[courtesy of California Progress Report]

In this week’s Democratic weekly radio address, California Secretary of State Debra Bowen urges all registered voters to vote in next Tuesday’s primary election and provides resources voters can use if they have questions or experience difficulties.

You may listen or read the transcript below.

Hello, I’m Secretary of State Debra Bowen, California’s chief elections officer.

Tuesday is Election Day in California, our second of three statewide elections in 2008. The polls open at 7:00 a.m. on Tuesday and they close at 8:00 p.m. I encourage everyone who is registered to get out and vote!

On Tuesday, we will pick the party nominees for Congress, state Senate, and state Assembly – and consider two ballot initiatives. In some areas, the ballot will also include local contests for county supervisor, mayor, school board, and other offices.

The candidates we select will make crucial decisions that shape our lives. They will determine the amount of money that goes to our neighborhood schools, to law enforcement – and even how we recycle and how often our trash is picked up.

[courtesy of California Progress Report]

By Frank D. Russo

The landmark California Supreme Court decision on marriage is a teachable moment for us to understand the role of the courts and their place along side the other branches of government and even the “will of the people” as expressed in ballot initiatives.

The rule of law in our society and the can easily get obscured in the often heated discussions and the frame that the right wing likes to use whenever they do not like a decision—by accusing courts of legislating.

And it comes from folks who should know better but without thinking have to put it in the old frame. The best example comes from Robert Villines, the leader of the Republicans in the legislature. From the Sacramento Bee, we read Villines reacting to the Court’s decision with this zinger:

“I am very disappointed that the California Supreme Court, by the narrowest of margins, would allow their own personal partisan views to get in the way of their duty to uphold the rule of law by thwarting the will of the overwhelming majority of Californians who voted in support of Proposition 22.

[courtesy of California Progress Report]

By Robert M. Stern
President
Center for Governmental Studies

After studying California’s ballot initiative process for 20 years, the Center for Governmental Studies (CGS) recommends a comprehensive set of 48 reforms in its new book Democracy by Initiative: Shaping California’s Fourth Branch of Government. These reforms would strengthen all aspects of the state’s ballot initiative process (Full Report, Appendix A, for complete list of recommendations). These recommendations would give California the most flexible, innovative and responsible initiative process of any state. Key recommendations include the following:

Inflexibility

[courtesy of The California Majority Report]

Cross-posted on Calitics. 

Back in December, after a series of articles in the LA Times that framed our budget crisis as the product of locked-in spending, I wrote an op-ed challenging this view that the Times published, arguing that by focusing on spending rules, the paper was not informing readers of the actual problem -- a structural, long-term revenue shortfall.

Unfortunately, that does not seem to have stopped the Times from continuing to espouse this view. Today's paper brings us an article by Evan Halper with the headline "In closing state budget gap, vast sums are off limits". In this case the spending rules that are examined are "novel" programs, but the basic conclusion is the same as usual -- California's budget crisis is the result of locked-in spending, and not a structural revenue shortfall.

"The state is about to pump half a billion dollars into teaching children to roll sushi, juggle pins and master new dance forms, even as spending cuts threaten to erode instruction in reading, math and other fundamentals.

read more »

by Robert in Monterey [courtesy of Calitics - Front Page]

[courtesy of California Progress Report]

Filing for Assembly and State Senate seats opens Monday!

By Frank D. Russo

With the defeat of Proposition 93 on term limits, at least 24 of California’s 80 Assembly seats and 10 of 40 Senate seats will have new occupants—and many of these races will be decided in the June 3, 2008 primary that is 128 days down the road.

Haven’t caught your breath from yesterday’s Super Tuesday presidential primary where the votes are still being counted? Filing for this next round—more important now in filling the state legislature begins Monday and closes March 7 for all of these 34 races.

Candidates have already been busy for months raising substantial money and planning for the June election in the anticipation that term limit changes would fail on yesterday’s ballot. Now it will be official and as soon as we will begin covering these races.

Because most of these districts are strongly Democratic or Republican, nomination by the majority party in most of them will be tantamount to election in November.