Ever since California unmoored itself from a state budget, back at the end of June, the Stockton Record newspaper has been pushing its eight local legislators to reveal every day just what each has done to help pass the state budget. The results read a bit like "what I did over my vacation" shuffled with 12-step-program declarations.
Some of the statements by the six Republicans and two Democrats can slide into jargon: Charles Poochigian, a Fresno Republican, talked up an "alternative revenue stream," and Linden Democrat Michael Machado strove to "better align state revenues with expenditures in the committee on fiscal restructuring."
Rico Oller, a San Andreas Republican, likes to go for the punch line: "I told Davis lecturing Republicans on fiscal responsibility is like Madonna lecturing my mother on how to be a lady."
The first few days must have been easy sailing, but as the standoff went on, one could imagine the daily scramble of legislative aides: What are we going to tell the Record today? There's always the old "met with constituents," but Modesto Republican Dave Cogdill said proudly, "I presented a bill that would enhance the value of our current state revenue." To which one Sacramento aide asked, "Does it mean a $20 bill is really worth $30? What a GREAT idea! We'll have this thing licked in no time!"
Lodging Complaints Over Yosemite Plan
George Radanovich, the Mariposa Republican and the only winemaker in Congress, is putting a cork in it. The Fresno Bee reports that the Mariposa County winery Radanovich began in 1986 is closing down because of debt.
That may not be the only operation Radanovich wants to shutter. He's pushing his bill dealing with the thorny matter of how to keep Yosemite National Park from being loved to death by visitors. While a Park Service plan wants to decentralize campsites and limit cars to nudge visitors into buses, Radanovich's bill would authorize new campsites and ditch the plan to limit parking spaces at one site.
And he wants to dismantle the 100-year-old LeConte Memorial Lodge, a national historic landmark, a Brothers Grimm-looking stone and wood cottage built under the leadership of Sierra Club founder John Muir, and once the residence of uber-photographer Ansel Adams.
"There is a value to every space in the Yosemite Valley that can be restored," Radanovich said.
