WASHINGTON — The Senate passed a long-overdue, $209 billion bundle of bipartisan spending bills Thursday, but a bitter fight over funding demanded by President Donald Trump for border fencing imperils broader Capitol Hill efforts to advance $1.4 trillion worth of annual Cabinet agency budgets. The 84-9 vote sends the measure...
Newsom’s First Rodeo: In Year One, Governor Bucks Both Trump and Brown
Californians will soon be allowed to eat roadkill but be prohibited from buying fur coats. Abortion pills will become available on college campuses, but tiny bottles of shampoo will be banned from hotel rooms. High school and middle school kids will get a later first bell, but schools won’t be...
New California Laws Aim to Speed Housing Construction
SACRAMENTO — A new California law aims to stop communities from delaying construction of new housing projects. It's one of 18 housing bills signed Wednesday by Gov. Gavin Newsom. State lawmakers have passed dozens of bills aimed at boosting funding for affordable housing, easing development restrictions and helping renters facing...
What to Watch as CA Lawmakers Wrap up, From Gators to the Gig Economy
Endangered species, gig workers, children, universities, privacy, parolees who want to vote, people who want straighter teeth, and alligators. As California lawmakers wrap up the final week of the 2019 legislative year, the issues they are taking up are sweeping and eclectic, as end-of-session to-do lists usually are. More than...
Hot Off the Grille: Is California Ready to Legalize Roadkill Cuisine?
Let’s get the jokes out of the way first. “Meals under wheels.” “Bumper crop.” “Gravel-tenderized meat.” Chances are state Sen. Bob Archuleta has heard most of them. A Los Angeles County Democrat, he has a bill advancing through the Legislature that would allow Californians to “salvage” recently deceased wildlife from the sides...
Walters: Some Bills Are Silly, and Some Are Just Dumb
Every session of the California Legislature generates some bills that can only be labeled as silly – that is, they defy common sense. One example this year is a bill that would abolish paper receipts at retail businesses, thereby requiring customers to supply their email addresses so merchants can send...
Walters: Battles Over Local Tax Measures Heat up
A change in the governor’s office and expanded Democratic supermajorities in the Legislature have emboldened long-frustrated advocates of increasing taxes to expand health, welfare and education services. The California Tax Foundation calculates that bills already introduced this year would raise Californians’ taxes by $6.2 billion a year with others to...
Charter-Mageddon: Lawmakers Advance a Raft of Union-Backed Charter School Curbs
As charter school advocates rallied en masse and California’s teachers’ unions flexed their political muscle, a cluster of bills that would dramatically curb the growth of charters in the state cleared the Assembly Education Committee on Wednesday. The votes were the first in what figures to be a lengthy, high-stakes...
Walters: Politicians Like to Keep Us in the Dark
Every year, governors and state legislators load up bills that supposedly implement the state budget with all sorts of extracurricular provisions benefiting those to whom they owe favors. They use these “trailer bills” because they can be, and often have been, passed very quickly after being drafted, thereby concealing their...
Anti-Abortion Bills: Odds Good in GOP States, not Congress
President Donald Trump's call for a ban on late-term abortions is unlikely to prevail in Congress, but Republican legislators in several states are pushing ahead with their own tough anti-abortion bills that they hope can pass muster with the Supreme Court. Two bills proposing to outlaw abortions after a fetal...