California Insider

Part of the fall-out from the after-the-fact uproar over the last prison guards' contract was a bill that requried the legislative analyst to review every new memorandum of understanding agreed to by the administration. The first one has now been done, on the new contract with state attorneys, and it's a great addition to the discussion. You can find it here. The compact report lays out who is in this bargaining group, how their salaries compare now to other state workers (but not, unfortunately, to the private sector), how much their benefits cost and what they are, and, most importantly, how much the new contract is likely to cost the taxpayers. In this case, while most of the attention when the contract was signed was on pension concessions to which the union agreed, the LAO points out that the the deal is still going to cost about $40 million more per year when fully implemented, or about 10 percent over two years.

The sale of new homes plunged in November to the lowest level for that month since 1997, the Bee reports, confirming what we have been hearing anecdotally for a while.

Capitol Weekly on the Rise of the Blogs -- California style.