California Politics

SACRAMENTO — The president of the California Fish and Game Commission violated state gift limits when he accepted a free guided cougar hunt in Idaho, ethics officials alleged Thursday. But Daniel W. Richards belatedly reimbursed the Flying B Ranch for the $6,800 hunt after media outlets reported the Idaho outing, so the enforcement chief of the Fair Political Practices Commission issued a warning letter rather than seek fines. State law bars officials from accepting gifts of more than $420 from certain sources.

A 2010 outing to a Washington state horse ranch owned by former Bell City Administrator Robert Rizzo is being investigated by a state agency that suspects the onetime city leader and a pair of council members may have broken conflict-of-interest and gift-giving laws. The allegations against Rizzo and the two part-time city politicians stem from May 2010 airline flights to Washington state, where Rizzo owns a horse farm. Rizzo paid $1,299 to buy tickets for then-Mayor Oscar Hernandez, his live-in girlfriend and her three children.

Reporting from Sacramento -- Three decades after Gov. Jerry Brown played a key role in creating a state political watchdog, the panel — now dominated by his appointees — has retreated from its aggressive approach to ethics enforcement. As part of a top-to-bottom rewrite of regulations in the last year, the Fair Political Practices Commission has eased restrictions on gifts from lobbyists to lawmakers, scaled back its open meetings and stopped notifying the public of pending investigations.

California may be the home of Silicon Valley, but for most of the last two weeks state officials have been unable to handle an elementary task of the digital age: putting information online about who is giving money and gifts to politicians. The database is older than Facebook, and it's the only easy way for the public to track special-interest influence in the Capitol and beyond. It lists donations and lobbying expenditures by unions, oil companies and billionaires, for example.

State lawmakers and city council members can accept expensive gifts from lobbyists without disclosure if they are dating, and can receive meals and lodging in lobbyists' homes without telling the public, under rules approved Thursday by the state ethics agency. In addition, officials can accept tickets to Major League Baseball games and other sports and entertainment events if they are performing a "ceremonial duty," such as throwing out the first pitch. They no longer have to report such gifts, although their government agency must do so, and now they can bring a guest.

Reporting from Los Angeles and Sacramento -- In a historic first, a citizens commission set new boundaries for California's congressional and legislative districts, reshaping the political landscape into more competitive terrain that could transform the state's usual dynamic of rancor and gridlock. The new maps, which are intended to govern elections for most of the next decade, would force several entrenched partisan legislators — those who have been deep blue or deep red — to face more moderate political districts.

I got a call one morning a few weeks back from the mayor of Los Angeles saying he wanted to talk about a subject no one in California politics is supposed to talk about. Proposition 13. You can talk about it, sure. But they put a tag on your toe before you can utter a full sentence. Mayor Antonio Villaraigosa was aware of that, but said he thought someone ought to speak honestly about the perennial state budget mess that spills over into cities, affecting public safety, education, healthcare and everything else.

In California, where congressional elections have been as predictable as traffic gridlock, new political maps are likely to set the stage for more competitive races and give the state a higher profile in the battle for Congress. Political analysts predict that Democrats — who hold a 33-19 advantage in the state's House delegation, with one vacancy in a seat previously held by a Democrat — could pick up three to five more. "You're going to have something like up to a quarter of the [California]

Vicious new political battles. Farewells from longtime power brokers. More candidate choices for minority communities. Possibly even a more moderate statehouse. All could spring from the latest reshaping of California's electoral landscape — done for the first time by voters rather than Sacramento insiders. The initial test of the new process will be Friday, when an independent panel that now performs the once-a-decade redrawing of political lines will release draft district maps for the state's 53 members of Congress, 40 state senators and 80 Assembly members.