Links:

• The Arnold-Ammiano dustup got some coverage on the websites of the LA Times and the SF Chronicle.

• Joel Anderson, a Republican Assemblyman from the Eastern San Diego ‘burbs, is being investigated for political money laungering. Apparently his MO is to donate large sums of money to Northern California County Central Committees, and get a slightly smaller sum of money in return a few weeks later in a more useful account. Pretty sweet how that works.

• A couple days ago, the LA Times reported about how California has paid $8 million dollars in penalties and late fees to vendors, money that didn’t need to be spent.  There’s always going to be a certain leakage in any bureaucracy, and this is pennies in the overall scheme of things, but there are steps the government could take to prevent this – mainly to pass a budget on time, which is responsible for the bulk of these payments.  I would add that the Legislature and the Governor routinely gives away hundreds of times this amount in corporate welfare every year, yet that story doesn’t make the papers.

• Joe Garofoli has a story in the SF Chronicle about Maine’s Question 1 in the context of Prop 8 here in California.  There are many “coincidences” between the two campaigns. Hopefully we will see different results with a more assertive No campaign.

• Here’s an interesting story about confusing signals on welfare.  In the name of saving money, the state suspended many of the employment assistance programs that encouraged moving people into work, and in the name of “reforming” welfare moved it basically back to where it was a decade ago.

• Who would want to be in the Legislature? Not too many local officials it turns out.  With the mess in Sacramento, it isn’t that hard to understand why local officials would avoid legislative races.