Water bond opponents want to keep it on the ballot

The state Legislature may act Monday on bills that would yank an $11-billion water bond off the November ballot and delay it until 2012, but opponents are gearing up to quash the move.

Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger and legislative leaders including Senate President Pro Tem Darrell Steinberg (D-Sacramento) want to delay the measure, which faces difficulty passing this year because many voters are reluctant to approve more borrowing during the poor economy.

“The end goal is for it to pass,” said Alicia Trost, a spokeswoman for Steinberg. With California voters facing a lot of other issues, “including a long list of other measures on the November ballot, we strongly believe it should be delayed,” she said.

Two bills to pull it off the ballot and delay the measure are available for action when the Legislature convenes on Monday, which is the deadline for voter information guides on the November ballot to go to the printer.

Read more…

Advertisement

Hollywood vs. water bond – Prop. 18

Governor Schwarzenegger is promoting Proposition 18, a massive $11 billion water bond to help big agribusiness at the expense of essential services. Sagging poll numbers have the Governor and legislative leaders trying to move the measure until 2012 when it might be more likely to pass.

But Governor Schwarzenegger isn’t the only celebrity weighing in on the future of the state’s water. We asked a few of our friends in Hollywood what they thought of the water bond and the prospect postponing it for two years. They all had the same reaction, and we captured it all on video.

Read more…

Assembly speaker open to rewriting water bond

Here we go again. Maybe.

This afternoon, Assembly Speaker John Pérez, D-Los Angeles, told reporters that he would be open to a rewrite of the $11 billion water bond passed by the Legislature last year. That bond is slated to be on the November ballot, but Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger and other legislative leaders have called for pulling it off and delaying it two years.

They also have been adamant that the bond, which has been criticized as containing too much pork, stay as-is while opponents of the bond have been calling for a do-over.

Read more: http://www.sfgate.com/cgi-bin/blogs/nov05election/detail?entry_id=68008#ixzz0trcyYBEV

Water bond’s ripples awash in the Capitol

The political fight to get an $11.1 billion water bond on California’s Nov. 2 ballot was tough. The fight to get it off the same ballot may be tough, too.

The same forces – and some new ones – are in play again: Environmentalists vs. business interests, Delta protectionists vs. farmers, Northern California vs.  Southern California, Republicans vs. Democrats, construction workers vs. conservationists. An underlying tension pits the demands of environmentalists to protect the Sacramento-San Joaquin River Delta and block new reservoirs against the building of new dams and the movement of more water to the Central Valley and Southern California.

Read more…