The Sacramento Bee is reporting today, based on an unnamed source, that Gov. Jerry Brown may attempt to place an initiative on the November ballot seeking the tax measures he wants Californians to vote on, if his attempt to get a two-thirds vote in the Legislature for a June special election fails.

Risky idea, not much time.

The initiative guidelines suggested by secretary state call for initiative supporters to turn in signatures six and a half months before an election -- which, for a November election, would mean mid-April. In addition, the secretary of state estimates it takes six weeks between the time a ballot measure is submitted and the attorney general releases a title and summary, a step that must be completed before signature-gathering could begin.

By that timetable, an initiative would have had to have been submitted two weeks ago -- and that doesn't even include time for gathering signatures.

Of course, it's possible that a friendly attorney general (Democrat Kamala Harris) could speed up that process and that a friendly Legislature might waive some deadlines.

Still, it would be an extraordinarily tight timetable to qualify an initiative for a November election. Since it would be a special election, Brown would likely have to call the election by early August.

No matter how much one crunched the calendar, county elections officials would likely need at least a month to verify a randon sample of voter signatures on initiative petitions, which would mean they'd have to receive the signatures by late June.

So, to make that plan work, supporters would have to submit an initiative to the attorney general within, say, the next three weeks and the attorney general would have to complete the title and summary within, say, another two weeks. Even with that kind of speed, supporters would have to collect a huge number of signatures (about 500,000 for an initiative statute, 800,000 for an initiative constitutional amendment) within about a month. (The numbers have gone up, because they're based on a percentage of voters who participated in the last gubernatorial election, and turnout was pretty high in November.)

That's a best-case scenario for supporters.

Could it be done? Maybe, but it would be a monstrous challenge.

The secretary of state has released the annual, odd-numbered year February report of voter registration, one that typically shows a cleaning of the voter roll following a gubernatorial election to delete names of those who moved or died, and it reveals a continuation of the trend for voters to declare themselves as nonpartisans.

In Ventura County, both Democrats and Republicans lost voters between February 2009 and February 2011-- in nearly equal number. Registered Democrats declined by 2,252 to 167,087, and registered Republicans declined by 2,336 to 155,174.

As has regularly been the case in recent years, only those registered as nonpartisans -- "decline to state" -- grew in number. That pool of voters increased by 2,325, to 78,261.

The Franchise Tax Board today released its annual report on tax returns filed in 2009, and to no one's surprise it shows a drop in median incomes from 2008. Statewide, the median income on joint income-tax returns dropped by 5.7 percent, to $65,025. The decline in Ventura County was slightly greater, 5.8 percent, to $72,226.

Despite that, Ventura County remains the richest county in California south of San Jose. It ranks 10th statewide, behind the seven San Francisco Bay Area counties and the affluent Sierra foothill counties of Placer and El Dorado. It is one spot above Orange County, which ranks 11th statewide.

At the top of the list, as always, is tiny Marin County, across the Golden Gate Bridge from San Francisco. There, the median income for a couple filing jointly was $108,465.

Jumping into the debate over whether California should adopt a so-called "Amazon tax" that would require online retailers who use in-state affiliates to market their products, Walmart officials today issued a statement not only supporting the proposal but also asserting it would be glad to partner with any affiliates that Amazon might drop should California adopt the new law.

Amazon.com offers commissions to any partner group that promotes its products on their websites. The fate of those affiliates is at the center of a public debate between two members of the state Board of Equalization, Republican George Runner and Democrat Betty Yee.

Runner issued a statement earlier this week saying that he had been assured by Amazon officials that they would sever releationships with 10,000 California affiliates should the state adopt the new law, which would force them for the first time to collect sales taxes on purchases made by customers in California. "This is an imminent threat to California jobs," Runner said.

Yee responded with a statement of her own, saying, "the right course of action for Amazon.com would be to stop threatening California from updating its statutes."

Enter Walmart, the world's largest retailer. Because Walmart operates bricks-and-mortar stores in California, it must collect sales taxes not only at its stores but also on Internet purchases by Californians from Walmart.com.

So for Walmart, it is a fairness issue. Because Amazon can duck out of collecting sales taxes from Californians (who are supposed to self-report the purchases and pay the sales taxes when they file their income tax returns), it can offer lower bottom-line prices on goods than can Walmart, which must collect the sales taxes.

"We encourage state legislators to support retail fairness legislation," said Raul Vazquez, executive vice president of Global Ecommerce for Walmart, in a statement sent to reporters today. "We are committed to the communities where our associates and our customers reside and raise their families. This is why we strongly support a change in the law that will help communities and level the playing field for everyone."