In a state as large and fractured as California, it is always cause for celebration when lawmakers can reach some form of agreement on an issue as divisive as water.

Rob Feckner, president of the California Public Employees' Retirement System board, has asked his fellow trustees to stop meeting with placement agents. Cutting contacts with placement agents is the absolute minimum board members charged with protecting retirement funds for 1.6 million California public employees should commit to, given the string of recent embarrassing disclosures about CalPERS.
Though it contained little new information, the state inspector general's report on Phillip Garrido's parole supervision still is stunning. Incompetence in the oversight of the man accused of kidnapping Jaycee Lee Dugard, and holding her captive for 18 years, defies belief.
On Wednesday, The Bee's Jim Sanders and Steve Wiegand broke news that the state's proposed water bond package included $10 million for a nonprofit tolerance center in Sacramento – a favored project of Senate President Pro Tem Darrell Steinberg.
One year after the election of President Barack Obama, it's time to ask whether his ambitious campaign promises about Latin America are being fulfilled, or whether, like others before him, he has placed the region at the bottom of his foreign policy priorities.
A few weeks ago, a friend of mine got some unnerving news about his health. I told him not to worry: The problem was caught early, medical science has such matters well under control, people no longer just up and die. I have a related condition, so, to further reassure my friend that his prognosis was good, I decided to consult the doctor who has been treating me for years. I called his office.
You'd think that a city that's grown from 66,000 in 1920 to nearly 500,000 today might want to reconsider its nearly 90-year-old city manager form of government.
A recent example in the city of Elk Grove illustrates California's tax dilemma. Elk Grove residents, like residents across the state, have faced cuts in their neighborhood parks. In June, 6,000 residents in the older, central area of the city and northern newer neighborhoods received ballots to raise a $79 annual fee to maintain parks. They roundly rejected it.

Mayor needs to collaborate with neighbors


If Sacramento Mayor Kevin Johnson wants to get things done, he needs to talk to his neighbors.
Posted: Friday, November 6, 2009
Students in Robert Benedetti's California government class at the University of the Pacific will spend the term rewriting the state's constitution. Based on what they have learned so far, the students were asked if they thought regular people would be capable of taking on this task as part of a constitutional convention, or if the job would be better handled by experts. Here are some of their responses:

The Conversation Forum

After nine years at The Bee, this is my final column as a regular feature on this page. But while I will be leaving the paper's payroll, I hope to be a frequent contributor to the ongoing discussion here about politics and public policy in this troubled state.

When a major storm roared through our region Oct. 13, hundreds of people traded questions and answers live on sacbee.com.

When we launched our reader survey of syndicated columnists two weeks ago, I assumed we'd get a deluge of responses.

NorCal Voices blog

What are the region's residents talking about on the streets, over the backyard fence and at the water cooler? Our line-up of local residents shares the buzz from their neighborhoods, communities, cities and region. Here's what's on their minds.

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