The California Democratic Party filed a complaint today with the state’s ethics agency, alleging Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger has improperly used funds from a ballot measure committee that he controls to pay for television ads touting his position on the budget crisis.
The complaint, which seeks an injunction to stop the ads, was filed with the state Fair Political Practices Commission, which in January adopted new rules aimed at preventing ballot measure committees controlled by elected officials from promoting the officials rather than the initiatives and referendums.
"However, the governor’s ad refers repeatedly to state budget negotiations rather than any current or anticipated ballot measure," the state party said in a statement.
In an interview, state Democratic Party Chairman John Burton called for
immediate action. "The ads should be taken off the air. They violate
the regulations of the FPPC," he said.
Death-penalty opponents dominated a debate over proposed new lethal-injection procedures today, turning what was intended to be a technical discussion into a platform for denouncing executions as barbaric, costly and so flawed that innocents are bound to be killed.
Only two of some 50 speakers at a hearing before officials of the Department of Corrections and Rehabilitation expressed support for resuming executions if and when the procedures earn state and federal approval.
The death penalty has been on hold in California since February 2006 out of concern that the former lethal-injection practices subjected some of those put to death to cruel and unusual punishment in violation of the Constitution.
Religious leaders, teachers, medical professionals and relatives of both condemned prisoners and their victims called for an end to executions.
Gavin Lee, a doctoral candidate at UC Irvine who studies lethal injection, criticized the proposed procedural provisions as still insufficient to ensure that a condemned prisoner is unconscious by the time the last, painful and fatal dose in the three-injection practice is administered.
"We are not infallible. Innocent people get executed," said Marcine van Dierendonck of Silicon Valley.
Johanna Westerson, a Swedish human-rights lawyer living in San Francisco, urged state officials to "join the civilized nations of the world in abandoning this barbaric practice" and part company with renowned rights abusers like China, Iran and Saudi Arabia.
The mother of death-row inmate Keith Doolin, Donna Doolin-Larsen, opened the hearing with an appeal for humane treatment of the condemned prisoners' families. "We are not criminals - we are innocent people dragged into this dehumanizing system."
Actor and activist Mike Farrell reiterated many of the moral arguments against executions and, as did several speakers, said the state was "ludicrous" in its claim that resuming executions would incur no new costs to taxpayers.
Two members of the Los Angeles chapter of the American Civil Responsibilities Union spoke early and left.
"You people have misplaced compassion," said Howard Garber, denouncing judges who have acted to halt executions and the lengthy appeals accorded death-row inmates. "Our compassion is for the innocent victims.
Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger’s private jet made an emergency landing at Van Nuys Airport tonight after the pilot reported smoke coming from the cockpit, according to a statement released by the governor’s press secretary.
The jet was about 10 minutes from Santa Monica Airport, its destination, when the pilot made a quick landing at 6:23 p.m. Although there wasn’t a visible fire, the Los Angeles Fire Department met the jet on the runway.
Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger will fight a Democratic budget proposal to eliminate the state's high school exit exam as a requirement to receive a high school diploma, a spokeswoman said Thursday.
“Gov. Schwarzenegger has been a longtime supporter of California’s High School Exit Exam and will veto any proposal to eliminate it,” spokeswoman Camille Anderson said.
Created by state legislation in 1999, the exit exam has been controversial from the start. Members of the class of 2006 were the first required to pass the exam, which tests basic math and language-arts skills, to earn their diplomas. Beginning in the sophomore year, students have six chances to take the exam. A score of at least 55% on the math portion, which is geared to an eighth-grade level, and 60% on the English, which is ninth- or 10th-grade level, is required.
The proposal to eliminate the exam, which outraged some members of the education community, emerged as part of the Democrats' proposal to fill the state's $24.3-billion deficit. Critics complained that opponents of the exit exam were using the budget process to set policy and noted that the proposal would save the state a scant $5 million to $10 million. The proposal was approved on a party-line vote by a joint legislative panel this week, and will head to the Assembly floor next week.
Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger gave a speech on the state budget crisis in Fresno this morning and he got a great reception – until he took questions.
First the Fresno City Council president, Cynthia Sterling, warned the governor that he would be “going down with us” if the state takes the city’s gas tax revenues, as Schwarzenegger has proposed doing with hundreds of millions of dollars designated for local governments across the state.
Sterling said such as move would cost Fresno jobs, stop repairs, and render the city – which she said has the nation’s highest concentration of poverty -- unable to pay debts. The gasoline money would never be returned, unlike local property taxes the state can borrow and must repay under Proposition 1A. Sterling told the governor she campaigned with him for that measure in 2004.
Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger said today that he was withdrawing his plan to raid local governments for $1.9 billion to help balance the state’s books.
In a question-and-answer session after a budget speech in Escondido, Schwarzenegger reasoned that both Democrats and Republican lawmakers seemed dead-set against his proposed move on local coffers.
“If both parties don’t want to borrow from local government, then of course we won’t borrow from local government,” the governor said. “I’m not stuck with any of those ideas. What’s important is that we solve the $24-billion deficit.”
Schwarzenegger said his finance department was already busy trying to find cuts to compensate for what he had proposed borrowing from municipalities.
Earlier today, lawmakers on the joint budget committee had criticized the idea of such borrowing, saying it would only exacerbate the state’s financial problems in the long term. The $1.9 billion would have had to be repaid -- with interest -- within three years.
[Updated at 4 p.m.: The governor’s office later said that Schwarzenegger would be willing to scrap plans to borrow from local government only if lawmakers agreed to other cuts to bridge the budget deficit.]
California Atty. Gen. Jerry Brown asked a federal court Thursday not to block Proposition 8, arguing that a resumption of same-sex marriages in the state before the federal challenge was resolved would put those unions in “legal limbo.”
In written arguments filed late Thursday, Brown said permitting gays to marry before appeals in the case are completed “would not serve the public interest because it would create significant uncertainty for many persons [involved in] a relationship in which certainty is of the utmost importance.”
Brown’s decision to oppose an order blocking Prop. 8, which his office contended violated the state constitution, reflects widespread concern among supporters of same-sex marriage that the federal challenge may ultimately fail.
In fact, many gay rights activists openly condemned the federal suit as fraught with risk. They had urged supporters and gay couples not to sue in federal court out of fear that a loss before the U.S. Supreme Court could set back the cause for decades.
Shortly before the California Supreme Court upheld Prop. 8 last month, former U.S. Solicitor General Theodore Olson and prominent lawyer David Boies challenged the anti-gay marriage initiative in federal court in San Francisco. The state high court’s ruling -- based on state law, not the federal constitution -- also upheld the validity of an estimated 18,000 same-sex marriages that occurred before the November vote.
Senate President Pro Tem Darrell Steinberg (D-Sacramento) outlined a Democratic budget plan today that would protect California programs for lower-income residents that provide health insurance for kids, college aid for students, welfare for those out of work and in-home nursing care for the elderly and disabled.
Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger’s budget, unveiled last month, put all those programs on the chopping block, including slating several for elimination entirely, as the GOP governor sought to tackle a projected $24-billion budget deficit.
Steinberg said Democrats would protect programs for the poor largely by tapping into a $4.5-billion reserve included in Schwarzenegger’s budget. The administration has argued the money should be tucked away in case the state’s economy continue to suffer or program costs exceed those budgeted. Democrats would lower the reserve to as little as $500 million, Steinberg said.
“The purpose of a rainy-day fund is to provide a reserve for a rainy day,” Steinberg said. “It is thunder and lightning in California right now.”
Steinberg also said Democrats would reject a Schwarzenegger administration proposal to raid “our friends in local government” for $1.9 billion to balance the state’s books. The state would have to repay local governments -- with interest -- within three years.
Democrats, he said, are prepared to cut $13 billion in state spending, including largely accepting the size of cuts Schwarzenegger proposed to the state’s schools and prison system. He said the Legislature would be “probably looking at the Proposition 98 minimum” guaranteed for K-12 schools.
An additional $6 billion to $7 billion would come about through “solutions,” Steinberg said, such as selling off state assets, accelerating tax payments and imposing fees and other accounting maneuvers similar to what Schwarzenegger has proposed.
Every area of government would still face cuts in the Democrats’ plan, Steinberg said.
The governor's proposal to save $70 million through the closure of most of California’s state parks is “on the bubble,” Steinberg said.
Also “on the bubble” is the governor’s plan to cut state workers’ pay by 5%, in addition to the two unpaid furlough days per month workers already are required to take.
Steinberg said Democrats would begin cutting within days. “It would be a mistake to lead with taxes,” he said.
But if the Republican governor and GOP lawmakers want a larger budget reserve, Democrats will push to “end corporate tax loopholes” instead of deeper cuts to services for the poor, he said. An oil severance tax, which Schwarzenegger proposed last year but was rebuffed by Republican lawmakers, “might be in the mix at the very end,” Steinberg added.
New taxes in California require a two-thirds vote of the Legislature, giving minority Republicans veto power.
Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger said today that he would like to see such “radical” proposals come out of a commission now studying an overhaul of the state’s tax system. The governor told the editorial board of the Sacramento Bee that he hoped the commission would not be afraid to propose something like “a 15% straight tax.”
“That’s the kind of radical, daring kind of a proposal that I want to see on the table so we can look at it and say, ‘Oh, let’s study this, maybe that is the way to go,’ ” Schwarzenegger said during the discussion, which was webcast.
The current system, based on highly unstable income tax revenue that fluctuates with the economy, “doesn’t work,” Schwarzenegger said.
Advocates of a flat tax, which applies a single tax rate to all income, say it increases compliance with the tax codes because it is so simple and easy to understand. But opponents dislike that it taxes the wealthy at the same rates as the poor.
Steve Forbes and Jerry Brown both pushed for it during their presidential campaigns.
Schwarzenegger said he was concerned that the commission might be too timid in what it suggests and rule things out in advance thinking that either Democrats or Republicans would object.
“I hope and I pray that they don’t think they have to make a political decision,” he said.
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Though California is in the throes of a budget crisis, Vice President Joe Biden said today that the state’s high-speed rail project was well-positioned to compete for a significant share of the $8 billion that the Obama administration has set aside in the Recovery Act for high-speed rail lines -- possibly more than 10%.
This summer, California officials will be vying against other states and regions for federal money to build a high-speed rail corridor that would ferry passengers between Los Angeles and San Francisco in a quick, 2-hour, 40-minute trip.
The state’s voters approved $9 billion in bonds for the project in November -- and promoters hope the federal government and the private sector will kick in enough money to help them complete the $34-billion first phase.
Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger, who already owns a Hummer fueled with vegetable oil, today touted the latest “green” addition to his fleet: a hydrogen-powered Honda FCX Clarity.
“I just got the Clarity, which is a wonderful hydrogen vehicle,” Schwarzenegger told reporters at California’s first retail station to sell both gasoline and hydrogen, in West Los Angeles. “We’re all fighting over who is driving it. My daughters want to drive it all the time and take it away from me.”
Schwarzenegger dropped by the Shell station, which opened last summer, to lend his star power to the Hydrogen Road Tour, a rally designed to highlight advances in fuel-cell technology. Seven automakers are taking part in the nine-day, 1,700-mile trip from San Diego to Vancouver, Canada.
Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger has been talking a lot about how the state’s leaders need to live just like ordinary citizens do: within their means. To that end, he has proposed addressing billions of dollars in projected deficits by selling off state landmarks, cutting off healthcare to children and adults, closing parks and more.
But the movie star turned governor clearly isn’t one of the ordinary Californians he is talking about. Before giving a speech about the budget crisis in Sacramento this morning to small business leaders, he took a few seconds to banter with an audience member about making a deal to buy some new motorcycles.
“And so I heard even there is someone out there that is from a Harley-Davidson shop in Orange County. Who is that? It's you? OK, I'm going to come to your table very soon after my speech and we'll make a deal to buy an extra few hogs, because I love motorcycles and I ride them every Sunday, OK? So it's good to have you here.”
Later in his speech, Schwarzenegger spoke of the people in the state who, unlike him, are unable to afford the motorcycles they already have.
“This is something that businesses have to do and individuals have to do in California. When they are in financial trouble they have to sell off their motorcycle or their boat, because they know that it doesn't make any sense to have a boat at the dock when you can't feed your family.… And that's exactly what California has to do and this is why we are having on the block today for sale San Quentin, Cal Expo, the Coliseum and the list goes on and on and on.”
Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger is proposing to completely eliminate the state’s welfare program for families, medical insurance for low-income children and Cal Grants cash assistance to college and university students.
The proposals to sharply scale back the assistance that California provides to its neediest residents came in testimony by the administration this afternoon at a joint legislative budget committee hearing. It followed comments by the governor earlier today that he would be withdrawing a proposal to help balance the budget with billions of dollars of borrowing and replacing it with program reductions.
The proposals would completely reshape the state’s social service network, transforming California from one of the country’s most generous states to one of the most tightfisted. The proposals are intended to help close a budget deficit estimated at $21.3 billion.
Declaring that California faces thorny choices to avoid insolvency, the state legislative analyst said that Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger’s plan to borrow and sell off key assets to help overcome a $21.3-billion deficit won’t work.
Updated at 11:38 a.m.: New estimates of revenue suggest the budget deficit may be as much as $3 billion
larger than the governor estimated.
In a 28-page report released this morning, Legislative Analyst Mac Taylor said the governor’s proposal for $5.5 billion in short-term borrowing would only shift trouble to the future and set a “dangerous precedent.”
Taylor’s report also expresses doubts about the proposed $1-billion sale of a state-owned workers’ compensation insurance program and a plan to save $750 million on the state’s costly Medi-Cal program by potentially cutting healthcare reimbursements or slashing the number of eligible participants.
But the report says several of the governor’s budget proposal “merit serious consideration,” including eliminating some state boards, selling property and changing retirement health benefits for future state employees.
Taylor also emphasized a need for the Legislature to “make the difficult decisions” and act quickly, which would “likely boost the confidence of the public and investors in the budget process” as well as prevent an anticipated cash crush in early July.
Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger said today that with revenue dropping back to levels last seen a decade ago, state spending and services have to be cut back to that level as well.
"It’s very important to note that our revenues now are back to the 1999 level," Schwarzenegger told reporters after a prayer breakfast in Sacramento. "So we have to do drastic measures. We have to dial back to what was happening in 1999, what kind of programs were available and what kind of programs were not available, and where did we expand on spending, and then eliminate all those [added] programs in order to make ends meet."
Schwarzenegger was concerned that new revenue projections expected later may paint a grimmer picture, but he said voters made it clear in Tuesday’s election that they didn’t want more taxes or extensive borrowing.
"People also made it very clear to me personally throughout the campaign -- 'We [voters] have to sell off our boats. We have to sell off our motorcycles. We have to sell off our art. We have to have garage sales. We have to sell off our second homes, why aren’t you in Sacramento doing the same thing?’ " the governor added.
He said that public sentiment was the reason he proposed selling off surplus state property, including San Quentin State Prison and the Los Angeles Coliseum.
"The people are absolutely right. We should do the same thing as they are doing," Schwarzenegger said.
The governor also indicated that he was having second thoughts about extensive borrowing. "We are also very clear that we don’t want to solve this budget through gimmicks and much borrowing," he said.
Los Angeles Mayor Antonio Villaraigosa today challenged Denver Mayor John Hickenlooper to a rather, uh, interesting tongue-in-cheek bet on the Lakers' playoff series against the Denver Nuggets, which began tonight at Staples Center.
If the Nuggets beat the Lakers, Villaraigosa offered to send the Mile-High City the Los Angeles Times, seeing as Denver’s beloved Rocky Mountain News recently folded.
If the Lakers win, Villaraigosa wants Denver’s “snowpack and a six-pack of the local beer of your choice," the mayor said in a statement. Plus, he said, Denver can have first dibs on the Los Angeles Memorial Coliseum, which Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger wants to sell to help bail California's state government out of its financial mess.
“You might have heard of it; it’s a historic, 'quaint' property looking for a new owner," Villaraigosa said.
Low voter turnout or not, Westside resident Alex Rengifo said he was out to send a special election message.
“I’m not too happy about the situation in California,” he said, explaining that he believes Sacramento politicians have pushed policies that have increased the economic burden for working people.
“It’s very difficult right now to make it,” said Rengifo, 54, after casting his ballot this afternoon at a polling place near Olympic and Robertson boulevards.
Santa Monica resident Will Durghalli said the special election featured a confusing array of ballot measures. But he was clear about one thing: State politicians don’t deserve pay raises with California suffering from a fiscal crisis.
So he said he voted in favor of Proposition 1F, which would bar pay hikes to state elected officials during periods when California is running a deficit.
“I don’t want them getting paid when we’re in a budget deficit,” said Durghalli, 31, who had just cast his ballot at the city's Virginia Park. “None of them deserve it, anyway.”
The near-empty polling place at Santa Monica’s Virginia Park this afternoon was in stark contrast to last November’s presidential election, when voters waited 30 minutes in line to cast their ballots.
Diane Andrews was among the few people who showed up for the special election. A music teacher, she said it was important that voters take a stand in support of education.
“I feel it’s imperative that we say something about the importance of our teachers and, in my case, especially about the arts,” said Andrews, who teaches at Santa Monica Alternative Schoolhouse, a public school.
In a last-ditch effort to rally Californians behind ballot measures in Tuesday's special election, Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger will participate this morning in a town hall meeting in the City of Industry.
Schwarzenegger has been aggressively campaigning for the passage of propositions 1A through 1F, aimed at restructuring the state’s budget, warning of dire consequences should the measures fail. He visited three African American churches in Los Angeles over the weekend to ask voters to support the measures.
The state’s budget deficit is projected to climb to $21.3 billion if the ballot measures fail. Most measures have been trailing in the polls.
The town hall is scheduled to take place at 10 a.m. at the Industry Hills Expo Center in the City of Industry and will be webcast live.
A couple of heavy-hitters in the political world are gracing stages in Los Angeles today: Vice President Joe Biden and Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger.
First up is Biden, who will tour a low-income housing development in South Los Angeles then speak about the progress of the federal economic stimulus package. Also expected to attend are Mayor Antonio Villaraigosa; Rep. Xavier Becerra (D-Los Angeles); and U.S. Department of Housing and Urban Development Secretary Ron Simms.
Later, Schwarzenegger will deliver the commencement address at USC’s 126th graduation ceremony. He will also receive an honorary degree. The event is expected to include 40,000 graduates and guests and will include satellite ceremonies held by 34 USC schools and academic units. The ceremony begins at 9 a.m. Schwarzenegger's address will be webcast live on gov.ca.gov.
Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger painted a bleak picture today of what’s to come should budget-related state ballot measures fail next week.
Fire stations will close, prisons will be forced to release inmates, schools will lay off more than 50,000 teachers, schools will be shut down for several weeks, and the state will have to borrow from local governments, Schwarzenegger warned.
He urged 15 or so officials from around Los Angeles County who joined him at a news conference to encourage their communities to approve the measures.
Los Angeles government officials plan to find jobs for 16,500 youths over the next year as part of a program that has received a $20.5-million boost from President Obama’s stimulus package.
Mayor Antonio Villaraigosa and Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger discussed the funding this morning on the steps of City Hall, where they were joined by hundreds of students who have secured summer or part-time jobs. “I want to thank a president who’s investing in our cities again,” Villaraigosa said.
Hire L.A. works with education officials and with various companies -- Best Buy, Vons and the pharmacy chain CVS among others -- to find jobs for residents between the ages of 16 and 24. The program has grown from roughly 3,000 participants in 2005 to 13,500 during the current year, Villaraigosa said.
Federal funding for the program includes $8 million for jobs to hire roughly 4,000 youths between July 1 and Aug. 31, as well as $2 million to help out-of-work Angelenos between the ages of 21 and 24 find jobs between Aug. 1 and Sept. 30, a mayoral aide said.
Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger renewed his push today for $3.6 million to help finance college education for the citizen soldiers of the California National Guard.
The governor called it “unconscionable” that California is the only state in the nation that does not provide tuition assistance to the men and women of the Guard.
“It’s a mark of shame on our great state,” Schwarzenegger said at a news conference in the Capitol rotunda. “It’s a terrible wrong that must be made right.”
A bill by state Sen. Dave Cogdill (R-Modesto) that would provide college assistance for the Guard is set for hearing Wednesday in the Senate Education Committee. Attempts in recent years by the governor and Republicans to win funding approval have been turned back amid the state’s ongoing fiscal travails.
Last August, Democrats in the Senate rejected a bill that would have launched the program. Foes argued that the Bush administration’s expanded deployment of California Guard members in Afghanistan and Iraq put the responsibility on the federal government to pay for expanded Guard benefits.
State corrections officials are proposing to make massive budget cuts ordered by Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger by reducing the number of ex-convicts on parole by more than 25% and allowing prison inmates to shorten their sentences by completing rehabilitation programs.
The plan, outlined this afternoon by Schwarzenegger’s corrections chief, Matthew Cate, resembles past proposals offered by the department that have met with strong opposition from local law enforcement officials and have ultimately been withdrawn.
But in a concession to those groups, Cate said his agency would propose legislation enabling police to search former prisoners and seize their property without a warrant for at least three years after their release, even if they are not placed on parole.
The plan would reduce the number of parolees monitored by the state by more than 30,000 from the current 114,000. As a result, fewer would also be sent back to prison for parole violations. Together with the additional time off their sentences that inmates could earn by completing programs, state lockups would see an estimated reduction of about 8,000 prisoners, on average, from the initiative.
Even with the cuts, Cate said, the Department of Corrections and Rehabilitation is unlikely to reach the $400 million in spending reductions for the coming fiscal year ordered by the governor when he signed the budget approved by lawmakers in February.
Cate said other elements of the department’s plan include cuts of up to 200 positions at the agency’s headquarters in Sacramento, about 10% of its workforce there; adjusting upward the dollar value of property crimes needed for them to be prosecuted as a felony, to account for inflation; and using satellite tracking technology on parolees who commit technical violations, such as failing a drug test or missing an appointment, as an alternative to sending them back to prison.
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