Unlike in the state Senate, where leader Darrell Steinberg asked each senator to voluntarily take a 5 percent pay cut (and 38 of 40 have complied), Assembly Speaker Karen Bass has not asked members to do the same.

Instead, the Assembly has taken other budget-cutting steps, such as a reduction in staff, to achieve a 10 percent savings.

Still, about two dozen of the 80 members of the Assembly have taken voluntary pay cuts. Republican Audra Strickland of Moorpark was the latest to do so, sending a letter to Controller John Chiang this week requesting that her paycheck be reduced by 5 percent.

Other members of the Ventura County delegation say they are considering such a move, but have not yet decided. Republican Cameron Smyth, who represents much of Simi Valley, has asked Chiang to reduce his pay by whatever percentage state workers' pay may be reduced in a budget-balancing package.

Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger is seeking a 5 percent reduction in state workers' pay, but that proposal is not part of the budget plan backed by the Democratic-controlled Legislature. Smyth is asking to take only any actual cut in pay -- not the equivalent of an 8 percent-plus cut that state workers have already taken as a result of being placed on unpaid furlough two days per month.

Democrats Pedro Nava of Santa Barbara and Julia Brownley of Santa Monica, who combined represent all of Ventura, Oxnard and Port Hueneme, say they are still weighing the issue. Both cite the cost-saving measures their offices have already implemented. Brownley also notes that, as a result of a recent action by the Citizens Compensation Commission, she will already face an 18 percent salary reduction late next year if she is re-elected.

Members of the Legislature are paid $116,208 a year.

For a Republican candidate running in a Republican primary, it doesn't get any better than this: an endorsement from the Republican Party.

That's what 37th Assembly District candidate Jeff Gorell received this week when the Ventura County Republican Central Committee lent its endorsement to his campaign.

Gorell announced his candidacy more than two years before the election in the hope of establishing himself as the clear choice for the party's nomination to succeed the termed-out Audra Strickland. So far, things are going according to script.

Party endorsements in primaries are rare except in cases in which a candidate is running unopposed. By locking up the party endorsement early, Gorell just makes it that much more challenging for anyone else to enter the race.

In an e-mail released by the Das Williams for Assembly campaign, former Assemblywoman Hannah-Beth Jackson expresses her strong support for the Santa Barbara city councilman and urges supporters "to step up to the plate with the dollars that are necessary to run a winning campaign."

Jackson's support for Williams has been no secret, but it now appears she is willing to invest some real energy in the campaign. That could be significant because Jackson is just coming off a year in which she waged a vigorous campaign for state Senate and raised a remarkable $305,000 in contributions from individuals within the 19th Senate District. The great majority of that money came from contributors in Santa Barbara who also live in the 35th Assembly District. In other words, Jackson has a solid, current list of potential contributors that she can share with Williams if she chooses.

That connection could help offset the fund-raising advantages of Williams' Democratic opponent, Susan Jordan. Because Jordan's husband, Pedro Nava, is an incumbent member of the Assembly, she is in a superior position to land financial support from Sacramento-based interest groups.

Republican and decline-to-state voters in Ventura County may be getting an interesting phone call tonight asking them if they'd like to listen in on a "tele-town hall" hosted by former Congressman Tom Campbell, a Republican candidate for governor.

It's a new development in political technology. For this event, voters in Ventura and Orange counties will be contacted about 7 p.m. with an automated phone call. They will be asked if they'd like to listen in as Campbell talks about his governing plans for the state (unlike any other candidate of either party to date, Campbell actually has detailed plans for what he'd do with the budget, to spur economic development and other issues). If they respond affirmatively, they will be patched into the telephonic town hall.

Campbell's campaign expects anywhere from 2,000 to 7,000 voters to listen in at any one time.

Following up on my two earlier posts, I can now report that Republican Sen. Tony Strickland this afternoon faxed a letter to the Controller's Office asking that his salary be reduced by 5 percent effective July 1.

In so doing, Strickland joins 29 other senators, including the other two who represent portions of Ventura County, in complying with Senate President Pro Tem Darrell Steinberg's request that all senators take a voluntary cut in pay.

An updated list provided by the Controller's Office late yesterday afternoon confirms what Sen. Fran Pavley notes in a comment to my previous post about senators taking pay cuts: Pavley was one 13 additional senators added to the controller's list on Monday to accept voluntary, 5 percent pay reductions beginning July 1.

Also added to the list was another member of Ventura County's Senate delegation, Republican George Runner of Lancaster, whose district includes Fillmore and Santa Paula.

Among the local senators, that leaves just Republican Tony Strickland off the list. As of yesterday evening, only 11 of 40 senators had not yet responded to President Pro Tem Darrell Steinberg's request that they volunteer to take a 5 percent reduction.

Last week California Senate leader Darrell Steinberg announced that he would voluntarily take a 5 percent pay reduction and asked other senators to do the same. As of this morning, the Controller's Office reports that 17 of the 40 senators have either requested the pay cut to take effect July 1 or had already acted independently to accept less than their full salary.

The three senators who represent portions of Ventura County -- Democrat Fran Pavley and Republicans Tony Strickland and George Runner -- are not among the volunteers.

Since a voter-approved constitutional amendment gives the sole power for setting legislative salaries to an appointed board called the Citizens Compensation Commission, the Legislature cannot force a pay cut on itself (or give itself a pay raise). The commission voted earlier this year to implement a 10 percent cut, but by law that cannot take effect until after members are sworn in following the next election, or in Decemeber 2010.

Although Assembly Speaker Karen Bass has not asked member of the Assembly to voluntarily take a pay cut. 22 members have done so, with reductions ranging from 2.75 percent to 18 percent. Again, there are no members of the Ventura County delegation -- Democrats Julia Brownley and Pedro Nava and Republicans Audra Strickland and Cameron Smyth -- on the list.

Steinberg asked for the reductions in recognition of the fact that state workers are already taking an effective pay cut of nearly 10 percent by virtue of being furloughed two days a month.

Legislative salaries now stand at $116,208 a year.

The office of former California Gov. Gray Davis today distributed to California reporters the text of Davis' speech last month to the graduating class at Columbia Law School. Not sure if this suggests a toe-in-the-waters step toward a political comeback, or simply one in a continuing series of actions designed to polish the tarnished legacy of being the only governor ever to be recalled from office. Whatever, Davis never shies from facing up to what happened. The highlight of what he had to say:

"I believe I am uniquely qualified to convince you that there is no defeat, no matter how devastating, that you cannot overcome.

"We can't always control what happens to us in life but we can control our response. Do not let a setback define your life -- get off the canvas, hold your head high and move on. You will be surprised how many good things will happen to you if you have the grace to accept what life has dealt you and the courage to continue on."

With the Ventura County Grand Jury sounding the alarm last week about soaring pension costs in a report alarmingly titled "Uncontrollable Costs," it's a good bet that pension issues -- including a Grand Jury recommendation that any future increases in benefits be subjected to a vote of the people -- will be an issue in next year's election contests for county supervisor.

In that regard, should former CHP assistant chief Mark Lunn, now chief of staff to Simi Valley Supervisor Peter Foy, decide to challenge Thousand Oaks Supervisor Linda Parks, as is widely expected, he will bring a unique perspective to the debate.

An organization called CaliforniaPensionReform.com has compiled a searchable database of all retired state and local employees who receive pensions in excess of $100,000 a year from the California Public Employee Retirementment System (CalPERS).

If you search by agency and check out the California Highway Patrol, Lunn's name jumps to near the top of the list. In fact, he receives the second-highest pension of any CHP retiree: $151,949 a year. Of the 131 CHP retirees who receive annual benefits of $100,000 a year or more, Lunn is one step above his ex-boss, former CHP Commissioner Spike Helmick, a career highway patrolman who headed the agency for nearly a decade.

No doubt about it, Lunn was a well-regarded officer who worked 30 years for the agency, earned his benefits and is now collecting only what is contractually his due. Still, given the value of his monthly check and the number of years he will likely collect it, if Lunn runs for supervisor he should have an interesting perspective on ssues regarding public pension benefits, how much is enough, what taxpayers can afford, and whether voters should have a say on future benefit increases.

There are some things that a political candidate just can't prepare for.

The San Francisco Chronicle today published a top-of-the-page, boldly headlined obituary of Susan B. Jordan, an activist attorney from Ukiah who perished in a plane crash last Friday. The obituary was accompanied by a two-column photograph of Susan Jordan standing on a pier.

Unfortunately, the woman in the photograph is Susan Jordan, the environmental activist and Democratic Assembly candidate from Santa Barbara, not the deceased woman of the same name.

The mistake created an awkward challenge for the campaign: How do you delicately bring to people's attention that the candidate is still alive?

The press release from the campaign struck just the right tone. It began: "The Susan Jordan for Assembly in 2010 campaign wishes to extend its condolences to the family of Susan B. Jordan, a Ukiah lawyer killed in a plane crash on Friday."

From there, it went on to explain the situation.

The Chronicle, by the way, has since placed a photo of the actual deceased on its Web site.

Former e-Bay CEO Meg Whitman, whose campaign for governor has avoided contact with the mainstream California press for months, sat down last Thursday for a tea-and-crumpets chat with Flash Report publisher Jon Fleischman, the text of which Fleischman published today.

Whitman talks very generally about how she sees the state's budget crisis, and says one of her starting points would be to roll back state spending to 2000-2001 levels because revenues have now been pared back to those levels.

She suggests it would be easily doable because the state population has grown by "only 3 percent."

Here's guessing that she never so wildly underestimated the growth in the number of people selling things on e-Bay. In fact, according to the Department of Finance's population unit, the number of people in California has soared by 11.2 percent since 2001. There were 34.4 million people in 2001, and 38.3 million in 2009.

(NOTE: Whitman campaign spokesman Mitch Zak told me today that Whitman bases her position on the belief that adapting spending to 2001 levels can be achieved because the population has grown by "slightly more than 3 million people," and that the candidate mispoke when she said "3 percent." The actual growth was, in fact, much closer to 4 million people -- 3.86 million.))