Even under optimal circumstances, California is extraordinarily difficult to govern — more like a fractious nation than a culturally homogenous state. Our size and our staggering economic, cultural, ethnic, even geographic and meteorological diversity not only create complex issues but make the reconciliation of often bitterly disparate factions difficult, bordering...
Walters: Winnowing Legislative Grain From Chaff
During the pre-industrial era, crops of wheat were planted, cultivated, harvested and processed by hand. The latter included “winnowing,” typically by using a shallow basket to toss the crushed kernels of wheat into the air, allowing the wind to separate edible grain from the lighter and disposable chaff. The term...
Walters: Secrecy Abounds on State Budget, Major Bills
Fair warning: By reading this you will be plunging into the Legislature’s almost impenetrably arcane thicket of internal procedures. To begin at the beginning, for decades the state budget was written in secret by the chairmen of the Legislature’s two fiscal committees, Assembly Ways and Means and Senate Finance. This...