John Burton now leads the California Democratic Party. In 1978, he was a member of Congress. The day after Prop 13 passed that June, he took to the floor of the U.S. House of Representatives for a one-minute statement, which I found in Gov. Jerry Brown’s briefing papers on Prop 13:

"Mr. Speaker, the people of California voted on a proposition yesterday that will have the effect of sending at least $700 or $800 million more to the Federal Treasury. They voted out of their disgust for the 8 years of the Reagan administration out there, which raised the taxes by better than $2.7 billion and never addressed the property tax relief problem.

"Mr. Speaker, I would just ask, as we sit here today, to have a moment of silence for those who live in mosquito abatement districts in California, because they have just been wiped out and all of the money will go to the State capitol, where Gov. Jerry Brown in 2 weeks will stand with Howard Jarvis and say, ‘I knew we could do it.’"

Los Angeles is a creative place. You can depend on the city to figure out some innovative way to punish businesses.

Just
last week, City Council members decided they didn’t like Arizona’s new
law that cracks down on illegal immigrants, so they came up with an
out-of-the-box way to flog businesses. They ordered city departments to
see if they could kill any contracts with companies headquartered in
that state.

That’ll
teach those companies. How dare they be located in Arizona and actually
sell their goods or services here? Los Angeles will make them hurt.

The Public Policy Institute of California came out with its last pre-primary poll confirming that the Whitman-Poizner Republican gubernatorial race has closed considerably over the last two months. Whitman holds a 9-point lead over Poizner, including leading across the board in all demographic categories. Her lead has dropped dramatically since the March PPIC poll, which had Whitman ahead by 50-points.

The poll covered a lot of ground not only dealing with primary candidate races, but also potential match-ups in the general election, proposition campaigns and peeks ahead at proposition battles for November.

You can read more about all the poll results here.

When it comes to politics, there’s never a dull moment in California.
And when it comes to California, there’s never a shortage of kooky
political ideas.

In the past week alone, we learned that in November California voters
will decide if pot should be legal in our state. Then there’s the
proposal by one legislator to ban fast food restaurants from selling
Happy Meals in an effort to sway kids to choose tofu and yogurt over
cheeseburgers and fries.

One thing is clear: Government priorities have run amuck.

California has long been known as a pioneer state willing to forge ahead in new ventures, technology, ideas and entertainment.

But if the Legislature thinks that one state acting alone can singlehandedly solve global warming, they are California Dreamin’.

A new report from the non-partisan Legislative Analyst’s Office (LAO) happens to agree with our tune.

Attorney General and Democratic Gubernatorial candidate Jerry Brown brushed aside concerns over public employee pay and benefits as a major cause of California’s troubles at a UC Santa Barbara political event.

As described in Calbuzz on Tuesday, Brown answered a question about government employee furloughs by charging that Republicans use the public employees as "scapegoats" for the state’s fiscal problems when the real problem is caused by Wall Street people who Brown conveniently tied to Republicans.

Brown’s defense of the public employee pensions and benefits is a telling message on an important issue concerning the state deficit. Brown, who signed into law collective bargaining when he was governor three decades ago giving the public unions more power, appears ready to defend the groups that are now supporting his candidacy.

Here is the Legislative Analyst’s estimate of future structural budget deficits in the unlikely event that the Legislature adopts all the Governor’s May Revision proposals:

Relax. This is an old story.

I’ve begun wading through boxes and boxes of papers from Jerry Brown’s first governorship, which are housed in a library at USC. I made a request last summer for access and complained publicly when I didn’t get an answer. Brown, who like all former governors can restrict access to his papers for at least 50 years after he leaves office, granted me access in February, though some issues with the library’s schedule for processing papers had delayed actual access for a couple months.

I’ve been through about 20 boxes out of hundreds. But there have been several small, fun finds, including a telegram sent to Brown at 5:13 p.m. on June 13, 1978, a week after the passage of Prop 13. The writer worries about whether tuition could be imposed at Cal State campuses as a result of Prop 13.

The
following two articles provide differing views on the Los Angeles city
budget.

Dogs, Cats, Gang-bangers — and the City Hall Follies
By Ron Kaye

This is what we’ve come to: Four million people provide an average of
$1,700 each to City Hall for police, fire, paved streets and sidewalks,
parks and libraries and other basic services but all they care about is
dogs, cats and gang-bangers.

Welcome to the City Hall Follies — a burlesque that lasted 11 hours on
Monday and amounted to petty bickering and maneuvering to add another
$5 in fines for illegal parking so they can provide more jobs to
hoodlums and keep a closed-to-the-public warehouse with 167 unwanted
pets functioning.