This is "retreat" week at the Capitol, with the Assembly's Democratic and Republican caucuses each getting together off-site to discuss their agendas for the coming months. The Democrats are meeting at a conference facility at the UC Davis Medical Center in Sacramento.

The Republicans are meeting at Le Rivage Hotel, a new high-end hotel on the banks of the Sacramento River that accommodates ... yacht owners.

The retreat at a hotel with yacht parking comes on the heels of the Assembly GOP's rejection of a Democratic bill that sought to close a loophole that allows yacht purchasers to escape sales taxes by keeping their new boats out of California for three months.

Democrats were quick to have some political fun with the Republicans' choice of destinations.

Saying the GOP caucus had "broken its own record for political tone-deafness," state Democratic Party spokesman Brian Brokaw asked in an e-mail to reporters: "What better way for Assembly Republicans to celebrate their crowning legislative accomplishment of the new session thus far -- their killing of the bill to close the 'sloophole.'?"