Word on the street is that union President Dave Regan's Faustian bargain with the California hospital industry -- cuddle up with hospitals' management to keep patient problems quiet and receive more than 60,000 new hospital workers -- is now teetering on the brink of collapse. Apparently Regan shut up, but the hospitals didn't put up the new workers. Good riddance.
Aetna is ending the year just like it started, with state regulators saying the insurance company has hiked premiums excessively, and there is nothing they can do about it.
California Attorney General Kamala Harris will soon have to decide if she is on the side of patients and healthcare workers or a New York hedge fund looking to make easy money with little risk by buying six financially-struggling Catholic hospitals.
Landmark bills protecting digital privacy, greening energy use in the state, reining in health insurance abuses and expanding voter registration were among the good proposals signed by Gov. Jerry Brown as the 2015 legislative year drew to a close. Yet, in a year Californians called for bold, progressive action on gas prices, toxics regulation and ratepayer protection against back room dealings with regulated utilities, centrist saddling and tepid reforms dull the shine of those wins for the public.
The crowded hallways outside of the Legislature's chambers may now be empty but that doesn't mean the fervent lobbying to kill pending legislation is over.
With more than 600 bills sitting at the governor's desk, we are keeping an eye on bills that protect privacy, healthcare, elections, consumer rights and the environment. Below are some of the bills we are watching:
Want to make a crowded Capitol hallway nervous? Turn on a video camera.
That's what we did in Sacramento over the last days of the California legislative session. We wanted to see what the dying days were like, and we found out: It's ugly. We watched bills appear, disappear or simply stall, lawmakers meeting with lobbyists, and lobbyists wanting to fight each other