Dan Walters

International financier George Soros has had some success in his dabbling in California politics. But he "hit a brick wall," as he terms it, in trying to unseat three California district attorneys this year, and his support for challengers may have backfired.

California will get hit hard by a new federal tax law that limits deductions for state and local taxes. California politicians had hoped to sidestep the law, but the Internal Revenue Service has squelched that notion.

Los Angeles Unified, the state's largest school district, faces a financial meltdown and the question is whether all California taxpayers should bail it out.

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

San Diego County, California's second largest county, has become a microcosm of the state's political profile and its five-member Board of Supervisors has become a battleground in the struggle for partisan control.

"Trailer bills" to the state budget are meant to enact the budget's financial decisions, but they have become convenient vehicles for enacting non-budgetary laws that have nothing to do with the budget.

Twenty-two years after the Legislature and then-Gov. Pete Wilson made a horrendous error in reconfiguring California's electric power system, lawmakers are weighing another big change, this time integrating California's grid with those of other Western states. Politicians should be very cautious of the new scheme.

The duplicitous campaigns against Democratic state Sen. Josh Newman and Republican Assemblyman Rocky Chavez are harsh reminders that California politics is not a game of tiddlywinks.

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

A "trailer" bill for the 2018-2019 state budget would suspend a law requiring voters to be told about the effects of local bond issues on their property taxes. Local officials apparently fear that with more information, voters would be less inclined to vote for the measures.