Thomas D. Elias

If there is one main reason for the distrust Californians feel for government and elected officials at all levels, it may be the way special interests regularly pour millions of dollars into election campaigns while managing to mask or obscure their identities. A major example last year was Prop. 45, voted down by a 59-41 percent margin even though it led by about that same amount in polls taken before the campaign began.

When ex-Gov. Schwarzenegger and former Interior Secretary Ken Salazar made their way onto a hot, sunny alkali flat just west of the I-15 freeway between Barstow and Las Vegas in late 2010, they were opening an era of giantism in solar electricity. They and utility executives went to ...

It pays to read between the lines whenever the state Legislature or a city council makes changes to longstanding election routines. One example: Almost all cities that lately have switched local elections to even years so they coincide with federal and state voting feature Democrat-dominated city councils whose members know both that ...

This graduate of the elite, private Polytechnic School adjacent to the Caltech campus in Pasadena has not spent substantial time in California since 2000, and very little in the six years before that. Essentially, Kruger left California to attend Harvard University and Yale Law School, returning only for short stays, including summer internships in the U.S. attorney’s office in Los Angeles in 1999 and with a large Los Angeles law firm the next year. That raises a question Mr. Brown ignored ...

Both the current president of the Public Utilities Commission and one of its member commissioners admit to improper, unethical contacts with Pacific Gas & Electric Co. over items which judges should rule on the utility's cases. President Michael Peevey and Commissioner Mike Florio recused themselves from voting on current PG&E cases. That, however, didn’t stop them from voting in mid-November to give the Southern California Edison Co. and the San Diego Gas & Electric Co. fully $3.3 billion in customer money (over 10 years) to help pay for Edison's incompetence at the San Onofre Nuclear Generating Station in northern San Diego County.

Politicians and public employees drawing pensions had high hopes they would get clarity on a key question from the federal bankruptcy judge presiding over the city of Stockton’s ongoing attempt to regain its financial health. It now appears that unique inland port city will emerge from two years of bankruptcy without ...

Neither devoted Republicans nor dedicated Democrats are happy about one obvious message of this month’s election: At least in California, there’s no need at all to choose or join a political party. This message came across in several ways. For one thing, the two Republican candidates for statewide office who refused to endorse their party’s candidate for governor both did far better than all other GOP candidates for major office. For another ...

A strong spotlight shines these days on the state Public Utilities Commission as it gets set to rule on how much the state’s biggest utilities will have to pay for their sometimes fatal blunders and how much consumers will be soaked for the negligence of utility executives. As much as $8 billion over the next decade rides on decisions of the five-member commission, about to rule on the 2010 PG&E gas pipeline explosion that killed eight and destroyed dozens of homes in San Bruno and on the Southern California Edison decisions that caused the premature shutdown of the San Onofre Nuclear Generating Station.

So much for populism. At least when it comes to fighting the interests of big-money corporations. In every vote this week pitting the interests of ordinary Californians against those of large companies, the corporate interests won big. Big bucks essentially convinced millions to vote against their own best interests.

The main result of this year’s election in California was not the least bit surprising: Four more years of Gov. Brown working with a Democratic-dominated Legislature. Next election season began the moment this year’s ended. Every indication is that the long logjam that has frustrated ambitious Democrats for most of the last two decades will break up.