Capitol Alert

MOUNTAIN VIEW - Gov. Jerry Brown complained bitterly this morning that the news media ignores climate change, in a speech attended by more than a dozen photographers and reporters.

"If you take a look at Google and type in 'global warming news,' I venture to say on most days in the news, 20 to 30 percent, if not more, of the news, will be by climate deniers or skeptics, whatever you want to call them," Brown said at a conference with climate scientists at NASA's Ames Research Center. "Everything these guys are saying either is not true, not relevant or totally distorted -- or it's not important."

The Democratic governor, who has made climate change a focus of his administration, compared interest in the event to recent news that the Bay Area will host football's Super Bowl in 2016.

"I mean, compared to getting the 50th Super Bowl, this stuff is silly," Brown said. "It's just a bunch of scientists talking. What really counts is the stuff you're going to read on the front page tomorrow. You're not going to hear about this. It's not allowed, because this is not news. News is something else. This may be true, it may be fundamentally important, but it's not news and therefore it cannot be printed in the American press."

The California Teachers Association has chosen sides in the incipient conflict over Gov. Jerry Brown's school funding proposal, backing the governor's call to earmark additional money for disadvantaged and English language-learning students.

While emphasizing that many of the details still need to be hammered out, CTA President Dean Vogel for the most part lauded Brown's blueprint during a Wednesday morning press conference. He noted that California's student population includes big chunks of learners who are either poor enough to qualify for free or reduced price lunch or are still absorbing English. He said covering the higher cost of educating those students is a recurring problem.

Under Brown's proposal, districts with high concentrations of poor, English learning and foster students would be eligible for extra concentration grants on top of the base grants every district would receive.

"It's hard to say that you're in support of this local control funding formula the way it's presented by the governor and then say you don't like the concentration grants," Vogel said. "The concentration grant is the piece of the formula that basically says we're going to actually put our money where our mouth is. You can't say year in and year out that it costs more to educate kids in poverty without giving them the money."

The concentration grant provision has met with skepticism from Democratic lawmakers who worry that allocating the money on a district-by-district basis is too imprecise. Struggling schools or students in relatively prosperous districts could get left behind, critics argue.

"If a kid is in a school of concentrated poverty, why shouldn't that kid get the civil rights benefit that a kid in a concentrated poverty district gets?" Senate President Pro Tem Darrell Steinberg asked reporters last week.

The Democratic dissension underscores what is likely to be a key point of conflict as the Legislature takes up Brown's budget: the notion that the new school funding plan would produce winners and losers by diverting extra funds to some districts but not to others.

Local California Teachers Association chapter presidents from around the state are in Sacramento today for a lobby day.

PHOTO CREDIT: California Teachers Association President Dean Vogel speaks to reporters in Sacramento on May 22, 2013. By Jeremy B. White/The Sacramento Bee.

Gov. Jerry Brown, whose public remarks occasionally include a phrase or two in Latin, explained Wednesday two reasons he liked learning it.

"It's obscure and makes you smarter than everybody," he told about 1,000 people at a California Chamber of Commerce breakfast.

Brown's statement was in English, and the audience laughed. It came as the Democratic governor discussed his week-old proposal to spend $1 billion to implement new English, math and other subject standards in California's public schools.

Brown said he was skeptical about a new curriculum but that the one he is proposing to fund will "make our schools more challenging, more interesting" and foster more critical thinking.

"I'm skeptical as hell about a new curriculum," Brown said. "I went to St. Ignatius, took four years of Latin. They told me you couldn't think if you didn't have four years of Latin. Now I can't find anybody that takes Latin."

However, Brown said, "I don't find that many people who think, either, so, maybe those priests were right."

PHOTO CREDIT: Gov. Jerry Brown speaks at the California Chamber of Commerce's annual Host Breakfast in Sacramento on Wednesday, May 22, 2013. AP Photo / Rich Pedroncelli

Gov. Jerry Brown this morning downplayed an estimate by the nonpartisan legislative analyst that California will collect about $3.2 billion more in revenue than Brown projected in his budget revision last week, saying the difference is minor and he will hold the line on spending.

"We got the (budget) in balance, if we stay the course," Brown told about 1,000 people at the California Chamber of Commerce's annual Host Breakfast in Sacramento. "And that's my intention."

The dispute over available revenue underlies an emerging conflict at the Capitol between Brown and legislative Democrats over spending on social programs, including mental health, child care and adult dental services.

Despite income tax revenue running about $4.5 billion ahead of expectations through April, Brown last week said economic growth will be slower than previously anticipated. He projected revenue next fiscal year down $1.8 billion from his January estimate.

The state's legislative analyst, Mac Taylor, predicted higher tax revenue next fiscal year based largely on an improving stock market and a more favorable economic forecast.

Like Brown, however, Taylor said revenue projections are volatile and that the state should approach spending with caution.

The Democratic governor said today that relying on uncertain revenue leads the state to "get into trouble."

"That's what happened before," Brown said. "You spend money that you think is going to be there year after year, and it isn't."

PHOTO CREDIT: Gov. Jerry Brown discusses his revised budget plan at a news conference at the Capitol on Tuesday, May 14, 2013. Renée C. Byer / Sacramento Bee

BERKELEY - Gov. Jerry Brown told college graduates in a commencement speech today that climate change is a greater threat to their future than any number of other problems, from the home mortgage crisis and student debt to growing inequality and war abroad.

"All these problems are serious and count as some kind of crisis," Brown said, before calling "even more threatening" the effect of greenhouse gas emissions.

The Democratic governor, who has made climate change a focus of his administration, warned of melting ice caps and rising sea levels.

"Of course the changes in our in our climate are not happening in political time," Brown said. "By Twitter standards, the pace is very slow but inexorable and, most troubling, soon to be irreversible."

Brown told the students, "That's the world you face. But you have the skills and the knowledge and the sense of the good. You can make change."

BERKELEY - Gov. Jerry Brown said this morning he does not know if the state will open the new eastern span of the San Francisco-Oakland Bay Bridge as scheduled on Labor Day weekend, as officials respond to reports of cracked bolts on the structure.

"I'm not going to predict," Brown said of the bridge's opening. "First we want to make it safe."

Brown has previously dismissed concerns about the bridge's structural integrity. When asked about broken and suspect bolts on the $6.4 billion structure earlier this month, the Democratic governor said, "I mean, look, s--- happens."

Today Brown expressed a higher level of concern.

"I take it very seriously, and that thing's not going to open unless it's ready," he told reporters before addressing a graduation ceremony for University of California, Berkeley political science students. "And the engineers are telling me that they're doing the kind of work that will be needed for that."

Brown said a review of bridge construction documents will require analyzing records going back as far as the Gray Davis administration.

"It's a pretty big issue," Brown said. "I drive across that bridge, too."

It was only about three months ago that Brown, participating in a live television event from the bridge location, pressed a button starting a clock counting down to the new span's opening. He said that night that the state was planning to have a bicycle race and a run, among other activities, when the bridge opened to the public.

PHOTO CREDIT: Gov. Jerry Brown speaks with reporters in Berkeley on Monday, May 20, 2013. David Siders / Sacramento Bee

Gov. Jerry Brown reiterated his resolve to remake how California finances public schools by giving districts with large numbers of poor and/or English-learner students more money when he presented a revised state budget this week.

"I think it's fair. I think it's just," Brown declared, adding, "I think it has great moral force."

Defending his plan, Brown stressed that overall, schools will see substantial increases in state aid and 80 percent of the money would still be distributed in "base grants" on a per-pupil basis, with the remaining 20 percent going to districts based on their numbers of poor and English-learner students, and just 4 percent going into "concentration grants to districts with especially large proportions.

But Brown's school plans are continuing to take heavy flak in the Legislature as education factions outside the Capitol ramp up pressure.

The terrain for the 2013 version of California's annual budget trek got a little clearer on Tuesday morning, with Gov. Jerry Brown releasing an updated blueprint..

Brown continued to emphasize restraint with a windfall of new money, but he detailed some new investments in schools. The revised budget would direct another $240 million towards the governor's plan to revamp education funding and send more money to disadvantaged students.

It also sets aside $1 billion to implement the new Common Core educational standards that California teachers, like their counterparts in states across the country, are beginning to implement in their curricula.

"This is a prudent budget," Brown said. "It's one that responds to our educational and our health challenges, but it's one that unlike those of the past will be very prudent, because we're sailing into some rather uncertain times, as we always have."

You can watch a piece of Brown's press conference below:

PHOTO CREDIT: Gov. Jerry Brown talks about his revised budget proposal in the Capitol. Jeremy B. White/The Sacramento Bee.

California Gov. Jerry Brown detailed his revised budget proposal this morning. Read The Bee's coverage of the plan here, then see what legislators, advocates and others are saying about the proposal in this rapid response roundup.

This post is being updated throughout the morning as details emerge.

Despite income tax revenue running about $4.5 billion ahead of expectations through April, Gov. Jerry Brown included relatively low revenue figures in the revised budget he released this morning, likely dampening expectations for greater program spending.

The budget Brown proposed will assume revenue in the current fiscal year only $2.8 billion ahead of expectations, with revenue next fiscal year down $1.8 billion from Brown's January estimate.

In the weeks leading up to Tuesday's budget revision, speculation mounted that Brown could take advantage of $4.5 billion that rolled into state coffers unexpectedly this spring. But the governor took a more cautious approach, projecting that economic growth will be slower than previously thought because of federal spending cuts and a higher payroll tax on workers.

"Four percent growth has now become 2 percent," Brown said.

The governor also assumes that the spring revenue spike was partly due to wealthy taxpayers taking more income in 2012 in anticipation of federal tax changes. That means the state potentially would receive lower tax revenues in 2013-14 than Brown previously expected.

"We have climbed out of a hole with a Prop 30 tax," Brown said, referring to his initiative last year that hiked income taxes on the wealthy and sales taxes. "That's good. But this is not the time to break out the champagne."

The proposed budget includes a $1.1 billion reserve. It increases funding for Brown's effort to overhaul California's educational finance system by $240 million. In his education proposal, Brown also proposes $1 billion to implement English, math and other subject guidelines known as the Common Core Standards.

Brown continued to ask lawmakers to approve his new funding formula, which directs more money to K-12 districts with large numbers of impoverished students and English learners. He was skeptical of critics who consider his plan flawed because wealthier suburban districts stand to receive less money than they would otherwise.

"Ask somebody in Beverly Hills or Palo Alto or Piedmont, 'Would you like to move to Compton? Would you like to move to Watts?' And if they say, 'Yeah, let's do it because I want to get the extra money,' then I'll believe it," Brown said.

The governor has dropped his January proposal to cap the number of state-subsidized classes that public university students can take. He had pitched the idea as a way to make the University of California and California State University systems more efficient.

Brown proposed a statewide approach - not a county-by-county effort - to implement California's expansion of Medi-Cal under the federal health care overhaul.

The budget includes $500 million in additional Medi-Cal spending, and more funding for California's prison realignment, in which the state shifted responsibility for certain low-level offenders to counties.

Brown seemed resistant Tuesday to Democratic proposals to raise additional taxes. He also dismissed calls to increase spending beyond education, mocking the Capitol as "a big spending machine."

PHOTO CREDIT: Gov. Jerry Brown unveils the revision of his budget proposal. The Sacramento Bee/Melody Gutierrez

Gov. Jerry Brown today will propose spending $1 billion to implement English, math and other educational standards in California's public schools, part of a revised budget plan he is scheduled to release this morning, a source said.

The revised budget proposal comes with state income tax revenue running about $4.5 billion ahead of expectations through April. Nearly all of the additional revenue could be required to go to schools and community colleges under Proposition 98, California's school-funding guarantee.

Brown is seeking a major overhaul of education funding, seeking to give local school districts greater flexibility in how they spend state money while directing more money to school districts with high proportions of poor students and English learners.

Senate President Pro Tem Darrell Steinberg and other Democratic lawmakers have argued more money should be allocated to all districts on a per-pupil basis.

The $1 billion Brown will propose will be to implement the so-called Common Core State Standards adopted by California and more than 40 other states since 2010.

PHOTO CREDIT: Gov. Jerry Brown speaks at a news conference at the Capitol on Jan. 10, 2013. Randall Benton / Sacramento Bee

Gov. Jerry Brown called Monday for a "smooth and rapid" path to citizenship for undocumented immigrants, telling U.S. Sen. Dianne Feinstein in a letter that he is working to find state money that may be used to implement potential changes to the nation's immigration system, including employment requirements and assistance learning English.

"In order to avoid dire consequences for our state, comprehensive immigration reform must occur this year and the resulting path to citizenship must be smooth and rapid," Brown said in a letter to Feinstein ahead of a Senate Judiciary Committee hearing today on a bipartisan immigration bill.

The Democratic governor said California and the nation "are choosing to accept the undocumented workers who have entered our country illegally because neither industry nor the workers themselves were ever given any viable option to fill our labor demands legally."

Brown said those workers should be afforded an expeditious path to citizenship, not "held in a state of purgatory for ten years."

A Northern California environmental group has begun airing advertisements on cable TV stations criticizing Gov. Jerry Brown for allowing clear-cut logging on thousands of acres of forest land.

Marily Woodhouse, co-founder of the Manton-based Battle Creek Alliance, said today her organization paid $3,000 to air spots this month on CNN, MSNBC and other cable networks in Sacramento.

The tiny ad buy is part of an ongoing conflict between environmentalists and business interests over the state's management of logging on private land. One ad features a photograph of the Democratic governor in a superimposed pair of sunglasses.

"Where's the real Gov. Jerry Brown?" a narrator says. "We don't know where this Jerry Brown impostor came from, but will the real one who values California's inhabitants and natural resources over the wealthy, special interest, short term profiteers please come back?"

The criticism is highly general, and Battle Creek Alliance neither objects to nor advocates for any specific policy in the ad. Woodhouse said she decided to air it because on logging issues, generally, "we've worked on this for a long time but really gotten nowhere."

Richard Stapler, a spokesman for the California Natural Resources Agency, said in an email that California has "the strictest timber harvest regulations in the country" and that the administration "remains committed to protecting and preserving our rich natural resources, while supporting important economic activities."

Editor's note: This post was updated at 1:10 p.m. to include Stapler's response.

PHOTO CREDIT: A screen shot of one of the ads.

One day after a civil rights leader accused him of using racially charged politics in his criticism of California's prison realignment, former Lt. Gov. Abel Maldonado said this afternoon that Gov. Jerry Brown and "his buddies are trying to make it about race."

Maldonado, who is preparing to challenge Brown in next year's gubernatorial election, told The Bee he will "probably" stop using the image of a felon to which a leader of the National Association for the Advancement of Colored People objected, but that he will continue to cite the case.

Maldonado came under criticism after a news conference Wednesday at which he highlighted a photograph of an offender who was not released from prison under realignment -- the program Maldonado organized the event to criticize. Maldonado announced he will file a ballot initiative to repeal the 2011 law in which the state shifted responsibility for certain low-level offenders from the prison and parole system to counties.

Elizabeth Ashford, who left Gov. Jerry Brown's administration in April, has opened her own public affairs and communications consultancy, and to celebrate she hosted a party on Thursday at the K Bar in Sacramento.

Ashford, 38, was Brown's chief deputy press secretary and worked previously in former Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger's administration and as a spokeswoman for BP.

On her business website, EAshford Public Affairs & Communications, Ashford says she "helps businesses, organizations and individuals make sound policy and political decisions, and talk about them effectively."

Ashford declined to identify her clients, saying only that they are involved in climate change and transportation.

That she has business at all, she said, is "very encouraging."

"The alternative," Ashford said, "is quite grim."

PHOTO CREDIT: Elizabeth Ashford talks with associates at the K Bar in Sacramento on Thursday, May 9, 2013. David Siders / Sacramento Bee

Jamal Maurice Johnson, the man Gov. Jerry Brown held out last month as an example of how crime has affected him personally, sat alone in a Sacramento courtroom Thursday, wearing dress slacks and a sweater.

Brown mentioned in a speech to crime victims in April that a man had been arrested "trying to break in" to the Sacramento building where he rents a loft.

"Luckily, I wasn't home," Brown said, and within hours Johnson hit the news.

Johnson, 26, was scheduled Thursday to be arraigned on misdemeanor charges of unlawful entry and prowling, but prosecutors said they needed more time to review the file.

Leaving court, Johnson said he was addled and sleep deprived and had been "running for three days" when police arrested him.

"I thought people were chasing me," Johnson said. "I was hearing things that weren't there."

Johnson, who works as a restaurant server, said he lives in Los Gatos and had no idea Brown lived in the building where he was arrested. He said he was neither drunk nor high but acting erratically, a state-of-mind he said he could illustrate with a story about how he managed to get up onto the building.

Johnson was about to tell that story when a public defender introduced herself to him and advised him not to talk publicly about the case.

The Sacramento Police Department this month denied a public records request for the agency's report on the incident, saying it is a confidential record. Johnson is scheduled to return to court in June.

PHOTO CREDIT: Gov. Jerry Brown talks to members of the press after speaking at a rally for crime victims in Sacramento on Tuesday, April 23, 2013. Hector Amezcua / Sacramento Bee

Abel Maldonado, who is preparing to challenge Gov. Jerry Brown in next year's gubernatorial race, said today he will file a ballot initiative to repeal California's prison realignment, an issue Republicans consider a potential liability for Brown.

The former lieutenant governor provided few details about the initiative, but the circumstances of his announcement suggested Maldonado will make the issue a centerpiece of his campaign.

"I'm here to address an issue that threatens the lives of every Californian, an issue that is the most important issue in California in a generation," Maldonado said. "It is an issue that affects the quality of life and the safety of every citizen of my home state of California."

Brown has faced criticism for months from Republican lawmakers - and some Democrats - seeking to modify or repeal elements of realignment, the 2011 law in which the state shifted responsibility for certain low-level offenders from the prison and parole system to counties. As Maldonado did at his event today, they highlight crimes committed by offenders they say were released under realignment.

The Democratic governor has said he is considering "some ideas" about potential changes to the law, but his administration is also under a court order to reduce California's prison population. Jeffrey Callison, a spokesman for the California Department of Corrections and Rehabilitation, said realignment has reduced the state's prison population while bringing "a more rational criminal justice system" to California.

The initiative Maldonado proposed would appear on the same ballot as the gubernatorial runoff election in November 2014, and his news conference had all the hallmarks of a campaign event. Maldonado addressed reporters from the top floor of a parking garage across the street from the Capitol. The location provided the Capitol dome as a backdrop, and Maldonado's strategist, John Weaver, was on hand.

Maldonado said his motivations are not political.

"This press conference is not about the governor's race," he said. "I said a couple of weeks ago that I was going to raise some resources to figure out if I was going to be a candidate for governor. I would venture to say that if you look at what I've been doing, there's a pretty good shot that I'm going to be running for governor. But I'm here to tell you today that this press conference is not about Abel Maldonado running for governor."

Gov. Jerry Brown is throwing his weight behind a push to update Proposition 65, California's safeguard against exposure to toxic chemicals.

Passed by voters in 1986, Proposition 65 sought to shield the state's water supply from contamination and to protect consumers by requiring companies to post clear warnings about harmful chemicals in products.

The law has been "a resounding success" as a consumer safeguard, California Environmental Protection Agency Secretary Matthew Rodriquez said in a conference call with reporters today. But he said the time has come to amend the law, citing a proliferation of "abusive" profit-seeking lawsuits and scientific strides that make some of the standards set 27 years ago obsolete.

California's top Senate Democrat called Tuesday for more investment in mental health services in the state, saying his proposal could improve lives, prevent future tragedies and reduce the burden mentally ill patients put on the state's prisons and hospitals.

Senate President Pro Tem Darrell Steinberg is proposing significantly increasing mental health services in the state by adding 2,000 beds and at least 200 "triage personnel" to help individuals with mental health issues. His plan, which he hopes to enact through the state budget process, would also add 25 "Mobile Crisis Support Teams" to provide a range of resources to help people manage their mental illness without turning to emergency rooms or jails.

Steinberg said "invariably heart-breaking and often tragic" stories of what happens when mental illness goes untreated motivated him to craft the proposal. He highlighted the December mass shooting at a Connecticut elementary school, a federal appeals court's ruling on health care in California prisons and stories chronicled by The Bee of Nevada busing mentally ill patients to California and other states as recent examples of the need for care

"How many more sad stories must we hear? With Newtown, Nevada and the 9th Circuit it is time for action," he said at a press conference in the state Capitol.

The unveiling of the plan comes days after Gov. Jerry Brown submitted a court-ordered plan to reduce the state's prison population. Steinberg said while his mental health services plan might not satisfy the three-judge panel's call for further inmate reductions, it will lower the prison population and recidivism rate for mentally ill inmates over time.

"Ultimately, if we are going to reduce overcrowding over the long term, we have to provide more effective, cost effective ways to keep people who leave the prisons and the jails from returning," he said, citing the success one three-year project for mentally ill parolees has had in cutting down the rate of repeat incarceration.

Steinberg said he has not yet calculated the full price tag for the plan, which would include grants of up to $500,000 for eligible projects. He said he envisions paying for the added services through grant funding offered by the California Endowment, a nonprofit that promotes health care coverage, money from the Proposition 63 tax on millionaires for mental health services, general fund revenues and by enrolling eligible individuals for health care benefits under the new state-run marketplace. He argued that any additional investment would provide big returns for the state over time.

"We are paying already, and we are paying big time," he said. "Our current system is a budget buster, also it's inhumane."

PHOTO CREDIT: Senate President Pro Tem Darrell Steinberg describes his proposal on increasing investment in mental health services as Democratic Sen. Jim Beall, chair of the Senate's mental health caucus, looks on. Sacramento Bee/Torey Van Oot.

Gov. Jerry Brown, apparently unfazed by reports of broken and suspect bolts on the new eastern span of the San Francisco-Oakland Bay Bridge, said today when asked about the problem, "Look, s--- happens."

The Democratic governor said it would be "premature to pull our hair out" over the cracked bolts, which threaten to delay the $6.4 billion structure's scheduled opening in September.

"Don't know if it's a setback," Brown told reporters after a California Highway Patrol memorial event in West Sacramento. "I mean, look, s--- happens."

Brown since last summer has maintained unwavering support for the state's construction and oversight of the new bridge, dismissing questions about its structural integrity.

He said this morning, "There are very professional engineers that are looking at this thing, and when they're ready to give us their report, I think the public will be satisfied."

PHOTO CREDIT: Gov. Jerry Brown, right, speaks with reporters in West Sacramento on Tuesday, May 7, 2013. David Siders / Sacramento Bee

Voter approval of a multi-billion-dollar tax increase last year has reduced financial pressure on California's nearly 1,000 school districts and thus dropped the number of districts in fiscal distress, the Legislature was told Tuesday.

Joel Montero, who heads the Bakersfield-based Fiscal Crisis and Management Assistance Team, told an Assembly budget subcommittee that the number of districts in distress is half what it was a few years ago, when the state was routinely "deferring" billions of dollars in aid to local districts because of its own budget problems.

Last year, voters passed Proposition 30, which hikes sales and income taxes by about $6 billion a year, much of which will go to schools. Gov. Jerry Brown says he wants to spend much of the new revenue to repay the state aid deferrals.

"The impact of Proposition 30 has been positive," Montero said during his annual update on school financial problems.

Gov. Jerry Brown, who is preparing to submit a revised budget proposal for the coming fiscal year this month, has found a new argument for financial restraint: Climate change.

At a news conference today to kick off Wildfire Awareness Week, the Democratic governor said he will "do everything I can to deal with forest fires," but he said the bigger problem is how people adapt to climate change.

"It doesn't look like the people who are in charge are going to do what it takes to really slow down this climate change, so we're going to have to adapt, and adapting is going to be very, very expensive," Brown said. "That's another reason why we have to maintain some budget discipline."

Brown, who has urged lawmakers of his own party to resist spending despite the state's improving revenue outlook, said weather is "becoming more intense" as a result of climate change and will "cost a lot of money and a lot of lives."

Brown's remarks come amid a fire season that is off to an unusually fast start, with firefighters battling blazes throughout the state.

In that effort, officials said they will spend whatever is necessary.

Natural Resources Secretary John Laird said an emergency firefighting fund is in "reasonable shape," but that, "The message is clear: We will do whatever it takes to fight the fires and worry about that later, because public safety is first."

PHOTO CREDIT: Gov. Jerry Brown leaves a news conference that was to start Wildfire Awareness Week at a hanger at the CAL Fire Aviation Management Unit at McClellan on Monday, May 6, 2013. Hector Amezcua / Sacramento Bee

Gov. Jerry Brown today called "mystifying" the continuing legal pressure on his administration to reduce California's prison population, as he reiterated his pledge to appeal the case as far as the U.S. Supreme Court.

"I find it rather mystifying why we're in this predicament, but I am following the law, and I'm exercising my rights as an American citizen to present the arguments as I see them and to seek final adjudication in our highest courts," Brown told reporters after a memorial ceremony for law enforcement officials in Sacramento.

Brown's remarks follow his administration's submission Thursday of a court-ordered plan to reduce the state's prison population, even as state officials vowed to appeal. The administration claims overcrowding in state prisons has been addressed and that inmate health care is sufficient.

A special, three-judge panel ordered the state in 2009 to reduce its prison population to improve health care conditions in the prison system, and a federal judge in April denied Brown's bid to remove prison health care from federal control. The three-judge panel is insisting that the state reduce its prison population by about 9,500 more inmates by the end of the year.

The U.S. Supreme Court sided with the three-judge panel in 2011. Asked why he thinks the state could prevail in court this year, Brown said, "Well, because it's many years later."

He said the state has spent billions of dollars on the prison system since the nation's highest court last considered the matter.

PHOTO CREDIT: Gov. Jerry Brown attends a memorial ceremony for law enforcement officers on Monday, May 6, 2013 in Sacramento. David Siders/Sacramento Bee

Gov. Jerry Brown has signed legislation to increase funding for a state effort to confiscate weapons from people who are prohibited from owning them because of mental illness or violent criminal pasts, Brown's office announced today.

Senate Bill 140 was one of a number of gun control proposals introduced by California Democrats following the December shooting at an elementary school in Newtown, Conn. The measure found bipartisan support in the Legislature, despite opposition from the National Rifle Association and other pro-gun groups.

The legislation directs $24 million to the state Department of Justice to improve enforcement efforts associated with the state's Armed Prohibited Persons System, a database that helps officials identify people who are no longer allowed to possess guns.

"Today, each California community is a step closer to being safer," Senate President Pro Tem Darrell Steinberg, D-Sacramento, said in a prepared statement. "This swift action by the Legislature and the Governor to enforce the laws we already have is a wise and worthy investment to reduce gun violence."

PHOTO CREDIT: Gov. Jerry Brown talks to members of the press on Tuesday, April 23, 2013. Hector Amezcua / The Sacramento Bee

One day after Gov. Jerry Brown called his education financing plan a civil rights issue and promised opponents "the battle of their lives," Senate Democrats today said their counter-proposal is better for low-income students.

"The governor, obviously, came out firing yesterday, and we take it all in stride," Senate President Pro Tem Darrell Steinberg told reporters at the Capitol. "But I do want to say that no group is more committed to civil rights and the cause of low income kids than my colleagues."

In a proposal to dramatically overhaul California's education financing system, Brown is seeking to give local school districts greater flexibility in how they spend state money, while also directing more money to school districts with higher proportions of students who are poor or learning English.

While offering conceptual support for Brown's plan, Senate Democrats would eliminate a proposal by the Democratic governor to award districts additional money if more than half of their students are low income or meet other criteria, instead distributing that money partly on a per-pupil basis for all students and partly on a per-pupil basis for disadvantaged students.

Facing resistance at the Capitol to his proposal to overhaul California's school financing formula and to shift more money to poor and English-learning students, Gov. Jerry Brown said today he considers the matter one of civil rights and will give opponents "the battle of their lives."

"This is a matter of equity and civil rights," the Democratic governor told reporters at the Capitol. "So if people are going to fight it, they're going to get the battle of their lives, because I'm not going to give up until the last hour, and I'm going to fight with everything I have, and whatever we have to bring to bear in this battle, we're bringing it."

Brown's appearance featured appeals by school superintendents from Los Angeles, Sacramento and Santa Ana and comes as Assembly Democrats prepare to debate the merits of his proposal at a committee hearing this afternoon.

Senate Democrats less than 24 hours ago suggested reservations about major parts of Brown's plan, announcing they will propose an alternative measure Thursday.

Brown is seeking in his annual budget proposal to give K-12 school districts greater flexibility over how they spend their money, while also directing more money to districts that serve poorer students and English learners.

In an incident predating the arrest of a suspected prowler at his Sacramento loft building over the weekend, Gov. Jerry Brown expressed frustration Tuesday with officials' handling of three men found lurking at his home in the Oakland hills in late 2011.

In a speech at a Crime Victims United rally at the Capitol, Brown said his wife, Anne Gust Brown, was home alone when "three gentlemen show up ... about 1 o'clock trying to break in." Brown said California Highway Patrol officers detained the men but let them go after consulting with Oakland police.

"They said they were looking ... to buy real estate in the neighborhood, and the Oakland police let them go, because the CHP deferred to them," said Brown, a former mayor of Oakland. "Well, that's not going to happen anymore."

In an email to The Bee, Oakland Police Sgt. Chris Bolton said three people in a vehicle were stopped at Brown's home on Nov. 30, 2011 and that one of suspects was issued a citation for possession of a hypodermic needle. Bolton described the circumstances of the vehicle's presence on the property as suspicious but did not elaborate.

Bolton said the three people were released from the scene following a preliminary investigation.

PHOTO CREDIT: Gov. Jerry Brown speaks to reporters at the Capitol on Tuesday.The Sacramento Bee/ David Siders

Senate Democrats today suggested reservations about major elements of Gov. Jerry Brown's bid to overhaul California's school funding system, saying they will announce an alternative plan this week.

Brown is seeking in his annual budget proposal to give K-12 school districts greater control over how they spend money they receive, while also directing more money to districts that serve poorer students and English learners.

Senate President Pro Tem Darrell Steinberg's office said in a prepared statement today that Senate Democrats agree with the "fundamental goals and concepts" included in Brown's proposal, but differences between Brown's plan and the one lawmakers are expected to propose are significant.

Steinberg's office said Senate Democrats on Thursday will propose a bill that would eliminate a proposal by Brown, a Democrat, to award districts additional money if more than half of their students are low income or meet other criteria. The lawmakers' proposal would instead distribute that money partly on a per-pupil basis for all students and partly on a per-pupil basis for certain disadvantaged students.

Despite relatively robust income tax returns and a projection that the state will finish April billions of dollars ahead of estimates, Gov. Jerry Brown today dismissed a reporter's suggestion he must be "pretty happy," suggesting any overage may be tied up by Proposition 98, California's school-funding guarantee.

"The revenues, guys, wait 'til the May revise," the Democratic governor told reporters at the Capitol. "We have a very complicated mechanism called Prop. 98, and depending upon how the money flows, it may ... not be as available as many people are now thinking."

April is typically the most significant month for personal income tax collections, and state budget watchers track revenue daily. The nonpartisan Legislative Analyst's Office estimated today that the state's personal income tax collections will end the month about $4 billion above the administration's estimates.

By the end of the fiscal year, the LAO said, revenue may be "a few billion dollars" above estimates. Like Brown, however, the LAO was restrained in its assessment of the significance of any additional revenue.

The report said "much or all of the revenue gain could be required to be allocated to schools and community colleges under Proposition 98, which means that this fiscal year's strong revenue performance may have little, if any, positive effect for the state's financial bottom line."

PHOTO CREDIT: Gov. Jerry Brown speaks to reporters at the Capitol on Tuesday, April 23, 2013. David Siders / Sacramento Bee

Gov. Jerry Brown said today that a man was arrested "a couple of days ago" trying to break into his Sacramento loft building.

Brown said he was not home at the time and did not think the intruder knew he lived in the building.

"A guy ... got in, got up to the roof, jumped down on the balcony and was trying to break in," Brown told reporters after mentioning the incident in a speech today at a Crime Victims United rally at the Capitol. "One of my neighbors called the police, and he was arrested, and I think he's out on his own recognizance."

The Sacramento Police Department's daily activity log lists an arrest on a prowling charge in the 1500 block of J Street on Sunday night. The one-bedroom unit Brown rents is in the 1530 J St. building across from Memorial Auditorium.

Police said Jamal Johnson, 26, was arrested on suspicion of prowling.

In a separate incident, Brown said three men were found "trying to break in" to his house in Oakland early one morning about a year ago, while his wife, first lady Anne Gust Brown, was home alone.

Brown said California Highway Patrol officers held the three men for about 40 minutes before deferring to Oakland police and deciding to let them go. He said the men claimed they were looking to buy real estate in the neighborhood.

Editor's note: Post was updated at 5:20 p.m. to include information about Jamal Johnson.

PHOTO CREDIT: Gov. Jerry Brown speaks with a participant at a Crime Victims United rally at the Capitol following a speech on Tuesday, April 23, 2013. David Siders / Sacramento Bee

PHOTO CREDIT: Jamal Johnson booking photo, provided by Sacramento Police Department

One remarkable thing about Gov. Jerry Brown's trip to China this past week is that, for a governor who can be difficult to keep organized and on schedule, it was largely a logistical success.

That is with one minor exception: getting Mike Rossi to dinner at Duck de Chine.

One night last week, Brown was dining at the Beijing restaurant when a text went out that he was looking for Rossi, his unpaid senior jobs adviser.

Rossi - "My man, Rossi," occasionally, in the governor's vernacular - was miles across town, his six-foot-two, 210-pound frame sandwiched between two reporters in the back seat of a cab. A mix-up had sent Rossi and several other members of Brown's trade mission in a bus from the U.S. embassy to the wrong restaurant, a second, considerably less famous Duck de Chine.

Back at the hotel, Rossi's deputy, Brook Taylor, thought they still could catch up to Brown.

"It's 10 after 8, it takes 20 minutes to get there," Taylor said. "Yeah, we should go."

Rossi ordered a car, and he and Taylor piled in. Twenty minutes later, the scenery began to look familiar and they pulled out a map. The driver glanced at it and nodded confidently, though the map was upside down.

Once more, Rossi had been delivered to the same, wrong Duck de Chine. The driver's cell phone rang, emitting an otherworldly sound, and the 69-year-old former bank executive started laughing.

He said, "You can't get upset about these things."

PHOTO CREDIT: Mike Rossi, Gov. Jerry Brown's senior jobs adviser, rides a delegate bus in Beijing as Karen Ross, secretary of the California Department of Food and Agriculture, looks on. David Siders / Sacramento Bee

Key elements of Gov. Jerry Brown's school-funding proposal are getting passing grades from Californians, a new statewide poll shows.

Brown's push to eliminate most state-driven earmarks and to direct more money to districts with impoverished students was supported by more than two of every three adults surveyed, according to the Public Policy Institute of California poll.

The nonpartisan, nonprofit think tank polled 1,705 adults on weekend days and weekday nights from April 2-9 on landlines and cellphones.

Brown's goal of giving school districts more spending flexibility by eliminating most state education earmarks -- funding restricted to specific programs -- was supported by 78 percent of adults surveyed.

Support dropped only slightly, to 71 percent, when pollsters asked about the governor's plan to direct more funding to districts with large numbers of impoverished students and English learners.

SHENZHEN, China - Gov. Jerry Brown said Tuesday his administration will prepare to release as many as 10,000 state prisoners if the state is unable to get out from under a court order demanding it reduce California's prison population.

Brown had said last week that he would not comply with the order "until the Supreme Court tells us that we're not on the right track," despite a federal court's threat to hold him and top prison officials in contempt of court.

"We certainly will appeal whatever we can appeal, and I think there is a lot of room there," the Democratic governor told reporters in Shenzhen, where he is concluding a week-long trade mission to China. "But at the same time, with the court threatening contempt at every level, when the Supreme Court gives these three judges the green light, then we have to do what they tell us, and we'll have a list of 9,000 or 10,000 of our finer inmates that will be ready for neighborhood visitations throughout California."

Brown said, "We're going to try to find the nicest of the nice, but I have to tell you, it's harder to get into prison now, there's not as many people hanging around."

A special, three-judge panel ordered the state in 2009 to reduce its prison population to improve health care conditions in the prison system, and U.S. District Judge Lawrence K. Karlton this month denied Brown's bid to move prison health care out from under federal control.

Brown has refused to decrease the prison population by the required 9,000 inmates to reach the court-ordered level.

PHOTO CREDIT: Gov. Jerry Brown tours the Shenzhen, China, headquarters of BYD Co., an electric car maker, on Tuesday, April 16, 2013.

SHENZHEN, China - Gov. Jerry Brown acknowledged Tuesday he likely won't be able to overhaul California's signature environmental law in the current legislative session, citing overwhelming opposition from fellow Democrats.

The California Environmental Quality Act, Brown told reporters here, "is supported by some key groups within the Democratic Party, and I think it would be difficult for the Legislature to move that process forward."

Brown said he remains committed relaxing provisions of the law but that he has a large agenda, including the state budget, water infrastructure and high-speed rail. He said "the appetite for CEQA reform is much stronger outside the state Capitol than it is inside."

GUANGZHOU, China - On the final night of his trade mission to China, Gov. Jerry Brown walked into the Four Seasons Hotel Guangzhou, looked up 30 stories from an atrium on the 70th floor and said, "Wow, this must be expensive."

The businesspeople, campaign donors and friends accompanying Brown on the trip assembled over a lavish dinner of sushi and Australian beef sirloin in a hotel restaurant overlooking this humid city of more than 12 million people.

The Democratic governor offered a toast.

"To all you people who came on this trip not quite knowing what you were going to get, I think we've all seen more than we expected and maybe more than we deserve," he said.

Brown went on, "To all our California and Chinese friends, many years of prosperity and happiness and good fortune."

Wine flowed throughout the evening, and the Bay Area Council, the business group helping organize the trade mission, gave Brown a likeness of himself in traditional garb.

Brown's office gave staff members California license plates that read, "DREAMER." They were signed by Brown and his wife, first lady Anne Gust Brown.

The event marked the end for most delegates of the week-long trade mission to China. Brown and his advisers are planning to make one more stop on Tuesday, in Shenzhen, before flying home later this week from Hong Kong.

PHOTO CREDIT: A California license plate Gov. Jerry Brown's office gave staff members on his trade mission to China (top) and a figure given to Brown by the Bay Area Council (bottom). David Siders / The Sacramento Bee

GUANGZHOU, China - In a cab ride this morning through the muggy streets of Guangzhou, Thomas Peterson, president and chief executive officer of the nonprofit Center for Climate Strategies, acknowledged skepticism in China about the friendly agreements government officials sign promising to combat climate change.

The country is the world's largest emitter of carbon dioxide, and while Gov. Jerry Brown is in the country promoting greenhouse gas reduction policies, pollution fills the skies. Brown and members of his trade mission took a cruise on Saturday down the Huangpu River in Shanghai, where an army of barges ferried coal down the river earlier in the day.

Yet good may come of an agreement signed today between California state officials and representatives of Guangdong, a South Chinese province of about 105 million people, said Peterson, whose group helped develop the accord. The non-binding agreement calls for cooperation in efforts to increase energy conservation, to expand the use of green energy and to promote carbon-reducing technologies, among other things.

SHANGHAI - Gov. Jerry Brown has enjoyed a relatively warm reception from Communist party officials while in China, but they also manage his exposure.

On Saturday, lights on the Citibank building in Shanghai lit up over the Huangpu River to "welcome Jerry & Anne Brown and California delegates to Shanghai."

The message required the approval of local publicity officials, and in the original script was one word to which they objected: governor.

For purposes of the massive Shanghai skyline, the governor and first lady of California would just be "Jerry & Anne Brown."

PHOTO CREDIT: A message welcoming Gov. Jerry Brown's trade mission to China lights up the Citibank building in Shanghai on Saturday, April 13, 2013. David Siders / Sacramento Bee

SHANGHAI - In a week in which Gov. Jerry Brown has demonstrated a significant degree of diplomatic acuity, it will likely not go down as an international incident.

On the other hand, the retired Chinese basketball player Yao Ming is a national icon, so it might have helped to know how injury prone Ming was before asking if he'd ever been hurt.

"Did you ever get injured?" Brown asked the former Houston Rockets standout before a dinner cruise on the Huangpu River on Saturday.

In fact, Ming said, injury was the reason he retired.

And no, it was not his knees, Ming said when Brown suggested basketball can be hard on them, but his ankle.

Ming, who owns a Napa Valley winery, met with Brown and posed for photographs before the governor and other members of his week-long trade mission to China left the dock.

Following the Brown-Ming injury exchange, Brown's wife, Anne Gust Brown, stepped in, a compliment coming.

"What do you do now to keep in shape?" she said.

When Ming said he isn't in shape, she replied, "You look in shape to me."

"OK," Ming said. "Thank you."

PHOTO CREDIT: Gov. Jerry Brown and retired Chinese basketball player Yao Ming meet in Shanghai on Saturday, April 13, 2013. David Siders / Sacramento Bee

SHANGHAI - Gov. Jerry Brown is making the papers in China.

On Saturday, the Shanghai Daily reported Brown made a "brief but eloquent speech" at the opening of a foreign trade office in Shanghai.

The state-run China Daily ran a story Thursday about the non-binding trade agreement Brown and Chinese commerce officials signed in Beijing, and on Friday the newspaper published a photograph of the meeting between Brown and the Chinese premier, Li Keqiang.

Just more than halfway through a week-long trade mission to China, Brown is scheduled to leave Shanghai on Sunday for Nanjing, before flying later in the day to Guangzhou, a southern Chinese city on the Pearl River.

The Democratic governor spent his last day in Shanghai meeting with Han Zheng, the local Communist party secretary, and joining members of the governor's trade mission on a Huangpu River cruise. Brown's meeting with Han included a discussion of acupuncture and harmony, while on the river he had more basic ideas in mind.

"Thank you very much," Brown said. "Now, nobody fall overboard, OK?"

PHOTO CREDIT: Photographers gather around Gov. Jerry Brown before he speaks at the opening of a trade office in Shanghai on Friday, April 12, 2013. David Siders / Sacramento Bee

SHANGHAI - If the strobe lights and house music did not make clear this was an unusual place for Gov. Jerry Brown, the host's introduction certainly did.

"It's not a press conference," he said Friday. "It's a party!"

In an auditorium at the Ritz Carlton in this city of more than 23 million people, Brown joined Caroline Beteta, president and chief executive officer of the tourism group Visit California, to announce a $1.6 million campaign to draw more Chinese tourists to the Golden State.

There were drawings for prizes, appeals to "shake" and "let's do it," and a countdown to a ceremonial launch that involved Brown, Beteta and a button on stage. The tourism group said it will promote California in online ads and on a dozen electronic billboards around Shanghai.

The 75-year-old governor, in China for a week-long trade mission, acknowledged the event was a "bit more glitzy than I'm used to," but he said, "it pales in comparison to the sparkle of California."

Earlier Friday, Chinese officials hosted Brown at a banquet at the government-owned WH Ming Hotel. Brown's hosts set up a massive, red banner in the banquet hall: "Welcome the delegation from California, USA headed by Governor Brown," and a march played as Brown walked to the podium to offer remarks.

Lighter music was playing as Brown left. He stopped for a moment to listen to the string trio.

PHOTO CREDIT: Gov. Jerry Brown participates in the announcement of a tourism campaign in China involving electronic billboards on Friday, April 12, 2013. David Siders / Sacramento Bee

SHANGHAI - Presiding over the opening of a foreign trade office here Friday, Gov. Jerry Brown suggested his family participated in a far more significant event in the improvement of U.S.-China relations - or what the governor called "the Brown family's contribution to the Shanghai Communiqué."

"As we open and look to the future, it's well that we keep grounded in the past," Brown said. "And as I was sitting there looking at 2013, I couldn't help but think of 1972, when Richard Nixon signed the Shanghai Communiqué that broke the logjam and opened the doors of friendship between China and the United States."

Ten years before Nixon made his historic visit to China and signed the diplomatic paper, he ran unsuccessfully for governor of California.

"He was unsuccessful because my father beat him," Brown said, causing a roomful of Chinese and American businesspeople to burst into laughter. "But that was not the end of Richard Nixon. He decided to leave California and move to New York, where a few years later he became president. And then as president, he was the first American to break so many years of antagonism and going against so much of the political thinking in America at that time to sign the Shanghai Communiqué."

The trade office's opening was a central event of Brown's week-long trade mission to China. The Democratic governor is seeking to lure Chinese investment into the Golden State. The privately-funded office is California's first official presence in China since the state closed its 12 trade offices amid controversy in 2003.

"I would like to think in just a small way," Brown said, "that we are continuing that history of breaking new ground, opening doors and recognizing that while different, China and America, we still have certain key elements in common."

PHOTO CREDIT: Gov. Jerry Brown speaks at an event celebrating the opening of a trade office in Shanghai on Friday, April 12, 2013. David Siders / Sacramento Bee

SHANGHAI - Gov. Jerry Brown said Friday his administration will not comply with a federal court order rejecting his effort to avoid reducing California's prison population, pledging to litigate "until the Supreme Court tells us that we're not on the right track."

The Democratic governor, in China for a week-long trade mission, said he was unaware that a three-judge federal court on Thursday had threatened to hold him and top prison officials in contempt of court, though he appeared unfazed by the prospect.

"I'm sure the people in L.A. would like to see more prisoners out on the streets," Brown said. "See, we have two problems here: Some are saying there are too many people being let loose, and then we have the judges saying, not enough, we need another 10,000 out there. So somewhere we're going to find the golden mean, and I will do my best to make it work."

SHANGHAI - When Gov. Jerry Brown boarded a bullet train from Beijing to Shanghai on Thursday afternoon, it marked the second time in less than a week that the Southwest Airlines-flying governor rode in a class that wasn't coach.

Brown sat in business class, as he did on his United Airlines flight arriving Tuesday in Beijing.

For a governor who has long used his mode of travel to highlight his frugality (when governor before, he was riding in a Plymouth), the latest seat assignments have been a departure.

The 75-year-old, third-term governor visited reporters Thursday in their section of the train and offered an explanation.

"I need it," he said. "My back's been a little sore, guys."

The ticket class is of no consequence to California taxpayers. Fees paid by business delegates joining Brown on his week-long trade mission to China are covering Brown's travel costs.

PHOTO CREDIT: Gov. Jerry Brown speaks with reporters on the bullet train from Beijing to Shanghai on Thursday, April 11, 2013. David Siders / Sacramento Bee

SHANGHAI - Gov. Jerry Brown, who has made building a high-speed rail system a priority of his administration, arrived in Shanghai on the bullet train from Beijing on Thursday night, admiring the station as he alighted.

"Yeah, it's good," he said. "Look at all this space, the trains, people moving."

The Democratic governor and senior officials traveled more than 800 miles in about five hours on the train, part of China's rapidly expanding high-speed rail network. Brown told reporters en route that "we've got to step up the pace in California," where officials plan to begin construction on a $68 billion high-speed rail system this summer.

California High-Speed Rail Authority officials traveling with the governor met privately this week with potential Chinese investors in the rail project, including the Chinese Investment Corporation, a major sovereign wealth fund. Brown was accompanied on the train by representatives of Tangshan Railway Vehicle Co., a Chinese company that designs and builds train-sets in China.

"What they've done here is impressive," said Dan Richard, chairman of the California High-Speed Rail Authority board

The Chinese government has built more than 5,000 miles of high-speed rail track in just more than five years, vastly expanding China's transportation infrastructure.

BEIJING - Gov. Jerry Brown appeared to have put some thought into his big environmental speech at Tsinghua University in Beijing on Thursday, largely staying on point and book-ending his remarks with readings from the Chinese philosopher Confucius.

And then there was the encore.

Following a panel discussion at the Chinese university, Brown took the stage to offer closing remarks - Confucius out and eggs in.

"Anytime we make progress, we have to push opposition out of the way," Brown said. "So, what is the saying? 'You can't make an omelet unless you crack the egg.'"

The Democratic governor paused for just a moment and looked out at the audience.

"So that'll be my last statement," he said, before returning to his chair.

PHOTO CREDIT: Gov. Jerry Brown speaks about climate change at Tsinghua University in Beijing on Thursday. The Sacramento Bee/David Siders

BEIJING - Gov. Jerry Brown met the Chinese media Wednesday, and his fondness for Greek mythology and for prickling the press appeared to have survived the flight from California intact.

At a news conference at the Hunan Hotel in Beijing, the Democratic governor compared his work in California to that of cleaning stables full of dung.

"I'm going to go home from China with renewed zest to, if I could use a classical allusion, cleanse the Augean stables," Brown said. "That's Hercules. Of course it's not a very good idea because no matter how much he cleaned it, it got dirty again."

Brown was accompanied by an interpreter, and his characteristically meandering answers and questioning of reporters did her no favors. One of Brown's advisers suggested at one point that the interpreter stand closer to Brown so he could see her and remember to pause.

BEIJING - A Chinese investment group said Wednesday it will finance the majority of a $1.5 billion mixed-use development project in Oakland, an unusually large investment by a Chinese company in California, especially in real estate.

The agreement was finalized ahead of Gov. Jerry Brown's week-long trade mission to China, and he used it to promote foreign investment in the Golden State. It was also a personal victory of sorts for Brown, who was mayor of Oakland when the project - the subject of litigation in recent years - was first approved by city officials in 2006.

"We're going to announce a major investment by China ... in where else than Oakland, of course," Brown said at a reception at the U.S. embassy in Beijing.

The investment by China-based Zarsion Holdings Group Co., Ltd., is estimated to be worth more than $1 billion over eight to 10 years. That is compared to a total of $1.3 billion in investment deals from China that California did from 2000 to 2011, according to an October report for the Asia Society by the research firm Rhodium Group.

BEIJING - Of all the things the Chinese government appears to take seriously, one of the most innocuous is the memorandum of understanding, known in city halls and state houses in the United States as the lowly MOU.

On Wednesday, Gov. Jerry Brown signed the first of a series of non-binding agreements he is expected to make with Chinese commerce officials while on a week-long trade mission. They pledged to establish a "Chinese Provinces and US California Joint Working Group on Trade and Investment Cooperation."

According to the agreement, "The two parties will set up an annual meeting mechanism in the forms of video conference or meeting in person."

For the detail-oriented, the agreement provides that "the time of each meeting will be decided by the two parties through consultation."

On Wednesday, the time was determined by China's commerce minister, Gao Hucheng. He met with Brown about 8 a.m. at the Ministry of Commerce before the MOU was signed that afternoon.

"First of all, I'd like to offer you my apologies for the fact that I had to move this meeting to 8 o'clock," the busy commerce minister said through an interpreter, "considering that you might still suffer from jet lag from the United States."

Sitting across from Gao in a conference room, Brown suggested he didn't mind.

"Thank you for receiving me at 8 o'clock," Brown said. "We have a saying that the early bird gets the worm."

The two men exchanged hopeful remarks about their partnership before the clock again was on Gao's mind.

"In the interest of time," he said, he had to go.

PHOTO CREDIT: Gov. Jerry Brown and first lady Anne Gust Brown meet with China's commerce minister, Gao Hucheng, in Beijing on Wednesday, April 10, 2013. David Siders / Sacramento Bee

BEIJING - Gov. Jerry Brown was participating in a luncheon discussion hosted by the American Chamber of Commerce in Beijing on Wednesday when a businessman asked about the rules and regulations businesses encounter in foreign trade.

"What would you say to those people who say, 'Oh, it's just too difficult, too much red tape, don't understand the foreign culture, you know, protectionist feelings and things like that," Chris Davies, of HSBC bank, asked the Democratic governor.

"Where?" Brown said. "In China or in California?"

The audience laughed.

"We've got more damn laws than you can think of," Brown said, lamenting litigation and other obstacles to business in California.

He said there are "endless ideas" about how to add more rules and regulations but that part of his job is "to find a way to cut through that."

"To the extent you have any red tape, there's no one more anxious to reduce it," Brown said.

At a news conference earlier Wednesday, Brown marveled at the amount of construction China has managed in the past several years.

The governor was asked if that didn't have something to do with China's one-party rule.

"While we don't have one-party rule in California, at least we have a diminished opposition," Brown said of California, where Democrats now hold supermajorities in both houses of the Legislature. "And hopefully that will bode well."

PHOTO CREDIT: Gov. Jerry Brown speaks at a news conference in Beijing on Wednesday, April 10, 2013. The Sacramento Bee/David Siders

BEIJING - The longest way to cross the street in China, it would seem, is in a car full of reporters bound for government talks.

A van arranged by Gov. Jerry Brown's administration to ferry journalists on Wednesday to the Ministry of Commerce, directly across the street from the Grand Hyatt Beijing, left the hotel about 7:45 a.m., snaked around several back streets and, upon arriving at the destination, was halted at the gate.

There the van sat while Brown's office tried first to get the license plate cleared, and then - through Chinese-speaking reporters inside the van - to direct the driver to another entrance. Brown, on a week-long trade mission to China, was about to meet with the country's commerce minister, Gao Hucheng.

Eventually the driver pulled around, just in time to see Brown's motorcade arrive.
"China is very complicated," one of the local reporters said. "You have to know all the gates."

PHOTO CREDIT: Gov. Jerry Brown meets with China's commerce minister, Gao Hucheng, in Beijing on Wednesday, April 10, 2013. The Sacramento Bee/ David Siders

BEIJING - Gov. Jerry Brown arrived in Beijing on Tuesday evening for his week-long trade mission to China, marveling at the pace of construction under China's one-party rule and suggesting - however wistfully - it is a lesson he could apply in California.

"Boy, you've done a lot of building," the Democratic governor said. "When I get back to California, the bulldozers are going to roll."

Brown last visited China in 1986. He has praised China for its construction of more than 5,000 miles of high-speed rail infrastructure in recent years, while he has spent decades calling for a high-speed rail system in California, only about to begin construction this year.

Gov. Jerry Brown, who is often uncomfortable with the type of protocol-heavy events that will fill his schedule next week in China, said today he is "excited" about the trip -- even if a week of banquets and meetings "can be a little bit ... it's not, like, exciting."

The third-term Democrat, who leaves the state on Monday, is expected to promote carbon-reduction policies and to seek investment in California while on a trade mission in China. He told reporters at the Capitol that he is open to Chinese investment in public infrastructure, including high-speed rail.

Brown visited Japan when he was governor before, in 1977, in an effort to persuade car manufacturers to site a plant in California, but he said the larger delegation he will lead to China is "unprecedented -- I've never done this, ever."

Brown said relationship-building with Chinese officials is significant to California and its companies, and he predicted the trade mission will help facilitate billions of dollars in investment in California.

"At least I'm putting my stake in the ground over there and flying the California flag," he said.

As he was showing a handful of reporters out of his office, Brown said again that he was looking forward to the trip.

"These banquets, though," said Brown, who will turn 75 on Sunday. "Oh, boy, that's going to be tough."

PHOTO CREDIT: Gov. Jerry Brown, center, gets a standing ovation after he delivered his State of the State speech on Thursday, Jan. 24, 2013. Hector Amezcua / Sacramento Bee

Gov. Jerry Brown said today that his trade mission to China next week will help facilitate "billions of dollars in investment" in California, as Brown's office released an itinerary of lunches, receptions, forums and agreement-signing events for the governor while abroad.

"I think we're going to get billions of dollars in investment coming from China," Brown said at a business event in Sacramento. "We're also going to facilitate billions of dollars in additional exports, not overnight, but over time."

China is California's third-largest trading partner, behind Mexico and Canada. The state's merchandise export trade with China amounted to about $14 billion last year. In his first official trip abroad since taking office in 2011, Brown is expected to promote California exports, tourism and greenhouse gas reduction policies.

He will be joined by a handful of senior advisers and about 75 business delegates, Brown's office said.

Brown will celebrate his 75th birthday on Sunday, before leaving next week for Beijing. Seven days of events are scheduled in that city and in Nanjing, Shanghai, Guangzhou and Shenzhen.

Brown will oversee the opening of a state trade office in Shanghai on Friday, April 12. He announced last year that the state would open the privately financed office, California's first official presence in China since the state closed its 12 foreign trade offices amid controversy in 2003.

Editor's note: This post was updated at 5:36 p.m. to correct the description of California's export trade with China.

PHOTO CREDIT: Gov. Jerry Brown explains his budget proposal during a news conference at the state Capitol in Sacramento in January. Randall Benton / Sacramento Bee

Friends and colleagues of long-time Capitol reporter Virgil Meibert will gather in Sacramento State University's alumni center April 12 for a memorial service.

Meibert represented the Oakland Tribune in the Capitol for nearly 20 years and held the same post for the Contra Costa Times for three years before retiring from newspapers in 1995. He died in his sleep March 18 at his Sacramento home after a lengthy battle with a variety of illnesses. He was 78.

Were California's state government a business, it would be a candidate for insolvency with a negative net worth of $127.2 billion, according to an annual financial report issued by State Auditor Elaine Howle and the Bureau of State Audits.

The report, which covers the fiscal year ending June 30, 2012, says that the state's negative status -- all of its assets minus all of its liabilities -- increased that year, largely because it spent more than it received in revenue.

During the 2011-12 fiscal year, the state's general fund spent $1.7 billion more than it received in revenues and wound up with an accumulated deficit of just under $23 billion from several years of red ink. Gov. Jerry Brown has referred to that and other budget gaps, mostly money owed to schools, as a "wall of debt" totaling more than $30 billion.

Gov. Jerry Brown announced today he has convened a panel on military matters to advise the state on efforts to expand California's defense industry and to protect against federal budget cuts.

The formation of the Governor's Military Council comes as $85 billion in across-the-board, federal spending reductions start taking effect under sequestration.

"California plays a crucial role in our nation's defense, and military bases and activities are vital to our state's economy," Brown said in a prepared statement. "As federal priorities shift to cyber security and new military technology, this council will work to expand defense-industry jobs and investment in California."

The Democratic governor appointed Ellen Tauscher, a former Democratic congresswoman and undersecretary in the State Department, to chair the panel. She said in a prepared statement that the panel "will send a unified message to Washington, D.C., that highlights the value" of military bases in California.

The Department of Defense employs more than 236,000 people in the state, according to the governor's office.

The council is scheduled to convene for one year, drafting recommendations to the governor and Legislature.

The 18-member panel includes Republican and Democratic lawmakers, retired military admirals and generals and the adjutant general of the California National Guard. Their positions on the panel are unpaid.

PHOTO CREDIT: Gov. Jerry Brown at a meeting of the National Governors Association in Washington on Feb. 24, 2013. AP Photo/ Manuel Balce Ceneta

Gov. Jerry Brown's interest in history is expansive, but there are two things he appears to enjoy more than most.

The first is quizzing schoolchildren about California's earliest explorers, as he has done since before taking office in 2011. The second is mule meat.

Happening by a group of fourth graders on the Capitol steps this afternoon, Brown asked if anyone had heard of the Spanish explorer Gaspar de Portola, and if anyone knew what year he came to California.

The students and the Democratic governor settled on 1769, and Brown went on to recount a story he told in his State of the State address in January about the fortitude of explorers who were "forced to eat the flesh of emaciated pack mules."

Brown toned it down slightly for the students, saying "they ate mule meat, and the mules weren't very healthy."

Brown, who was returning to his office from having his portrait taken on the Capitol grounds, went on to discuss how long it took for settlements to take hold in California.

As he left, he said, "That's it. That's the history lesson for the day."

PHOTO CREDIT: Gov. Jerry Brown speaks to students outside the Capitol Wednesday. The Sacramento Bee/David Siders

Following the resignations of his press secretary and chief deputy press secretary, Gov. Jerry Brown has promoted a spokesman from within his office to oversee the administration's Spartan communications effort.

Evan Westrup, 31, was Brown's deputy press secretary in his 2010 campaign for governor and joined the administration in the same capacity when Brown took office in 2011.

Westrup's appointment, announced today, follows the resignations of press secretary Gil Duran and chief deputy press secretary Elizabeth Ashford. Duran has already left the administration. Ashford will leave next month. When she does, Westrup will oversee a shoestring office of three people, including himself.

Like Brown, Westrup is a Democrat. He will be paid $130,000 a year.

Westrup previously worked as a deputy press secretary for Brown when Brown was state attorney general, and as an associate communications director for Brown's predecessor, Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger.

PHOTO CREDIT: California Gov. Jerry Brown explains his budget proposal during a news conference at the Capitol in Sacramento on Thursday, Jan. 10, 2013. Randall Benton / Sacramento Bee

Gov. Jerry Brown and other California political figures, especially Democrats, have frequently touted "clean tech" as the key ingredient in the state's economic future.

However, the state's own big pension fund, the California Public Employees Retirement System, apparently sees it as a loser.

While running for governor in 2010, Brown promised to fast-track permits for solar energy projects and take other steps to move the state away from dependence on oil and other carbon-based energy sources, promising that it would create hundreds of thousands of new jobs.

A few months after becoming governor again, Brown flew to Blythe in the middle of summer to break ground on what would become, he and others said, the largest solar energy project in the world, saying, "This is really big."

"It's not for the faint of heart," Brown told a conference on renewable industry. "Scientific and technological progress moves by trial and error."

It's apparently mostly error, however, in the view of CalPERS. Joseph Dear, its chief investment officer, told a Wall Street Journal-sponsored conference on the environment and the economy last week that CalPERS is reducing its investment in such technology because it's a loser.

Gov. Jerry Brown's shoestring communications office is shrinking even further.

Elizabeth Ashford, Brown's chief deputy press secretary, will leave the administration in April.

Her resignation follows the resignation last month of Brown's press secretary, Gil Duran. That position has not been filled.

In an email, Ashford cited family concerns and said she plans to work as a communications and public affairs consultant.

"I'm indebted to the Governor and Anne (Gust Brown) for the opportunity to work here over these incredible two years," she wrote.

Ashford, 38, was chief deputy communications director and chief deputy Cabinet secretary in former Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger's administration, and she later worked as a spokeswoman for BP.

Brown's communications office will be down to three people when Ashford leaves. That is the same number it had during the first month of Brown's term, before the administration staffed up.

"After more than fulfilling her two-year commitment to the administration earlier this year -- and recently tying the knot with her now LA-based husband -- we knew we'd lose Elizabeth soon," Evan Westrup, Brown's deputy press secretary, said in an email. "We're sad that day has come, but we're incredibly grateful for her service."

PHOTO CREDIT: California Gov. Jerry Brown explains his budget proposal during a news conference at the Capitol in Sacramento on Thursday, Jan. 10, 2013. Randall Benton / Sacramento Bee

Gov. Jerry Brown followed Warren Beatty onto the red carpet at the California Museum this evening, where Brown inducted the movie star and several other people into the California Hall of Fame.

Beatty, a longtime supporter of Brown, called the Democratic governor the "most astute governor in the nation," while Brown called Beatty "somebody I've been talking to and arguing with for decades."

Brown told reporters the annual Hall of Fame event is important to honor Californians who have made significant contributions to the state.

"Tonight is just letting California express itself and its many personalities," the third-term governor said.

Behind Beatty and Brown came Joe Montana, and a cheer went up.

The football star shrugged off a question about Brown.

"Everybody must like him," Montana said. "He's back again, right?"

Californians remain sharply divided about California's $68 billion high-speed rail project, even as officials prepare to start construction in the Central Valley this year, according to a Public Policy Institute of California poll released tonight.

Forty-eight percent of adults favor the project, while 50 percent oppose it, according to the poll. Opposition is even greater among likely voters, 54 percent to 43 percent.

In addition to division over high-speed rail, a majority of likely voters -- 51 percent -- oppose an $11.1 billion water bond scheduled for the November 2014 ballot. The bond, tied politically to Gov. Jerry Brown's effort to build two water-diverting tunnels through the Sacramento-San Joaquin Delta, includes funding for dams, wastewater treatment and other water infrastructure projects.

One chair will be empty when an independent commission convenes Thursday to consider whether pay for California's elected officials is too high, too low or just right.

Gov. Jerry Brown announced Wednesday that he was naming Democrats LeRoy Chatfield and Nora Vargas to vacancies on the seven-member Citizens Compensation Commission, which sets pay packages for constitutional officers, including the governor, and state legislators.

But the Democratic governor's office backtracked just hours later, saying the appointments "were announced prematurely."

"Under statute, prior employment with the state of California precludes these individuals from serving on the commission," that statement says. "When new appointments are made, they will be announced."

Chatfield, who publishes an online literary journal and Web publication related to the farmworker movement, served as an appointee on several boards and commissions when Brown was governor in the 1970s and 1980s. A 1976 Newsweek article also identified him as travelling secretary on the young Brown's presidential campaign.

Vargas, the vice president of community engagement at Planned Parenthood of the Pacific Southwest, is ineligible because she spent one year as a legislative relations specialist at San Diego State University.

Filling the two vacant seats would give Brown a majority of appointees on the commission. Three of the five members now serving were named to the commission by former GOP Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger.

Later in the day, Brown named Nancy C. Miller, an attorney from Sacramento, to fill one of the vacancies.

The panel has slashed pay and benefits for elected officials over the last several years, most recently instituting a 5 percent salary cut and axing a program that provided on-the-job cars for state legislators. Annual pay for governor dropped from $212,179 to $165,288 between 2005 and December 2012, while starting salaries for members of the state Legislature went from $116,208 to $90,526 in that period. State legislators are also eligible for roughly $30,000 in per diem payments.

Commissioners are scheduled to meet at 10 a.m.Thursday at Sacramento City Hall for their annual review of elected officials' pay.

PHOTO CREDIT: Gov. Jerry Brown speaks at a news conference at the Gladstone Institutes in San Francisco, Wednesday, March 13, 2013. (AP Photo/ Jeff Chiu)

Editor's Note: This post was updated to reflect Miller's appointment. Updated at 6:37 p.m. on March 20, 2013.

SAN FRANCISCO -- Gov. Jerry Brown was answering a question at a news conference this afternoon about California's historic prison realignment when his thoughts turned to Rome.

"I'm certainly not saying we have a perfect situation," said Brown, a former Jesuit seminarian. "We don't have that prerogative that they have over there in Rome, of infallibility. We have impeccability, no peccability, I guess, that's the correct word. Yeah, we make mistakes, but we correct them as we go."

The answer prompted a follow-up question about the new pope, Jorge Mario Bergoglio, a Jesuit from Argentina who has taken the name Pope Francis. Brown, like everyone else with a smartphone, had learned about the selection about an hour before.

"I'm glad he's a Jesuit," Brown said. "He's from Argentina, so that might give him a broader perspective. He sees the world from the Southern Hemisphere."

However, the third-term governor said, "What the hell do I know? I thought Jesuits were not allowed to consider higher office -- at least they weren't in my day."

Brown was in San Francisco for a meeting of the University of California's governing board, and for a news conference with U.S. Secretary of the Interior Ken Salazar.

PHOTO CREDIT: Gov. Jerry Brown takes a pause outside a meeting in San Francisco on Wednesday, March 13, 2013. David Siders / Sacramento Bee

Gov. Jerry Brown today blocked the release from prison of Bruce Davis, a former Charles Manson follower, reversing a decision of the state parole board.

Davis was convicted in the 1969 killings of Gary Hinman, an aspiring musician, and Donald "Shorty" Shea, a stuntman, but he did not participate in the infamous murder of Sharon Tate.

The state Board of Parole Hearings found Davis, now 70, suitable for parole last year.

In his decision today, the Democratic governor acknowledged Davis "has made efforts to improve himself while incarcerated," but he said the positive steps Davis has taken "are outweighed by negative factors that demonstrate he remains unsuitable for parole."

Brown, who uses his power to block decisions of the parole board relatively sparingly, called the killings of Hinman and Shea "heinous and brutal," and he said Davis played a central role. He also said Davis fails to acknowledge the extent of his involvement in the crime.

PHOTO CREDIT: A photograph of Bruce Davis taken in October 2012 / California Department of Corrections and Rehabilitation

The first legislative public hearing on Gov. Jerry Brown's proposal for a new school funding formula drew scores of people Thursday who generally applauded the concept but criticized details.

Brown is pushing to consolidate funds for state-mandated programs in order to provide a "base grant" of about $6,800 per student, which would be supplemented with extra funds for districts with large numbers of poor students, English learners or foster youth.

The new formula would distribute $1.6 billion in the coming fiscal year.

The governor's goal is to let districts decide for themselves how best to spend money for various school-related "categorical" programs, such as summer school or foster youth programs, while targeting communities with special needs to receive a fiscal boost.

"Clearly a big step has been presented to us, a lot of moving pieces, and we want to do it right," state Sen. Mark Leno, D-San Francisco, said in closing Thursday's nearly five-hour public hearing of the Budget and Fiscal Review Committee he chairs.

Women accounted for slightly more than one-third of Gov. Jerry Brown's judicial appointments since he took office in 2011, with minorities claiming a similar share, according to data released today by the governor's office.

The percentage of women and minorities appointed by the Democratic governor falls below that of the statewide population but is more reflective of California's diversity than all the judges now on the bench.

Seventy-one percent of sitting judges and justices are white, and 69 percent are men, according to the governor's office.

Brown has made 90 judicial appointments since taking office in 2011. His appointments last year included Jim Humes, pictured above, a former senior aide to Brown and the first openly gay justice to serve on a California Court of Appeal.

Brown's office said another appointee, Halim Dhanidina, is the first American Muslim judge ever appointed in California. The governor named him to Los Angeles Superior Court last May.

PHOTO CREDIT: Jim Humes, right, talks to Bee reporter David Siders in January 2011. Hector Amezcua / Sacramento Bee file, 2011.

WASHINGTON - Gov. Jerry Brown skipped a meeting with President Barack Obama and boarded a train today for New York, where he will meet with several "thought leaders" before returning to California on Tuesday, his office said.

Brown, who left Washington on Amtrak, is scheduled to meet privately with former Federal Reserve Chairman Paul Volcker, former Treasury Secretary Robert Rubin and economist William Baumol, spokesman Evan Westrup said.

WASHINGTON - Any hope of a push-up contest between California Gov. Jerry Brown and New Jersey Gov. Chris Christie was put on hold for at least a few hours Sunday, with Christie and Brown posing together -- all smiles -- for a photograph at a dinner at the White House.

Brown's wife, Anne Gust Brown, posted the photograph from her Twitter account with the message, "Jerry and Chris at the White House. Not doing push ups."

Brown and Christie, in Washington for a meeting of the nation's governors, feuded last year.

In a speech to California Republicans at the Republican National Convention in Tampa, Fla., in August, Christie called the 74-year-old Brown an "old retread" and said he could not believe Californians elected him to a third term.

Brown fired back at New Jersey's rotund governor a few days later. Brown said he may have less hair and be slower than he once was, but, "I have to tell you, I ran three miles in 29 minutes two nights ago ... and I hereby challenge Gov. Christie to a three-mile race, a pushup contest and a chin-up contest. And whatever he wants to bet, I have no doubt of the outcome."

WASHINGTON - One advantage of being in politics for more than 40 years is that Gov. Jerry Brown knows someone with a spare bedroom almost everywhere he goes.

In Washington this weekend for a conference of the National Governors Association, Brown and first lady Anne Gust Brown will stay at the home of Lucie Gikovich, a former aide.

"I don't like hotels," the 74-year-old, third-term governor said while waiting for a tram at Washington Dulles International Airport.

He mentioned that his wife likes them, though, and she said, "You can see who gets their way."

The conference is at a respectable hotel, the JW Marriott, and Brown could have stayed there. He didn't last year, and he often rooms with friends when traveling.

"I like to be able to go in the refrigerator in the middle of the night," Brown said.

He and his wife joked about Brown's frugality - how he doesn't like the minibar prices.

"No," Brown said. "It's just, I like to be with friends."

PHOTO CREDIT: Gov. Jerry Brown and first lady Anne Gust Brown ride the tram at Washington Dulles International Airport on Friday, Feb. 22, 2013. David Siders / Sacramento Bee

WASHINGTON - Gov. Jerry Brown said today that state Sen. Michael Rubio's resignation from the state Legislature took him by surprise, and he suggested it could complicate his effort to overhaul the state's signature environmental law.

"He's a good man," Brown said as he arrived here for a conference of the National Governors Association. "I was kind of counting on him for this year."

Asked if Rubio's resignation would hurt his effort to make changes to the California Environmental Quality Act, the Democratic governor said, "Well, he was certainly the foremost champion" of enacting changes.

Rubio announced today that he is leaving the Legislature to take a job at Chevron Corp. Brown had expected the Shafter Democrat to help him enact legislation limiting the reach of CEQA.

Brown said of Rubio's announcement, "That was a surprise."

PHOTO CREDIT: Gov. Jerry Brown and first lady Anne Gust Brown arrive at Washington Dulles International Airport on Friday, Feb. 22, 2013. David Siders / Sacramento Bee

Gov. Jerry Brown continued last year to use his power to block decisions of the state parole board relatively sparingly, letting about 80 percent of convicted killers' parole releases stand.

Brown reversed 91 of 470 parole grants in 2012 and returned two cases to the state Board of Parole Hearings for reconsideration, according to a report to the Legislature released today.

Brown's record in 2012 is similar to the first year of his term, when he let stand roughly 82 percent of parole board decisions.

Texas Gov. Rick Perry is heading to California to recruit businesses, his office said this morning, after Perry released a radio ad Monday criticizing California's business climate and encouraging businesses to leave.

Perry's radio ad - and California Gov. Jerry Brown's response that the $24,000 media buy is so small it is "barely a fart" - are the latest in a war of words between Brown and Perry about which state is better for business.

Perry, a Republican, has criticized California's tax rate and regulatory environment, while Brown, a Democrat, has criticized Texas for its relatively large percentage of people working at or below the minimum wage.

Gov. Jerry Brown wants to expand how the state can spend new fire fee proceeds, while Republican legislators want to kill the charge entirely.

In a series of new proposals, GOP lawmakers and the Democratic governor are jockeying over ways to change the controversial $150 annual fee on 825,000 properties mostly located in rural areas. State leaders approved the "fire prevention fee" in 2011 as a way to raise money for the California Department of Forestry and Fire Protection, and Brown said at the time that residential growth on the forest edges had led to higher state fire costs.

Gov. Jerry Brown said today that revelations that the California Department of Forestry and Fire Protection hid settlement funds for several years in a nonprofit account amount to a "boring story," though he said the administration would look into it.

The Democratic governor said at a business event in West Sacramento that he had not read The Bee's report this morning that his administration for two years used a share of new fire fees for wildfire investigations, an arrangement the Legislature's attorney considers illegal.

Nor, Brown said, had he read earlier reports by the Los Angeles Times and Wall Street Journal that Cal Fire since 2005 directed a share of wildfire settlements to a $3.66 million, off-budget fund managed by the California District Attorneys Association.

"I find it a relatively boring story, to tell you the truth," Brown said. "I always like stories that say we've got more money than I thought we had."

However, Brown said he will "certainly look into it."

'We're not going to not take it seriously," Brown said. "If there's a few million bucks laying around and somebody didn't put in the right account, we'll figure it out."

Senate Republican Leader Bob Huff, R-Diamond Bar, issued a statement criticizing Brown's characterization of the revelations as "boring."

"After the $40 million state parks fund scandal, the governor assured us there were no other hidden pots of money to be found in the depths of state government," Huff said. "But just weeks later, we see there's a completely different money-hiding scandal unfolding at CalFire. I can't speak for the governor, but 'boring' is the last word I would use to describe these very disturbing revelations of hidden funds."

Editor's note: Post updated at 1:45 p.m. to include Huff's remarks.

Gov. Jerry Brown said today that the radio ads Texas Gov. Rick Perry is voicing in California are nothing more than a "few tricks," doubtful they would influence businesses to leave the Golden State.

"Do you think a few tricks from a politician is going to make any difference?" the Democratic governor told reporters at a business event in Los Angeles, according to a transcript provided by the governor's office. "People invest their money where these big things have occurred. The ideas, the structures, the climate, the opportunity is right here on the Pacific Rim."

Perry, a Republican, announced this morning that he is airing a new radio ad in California cities criticizing California's business climate and promoting Texas.

Asked by a reporter about Texans "coming here and poaching," Brown said, "Of course they're coming here. So are the British coming here, so are the French, so are the Russians, so are the Chinese. Everybody with half a brain is coming to California. So Texas, come on over!"

PHOTO CREDIT: Gov. Jerry Brown is escorted by Sen. Hannah-Beth Jackson, left, and Assemblywoman Nora Campos to his right, as he enters the Assembly to present his State of the State speech at the state Capitol in Sacramento, California on Thursday, January 24, 2013. Hector Amezcua / Sacramento Bee

The trust fund that provides pensions to retired teachers has a $64 billion deficit and would need a $4.5 billion per year infusion of revenue to become fully solvent, according to a new internal study.

The California State Teachers Retirement System produced the report in response to a legislative resolution.

Its release came just days after the Legislature's budget analyst, Mac Taylor, indirectly chided Gov. Jerry Brown for ignoring "huge unfunded liabilities associated with the teachers' retirement system and state retiree health benefits" in his new budget.

STRS receives money from the state, from local school districts and from teachers themselves, but is also highly dependent on investment earnings, which were clobbered during the recent recession. And while its larger cousin, the California Public Employees Retirement System, has the power take money from the state treasury as it sees fit, STRS must receive specific appropriations from the Legislature.

While fully funding teacher pensions would require $4.5 billion more a year --excluding projected investment earnings -- the system says in its report, the burden would be eased by setting lower funding targets and./or stretching out contributions. The most important decision, STRS said, is to begin closing the deficit, rather than allowing it to widen further.

Texas Gov. Rick Perry is criticizing California's business climate and promoting Texas in a new radio advertisement airing in the Golden State.

"Building a business is tough, but I hear building a business in California is next to impossible," the Republican governor says in the ad. "This is Texas Gov. Rick Perry, and I have a message for California businesses: come check out Texas."

The ad, airing this week on six stations in the Los Angeles, San Francisco, Sacramento, Inland Empire and San Diego media markets, is the latest in a back-and-forth between Perry and California Gov. Jerry Brown about whose state is better for business. The ad cheers Texas' "low taxes, sensible regulations and fair legal system."

Perry has boasted frequently about luring companies from California, while Brown, a Democrat, has touted the state's green energy industries and venture capital investments. THe ad buy cost about $24,000.

Gov. Jerry Brown was in a forgiving state of mind last year.

The Democratic governor pardoned 128 convicted criminals in 2012, six times the number he granted the previous year, according to a report to the Legislature today by Brown.

In 2011, Brown issued 21 pardons. Even that number was more than any governor had granted for years. Brown's predecessor, Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger, commuted 10 sentences during his tenure and pardoned just 16 people. Schwarzenegger's predecessor, Gray Davis, granted no pardons.

Most of the people Brown pardoned in 2012 were convicted of drug or property crimes and discharged from prison or parole many years ago. Most of the pardons - 79 - were announced on Christmas Eve.

Brown also granted one commutation, which was widely reported when it was announced in April. That month, Brown commuted the prison sentence of a woman convicted of shaking her baby grandson to death in Los Angeles County in 1997, in a case an appeals court deemed a likely miscarriage of justice.

A pardon is often symbolically significant to its recipient, and it can help in job applications. It also allows an ex-felon to be employed as a parole or probation officer and, in most cases, to own a gun.

PHOTO CREDIT: Gov. Jerry Brown gives his State of the State speech at the state Capitol in Sacramento, California on Thursday, January 24, 2013. Hector Amezcua / Sacramento Bee

Gov. Jerry Brown and his allies spent nearly $54 million passing Brown's November ballot initiative to raise taxes, about four times the opposition, according to year-end campaign finance reports.

Total spending in support of Proposition 30 was equivalent to about $7.65 per "Yes" vote. The initiative passed by more than 10 percentage points, providing a major political lift to the Democratic governor as he begins the second half of his term.

The campaign committee specifically opposing Prop. 30 spent about $13.2 million, or $2.33 per "No" vote.

Meanwhile, Brown's effort to raise money for his re-election account remained relatively modest last year, at about $1.9 million. Brown had $7.1 million in cash on hand at the end of the year, according to his year-end campaign finance statement.

The third-term governor is widely expected to seek re-election in 2014, though he has not yet said if he will run.

PHOTO CREDIT: Students, dignitaries and supporters cheer on Gov. Jerry Brown who holds up a campaign sign and encourages students to vote yes for Proposition 30 at Sacramento City College on Oct. 18, 2012. Randy Pench / Sacramento Bee

Following passage of his November ballot initiative to raise taxes, Gov. Jerry Brown's public approval rating is higher than at any previous point in his term, according to a new poll.

Fifty-one percent of California adults and 50 percent of likely voters approve of the job Brown is doing, according to a Public Policy Institute of California poll released tonight. The Democratic governor's job approval rating was 41 percent when he took office in 2011 and 46 percent one year ago.

The Legislature's traditionally dismal public approval rating has also improved, though it remains well below 50 percent. Forty-one percent of Californians approve of the job the Legislature is doing, up from 28 percent a year ago, according to the poll. Forty-two percent of Californians disapprove of the job the Legislature is doing.

Brown's improving image follows passage of Proposition 30 and the release this month of a relatively popular budget plan.

Sixty-nine percent of Californians favor Brown's annual budget proposal, while 75 percent of Californians favor his controversial proposal to overhaul the state's K-12 funding system to direct more money to districts with more poor students and English learners, according to the poll.

Californians remain concerned about the economy, but their outlook has improved. Forty-nine percent of adults expect good economic times in the next 12 months, up from 35 percent a year ago. The proportion of residents who say things in California are generally going in the right direction -- 51 percent -- is above 50 percent for the first time since January 2007, according to the poll.

Fifty-seven percent of Californians expect the governor and Legislature to work together to accomplish a lot this year, up 13 percentage points from a year ago.

A week after delivering his State of the State address to a joint session of the Legislature, Gov. Jerry Brown will hold the first of a series of dinners with lawmakers in Sacramento tonight.

Brown's press secretary, Gil Duran, said in an email that the Democratic governor is "breaking bread with legislators - renewing old friendships and starting new ones - in a series of dinners at the Governor's Mansion."

Brown is hopeful lawmakers this year will approve his budget plan and other policy initiatives, including overhauling the state's K-12 funding system modifying its signature environmental regulation.

Brown attended a reception for newly elected Assembly members in December. The Legislature this year is convening its largest freshman class since 1966.

Duran said Brown worked with legislative leaders to plan the dinners.

Robin Swanson, a spokeswoman for Assembly Speaker John A. Pérez, said Pérez felt "it was important for his members to have time with the governor."

"Why not start off the year breaking bread and balancing budgets?" she said.

Sacramento County Supervisor Phil Serna has been named a member of the California Air Resources Board by Gov. Jerry Brown.

Serna, who was elected to the board of supervisors in 2010, is also currently the chair of the Sacramento Metropolitan Air Quality Management District. He previously ran his own consulting firm and served as vice president of governmental affairs at the Home Builders Association of Northern California.

He will fill a seat created by Assembly Bill 146, 2012 legislation by Assemblyman Roger Dickinson, D-Sacramento, that increased membership of the board to include someone representing air districts in the Sacramento region.

The 12-member regulatory board's duties include running the state's new cap-and-trade carbon market.

Serna won't receive compensation for the appointment, which must be approved by the state Senate.

Editor's note: This post has been updated to include Dickinson's legislation and reflect that the board now has 12 slots.

PHOTO CREDIT: Sacramento Supervisor Phil Serna speaks to the school board members about the culture in the Twin Rivers Police Dept. on Nov. 1, 201. Jose Luis Villegas/The Sacramento Bee

Gov. Jerry Brown said in a triumphant State of the State address this morning that "California is back," arriving at a balanced budget after years of deficits.

"California has once again confounded our critics," he said. "We've wrought in just two years a solid and enduring budget. And by God, we're going to preserve and keep it that way for years to come."

In a wide-ranging and, at times, seemingly rushed 24-minute address to a joint session of the Legislature, the Democratic governor credited lawmakers for casting "difficult votes to cut billions from the state budget," and he praised voters for approving Proposition 30, Brown's November measure to raise the state sales tax and income taxes on California's highest earners.

"Two years ago, they were writing our obituary," Brown said. "Well, it didn't happen. California is back, its budget is balanced and we are on the move."

Still, the governor who famously declared in his 1976 State of the State address that California was "entering an era of limits" also cautioned lawmakers to "guard jealously the money temporarily made available" by Proposition 30.

"This means living within our means and not spending what we don't have," he said. "Fiscal discipline is not the enemy of our good intentions, but the basis for realizing them. It's cruel to lead people on by expanding good programs, only to cut them, cut them back when the funding disappears."

Here is the text of Gov. Jerry Brown's State of the State speech, as provided by the Governor's Office:

The message this year is clear: California has once again confounded our critics. We have wrought in just two years a solid and enduring budget. And, by God, we will persevere and keep it that way for years to come.

Against those who take pleasure, singing of our demise, California did the impossible.

You, the California legislature, did it. You cast difficult votes to cut billions from the state budget. You curbed prison spending through an historic realignment and you reformed and reduced the state's long term pension liabilities.

Then, the citizens of California, using their inherent political power under the Constitution, finished the task. They embraced the new taxes of Proposition 30 by a healthy margin of 55% to 44%.

A social scientist, labor activist and football star are among the newest class of inductees named by Gov. Jerry Brown and first lady Anne Gust Brown to the California Hall of Fame.

The inductees, announced today, are the late anthropologist and social scientist Gregory Bateson, actor Warren Beatty, football star Joe Montana, labor activist Dolores Huerta, the late designers Charles and Ray Eames, the founding brothers of Warner Bros., and Ishi, the famous American Indian.

At least one of the inductees - Bateson - impressed Brown long ago. While governor from 1975 to 1983, Brown appointed Bateson to the University of California board of regents.

"The Golden State shines brighter thanks to the talent and creativity of
these trailblazers," Brown said in a prepared statement. "Their contributions to
California are truly inspiring."

The annual Hall of Fame event was started by Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger and first lady Maria Shriver in 2006. Brown and Gust Brown will present medals to the living inductees and to family members of posthumous inductees at a ceremony on March 20 at The California Museum.

PHOTO CREDIT: San Francisco 49ers quarterback Joe Montana is seen in this Jan. 12, 1990 file photo. AP Photo/ Jack Smith

The California Legislature acted unconstitutionally when it approved a bill moving Gov. Jerry Brown's initiative to raise taxes to the top of the November ballot, an appeals court ruled today.

The opinion does not affect the passage of Proposition 30 but could limit the Legislature's future use of so-called "spot bills," placeholder bills included in budget packages and passed as urgency measures only after they are filled with language later. Such budget-related bills are useful to lawmakers because they require only a majority vote and take effect immediately.

The 3rd District Court of Appeal ruled that the state Constitution does not allow the Legislature to include empty spot bills in the budget package and to fill them with content as urgency bills later.

The measure that gave Proposition 30 top billing on the November ballot "was nothing but a number, a placeholder, an empty vessel at the time the budget bill was passed," the court ruled.

That bill, Assembly Bill 1499, gave ballot order priority to signature-based constitutional amendments over other initiatives. A higher position on the ballot is considered advantageous.

Legislative Democrats said a $1,000 expenditure included in the bill qualified it as an appropriation. The Howard Jarvis Taxpayers Association challenged the legislation, saying it had nothing to do with the state budget.

The taxpayers association heralded the ruling in a news release, calling it a case of "huge significance for the budget process."

Senate President Pro Tem Darrell Steinberg's office said it was reviewing the decision and conferring with counsel.

Gov. Jerry Brown may not have much in common with John Kasich, the Republican governor of Ohio, but in the world of online education they appear to have a mutual friend.

"I talked to the governor of Ohio just yesterday, and I went to the governor of Texas last week, last Friday, and I told them what Jerry Brown is doing in California," Udacity Inc. founder Sebastian Thrun said the other day.

Thrun, whose Palo Alto-based startup this week announced a partnership with San Jose State University to provide online courses, was in Ohio on Monday to meet with Kasich. Mark Kvamme, the high-profile venture capitalist who has been involved in economic development efforts in Ohio, recommended the meeting to Kasich, the governor's office said.

In a written statement, Kasich said a "powerful tool like Udacity is tailor-made for us because it's nimble, easily accessible and low-cost."

He said, "It's a break-the-mold approach that's driving what we're doing in Ohio, and I'm very excited to see how we can take full advantage of it to help meet our goals of developing a stronger workforce."

Brown, a Democrat, has been lobbying the University of California and California State University systems to expand their online offerings. He concluded two days of meetings with UC regents today, and he is expected to attend a meeting of CSU trustees in Long Beach next week.

Gov. Jerry Brown is thrusting himself into the federal fight over creating a "pathway to citizenship" for millions of undocumented immigrants who entered the United States illegally.

"I expect to play a role in the national effort for comprehensive reform," Brown said in a statement released by his office Thursday. "I'll be directing some efforts on national reform."

Brown's personal involvement is significant because California is home to an estimated 2.9 million undocumented immigrants, about one of every four nationwide.

Gil Duran, Brown's spokesman, said the governor will "carry the message to Washington" that comprehensive immigration reform is needed, underscoring its importance to California's economy.

Brown has been talking to business, agriculture, labor and other groups about "how best to be part of that conversation," Duran said.

"It seems that in both Washington and certainly here in California, people recognize the importance of addressing comprehensive immigration reform," Duran said. "It does appear there may be some bipartisan support. The time to act has come."

Gov. Jerry Brown, who has occasionally been prickled by claims that Texas is a better place to do business than California, was asked on Marketplace Morning Report today if the Golden State was falling behind.

Noting that the "debt burden per resident in Texas is actually one-fifth of what it is in California," host Jeremy Hobson asked Brown, "Are you losing, do you think, the economic battle in the long term to a state like Texas?"

Brown countered with another statistic - that the percentage of people working at or below the minimum wage in Texas is far higher than in California.

"That devastates families," he said.

Texas Gov. Rick Perry, a Republican, has boasted about recruiting businesses from California, while Brown, a Democrat, has emphasized California's green-energy industries and venture capital investments. This morning, Brown suggested Texas might benefit from investments that increase debt.

"They're doing well in manufacturing, they're doing well in investing in wind," Brown said. "Maybe they have a lower debt. Maybe their debt's too low. Maybe they should be investing in the kinds of innovation and technology that will serve their citizens in the future."

SAN JOSE -- At the announcement today of an agreement between San Jose State University and Silicon Valley startup Udacity Inc., to provide online courses, Udacity's Sebastian Thrun said the foundation for the agreement was laid in June, when he awoke to find "in my inbox an email from a guy named Jerry Brown."

The governor of California, Thrun said, wrote, "We need your help," then followed up with a telephone call a few minutes later.

Brown might have chosen to contact any of three leaders in the offerings of MOOCs, or massive open online courses.

Why Udacity?

"I was reading The New York Times on the weekend, since I don't take it during the week, and I saw his name, and it looked interesting to me, so I just went online, found out his email and sent him an email, and that's how it worked," Brown told reporters.

He said he looked at the other providers, Coursera and edX, but "wherever it was, I got to his email quicker."

"I said, 'Give me a call,' " Brown said. "And then I found his number."

Thrun was standing behind Brown, beaming. He is a part-time research professor of computer science at Stanford University and a fellow at Google. Someone in the crowd suggested the latter connection might have had something to do with Brown finding Thrun so easily.

The man said, "Helps to work at Google, doesn't it?"

SAN JOSE -- Gov. Jerry Brown, the former mayor of Oakland, said today that his home city "has to solve its own problems," after a surge in crime has prompted Oakland's vice mayor to call for a state of emergency to free up state aid.

"Certainly I want to help where we can, but Oakland has to solve its own problems," the Democratic governor told reporters here. "The clergy, the Police Department, the Fire Department, the mayor, you've got to pull together in extraordinary ways to respond. And as a citizen of Oakland, I wish you well and I'll do my part."

Oakland Vice Mayor Larry Reid told the Oakland Tribune last week that the city had "lost control" and should call a state of emergency, though the newspaper reported today that other city leaders have rejected that idea.

Brown said that with "everybody working together, we can drive that crime in Oakland down, I'm confident."

Brown and his wife, Anne Gust Brown, own a house in the Oakland hills. They stay in a rented loft in Sacramento when they are at the Capitol.

SAN JOSE -- Amid a push by Gov. Jerry Brown to expand online course offerings at public colleges and universities, San Jose State University and an online education startup today announced a deal to provide three entry-level courses for credit online.

The pilot program, if successful, could eventually be expanded statewide, officials said. It is unique because of the low price -- $150 a course -- and because it makes courses available to students who are not enrolled at the university.

The deal with Palo Alto-based Udacity Inc. was announced after Brown approached Udacity founder Sebastian Thrun in June.

"We're talking about our society, our future and how we can all improve our skills, how we can exercise our imagination, and we can come to understand this great learning environment called California," Brown said at a news conference here. "We're about inquiry. We're about knowledge, and we're about reflection and wisdom. Technology helps that."

The Democratic governor is lobbying the University of California and California State University systems to expand online offerings to reach more students. He is also encouraging them to reduce costs, and he is expected to attend a meeting of University of California regents on Wednesday.

Gov. Jerry Brown has nominated the former advocate for a group that represents school administrators in the Capitol as executive director of the California State Board of Education.

Karen Stapf Walters, a former teacher and state Senate aide, most recently served as interim executive director of the Association of California School Administrators. The former assistant executive director for governmental relations at the organization first joined ACSA as an advocate in 1999.

Stapf Walters will also advise the governor on education policy in her new role, which pays an annual salary of $175,000. The executive director appointment must be approved by a vote of the board.

She succeeds former Board of Education executive director and Brown education adviser Sue Burr, who retired at the end of 2012. The former assistant superintendent of Elk Grove Unified and state undersecretary of education was named a member of the board by Brown earlier this week.

RELATED POSTS:

Sue Burr appointed director of State Board of Education

Editor's note: This post was updated at 11:48 a.m. with additional information about the confirmation.

With a declining birthrate and ebbing migration into California from other states and nations, the historically fast-growing state will see only relatively slow population expansion in the foreseeable future, the state's own demographers conclude.

However, these trends also mean that Latinos are likely to become the state's largest single ethnic group sometime this year, a data-packed section of Gov. Jerry Brown's new state budget plan concludes.

That's a couple of years earlier than previous demographic expectations.

The release last week of Gov. Jerry Brown's 2013-2014 budget proposal has kept reporters busy, particularly Capitol Alert's resident budget expert, Kevin Yamamura.

In the video below, Kevin hosts a California Connections discussion analyzing whether this budget marks California moving beyond the era of gaping budget deficits. He is joined by Senate Republican Leader Bob Huff; Sen. Mark DeSaulnier, who sits on the Budget and Fiscal Review Committee, and H.D. Palmer, a spokesman for California's Department of Finance.

Gov. Jerry Brown's budget plan appears to provide sufficient funding to avoid tuition increases at the University of California next year, a UC administrator said this afternoon.

"When you add everything up, I think our initial reaction is that we can manage without a tuition increase for '13-14," Daniel Dooley, senior vice president of external relations at the UC, told The Bee. "We're pretty excited about what he's proposed."

Brown promised while campaigning last year for Proposition 30, his initiative to raise taxes, that its passage would avert tuition increases at public universities this school year. The prospect remained, however, of tuition rising in the fall.

Brown's budget proposal includes an additional $250 million for the University of California system. That amount is less than the UC requested, and the Democratic governor said he would lobby regents to hold tuition steady.

Dooley said, "We think we can get there."

Gov. Jerry Brown's new budget boasts that even with new taxes, general fund spending is below the record $103 billion that it reached in 2007-08, just before a severe recession hit the state.

But that claim is fudging a bit. Brown's budget would spend, he says, $97.7 billion in 2013-14, but the number doesn't include $5.3 billion that the state is now sending to counties to pay for "realignment" of some social and correctional programs to local control.

That's money that used to flow into and out of the general fund. When it's added to the projected spending for 2013-14, the total is $103 billion -- thus equaling the record set six years earlier, not taking inflation into account.

The budget also says that general fund spending "remains at its lowest level since 1972-73" by inflation-adjusted measures such as a proportion of personal income. But that, too, doesn't take into account big changes that have been made since then in how money is allocated, such as "realignment" and dozens of other shifts between local and state levels.

The realignment funds, for instance, are now counted as a "special fund" expenditure. When the general and special funds are merged, spending rises to $138.6 billion. And when $7.2 billion in bond spending and about $80 billion in federal funds are included, the total budget jumps to about $225 billion.

There was a flurry of tweeting and other on-line speculation about which journalist would jump in with the first question Thursday when Gov. Jerry Brown unveiled his new budget at a Capitol press conference -- and even a bit of odds-making.

Television journalist Nannette Miranda, however, defied the odds by asking a question of Brown even before he began his presentation -- an innocuous inquiry about his well-being.

That not only earned her bragging rights but an autographed budget summary from Brown saying it was a "great question" to certify her triumph.

"Coolest 1st Question Prize ever!" tweeted Miranda, who is the Sacramento bureau chief for ABC-owned stations in California, when Brown aide Steve Glazer informed her she could come by the governor's office to pick it up.

PHOTO CREDIT: Twitpic posted by Steve Glazer @steve4jerry

It didn't take long for California's lawmakers, officials and advocates to start issuing statements responding to the budget proposal that Gov. Jerry Brown released this morning.

You'll find them after the jump. We'll be adding statements as they come in.

Gov. Jerry Brown railed this morning against federal oversight of California's troubled prison system, calling it "intrusive" and "nit-picky" and vowing to fight in court to get the state out from under federal control.

A defiant Brown also lifted a state of emergency declared in 2006 by his predecessor, Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger, due to prison overcrowding.

"The prison emergency is over in California," Brown said.

Gov. Jerry Brown said this morning treatment for his prostate cancer is finished and that he is "raring to go."

"I'm ready, I'm raring to go, and don't expect me to leave too soon," the 74-year-old, third-term governor said at a news conference at the Capitol.

Brown's remarks were his first about his illness, which his office announced last month. The Democratic governor underwent a short course of conventional radiotherapy for early-stage, localized prostate cancer, his office said.

Brown discussed the matter only briefly at a news conference about California's prison system.

Asked if he is better following treatment, Brown joked, "You choose."

Gov. Jerry Brown, who has limited his public appearances since the November election, will deliver his State of the State address on Jan. 24, after releasing his annual budget proposal at a news conference Thursday, his office said this afternoon.

The State of the State speech will be unusually early, at 9 a.m. The Democratic governor spoke to a joint session of the Legislature at 5 p.m. in 2011 and at 10 a.m. last year.

Brown's agenda this year includes overhauling California's environmental regulations and school funding system, starting construction of the state's high-speed rail project and pushing forward a controversial plan to move water through the Sacramento-San Joaquin Delta to the south.

Brown has been undergoing treatment for prostate cancer. The governor's office said last month that it expected treatment to be completed this week.

Two open seats in the state Senate could be filled as soon as mid-March.

Gov. Jerry Brown announced today that special primary elections for the Inland Empire's 32nd Senate District and the San Diego-area 40th Senate District will be held March 12. If no candidate wins more than 50 percent of the vote, a runoff between the top two vote-getters will be held May 14.

The vacancies were created when former Sens. Gloria Negrete McLeod, D-Chino, and Juan Vargas, D-San Diego, stepped down to take seats in the U.S. House of Representatives. Both won election to the Congress in November.

California's state budget. Public-sector pensions. Taxes.

The Sacramento Bee's Capitol Alert readers avidly followed those issues this year, as the blog's top 10 posts of 2012 show. Here's the list, in reverse order:

No. 10: "Rep. Dennis Cardoza announces resignation" (Aug. 14). In a surprise move citing his family's needs, the Merced Democrat said he was resigning from Congress.

No. 9: "FPPC says Arizona nonprofit laundered money to California campaign" (Nov. 5). "At $11 million, this is the largest contribution ever disclosed as campaign money laundering in California history," the Fair Political Practices Commission said in a news release.

No. 8: "Bera lead over Lungren wider in Sacramento County House race" (Nov. 9). Democrat Ami Bera wound up besting Republican Rep. Dan Lungren and will be sworn into Congress this week.

Gov. Jerry Brown announced pardons for 79 individuals today, from convicted marijuana growers to drunk drivers, who served their sentences and committed no other crimes for at least a decade.

Most of the pardons announced today -- 61 -- involved drug crimes, many of which carried no prison sentence. One of the pardons involved involuntary manslaughter, four grand theft, four robbery and three felony driving under the influence.

The pardons handled out by the governor on one of the slowest news days of the year include Kenneth Joe Benedict, a Sacramento County resident convicted of criminal conspiracy to manufacture drugs. He was discharged in 1995 after serving two years in prison and 11 months on parole.

Gov. Jerry Brown has appointed former campaign adviser Douglas Faigin, president of City News Service Inc., to the California State University Board of Trustees.

Faigin, 66, was press secretary for Brown's 1974 gubernatorial campaign and deputy campaign manager of Brown's reelection effort in 1978. Faigin's late wife, Mary Jean Pew, was appointed by Brown to the CSU board in 1975.

Pew, who died this year, was one of Brown's first appointments to the college system board.

Faigin, of Marina del Rey, has a doctorate in political science from Claremont Graduate University and a master's degree in journalism from Northwestern University.

Like Brown, he is a Democrat.

The position requires Senate confirmation and pays a $100 per diem.

Gov. Jerry Brown has appointed a former Pennsylvania prison chief secretary of the California Department of Corrections and Rehabilitation, Brown's office announced this morning.

Jeffrey Beard, 65, was secretary of the Pennsylvania Department of Corrections from 2001 to 2010, Brown's office said. He consulted for California's prison system on litigation filed on behalf of inmates who complained prisons failed to provide adequate mental health treatment, and he was a member of a 2007 panel assessing the effectiveness of California's adult prison and parole programs, according to the governor's office.

"The new secretary has just the experience California needs," the Democratic governor said in a prepared statement. "He's been a prison warden, led the correctional system in Pennsylvania, and more recently participated in the federal oversight of California's prisons, visiting the majority of our institutions. In the face of a plethora of federal court decisions and the bold realignment enacted by the Legislature, Jeff Beard has arrived at the right time to take the next steps in returning California's parole and correctional institutions to their former luster."

Beard replaces Matt Cate, who announced his resignation in October to become executive director of the California State Association of Counties.

Beard, of Bellefonte, Pa., is registered decline-to-state. He received a doctorate and master of education in counseling from Pennsylvania State University, Brown's office said. The position requires Senate confirmation and pays $225,000 a year.

The Brown administration today released draft regulations that would require oil companies for the first time to disclose where in California they use hydraulic fracturing, a controversial but little regulated method of oil extraction.

The proposed rules, issued by the state Department of Conservation, were immediately criticized by environmentalists as too lenient.

Hydraulic fracturing, in which water and chemicals are injected underground to break up rock formations, has been used for decades in California - safely, oil producers say. Environmentalists have said the method of oil extraction can damage wells and pollute groundwater.

The draft regulations would require oil producers to test the integrity of wells they intend to use for hydraulic fracturing before drilling, to provide advance notice to the state and to monitor sites where hydraulic fracturing is employed. The regulations would also require drillers to disclose the chemical makeup of the fluid they use in hydraulic fracturing, though it would provide an exemption in cases in which an operator claims the fluid makeup is a trade secret.

Following the revelation of a costly public relations contract that the Brown administration said it knew nothing about, the California Business, Transportation & Housing Agency said this afternoon that it is requiring departments to obtain administration approval for even relatively small public relations contracts.

Jim Evans, a spokesman for the agency, said in an email that agency officials have told the California Department of Transportation and other departments within the agency that any public relations contract worth more than $100,000 must be approved by the agency's acting secretary, Brian Kelly.

The order follows a The Bee's report on Wednesday that Caltrans agreed to pay a public relations company nearly $10 million for work on the new San Francisco-Oakland Bay Bridge, including hundreds of thousands of dollars to conduct tours and produce a video and commemorative book.

The administration ordered the contract's cancellation after The Bee requested documents related to it.

PHOTO CREDIT: Traffic flows on the San Francisco-Oakland Bay Bridge on Tuesday, September 8, 2009. (Laura A. Oda/ Oakland Tribune/ MCT)

Gov. Jerry Brown is undergoing treatment for prostate cancer, his office announced this afternoon.

The governor's office described the condition as a "localized prostate cancer" and said Brown is continuing to work a full schedule while being treated with a short course of radiation.

It released a statement from Eric Small, Brown's oncologist at University of California San Francisco.

"Fortunately, this is early stage localized prostate cancer, which is being treated with a short course of conventional radiotherapy," Small said in the statement. "The prognosis is excellent, and there are not expected to be any significant side effects."

Brown's office said the treatment is expected to be completed the week of Jan. 7.

The 74-year-old governor underwent a procedure in April 2011 to remove skin cancer from his nose.

Editor's note: Comments on this post are closed because of inappropriate comments and personal attacks.

Gov. Jerry Brown, lawmakers and the state's future all looked brighter to residents after last month's passage of the Proposition 30 tax hike, according to a new poll released tonight by the nonpartisan Public Policy Institute of California.

Brown's approval rating hit 48 percent among all California adults and slightly higher, 49 percent, among likely voters.

Legislators are less popular, the poll found, but the mercury is rising. Thirty-four percent of California adults gave the Legislature a thumbs up, the highest PPIC total since January 2008, when its approval rating was 39 percent.

Forty-four percent of respondents said things in California generally are going in the right direction, the highest tally since June 2007 -- and up 30 points from a low of 14 percent in July 2009.

"Many Californians are feeling positive about the state's outlook now and optimistic about the future," Mark Baldassare, PPIC president, said in a written statement. "But they also are feeling fiscally frugal. They are strongly opposed to raising their state taxes and strongly in favor of spending limits."

Among other findings:

A friend of first lady Anne Gust Brown has been appointed by Brown's husband, Gov. Jerry Brown, to the State Personnel Board.

Lauri Shanahan, 50, held various positions at Gap Inc. from 1992 to 2008, replacing Gust Brown as chief administrative officer at the company in 2005. Shanahan's appointment was announced this afternoon.

Shanahan, of Woodside, is currently a principal at Maroon Peak Advisors, a retail and consumer products consultancy, according to the governor's office. Like the governor, she is a Democrat.

The personnel board settles disputes between employees and the state. The position pays $40,669 a year, and the appointment requires Senate confirmation.

Gov. Jerry Brown has named a long-time aide, Jim Humes, as a First District Court of Appeal associate justice.

If confirmed by the Commission on Judicial Appointments, the 53-year-old Democrat will fill the vacancy created by retired Justice Patricia Sepulveda and become the first openly gay justice to serve on the California Court of Appeal.

The job pays $204,599 per year. The court is based in Humes' hometown San Francisco.

Humes' résumé includes a 19-year state career, most recently as the Brown administration's executive secretary for legal affairs. As California's attorney general, Brown named Humes his chief deputy in 2007, capping a Justice Department career that started in 1993 and included leadership positions in its civil division and health, education and welfare section.

After earning his law degree the University of Denver, Humes worked for two Colorado-based law firms with stints in the Colorado Attorney General's Office from 1984 to 1986 and again from 1987 to 1993. He also holds a Master of Social Science degree from the University of Colorado and a Bachelor of Arts degree from Illinois State University.

Gov. Jerry Brown prodded University of California regents today to pursue online course offerings to reduce costs, saying the state's premier university system must "get more grounded" in its approach to education.

The Democratic governor's remarks came at a meeting of the UC's governing board, which postponed a vote on fee increases at Brown's request.

Brown had said in his campaign to raise taxes that his initiative, Proposition 30, would avert tuition increases this year. The measure's passage, however, does not prevent universities from raising other fees.

Lt. Gov. Gavin Newsom had accused Brown during the campaign of making misleading statements about the extent to which tuition increases could be avoided. When Newsom pressed UC administrators today about the potential for future increases, Brown hardly contradicted him.

For the second time this week, a California university system is postponing a vote on fee increases as Gov. Jerry Brown makes the rounds touting the success of his Proposition 30 tax measure - which was supposed to avert tuition hikes.

University of California regents announced today that at Brown's request, they are yanking an item from tomorrow's agenda in which the board was to consider raising fees at several UC professional schools, including schools of nursing, business, law and medicine.

"The governor, who serves on the Board of Regents by virtue of his office, asked for additional time to allow him to develop a better understanding of the policies and methodology involved in the setting of fee levels at individual graduate professional programs," said a statement from UC's Office of the President.

Just more than a month after Sen. Michael Rubio asked Gov. Jerry Brown to delay implementation of California's law to regulate toxic chemicals in consumer goods, he has dropped his request.

In a letter Friday to the California Department of Toxic Substances Control, Rubio and six other lawmakers said they were satisfied with the department's plan to study the law's economic impact on regulated industries.

"We applaud your work on this important issue and look forward to working with you to protect all consumers in California, as well as our state's economic future," the letter said.

The state's Green Chemistry initiative, passed by the Legislature in 2008, has been delayed about two years. Environmentalists say the initiative is important to protect the public and the environment from toxins, while critics fear its impact on business.

Rubio has had a difficult relationship with environmentalists, only exacerbated since Senate President Pro Tem Darrell Steinberg, D-Sacramento, announced this fall that Rubio would be chairman of the Senate Committee on Environmental Quality. The Central Valley Democrat was behind a controversial, failed effort this year to overhaul the California Environmental Quality Act.

In the wake of a financial scandal at state parks, Gov. Jerry Brown tapped retired U.S. Marine Corps Major General Anthony L. Jackson to run the beleaguered department, he announced today.

Jackson, 63, served 36 years in the U.S. Marine Corps, most recently in charge of installations in the Southwest. He has worked with state and federal officials on renewable energy, fire suppression, state parks and off-highway vehicle use, according to Brown's office.

His appointment comes after the July resignation of longtime California Department of Parks and Recreation Director Ruth Coleman following a discovery that parks administrators had hidden more than $50 million. That revelation came after state investigators found parks officials conducted an unauthorized leave buyback program, using a surplus of cash that was never reported to the Department of Finance.

"Major General Jackson brings more than thirty years of problem-solving and management experience to Parks, serving most recently as the Commanding General of Marine bases across the Southwestern U.S. and tens of thousands of troops and civilians," Brown said in a statement. "Under Major General Jackson's leadership, I am confident that the stewardship of California's beaches, forests, estuaries, dunes and wetlands is in good hands and that the confidence and trust of Californians in our Parks Department will be restored."

Jackson is registered as a decline-to-state voter and will earn $150,112 annually as parks director.

Gov. Jerry Brown thanked California State University leaders today for postponing a vote - originally scheduled for this afternoon - on a controversial proposal to charge extra fees on "super seniors," course repeaters and students who take an extra-heavy course load.

The proposal had caused uproar among students and faculty, and threatened to steal some thunder from Brown's unusual appearance at the board of trustees meeting today in Long Beach, where he thanked students and faculty for their help in passing his tax measure, Proposition 30.

"You did heroic work here," Brown told them. "It did go against the trend and some people's expectations, but it really is sorely needed. Of course it's not a panacea so we are going to have to continue to manage our resources very carefully. I understand the fee proposal was an effort to do that -- to free up seats, to get more kids into the university. So we'll take a look at that. We all will, and I want to participate."

After previously threatening downgrades if Proposition 30 had failed, Moody's Investors Service said Thursday that voter approval of the tax initiative positively impacted the credit ratings of California's K-12 districts and colleges.

Gov. Jerry Brown and state lawmakers enacted a June budget that put education funding at risk this year if voters had rejected the measure. Moody's warned before the election that it would have begun reviewing the most perilously positioned K-12 districts for a credit downgrade if that had come to pass.

"Passage of this proposition is credit positive for the state's K-12 school districts, community college districts and university systems because it averts the state executing a $6 billion, mid-year cut to education funding," Moody's wrote in its Thursday report.

Moody's observed that K-12 funding for the current school year will now remain about the same as last year. The ratings agency embraced Brown's plan to use extra cash to begin reversing delayed payments, which had forced districts to borrow to pay their bills on an annual basis.

The agency said that in the coming years, Proposition 30 revenues "could provide district with more revenues, assuming economic growth and taxable income rise above our current expectations."

Earlier this week, ratings house Standard and Poor's said the initiative's passage was a positive development for the state's credit rating as a whole. Analyst Gabriel Petek said that California could climb out of the ratings basement - its A- remains the nation's worst - if the state uses this period of increased taxes to enact permanent changes that steady the budget system.

Gov. Jerry Brown said today that he will not use an expected Democratic supermajority in the California Legislature to raise taxes further than were raised by passage of his ballot initiative Tuesday, urging "the prudence of Joseph" on spending in the next few years.

"We have to make sure over the next few years that we pay our bills, we invest in the right programs, but we don't go on any spending binges," the Democratic governor said at a news conference at the Capitol.

Brown said he will be guided by a biblical reference to seven years of plenty being followed by seven years of famine, and to the need in better times to save crops for less abundant years.

If the photograph of a bottle of Scotch whiskey posted on Twitter early this morning by the spokesman for the campaign against Gov. Jerry Brown's ballot initiative to raise taxes wasn't a clear enough acknowledgment of defeat, the statement issued this morning was.

"While we are disappointed in the outcome of the campaign, the voters have spoken," the campaign against Proposition 30 said in a prepared statement. "We congratulate Governor Brown and his team on their victory and thank all the small business owners, taxpayers and other groups from every corner of the state for their extraordinary commitment to the 'No on 30' campaign."

The concession comes nearly 12 hours after Brown claimed victory.

Aaron McLear, who posted the photograph of the 12-year-old Cragganmore, wrote separately, "Anyone know of a good realtor in Incline Village?"

The Nevada town is just over the California border.

Gov. Jerry Brown, successful in his ballot initiative to raise taxes and buoyed by the prospect of Democratic supermajorities in the state Legislature, said this morning that the state still faces "big issues" and that the challenge for Democrats will be to "earn and maintain the people's trust."

"We have big issues," the Democratic governor said on CBS This Morning. "We still have a divided state, between, you know, the red and the blue. But we have a predominant Democratic majority now in the Legislature, and the challenge is what can we do with it? Can we earn and maintain the people's trust? And that's no easy thing."

Brown attributed the success of his initiative to raise taxes to an electorate tired of billions of dollars in state spending cuts.

"This has been a very tough fiscal program of austerity, $3 of cuts for every $1 of income, and I think that's the reason why people finally said, OK, enough is enough, 'We'll vote you some more money.'"

Brown said, "This January, we'll have the first balanced budget, probably, since 1998."

Brown, governor before from 1975 to 1983, was asked how he was feeling.

"Well I'm feeling good," he said. "But I mean, I've been around this business a long time, and I know that whatever happens one night there's always another challenge the next day."

Gov. Jerry Brown said tonight that prospects of passing his initiative to raise taxes are "pretty good," though few at his election night party heard him -- or even knew Brown was speaking.

The Democratic governor made his remark in a brief appearance on NBC Nightly News, while supporters cheered speakers on stage at an election night party at the Sheraton Grand Hotel in Sacramento.

Brown is scheduled to arrive later this evening, but not before doing another network interview.

A handful of reporters huddled around a television in the noisy ballroom with Brown on a TV. Later, as they were waiting for his second interview, a guest asked them to turn the channel back to the favorite at this party, MSNBC.

It caused more than few eyes to roll when it was announced last month that Gov. Jerry Brown would dispatch his pet dog to visit Democratic field offices on behalf of Proposition 30, Brown's initiative to raise taxes.

But it was inexpensive, as campaign activities go, and it required no time of Brown's. Jennifer Fearing, of the Humane Society of the United States, would tour Sutter, the Pembroke Welsh corgi, around.

The press swooned.

Television and light newspaper coverage was abundant. In one city, Fearing said, Sutter "got the key to the city from the mayor - on a live shot!" As she arrived with Sutter at a campaign party this evening at the Sheraton Grand Hotel, Fearing said the two had logged 3,200 miles.

On Sunday, the Democratic governor had finished a series of campaign stops in Los Angeles when he was asked about the dog's involvement in the race.

"I think there are a lot of people who like animals, more than you think," Brown said. "And I also think there's a certain human quality that it adds ... in a campaign world which is very mechanical, driven by polls, focus groups and scripted commercials, to have an element of spontaneity."

There are certain liabilities that a politician accepts when he appoints an animal to be his surrogate, interacting with people on live television. But Sutter is exceedingly well behaved.

It may also be true, as Brown said, that "his favorability ratings are higher than mine."

PHOTO CREDIT: Gov. Jerry Brown and first dog, Sutter Brown, promote sales of specialty license plates in Los Angeles on May 2, 2012. (AP Photo/Nick Ut)

OAKLAND - Gov. Jerry Brown this morning said he voted for a ballot initiative to repeal the death penalty, after declining during the campaign to say how he would vote on the measure.

The Democratic governor had maintained a careful distance from Proposition 34. Despite his longstanding moral reservations about capital punishment, Brown enforced the death penalty as state attorney general and promised during his gubernatorial campaign in 2010 to uphold the law if elected.

Brown's vote was as expected. He was 21 when he persuaded his father, then-Gov. Pat Brown, to grant convicted rapist Caryl Chessman a temporary stay of execution. Later, as governor from 1975 to 1983, Jerry Brown vetoed death penalty legislation, though his veto was overridden by the Legislature.

Near his home in the Oakland hills this morning, the governor was asked about Proposition 34 outside the fire station where he cast his ballot.

"I voted 'Yes,'" he said. "Of course."

PHOTO CAPTION: A Dalmatian dog watches as California Gov. Jerry Brown, left, votes Tuesday, Nov. 6, 2012, at a fire station in Oakland, Calif. (AP Photo/Eric Risberg)

OAKLAND - Gov. Jerry Brown stood this morning at a stand of microphones down the road from his home in the Oakland hills, outside the fire station where he votes, optimistic his ballot initiative to raise taxes may do even better "than most of you are probably expecting."

Brown's campaign for Proposition 30, his initiative to raise the state sales tax and income taxes on California's highest earners, is expected to result in a close finish. The political implications are enormous for Brown, who has sought to raise taxes almost since taking office.

The Democratic governor acknowledged the difficulty he had in failed negotiations with the Legislature over taxes immediately after taking office last year, and later in his feud with the proponents of alternative tax proposals.

California regulators and attorneys said today they are seriously weighing next steps - including criminal charges - against parties involved in the $11 million contribution whose known trail leads through three different out-of-state nonprofits.

A lawyer for Americans for Responsible Leadership, the Arizona-based donor at the center of the controversy, appeared to acknowledge the possibility of future legal action in a letter he filed this morning with the state Fair Political Practices Commission.

Attorney Michael D. Bopp wrote that while new disclosures from Americans for Responsible Leadership and The Center to Protect Patient Rights may relate to state codes banning hidden intermediary contributions, the groups do not admit wrongdoing.

"While these letters relate to Cal. Gov. Code § 84302 and 2 CA ADC § 18432.5, we want to make it clear that they have been sent pursuant to a settlement agreement with the California Fair Political Practices Commission and that neither ARL nor CPPR admit any wrongdoing or that the letters are required by applicable law," Bopp wrote. "Further, ARL and CPPR reserve the right to contest any further proceedings that relate to the contributions discussed in the aforementioned letters."

Both FPPC Chairwoman Ann Ravel and state Attorney General Kamala Harris said today they are reviewing the matter to see whether further civil or criminal action is warranted. The state previously filed a lawsuit asking Americans for Responsible Leadership to submit records.

"What this committee agreed it had done is a clear violation of the state's money laundering prohibition," said Ravel, a Gov. Jerry Brown appointee.

Ravel said one civil penalty is that the recipient committee pay to the state general fund an amount equal to the contribution - in this case, $11 million. The party liable would be the Small Business Action Committee No on 30/Yes on 32.

SBAC spokeswoman Beth Miller said her group never was told that Americans for Responsible Leadership received its $11 million by way of two other nonprofits. Failing to disclose that information to a recipient committee is a potential violation of California Government Code § 84302.

SBAC immediately updated its campaign disclosure forms this morning to acknowledge contributions from The Center to Protect Patient Rights and Americans for Job Security.

"SBAC PAC had no knowledge that the contribution was from an intermediary," Miller said in a written statement. "As it does with all its donors, upon accepting the donation from Americans for Responsible Leadership SBAC PAC sent a donor advice letter explaining the organization's filing responsibilities. When SBAC PAC was informed this morning by the FPPC it amended its disclosure reports immediately."

Update (8:24 p.m.) After the state court declined to extend the deadline, Americans for Responsible Leadership said it was attempting to contact the FPPC to comply with the order, while continuing to seek a stay from the U.S. Supreme Court.

Update (5:08 p.m.): Americans for Responsible Leadership did not submit information to the FPPC by 4 p.m. as ordered and instead has asked the state court to extend its compliance window to 9 a.m. Monday as it seeks a stay from the U.S. Supreme Court, according to FPPC chairwoman Ann Ravel.

The California Supreme Court this afternoon ordered an obscure Arizona nonprofit to submit donation records immediately to state regulators related to an $11 million contribution the group gave in October.

The state's highest court issued its unanimous 7-0 decision at 3 p.m. after a telephone conference and gave Phoenix-based Americans for Responsible Leadership until 4 p.m. to comply.

The state Fair Political Practices Commission had asked the Supreme Court to force ARL to turn over e-mails and transactions data behind the donation, whose specific donors the group has never disclosed. The group gave $11 million to a business campaign committee established to oppose Gov. Jerry Brown's tax initiative, Proposition 30, and support a measure that would restrict union dues collection, Proposition 32.

The FPPC wants to review the information to determine before Tuesday's election whether ARL violated state rules requiring nonprofits to disclose donors if their money was earmarked for a specific initiative. If the FPPC finds a violation, it remains to be seen whether there is enough time to invoke administrative or legal procedures that would force ARL to disclose its donors by Tuesday.

ARL is directed by lesser-known Arizona GOP activists, and the group hired attorneys from a Virginia-based law firm with longstanding Republican National Committee ties.

SANTA CLARA - Gov. Jerry Brown, campaigning this afternoon for his ballot initiative to raise income taxes on upper-income earners, sought to debunk the idea that the increase would drive them out of the state.

He cited a study that says millionaires are more likely to leave California because of divorce than higher tax rates.

Presuming some millionaires were in the audience as he participated in a panel discussion at the Silicon Valley Leadership Group's annual public policy luncheon, Brown told them: "People are afraid that you're going to move, and I want you to stay. I want to write you a letter of commendation because you're doing well."

The Democratic governor said he read the study during the luncheon "while I was trying to finish that sandwich ... What it says is the biggest factor in millionaires moving out of California is divorce."

Brown, who also proposes to raise the state sales tax, called divorce a "50 percent tax hit," suggesting millionaires concern themselves less with California's tax rate and "pay attention to your spouse."

High unemployment will persist in California for at least a couple more years, the state Department of Employment Development predicts, and the state's $10 billion debt to the federal government will also persist unless California employers cough up more money.

The projections are contained in a new EDD report.

California began borrowing to shore up its flat-broke Unemployment Insurance Fund (UIF) nearly four years ago. The fund pays for the initial 26 weeks of unemployment insurance benefits, plus portions of extended benefits.

The debt grew to nearly $10 billion by the end of 2011. It's expected to hit $10.2 billion by the end of this year and remain at that level through 2013 before slowly declining in 2014 as, EDD expects, unemployment drifts slowly downward.

California has just under 2 million unemployed now. The agency expects that the number will decline slowly in 2013 and 2014. It also expects new claims for unemployment insurance benefits to remain at about 2 million a year through 2014.

The federal government slightly boosted taxes on employers to offset some of the state's UIF debt, but it also started charging interest on that debt -- about $300 million a year -- in 2011. With the UIF in the red and the state budget facing deficits, Gov. Jerry Brown and the Legislature opted to borrow money for the interest payments from the Disability Insurance Fund (DIF), which is financed by payroll taxes on employees.

Brown asked the Legislature this to raise taxes on employers to repay the DIF loan, but there was no action -- nor has anyone proposed a plan to repay the larger, $10 billion UIF debt to the federal government.

It was just a a semi-coincidence that as Gov. Jerry Brown was touting California on Thursday as an engine of economic growth, the California Manufacturers and Technology Association was declaring the state to be falling behind the rest of the country.

Both have data on their sides.

During an appearance before the Commonwealth Club in San Francisco -- mostly to campaign for passage of his tax measure, Proposition 30 -- Brown skewered the "declinists" who believe that California is faltering.

The state has its flaws, he said, but "California ... has made some fabulous decisions, and our collective will ... will not be slowed by the skeptics, the declinists and those fearful individuals who can't see where they are: the greatest place in the world."

SAN FRANCISCO -- The Legislature's unpopularity is such that a standard practice of political campaigns is to distance oneself from "Sacramento politicians" while tying one's opponents to them.

Gov. Jerry Brown's ballot measure to raise taxes has suffered from the association, and he has asserted in his campaign advertising - however disingenuously - that "Sacramento politicians can't touch the money" his initiative would raise.

If it is the kind of rhetoric a third-term governor and lifelong politician might find uncomfortable, and it gave Brown pause this afternoon.

"I'm not going to give a defense of politicians. I'm not that stupid," the Democratic governor said when asked at The Commonwealth Club in San Francisco if politicians wouldn't waste the tax revenue promised by Proposition 30. "But I will say the word politician comes from "politeia," which means the pulse, the community, the city state. In ancient Greece, the politician unfortunately has the work of trying to mesh all these totally discordant, contradictory opinions and identities, and they clash.

"And that's why sometimes people get a little tired of democracy, and representative democracy, because it is strenuous. And it does take sustained courage to keep at it, even when you see things you don't like or you get disappointed. Now, if I were going to be cynical or get disappointed, I would have checked out a long time ago. But I've come back."

Brown, 74, later recounted all the offices he has held or run for over the decades, and he was asked about his political future.

"Do I have more offices in mind?" he said. "I'm not telling."

Lt. Gov. Gavin Newsom two weeks ago criticized Gov. Jerry Brown's tax initiative approach, suggesting to KGO Radio in San Francisco that the governor was slow to hit the campaign trail and that he was telling college students "something that's not true."

Newsom spoke to KGO on Oct. 17, a day after Brown appeared at UCLA in the first of several appearances at state colleges and universities. But the interview got little statewide notice until Bee columnist Dan Morain referenced Newsom's caustic words for Brown in today's Bee. Though both Democrats who support Proposition 30, Newsom and Brown have endured a difficult relationship.

Newsom, who sits on the University of California Board of Regents and the California State University Board of Trustees, emphasized several times in a four-minute interview that Brown was misleading college students by suggesting Prop. 30 would avert tuition increases. That has since become a central part of Brown's campaign message.

"My big concern is, we went down yesterday and said there will be no tuition increase if you support this," Newsom said. "That's just not true. You can't say things like this."