By Phillip Reese -
Published: Friday, July 3 2009 - 12:00 am
Murderers are more likely to be sentenced to death in conservative California counties, particularly in the southern part of the state, according to a Bee analysis of recent data from the state attorney general's office.
By Jim Sanders -
Published: Friday, July 3 2009 - 12:00 am
With California's budget gap growing by millions each day, Thursday marked a roller coaster of Capitol emotion that veered from optimism about prospects for a deal to eruption of a new fight over school funding.
By Andrew McIntosh -
Published: Thursday, July 2 2009 - 12:00 am
A California financial company on Wednesday agreed to repay $2 million to New York state's giant public pension fund after one of the company's former partners was implicated in paying a kickback to secure investment deals from the fund.
Published: Thursday, July 2 2009 - 12:00 am
"No excuses, but there are clear reasons why the budget isn't done yet. We are living through a historic economic crisis that has resulted in people and government having less money. Since I began as leader of the Senate, the combined budget deficit has amounted to almost $60 billion. This fiscal reality, combined with the extraordinary two-thirds requirement to pass a budget, is the reason the job is not done yet."
Published: Thursday, July 2 2009 - 12:00 am
Day one of the 2009-10 fiscal year brought no agreement on a plan to close what is now estimated to be a $26.3 billion state budget deficit. Here are some of Wednesday's key developments:
By Susan Ferriss -
Updated: Wednesday, July 1 2009 - 8:23 am
As legislators battled over the state budget Tuesday, an independent commission voted to slash lawmakers' per-diem payments, car allowances and medical and other fringe benefits by 18 percent.
Published: Wednesday, July 1 2009 - 12:00 am
While rank-and-file state employees face as much as a 14 percent pay cut through furloughs, California Highway Patrol officers could well get a raise. The CHP contract adjusts pay based on salary levels at five local law enforcement agencies in the state. The results of this year's survey are expected out soon.
By Dan Walters -
Published: Wednesday, July 1 2009 - 12:00 am
The Capitol's budget game has evolved into a predictable pattern of political moves, one of which is a late-blooming demand for something not directly tied to the budget as a price for its enactment.
By Dale Kasler and Robert Lewis -
Updated: Tuesday, June 30 2009 - 1:10 pm
With the state poised to issue billions in IOUs in lieu of cash this week, California's budget crisis could create serious headaches for some private vendors and local governments.
Updated: Tuesday, June 30 2009 - 8:22 am
Recession-wracked Michigan is looking west to its poor sister California for a budget boost.
By Dan Walters -
Published: Tuesday, June 30 2009 - 12:00 am
While waiting for the state Senate to convene Monday, the California Channel, a public affairs television service, filled in by broadcasting a recent conference on the burgeoning movement to fundamentally overhaul California's dysfunctional state government.
By Steve Wiegand and Jim Sanders -
Published: Monday, June 29 2009 - 12:00 am
Democratic legislators trotted out a stick-and-carrot approach to closing the state's budget gap Sunday night, negotiating with the governor on one floor of the Capitol while voting for a package of cuts and taxes on another.
Updated: Monday, June 29 2009 - 8:31 am
The state Managed Risk Medical Insurance Board meets today to discuss the budget situation and what to do about enrollment in the Healthy Families program.
By Dan Walters -
Published: Monday, June 29 2009 - 12:00 am
California's cost of guarding, feeding, clothing, medicating and supposedly educating its nearly 170,000 prison inmates and supervising 110,000 parolees is about $10 billion a year. And it's very easily the fastest-growing segment of the deficit-ridden state budget over the past decade.
By Pamela Martineau -
Published: Sunday, June 28 2009 - 12:00 am
They think of themselves as street-theater activists who are willing to get in the face of the powers-that-be to bring equity to the state's school funding system.