California: Steve Westly

The long history of troubled state computer projects is continuing with an attempt to modernize the payroll system for state workers.

State Controller John Chiang quietly terminated a $69 million contract last month with BearingPoint, a large Virginia-based firm that declared bankruptcy last week to restructure its debt.

The state payroll system, more than three decades old, uses an outdated computer language, COBOL, said to be spoken now mainly by an older generation of programmers, many of whom are retired.

The balky system was cited by Chiang, a Democrat, when he rejected Republican Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger's order last year to pay state workers the federal minimum wage, $6.55 an hour, until the Legislature passed a state budget.

Abel Maldonado and his toady Brandon Gesicki have been all over the news pushing the frame that Controller John Chiang is wasting a million dollars on office furniture:
The same day the governor vetoed the Democrats' budget proposal, the Controller's office requested $924,500,000 worth of new office furniture from this fiscal year! How is that acceptable? Here is an elected official who is in the press every day talking about cutting services, stopping checks to welfare recipients and issuing IOUs to hardworking Californians. But at the exact same time, he is requesting new office furniture. This disgusting and disingenuous behavior has to end.

U.S. Sen. Dianne Feinstein now holds a 22-point lead over her closest competitor in the Democratic primary, should she run for governor next year, according to the first Capitol Weekly/Probolksy Research poll.

Of course, Feinstein has been pretty skittish about what exactly her plans are.

The poll's breadown:

Sen, Dianne Feinstein: 36 percent
Attorney General Jerry Brown: 14
San Francisco Mayor Gavin Newsom: 9
Los Angeles Mayor Antonio Villaraigosa: 9
Lt. Gov. John Garamendi: 4
Superintendent of Public Instruction Jack O'Connell: 3
Ex-Controller Steve Westly: 1
Unsure: 22 percent

The poll reports a margin of error of 3.7 percent.

On the GOP side, former Rep. Tom Campbell narrowly tops a field of largely unknown candidates with 15 percent support.

State Superintendent of Public Instruction Jack O'Connell wants to be governor. But the Democratic officeholder says he's struggling to put together the money to make a credible run to be California's next chief executive.

"We're trying to put it together for governor, but it's just regrettable that it's so costly and so expensive and I'm not a multimillionaire," said O'Connell in a brief interview this week. "That makes it very challenging."

O'Connell, 57, has continuously held state elective office in California since 1982, when he joined the state Assembly. He later served as a state senator and will finish his second term as state schools chief in 2010.