Capitol Alert: AM Alert: Bay Area lawmaker pushing mountain lion protections

Capitol Alert

The latest on California politics and government

January 25, 2013

AM Alert: Bay Area lawmaker pushing mountain lion protections

VIDEO: Based on Thursday's State of the State speech, Dan Walters says Gov. Jerry Brown is thinking about his legacy.

Sen. Jerry Hill, D-San Mateo, is introducing legislation today that's designed to prevent employees of the state Department of Fish and Wildlife from killing mountain lions when they wander into areas settled by humans. Hill is announcing the measure at the CuriOdyssey wildlife museum in San Mateo at 10 a.m. Two cubs were shot to death in early December in Half Moon Bay, and its mayor is joining Hill at the presser.

A quick refresher: California has some pretty stringent safeguards against killing mountain lions, with voters approving a ballot measure back in 1990 to prohibit sport hunting of the animals. Bobcats, which are often mistaken for mountain lions, also got some extra protections last session from SB 1221, by Sen. Ted Lieu, D-Torrance, that prohibits people from using dogs to hunt bobcats and bears.

Down in the south state, Sen. Kevin de León, D-Los Angeles, is holding a hearing of the Appropriations Subcommittee on Fiscal Oversight and Bonded Indebtedness today to examine options for using the revenue from newly passed Proposition 39. The hearing will run from 2 to 5 p.m. at San Diego's Perkins Elementary School.

In case you missed our coverage of Brown's State of the State address yesterday, the governor got generally positive responses for promising to carefully steward California's budget stability while giving K-12 schools more flexibility. The reactions to his proposals on high-speed rail and two tunnels through the Sacramento-San Joaquin Delta were more mixed.

Insurance Commissioner Dave Jones notes in David Siders' story in today's Bee that the speech "managed to quote three philosophers and a children's story -- 'The Little Train That Could' -- and the Bible, too."

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