purchase insurance.

After federal officials and California Democratic lawmakers raised objections, Gov. Jerry Brown's proposal to limit wildfire liability and impose a lumber tax has stalled for now.

The natural resources budget bill, Assembly Bill 1478, does not contain Brown's proposals to limit payouts in wildfire liability cases or allow timber companies to face less frequent reviews of tree-cutting plans for environmental impacts.

A separate, but related, idea to impose a 1 percent tax on lumber sold in California has not been introduced. That money would have provided additional funding for the state Department of Fish and Game and other regulatory agencies to review timber harvest plans. It was one aspect that environmentalists liked in the proposal, but many of them were suspicious of the liability change that was crucial to getting the lumber tax passed.

A California bill to ban the use of dogs to hunt bears and bobcats has stalled in the state Legislature.

Senate Bill 1221, by Democratic Sen. Ted Lieu, fell short of passage in the Assembly Committee on Water, Parks and Wildlife today. The bill was given the OK to be reconsidered next week. It was not immediately clear whether any members were absent or abstained from today's vote.

Supporters of the bill, which was sponsored by the Humane Society of the United States, argued that the practice is cruel for both the targeted animals and the hounds. Lieu has in the past questioned the fairness of allowing a dog to chase a bear into a tree where it can be killed at close range, likening it to shooting a bear at a zoo.

The bill attracted strong opposition from a large coalition of hunting groups, which felt they were unfairly targeted by the legislation. They said the type of hunting prohibited under the bill is part of a long-standing and humane tradition that helps control the state's bear population.

Many advocates from both sides turned out for committee hearings on the issue.

The bill narrowly cleared the state Senate by a vote of 22-15 earlier this year.

RELATED POSTS:
CA Senate moves to ban hunting bears, bobcats with hounds

California welfare-to-work recipients could receive six-month extensions beyond a new 24-month time limit for aid if they are making progress in a treatment program, on the verge of finding work or struggle with a learning disability, according to new bill language released today.

The guts of the welfare-to-work compromise between Gov. Jerry Brown and Democratic lawmakers is contained in Assembly Bill 1471. The deal struck last week would generally cut off aid and services to CalWORKs recipients if they cannot find employment after 24 months.

The new rules take effect starting in January. Months on aid before January do not count against the new time limit.

Democratic lawmakers insisted on a series of exemptions that would protect one-fifth of welfare recipients who go past that time limit without finding a job. AB 1471 allows counties to grant extensions in six-month blocks to people who meet any of the following criteria:

The sudden, deep and lasting effects of California's great recession are revealed in a detailed bloc of business data released Tuesday by the U.S. Census Bureau.

In 2006, at the height of the state's housing boom, California had 13.8 million paid employees of 878,128 businesses and they were earning $633.8 billion a year, according to the Census Bureau report.

But just four years later, in 2010, employers had declined to 849,875 and their work forces had dropped to 12.5 million, although total compensation had risen slightly to $635.6 billion.

The voluminous report for 2010 and earlier years covers every state, every county, every ZIP code and dozens of specific types of businesses, but does not include data on government employment. The Census Bureau issues a separate annual report on state and local governments' spending and roughly two million employees.

Dan Walters says 7 million Californians could miss out on health care coverage if the Supreme Court rules universal health care unconstitutional.

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Dan Walters Daily: Dan says 7 million Californians could miss out on health care coverage if the Supreme Court rules universal health care unconstitutional.

The bills literally trailing the budget measure this year are surfacing, and Kevin Yamamura reports today on some surprises.

The Senate Budget Committee may meet again today to continue reviewing the legislation, which includes an education bill that would let school districts cut double the number of instruction days Gov. Jerry Brown proposed in May.

Both houses have scheduled floor votes beginning at 9 a.m. on Wednesday, the day Brown is required to sign or veto the budget bill lawmakers sent him more than a week ago.

"Those were the days ..." is the theme of an event this event sponsored by the Kenneth L. Maddy Institute at CSU Fresno. It's set for 5 to 7 p.m. at the Stanford Mansion at 800 N Street.

Former Senate President Pro Tem (and current state Democratic Party chairman) John Burton will join former legislative GOP leader (and current partner at California Strategies LLC) Jim Brulte to host a fundraising reception for the Bob Beverly Sacramento Legislative Intern Scholarship Fund.

The invitation promises appearances by Gov. Jerry Brown, Senate President Pro Tem Darrell Steinberg, Senate Minority Leader Bob Huff and Assembly Minority Leader Connie Conway. Tickets are $250.

Got a tax problem? The state Board of Equalization will hold its annual Taxpayers' Bill of Rights hearing today. The meeting begins at 1:30 p.m. at its headquarters, 450 N St., in the first floor board room.

A California lawmaker has dropped his bid to regulate and allow taxation of California's medical marijuana industry.

Assemblyman Tom Ammiano today canceled a scheduled Senate committee vote on Assembly Bill 2312, saying he has decided to allow the Businesses, Professions and Economic Development Committee to hold more committee hearings and issue a report on the issue after the legislative session adjourns.

Ammiano said in a statement that while the bill "represents my best effort to regulate this industry that has existed in a patchwork of regulations and laws for the past 15 years," additional study could create an even better product.

"There is no doubt that my colleagues understand the need for this legislation, and I have a lot of faith in this committee that we can hammer out a well-balanced regulatory policy during the fall to answer calls from local governments, law enforcement including our Attorney General, patients, and the public to enact a highly regulated system for medical marijuana and provide a clear set of rules for everybody," Ammiano said.

The bill, which squeaked out of the state Assembly earlier this month on a vote of 41-28, would create a state Bureau of Medical Marijuana Enforcement to provide oversight of many aspects of the medical marijuana industry. It would also allow local governments to tax marijuana products.

Supporters said such steps would help protect California's medical cannabis growers, sellers and users in the wake of a medical marijuana crackdown by federal authorities. Law enforcement associations opposed to the bill complained that the measure was "really a giant permission slip for medical marijuana stores to operate in a virtual unfettered manner."

RELATED STORIES:

California Assembly passes pot regulation bill

California counties could bolster fees for real estate fraud prevention and enforcement under legislation passed Monday by the Assembly.

The measure, Senate Bill 1342, would allow counties to increase from $3 to $10 the maximum fee that could be charged on various property-related documents recorded in county offices.

The Assembly vote was 56-14, with nearly every Democrat but only five Republicans supporting the bill.

Sacramento County Superior Court Judge Troy L. Nunley was nominated by the White House on Monday to serve as a U.S. District Court Judge for the Eastern District of California.

A graduate of St. Mary's College and the University of California Hastings College of Law, Nunley was nominated to replace Judge Garland Burrell, who is retiring. He was appointed to the Sacramento County Superior Court in 2002.

Nunley was born in San Francisco and raised by a single mom. Prior to being appointed to the bench by then-Gov. Gray Davis, he worked as a deputy district attorney in Alameda County, had his own practice in San Leandro, then served with the Sacramento County District Attorney's Office.

Democratic Sen. Dianne Feinstein recommended that Nunley be appointed, under an arrangment by which she and Sen. Barbara Boxer trade off making recommendations to the White House.

"The Eastern District of California manages a caseload more than twice the national average and is by far the busiest federal district court in the nation. It is especially important the Senate move quickly to consider Judge Nunley's nomination," Feinstein said in a statement.

Senate President Pro Tem Darrell Steinberg said today that he hopes the budget agreement approved later this week lessens the need for any additional "blue pencil" cuts by Gov. Jerry Brown.

The Sacramento Democrat said he expects legislators to consider 21 remaining budget trailer bills on Wednesday, which is Gov. Jerry Brown's final day to act on the main budget bill lawmakers passed earlier this month.

Steinberg said leaders have been "working very closely with the administration" as the final details of the bill language are hammered out. Democratic leaders and Brown announced last week that they had reached an accord on differences that remained after the first budget bill cleared both houses.

"I don't know what to expect," Steinberg said. "The governor does have constitutional authority in that regard, but given the fact that the budget that we've now come to will have a very healthy reserve, even above the $544 million that we passed a week ago Friday, I hope that the blue pencils are minimal."

The Senate is expected to convene at 9 a.m. on Wednesday for floor action on the trailer bills. Steinberg said all he expects most of the language that will be voted on Wednesday to be in print by tonight.

Legislation passed by the Assembly on Monday would prohibit cities that currently pay for sidewalk repair to shift that burden onto homeowners without a majority vote of the public.

The Assembly vote was 48-9, with support split evenly among Democrats and Republicans.

Democratic Assemblyman Felipe Fuentes proposed the bill in response to proposals in Los Angeles to shift sidewalk repair responsibility from the city to homeowners, or to require repairs as a condition of a house sale.

Most local governments do not accept responsibility for sidewalk repair. AB 2231 would apply only to cities that passed an ordinance years ago to accept that fiscal burden. The bill would not allow repeal without a majority vote of the public.

Los Angeles adopted an ordinance in 1974 making the city responsible for sidewalks, but it now faces the prospect of massive costs to do the work. Almost half its sidewalks are in some state of disrepair, according to a legislative analysis of AB 2231.

Fuentes, of Los Angeles, contends that local governments often plant the trees that cause significant cracks or breaks in sidewalks. If a city council promised to maintain walkways, it should do so unless the voters decide otherwise, Fuentes says.

Opponents include the League of California Cities and the California State Association of Counties. They argue that local governments are strapped for cash and that walkways will remain in disrepair unless alternative funding sources can be found.

Besides Los Angeles, cities that could be affected by AB 2231 include Oakland, Berkeley, Half Moon Bay, Placentia, Burlingame and Redlands, according to Fuentes.

AB 2231 now goes to the Senate.

Legislative Democrats are pushing a late-hour amendment to give Gov. Jerry Brown a leg up with his November ballot initiative to raise taxes, tweaking the Elections Code to afford Brown's measure a prominent position on the ballot.

In an amendment to a budget trailer bill, Senate Democrats propose language pushing constitutional amendments proposed by voter initiative, such as Brown's, to second on the ballot, right below bond measures. If lawmakers move the water bond scheduled for Nov. 6 to a later ballot -- as many believe they will -- Brown's tax increase measure would be guaranteed top billing

Further down come statutory changes put on by the Legislature, and ballot initiatives that do not propose constitutional amendments, such as a competing tax measure backed by Molly Munger. A higher ballot position is traditionally considered advantageous on ballots with lots of measures, and 11 have qualified for Nov. 6.

The amendment offers this justification:

"The Legislature finds and declares that bond measures and constitutional amendments should have priority on the ballot because of the profound and lasting impact these measures can have on our state."

While this seems like a simple, cost-free change, the amendment appropriates $1,000 from the general fund to the secretary of state to implement the changes. That, of course, makes the measure a budget "trailer" bill able to be approved by a majority vote of the Legislature under Proposition 25. Otherwise, such a move would be considered an urgency measure and need Republican votes to achieve a two-thirds margin.

The Democratic governor is proposing to raise the state sales tax and income taxes on California's highest earners.

Two years after Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger vetoed legislation that would have given California farm workers the same overtime benefits most other wage earners receive, the United Farm Workers union is preparing to try again with Schwarzenegger's successor, Gov. Jerry Brown.

"Farm workers and domestic workers are not second-class citizens," Arturo Rodriguez, the union president, told more than 200 supporters in a basement dining room at the Capitol today. "They do not belong to a lower class of workers in California or in the United States. They are men and women who take some of the hardest jobs in America, often for pay and under conditions other American workers would not tolerate."

Assembly Bill 1313, by Assemblyman Michael Allen, D-Santa Rosa, would remove an exemption for agricultural workers from the Fair Labor Standards Act, requiring overtime be paid after eight hours a day or 40 hours a week. Farm workers were joined at the Capitol by supporters of a separate bill that would give housekeepers and other domestic workers the right to overtime pay, vacation and other benefits.

Brown signed the landmark Agricultural Labor Relations Act when he was governor before, from 1975 to 1983, and farm worker advocates had high hopes for the Democratic governor when he took office last year.

Their relationship has at times been tense, however: Brown vetoed legislation last year that would have let farm workers unionize more easily, only later reaching a compromise with the union.

Asked if he thought the overtime legislation would get a better reception from Brown than from Schwarzenegger, a Republican, Rodriguez said, "We're always hopeful. We always come here and know we're fighting a battle."

Rodriguez said the Brown administration "hasn't given us any commitment one way or another."

Two years ago, when Schwarzenegger vetoed the overtime bill, the agricultural industry warned approval may have provoked farmers to reduce their workers' hours, resulting in reduced paychecks.

PHOTO CREDIT: Arturo Rodriguez, President of the United Farm Workers, speaks on Monday to honor farm workers, from left, Carolina Holguin from McFarland and Josefina Flores from Delano for their 30 years of support and commitment to the UFW. Hector Navejas/Vida en el Valle

A new education budget bill allows schools to cut 15 days in each of the next two school years if voters reject additional taxes on sales and income in November, double what Gov. Jerry Brown proposed in his May budget plan.

The governor last month proposed allowing districts to cut 15 days across the next two school years if the tax initiative fails. But the latest education budget bill says districts could actually go down to 160 days in both 2012-13 and 2013-14. That is 20 days below the once standard 180 days, which fell to 175 days in post-recession budget cuts.

According to identical budget language in Assembly Bill 1476 and Senate Bill 1016, the school-day reduction would still be subject to collective bargaining between school districts and labor unions.

A memorial service for Martin Smith, former political editor for McClatchy Newspapers, will be held Sunday in Sacramento.

The event honoring the life of Mr. Smith, who died April 26, is scheduled from 2 p.m. to 4 p.m. Sunday at the Park Terrace Swim and Tennis Club, 5500, Parkfield Court, Sacramento.

Mr. Smith died of complications from Parkinson's disease in the state of Washington, where he had lived for many years after retiring in late 1992 from McClatchy Newspapers, owner of The Sacramento Bee.

Mr. Smith's journalism career began as a copy boy for the San Francisco Call-Bulletin as a teenager. His professional career included stints at the Yakima Morning Herald and Modesto Bee before he joined The Sacramento Bee as a reporter in 1965.

In Sacramento, he rose through the ranks to become Capitol bureau chief, then managing editor, before accepting the position of McClatchy Newspapers' political editor in 1977.

Mr. Smith was survived by his wife, Joan, of Bothell, Wash.; two daughters, Catherine Smith of Bellevue, Wash., and Karen Smith of Cincinnati, Ohio; and by three grandchildren.

Dan Walters says that the failure of cigarette tax proponents to pass Proposition 29 does not bode well for tax initiatives on the November ballot, including Gov. Jerry Brown's measure.

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VIDEO: Dan Walters says in his latest report that Gov. Jerry Brown's tax ballot measure could be in trouble, if the demise of Proposition 29's cigarette tax is any indication of what's to come in November.

Finishing up the state budget, with votes expected Tuesday, isn't the only issue on the Legislature's to-do list.

A legislative conference committee is expected to act this week on a negotiated package of bills, sponsored by Attorney General Kamala Harris, that are aimed at protecting California homeowners facing foreclosure.

Today, a coalition of homeowners, unions, clergy members, and Occupy groups are rallying on the Capitol's west steps at 10 a.m. to urge a moratorium on foreclosures altogether.

Inside the building, United Farm Workers and the California Domestic Workers Coalition are marking the 74th anniversary of the Fair Labor Standards Act, which set a federal minimum wage, by calling for protections to be extended to farmworkers and domestic workers to end a "shameful legacy of racism," a news release says.

They're backing two measures: UFW-sponsored Assembly Bill 1313, by Assemblyman Michael Allen, to provide overtime pay for farm workers after eight hours a day or 40 hours a week, and CDWC-sponsored Assembly Bill 889, by Assemblyman Tom Ammiano, to end the exclusion of domestic workers from labor protections such as overtime pay and rest breaks.

Listed participants include California NAACP Executive Director Robert Rooks and UFW President Arturo Rodriguez, as well as Sen. Curren Price and Assemblyman Ricardo Lara, the chairs of the Black and Latino legislative caucuses. The event starts at 10:30 a.m. in the Capitol basement dining room.

Meanwhile, today could be the day that the U.S. Supreme Court issues its ruling on President Barack Obama's health care law. As David Siders reported last week, California became the first state in the nation to establish an insurance exchange, and the Brown administration says it will remain intact -- but what that will look like is unclear.

CAKE AND CANDLES: Sen. Sam Blakeslee, R-San Luis Obispo, celebrates his 57th birthday today.

The state budget will freeze tuition rates for the state's two university systems if voters approve tax hikes in November, University of California student groups said this evening.

Charlie Eaton, a leader with the UC student workers' union, said Capitol officials told him that the budget bills will add $120 million each for the UC and California State University systems to avoid tuition hikes. But that is contingent on voter passage of Gov. Jerry Brown's tax hikes in November, he said.

The tuition freeze announcement could not be immediately confirmed by Capitol officials.

Lawmakers have yet to make budget language publicly available. Legislative floor votes have been delayed one day to Wednesday because drafting of bills is taking longer than Senate leaders predicted, according to sources who were not authorized to speak publicly.

UC regents last month examined the possibility of raising tuition 6 percent in 2012-13 if they did not receive additional funding in the state budget. CSU trustees have already agreed to hike tuition by 9 percent in 2012-13.

"I think this shows that students have changed the conversation this year about who should be paying to re-fund education," Eaton said. "It's a great step we're freezing tuition this year but the next step is to figure out how do we roll back tuition."

The UC Students Association made the announcement on its Facebook page this evening: "UCSA just got the word that Speaker Perez was able to secure a tuition freeze for UC and CSU in the budget deal funded by an additional $120 million for each segment. HUGE. This means NO TUITION INCREASE in 2012-2013. This was a top priority for students and students helped make it happen."

Gov. Jerry Brown and Democratic leaders called their budget deal Thursday a "conceptual agreement" for good reason.

With floor votes planned in three days, Brown officials and lawmakers are still filling out major details of cuts to welfare-to-work and health care for low-income children that will determine exactly how the budget will impact programs.

Since taking office, Brown has sought to eliminate Healthy Families, which provides low-cost care to 880,000 children in working poor households that lack health insurance. Brown has argued that all publicly insured patients should be in Medi-Cal as matter of efficiency and to eliminate the challenges patients face when switching between Medi-Cal and Healthy Families as their family income fluctuates.

But health advocates who say Healthy Families works well and affords better care than Medi-Cal have begun mobilizing against Brown's demand to move those 880,000 children out of Healthy Families. Behind closed doors, Brown officials and Democratic lawmakers are trying to appease health care interests caught off guard by the elimination altogether of Healthy Families after they presumed the state would only shift about 190,000 of those children.

FREMONT - Gov. Jerry Brown has little occasion to drive these days, chauffeured as he is by his security detail.

But at the Fremont plant of Tesla Motors this afternoon, a brand new Model S in red was waiting for him outside.

Brown slipped into the driver's seat - state Treasurer Bill Lockyer rode shotgun - turned his head for a photographer and took off.

Brown's press secretary, Gil Duran, crossed himself.

"Hey, great!" Brown said when he came back. "Very fast."

Brown was at Tesla to celebrate the delivery of the high-end electric car maker's new sedan. Brown talked cars, solar power and rockets for about 10 minutes with the company's Elon Musk.

Then, Brown said, he had to get back "to the mundane matters of the state."

FREMONT - Gov. Jerry Brown said this afternoon that he is not abandoning a proposal to insulate California's high-speed rail project from environmental lawsuits, suggesting he was only delaying the legislation until sometime after the Legislature considers funding for the project.

The Brown administration told environmentalists on Wednesday it was backing off a proposal to limit the circumstances in which a court could block construction of the project under the California Environmental Quality Act. Kathryn Phillips, director of Sierra Club California, said at the time that the administration suggested it could revisit the proposal later.

The Democratic governor is seeking legislative approval, likely next week, to start construction of the $68 billion project.

Asked about his proposal to protect the project from environmental lawsuits, Brown said, "I haven't abandoned that at this point ... I think it's a question of when we push and when we don't."

Brown, in Fremont for an event at car maker Tesla Motors, said his goal is to "do the right thing, but do it in a very efficient manner." He said, "We're going to do whatever it takes."

Brown's remarks were his first since announcing a budget deal with legislative Democrats on Thursday. He said staffers are still laboring on the deal's finer points.

"I spent a few hours on the telephone coming down," Brown said. "The nits and nats and details are being turned over as we speak, so staff is working in Sacramento, executive and legislative branch, so they're still struggling."

He said of the deal's prospects ahead of a vote in the Legislature next week, "I'm very optimistic."

Assembly Speaker John A. Pérez won't be going to Florida this weekend after all.

The Los Angeles Democrat canceled plans Friday to attend the annual conference of the National Association of Latino Elected and Appointed Officials after striking a tentative state budget deal.

"I didn't go because I still have work to do," Pérez said, adding that he is ready to return to the Capitol this weekend as needed to fine-tune budget details in preparation for an Assembly floor vote next week.

"I've been working," Pérez said. "I'm going to go home tonight. I'll be back over the weekend. There's some work I have to do in person, there's some work I don't have to do in person. If I've got to be here to do work, I'll be here."

As reported this morning on Capitol Alert, Pérez was scheduled to participate in a panel discussion at the NALEO annual conference at Disney World.

President Barack Obama and Republican presidential hopeful Mitt Romney were scheduled headliners of the three-day conference.

Pérez said he had made plans long ago to attend the NALEO event. It is not rare for him to make commitments only to cancel them later due to the press of Assembly business, he said.

Gov. Jerry Brown and Democratic leaders are crafting an exception for Kaiser Permanente as they prepare to move 880,000 Healthy Families patients to lower-cost Medi-Cal as part of their budget agreement.

The provision would enable Oakland-based Kaiser to keep its 200,000 Healthy Families patients as Medi-Cal clients through a direct contract with the state, according to Department of Health Care Services Director Toby Douglas. It would also give Kaiser the ability to avoid paying fees to county-based health plans for an additional 200,000 people it already serves through Medi-Cal.

As part of the budget deal, Democratic leaders agreed to dissolve Healthy Families, which provides low-cost health care to children whose families are at the federal poverty threshold ($23,050 for a family of four) up to 250 percent of that amount ($57,625). The state will shift all 880,000 Healthy Families children to Medi-Cal in waves next year, starting in January.

Folsom attorney Andy Pugno completed a come-from-behind win over Democrat Regy Bronner Friday to secure a ballot spot in the November election for a Placer County-based Assembly seat.

The election promises a rerun of a hard-fought primary campaign between Republicans Pugno and incumbent Beth Gaines, who will square off because the state's new "top-two" primary system pits the two highest vote-getters in November, regardless of party.

Gaines, of Rocklin, finished first by a comfortable margin on election night, but Pugno trailed Bronner for second place by 531 votes after precinct votes had been counted by the next morning.

The counting of thousands of provisional, write-in and mail ballots received on election day kept the final outcome in doubt until Friday, when Bronner started the day with a lead of about 95 votes over Pugno.

Pugno overtook Bronner by Friday afternoon, however, when Placer County's final tally of votes favored Pugno over his Democratic opponent by about 800 votes.

All three counties represented by the 6th Assembly District -- Placer, Sacramento and El Dorado -- have completed their ballot count, officials said. The newly drawn district tilts strongly toward the GOP in voter registration.

Friday's outcome leaves Pugno with a decision to make: Months ago, he vowed to step aside and not split the Republican Party by fighting Gaines if she finished ahead of him in the primary. She made no such commitment.

While final votes were being counted in recent weeks, Pugno did not comment publicly about whether he has changed his mind about stepping aside in favor of Gaines if both qualified for the November general election.

Tobacco tax backers in California officially conceded defeat Friday in the tight Proposition 29 race after they determined the vote gap had simply grown too large to overcome.

The initiative is losing by 27,888 votes out of more than 5 million counted, a 49.7 percent to 50.3 percent divide, the Secretary of State's Office reported this morning.

As counties tallied their remaining ballots after the June 5 election, the gap had steadily shrunk from about 60,000 votes down to 13,000 votes as recently as Wednesday. But the tide turned late this week, and there remain only 111,472 ballots left to tally, the Secretary of State's Office showed.

Yes on 29 campaign manager Chris Lehman said the math showed it would almost certainly be too difficult to mount a comeback at this point because his side would need to win nearly 65 percent of the remaining ballots.

Proposition 29 would have raised tobacco taxes by $1 per pack of cigarettes and paid for cancer research, stop-smoking programs and related law enforcement efforts. Opponents said that the money could be better spent on solving California's immediate budget problems and that it would create a new state bureaucracy. Tobacco companies funded virtually all of the statewide campaign with nearly $47 million.

In a statement, the campaign called it a "sad day for California" and blamed tobacco companies for a "misinformation campaign." Proponents vowed to ask voters for another tobacco tax hike in the future.

"We're certainly not going away," said Jim Knox of the American Cancer Society. "It's not going to slow our efforts to battle tobacco companies and cancer. We will be looking for opportunities to do that wherever they may present themselves."

RELATED POSTS:
Associated Press: California cigarette tax proposition defeated

Spending by California's state government increased by 42 percent between 2000 and 2010 on a per-capita, inflation-adjusted basis, the nation's 16th highest rate of spending growth, according to a new data compilation by the Tax Foundation.

Oklahoma topped the states with a 74 percent increase in per-capita spending during the decade, the Washington-based Tax Foundation concluded, expressing its findings via a map on its website. Alaska was lowest at 17 percent.

California's 42 percent growth was identical to that of neighboring Nevada and lower than Arizona's 46 percent, but markedly higher than Oregon's 26 percent, one of the nation's lowest. It was also a bit higher than Texas' 37 percent and Florida's 36 percent but similar to New York's 41 percent.

A California ballot measure to increase the cigarette tax by $1 a pack has failed, the Associated Press projected today.

Proposition 29 has been trailing in the vote count since the June 5 election, though the narrow margin made it too close to call until today. Wednesday, the gap was only 13,327 votes out of nearly 4.9 million counted.The latest results posted by the Secretary of State show the measure losing by 27,888 votes, less than one percentage point.

Supporters said the measure would raise $735 million annually for cancer research and smoking cessation programs.

Tobacco companies spent tens of millions of dollars against the measure. Opponents argued that the measure was flawed and lacked accountability and oversight for how the revenues would be spent.

No on 29 spokeswoman Beth Miller said, ""We are obviously very encouraged with the way the vote count is going."

But, she said, they're waiting until all the votes are tallied: "We're not declaring a win yet. There are still 100,000 votes out there."

Democratic lawmakers portrayed a shift of 880,000 children from Healthy Families to Medi-Cal as a way to help bridge the state's $15.7 billion deficit, but opponents say there is good reason to think the change could actually cost the state more money.

Gov. Jerry Brown's administration is counting on $13 million in general fund savings in 2012-13 because only a partial shift will occur in the fiscal year - and only in the second half of the year. At full implementation, the state would save $73 million in 2014-15.

But shifting those children to Healthy Families risks the loss of $183 million in taxes on managed care plans. The tax is set to expire at the end of this month, and managed care providers previously supported the tax because it came back to them through Healthy Families patients.

Democrats need a two-thirds supermajority vote with Republican support to keep the tax going. If the industry is opposed, it is difficult to see how Republicans will sign on to the tax this summer.

Also, Republicans are far more favorable toward Healthy Families than Medi-Cal. In a statement Thursday, Senate Republican Leader Bob Huff, R-Diamond Bar, said, "This transfer of children from a popular and successful program like Healthy Families to the problem plagued Medi-Cal system is a reckless move that unnecessarily puts the health of California children at risk."

As California lawmakers consider extending a $100 million annual film tax credit for five more years to help a signature industry, the state's top fiscal analyst said in a new review that the credit results in an overall loss of tax dollars.

The finding by the nonpartisan Legislative Analyst's Office runs counter to two recent studies by the Los Angeles County Economic Development Corporation (LAEDC) and the UCLA Institute for Research on Labor and Employment (UCLA-IRLE).

In a letter publicly released Thursday, the LAO said that each dollar of tax credit results in less than a dollar in tax revenues returned to state and local governments through taxation on increased economic activity. The LAEDC study said that each tax credit dollar returns at least $1.13, while the UCLA-IRLE study said it was $1.04.

The Analyst's Office stated that "we believe it is likely that the state local tax revenue return would be under $1.00 for every tax credit dollar -- perhaps well under $1.00 for every tax credit dollar in many years. In any event, even if the combined state and local tax revenue return is right around $1.00 for every tax credit dollar, the state government's tax revenue return would by definition be less than $1.00 for every tax credit dollar. The credit program, therefore, appears to result in a net decline in state revenues."

The LAO did not dispute that the tax credit generates additional economic activity in California, but it believes the LAEDC estimate of economic output is "likely overstated, as is its estimate of job gains resulting from the credit program." It cited other factors that played into its determination, such as benefits from other governmental uses of the tax credit dollars and underestimating how much film production would occur in California without such incentives.

The Analyst's Office weighed in at the request of the Senate Governance and Finance Committee, which is considering Senate Bill 1167 by Sen. Ron Calderon, D-Montebello, to continue the program that former Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger helped initiate in 2009. At the time, Los Angeles-area lawmakers and the movie-star governor expressed concerns about the aggressive tax credit offerings by other states to lure film production away from California.

Where does an Assembly leader go after a budget deal is reached?

To Disney World, of course.

Assembly Speaker John A. Pérez is flying to Florida's world-famous resort to participate in a panel discussion Saturday at the annual conference of the National Association of Latino Elected and Appointed Officials.

President Barack Obama and Republican presidential hopeful Mitt Romney are headliners of the three-day event, which began Thursday in Orlando and ends Saturday evening. Pérez will participate in a panel discussion during the event's congressional leadership luncheon.

Perez's spokesman, John Vigna, squashed a rumor Thursday that the speaker's Florida commitment would keep lawmakers from voting on a final package of budget bills this weekend.

Crafting and fine-tuning of the bills would have consumed the weekend anyhow, Vigna said.

Vigna said that Pérez had committed himself to the conference a long time ago and that the speaker plans to return in plenty of time to vote on the budget package early next week.

Whistling a Disney tune, perhaps.

Dan Walters says the November ballot battle over rival tax measures from Gov. Jerry Brown and civil rights attorney Molly Munger may show whether voters are interested in helping California schools.

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VIDEO: Dan Walters, in today's report, looks at the upcoming ballot battle in California over Gov. Jerry Brown's and civil rights attorney Molly Munger's rival tax measures.

Gov. Jerry Brown will be in Alameda County this afternoon for a ceremony at the Tesla Motors factory in Fremont, where its CEO will give keys to the Model S sedan's earliest customers. The event is scheduled for 3 p.m.

Tesla says it has more than 10,000 reservations for its premium all-electric car, The Bee's Mark Glover reported in this story. It has a base price, after a federal tax credit, of $49,999.

"The Model S is going to be the first true mass market product experiment for Tesla, one they cannot afford to fail," Jesse Toprak, vice president of market intelligence at car buying site TrueCar.com, told the Associated Press. Here's more from the AP:

Tesla, the brainchild of PayPal billionaire and SpaceX founder Elon Musk, has always been a moon shot. Analysts and auto industry insiders scoffed at the idea that a new car company could be created from scratch and built in a high-cost state like California. Boardroom turmoil and a string of technical problems repeatedly delayed the launch of the company's only car, the $109,000 two-seat Tesla Roadster.

Tesla survived by creating something so unique that the price tag was almost irrelevant: A beautiful car that could tear up a race track without burning a single drop of gasoline. Celebrities flocked to it, giving Tesla a cache that an established brand like Cadillac could only dream of.

Now Tesla must do something much more difficult. It has to convince more traditional car customers to buy an expensive vehicle with limited range from a small, untested company.

... But if you're a believer, all you have to do is point out Musk's latest accomplishment: Last month, his SpaceX venture became the first private company to send a cargo rocket to the International Space station.

Back in Sacramento, Girl Scouts fans can celebrate the organization's 100th anniversary at a gala held at the California Museum, 1020 O St., from 5:30 to 7:30 p.m.

The event features appetizers and desserts from Mulvaney's B&L (no Girl Scout cookies mentioned), plus a fashion show of Girl Scout uniform styles over the years. Tickets are $50 and include admission to the museum's exhibit marking the centennial.

Later on this weekend, California Democrats who'll be heading to Charlotte as delegates for the national convention will gather in Sacramento for an orientation of sorts.

California Democratic Party spokesman Tenoch Flores told The Bee's Torey Van Oot that in addition to finalizing the delegation, the selected Democrats will be privvy to logistical information on applying for housing and other matters. He's expecting many of the 547 delegates and 46 alternates to be in attendance Sunday.

CAKE AND CANDLES: Democratic Assemblywoman Susan Bonilla turns 52 today.

State Treasurer Bill Lockyer said this afternoon that he will vote for Gov. Jerry Brown's November ballot initiative to raise taxes, despite concerns about the measure's burden on California's highest-income earners.

Lockyer, who said last year that California had neared its reasonable limit for taxing the rich, told the Sacramento Press Club that the alternative -- billions of dollars in spending reductions, including to education -- is intolerable.

"I'm voting for the governor's tax proposal," said Lockyer, a Democrat. "The cuts to education if it doesn't pass are so severe that it will injure our ability to produce an informed citizenry and workforce that we need for the future of California, so I'm a 'yes' vote."

Brown proposes to raise the state sales tax and income taxes on California's highest earners.

"I worry a little bit about fairness," Lockyer said, "although when you look at the income distributions in the last 20 years and see that essentially 80 percent of the people in California have either stagnated or fallen backward, 20 percent are the folks that actually have more disposable income, maybe progressive income taxes are relevant and fair in that kind of environment."

"However, you do get to the top pretty quick, and the potential for out-of-state migration is substantial enough that we have to be very sensitive about those rates," he added.

In a compromise to push a more popular, competing tax measure off the November ballot, the Democratic governor changed his tax initiative in March to include a larger tax increase on the wealthiest Californians than he initially wanted.

Lockyer said Brown had little choice but to alter his measure, adding, "I think he shares the same anxiety about practical impacts of our personal income tax getting high, or higher."

Lockyer's remarks came a day after Brown's tax measure and two others officially qualified for the November ballot. Lockyer said, "I reserve judgment" on the other two, one that would raise income taxes on all but the poorest Californians and one involving changes to the state's corporate tax formula.

Lockyer remained quiet about the scandal involving his wife, Nadia, who resigned from her position as an Alameda County supervisor after revelations of an affair and substance abuse.

The treasurer declined to discuss his wife's accusation he once supplied her with drugs, a claim Bill Lockyer's spokesman has previously denied.

"With respect to the personal matter, yes, I haven't commented much and don't intend to today," Bill Lockyer said.

The treasurer would at least allude to the matter later, however, provoking laughter while discussing rating agencies and California's creditworthiness.

"Have rating agencies in the past been probably too friendly with investors and Wall Street underwriters and others?" he said. "Yes, and whether people made money because of low ratings of some issuers? Yes, and was there sort of a co-dependent enabling going on -- sorry to start answering my last question, earlier -- but was there some of that going on with respect to the financial institutions? Yeah."

The new budget deal between Gov. Jerry Brown and Democratic lawmakers involves a controversial shift of 880,000 Healthy Families children to lower-cost Medi-Cal, additional child care cuts and more stringent work requirements for welfare parents.

Senate Democratic leaders provided details today in a hastily scheduled Capitol press conference, just minutes after Brown issued a joint statement declaring a "conceptual agreement" with lawmakers.

"This is a budget that is not fundamentally different from the budget we passed on Friday," said Senate President Pro Tem Darrell Steinberg, D-Sacramento.

Steinberg said major changes focused on areas that serve low-income residents: Healthy Families medical coverage for low-income children slightly above the federal poverty line; subsidized child care; and welfare-to-work. We detail the changes after the jump:

Ten days before the start of the next fiscal year, Gov. Jerry Brown and Democratic leaders announced a budget "conceptual agreement" this morning after bridging their biggest difference over cuts to welfare-to-work.

Democrats sent Brown a $92.1 billion spending plan last week under the threat of lost pay, but without a deal with the Democratic governor in place.

Brown, Senate President Pro Tem Darrell Steinberg and Assembly Speaker John A. Pérez made the announcement in a joint statement that contained no specific details of the compromise. The announcement said their agreement "protects education, permanently reforms welfare and includes tough ongoing cuts."

The statement says final votes to seal the agreement will take place in the "coming days." Sen. Mark Leno and Capitol aides said they expect floor votes Tuesday.

"This agreement strongly positions the state to withstand the economic challenges and uncertainties ahead," Brown said in the statement. "We have restructured and downsized our prison system, moved government closer to the people, made billions in difficult cuts and now the Legislature is poised to make even more difficult cuts and permanently reform welfare."

Is this serendipitous or what?

Just as two rival tax measures, both purporting to help struggling schools, qualified for the state's November ballot, the Census Bureau today released its annual report on school finance, revealing that California ranks 35th in per-pupil spending, more than $1,200 per year under the national average.

Furthermore, the Census Bureau report said, California ranks even lower - 42nd - in school spending vis-à-vis personal income.

The report provides new ammunition for Gov. Jerry Brown and civil rights attorney Molly Munger as they peddle their rival tax measures to voters. Brown says his sales and income tax boost would shield schools from deep spending cuts and increase it sharply over time. Munger's broader income tax measure would raise per-pupil spending for the state's 6 million public school students by more than $1,500 a year, roughly to the national average.

The Census Bureau report, covering the 2009-10 fiscal year, differs from the measures of per-pupil spending that are used in California's ceaseless political debates over the issue. The report includes all sources of income, including federal funds, whereas in state budget scoring, only state and local funds are counted and about $4 billion in state payments on school construction bonds and teachers' pensions are excluded.

Thus, the Census Bureau tagged California's $58.9 billion in 2009-10 "current spending" at $9,375 per pupil, which was $1,240 less than the national average of $10,675 and placed it 35th . The District of Columbia was highest at $18,667, followed by New York, Wyoming, New Jersey and Connecticut. Utah was lowest at $6,064.

Total California spending, including $7.2 billion in capital outlay and ancillary costs, was pegged at $68.1 billion.

In terms of revenue from all sources, California's $10,581 per pupil was 40th in the nation. Its revenue, some $65 billion, was calculated at 4.25 percent of personal income, while its spending, 3.77 percent of personal income, was 42nd. In relation to personal income, Alaska was tops in both revenue and spending.

The state government supplied $34.2 billion of school revenues in 2009-10, or 52.6 percent, which was higher than the national average of 43.5 percent. The federal government's 15 percent was also higher than the national average of 12.5 percent, while local source revenues at 32.5 percent were below the national average of 44 percent, reflecting Proposition 13's limits on local property taxes.

The report also provided details on how states divvied up school spending among different categories. Relatively speaking, the only two categories in which California rose above national per-pupil averages were in support staff and school administration.

Gov. Jerry Brown and legislative Democrats plan to announce a budget deal around 11 a.m. this morning, with floor votes expected Tuesday, according to Sen. Mark Leno, D-San Francisco.

Democratic leaders and Brown reached a compromise that would reduce the amount of time welfare-to-work recipients can receive full aid without finding a job, according to sources close to negotiations. But the package contains CalWORKs exemptions designed to help welfare recipients on the verge of finding employment or struggling to find work in areas with high unemployment.

Brown rejected the Democrats' plan to bridge the state's $15.7 billion gap with $250 million in property tax dollars that counties say they are owed each year. Lawmakers and Brown found other ways to help plug the remaining hole, such as additional CalWORKs savings and using more money upfront from a multi-state mortgage settlement.

Assemblyman Roger Hernández is set to take his drunken driving case to a jury Aug. 7.

The West Covina Democrat was given a trial date Wednesday by Contra Costa County Judge Bruce Mills, said Karen Holder, senior deputy district attorney.

Hernández did not appear at Wednesday's brief pretrial hearing, Holder said. He was represented by attorney Carin Johnson.

Hernández was charged with drunken driving last month after Concord police officers said they observed him driving erratically March 27 at about 2 a.m. on a weekday. The legislator said that he had only two glasses of wine over a five-hour period.

Tests concluded that his blood-alcohol level was 0.08, the level at which a driver can be charged with drunken driving.

Hernández has denied officers' claims that he was weaving inside a lane of traffic. He also contends that he was not impaired when stopped by officers after driving into the parking lot of a lot of a Concord hotel.

Hernández was accompanied by a 29-year-old woman and was driving a state Assembly car at the time of the incident. He has voluntarily relinquished his right to drive a legislative car until the case is resolved.

* Updated at 5:53 p.m. Thursday to correct the spelling of Carin Johnson.

Dan Walters chronicles how California's history as a red state started to change around the time Bill Clinton was elected president.

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VIDEO: Dan Walters, in today's report, asks: "Are Republicans an endangered species in California?"

School's out, but middle-school and high-school students are joining a National Summer Learning Day rally on the Capitol's north steps to call for more summer learning programs, especially in science, technology, engineering and math -- so-called STEM education.

Listed speakers include State Superintendent of Public Instruction Tom Torlakson (a news release notes that he used to be a science teacher) and Jonathan Raymond, superintendent of Sacramento City Unified School District.

The list of legislator-participants is long, including Democratic Sens. Lou Correa, Mark De Saulnier, Kevin de León, Loni Hancock, Carol Liu and Michael Rubio, plus Republican Sen. Tom Berryhill.

Representing the Assembly side are Assembly Republican leader Connie Conway, Republican Assemblywoman Linda Halderman, and Democratic Assembly members Roger Dickinson, Holly Mitchell, Richard Pan and Nancy Skinner.

The rally starts at 10 a.m., followed by educational activities and a picnic on the north lawn. San Francisco-based comedy magician Robert Strong will also be on hand. Maybe he can pull the rest of the state budget out of a hat.

Meanwhile, State Treasurer Bill Lockyer will be talking to the Sacramento Press Club at noon about state finances and the budget.

Alert readers will recall that the Democrat said last week in response to a Republican request that the budget was "financeable." Click here for more information about today's luncheon.

Both the Senate and the Assembly have scheduled floor sessions for 9 a.m. Click here for the Senate's schedule, and click here for the Assembly's.

As Democratic state leaders continue budget negotiations, Gov. Jerry Brown's tax hike on sales and upper-income earners officially qualified Wednesday for the November ballot, as did two other tax measures.

Brown's tax initiative will be joined by a rival measure to hike income taxes on all but the poorest Californians as well as an initiative to raise taxes on multistate corporations based elsewhere, the Secretary of State's Office announced. A total of 11 measures, including a water bond, are now on the November ballot.

Brown and lawmakers are counting on voters to pass his tax plan to generate an estimated $8.5 billion in the current budget cycle, which provides additional funding for schools and helps bridge the state's $15.7 billion deficit. Though state leaders considered its qualification a foregone conclusion, some political experts began to wonder whether it could miss the June 28 deadline to reach the November ballot as the date drew closer.

The Brown initiative would raise sales taxes by a quarter-cent on the dollar. It would also hike income taxes starting at $250,000 for individuals and $500,000 for joint filers.

A rival measure filed by wealthy civil rights attorney Molly Munger would raise taxes along a sliding scale starting at $7,316 in taxable income for single filers and $14,632 for joint filers. Her initiative would raise about $10 billion annually, mostly for schools and early childhood programs, but with some initial funding to help relieve the state budget by about $3 billion.

The third tax measure to qualify Wednesday involves changing the state's corporate tax formula by forcing most companies to calculate their liability based on their share of sales in California. A recent law change allowed companies last year to choose the less expensive of two tax formulas. The proposal by hedge fund manager Tom Steyer would generate about $1 billion extra each year, initially split between the state budget and green energy projects before going entirely to the general fund in 2018-19.

The Brown administration is abandoning legislation it proposed to insulate California's high-speed rail project from environmental lawsuits, the administration told environmentalists today.

Gov. Jerry Brown, who is seeking legislative approval this summer to start construction on the $68 billion project, angered environmentalists when his administration proposed this month to limit the circumstances in which a court could block construction of the project under the landmark California Environmental Quality Act.

Kathryn Phillips, director of Sierra Club California, said a Brown adviser sent environmentalists and transportation advocates an e-mail today indicating the Democratic governor was backing off.

Phillips said the administration suggested it could revisit the proposal later.

"They're not interested for now," Phillips said. "So I feel like I can sleep well tonight, and there will be another day when we will have to struggle with how we can ensure that we protect environmental quality."

Brown's office declined to comment. The California High-Speed Rail Authority did not immediately return calls for comment.

Gov. Jerry Brown and legislative Democrats are nearing a deal on welfare-to-work cuts that would reduce the amount of time families could receive full aid and child care, but with exemptions such as one for people in areas with high unemployment.

The Democratic governor and lawmakers are still working out how broadly the exemptions would apply, said sources close to the negotiations who did not want to be named because the deal remains incomplete. That criteria would determine how much the state could save and the extent to which Brown can declare a shift in the welfare model as he asks voters to raise taxes in November.

Brown wants lawmakers to remake the state's welfare-to-work program, known as CalWORKs, by imposing more severe consequences for not finding work. Democrats are willing to accept some changes, but they say the governor's plan is too severe when work is scarce even for more qualified job applicants in California.

"The typical CalWORKs recipient doesn't have a high school diploma," said Mike Herald, a lobbyist for the Western Center on Law and Poverty. "They're having to compete right now in a job market where even people with high school diplomas can't get hired."

Youth organizers are seeking Capitol support of a "bill of rights" for California young people that calls for a statewide effort to improve education and opportunities.

A resolution by Assemblyman V. Manuel Pérez, D-Coachella, presents a multiple-point political platform, including access to affordable day care, health care and fair trials.

About 40 people attended an event marking its introduction at the Capitol. Participating organizations included the California Fund for Youth Organizing and the Communities United for Restorative Youth Justice.

Many members of the crowd, most in their late teens and early 20s, wore shirts reading "college prep, not prison prep."

George Galvis, an event organizer and the executive director for the Communities United for Restorative Youth Justice, said the resolution marked important opportunities for the youth of California.

"This is an integrated collaboration and we are building on a statewide coalition," Galvis said. "It's a framework for a youth platform for California."

PHOTO CREDIT: Sacramento Bee/Hannah Madans

Republican Sen. Bob Huff has decided to drop legislation that would ban chiropractors from treating allergies now that new rules prohibiting the use of laser therapy for the condition are set to take effect.

The Diamond Bar Republican introduced Senate Bill 352 out of concern that a patient with life-threatening food allergies could be hurt or killed if they felt they were cured after receiving medically unproven laser treatments being advertised by some chiropractors in the state.

The state Board of Chiropractic Examiners decided to ban licensed chiropractors from using lasers for allergy treatments earlier this year in hopes of persuading Huff to drop his bill. They argued that his legislation would prevent chiropractors from providing nutritional counseling and other services to address food sensitives and other allergies.

The rules, which were adopted in early May, which were recently approved by the Office of Administrative Law. They will be effective as of July 14, according to a press release issued by the board.

Huff suggested earlier this year that action by the board would lessen the need for his bill, which has cleared the Senate and is pending approval in the state Assembly.

"To the degree that they're taking care of it themselves, it takes pressure off a legislative fix," he said at the time.

RELATED STORIES:

Bill seeks to ban California chiropractors from offering laser 'cure' for allergies

Bruce McPherson, a former state legislator and secretary of state who is now seeking a seat on the Santa Cruz County Board of Supervisors, is quitting the Republican Party, citing the "strident" nature of partisan politics.

"That's who I am," McPherson was quoted in a Santa Cruz Sentinel article."During my years in the California Legislature, I was widely recognized as the most independent voice in either the Assembly or the Senate. Now more than ever I think we need leaders who make decisions for the community and the people, not what's best for the party."

"It's as strident as I've ever known it to be," McPherson said of partisan politics. "I don't want to be identified as right or left."

McPherson is a moderate former editor of the Sentinel who had been hailed as the only Republican who can win in heavy Democratic Santa Cruz County. He's now locked in a runoff duel with Democrat Eric Hammer, having failed by 48 votes to achieve an outright majority and election in the June 5 primary election. But he says his decision to re-register as a "no-party-preference" voter is not connected to his looming runoff.

Editor's Note: This post was updated to reflect that the quote came from the Santa Cruz Sentinel. Updated 2:25 p.m June 20, 2012.

Call it good politics, call it kindness, call it grandstanding, call it whatever you want: Carly Burns just calls it amazing.

The 20-year-old Granite Bay woman was sitting at home, filling out a job application, when her phone rang Tuesday.

"Hello, this is Vice President Joe Biden," the caller said.

She thought it was a joke.

It wasn't.

Carly's mother and father, Dina and Michael Burns, the latter a partner in KP Public Affairs, had shaken Biden's hand minutes earlier at a fundraiser in the Sutter Club. They mentioned that their daughter had just graduated from the University of Oregon, had studied abroad in Tunisia, had been inspired by him, and had kept a newspaper from Election Day 2008 on the wall of her room.

"He said, 'Oh, get her on the phone,'" Dina recalled.

Biden congratulated Carly on her graduation, asked what she planned to do this summer, and quipped that her studies in the Middle East might come in handy for the Obama administration.

"We could probably use you in Syria," he quipped.

After two or three minutes, the conversation was over, a simple exchange in what seems to be an endless trail of fundraising and campaigning leading up to the November presidential election.

But Carly will never forget.

"It was actually surreal," she said. "It was amazing. I still can't believe he talked to me."

Dan Walters says California police unions and law enforcement groups usually get what they want in Sacramento -- but not this time.

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VIDEO: Dan Walters, in today's video report, says police unions and law enforcement groups don't always get what they want in Sacramento.

Expect busloads of students and other young people from Southern California and the Bay Area to arrive at the Capitol today.

Organizations including the California Fund for Youth Organizing, Communities United for Restorative Youth Justice and others are rallying on the west steps to support Assemblyman V. Manuel Pérez's resolution to establish a statewide Student and Youth Bill of Rights to improve education and other issues.

Pérez is to make opening remarks, followed by other speakers as well as performances by young musicians and artists. The event runs from 10 a.m. to 2 p.m.

Inside the building, the Senate Rules Committee takes up Gov. Jerry Brown's appointments starting at 1:30 p.m. in Room 113, with the following required to appear: Caroll Mortensen, director of the Department of Resources Recycling and Recovery; Robert T. O'Neill, director of the California State Lottery; Lottery Commission members Nathaniel Kirtman III, John Smolin and Phillip Tagami; and state Gambling Control Commission member Richard Schuetz.

Other committees meet in both houses. Click here for the Senate committee schedule, and click here for the Assembly's.

Elsewhere in Sacramento, the Asian and Pacific Islander Legislative Caucus is hosting its first annual film festival tonight at the Crest Theatre, 1013 K St., in Sacramento, showing two documentaries: "Vincent Who?" and "The Manzanar Fishing Club."

Doors open at 5:30 p.m. Click here for more information and showtimes.

CAKE AND CANDLES: Republican Assemblywoman Diane Harkey turns 61 today.

California's recession-battered economy is improving but at a "slower than desired pace," says a new overview by Beacon Economics, a private firm that advises both private and public clients, including the State Controller's Office.

"California's economy is not headed for a double dip and will continue to grow although reaching the state's pre-recession peaks on some indicators is still several years away," the Beacon report says, adding that technology, agriculture, travel and business services seem to be leading the recovery.

Beacon's forecast, to be presented today at an economic conference in Los Angeles, closely parallels the economic assumptions of Gov. Jerry Brown's latest state budget. It sees a 1.5 percent increase in non-farm employment this year, followed by a 1.9 percent gain in 2013.

"California is clearly past the bottom it hit during the recession in terms of consumer spending, the residential real estate market, state GDP, and international trade," says Beacon economic researcher Jordan Levine, said in a statement.

"And although Los Angeles County is lagging the state, it also didn't fall as far as surrounding communities during the recession," Levine continued. "The biggest worry we have for Los Angeles is the fact that manufacturing -- traditionally an important source of growth in the region -- does not seem to be experiencing the same renaissance being seen in much of the rest of the nation."

Vice President Joe Biden was in town this afternoon. Here's The Bee's pool report from the event:

Vice President Joe Biden arrived before 3 p.m. - a bit earlier than expected - at a fundraiser at the Sutter Club, near the state Capitol in downtown Sacramento.

Pool was ushered into the hall about 3:17 p.m., just in time to hear Gov. Jerry Brown at the podium ahead of Biden. Biden started speaking about three minutes later to a crowd of about 130 people.

"Nothing has changed," Biden said of Brown, who was governor before from 1975 to 1983. Biden said he met Brown in San Francisco in the 1970s. He said, "He was the smartest guy in American politics then. He's still the smartest guy in American politics."

"He speaks his mind," Biden said, and the crowd laughed when he said, "I like guys like that."

Biden said the fundamental question of the campaign is, "Are we going to restore the American middle class?"

"It's a simple proposition: When the middle class does well, the poor have a shot, and the wealthy do very well. When the middle class is not doing well, and atrophies, the poor, they're in trouble, and only a certain part of the super-wealthy do very well."

Biden said, "Ladies and gentlemen, I'm all for people being wealthy. It's a good thing; it's not a bad thing. I come from the state of Delaware, one of the wealthiest states in America, and I have never played this populist card because I don't believe it. Wealthy people are just as patriotic as poor people. But the truth is it doesn't trickle down."

Biden said on environmental policies that Mitt Romney is "an anathema to things that the Republican Party used to stand for."

Talking about the slumping economy, he said, "We believe that the way to deal with this God awful recession we've inherited is that everyone is in on the deal."

Biden predicted $800 million in super PAC spending against Obama.

"Rooms like this all over America, you are enabling us to do the only thing that will allow us to counter $800 million spent on carpet-bombing of the president of the United States, my friend, scurrilously attacking him with these super PACs, because that's what they're going to spend. Remember I said it. They're going to spend about $800 million unaccountable dollars attacking my friend. There's only one way to counter that. That's to put together the single most consequential ground game in the history of American politics. We did it last time. It's got to be better this time."

Biden said Democrats are at an advantage in part because, for the first time he could recall, "Republicans aren't hiding the ball," but are "saying exactly what they believe."

He said, "They're just saying flat-out what they believe."

Biden finished after about 18 minutes. He wore a dark suit and tie and spoke at a podium before a black backdrop. Two large tapestries hung on one side of the hall. Guests ate meats and cheeses and stood around white tablecloth-covered bar tables. There were shouts of "Four more years!" as Biden ended.

Before Biden spoke, Brown, who walked into the Sutter Club with senior adviser Nancy McFadden, encouraged attendees to raise "a lot of money" for Obama in what Brown called a "watershed election."

He said, "We're either looking forward, we're looking at investment, inclusion for all of us, or we pull back to a rather narrow perspective of what America could be."

State Senate President Pro Tem Darrell Steinberg, D-Sacramento, and Sacramento Mayor Kevin Johnson were also in the audience.

Biden said Johnson has a bright political future. Not only can he play basketball, Biden said, "He knows how to play politics, too."

From a campaign official:

On Tuesday afternoon, the Vice President will attend a fundraising event at the Sutter Club in Sacramento, California. Ticket prices start at $500. All proceeds will go to the Obama Victory Fund, a joint fundraising committee of Obama for America, the Democratic National Committee and several state Democratic parties.

Holding area was lavish for a one-person pool - including 20 bottles of Dasani, 10 cans of Coke, three Sprites, three 7-ups and one large tray of ice.

Rep. Dan Lungren has come to the defense of a Sacramento County Republican Party voter registration drive that has come under fire for filing potentially fraudulent registration cards.

Lungren said he supported the voter drive and understood that there were sufficient safeguards in place to prevent fraud. "The overall registration effort made by the party was very successful. I am unaware of any single registration that was paid for by that program that had any problems," he said last week, adding that it's possible that the voters filling out the forms made mistakes.

Sacramento County election officials forwarded information about the registration effort to the Secretary of State last month after finding irregularities with the voter registration cards submitted by circulators working for Momentum Political Services, a firm hired by the Sacramento County Republican Party.

Lungren said it was his understanding that cards collected by the drive had to go through multiple validity checks before a payment to the vendor would be made, though he said he had to distance himself from the operation because of campaign finance laws.

Elk Grove Democrat Ami Bera, who is challenging Lungren in November, has called for an investigation into the drive, writing in a letter to the Secretary of State that reports showed "3000 voter registration cards contained false or illegally changed information to inflate the amount of registered Republican voters in the newly drawn seventh Congressional District."

His campaign has raised questions about the Gold River Republican's involvement in the effort, pointing to a form submitted to county election officials that called the effort a "Lungren Voter Drive."

Lungren said last week that he supported the effort and did what was allowed under campaign finance laws to help the drive. At least two of his donors gave money to the county GOP's federal campaign committee last fall, but he declined to specify whether he solicited any contributions to help with voter registration.

"The law is so complicated that we're allowed to do certain things for certain days and then as you get closer to the election we're not allowed to. I can raise funds under certain circumstances and certain times and I can't raise it in others," he said. "Sometimes I can tell people there's a registration drive going on and if they want to send money they can, other times I can't even say that. So whatever the constraints were, we worked within them."

Representatives for the Secretary of State and the Sacramento County District Attorney's office, which would have power to prosecute, declined to comment on any complaints or investigations into the matter, citing confidentiality policies. The Secretary of State's elections fraud division said in a letter responding to Bera's complaint that they are "evaluating" the materials the campaign sent.

Lungren said he supports an investigation if evidence shows one is merited.

"Look, if there's any foul play, they ought to look at it, on any side," he said.

RELATED POSTS:

Suspicious voter registration cards found in Sacramento County

California legislation that would have restricted -- and possibly eliminated -- news media access to recordings of 911 emergency calls died in the Senate Public Safety Committee on Tuesday.

Assemblywoman Norma Torres, D-Pomona, for many years a 911 dispatcher, said her bill, Assembly Bill 1275, was needed to avoid disclosure of sensitive medical information and thus discourage the public from making 911 calls. She said 911-call access benefits just "tabloids and gossip magazines."

However, representatives of newspapers and broadcast media said that although it was aimed at medical and other personal information, the practical effect would be to close access to all 911 calls and thus make it impossible to investigate how authorities are responding to emergencies.

AB 1275 was backed by public employee unions and law enforcement groups but Public Safety's chairwoman, Berkeley Democrat Loni Hancock, agreed with the media representatives that its enactment would chill news media oversight of emergency operations and "needs a great deal of work."

With Hancock's opposition, the bill didn't receive a single affirmative vote in the committee.

How did the East Bay - Oakland and Berkeley specifically - evolve from a conservative Republican bastion into a region with a global reputation for left-wing politics?

John Curl, an inside player and observer of the region's complex political matrix, explains the transition in a lengthy, and more than slightly critical, examination of one of its most enduring characters, Berkeley Mayor (and former assemblyman) Tom Bates. And it's creating a stir in Berkeley's hyper-active political community, where minute shades of ideological difference can have a major effect.

Bates, whose wife, Loni Hancock, is now an East Bay state senator, is quoted extensively in the article, "Tom Bates and the Secret Government of Berkeley," thanks to an oral history archive in which Bates participated during a lull in his nearly half-century-long political career. And some of his pithiest and most candid observations are about what happens behind the scenes in the Capitol and how its appearances conflict with political reality.

Curl's 54-page article was first published in the Berkeley Daily Planet. Although he praises Hancock for her decades-long activism on behalf of leftish causes, he depicts Bates as posing as a true-blue progressive while aiding pro-development forces, particularly the expansion of the city's immense University of California campus.

Bates did not respond to a request for comment on Curl's monograph.

What, California has no golf courses?

Bill Berryhill and Steve Knight are planning a two-day golfing "Duel In The Desert" featuring the two incumbent Republican assemblymen, who currently are running for separate state Senate seats.

Now the kicker: The event is in Arizona.

For $3,000 per person, donors can join Berryhill and Knight in teeing off July 12 at the We-Ko-Pa Golf Club in Fort McDowell, Ariz., and the following day at the Grayhawk Golf Club in Scottsdale, Ariz. Resort lodging is included, but not airfare.

Proceeds will be split evenly between the campaigns of Berryhill, a Stockton resident, and Knight, of Palmdale.

Despite its billing as a "Duel In The Desert," Berryhill characterized the event as a golf outing rather than a competition. The two days of fun in the summer sun are planned during a monthlong legislative recess.

Why Arizona?

Berryhill said he thought it was odd to hold the event out-of-state. "Quite frankly, I don't like having to go to Arizona," he said, adding that lobbyists organized the event and chose the location.

Knight could not be reached immediately for comment.

Dan Walters says people at the Capitol are waiting on many things, including a finalized budget.

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Dan Walters Daily: In today's video, Dan says "there's a lot of waiting going on."

Vice President Joe Biden will hit California today to keynote the 40th Annual International Convention of the American Federation of State, County and Municipal Employees, in Los Angeles. AFSCME is celebrating its 75th anniversary.

Then he'll travel north for a fundraiser at Sacramento's Sutter Club. Tickets for the event, to raise money for the Obama Victory Fund, start at $500.

Tickets prices begin at $1,000 for another fundraiser today, a shoe-shine event to raise money for Assemblyman Das Williams. But then, he's working for the money - he says he'll shine some himself.

CASTING CALL: If you're out and about at 1:30 p.m., you can catch a fly-casting competition organized by Cal Trout and Trout Unlimited. They're out to promote AB 1961, a measure aimed restoring habitat for salmon, trout and steelhead. Scheduled participants include Assemblyman Jared Huffman, Sen. Tom Harman, Assemblyman Wes Chesbro, Sen. Bob Huff, Assemblywoman Alyson Huber, Sen. Tom Berryhill, and Assemblyman Martin Garrick. Alert readers will note that it's a bipartisan affair.

In need of a shoe shine?

Assemblyman Das Williams is at your service.

The Santa Barbara Democrat is inviting his donors to get their footwear polished and fixed at Russo's Shoe Repair across from the state Capitol tomorrow.

"They're just one of those places that, I bring them a pair of shoes that looks like it's on death's door and they make 'em look magical," said Williams, who is even offering to shine some himself.

An invitation touts the 5 p.m. fundraiser as a birthday celebration, but this party favor doesn't come cheap.

Tickets to the event, which benefits Williams' re-election bid, start at $1,000, though he says he's letting invitees come for less.

Williams isn't the first legislator to use fashion or style to lure donors to an event. Fundraisers last year featured custom suit tailoring and a designer trunk sale offering discounted items from St. John, Chanel and Gucci.

The first-term lawmaker said offering shoe shining at his reception seemed like a creative and cost-effective way to allow supporters to put their best foot forward.

"Really, the idea just came from wanting to make sure that in this age of austerity that we have fun events, but ones that don't cost a lot of money," said Williams, who turns 38 next week. "And it's a fun little birthday shindig and allows people to do what they need to get done, which is probably that they'll have time to get their shoes shined or bring their shoes in to get repaired or whatever, but still get a chance to do that and hang out, and just have a drink and take a load off."

Das Williams Shoe Shine Event

Jim Sanders contributed to this post.

Vice President Joe Biden, in California for two days this week, is scheduled to attend a fundraiser at the Sutter Club in downtown Sacramento on Tuesday.

Tickets for the afternoon fundraiser, to raise money for the Obama Victory Fund, start at $500.

Biden was expected to speak earlier Tuesday in Los Angeles, at a convention of the American Federation of State, County and Municipal Employees. He is expected to attend a campaign event in Carmel on Wednesday.

PHOTO CREDIT: Vice President Joe Biden in March. AP Photo/Carolyn Kaster

Senate President Pro Tem Darrell Steinberg, D-Sacramento, defended the Legislature's deadline passage of a main budget bill Friday without most of the implementing language, responding to critics who suggested lawmakers had rushed through a plan to maintain their pay.

"You know what?" Steinberg said. "I gotta tell you, I work about 15 hours a day. And we passed a budget that is balanced in the budget year, the second year, the third year and with a surplus in the fourth year. So we're doing our work. And we're going to continue doing our work."

"I'm going to stand up for the people who get elected to these offices, who work hard, and who do the very best by the people," Steinberg added. "And I know it's not popular. And I know that it's easy as heck to take the shots. But I'm proud of what we did on Friday. And we'll finish the job now."

Legislative Democrats and Gov. Jerry Brown largely disagree over how to treat the state's welfare-to-work program, CalWORKs. The governor wants to remake CalWORKs by imposing harsher consequences for parents who do not find a job or seek training. Brown wants to reduce grants and cut off child care and other assistance for those parents.

Gov. Jerry Brown urged state regulators today to reduce the use of toxic flame retardants in upholstered furniture.

"Toxic flame retardants are found in everything from high chairs to couches and a growing body of evidence suggests that these chemicals harm human health and the environment," the Democratic governor said in a prepared statement. "We must find better ways to meet fire safety standards by reducing and eliminating -- wherever possible -- dangerous chemicals."

Brown's office said in a release that the governor asked the state Bureau of Electronic and Appliance Repair, Home Furnishings and Thermal Insulation to recommend changes to state furniture flammability standards. Brown's office said the standards are four decades old and could be changed to reduce the use of toxic flame retardants while also ensuring safety.

The directive follows studies Brown's office said show health concerns related to exposure to flame retardant chemicals.

Former Democratic state Sen. Jenny Oropeza would be honored posthumously with a Los Angeles County highway overcrossing named after her under a proposal zipping through the Legislature.

Senate Concurrent Resolution 79 awaits final action in the Assembly after being approved by the Senate without a dissenting vote, 33-0. The Assembly Transportation Committee will consider the measure today.

Crafted by Sen. Ted Lieu, D-Torrance, the resolution would designate a section of State Route 1 near Tesoro Refinery in Los Angeles County as the Honorable Jenny Oropeza Memorial Overcrossing.

SCR 79 noted that Oropeza, a Long Beach Democrat, played a key role in acquiring $107 million in state, federal, railroad and other funds to eliminate train and car conflicts by completing the overcrossing on that busy stretch of roadway.

Oropeza died in October 2010 after a four-year career in the Senate. She also served six years in the Assembly. Oropeza battled numerous health problems during her Capitol career, including liver cancer, a tumor and an abdominal blood clot.

"During her time as a member of the California Legislature, Jenny Oropeza was a champion for public transportation, health care, education, clean air, equality, and prevention of cancer," SCR 79 said.

Signs identifying the Jenny Oropeza Memorial Overcrossing would be erected once donated funds are collected to pay for them.

PHOTO CREDIT: Sen. Jenny Oropeza, 2006. The Sacramento Bee/Brian Baer

* Corrected at 11:35 a.m. Monday to say that the resolution's author is Sen. Ted Lieu, D-Torrance.

Dan Walters ponders the Legislature's upcoming vote on high-speed rail funds.

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Thought Friday's budget votes signaled an end to this year's fiscal fight under the dome?

Nope.

While lawmakers approved a budget bill and six "trailer' measures Friday to meet their constitutional deadline and keep their paychecks coming, some of the biggest issues remain unresolved.

Democratic leaders and Gov. Jerry Brown are expected to continue working on working out their differences - a several hundred million dollar gap - this week, with a goal of getting the remaining language to the governor's desk by June 30. Proposals concerning CalWorks and redevelopment dollars were among the sticking points as of Friday's floor votes.

By some counts, as many as additional 22 trailer bills will come to the floor to complete the budget package. That's about three times as many measures as the Legislature took up in Friday's speedy floor sessions.

Both houses are scheduled to convene for floor sessions today. Senate President Pro Tem Darrell Steinberg asked members to keep their own scheduled flexible this week in anticipation of some possibly lengthy sessions on those trailer bills.

The budget isn't the only issue subject to ongoing negotiations.

Lawmakers are trying to close a deal on a package of bills aimed at aiding homeowners hurt by the mortgage crisis. The joint conference committee created to work out the details of the proposals could come out with its draft report as soon as this week.

DAN WALTERS DAILY: Find out what Bee columnist Dan Walters thinks is next on the Legislature's to do list.

NEW JOBS: Steinberg spokesman Mark Hedlund has been promoted to communications director. He replaces Alicia Trost, who worked her final budget vote on Friday before starting a new job as Communications Department manager for the Bay Area Rapid Transit District. Rhys Williams, who worked on the Proposition 29 campaign and for former Senate President Pro Tem Don Perata's Oakland mayoral bid, has joined the office as a press secretary.

BIRTHDAY: Assemblyman V. Manuel Perez, D-Coachella, turns 39 today.

Republican Peter Tateishi has beaten Barbara Ortega for the right to butt heads with Democrat Ken Cooley in the November election for the 8th Assembly District seat.

Tateishi's lead over Ortega for second place had grown from 657 after precinct counts to 2,612 votes on Friday as officials tallied write-ins, provisionals and other ballots received on election day.

With fewer than 5,700 such ballots remaining to be counted in Sacramento County, and with only a portion of those from the 8th Assembly District, Ortega conceded defeat to Tateishi late Friday through a campaign aide.

"Given the number of votes that are left to count, we don't think that she can make up the difference," said Cristina Rivera, spokeswoman for Ortega's campaign.

"So she's willing to concede that Peter is the top Republican vote getter, but she's very happy with the campaign that she ran ... She has no regrets," Rivera said.

Cooley, the only Democrat in the race, finished an easy first by garnering 42.8 percent of votes cast. Tateishi collected 23.5 percent, followed by Ortega, 20.1 percent. The remainder were split among three other candidates.

Both Cooley, a state Senate aide, and Tateishi, chief of staff to Republican Rep. Dan Lungren of Gold River, said Friday that they look forward to their looming showdown in November.

The 8th Assembly District extends from Citrus Heights to the Sacramento County line south of Wilton.

On a mostly party-line vote, both houses of the Legislature sent Gov. Jerry Brown a $92.1 billion spending plan Friday without a deal on welfare cuts.

Lawmakers faced a Friday deadline to pass the budget in order to avoid losing their pay and expense money. It marked the second budget lawmakers passed using their new majority-vote authority under Proposition 25, rather than the supermajority vote required prior to 2011.

While lawmakers sent Brown the main budget bill, Assembly Bill 1464, they did not send him the bulk of more than two dozen "trailer" bills that actually explain how to cut programs and raise revenues to carry out the expenditures. Senate President Pro Tem Darrell Steinberg, D-Sacramento, said that is because legislative Democrats and Brown still must resolve "small but important differences."

Democrats believe that they satisfied the Proposition 25 requirement by sending AB 1464 alone. Last year, Controller John Chiang cited their failure to pass all of the revenue-related trailer bills by the June 15 deadline as one reason to dock their pay, but his power to interpret their budget was curtailed by a Sacramento Superior Court decision in April.

Sen. Mark Leno, D-San Francisco, said Brown would sign the main budget bill and all related bills before the July 1 start of the next fiscal year.

The Democrats' budget relies on cuts to courts, counties and state workers, along with an $8.5 billion November tax hike on sales and high-income earners. It also includes funds from now-defunct redevelopment agencies, borrowing from special funds and extending cuts to in-home care, child care and welfare job training.

As lawmakers prepare to approve a budget bill today, Senate Democratic leader Darrell Steinberg released a video address defending the plan, but noted that "there are small but important differences to resolve in the coming days" with Gov. Jerry Brown.

"This budget is a sober one," Steinberg said. "Democrats are on the verge of eliminating the stubborn structural deficit and we are going to get it done, with or without Republican votes."

Approving the budget bill today -- even without the accompanying legislation to resolve the differences with Brown -- allows lawmakers to continue to collect paychecks under Proposition 25.

The Sacramento Democrat defended the spending plan against criticism that it relies on one-time fixes to bridge a predicted $15.7 billion gap.

"More deep cuts in our view would be punitive, especially when there are other options that don't carry as much risk to children, to our economy and to people's lives," Steinberg said.

Dan Walters questions claims that the budget up for a vote today is really gimmick-free.

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Dan Walters Daily: Dan isn't so sure the state budget under discussion is as gimmick-free as its authors say.

You could put some money on the likelihood that the Legislature will pass the budget bill today, an action that will ensure lawmakers continue to be paid.

Here's the operative language from Proposition 25 that's driving the process:

(h) Notwithstanding any other provision of law or of this Constitution, including subdivision (c) of this section, Section 4 of this article, and Sections 4 and 8 of Article III, in any year in which the budget bill is not passed by the Legislature by midnight on June 15, there shall be no appropriation from the current budget or future budget to pay any salary or reimbursement for travel or living expenses for Members of the Legislature during any regular or special session for the period from midnight on June 15 until the day that the budget bill is presented to the Governor. No salary or reimbursement for travel or living expenses forfeited pursuant to this subdivision shall be paid retroactively.

That doesn't mean, however, that Gov. Jerry Brown and Democratic legislative leaders have made a budget deal. They're still haggling over issues ranging from CalWorks to county funds. Those talks could continue into next week.

Pay or work schedule changes for state workers are also still up in the air.

SEIU Local 1000 is waiting for a response from the Brown administration to a proposal to that includes flexible furloughs. Legislative leaders would clearly prefer not to get involved.

CAKE and CANDLES: Happy birthday to Assemblywoman Nora Campos, D-San Jose, who was born on this date in 1965.

Each year, the California Chamber of Commerce chooses a few dozen bills it and other business groups oppose and labels them as "job killers" for imposing new regulations, business costs or taxes.

All are carried by Democratic legislators and most are sponsored by labor unions, environmental groups, consumer activists and personal injury lawyers.

Despite strong Democratic majorities in the Legislature, the chamber and its allies have been remarkably successful in blocking or neutralizing the targeted measures. Only a few have made it through the Legislature and most of the survivors have been vetoed by governors of both parties.

It's been frustrating for the sponsoring groups, which explains why Consumer Attorneys of California, whose bills have often been tagged with the "job killer" epithet, is distributing a study by two university professors that charts the "job killer" campaign in California and other states and chastises the media for repeating the term, saying they "contribute to the deterioration of honest political discourse."

Peter Dreier of Occidental College in Los Angeles and Christopher Martin of the University of Northern Iowa studied use of the "job killer" term in four national media outlets and say that while it's been widely used, its veracity, when applied to a specific piece of legislation or regulatory action, has rarely been investigated.

"At the state level, California has been a hotbed of 'job killer' allegations," they write, adding, "the news media often simply repeat the Chamber's own label of these proposed bills as 'job killers' without providing any scrutiny or analysis."

They cited as one example a 2011 Associated Press story about a California bill to ban use of polystyrene containers for food purchases. However, the story did not apply the term gratuitously, but rather attributed the label to the Chamber of Commerce, as do virtually all uses of the term, which is standard journalistic practice.

By the way, the chamber's current 25-bill "job killer" list can be found here.

Republican Sen. Joel Anderson gave a lengthy speech blasting "Roger's law" on the Senate floor Thursday.

"I don't support Roger's law now and I will never support Roger's law," the Alpine Republican said.

One problem. There's no longer a Roger associated with the bill that was up for a vote.

Assembly Bill 2127, which allows work release credits for inmates who participate in educational, vocational, substance abuse or parenting programs, originally included Assemblyman Roger Hernandez, D-West Covina, as an author.

But he took his name off the proposal after critics, concerned about how the bill affects drunken driving offenders, raised issues about his own recent DUI arrest.

The focus on DUIs and the former author struck some supporters as off mark.

"Woah, how do I close on that," said Sen. Gloria Negrete McLeod, who presented the bill on the floor, said after Anderson wrapped up his remarks.

The bill, which is supported by counties and sheriffs but opposed by district attorneys, cleared the Senate on a vote of 21-14.

PHOTO CREDIT: Sen. Joel Anderson, debates "Roger's Law." Associated Press/Rich Pedroncelli

California's depressed construction industry generated just 32,000 new housing units between 2010 and 2011, a new Census Bureau report says, a fraction of the 200,000-plus units that California once produced each year.

The 32,000-unit increase, from slightly under 13.7 million units to slightly over 13.7 million, was less than a quarter of one-percent, even though the state's population was growing at least twice as fast. Or to put it another way, with about 12 percent of the nation's population, California had just 6 percent of the nation's year-to-year housing growth.

Traditionally, housing construction has been a major factor in recovery from recession, but it hasn't been happening in California, in part because the recession itself was rooted in the collapse of the housing industry, rather than some other sector of the economy.

Overall, the nation added nearly 500,000 housing units during the one-year period, according to the Census Bureau report, which included a list of the nation's 100 fastest growing counties, in terms of housing units. No California county is on that list, which is dominated by communities in the South and Southwest and topped by Long County, GA, with a 6.3 percent one-year gain.

A number of Texas counties are on the list. Texas had a one-year gain of 97,000 units, almost exactly three times as many as California's increase.

Dan Walters says welfare is the last big sticking point between Gov. Jerry Brown and legislative Democrats on the budget.

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VIDEO: Dan Walters, in today's video report, names welfare as the last big issue facing California lawmakers on the budget.

It's time to start watching the clock. Legislators needs to pass a budget by midnight Friday night or they could see their paychecks whacked.

What kind of a budget will they send Gov. Jerry Brown? Kevin Yamamura reports in today's Bee that it looks like they'll reject $1 billion of the cuts he's requested.

In non-budget news, the tents on the Capitol's north steps and lawn will shade high school seniors who've won Comcast scholarships this year.

Elected officials listed to attend include State Superintendent of Public Instruction Tom Torlakson, Democratic Sen. Michael Rubio, Assembly Republican leader Connie Conway, and Democratic Assembly members Wesley Chesbro, Rich Gordon, Jerry Hill, Jared Huffman and Bob Wieckowski.

The event runs from 11:30 a.m. to 1 p.m. The students also get a tour of the Capitol and admission to a River Cats game.

Both the Senate and the Assembly have scheduled floor sessions this morning. The upper house will welcome as guest chaplain the evangelist Luis Palau, who's in town for a festival this weekend at Cal Expo, before he heads to the Assembly side.

Palau got a few digs in at Sacramento Mayor Kevin Johnson this week, as Ryan Lillis reported in this post: "It took him a while, but he got married at last. And we're very proud of that. It's OK to say that, right? The city knows about it?"

Hmm. If he could get away with that, there's plenty of material for him under the dome.

CAKE AND CANDLES: Democratic Assemblywoman Betsy Butler turns 49 today.

Jerry Brown's administration says it will support a Canadian company's effort to vaporize garbage and turn it into electricity in Monterey County, despite concerns raised by environmentalists.

Plasco Energy Group's $175 million project is at the center of a regulatory dispute over gasification, an emerging technology in which garbage, under intense heat, is converted into a synthetic fuel used to generate electricity.

At issue is whether the Plasco project qualifies as a renewable energy project under state law. The designation is critical to the project's financing, Plasco says, because it will allow it to sell electricity at a premium to utilities that must buy one-third of their electricity from renewable sources by 2020.

The Department of Resources, Recycling and Recovery said under Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger in 2010 that the Plasco facility could be considered a renewable energy project. But the department reversed its decision last month, rescinding its original opinion while planning an overall review of how it evaluates so-called "waste-to-energy" projects.

Environmentalists had protested the state's original interpretation of the law. They called the gasification technology unproven and said it would release toxic contaminants into the air.

On June 1, the Brown administration suggested it will step in on Plasco's behalf.

In a letter to the company, Nancy McFadden, a senior adviser to Gov. Jerry Brown, said Brown's office "will be supportive of legislation during the current session to allow Plasco's project to proceed on a pilot basis and be considered an eligible renewable energy resource under state law."

She added a hand-printed note: "We can make this work."

U.S. Surgeon General Regina Benjamin was in Sacramento on Wednesday to talk up wellness.

About 70 California health advocates and others were on hand at the California Museum as Benjamin unveiled the National Prevention Council's new action plan aimed at helping all Americans stay healthy at all stages of life.

"Health does not occur in the doctor's office or hospitals alone," Benjamin told them. "It also occurs where we work, where we learn, where we play."

All 17 federal departments and agencies on the council will be combining efforts for the first time to reach goals such as increasing tobacco-free environments as well as access to healthy, affordable foods. Benjamin also pointed to the Environmental Protection Agency's work on enforcing the Clear Air Act and preventing asthma.

The plan, which complements efforts already under way, is meant to tackle obesity, tobacco use, health disparities among population groups, chronic disease and other issues. It stresses empowering people themselves, encouraging healthy and safe community environments, increasing preventive services and eliminating health disparities among population groups.

Some examples include businesses running carpool programs to cut air pollution, communities setting up diabetes prevention programs, health care professionals using social media to encourage healthy living, and health care providers hiring more qualified staff from minority groups.

After Benjamin spoke, panelists discussed the importance of getting healthy lunches in schools and eliminating health disparities so people of color are not more likely to be obese or have chronic conditions than the population as a whole.

Others stressed the importance of youth in any health movement.

"We see young people not as a problem," said Olis Simmons, the founder of the Oakland's Youth UpRising. "We see young people as our partners in changing the community."

The California State Association of Counties, whose support Gov. Jerry Brown has relied upon since taking office last year, immediately slammed a Democratic plan Wednesday to take $250 million that had gone to local governments under deals with now-defunct redevelopment agencies.

Counties had long-standing "pass-through" agreements with redevelopment agencies to receive a share of property tax dollars each year. CSAC Executive Director Paul McIntosh said Wednesday that past agreements are still legally valid and should still be upheld.

"I'm not sure how they can suspend legally binding agreements on contracts," McIntosh said Wednesday of Democratic lawmakers. CSAC sent a letter (PDF) this afternoon to the Legislature expressing its opposition.

Brown did not include the $250 million in his budget. President Pro Tem Darrell Steinberg, D-Sacramento, said he believes the money should be divided up like any other property tax dollars among schools and local governments. He said counties have benefited generally by the elimination of redevelopment agencies, suggesting they should not complain about this loss of funds.

California's budget benefits by any additional dollars that go to schools because it reduces the state's burden. Lawmakers will not pass a bill stating that this money is theirs, but just assume it as one revenue source that helps erase the $15.7 billion deficit.

"This occurs by operation of law," said Steinberg, an attorney. "We don't take an affirmative act to appropriate the money. That's what occurs."

McIntosh said counties have already included this money in their budgets for the next fiscal year. He said Yolo County, for instance, had an agreement for $5.5 million, equal to nearly one-tenth of its $56 million general fund.

Forty-three Capitol demonstrators were arrested Wednesday after they and hundreds of others crowded around the rotunda chanting protests against proposed cuts to homecare services for those with disabilities or special needs.

A small cadre of California Highway Patrol officers escorted the protesters from the scene, ending a loud demonstration organized by the Service Employees International Union, which represents workers who provide in-home support services.

During the lengthy union protest, demonstrators shouted chants loud enough to be heard through much of the Capitol, including, "Jerry Brown -- shame on you!" and "hey, hey, ho, ho -- budget cuts have got to go!"

Violators were cited and released on two misdemeanors -- demonstrating without a permit and obstructing or interfering with the use of state property, CHP Officer Sean Kennedy said.

Officers removed the offenders without incident, escorting them to a nearby committee room, where they were detained briefly. Those who came to the Capitol planning to be arrested for civil disobedience wore red armbands.

As CHP warned protesters to disperse, Bonita Munoz, a 56-year-old Sacramento caregiver, told the crowd that she was willing to be arrested for the cause - "to save the cuts from our clients, so our clients won't be homeless."

Charles Myers, a 49-year-old Sacramentan who suffers from cerebral palsy and chronic arthritis, said that "I need my homecare. If I don't have homecare, what would I do?"

The Legislature is expected to close a multibillion-dollar shortfall by adopting a new state budget Friday.

Photo caption: California Highway Patrol officers arrest Arminda Sanchez, of Napa, at the state Capitol as she and a group of IHSS workers and clients where arrested while protesting in the Capitol Rotunda on Wednesday, June 13, 2012. Photo and video by Hector Amezcua

* Updated at 4:25 p.m. with a firm count of arrestees, 43, and confirmation that they were cited for two misdemeanors.

Two new political reforms - a "top-two" primary election and redistricting by an independent commission - "disrupted established incumbents" in June 5 balloting, the Public Policy Institute of California concludes, and "the political establishment suffered some defeats" but the impacts were not dramatic.

The PPIC study contrasts what happened in the 2012 primary, using various measures of political patterns, with what happened in the five previous election cycles.

While outcomes in 153 congressional and legislative districts were markedly different in many respects, PPIC researchers Eric McGhee and Daniel Krimm write, "All incumbents who ran this year advanced to the fall campaign, and all but four of them finished in first place."

Some of those incumbents, however, will either face each other in November, thanks to the redrawn districts, or must overcome challenges from within their own parties. Most notably, Southern California Congressmen Brad Sherman and Howard Berman spent millions in their duel and by finishing 1-2 in the top-two primary, will duke it out again in the fall.

In a freshly updated budget plan, legislative Democrats showed Wednesday how they replace more than $1 billion in Gov. Jerry Brown's cuts to programs for the poor with a lower reserve and accounting changes.

Democrats now want a $544 million reserve, just over half of Brown's proposed $1.05 billion rainy-day fund and on par with last year's amount. They believe the state can gain $330 million through different accounting for K-14 education funds, as well as $250 million more than Brown projected from tax dollars that once flowed to defunct redevelopment agencies.

They also capture $50 million more than Brown did from a multi-state settlement with banks over mortgage abuses.

In a Capitol press conference, Senate President Pro Tem Darrell Steinberg and Assembly Speaker John A. Pérez stressed that their budget meets Brown's requirements of being balanced over the next three fiscal years and then produces a surplus in 2015-16. They emphasized how close their proposal is to Brown's, but said they did not want to cut as deeply into the safety net.

"I strongly believe that the differences between the governor's proposal and our proposal are bridgeable," Pérez said. "Frankly, we're not only on the same page as the governor, we're in the same paragraph."

One tiny word can make all the difference.

And one slip of a finger might remain in print for years without correction.

Buried deep in 55 pages of California Senate rules, for example, is a big smile for writing perfectionists.

Here it is, a sentence that expands upon a rule that each Senate select committee terminates upon adjournment of the regular session in which it was created:

"In deciding whether to re-establish a select committee established in a previous regular session, the Committee on Rules shall consider the extent to which the select committee successfully achieved its assigned objections."

Surely, it meant "objectives."

Objections, anyone?

Dan Walters says the increasing number of Latinos in California could change the political landscape.

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VIDEO: Dan Walters, in today's video report, says that California's growing number of Latinos could change the state's political landscape.

There's nothing like a budget deadline to bring political theater to the Capitol.

Recipients of In-Home Supportive Services and their caregivers are gearing up for a rally, assembling early to make signs and hang banners before gathering on the south steps at 10:30 a.m. to urge lawmakers to pass "a better alternative" to program cuts, as a news release puts it.

IHSS organizers also anticipate an attempt around noon to take over the rotunda. Ten demonstrators were arrested Tuesday after an officer warned that they would be arrested if they remained in a Capitol hallway, Torey Van Oot reports in this post.

At the same time as the rotunda action, organizers say 5,000 protesters will link arms around the exterior of the Capitol building in what they're calling a "circle of care."

Home-care advocates aren't the only protesters today. Members of the California Federation of Teachers join students to decry what they're calling "the death of education" via budget cuts, complete with a hearse and a coffin carrying grievance cards signed by Los Angeles Community College District students. That event starts at 11 a.m. over by the fish pond.

As Friday's deadline approaches, here's a provision in Gov. Jerry Brown's budget that hasn't drawn much notice: A proposal to cut off thousands of retirees who return to work for the state. Jon Ortiz and Phillip Reese have details in today's Bee.

While protesters rally at the Capitol, U.S. Surgeon General Regina M. Benjamin will be a few blocks away at the California Museum announcing a new national initiative that aims to keep Americans healthy. State schools chief Tom Torlakson will join Benjamin at a roundtable discussion about the plan. The event starts at 10:30 a.m. at 1020 O St. Learn more at this link.

In his first official response this week, Gov. Jerry Brown said the budget proposed by legislative Democrats includes tough cuts but is "not structurally balanced and puts us into a hole in succeeding years."

Brown focused specifically on Democrats' rejection of his overhaul of welfare-to-work, which would save $880 million in the first year by creating significantly new programs with harsher consequences for welfare families. The governor took exception to the idea that Democrats instead want to save a smaller amount for one year by allowing parents of young children to receive welfare grants without trying to find a job.

"Last year, legislators enacted major reforms that cut spending on prisons and eliminated redevelopment," Brown said in an e-mail statement. "This year, we need additional structural reforms to cut spending on an ongoing basis, including welfare reform that's built on President Clinton's framework and focused on getting people back to work."

"I don't know that President Clinton was dealing with an economy like ours today," Sen. Mark Leno, D-San Francisco, said earlier in his budget committee when a Brown aide made the same argument.

Police arrested 10 demonstrators for protesting proposed budget cuts to in-home care for low-income elderly and disabled Californians at the Capitol this afternoon.

Gov. Jerry Brown called for cutting hours and services provided by the program as part of his proposal to close a projected $15.7 billion budget deficit. Negotiations with Democratic legislative leaders, who are seeking to craft a budget with fewer cuts to heath and welfare programs, are continuing ahead of Friday's deadline for the Legislature to approve a budget.

The demonstration in the halls of the Capitol was part of an ongoing effort organized by SEIU United Long Term Care Workers and other unions representing In-Home Supportive Services workers.

Hundreds of supporters of the program, including providers and some recipients, filled the first-floor hallway in the Capitol at about 1 p.m., chanting "si se puede" and "hey, hey, ho, ho, these budget cuts have got to go."

Ten individuals standing shoulder to shoulder and linking arms around the entrance to the Governor's Office, including one man in a wheelchair, chose to face arrest after hearing an officer's warning that they would be arrested if they remained in place. They were escorted out of the hallway as other demonstrators cheered them on.

A spokesman for California Highway Patrol said all 10 were cited for demonstrating without a permit and obstructing or interfering with the use of state property and released.

IHSS provider Lesia Louro, one of the arrested protesters, said she was concerned about how the cuts would affect the woman she cares for as part of the program.

"By them cutting her hours, it's going to hurt her because she has seizures," said Louro, who is from Barstow.

The remaining protesters filed out of the building after the arrests, chanting "We'll be back." Organizers are planning a candlelight vigil later tonight and more protests tomorrow, when they say 5,000 supporters will be on Capitol grounds.

PHOTO: An officer reads two protesters asks two protesters outside Gov. Jerry Brown's office whether they would like to leave or face arrest . Torey Van Oot, Sacramento Bee.

It was an honor system: California's redistricting commissioners received $300 for each day they reported working, often from home.

The result was that some commissioners were paid far more than others in the redrawing of legislative and congressional districts, records show.

Commissioner Michael Ward received the most compensation for time served, $68,400 in per diem, while Commissioner Maria Blanco pocketed the least, $35,100, records show.

The disparity between Ward and Blanco represents 111 more days in which the former reported that he had conducted commission business between late 2010 and this month. The panel is scheduled to shut down July 1.

For six of the first seven months in 2011, Ward reported averaging more than five days per week on commission business. In each of his two busiest months, he reported working 28 days and receiving $8,400 in per diem each month.

Ward, a practicing chiropractor when named to the panel, said he was burning the midnight oil studying redistricting publications and handling paperwork required of commissioners in the first few months of its existence.

"My knowledge base, at the start, was very low," Ward said. "Those first few months, I was getting four or five hours sleep, reading and studying like crazy. That's what was required, just to be competent."

The campaign against Gov. Jerry Brown's November ballot measure to raise taxes took shape this morning, with a group of conservative interests announcing a new website and name, "Californians for Reforms and Jobs, Not Taxes."

The proponents, as expected, include the Howard Jarvis Taxpayers Association, the National Federation of Independent Business, California, and the Small Business Action Committee.

The campaign is unlikely to begin in earnest on either side until later this summer. The Democratic governor is proposing to raise the state sales tax and income taxes on California's highest earners.

Jon Coupal, president of the Jarvis group, told reporters this morning, "We look forward to giving this tax increase the inglorious defeat that it so richly deserves."

California election officials estimate that 23.7 million Californians could potentially vote - i.e. they are citizens over the age of 18 -- and know that 17.2 million of them are registered to vote.

They're still counting votes from last week's election, but it appears that 5.4 million ballots were cast in person or by mail. That was just 31.6 percent of registered voters and 23 percent of potential voters, a record-low turnout for a presidential primary.

Turnout will certainly be higher for the November presidential election, but how high? Four years ago, there were 13.7 million votes cast in California, nearly 80 percent of those registered and nearly 60 percent of those eligible.

Overall voter turnout in California is among the lowest of any state, but it could be much higher, the Washington-based Center for American Progress says in a new report, if more of the state's fast-growing Latino population would register and vote.

The organization says that there are 4.4 million potential voters among Latinos who are either age-eligible citizens who not registered (2 million) or who are eligible to become citizens (2.4 million), by far the largest numbers of potential voters in any state.

"The numbers don't lie," Angela Kelley, the organization's vice president for immigration policy, said in a statement. "U.S.-born Latinos coming of age as voters have a close connection to their family and their communities' immigrant roots. Add to that the immigrants themselves who are naturalizing and you've got a powerful lens through which candidates from both parties are being examined. If politicians either ignore or demonize immigrants, they can say 'adios' to ever getting a second look by these voters."

A recent Census Bureau report indicated that Latinos are approaching 40 percent of California's population and will become its largest ethic group within a few years.

Sen. Rod Wright folded on today's round of Internet poker debate under the dome, pulling his legalization legislation from a committee agenda before it could come up for a vote.

Senate Bill 1463, which would legalize and regulate online poker in California, was scheduled for a vote in the Senate Governmental Organization Committee today. Wright, who chairs the committee, announced to a crowded room at the start of the hearing that he decided to pull the bill from the agenda, sparking an exodus to the hallway.

Despite months of talks and some recent amendments, the legislation faced opposition from major gambling tribes and card rooms, including many that support the idea of legalizing online poker but oppose the specifics in the Inglewood Democrat's bill. The critics say the current version of the bill gives too much power to horse racing and Las Vegas and international gambling interests, while shutting out some California tribes.

Supporters of legalizing Internet poker in general say the move could raise millions for the state in new revenues, arguing that such business and money is currently going to off-shore operations.

Wright spokeswoman Jennifer Hanson said the senator "can't say for certain this bill is still going to move," though she said it was possible that he will consider another round of amendments to the current language.

RELATED STORIES:

AM Alert: California budget discussions continue as anti-tax campaign begins

Dan Walters DailyDan's video report says Stockton, San Diego and San Jose have stepped up pressure on the Legislature to do something about public pensions.

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Dan Walters Daily: Dan's video report says state lawmakers are facing increasing pressure to do something about pensions.

The Capitol is awaiting word from Gov. Jerry Brown on the budget plan Democratic leaders say they will send him on Friday. The plan is moving quickly in the Legislature (amazing how a deadline tied to pay focuses the mind), but Brown's office says only that discussions are ongoing.

Opponents of his tax measure for the November ballot aren't waiting for a deal on the spending plan. The National Federation of Independent Business/California, the Howard Jarvis Taxpayers Association and the Small Business Action Committee will kick off the campaign against it today.

Their new group name? "Californians for Reforms and Jobs. Not Taxes."

They'll hold a 10 a.m. press conference at NFIB offices, 921 11th Street.

Meanwhile, Torey Van Oot reports that the ongoing debate over legalizing and regulating online poker in California is set to resurface under the dome:

Senate Bill 1463, by Democratic Sen. Rod Wright, is scheduled to be heard at a 9:30 a.m. Senate Governmental Organization Committee hearing. Wright unveiled the bill this spring after Senate President Pro Tem Darrell Steinberg hit the pause button on dueling measures at the end of last session.

Wright recently amended the bill to take out language that would leave the door open to online wagering on games other than poker in the future. While that was a major issue cited by some critics, opposition continues from some influential players, including some gaming tribes and card rooms.

Supporters say the move would raise hundreds of millions of dollars for California. But don't expect those figures to come into play as the Legislature works towards Friday's budget deadline.

"We're not counting on any '(online poker) revenues as part of this year's budget framework," said Steinberg, a co-author of Wright's bill. "It's too soon, and its prospects are too uncertain to be able to score it."

As for the prospects for the bill in today's hearing: Wright wouldn't respond to a reporter's request for comment on the floor Monday, but based on Steinberg's comments, we wouldn't bet on an easy passage.

"It may," the Sacramento Democrat said, "And it may be just a good constructive discussion that helps narrow the differences among and between the members and stakeholders here."

ELECTION RECAP - Haven't had enough analysis of Tuesday's election? The Public Policy Institute of California will hold a conversation with Secretary of State Debra Bowen at 4:30 p.m. today in San Francisco. PPIC policy fellow Eric McGhee will discuss how the new top-two primary and redrawn district lines worked in last week's balloting, while Bowen will talk about how to get more Californians to the polls.

See the agenda and register here.

California's November ballot will include questions on modifying the state's "three strikes" sentencing laws and requiring labels for genetically modified foods.

Secretary of State Debra Bowen announced Monday that two additional initiatives have qualified for the general election ballot, bringing the total measures slated for a vote this fall so far to eight.

One proposal would change the state's sentencing laws so that only offenders convicted of a "third strike" felony that is violent or serious would face a minimum sentence of 25 to life in prison.

The measure, which is modeled after proposed legislation, would also allow some offenders to seek re-sentencing if they are currently behind bars for a "third strike" that was a minor crime.

The second measure that made the cut today calls for disclosures on the labels of many raw and processed foods containing genetically engineered ingredients, banning producers from calling such products "natural." It includes some exceptions, including for organic products, foods sold in restaurants and animal products supplemented with genetically engineered ingredients.

Validity checks on petition signatures submitted to county election officials projected that proponents of both measures collected the hundreds of thousands of voter signatures needed to secure a spot on the ballot.

The number of statewide measures up for a vote in November is expected to grow in the coming weeks, as county election officials continue to count and verify signatures for a handful of proposals. Three competing tax measures, including one backed by Gov. Jerry Brown, are among the initiatives currently awaiting certification.

The deadline for making the fall ballot through the initiative process is June 28.

Nothing eases the pain of California's economic woes quite like golf and luxury.

The California Legislative Black Caucus has scheduled three fundraising golf events with four- to five-figure price tags this year. Tee times for the first event are set for Saturday, one day after the Legislature is expected to approve a new state budget to close a multibillion-dollar budget gap.

"These are all for charitable endeavors," state Sen. Curren Price, D-Los Angeles, said of the events planned at Pebble Beach, Lake Tahoe and the Harding Park Golf Course in San Francisco.

The events hope to raise big bucks for the Black Caucus's youth scholarship, internship and fellowship programs. Money raised by the three golfing events will benefit worthy kids, Price said.

Assembly Democrats released a budget plan this afternoon that includes a lower reserve and smaller cuts in health and welfare programs than Gov. Jerry Brown proposed to bridge a $15.7 billion deficit.

Both houses will hear the budget tomorrow in committee, with a floor vote expected on Friday. Democratic leaders gave Brown a version of their plan this afternoon, but it remains unclear where Brown stands on the Democrats' plan. Brown spokesman Gil Duran said, "Discussions are ongoing."

Assemblyman Bob Blumenfield, chairman of the Assembly budget committee, said in a statement, "Our budget eliminates the structural deficit, includes a modest reserve, and differs only from Governor Brown's plan by less than one percent of total spending. We are down to dotting the I's and crossing the T's in this budget before voting on it later this week."

Assembly Democrats referred to their plan as "the Legislature's 2012-13 budget." But Alicia Trost, spokeswoman for Senate President Pro Tem Darrell Steinberg, said, "It is a version of how to close the budget gap. But it may not be what is considered in committee tomorrow."

The highlights:

-- The Legislature's budget contains a $614 million rainy day fund, $434 million lower than the governor's $1.048 billion reserve.

-- The Legislature rejects the governor's $880 million overhaul of welfare-to-work. Instead, the state would save $327 million by exempting parents of young children from meeting work requirements to receive welfare grants. This reflects the fact that it costs the state more money to provide job training and child care than to provide grants without strings.

-- The Legislature maintains a 3.6 percent cut in hours to In-Home Supportive Services residents but rejects an additional 3.4 percentage point cut that Brown wanted. The Legislature also rejects a proposal to eliminate pay for domestic services like laundry for relatives of recipients.

-- The Legislature would allow districts to cut the school year by 15 days across the next two school years if voters reject the governor's November tax initiative.

-- The Legislature rejects rate cuts to child care providers, including a 35 percent cut that Brown had proposed.

-- The Legislature rejects the governor's proposal to require low-income students to have higher grade-point averages to receive Cal Grant scholarship aid. The Legislature agrees to cut Cal Grants for private college students, but not until 2013-14.

Updated with quotes from Steinberg spokeswoman Alicia Trost and Brown spokesman Gil Duran.

Sen. Sharon Runner thought getting a new set of lungs signaled the end of the worst of her battle with a rare auto-immune disorder.

Then came recovery.

"It's been a long haul," the Lancaster Republican said today. "It takes a while. I'm still not 100 percent, but it's great to be able to breathe, to be able to walk further, to be able to do the things that I used to be able to do."

Runner's comments came as she returned to the Senate floor for the first time this year. Her office announced in January that complications from limited scleroderma, a condition she has had for years, landed her back on the transplant list. The risk of infection kept her away from the Capitol as she waited for a double lung transplant, which occurred Feb. 24.

Legislative Democrats will vote by Friday's deadline on a state budget that has a "very substantial reserve" and is free of gimmicks to erase a $15.7 billion deficit, Senate President Pro Tem Darrell Steinberg said this morning.

Steinberg said he "spent a lot of quality time" with Assembly Speaker John A. Pérez over the weekend working on budget matters, but did not meet with Gov. Jerry Brown. As outlined this morning in The Bee, legislative leaders started negotiations this month about $2 billion apart from the Democratic governor, with differences largely having to do with cuts to welfare-to-work, child care, in-home care and Cal Grants.

Assembly Democrats took a harder line than their Senate counterparts during the budget committee process earlier this year by outright rejecting the governor's overhaul of welfare-to-work and Cal Grants.

Lawmakers face a constitutional deadline Friday to pass a budget under threat of losing their pay. But that threat is not as severe as last year, when Democrats sent Brown a budget but still lost their pay because Controller John Chiang deemed their plan out of balance. A Sacramento Superior Court judge ruled this spring that the controller has no such authority to interpret the Legislature's budget.

Dan Walters says that California lawmakers may be assuming wrong if they pass a budget that assumes that voters will approve Gov. Jerry Brown's tax package in November.

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VIDEO: Dan Walters, in today's video report, says California lawmakers may be making the wrong assumption if they pass a state budget assuming voters approve Gov. Jerry Brown's tax proposal in November.

Lt. Gov. Gavin Newsom is scheduled to make a foray into Sacramento today for not just one event, but two.

First up, Newsom is set to deliver the luncheon keynote speech at this year's California Small Business Day event, which runs all day at the Sacramento Convention Center at 14th and J.

Several dozen legislators and other elected officials are also expected to attend, with other listed speakers including Senate President Pro Tem Darrell Steinberg, Assembly Speaker John A. Pérez and Insurance Commissioner Dave Jones. Click here for more information.

Newsom also has a fundraiser at the Sterling Hotel, a few blocks away at 13th and H, to benefit his 2014 re-election campaign. Tickets run $2,500 each, and word is that his own Plumpjack and Cade wines will be flowing. That event starts at 5:30 p.m.

The California Women's Leadership Association is also holding a fundraiser at 5:30 p.m., and this one may require some liquid courage -- it's karaoke night. Tickets cost $250, with sponsorships ranging from $2,500 to $20,000. Look for it at Chop's on 11th and L.

Friday at midnight, as Alert readers know, is the Legislature's deadline for passing a state budget. The Senate meets at noon today, and the Assembly convenes at 1 p.m. Kevin Yamamura takes a look in today's Bee at what's in store for the week.

Meanwhile, public support for Gov. Jerry Brown's tax ballot proposal has slipped, according to the latest Field Poll. Even so, as David Siders reported in Saturday's Bee, his plan is doing better than the competing measure proposed by wealthy civil rights lawyer Molly Munger and the California State PTA.

Click here to read the statistical tabulations prepared exclusively for Capitol Alert. You'll find the publicly released poll at this link.

TECH: Members of the Washington, D.C.-based advocacy group TechAmerica meet at the Sheraton Grand Hotel in Sacramento for their 26th annual legislative day in California's capital.

As many as 1 million ballots remain to be counted from Tuesday's primary election in California, according to the Secretary of State's office.

The unprocessed ballot report tallies 972,652 ballots, but a dozen small counties have yet to report.

The bulk -- 783,770 -- are vote-by-mail ballots that came in too late to be counted before Election Day. The rest are provisional ballots cast on Election Day or otherwise questioned ballots that must be reviewed.

The outcome of several close races will turn on how these ballots come out. Proposition 29, the $1-a-pack cigarette tax, is trailing by about 40,000 votes out of more than 4 million counted so far.

Here is a county-by-county breakdown of the unprocessed ballots:

Unprocessed Ballots Report

Emerge America, a California-based group that offers candidate training to female Democrats, has lost the nonprofit status that allowed it to operate without disclosing its donors, Bloomberg News reported Thursday.

The Internal Revenue Service told the group in a letter that it made the decision to strip the its tax-exempt status based on a determination that "You are not operated primarily to promote social welfare because your activities are conducted primarily for the benefit of a political party and a private group of individuals, rather than the community as a whole," according to Bloomberg.

The president of Emerge America told Bloomberg that the group refiled under a section of the tax code that requires it to report its donors after last month's decision.

The website for Emerge America's California chapter says it offers an "in-depth, seven-month training program that inspires candidates to run and gives them the tools to win."The group is also active in Arizona, Kentucky, Maine, Massachusetts, New Mexico, Nevada, Oregon and Wisconsin.

Read the full Bloomberg story at this link.

The bottom line is in: Taxpayers spent more than three times the projected cost to redraw the state's political districts.

Voters gave the commission $3 million to draw legislative and Board of Equalization district boundaries by passing Proposition 11 in 2008.

Money ran out quickly.

The final tab was $10.4 million, roughly one-third of which was Bureau of State Audit funds used to solicit and screen applicants for the 14-member citizens panel that replaced the Legislature in drawing political districts.

Executive Director Dan Claypool said it is not surprising that the commission's initial $3 million fell short. The state never before had attempted independent redistricting, and the authors of Proposition 11 took their best shot at estimating cost, he said.

"In fairness, when you're working in a void and just attaching a number, one number is as good as the next," he said. "But we believe this (bottom line) will provide a more realistic basis for next time around."

The commission pegged its own costs at $6.9 million and the Bureau of State Audit's tab at $3.5 million. The figures do not include $3.3 million spent by the Irvine Foundation to educate community groups and encourage public comment as initial maps were drawn and released.

Commissioners were not paid a salary, but received $300 for each day they worked. Other expenses included the cost of holding public hearings throughout the state, travel, a roughly 10-person administrative staff, public relations, line-drawing services, computer software, and legal counsel to defend against lawsuits challenging the new districts.

Funded only through June 30, the redistricting commission is preparing to shut down. Its cost estimates Thursday covered a three-year process that began with recruiting thousands of potential panelists and climaxed with the drawing of new political districts that were used in this week's primary election.

Days before selection of the panel's first eight members in November 2010, Californians approved Proposition 20 to expand the panel's duties to include congressional boundaries. The voters' action increased costs, by an unspecified amount, but did not add more funding.

Dan Walters says California legislators' task next week is agreeing on budget cuts -- and there are big differences over what to whack.

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VIDEO: Dan Walters says in his latest video report that California legislators' next task is figuring out what to cut in order to resolve the state's budget deficit.

The Legislature has until next Friday to pass a state budget. The Senate and the Assembly convene next on Monday. It promises to be a long week.

Do California voters think they're up to closing the budget gap? Not according to the latest Field Poll, which doesn't find much confidence in either Gov. Jerry Brown or the Legislature on that score.

But if Brown is at odds with legislators over budget specifics, 41 percent of voters say they're more inclined to support his position, while 26 percent would side with the Legislature, the poll says.

Brown has the backing of Democratic voters, 53 percent to 20 percent, as well as "no-party-preference" voters, 41 percent to 25 percent. Republican voters, however, would side with the Legislature over the governor, 35 percent to 25 percent.

David Siders has more details in today's Bee about what voters think of Brown's and legislators' job performance. Click here to read the statistical tabulations compiled exclusively for Capitol Alert. You'll find the publicly released poll at this link.

Democratic legislative leaders and Brown have been meeting behind closed doors, as Kevin Yamamura reports in this post. Senate leader Darrell Steinberg said Thursday they're still about $2 billion apart.

CAPITOL STEPS: Members of Christians for Religious Liberty rally on the west steps at noon to protest the Obama administration's rule on health insurance plans and contraceptive coverage.

CAR SHOW: If you're into classic cars, check out the 18th annual Capitol Concours d'Elegance on Sunday from 10 a.m. to 4 p.m. west of the Capitol on Capitol Mall. Proceeds benefit the Shriners Hospital for Children and the California Auto Museum. Admission is $20. Click here for more information.

Twenty-nine layoffs were announced today by California's Administrative Office of the Courts, which sets policy and distributes funding for all levels of the state's court system.

Interim director Jody Patel said the layoffs were forced by pending budget cuts and ranged from entry level to senior positions.

"Sadly, this is not the end of our staff reductions," Patel said in a prepared statement.

The layoffs affected AOC offices in San Francisco, Sacramento and Burbank. Spokesman Phillip Carrizosa said he did not have a breakdown of how many workers were affected at each or how much money would be saved by them.

Patel called Thursday's layoffs distressing, but added: "Unfortunately, given the current fiscal reality that affects all areas of the judicial branch, we were forced to make this difficult decision."

Thursday's 29 layoffs marked the first wave of cuts targeting 190 positions, including layoffs of contractors and temporary employees, voluntary separations and retirements, spokesman Carrizosa said.

By the start of the new fiscal year July 1, the AOC anticipates having 860 full-time or part-time employees, contractors and temporary workers.

A little under a thousand people gathered at the Capitol Thursday to deliver 75,000 petitions and ask legislators to reject cuts to the in-home care system.

Gov. Jerry Brown's proposed budget cuts include a 7-percent cut to caregiver hours and the elimination of domestic services in shared households, adding up to a $224.5 million reduction.

Doug Moore, executive director of the UDW Homecare Providers Union, said he came to the rally because he was "preparing for attack on the budget proposal by the governor."

He said IHSS saves the state money. Putting someone in an institution can cost around $5,000 a month, he said, while caring for them at home costs $800 a month.

"I'm sick and tired of having to be here every year, but I'm not too sick and tired to not fight back," Moore said.

An architect of California's new top-two primary system has turned his attention to shaking up how campaigns are funded.

Steve Peace, a former state legislator and finance director who now chairs the Independent Voter Project, said Wednesday that he plans to file a ballot measure on campaign finance for the 2014 ballot. He said his attorneys are now focused on the "legal aspects" of the proposal, which has been in the works for a year.

"Our lawyers are working very hard on understanding what the limits of Citizens United is and is not and some pretty dramatic ways in which we can change, and I mean very dramatically change the way campaigns are run," he said, referring to the 2009 U.S. Supreme Court case that opened the door to unlimited spending by federal super PACs.

Peace wouldn't offer specifics on his ideas, which he plans to unveil after the November election. But he cited discounted postal rates for bulk mail sent by political parties as well as the influence of independent committees that, unlike candidate campaigns, can raise and spend unlimited amounts of money to influence a race.

"No organization, whether it's the Republican Party, the Democratic Party, or an (independent expenditure committee) ought to be able to operate as a Laundromat," he said. "I think we've reformed ourselves into a Gordian knot ... with the perverse result of separating the candidate from their messaging."

PHOTO CREDIT: Then-state Sen. Steve Peace, D-Chula Vista, speaks to reporters Monday, June 17, 2002, in Sacramento. (AP Photo/ Rich Pedroncelli).

Gov. Jerry Brown and Democratic legislative leaders have been meeting daily this week behind closed doors to resolve about $2 billion in differences over budget cuts that would affect the poorest Californians.

Facing a June 15 constitutional deadline, Democratic leaders say they intend to send Brown a budget by next Friday, and preferably a budget that the governor will sign.

Senate President Pro Tem Darrell Steinberg, D-Sacramento, and Assembly Speaker John A. Pérez, D-Los Angeles, have made it clear that legislative Democrats disagree with Brown specifically on his cuts to welfare-to-work, Cal Grants, In-Home Supportive Services and child care for low-income families.

Steinberg said Thursday those differences amount to roughly $2 billion. He suggested that, for the most part, legislative Democrats agree with the remainder of Brown's solutions to bridge a $15.7 billion gap. Some policy exceptions include the governor's plan to restrict wildfire liability and change tree-cutting requirements, as well as dealing with state park closures.

Democrats are privately suggesting alternatives to the cuts to buy down as many of them as possible. In the past, Steinberg has suggested reducing Brown's $1 billion reserve.

The nonpartisan Legislative Analyst's Office said last month that lawmakers could find $1.9 billion by interpreting the state's school funding requirement differently than Brown did. That would bridge nearly the entire $2 billion gap dividing Brown and lawmakers.

But Steinberg said that is not being seriously considered because lawmakers don't want to cut schools further, and they believe that it could invite a lawsuit. School groups have not been shy in the past about filing a lawsuit or threatening legal action around the Proposition 98 constitutional requirement.

Dan Walters says that the California primary's most important results had to do with local measures on public pension reform in San Jose and San Diego.

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VIDEO: Dan Walters, in his video report today, believes that pension reform battles produced Tuesday's most important votes.

With the primary behind us, the Legislature's next major task is passing a budget by midnight next Friday, June 15.

The Senate Budget Committee will meet in the Capitol's Room 4203 after the upper house adjourns its 9 a.m. session. The committee's agenda ranges from IT contracts to the rural fire fee, as well as long-range funding plans for California's universities and colleges. Click here for the rather long list.

The Assembly is also meeting at 9 a.m., after which a special committee scrutinizes Gov. Jerry Brown's plan for government reorganization for the second time in two days. The hearing starts at 1:30 p.m. in the Capitol's Room 4202. Click here to read the agenda.

Speaking of budgets, members of the California Citizens Redistricting Commission are talking about how to handle ongoing legal issues and other matters once the commission's funding runs out at the end of June.

They'll also hear a report on how much redistricting has cost the state. Another item of note: "Discussion of the Reversion of Unused Funds to the General Fund." The meeting starts at 10 a.m. at 901 P St. in Sacramento. Click here to read the agenda.

The Franchise Tax Board, meanwhile, is discussing "The Tax Gap, The Underground Economy, And The Criminal Element," as the agenda puts it. That gap is estimated at $10 billion a year after enforcement and collections. The meeting starts at 1:30 p.m. at 9646 Butterfield Way, Town Center's Gerald Goldberg Auditorium in Sacramento.

Preliminary election results may be in, but some races won't be called until officials can count provisional ballots and mail-in votes that were dropped off at polling places Tuesday.

The secretary of state's office reported that "hundreds of thousands" of votes remain to be counted, but won't have a better idea until counties report this week

A Bee survey showed nearly 800,000 uncounted votes in just nine of the state's 58 counties:

Los Angeles County..........................162,008
San Diego County.............................135,000
Orange County.................................113,119
Riverside County................................49,200
San Bernardino County......................29,800
Santa Clara County................86,600-96,600
Alameda County.................................61,100
Sacramento........................................84,000
San Francisco County........................31,000

These votes could determine a handful of tight legislative, congressional and local races and the fate of Proposition 29 to raise the cigarette tax $1 a pack.

With almost 800,000 votes left to be counted in these nine counties alone, it could be a while before final results are known. County election officials must report their final results to the Secretary of State by State by July 6. The Secretary of State then has until July 13 to certify the results.

Gov. Jerry Brown hardly involved himself in the statewide primary election Tuesday, but in the few contests in which the Democratic governor did endorse a candidate or issue public praise, his record wasn't great.

Carmen Trutanich, Brown's choice for Los Angeles County district attorney, was running third, poised to miss a November runoff. Brown made a robotic telephone appeal for the candidate, who had issued a favorable statement about Brown's prison realignment program.

In the throw-down between Democratic Reps. Howard Berman and Brad Sherman in Southern California's 30th Congressional District, Brown's choice - Berman - finished second. The two will face each other in a runoff in the fall.

Brown issued a public statement praising - though not endorsing - Assemblyman Nathan Fletcher in his bid for mayor of San Diego. Fletcher, who abandoned the Republican Party to become an independent during the campaign, finished third, missing a November runoff.

The candidate Brown publicly praised appeared to be doing better in Assembly District 50, where Assemblywoman Betsy Butler held a narrow lead. Four candidates remain separated by less than 2 percentage points in the race this afternoon.

Gov. Jerry Brown has appointed a labor union representative to be deputy director of legislative affairs at the Department of Personnel Administration.

The appointment of Nancy Farias, legislative director for Service Employees International Union Local 1000 since 2009, comes before the Legislature is expected this summer to consider pension changes proposed by Brown. The appointment was announced by the Democratic governor's office today.

Farias, 39, is registered as having no party preference. The Sacramento resident is to be paid $110,004 a year.

The Legislature is expected to consider public employee pension changes following adoption of the state budget this month.