A couple of interesting stories out of California over the weekend. First, late on Friday the state Senate passed a bill to create a pilot program of Clean Elections funding for candidates for Secretary of State. The bill now goes back to the state Assembly for their final approval (they passed it once already earlier in the cycle). If it passes the Assembly it goes to the Governor for his signature.

Ha ha ha...ewww. Man, some people will do anything to close a deal. Ex-Los Angeles city commissioner Leland Wong is on trial for 21 different felony charges and Troy Edwards, an aide to the former mayor, James Hahn, testified yesterday that Wong gave him Lakers tickets and offered to pick up the tab at a local massage parlor as part of a scheme to get the mayor's office to approve a deal for a Taiwanese company. Please file this under "yep, some politicians sure are are sleazy."

If Los Angeles ends up pursuing a Clean Elections law in the next year it will be without the help of the Pacific Palisades community council, which just voted down a motion in support of a full public financing option for city races.

Los Angeles' CityWatch examines the revived interest in Clean Elections public financing for municipal races in LA's City Hall, noting recent outreach efforts designed to elicit input from interested parties on the potential of bringing such a program to the city.

Once you're in, you're in - but how do you get there? That's a question hopefuls for the Los Angeles City Council might be asking themselves now that term limits have been extended - a move anticipated to make ousting an incumbent from the well-entrenched Council even harder. It has some in the city questioning whether public financing would shake things up a bit.

The Los Angeles Ethics Commission's has sent a public financing proposal to the city council and asked them to consider adopting it for municipal elections, and encouraging the Council to get further community feedback on the idea by distributing the proposals to neighborhood councils.