Dan Walters

California's projected $97.5 billion budget surplus has failed to materialize and the state now faces at least a $25 billion deficit that will require major adjustments.

California has a severe shortage of affordable rental housing, but also has a crisis in home ownership, with the nation's second most expensive home market relative to family incomes.

California water officials are seeking "voluntary agreements" to enhance water flows through the Sacramento-San Joaquin Delta and have achieved a new breakthrough.

A months-long power struggle over the state Assembly speakership ended with a political deal. But will changing one politician for another make any difference?

As California's water crisis worsens, desalination of seawater is getting a new look as a potentially limitless source.

Nearly three years after California Gov. Gavin Newsom promised to aggressively work on California's homelessness crisis, he's once again placing it atop his agenda.

Gavin Newsom has easily won his second and last term as California's governor. So does he now try to climb higher on the political ladder or merely finish out his governorship and return to private life?

This year's political campaigns in California have hit a low mark for relevance and a high mark for vapidity — with one exception.

A decades-old conflict over how to teach reading to young children, dubbed "reading wars," is being resolved in California by a shift to phonics.

Gov. Gavin Newsom celebrates an article indicating that California's economy could soon become the 4th largest in the world. But he ignores another report that new stock issuances in the state's high-tech industry have plummeted.