Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger and the four legislative leaders met Monday to talk budget. Legislative leaders emerged and called the talks "productive."
For whatever that's worth.
And how's this for a telling budgetary juxtaposition.
Mike Genest, Schwarzenegger's director of finance, will headline a lunch event today for the California Chamber of Commerce, the state's business lobby.
Genest will be speaking on the topic of "California's Budget -- on the Brink?" in the second half of the noon hour.
Only blocks away -- at almost the exact same time -- Senate President Pro Tem Darrell Steinberg will be giving the keynote address to the California Working Families Policy Summit, an event organized by advocates dedicated to strengthening the state's social services safety net.
Steinberg, meanwhile, is renaming and rejiggering the Senate Agricultural panel, making it the Senate Food and Agriculture Committee, to be chaired by Steinberg's No. 2, Sen. Dean Florez.
Steinberg and Florez have an 11:30 a.m. event today to announce the change, but Florez's office let the cat out of the bag with a press release late Monday.
The Ag committee had been one of only two panels in the upper house chaired by a Republican last session (GOP Sen. Abel Maldonado had wielded the gavel). Now, GOP senators will be down to one (Veterans Affairs), at best.
And the good news today for state Superintendent of Public Instruction Jack O'Connell is he will be on CNN for two eight-minute segments this morning.
He'll be talking about the challenges President-elect Barack Obama will face, along with former U.S. Department of Education Secretary Rod Paige and a national Teacher of the Year winner.
The bad news: O'Connell will be airing at 4:24 a.m. and 5:24 a.m. West Coast time.
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