Dan Walters

For years, Gov. Jerry Brown has preached a secular version of a religious principle called “subsidiarity,” asserting that local officials should have flexibility to act without micromanagement from Sacramento. In practice, he’s not always adhered to the principle, but has been particularly stubborn about applying it to the state’s six-million-student public education system, rejecting demands […]

To intertwine cliches, Gov. Jerry Brown let the cat out of the bag last week and acknowledged that he’s concerned about killing the golden geese. Those geese are the few thousand Californians with the highest incomes whose taxes allow Brown and other California politicians to spend tens of billions of dollars a year and the […]

Notwithstanding the maxim about not speaking ill of the dead, sometimes it’s necessary, as historians often do, to complete the record and teach a lesson about human behavior. That brings us to two major figures in the California Legislature three decades ago, both since deceased, John Vasconcellos and Lou Papan. Both were Democratic legislators from […]

The verdict is in and California stands convicted of gross negligence in the construction and maintenance of the nation’s highest dam, Oroville. The dam on the Feather River came very close to failing last year, forcing the evacuation of a quarter-million people living downstream. Heavy outflows revealed structural flaws in the dam’s concrete spillway and […]

Roy Bell, who was Jerry Brown’s first budget director 43 years ago, called it a “dog-and-pony show” and it’s one of the Capitol’s longest-running rituals. Each January, usually on the 10th, journalists who cover the Capitol file into a first-floor room dedicated to news conferences and settle into fiberglass swivel chairs that would command high […]

Billionaire environmentalist Tom Steyer and former Republican Congressman Doug Ose are polar opposites politically, but have jointly altered dynamics of this year’s California elections. Late last week, Ose, who represented a suburban Sacramento district for several terms, declared that he will run for governor. “Simply put, I’m running to rebuild the California dream.” Ose told […]

State legislators are floating some creative schemes to blunt the impact of the new federal tax law on California taxpayers. Several are in the air, but the main one, proposed by Kevin de León, the outgoing state Senate president pro tem, more than slightly resembles phony tax avoidance scams that entice the unwary and often […]

Outwardly, the McDonalds restaurant just off Highway 101 in Pismo Beach doesn’t look any different from the 1,500 or so others in California. But when you walk into this one, you immediately encounter a robotic kiosk that allows you to order your hamburger or other fast food on a touch screen, rather than verbally with […]

The size and cultural complexity of California spawns many unique political conflicts, and none more so than a years-long, multi-party squabble within the nation’s largest judicial system. The new year will doubtless see renewal of the power struggle, which grew out of the 2002 decision by the Legislature and then-Gov. Gray Davis to consolidate what […]

A new year brings renewal of hope, it’s said, but it also means renewed political and legal hostilities over the direction of California’s public school system. For years, an “Equity Coalition” of civil rights and education reform groups has battled the state’s education establishment – state schools Supt. Tom Torlakson, the state Board of Education […]