California Legislature

As the 2007 Legislature dives into another session of lawmaking, business lobbyists are on alert. They have new lawmakers to meet, of course, along with new committee chairs to brief, new legislation to push and bills to kill. But this year, California businesses have another challenge: an activist second-term governor with an ambitious -- some call it overextended -- agenda. Gov.

Five lawmakers with state mental hospitals in their districts called on the Legislature's budget chairs Tuesday to address an accelerating staffing shortage at the institutions, calling it "a crisis of meltdown proportions." The urgently worded letter came in the wake of a Times report that two Atascadero State Hospital patients had killed themselves and four others had attempted suicide since early February -- an alarming increase that some have tied directly to the staffing shortage.

The Legislature on Thursday passed a sweeping spending package to ease overcrowding in California prisons but did not tackle several problems that experts say are driving the long-running crisis. While lawmakers celebrated their vote to add 53,000 beds to the state corrections system and boost rehabilitation for inmates, critics beyond the Capitol worried that other ideas left out of the $7.4-billion deal might be sidelined for good.

Half a dozen black men wearing leather jackets and carrying loaded guns burst through the massive doors of the California Assembly chamber. Twenty brothers in arms waited outside in the hall. The Assembly was in session, approaching lunchtime. Some lawmakers dived under their desks. Others darted for a side door. Most simply froze and stared in disbelief. That was 40 years ago Wednesday.

The Legislature's chief budget analyst told lawmakers Tuesday that the budget revisions Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger released this week rely on "overly optimistic" savings projections and short-term fixes that could saddle the state with financial problems for years to come. Nonpartisan Legislative Analyst Elizabeth G.

State Sen. Carole Migden was in the Legislature pressing her colleagues to back one of her bills when electronic voting began. Noticing that one lawmaker was away from his desk, Migden impatiently pushed his green "yes" button. That 2004 breach of protocol drew bipartisan reproof, and Migden, a San Francisco Democrat, was removed from the committee she chaired. But her bill, which increases regulation of chemicals used in cosmetics, ultimately became law even without the improper vote.

Despite the efforts of Assembly Speaker Fabian Nunez, legislation to allow terminally ill people to hasten their deaths was shelved Thursday for lack of support. Certain they didn't have the votes to pass it, the bill's authors in effect killed it, at least until January, by not bringing it up for a vote on the Assembly floor. Nunez, a Los Angeles Democrat, co-wrote the bill, to the consternation of Cardinal Roger M. Mahony and other Catholic leaders.

Until California eases prison overcrowding, it can't slow the revolving prison doors that return roughly 70% of freed inmates within a year, national experts reported to the Legislature on Friday.

Legislators are 16 days past the deadline for passing a budget and they haven't even done the "Dance of Death." That's the annual summer ritual where one budget scheme after another is ceremoniously sacrificed until there's agreement on a single survivor. A senior legislative staffer long ago described the Dance of Death to me this way: "Everybody dances around the fire. They throw stuff at us. We throw stuff at them. Everybody falls over dead, and we start all over again." Gov.

State senators went home Saturday morning after an all-night lockdown failed to force a budget agreement, with the exasperated Senate leader ordering GOP members to return midweek with their own spending plan. The senators read books and magazines, listened to music and mostly just sat around through the previous night. Some of the Republicans posted notes ridiculing the lockdown to a conservative blog that has become a rallying point.