Sacramento Bee

Here is a Sacramento Bee item on an independent legislative candidate who got enough sigs -- some 21,000 to qualify for the ballot. This is rare (Former Long Beach Mayor Beverly O'Neill is one of a handful of politicians to make the ballot as a write-in in a significant election).

What's most interesting is what the candidate, Jim Fitzgerald, seems to have discovered during the process: paid signature gathering is effecitvely cheaper and more efficient. Fitzgerald started off with a volunteer effort to get the signatures, but, as those involved in the signature gathering game know, volunteer signature work is far more costly on a per-signature basis than a paid signature efffort. Fitzgerald went to a temp agency, according to the Sacramento Bee, and spent $30,000 to get the sigs. That's not bad by the way -- about $1.30 a signature. $2 a sig has become the default cost in many California signature gathering efforts.

This picture from the Sacramento Bee is of the chief of staff to Democratic Assemblywoman Nicole Parra packing up her office after Assembly Speaker Karen Bass kicked her out of the Capitol. Parra's crime? Showing a little independence. Parra, a Central Valley moderate Democrat from one of the few competitive legislative districts in the state, refused to vote for the Democratic budget proposal for a simple and good reason: the legislature refuses to pass a badly needed water bond even after it was presented with a bipartisan compromise fashioned by U.S. Sen. Dianne Feinstein and Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger. 

Dan Weintraub at the Sacramento Bee provides a great summary of what Prop 13 did, and didn't do.

Shane Goldmacher of the Sacramento Bee takes an excellent and thorough look at the phenomenon of California legislators opening ballot measure political accounts, through which they can accept contributions of unlimited amounts. He points out the potential for corruption from these donations, but also gives time to my view -- in fact, he quotes your blogger -- that with so many questions going to the ballot, legislators need these accounts to defend their policymaking. This is obviously not a good thing, and such accounts deserve the kind of scrutiny that the Bee is giving them. But you legislate with the system we have. What we need is a different system that fits direct democracy and the legislative process together in a smarter way. But how to do that?