A.M. Splash: Guv vs. Dems on Some Budget Cuts; Plug Pulled on Some Pell Grants; SF Recology Vote

Gov. Jerry Brown's latest budget proposal attempts to close a formidable $15.7 billion deficit, but the real debate at the Capitol in the next few weeks probably will be over how to cut just a fraction of the big amount. That's because about $2 billion in the governor's budget represents permanent reductions in spending on state welfare, child care and other programs that Democratic leaders in the Senate and Assembly have pledged to protect.

...The changes take effect July 1...Among those who will lose Pell Grants in the summer are at least 65,000 new college students without high school diplomas and 63,000 who...have spent more than six years in college. Changes in income requirements will reduce or eliminate grants for nearly 300,000 others.

San Francisco's Democratic, Republican and Green parties are rarely on the same side of a political tussle. The Chamber of Commerce doesn't play well with the San Francisco Labor Council and the San Francisco Tenants Union is almost never an ally of the city's Building Owners and Managers Association. But these groups and almost every other maker and shaker in the city oppose Proposition A on the June 5 ballot, a measure that could end Recology's 80-year monopoly on garbage collection in San Francisco by forcing the first competitive bid on that contract since the Depression era.

Pacific Gas and Electric Co. has accidentally over-pressurized pipelines on its gas system more than 120 times since the San Bruno explosion - a rate that the company's top gas official says is unacceptable and that experts fear could increase the risk of a similar disaster.

Spurred by the dramatic collapse of Lucasfilm's Grady Ranch studio proposal, Marin officials want to streamline the development review process in order to facilitate projects that are in line with county planning policies. To do that, county officials are poised to give a citizens committee a broad charter to study everything from reform of state environmental law to making it easier for projects to get permits by cutting red tape.

...Elite runners Sammy Kitwara of Kenya and Mamitu Daska of Ethiopia snagged first-place finishes in the men’s and women’s fields, respectively, and they were followed by the masses of revelers wearing everything from neon tutus to “Angry Birds” costumes to fairy tale characters, such as 27-year-old Donald Moore and his Snow White dress.

Muni has been awarded more than $37 million in federal homeland security and other grants over the past five years for cameras to safeguard its buses, rail stations and maintenance yards - but it turns out the transit agency has installed fewer than 50 of them.

Amid reports that the Warriors have agreed to a deal for a new arena in San Francisco for 2017, team co-owner Joe Lacob issued a classic non-denial denial Sunday: "We are not prepared to make any announcements at this time," Lacob said in an email.

...The ferry would dock somewhere across the tracks from a planned Hercules passenger train station and bus transfer area along Bayfront Boulevard. But nautical depth charts reveal a serious inconvenience: Hercules' shoreline is mired in mud and shallows, extending more than a half-mile into the Bay -- a fact that often goes unmentioned during discussions of the proposed transit center. Other times, it gets brushed off as readily solvable by the dredging of a channel or by the deployment of hovercraft, vessels that ride a cushion of air and can navigate in shallow waters and even onto beaches.