A.M. Splash: Assembly Dems Look to Avoid Deep Cuts For Poor; Edwin Ramos Sentenced to Life in Prison; Berkeley Eyes Sidewalk-Sitting Ban

As budget negotiations continued Monday, legislative Democrats gave the clearest indication yet they will not cut as deeply into programs for the poor as Gov. Jerry Brown wants. Assembly Democrats released a blueprint that includes a smaller rainy-day fund and rejects most of Brown's cuts to welfare-to-work, In-Home Supportive Services, child care and Cal Grant scholarships.

Edwin Ramos didn't take responsibility Monday for the 2008 murders of a San Francisco man and his two sons. But as he heard that he would spend the rest of his life in prison, the gang member said he longed for a chance to change the past. Ramos, 25, was sentenced to three consecutive life sentences without the possibility of parole for shooting the victims as they drove down an Excelsior neighborhood street on a Sunday afternoon June 22, 2008.

Berkeley, among the most generous cities in the country in funding homeless services, is considering a daytime ban on sitting on the sidewalk in all commercial areas.The City Council on Tuesday night is slated to vote to direct the city attorney to write a ballot measure, similar to San Francisco's sit-lie ordinance, that would prohibit sitting on the sidewalk from 7 a.m. to 10 p.m.

A proposal to create a one-time bypass of San Francisco's strict condominium conversion lottery could pump as much as $25 million into the city's affordable housing fund and help more than 1,000 tenancy-in-common owners escape the financial shackles that now constrain them, proponents assert. Supervisors Mark Farrell and Scott Wiener plan to introduce legislation Tuesday that will allow eligible TIC owners to skip the city-run condo-conversion lottery if they pay a $20,000 fee for the privilege. The money would be used to help fund the city's affordable-housing programs.

With wildfires already raging in bone-dry Rocky Mountain states, the forecast for thirsty California isn't much better: Prepare for an early and busy wildfire season. After a winter that sprinkled the Bay Area with about half as much rain as normal, California has already experienced nearly twice as many wildfires as it did by this time last year. And with temperatures soaring into the mid-90s, experts say the scenes of weary residents evacuating blazes in Colorado and New Mexico could play out in the Golden State sooner than you'd think.

The City’s transformation of the mid-Market Street area has begun after Twitter’s weekend move into a historic Market Square building. The microblogging company said Monday it had begun occupying its “new nest” at 1355 Market St., where about 800 employees are expected to fill at least three of the 11 floors of the formerly vacant building. Constructed in 1937, the art deco palace is being renovated by the firm Shorenstein, which purchased it last year.

In a Hollywood moment Monday, a leafy Los Altos neighborhood was transformed back to the 1970s, when two irrepressible 20-somethings tinkering in a simple suburban garage set out to revolutionize humanity's relationship with computers. The modest 1950s home on Crist Drive received a time-travel makeover as film crews for the movie "jOBS" began three days of on-location shooting at what many acolytes consider the Holy of Holies: the birthplace of Apple in 1976.