California Insider

Currently in California, it's illegal for an individual hourly employee and his or her employer to agree to a 10-hour, 4-day work week that does not include premium overtime pay. It can happen, but only by a union contract or a secret ballot approved by two-thirds of the affected workers in a firm. AB 640, by Assemblyman Van Tran, would have changed that, allowing any employee to request such a deal, while still prohibiting an employer from encouraging it. Seem reasonable enough? Nope. The measure died today in the Assembly Labor Committee. Thank God someone is protecting us from ourselves.

I think this is good news. The unions, representing their members, want a seat at the table negotiating better prices from hospitals. Some will worry about ulterior motives. I say, anything that gets consumers better information and a way to negotiate with providers is a good thing.

At a press conference on environmental issues today, Schwarzenegger was asked what he meant when he said yesterday that the United States should "close the border" with Mexico. Here is his answer, according to a transcript supplied by the governor's office:

"First of all, I was very happy that some of you took our corrections seriously. And the bottom line is I misspoke, and I'm sorry if that offended anyone. But it was a language problem, because I meant "securing our borders" rather than "closing our borders." Because, of course, we don't want to close the borders, because I think that we have a terrific relationship with Mexico. I have done myself four movies in Mexico. I love to go on vacation to Mexico. I think that we have a great trade agreement with Mexico, we are good friends. I did not mean "close," I meant "secure" our borders, that's what I mean."

In a breakfast meeting with the Sacramento Bee's Capitol Bureau, Speaker Fabian Núñez said he didn't mean to suggest at a rally yesterday that he was prepared to hold up the budget until Gov. Schwarzenegger agrees to changes in the implementation of last year's workers comp deal. "Perhaps I misspoke," he said.

He added: "It's going to be a budget issue and there's no question we are going to put it on the table."

I will have more on the rest of his remarks in Thursday's column.

Here is a link to the Bee's early story and audio from the breakfast.

The Department of Finance report on March revenues is here, on their website. The department reports that March revenues were $2.9 billion higher than projected and year-to-date revenues were $3.3 billion above projections. But the report cautions that most of the unexpected money came from the tax amnesty program that ended in March. A "responsible" budget, finance says, would allocate no more than 10 percent of that new money. Meanwhile, withholding from wages, estimated payments, sales taxes and corporate taxes (outside the amnesty revenue) were also at least slightly above projections, probably about in line with an earlier estimate by the Legislative Analyst's office that was more bullish on revenues than was the governor's budget.