Earlier this week, Gov. Jerry Brown's point man on the highly controversial proposal to bore tunnels beneath the Sacramento-San Joaquin Delta found himself in political hot water.

Senate Bills 491, 492 and 493 won approval of a Senate committee Monday and we should all be afraid – very afraid – because once again, state legislators are voting on "scope of practice."

Twenty years ago, as California struggled to emerge from what was then the worst recession since the Great Depression, then-Gov. Pete Wilson and the Legislature enacted a tax break to spur capital investment in job-creating small businesses.

David Crane, a businessman who advised former Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger on financial matters – particularly long-term public pension deficits – recently wrote an I-told-you-so piece for the Bloomberg news service about the State Teachers Retirement System.

Jerry Brown spent the first two years of his second governorship dealing with a chronic budget crisis and finally persuaded voters to raise sales and income taxes to narrow the budget gap.

Antonio Villaraigosa worked for Los Angeles' teachers union for eight years before embarking on a political career that took him to the Legislature, to the speakership of the state Assembly and then, eight years ago, to the Los Angeles mayor's office.

The California Legislature rarely – if ever – concerns itself with long-range, big-picture social and economic trends and their relationship to current decision-making.

One committee of one legislative house recently did something rarely seen in the California Capitol. It made a rational decision about electricity.

A fire had ravaged a nut-processing plant the night before, so as the one-man Stockton bureau of the Sacramento Union, I was focused that chilly November 1973 morning on chasing down the details.

Eight years ago, the California Legislature and then-Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger made what may have been a gigantic mistake by allowing public employee pension funds to drop a curtain of secrecy over their dealings with hedge funds, private equity funds and other "alternative investments."

A couple of years into Jerry Brown's first governorship Dow Chemical Co. abandoned plans to build a $500 million petrochemical plant, citing regulatory red tape.

It's a familiar refrain in the state Capitol: Legislation to regulate a major industry surfaces, and industry emissaries warn that it could drive production and its jobs to another state.

In the world of high-stakes poker, one continuous – and private – game in a luxurious Las Vegas hotel reigns supreme.

Six years ago, yours truly wrote a column about a proposed law school at the University of California's Irvine campus, suggesting that it was more about academic ego and Orange County boosterism than a shortage of lawyers.

Dan Schnur came to Sacramento a couple of decades ago as a media spokesman for then-Gov. Pete Wilson.