Editorials

In recent years, Vallejo has been known mostly and sadly for the fact that it went bankrupt in 2008. Today, the beleaguered city on San Pablo Bay is making news for something innovative and exciting.

Groups of a particular breed that have pumped in waves of secret cash polluting our politics have long demanded closer scrutiny.

What board of a major company would select a new executive without having the final slate of candidates visit the site?

Under Proposition 13, the 1978 initiative that slashed property taxes in California, the sale of property is supposed to trigger a reassessment for tax purposes. Because residential property turns over more frequently than businesses, home property values are reassessed more frequently. But even when a business is sold, new owners often avoid higher taxes.

For more than a decade, the big farm and urban districts that have grown dependent on water from the Sacramento-San Joaquin Delta have tried to discredit scientific findings that greater Delta flows are needed to recover endangered species.

Important legislation is emerging that would significantly improve care for the most severely mentally ill people in California.

The water infrastructure of the United States is aging, and aging fast. Yet Congress hasn't enacted a Water Resources Development Act, authorizing U.S. Army Corps of Engineers projects and providing policy direction, since 2007.

Assembly Speaker John A. Pérez has reintroduced a pared-down version of a bill that Gov. Jerry Brown vetoed last year that would expand the statute of limitations for death benefits for police and firefighters injured in the line of duty. Even in its more modest incarnation, cities and counties oppose the measure. They fear it will impose unspecified additional costs on local governments that could add up to hundreds of millions of dollars. Despite those concerns, the speaker's Assembly Bill 1373 went flying out of the Assembly earlier this month on a 60 to 12 vote.

We have fewer than five months until the October enrollment launch when uninsured Californians will be able to apply for coverage through the state.

Gov. Jerry Brown and the Legislature did a heavy lift in reducing California's 33 overcrowded state prisons from 141,000 inmates to 119,000 in two years. But the effects of Brown's public safety realignment have plateaued.

The Sacramento Municipal Utility District is weighing a rate increase that will cost the typical residential customer between $2 and $4 more a month by 2015. That may grab people's immediate attention. But what is far more significant is the farsighted change in the way SMUD is proposing to charge for electricity in future years.

It's hard to fathom that such a tiny creature can have so large an impact on our food supply.

Former Fish and Game Commission President Dan Richards denounces what he calls a "perverted agenda" being advanced through the Legislature by "enviro-terrorist groups."

The numbers are startling. African Americans are 12 percent of the child population of Sacramento County, but they made up 22 percent of child deaths over a 20-year period beginning in 1990.

It may surprise many that while Sacramento has sister cities spanning the globe, it doesn't have one in Mexico.

No doubt, it is gearing up to be a dry, ugly summer. It's just early May, but fires have erupted around the state, most notably in Ventura County.

Public records have cleansing power, as Nevada is discovering. The U.S. Supreme Court doesn't seem interested.

Imagine you go to the grocery story and find long lines at the checkout. A clerk approaches and says, "You can wait in line, or if you're willing to pay four times more, we can get you out right away."

A damning series of stories published this year in The Sacramento Bee accuses Nevada of systematically dumping mental health patients on other states, particularly California.

We have great respect for the legal profession. Most attorneys adhere to a strict code of ethics and many provide service to the downtrodden, victims and underdogs. Then there is Miguel A. Custodio Jr.

Barack Obama was right to call for closing the prison at Guantánamo Bay when he first became president. Four years on, his cause is even stronger.

Fundraising for the opening bash planned for the new San Francisco-Oakland Bay Bridge – scheduled for the Labor Day weekend – has been suspended. That's the clearest indication yet that the new span's cracked bolts and other problems pose serious risks to a safe opening of this bridge.

At the last minute in the last hour of the California legislative session, lawmakers resort to a stealth maneuver called "gut and amend." They strip out the original language of a bill and insert wholly new, unrelated language.

If the Maloof family truly cares about Sacramento and the Kings, it ought to graciously step aside. It's time to end the uncertainty and give the team and its city a fresh start.

Congressional representatives from Northern California have reason to criticize the way Jerry Meral and the Brown administration continue to push ahead with plans for two gigantic water tunnels in the Sacramento-San Joaquin Delta. We added our voice to those criticisms Sunday.

The city of Sacramento's budget picture is a bit brighter. Yet even with the recovering economy and a big boost from a voter-approved sales tax, City Hall is certainly not out of the woods yet.

Looked at narrowly, it is true that a lack of regulatory oversight didn't cause the April 17 fertilizer plant explosion in West that killed 14 people, including 10 volunteer firefighters.

I attended four different elementary schools when I was growing up. At two of them, I entered during the middle of a school year.

Nevada Gov. Brian Sandoval still has plenty of explaining to do about his state's cavalier policy of busing mentally ill patients unescorted to all corners of the continental United States.

How's this for a sweet deal? A former Finance Department employee retires from state service and collects a pension of close to $153,000 annually.