Dan Walters

It was late one night 40 years ago and Gov. Jerry Brown’s most important piece of legislation was in trouble. Brown wanted the Legislature to approve a 42-mile-long “peripheral canal” to carry water around the environmentally fragile Sacramento-San Joaquin Delta, thus closing the last major gap in the massive state water system that had been […]

A collection of commentaries by Dan Walters over the past week.

The battle over California's "gig economy" is underway in the Legislature and a new front has been opened in the California Public Employees Retirement System.

Welcome to Sacramento, where the state budget is written in secret and decisions on important bills are made behind closed doors.

Donald Trump closes the book by California's "Shrimpgate" scandal by pardoning former Assemblyman Pat Nolan.

"Fungibility," as applied to politics, means there's no free lunch despite politicians' efforts to persuade us otherwise.

A collection of commentaries by Dan Walters over the past week.

Now we have a second instance in which California law enforcement officials try to crack down on journalists who obtained information the officials didn't want them to have.

President Donald Trump wants to claw back the federal money for California's bullet train project and may be doing the state a favor.

As California prevails in its tax battle with inventor Gilbert Hyatt, the Supreme Court's ruling for the state in his case could foretell a battle over abortion rights.