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CA: Community colleges hit by $149-million shortfall

By Carla Rivera

California community colleges were struggling Tuesday to absorb an unexpected $149-million budget shortfall that will mean more class cuts, layoffs, borrowing and probable elimination of summer programs affecting thousands of students.

CA: Proposition 8 backers seek review

By Geoffrey A. Fowler

California's Proposition 8 gay-marriage ban will likely take another detour through the federal-appeals-court system before reaching the U.S. Supreme Court.

CA: PUC, PG&E revive $3 million records settlement

By Jaxon Van Derbeken

State regulators and Pacific Gas and Electric Co. have revived a $3 million settlement over the utility's failure to produce gas-pipeline safety records after the San Bruno disaster - a fine that critics of the company denounced as too lenient.

CA: Feds ask judge to drop Calif. postal records suit

By Corey G. Johnson

The battle lines have been drawn in an unusual public records spat between a state agency responsible for upholding election laws and the U.S. Postal Service.

CA: Gasoline use declines, prices climb as drivers ask -- What's up with that?

By Mark Glover

As the average price of gasoline zips toward $4 a gallon in California and past $3.50 nationwide, increasingly frustrated motorists are asking questions.

CA: Gay-marriage foes to ask appeals court to review Prop. 8 ruling

By Maura Dolan

Opponents of same-sex marriage said Tuesday they planned to ask a federal appeals court to reconsider this month's 2-1 ruling that struck down Proposition 8, California's 2008 ballot measure that banned gay marriage.

CA: Jerry Brown bound for Washington, will meet with Obama

By David Siders

Gov. Jerry Brown, who has rarely left the state since taking office last year, will travel to Washington this weekend to meet with President Barack Obama and governors at the National Governors Association's winter meeting.

CA: California's top labor official quits

By Jon Ortiz

Amid government layoffs, budget cuts and looming contract talks, the state's top labor relations official is stepping down.

CA: Special interests run Capitol, says advocate for part-time Legislature initiative

By Jim Sanders

The California assemblywoman pushing an initiative for a part-time Legislature said she isn't worried that only $85,000 has been raised for the drive thus far.

CA: Study finds $135.7B in local pension liabilities

By Judy Lin, The Associated Press

Two dozen city and county governments in California face a combined $135.7 billion in unfunded pension liabilities, according to a study released Tuesday that also found the problem is growing.

CA: In California, Mitt Romney holds lead, but Santorum gains

By David Siders

While challengers rise and recede in the Republican presidential primaries, Mitt Romney's sail remains full in California.

CA: California's red light cameras in jeopardy

By Dan Walters

The battle over the cameras that many California cities and counties use to nab motorists who blow through red lights or – more commonly – make rolling stops for right turns has raged in the Capitol for several years without resolution.

Gambling revenue promises rarely met

By Ben Wieder, Stateline Staff Writer — 02/23/2012

More than two-thirds of states that legalized casinos, lotteries or racetrack casinos in the past 10 years have yet to see the state and local revenue that political and industry champions of legalization had promised.

Oscar night secret: Tax breaks for films go undisclosed in many states

By Will Wilson, Special to Stateline — 02/22/2012

States are eager to use financial incentives to attract Hollywood productions. But they're less enthusiastic about revealing which films got how much help.

US: Tax-cut bill includes updates to jobless benefits system

By Annie Lowrey

Tucked into a $140 billion bill extending emergency jobless benefits and a temporary cut to payroll taxes are several provisions intended to modernize the country's outdated unemployment insurance system.

US: Governors as policy innovators

By Eric Schnurer

Four years of recession have left governors with seemingly little to cut — yet, like most governments in this country from the courthouse to the White House, they face a structural mismatch between the spending their citizens still want and the taxes they're willing to pay for it. For the past decade, I've been working with governors across the country to bridge this gap. Doing so successfully involves more than the simple choice normally posed publicly between cutting services and increasing taxes.

NY: New York may ban shark fin sales, following other states

By Elisabeth Rosenthal

Large glass bottles of desiccated shark fins grace the upper shelves of nearly every convenience store and grocery in Chinatown, bearing price tags — from $100 to more than $500 per pound — that reflect the market value of a delicacy that has been served for centuries.

US: Colleges worry that court could make diversity harder to maintain

By Tamar Lewin

The news that the Supreme Court is revisiting the use of race as a factor in admissions decisions, just nine years after upholding it in a University of Michigan case, has admissions officials worried about maintaining diversity and confounded that the question is being reconsidered so soon.

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