Gov. Jerry Brown said Monday that he does not know if the Bay Bridge will open over Labor Day weekend because of safety concerns.
It was the first time the governor acknowledged serious worries about the structural integrity of the $6.4 billion infrastructure project to build a new eastern span of the bridge. Brown had dismissed concerns about broken bolts earlier this month.
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California’s prisons remain desperately overcrowded despite years of litigation and intervention by federal judges.
Overcrowding seriously compromises the health of prison inmates, and inadequate health care has led to the gratuitous suffering of untold numbers of felons. If the state is going to comply with federal requirements to reduce the prison population, it may well have to consider releasing some inmates early.
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I am shocked and concerned over your completely unfair editorial (“Soup ban about overfishing, not culture attack.” July 24). Both you and Gov. Jerry Brown seem to have swallowed hook, line and sinker the untruth and distortion put forth by AB 376’s sponsors concerning the need for a shark fin ban.
In fact, the reality is that virtually all experts in the field agree that there is no need for such a ban because federal law since 2000 has made shark finning illegal.
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Gov. Jerry Brown wants to fast-track an initial section of a bullet train system, perhaps by partially exempting it from environmental impact laws, even though there’s no financing on the horizon to complete the project and even though a new poll shows that most Californians don’t want to build it.
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Thousands of California teachers were given layoff notices a few weeks ago because state law requires the slips to be sent out each spring if administrators and trustees believe cuts are needed to balance their budgets.
This month, the districts must decide whether to continue or rescind those layoffs on the assumption that by then they’ll know the state of their 2012-13 finances.
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The City Charter says the Ethics Commission has to conduct a hearing and make a recommendation to the Board of Supervisors whenever an elected official is suspended from office for misconduct. But, there is no formal process in the charter that dictates how to conduct such a hearing.
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State legislators have sent 600 bills to Gov. Jerry Brown, many of which he has promised to veto. One of those should be Senate Bill 202, which does two things that represent partisan politics at its worst.
First, it denies Californians the opportunity to vote in June on creation of a 3 percent reserve fund in the state budget. This “rainy-day” fund would help the state avoid the perennial budget crises that force it to issue IOUs when it runs out of money.
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It’s time for Gov. Jerry Brown to release his inner libertarian. And I admit this sounds nuts or born of wishful thinking.
The governor has spent his first months in office advocating more government spending and protecting the ravenous public-sector unions that helped elect him to office. But deep down — or maybe not so deep down — Brown understands the limits of government and the importance of freedom, entrepreneurship and a competitive environment.
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The Capitol — especially during the last, hectic days of any California legislative session — is a bottom-line kind of place. Its occupants, whether legislators or lobbyists, are entirely focused on passing, defeating or amending bills.
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Just as Gov. Jerry Brown’s previous budget-saving measures such as eliminating some state cellphones and cars were more symbolic than substantive, his latest proposal to stimulate job growth by changing the tax code — as reported in the Friday San Francisco Examiner — is also more symbolic than substantive.
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URL: http://www.sfexaminer.com/topics/gov-jerry-brown
