Dan Walters

Gavin Newsom’s off-the-mark budget numbers undermine his credibility again

May 22, 2025 at 12:38 p.m.

Gov. Gavin Newsom’s revised state budget assumes California will see a sharp decline in projected revenue, largely because President Donald Trump’s tariffs will slow the nation’s economy.

State Bar’s botched exam for new lawyers is California’s latest entry to the hall of shame

May 7, 2025 at 5:48 p.m.

Many of the state government’s wrongheaded actions involve abortive efforts to use advanced technology.

Other states do housing better than California; a new study shows how

April 10, 2025 at 3:00 p.m.

It would be tempting to dismiss the Bush Institute’s report as biased because it comes from Texas, but it contains a wealth of detail and explains how the data were...

Newsom touts career master plan as his governorship begins to wind down

April 8, 2025 at 11:33 a.m.

Newsom, who once proclaimed his affection for “big, hairy, audacious goals,” is polishing up his resume over the next 21 months before transitioning into his post-gubernatorial phase.

If California bails out LA’s $1 billion budget deficit, beware the slippery slope

March 31, 2025 at 1:12 p.m.

City Controller Kenneth Mejia has repeatedly warned Mayor Karen Bass and city council that the city was overspending vis-à-vis revenues, creating a growing structural deficit.

UC abandons its ‘diversity statement’ requirement for faculty

March 24, 2025 at 2:36 p.m.

Ill-disguised political loyalty tests are as loathsome today as they were 75 years ago when the Levering Act was ed.

Lobbyists are a growth industry in a state as complex as California

March 20, 2025 at 10:18 a.m.

Maybe it shouldn’t work that way, but in a state as immense and complex as California, it does.

Playing political Whac-A-Mole as issue of bond measure language pops up again

March 17, 2025 at 6:15 p.m.

Fooling voters is never a good thing. Time to get out the mallet.

California’s cities and schools face big budget gaps, few options

March 13, 2025 at 4:43 a.m.

Therefore the options are either make real spending reductions, which might mean laying off workers and closing schools, or emulate the state’s gimmickry and hope the problems solve themselves.

California’s fire crisis clashes with Newsom’s political ambitions

January 25, 2025 at 6:01 a.m.

As Donald Trump this week assumed the presidency for the second time, he rekindled his personal and political feud with California and its governor, Gavin Newsom, while also inflating Newsom’s...

Surplus spending still looms over Newsom’s new state budget

January 12, 2025 at 6:02 a.m.

Fashioning a budget for a state as large and diverse as California is a fraught process under the best of circumstances, involving not only strictly financial aspects but demands from...

Tax loopholes cost California and its cities $107 billion but get little scrutiny

December 29, 2024 at 6:00 a.m.

Among the hundreds of bills introduced in every session of the California Legislature, a few deal with what state officials term “tax expenditures,” which requires some explanation. The term refers...

Despite wins, California’s bold clean vehicle goals face big hurdles

December 23, 2024 at 5:00 a.m.

Gov. Gavin Newsom’s decree that by 2035 all new cars sold in California must be powered by batteries or other zero-emission systems has received a double dose of legal and...

State still struggling to stem exodus of property insurers

December 21, 2024 at 9:30 a.m.

There’s no law requiring California property owners to carry insurance, but the vast majority buy it to protect themselves from fire and other perils, or are required to do so...

How California can fix its school crisis. Two projects point the way

December 15, 2024 at 6:01 a.m.

When the state Department of Education released academic test scores of California’s public school students in October, it cast them in positive . “Overall,” the department said, “the percentages of California students...

Will state finally fix broken unemployment insurance system?

December 9, 2024 at 5:15 a.m.

When the Great Recession struck California in 2007 and hundreds of thousands of workers lost their jobs, the state’s unemployment insurance system crashed. The employer-financed program quickly exhausted its thin...

California officials plan for a dry 2025 with grim water supply guesswork

December 7, 2024 at 5:31 a.m.

Each December there’s a new version of an old guessing game about how much water will be provided to agricultural and municipal s in the year ahead. Federal and state...

High cost of living emerges as major issue in Sacramento

December 6, 2024 at 6:00 a.m.

It would be fair to say that as voters in last month’s presidential election were giving Republicans control of all three branches of the federal government, they were tacitly rejecting...

$165 billion revenue error continues to haunt California’s budget

November 25, 2024 at 5:01 a.m.

History will — or at least should — see a $165 billion error in revenue estimates as one of California’s most boneheaded political acts. It happened in 2022, as the...

Los Angeles County voters launch a ‘quiet revolution’

November 16, 2024 at 11:01 a.m.

It got lost in the massive attention paid — with good reason — to Donald Trump’s triumphant return to the presidency, but a quiet revolution occurred in Los Angeles County. Its voters...

Growing moderation of California Assembly may be harbinger

November 15, 2024 at 5:00 a.m.

Several decades ago, when Republicans had rough parity with Democrats as they dueled over California’s presidential electoral votes and other offices high and low, GOP strategists counted on what they...

Newsom calling pointless special session a publicity stunt

November 9, 2024 at 6:15 a.m.

Two days after the nation’s voters gave Donald Trump another term as president, Gov. Gavin Newsom staged a publicity stunt to position California — and presumably himself — as the epicenter of resistance. Newsom called...

Expect Trump to keep using California as a punching bag

November 6, 2024 at 11:13 a.m.

The state has been a bastion of anti-Trump sentiment ever since the bombastic billionaire real estate tycoon first ventured into politics nearly a decade ago.

Will two progressive DAs be ousted as crime backlash builds?

October 27, 2024 at 9:00 a.m.

Occasionally — perhaps once a generation — California experiences a sharp change in its political climate, upsetting whatever is considered the current norm. The most obvious example occurred in 1978,...

Are there any homeless policy options that aren’t exorbitant?

October 21, 2024 at 6:15 a.m.

Multiple state agencies spent nearly $24 billion on housing and homeless programs in the first five years of Gavin Newsom’s governorship, but the number of people without homes continued to...

Prolonged school closures may be worst mistake in state history

October 20, 2024 at 5:01 a.m.

What truly sets California apart from other states is its sheer immensity. While Alaska and Texas may be physically larger, in all other respects California towers above other states in...

Trump makes swing state voters’ view of California a campaign issue

October 18, 2024 at 6:01 a.m.

Not surprisingly, this year’s presidential campaign pitting Vice President Kamala Harris against former President Donald Trump includes a sharp conflict over whether California is a shining model of prosperity and...

Still more gaslighting by Gov. Newsom on high gas prices

October 16, 2024 at 1:30 p.m.

California’s governors and legislators often do things that defy real world rationality and can only be explained, if not justified, in political . This month’s exercise in political theater over...

Trump changes mind, agrees with Pelosi on state tax break

September 30, 2024 at 8:00 a.m.

More often than not, the two major political parties directly oppose each other on major issues, which explains why those issues tend to linger, unresolved, for years or even decades....

Lack of UC-CSU-CCC cooperation takes toll on state college students

September 29, 2024 at 5:00 a.m.

California’s Master Plan for Higher Education, adopted 64 years ago, envisioned that three systems — the University of California, California State University and dozens of community colleges — would cooperatively, seamlessly and inexpensively...

Defender of Prop. 47 leaves out inconvenient evidence

September 27, 2024 at 9:00 a.m.

The Los Angeles Times, California’s largest newspaper, has editorialized against Proposition 36, the Nov. 5 ballot measure that would increase penalties for some crimes. Prop. 36 would modify Proposition 47, the 2014 measure...

Latest federal stats show California still has highest poverty rate

September 23, 2024 at 6:01 a.m.

Gov. Gavin Newsom is fond of comparing California’s economy to those of other states, particularly arch-rivals Texas and Florida, and even other nations. Unsurprisingly, however, there was no braggadocio from...

Political family feuds fill California’s competitive vacuum

September 22, 2024 at 10:01 a.m.

Aristotle is said to have coined the phrase “nature abhors a vacuum” — or “horror vacui” in Latin — as a principle in the physical world. However it applies equally...

Newsom’s posturing on gasoline prices is empty and unconvincing

September 17, 2024 at 1:16 p.m.

It’s time to blow the whistle on the farcical efforts of California’s politicians — especially Gov. Gavin Newsom — to reduce the state’s high gasoline prices. Newsom’s demand that the...

California schools face crisis over absenteeism, declining enrollment

September 16, 2024 at 6:01 a.m.

California’s public schools have a numbers problem —and it’s not just that their students don’t score very highly in national tests of mathematics ability. Their other numbers problem is the financial squeeze posed...

Can GOP benefit from Californians’ increasing crime worries?

September 14, 2024 at 9:00 a.m.

Over the last dozen years, Democrats have gained, lost and finally nailed down supermajorities in the California Legislature. Now they hold more than 75 percent of its 120 seats. Having...

Huge flaw in Prop. 57 may lead to serial rapist’s parole

September 12, 2024 at 6:00 a.m.

Eight years ago, then-Gov. Jerry Brown hoodwinked California voters into making it easier for violent sex offenders to shorten their prison sentences. A month ago, the 2016 ballot measure that...

Will governor block hard look at state programs on homelessness?

September 9, 2024 at 8:00 a.m.

California has allocated more than $20 billion to alleviate the state’s homelessness crisis since Gavin Newsom became governor in 2019, but there’s precious little data on how the money was...

Newsom has lost much of his influence over Sacramento

September 5, 2024 at 1:00 p.m.

Gavin Newsom’s flirtation with national political status ended abruptly when Vice President Kamala Harris, often depicted as his rival, became the Democratic Party’s presidential candidate. For months California’s governor had...

With 28 months to go, will Newsom now pay more attention to his day job?

August 28, 2024 at 9:57 a.m.

Truth is, were Newsom’s governorship to end now his record of accomplishment would be scant, particularly if measured against that of his immediate predecessor, Jerry Brown.

As inflation keeps hitting pocketbooks, California politicians scramble to respond

August 22, 2024 at 4:09 p.m.

A coalition of renewable energy, environmental and groups this week sent a letter to Newsom and legislative leaders opposing any diversions.

Crime was once California’s biggest political issue. It’s made a major comeback

August 20, 2024 at 7:36 a.m.

There was a time, four-plus decades ago, when crime was California’s most powerful political issue.