California Insider

Secretary of State Kevin Shelley has posted draft standards for adding a voter-verifiable paper trail to electronic voting machines. He is soliciting comments from the public. You can find the standards here.

Schwarzenegger continues to struggle over his definition of "special interests" and when he will or will not take money from them. The latest twist: he's suspending the acceptance of contributions from the insurance industry while he negotiates a workers comp deal with the Legislature. This after taking nearly $1 million from insurers to help pass his two ballot measures March 2. Look, either the guy is influenced by big donations or he isn't. Does anybody really believe that he would ignore all the money given before the talks got hot and heavy, yet respond to money given during the heat of the battle? If Schwarzenegger really cares about how all this looks, he needs to sit down and develop a comprehensive, consistent policy governing his own fundraising, perhaps even refusing to accept contributions from anyone with a stake in public policy in the Capitol, i.e., anyone who pays a lobbyist to influence legislation or executive action in state government. Anything short of that is simply window dressing. I'm not recommending it. I personally think campaign finance limits are a joke. But that applies to limits in the law. If someone wants to prove that they "don't need anybody else's money," this is the way to do it. Here is a story in the Bee about the insurance money.

The latest in a series of Assembly Budget Committee hearings on waste in government zeroed in on the Department of Corrections. Lawmakers were told what many already suspected: the prisons budget is out of control, with little to no accountability for how much money each prison spends. But one reason wardens consistently overspend their budgets, the Department of Finance told legislators, is that those budgets have been set at an artificially low level that did not reflect policy changes and pay raises for employees. The goal: set a realistic budget this year, then stick to it. Wardens who overspend, says a prison agency official, will be fired. Here is a link to the Bee's story on the hearing.