Newswire

The University of California Board of Regents voted Thursday to oppose a February ballot measure that would guarantee state funding for community colleges and reduce student fees at the 110-campus system.

Another eminent domain measure headed for ballot

San Francisco is about to charge forward with a game plan designed to keep the 49ers in the city instead of moving to Santa Clara, despite the team’s intention to relocate even if a new stadium is approved for Hunters Point.

Hopefully, this will be enough time for advocates of a $600 million transportation measure to rally public support.

Property rights activists are once again pushing a ballot measure aimed at restricting government’s use of eminent domain, but this time there’s a secondary target - rent-control ordinances.

A break for schools

Mon, Nov 19 2007

The simple-majority ballot measure for school levies is ahead by a comfortable enough margin to break open the champagne. This ballot measure had a simple request: Allow school levy requests to pass by a 50 percent-plus-one voting majority rather than a 60 percent supermajority.

LTE: A puppet show

Sun, Nov 18 2007

At latest count, but not final, 13,189 registered voters in Clatsop County had expressed their wishes on ballot Measure 4-123 (“County retrieves 330 stray votes,” The Daily Astorian, Nov. 8).

Pro-life human rights activists in Colorado may be on the verge of a major breakthrough in the struggle against the 1973 Roe v. Wade Supreme Court decision. The group Colorado for Equal Rights received permission from a unanimous vote Tuesday in the state Supreme Court to begin collecting the signatures needed to bring forward a ballot initiative that would grant the status of legal personhood to the unborn.

A proposed amendment to the Colorado Constitution that would give legal rights to fertilized human eggs may be headed for the ballot next year, raising the prospect of a heated local debate over abortion at the same time that Democrats are gathering here for their national convention.

A controversial bid to change long-standing height limit restrictions in Walnut Creek has failed, but the issue is not dead.

The city’s Planning Commission on Thursday unanimously rejected a challenge to height limits established when voters passed Measure A in 1985. The commission, however, agreed that the frozen height limits have handicapped redevelopment of some parcels such as the site of a vacant former co-op store at 1510 Geary Road, leaving them underutilized.