Petitions

First Lady Barbara Bush offered a strong defense of private lives, including her own, saying Wednesday that she sympathizes with Wellesley College students who raised questions about her speaking at their graduation, but she thinks they don't understand "where I am coming from." "That's all right," Mrs. Bush said. "I chose to live the life I've lived, and I think it has been a fabulously exciting, interesting, involved life. I hope some of them will choose the same. . . .

Supporters of a proposed ballot measure seeking tighter regulation of health insurance rates in California turned in 800,000 petition signatures, confident that they will qualify for the Nov. 6 election. In the coming weeks, county election offices and the California secretary of state will determine whether the measure meets the requirement for 504,760 valid signatures of registered voters. The deadline to qualify is June 28. The initiative is expected to spark an expensive campaign battle over rising health insurance rates, which have angered thousands of California consumers in recent years.

The steamy goings-on at a house in a quiet hillside neighborhood here give new meaning to the word "picturesque"--one that neighbors wish it didn't have. The three-story house on Picturesque Drive has recently become a popular site for film crews shooting X-rated movies. Three pornographic productions have been shot at the location in the past four months.

SACRAMENTO — Gov. Jerry Brown warned Californians on Thursday to brace for another round of difficult budget cuts as he hand-delivered boxes of petitions to election officials requesting that his proposed tax hike be placed on the November ballot. Brown, who is expected to unveil his revised budget proposal Monday, said he needed far more than the $4.2 billion in spending reductions he asked for in January. And he continued to raise the specter of even deeper wounds to public schools, colleges and other state services if his bid for tax hikes fails.

Orange County residents who want to abolish the Internal Revenue Service can lend their names to that cause today by signing petitions sponsored by U.S. Rep. Ron Packard (R-Oceanside). The petitions are part of a campaign by the National Federation of Independent Business to abolish the IRS Tax Code by Dec. 31, 2000. Packard announced his support last month.

State Atty. Gen. Bill Lockyer ruled this week that the Burbank city clerk was correct when she disqualified a petition that sought to limit the size of a proposed Burbank Airport terminal. The ballot initiative, signed by 7,400 people and collected by a group calling itself Restore Our Airport Rights, or ROAR, would have barred the Burbank City Council from approving an airport terminal exceeding 200,000 square feet.

A county education committee formally received petitions Wednesday from a group intent on breaking up the 710,000-student Los Angeles Unified School District and forming two independent systems in the San Fernando Valley. During its regular monthly meeting at the Los Angeles County Office of Education headquarters in Downey, the 11 elected members of the Committee on School District Reorganization also decided to hold at least two public hearings on the issue in February.

The push to recall the controversial head of L.A.'s firefighter union has fizzled, according to the man who was the target of the campaign over the last three months. Pat McOsker, president of United Firefighters of Los Angeles City Local 112, said the union's election committee unanimously invalidated the recall drive after discovering that signature gatherers had, in violation of the rules, failed to attach the reasons for the recall to their petitions. McOsker has been criticized for using aggressive tactics to lobby against reductions in firefighter and paramedic staffing, including the publication of a mailer featuring images of last year's deadly Metrolink crash in Chatsworth.

Proponents of cityhood for Portola Hills and Foothill Ranch launched a petition drive over the weekend to gather signatures that could help lead to incorporation. About 100 area residents attended a town meeting in Foothill Ranch to kick off the drive, said Helen Ward, director of Cityhood Now, a subcommittee of the Foothill Ranch Civic Council. Signatures are needed from 25% of the area's registered voters.

The state House of Representatives has voted to make it illegal to pay people per signature in campaigns to gather enough support to get a measure on South Dakota's ballot. The legislation is meant to reduce fraud. If the measure passes, petition carriers could still be paid by the hour or on salary.

Weeks after news about Wal Mart Stores Inc.'s alleged bribery and coverup in Mexico surfaced, rank-and-file workers at the world's largest retailer have taken their calls for change to the Internet. Venanzi Luna, a department manager at a Wal-Mart store in Pico Rivera, has created an online petition for fellow employees and customers at Change.org, a website that seeks to promote social change. The petition urges Wal-Mart to undertake "a thorough and independent investigation" into allegations of widespread bribery by company officials to gain approval for new stores in Mexico.

A wise man learns from his foe. Democrats have carefully studied Republicans, and now Gov. Jerry Brown may be benefiting. Or maybe not. "Talk to me in a month," says Democratic guru Gale Kaufman, who recommended that Brown emulate the longtime GOP strategy of mailing ballot-measure petitions directly to voters for their signatures. More than 1 million California voters — mainly reliable Democrats — received a Brown blurb at home last week, preceded by a robocall from the governor announcing it was in the mail.

More than two years after California's "parent trigger" law was enacted, things haven't worked out the way school reformers had planned or opponents had feared. In those heady days, it was expected that parents would race to sign petitions to transform their low-performing schools. More than 20 states considered passing similar measures. The California law allows parents to compel one of four major reforms at their children's schools if half or more sign a petition. Right now it's limited to 75 schools statewide, as a sort of pilot program.

The U.S. Food and Drug Administrationannounced Friday that it will not ban the use of bisphenol A, also known as BPA, in food packaging. [For the record: In an earlier version of this post, the Natural Resources Defense Council was misidentified as the National Resources Defense Council. ] In a 12-page letter,David H. Dorsey, FDA acting associate commissioner for policy and planning, wrote that the the Natural Resources Defense Council, which had petitioned the agency to change its regulations on use of the chemical, had not provided sufficient scientific evidence to change the current regulations.

A day after Mojave Desert school officials rejected a controversial effort by parents seeking major changes at their lowest-performing elementary school, the embattled campus finally appeared calm even as supporters vowed to continue the fight. David Mobley, principal at Desert Trails Elementary in Adelanto, said Thursday that the school was free from weeks of conflict between supporters and opponents of the petition to hand over management to a charter operator under the state's landmark parent trigger law. "It was nice to relax," he said.

Mojave Desert school officials are expected to settle weeks of controversy Wednesday over what could be the first successful effort by California parents to petition for dramatic changes in their failing school under a landmark but still largely untested state law. Parents at Desert Trails Elementary in Adelanto, where fewer than half the students are proficient in reading and math, called Tuesday for school board officials to approve their petition...

While Shannon Miller and Dominique Moceanu sit and wait, hoping to petition their way into the Olympics, all the top American male gymnasts are entered in today's opening round of U.S. Olympic gymnastics trials in Boston because for them, it's the only road that leads to Atlanta. No petition process is available to the men, according to men's program director Ron Galimore, because "our committee decided this was the best way to ensure a solid, competitive Olympic team. . . .

The executive officer of the county Local Agency Formation Commission has certified that enough valid signatures were collected to qualify a petition seeking incorporation for a proposed city of Malibu. A review of names on the required application for incorporation shows that at least 25% of the 8,347 registered voters in the area had signed the petition, Ruth Benell said.

Calling solitary confinement "torture," California prisoners and advocates are asking the United Nations to investigate the segregated housing of gang members at prisons throughout the state. "We have California treating several thousand prisoners in much the same way the U.S. government treats enemy combatants held in Guantanamo," said Peter Schey, an attorney representing hundreds of inmates. Schey, who announced the petition at a news conference in Los Angeles on Tuesday alongside prisoners' relatives, said solitary confinement was devastating to the physical and mental health of prisoners and was likely to increase their risk of committing more crimes upon release.

Julie Rodriguez wanted improvement — but not a wholesale change of staff — at her children's school in the High Desert community of Adelanto. So late last year she signed what she thought was a petition, circulated by parents she considered friends, for more programs and better teachers. But she learned that what she actually signed was a petition to convert Desert Trails Elementary School into a charter campus, a change she says she had specifically told organizers she didn't want.