State Aid

The roving television reporter Huell Howser stood on the bright green lawn in front of a new apartment complex in the city of Signal Hill and, as the camera rolled, gushed about the marvels of redevelopment policy. "Your idea was to take one of the most blighted areas in the entire city and . . . do something with it?" Howser asked. "That was a tall order, wasn't it? Was it almost insurmountable?" City Manager Ken Farfsing nodded. "Without redevelopment this project . . .

Toyota Motor Corp. is closing California's last automobile plant, but that isn't keeping the factory from asking the state for $2 million in taxpayer money for recent training that made some of its workers better car builders. The automaker says it deserves to be paid back money it spent on training this year at its Fremont plant under a Feb. 27 agreement with the state's Employment Training Panel. But critics are incensed, noting that there won't be any more auto assembly plants left in the state where workers can make use of their training.

In the spirit of the New Reality of today's world, I'd like to propose a change in the California state motto. Instead of "Eureka (I have found it)," which lately has been sounding a little threadbare, how about this one, derived from the glide path of our public systems of higher education: "California -- penny-wise, pound-foolish"?

After voters rejected ballot measures that would have restored state funding for schools, educators across California on Wednesday braced for $5.3 billion in cuts over the next 13 months. State and district officials predicted increased class sizes, additional teacher layoffs, more school closures and fewer arts and music offerings. Some districts could face insolvency.

After an unsuccessful campaign for Congress in 2000, Illinois state Sen. Barack Obama faced serious financial pressure: numerous debts, limited cash and a law practice he had neglected for a year. Help arrived in early 2001 from a significant new legal client -- a longtime political supporter. Chicago entrepreneur Robert Blackwell Jr. paid Obama an $8,000-a-month retainer to give legal advice to his growing technology firm, Electronic Knowledge Interchange.

Orange County has received preliminary approval from the state for a $100-million grant for the long-stalled expansion of the James A. Musick jail, but the money comes with conditions that could doom the deal.

In the wake of a Times report that illegal trash dumping is plaguing some of Los Angeles' poorest neighborhoods, state officials announced Tuesday that they would give the city a $500,000 grant to help crack down on violators in the hardest-hit areas. The grant, from the California Integrated Waste Management Board, will help fund a special enforcement zone in South Los Angeles, where about half of the illegally dumped refuse in the city is discarded.

More than 400 university professors and academic staff have sent a letter of protest to Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger, objecting to his veto last month of $5.4 million for a University of California labor research program and asking that the money be restored. At a time when unemployment in California is reaching a level not seen in decades, the letter said, the governor's action appears to be politically motivated and an excuse to ax a program his fellow Republicans have sought to kill.

More than $2.7 million will be distributed to 51 Southern California school districts that lost state funding because of the devastating wildfires of 2003, state Supt. Jack O'Connell announced Wednesday. The funding will be given to districts in San Diego, San Bernardino and Ventura counties that suffered financial losses because they were forced to close by the fires, which destroyed more than 3,600 homes and killed 25 people.

Los Angeles political leaders on Monday vowed an all-out campaign over the next week to persuade state officials to fund a long-sought widening of the 405 Freeway over the Sepulveda Pass, saying the traffic-clogged Westside is in desperate need of relief. The project, which would add a carpool lane on the northbound 405 between the 10 and 101 freeways, was left off the list of freeway improvements announced last week by the California Transportation Commission.