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If You Can’t Stand the Heat, Stay Out of the Kitchen
“The game here is, ‘Come to Sacramento and get your little piece of the pie.’ Well I’m the cook here and I’ve got to cut the slices in fair amounts and I think we’ve cut a big enough slice for the prisons.”
–Gov. Jerry Brown, Janaury 8, 2013, Sacramento Press Conference
(Art by Katie Lucas) Read more »
Memo From the Grammar Police to California Department of Justice Lawyers
On January 7, 2013 the Brown administration filed a document with a panel of three federal judges asking them to release the state from it’s obligation to lower the population at the Golden State’s 33 prisons to 110,000 inmates – 137.5 percent of design capacity.
(There’s a little under 120,000 inmates at the moment, which is down 43,000 from the peak of overcrowding several years ago.) Read more »
As an Alternative, Eliminate the Archaic 30-Days-In-Print Rule
On January 7, 2013, Senate President Pro Tempore Darrell Steinberg, a Sacramento Democrat, violated one of the chief rules of public relations by trying to blunt potential criticism of the upper house by drawing attentiont o the opportunity for leveling it.
As the Senate’s first floor session of 2013 drew to a close, Steinberg allowed that the public and might be critical of the lack of legislative business conducted during the first months of the legislative session. Read more »
“Make ’em, Don’t Break ’em — New Year’s Resolutions for Lawmakers”
By Greg Lucas
Sacramento News & Review, December 27, 2012 — Elected officials aren’t mutants from an alternate universe sent to infect our world with madness.
They used to be regular folks anonymously striving to meet their monthly nut, not piss off partners (business or otherwise) and navigate life’s pothole-pocked path without major catastrophe. Read more »
So Far, 2013 Is The Year of the Well Read Legislator
On the January 6, 2013 Viewpoints page of the Sacramento Bee, Assemblyman Jeff Gorrell, a Camarillo Republican, opines that despite he and the members of his party holding less than one-third of the seats in both the Assembly and Senate for the first time in 80 years, they still influence the legislative process. Read more »
Remembering John Quimby
John Phillip Quimby, a craggy Capitol fixture for five decades first as a legislator and then a lobbyist for the Inland Empire, died December 23, 2012 of complications from pneumonia. He was 77.
A Democratic Assemblyman from 1962 to 1974, he subsequently lobbied for the counties he previously represented, San Bernardino and Riverside. Read more »
The Case of the Stolen Overcoat
The California Assembly’s Indomitable John Quimby Had a Lion’s Build, a Cheery Wit and a Hound’s Tooth Coat He Didn’t Own
By James R. Mills
San Diego Magazine, December 1983
“Hire the handicapped,” John Quimby used to say. “They’re fun to watch.”
Upon his arrival in Sacramento in 1962, John had become the most popular member of the State Assembly, partly because he carried on so cheerfully and indomitably in spite of his own handicap. Read more »
Can the Capitol’s Existing Hearing Rooms Handle the Capacity?
Assembly Speaker John Perez announced the membership of the lower house’s committees on January 3.
The smallest number of members in a committee is seven. The largest is the Budget Committee at 27 members.
There are 19 members on the Health Committee, which will cope with implement of the Affordable Care Act, slated to take full effect in 2014. Read more »
Green on the Outside But Not on the Inside
The cardboard box to the left, which is 14 inches long, 10 inches wide and 5 inches deep, arrived January 3 at the offices of California’s Capitol. The green stamp on the lid proudly notes that “this carton made with recycled material for a better environment.”
Inside the 14 by 10 by 5 inch box were four 6 inch by 6 inch recyclable semi-inflated clear plastic AIRSPEED packing pillows, an 8.5 by 11 inch paper invoice and one 4 inch by 4 inch by 1.5 inch trapezoidal box containing one Hewlett Packard 61XL Tri-Color inkjet cartridge. Read more »
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