Former Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger and his wife, Maria Shriver, are separating after 25 years of marriage. Shriver, a TV news personality, has moved out of the couple's Brentwood mansion and they have been living apart for the past few weeks.
From the LAT's Mark Barabak: "Over the years, the marriage between the international celebrity and the daughter of the Kennedy dynasty has come under close scrutiny, especially during the 2003 recall of Gov. Gray Davis, when The Times reported on Schwarzenegger's lengthy history of groping women. At the time, Shriver defended her husband, helping lift him to victory in the free-for-all contest."
"Since Schwarzenegger left office, it had seemed as
though the two were living separate lives. Shriver, a former contributing
anchor on NBC's "Dateline," has worked on her women's empowerment
website, guest edited an issue of Oprah Winfrey's magazine and promoted causes
near to her heart, such as Alzheimer's research. She struggled with the death
of her father, Sargent Shriver, in January, and took her son Patrick and some
of his friends on an East Coast college tour in April."
Meanwhile, back at the Capitol, some 65 people were arrested as protests against state budget cuts ended their first full day of what is expected to be a week of demonstrations. The Chronicle's Wyatt Buchanan tells the tale.
"The California Teachers Association earlier today launched a week of action to highlight spending cuts to education and to push the Legislature to extend and raise temporary taxes to ensure no further cuts."
"Many teachers participated in the more than two hour sit-in, and they were joined by students from the City College of San Francisco and UC Santa Cruz and peace activists. Most of those arrested were taken from the protest in the first floor rotunda voluntarily, but several resisted and the CHP said up to three also were cited with resisting arrest."
"All were booked into Sacramento County Jail, though earlier in the evening a CHP officer said they could be cited and released. The Senate Sergeant-at-Arms Tony Beard, Jr., said this is the first mass arrest from a sit-in at the Capitol that he remembered since Gov. Jerry Brown's first term, when some people occupied the waiting room of the governor's office for several days."
A state senator who is leading the charge to save redevelopment agencies is married to a consultant who is being paid to preserve the agencies -- which Jerry Brown would like to abolish.
From the LAT's Shane Goldmacher: "State Sen.Bob Huff, who is working aggressively to save California's redevelopment agencies, says Gov. Jerry Brown's plan to abolish them is legally dubious, would cost jobs and would eliminate one of the state's few tools for spurring economic development."
"What the Diamond Bar Republican doesn't include in
his pitch is that his wife is a paid consultant for a large developer eager to
keep the program intact."
The developer, Ed Roski Jr., owner of Majestic
Realty, has industrial and commercial properties across Southern California,
many of them in redevelopment zones that have been spruced up with tax dollars."
California's high-speed rail program got far fewer federal dollars than it hoped for, in part because federalm officials spread the money out among 15 states. The Mercury News' Mike Rosenberg has the story.
"California scored another $300 million from the U.S. government on Monday to inch its high-speed rail project closer to San Jose, yet it was only a fraction of the $2 billion the state was hoping for."
"The money was left over after Florida killed its bullet train project earlier this year and returned the funds to Washington. State leaders will match the new grant with $75 million in voter-approved bond funds, allowing them to build another 20 miles of track in the Central Valley next year. But in March they applied for the full $2 billion Florida bounty and wanted to spend it building another 70 to 110 miles of rail line."
"It still means the Bay Area could be next in line. The latest round of funding will extend the tracks north to the point where the line would jet west to Gilroy and up to the Caltrain tracks between San Jose and San Francisco. But the state might choose to spend the next round of funding, whenever it comes, to extend the tracks north to Merced or south toward Los Angeles."
Backers of another attempt to establish an oil severance tax in California are prepared for well-financed opposition. They're right: That's exactly what will happen.
From the Chronicle's Joe Garofoli: "But should his measure qualify for the November ballot, Mathews and liberal groups worry that a pair of deep-pocketed brothers could emerge to fight the initiative: Charles and David Koch (pronounced "coke") of Kansas, who have used the billions they've made in the oil industry to try to reshape national politics in their conservative, free-market image."
"They'd probably weigh in because (the tax) would represent another burden on business," said Peter Foy, a Republican Ventura County supervisor and chair of the California chapter of Americans for Prosperity, which David Koch co-founded."
"The brothers control the majority of Koch Industries, the nation's second-largest privately held company, with revenues of about $100 billion. Each brother is believed to be worth $21.5 billion, according to Forbes magazine, making them the fifth-richest people in America."
The fact that state tax receipts came in higher than expected sounds like good news. But for Democrats, it might not be so good in the topsy-turvy world of Sacramento. The Bee's Dan Walters weighs in.
"However, revenues are running several billion dollars ahead of expectations, and if the trend continues, they could offset as much as a third of the $26 billion deficit that Brown originally projected for the remaining months of the 2010-11 fiscal year and all of FY 2011-12."
"Coupled with the health, welfare and college spending cuts already enacted, the higher revenues could finance all of the constitutionally guaranteed funding for K-12 schools and leave only a few billion dollars remaining to be covered – not nearly enough to justify a $10 billion per year tax hike."
"Brown will deliver his take on the situation next week in a "May revise" of the budget he originally proposed in January, but administration officials are already downplaying the impact of the revenue surge."
And from our "Whistling Past the Graveyard" file comes the tale of a tombstone tango. Arriba!
"Police said Kara Mitchell removed her top and danced around for a minute in the Mesa Cemetery in the 1200 block of North Center Street in Mesa."
"Police said Mitchell then dropped her pants and continued spinning around in front of cemetery employees, customers looking for plots and several groups of visitors who were paying respects to the deceased."
"After Mitchell put her clothes back on she went to the administrative office, sat down and started talking to herself. She was found in a cemetery golf cart when police arrived."