California Insider

The Franchise Tax Board wrapped up the month today with personal income tax collections of about $632 million, bringing the total for April, not including withholding from paychecks, to $11.25 billion. After deducting refunds mailed out, the state was left with a net of about $9.5 billion. The projection for the month in the January budget was $6.3 billion. The bank and corporate tax, meanwhile, finished the month about $200 million above projections. Do the math, and you come up with nearly $3.5 billion more than the governor's budget projected, just in April. Throw in the $1 billion surplus coming into the month and you get to revenues of $4.5 billion above the figure in the January budget. Could be a few hundred million more or less depending on how withholding and the sales tax did this month.

But you get the idea. If only one-third of the new money is considered ongoing, that's $6 billion in added revenue over the two year period covering the end of this fiscal year through June 30 2007.

After implying as much for a couple of weeks, Jon Fleischman now states flatly that he thinks the second-place Republican finisher in the special election for Duke Cunningham's old 50th Congressional district should challenge the leading Republican in the June primary for a full term in the seat. Fleischman, who traveled with his candidate, Eric Roach, on a trip to Washington to guage support, continues to be a case-study in the merger of news-making and new-reporting as a blogger and editor who is still practicing politics full time.

Bill Bradley says Phil Angelides is "on the verge" of winning the Democratic Party's coveted pre-primary endorsement.