Capitol News Roundup - August 19, 2008
Posted by: Craig DeLuz | 08/19/2008 10:06 AM
Democrats vow to seek voter change of two-thirds requirement -- Assemblyman Sandre Swanson is convinced that the only way to avoid lengthy budget stalemates in the future is to strip the minority party of what he calls its out-sized influence.
Democratic assemblywoman banished from Capitol for withholding budget vote -- The only perceptible movement Monday in the Capitol's long-stalled budget debate came on the fifth floor - Democrat Nicole Parra was booted from her office for bucking her party during a vote Sunday night.
California Budget Impasse Persists As GOP Refuses Income-Tax Rise -- California's months-long budget standoff hit a low when an emergency State Assembly meeting failed to produce a compromise between Democrats and Republicans over how to compensate for a shortfall exceeding $15 billion.
California Assembly rejects two bills on chemical bans -- An avalanche of lobbying buried two bills in the Assembly on Monday that sought to ban controversial chemicals from fast food containers, microwave popcorn bags and baby bottles.
Dan Walters: Solar power tax break has a ray of irony -- The central focus of Sunday's four-hour Assembly debate over the long-stalled state budget was the Democrats' $6.7 billion package of new taxes. Republicans complained loudly that with California's economy mired in recession, raising taxes would be counterproductive, making the state less hospitable to business and propelling investment elsewhere.
Panel urges San Francisco to help teen immigrant felons -- A San Francisco city commission has taken a defiant stand against Mayor Gavin Newsom's directive on young immigrant felons by urging officials to permit the offenders to remain in the city and help pay for their housing, job placement services and immigration lawyers.
California leads nation in immigrant births -- A new and more nuanced national report about fertility shows a significantly higher share of babies are born to immigrants in California than in any other state, even as a lower-than-average share of the state's births are to poor women and women on welfare.
Peter Schrag: Another shot in math wars: A stink bomb -- Who says Jack O'Connell doesn't have a sense of humor? Last week, O'Connell, the state superintendent of public instruction, called for an additional $3.1 billion a year to allow California's middle schools to meet a three-year deadline by which all students must take (and presumably pass) algebra in the eighth grade.
Doctors can't use bias to deny gays treatment -- California doctors who have religious objections to gays and lesbians must nevertheless treat them the same as any other patient or find a colleague in the office who will do so, the state Supreme Court ruled unanimously Monday. he justices rejected a San Diego County fertility clinic's attempt to use its physicians' religious beliefs as a justification for their refusal to provide artificial insemination for a lesbian couple.
Assembly OKs water park bill -- A proposal to improve child safety at wave pools - prompted by the drowning of a small boy at Great America last summer - drew spirited partisan debate among state lawmakers Monday but was eventually approved by a wide margin.
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Capitol News Roundup
But think, those undocumented students who benefit now will become future tax-payers that can pay back to the...