California Voices

Getting legislative leaders to release records about sexual harassment by legislators and their staffers was like pulling teeth without anesthesia. It took months of pressure from women who work in and around the Capitol and had demanded an end to the pervasive culture of bad behavior and from news media, but it finally happened last […]

One of California’s most complex and unusual financial, political and legal conflicts was settled last week, but mysteries remain.

"We don't know how we're going to operate," one city official says.

Ever since California voters passed Proposition 13 40 years ago, the Capitol’s annual budget wrangle has been dominated by how much money would go to K-12 schools – for good reason. Not only are the schools educating six million kids, but they are number one on the voting public’s priority list, and are by a […]

Gov. Jerry Brown reappointed Elaine Howle as the state auditor last week. It was a wise move. Howle has served in that vital, if little known, position longer than anyone with fierce independence and dogged determination to bore deeply into state and local government operations. That was demonstrated last year when Howle uncovered a secret, […]

Los Angeles and San Francisco may be economic and cultural rivals, but politics in the state’s two most important cities are similarly harsh. Both are dense mélanges of economic, cultural and ethnic “communities” that joust constantly and to those who aspire to high office, they are minefields laid atop pits of quicksand. As fate would […]

Walters: For Gov. Brown, striking out on water tunnels and the bullet train would be bitter pills to swallow.

Waters: Some of the big things Brown has championed may or may not pan out.

Dreamers' fate could be a tricky issue for Sen. Dianne Feinstein, who faces a potentially stiff re-election challenge.

Media is declining nationally, but unique pressures have made California into America’s laboratory for a dangerous experiment about what happens to the public interest when policy is made without public awareness or accountability. In just the last three weeks, four major announcements about California media indicate a troubling downward spiral is accelerating.