Author: Melanie Sill

Public employee pensions have become one of the prickliest topics The Bee covers, and our front-page story today adds some sobering numbers to the discussion.

Here’s one: $28 billion.

That’s the collective gap, according to The Bee’s analysis, between the amount of pension money that’s invested and the amount that’s promised to employees and retirees in California’s 80 largest city and county governments.

McClatchy’s California newspapers teamed up on this project after reporting on ways pension obligations were adding to budget headaches in one locality after another.

Our aim was to provide the bigger picture beyond a string of local decisions.

Phillip Reese, a Bee investigative reporter, led the work in gathering and analyzing information from local governments. His efforts yielded the best view so far of pension funding gaps statewide.

Graphics in our print editions tell part of the numbers story; at www.sacbee.com/investigations, you can find an interactive map with details by city and county.

Reese worked closely with reporters from the Fresno Bee, Modesto Bee, Merced Sun-Star and San Luis Obispo Tribune, and today’s stories appear in those newspapers’ print and online editions.

As Reese and his counterparts explain, the pension pressures didn’t pop up overnight, nor are they easily solved.

The story isn’t identical in every city or county, but there are some repeated themes:

• Many localities improved retirement benefits for public employees during healthier fiscal conditions early in the last decade.

• The stock market’s declines during the recession caused investment values to drop, and a big debate about the gap hinges on future market returns.

• Many localities increased their pension tab by raising pay for public employees, also during happier times.

This reporting adds important context for local officials who, as stewards of public spending, make choices that affect all residents as well as employees.

Some are considering benefits changes (mostly for future hires) to address the longer-term picture; others have taken this step already, but many are using bond money or service cuts to close the gap.

While this report focuses on local governments, the picture that emerged mirrors state pension funding in certain ways.

Last week, a Stanford University report kicked up dust with findings that our state’s giant pension funds, CalPERS, CalSTRS and the University of California retirement system, were understating the amount of their unfunded obligations.

The gap, according to the report, is $500 billion. (To which an ordinary person can only say, in polite terms, holy cow!)

The funds’ leaders promptly contested the Stanford report’s findings and its calculation methods. But the matter needs much more attention and public debate.

The Bee’s own reporting, based on information from CalPERS and CalSTRS, has shown that government employers will have to increase their contributions in coming years to meet pension obligations.

Government’s debt is our debt – taxpayers are the “employer” contributors to public pensions. So as stupefying as the large numbers can seem, we all have an interest in understanding them.

Today’s stories are part of our commitment to digging into these complex matters and providing facts that can inform good decisions in the months ahead.

I don’t know if his ideas will work, but interim executive officer Steve Szalay impressed me last month with the way he approached Sacramento County’s $118 million budget deficit.

Instead of simply proposing cuts, borrowing or other financial moves, Szalay gave county supervisors ideas for providing core services in different ways.

He said the county “was in great need of reorganization or a fresh look at the way services are provided.”

In other words, his message wasn’t just the slash-or-tax choices we’ve heard in most government budget discussions, at least those held in public.

Whether or not his specific ideas prevail, Szalay’s push to prioritize is becoming a common theme in organizations that want to do more than just survive this tenacious downturn.

Such conversation gets my attention, partly because The Bee has undergone its own process of financial disruption and mission focus: What matters most? How do we serve our community and our customers?

Over lunch recently, several arts leaders told Bee editors about the struggles of groups hit in the last two years by recession (reduced giving and slower ticket sales) and government funding cuts.

Several organizations, as we’ve reported, have responded in ways that show their creativity extending from their art to their organizational management.

For instance, the Sacramento Ballet has drawn praise for its determined march back from canceling a big part of its 2008-09 season.

The company’s leadership changed programming and faced its financial challenges head-on, and in March staged a well-received production of its classic “Carmina Burana.”

We’ve also seen new approaches in community services.

Sacramento County supervisors recently transferred control of the Mather Community Campus and its programs for homeless people to the nonprofit Volunteers of America.

A separate local initiative has teamed Sutter General Hospital and a nonprofit community clinic called The Effort in a program called T3 that targets patients who come to emergency rooms for non-ER care.

T3 is getting credit for cutting ER visits, saving Sutter money and providing better help for patients who get services including mental health counseling, primary health care and housing.

These endeavors and others won’t all succeed. Yet they’re just a few illustrations of a truth too often forgotten: Good things can come out of adversity.

The Bee has chronicled many tough choices and their impacts throughout the recession; we’re also spotting success stories and encouraging trends. For instance, we’re offering an ongoing series called “Road to Recovery” that explores ideas and activity that might lift our region out of recession.

The series also is putting a focus on problems and obstacles to recovery. Dale Kasler’s latest installment (on Page A1 today) shows how California’s perceived and actual regulatory issues are influencing one promising local startup’s decisions.

This far into an economic downturn, most people recognize that solutions won’t simply be served up by circumstance. We can’t just wait for things to get better (though some government leaders seem to favor that approach).

I hope we’ll hear more public discussion, more fresh thinking and more candor about our choices. In other words, let’s hope for real leadership and public debate of the decisions that will shape our region’s destiny.

The Web site YubaNet.com covers the Sierra in a much different way than The Bee, delivering a decidedly local view through original reporting and citizen posts.

For instance, YubaNet has a tab for fire news and a “Sierra NightSky” report. The site serves its readers in some ways The Bee never will, and vice versa.

Beginning this week, sacbee.com and YubaNet will be linked – not just by a single reference or story, but through The Bee’s new network for connecting coverage from an increasingly lively mix of online sources.

The network, called Sacramento Connect, is simple in concept. It links the best of the Web for readers in the Sacramento area and more broadly in Northern California – sites and blogs you might not otherwise find.

It also provides a simple toolbar to connect the network and to make it easy to share stories via Facebook, Twitter or other social media sites.

Like many online tools, Sacramento Connect is easier to comprehend when you’re using it than when you’re reading about it. That’s why I want to talk more about why we’ve developed the network than how it works technically.

From my view, Sacramento Connect is a contemporary way to carry out some familiar aims of a newspaper: Pointing readers to interesting and useful information and connecting people to community life.

We began talking about a Bee-hosted network last spring, inspired by the continuing explosion of blogs and Web sites offering specialized news and opinion, citizen journalism or creative storytelling.

These sites are both competitors and friends, and from our experience mostly the latter.

We looked at some experiments elsewhere involving newspaper sites and local blogs and got help and coaching at a Knight Digital Media Center session for newspapers on social media strategy.

Sacramento Connect’s true breakthroughs came, however, through conversations with local bloggers who quickly saw the potential and offered advice and suggestions.

For The Bee and its partners, the network adds content and supports advertising goals. We think sacbee.com readers will like Sacramento Connect and the toolbar, for both finding and sharing articles and photos, and we’ll sell advertising on The Bee’s part of the network.

Our partners also gain by connecting to sacbee.com’s audience – the largest in the region – in regular ways that promise to boost their readership and advertising.

We’re starting small by intention, with fewer than two dozen partner sites whose content will be linked and featured. There’s a link for blogs and sites to apply to be part of the network (there’s no fee), and another to recommend sites, from solo blogs to community news operations, and we expect to build steadily.

The network might have some startup pains, so we’ll take it slow until we work out the bugs.

I’m excited most by the potential of this network for linking community-minded sites (geographic communities or interest communities) not just with The Bee, but with one another.

Some of our partners might be familiar to you, depending on your interests. On SacFoodies.com, for instance, locals explore and delight in the area’s culinary scene. At PublicCEO.com, daily posts address the interests and concerns of people in government, including executives and administrators.

You can find the network and toolbar, which will appear at the bottom of the screen, beginning Monday at sacbee.com and on partner sites.

The Bee’s online comments and letters to the editor crackled with citizen outrage last week after Assembly Speaker John A. Pérez made one of his first official moves: Granting big raises to several of his aides, including a $65,000 boost for his new chief of staff.

Pérez joined a long line of electeds who have incurred public wrath for how they chose to spend the increasingly scarce dollars of a struggling California.

“They really don’t understand why the majority of us have zero confidence in them …” fumed one Bee reader in a letter to the editor.

We hear it over and over, in Field Poll results over the past week showing dismal ratings for Congress, the Legislature and the governor: We don’t like the way our elected officials are governing. We want change.

Don’t they get it?

One has to wonder, even as frustration with government boils and bubbles: Perhaps we citizens don’t get what’s really happening.

Temporary outrage aside, most people pay little attention to the details of government or of political platforms, candidate backgrounds or ballot initiative specifics.

The public attention span can be short. We’re not dumb, but we’re busy, and our elected officials fail us most significantly by displaying a lack of candor on difficult issues.

So big money and big influence continue dominating our political process. We move on. They stick around.

Californians, once delighted and now thoroughly disgusted with a political outsider named Arnold Schwarzenegger, will pick a new governor in November.

Moneyball politics has already ruled out many choices. We’re down to three: former eBay CEO Meg Whitman and state Insurance Commissioner Steve Poizner in the Republican primary, and former governor and current Attorney General Jerry Brown as the Democrat.

There’s still a chance to use this election for broad debate about California’s future. But if we as citizens want to influence that discussion, we’ll have to dig in.

Based on the early going, the cynical political culture will again hope that most of us won’t do our own homework – that gut-punch TV and radio advertising will cement our votes.

The Bee has an important role in providing substance for the many readers – and there are many – who want the truth beyond the TV ads.

We’ll ramp up fact-checking such as our Ad Watch feature. We’ll identify special interests behind candidates and offer an online data tool that lets you check up yourself.

Most of all, we’ll work to keep the concerns we’re hearing from voters, including outrage over spending, on the candidates’ agendas.

On Thursday, Whitman’s campaign turned down The Bee’s invitation to debate Poizner in Sacramento next month. Our editorial board had joined with Fox40 locally and Fox News nationally to issue the invitation for a debate at the California Museum, another co-sponsor.

The debate would have been moderated by Fox News national anchor Bret Baier and offered to Fox stations statewide for broadcast.

In declining, Whitman’s team noted that she had debated Poizner Monday (seen only by determined souls who watched a Web stream) and that the two will face off in a May 2 debate sponsored by Comcast on cable stations.

We wish Whitman had taken our offer, but the cable debate is better than none.

Let’s all tune in, not just to the governor’s race but to the othe big choices on our ballot. Some time spent now could save us from being outraged down the line.

Today begins national Sunshine Week, organized each year to highlight the twin causes of open government and freedom of information.

Here in California, it’s a good time to celebrate the memory of Sacramento Congressman John E. Moss, whose gift to the nation was the Freedom of Information Act.

According to accounts of his battle to pass the FOI Act, Moss possessed not just a passion for open government but a genuine belief in the good sense of citizens. We could use a healthy dose of that kind of public-mindedness in an age when neither government nor citizens seem to trust one another.

Too often these days, people in power – in state, federal or local government agencies – seem to do the minimum instead of the maximum to operate in the open. Some are passionate about open government, but others fight the letter of public records laws and display no enthusiasm for their spirit.

Back to John Moss, a Utah native raised in Sacramento who served 26 years in the U.S. House.

Moss, who arrived in Congress in 1953, was not a journalist or press advocate. Instead, he was an inquisitive freshman member of the Post Office and Civil Service Committee trying to get information out of a federal agency.

“I was a businessman. I was engaged in a real estate brokerage, but I have strong convictions that, as a representative of the people, I had a right to know what goes on in the government,” he told interviewer George Berdes in 1965. “And I have also a conviction that the people I represent need to know what goes on in government.”

Moss launched a 12-year battle that culminated in 1966 when President Lyndon B. Johnson signed the FOI Act.

The federal law’s importance is hard to overstate, even though it is pitted with exemptions and has been weakened by delays and too many cases of outright noncompliance.

The act’s provisions have been used by lawyers, journalists, historians, researchers and ordinary citizens to obtain countless government records, many of which would otherwise have been kept from view.

John Moss’ commitment to access came with a corollary belief: Informed citizens generally are capable of making good decisions.

Here’s what Moss told Berdes in the 1965 interview, published on the John E. Moss Foundation Web site with permission from Marquette University Press:

“We are drawing increasingly from professional fields in public administration where, too often, they are contemptuous of the public,” he said. “They haven’t the confidence that the public can use information to make sound judgments … I think a few more of them should go out to run for office and learn that the public does make pretty sound judgments, given the chance.”

Too often, fights over public records and open meetings are viewed as the media vs. the government. Yet access belongs to citizens who use it in everyday ways and occasionally to crusade against wrongdoing.

Readers here might remember the diligence of Arden-area resident LeRoy Munsch. He exercised his right to attend meetings and obtain documents from his local water district several years ago, eventually helping expose scandalous misuse of funds.

John Moss died in 1997, remembered for many accomplishments but most of all for a law that became a wedge against federal government secrecy. His legacy remains an inspiration to those who share his beliefs in democracy and in citizens.

Learn more about Sunshine Week, led by the American Society of News Editors, at www.sunshineweek.org.

The Bee has added a new online feature: a marijuana blog called “Weed Wars.”

Go ahead and giggle (that’s been a common reaction). You can even supply your own joke.

But this blog is driven by news, not whimsy – news about California’s burgeoning medical marijuana industry and our state’s escalating debate over legalizing the drug.

“Weed Wars,” led by reporter Peter Hecht, will break news regularly with large and small items about the marijuana debate.

As with other http://www.sacbee.com/blogs/ sacbee.com blogs, some news from “Weed Wars” will be expanded or reprinted in the paper, and Hecht will continue to report in depth for print editions.

Hecht has been The Bee’s lead reporter on the marijuana story over the past six months, reporting on these and other story lines:

• The rapid expansion of medical marijuana dispensaries in California communities following the federal government’s decision not to prosecute people for medical marijuana use unless drug trafficking is suspected.

• Efforts by local elected officials to regulate the numbers and locations of dispensaries. Many have tried moratoriums or bans only to face legal challenges.

• Court actions including the California Supreme Court decision in January that threw out limits, set by the Legislature in 2003, on how many plants medical marijuana users can grow or possess.

• Ongoing disputes, both semantic and legal, over just what it is that medical marijuana dispensaries actually provide (services? products?) and how to define and tax their output.

• The blossoming of colorful commercial enterprises around medical marijuana, including a Los Angeles trade show called Hemp Con 2010 that Hecht covered last week.

• The drive to get a marijuana legalization initiative on the ballot in November.

California has been at the center of the marijuana debate since 1996, when voters passed the nation’s first statewide initiative allowing medical marijuana use.

We’ve captured the nation’s attention again, along with a few other states, as advocacy for legalization has escalated and medical marijuana dispensaries have operated ever more boldly and visibly.

Last spring, Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger said it was time for a broad public debate on legalizing marijuana, and the statewide Field Poll showed the first majority of Californians in favor of that step.

Despite the apparent momentum, legalization is far from certain, and reporting by Hecht and many others reflects the complexity of these issues.

Marijuana use has therapeutic value, as a recent University of California, San Diego, study confirmed, yet it carries health risks.

California dispensaries operate under loose rules, as does the system by which doctors authorize patients to obtain medical marijuana.

Law enforcement officials remain vocally opposed to legalization, saying it will pose new dangers. Many consider the medical marijuana movement a cover for de facto legalization.

All this provides daily fodder for news stories. “Weed Wars” aims to provide context and connection beyond daily headlines, using the Internet’s capacity for constant updating and its linking and collecting capabilities.

The blog will link to a special topics page offering background material, video, photos, Twitter feeds and links to coverage from The Bee and other media.

Never before have so many researchers spent so much time studying the American news consumer, trying to figure out how people are getting news and what they want.

Gentle reader, you’re in great demand.

We’re tuned into people’s media habits at The Bee as well, but our newsroom’s questions are different from those of Internet marketers trying to figure out how to get you to click on the dancing animals.

We’re competitive, but we’re also constantly working on how our traditional missions of public service and community connection translate in a digital age.

For now that means strong print editions – despite the chorus of online pundits calling incessantly for the death of print – and an expanding set of online and mobile phone options for Bee content.

Aside from the way we deliver coverage, we’re also looking at beats, topics and ways of providing information – local, regional, national and international.

The Bee, despite declines in circulation and revenue in the past three years, remains by far the most heavily used local information source in our four-county region.

Our print edition alone reaches 32 percent more people in a week in The Bee’s core region than all four early evening local TV newscasts combined, according to the latest report from Scarborough Research.

In an average week, the report shows, The Bee print and online editions reach 62 percent of adults in the four-county area – a full 23 percentage points ahead of the leading TV competitors’ combined morning, noon and evening newscast viewership and online readership for the week.

Despite that strength, we’re competing for readers and we don’t have unlimited resources, so we’re asking fundamental questions as we work to improve coverage: Amid a sea of information on television and the Internet, how can The Bee be most useful and important?

TV’s quiet downward trend

For perspective, I called Tom Rosenstiel, author and director of the Pew Research Center’s Project for Excellence in Journalism in Washington.

Rosenstiel, a former Los Angeles Times and Newsweek reporter, watches over the annual State of the News Media report – a comprehensive national review of how people use media and how they view that information.

I was interested in Rosenstiel’s view not just of newspaper readership but of people’s connection to local news vs. other kinds of coverage.

For instance, the State of the Media research shows that, as a national trend, local TV news has been losing viewers in recent years. This trend hasn’t gotten much attention, especially in comparison with all the publicity focused on drops in print circulation.

TV stations don’t report their viewer declines in the way The Bee reports on its circulation. They market well, constantly emphasizing that they’re “on your side” and so forth.

That creates a perception that conflicts with actual viewer numbers: Most people say they get most of their local news from TV.

Survey respondents “have an understanding that is based on how frequently local TV is on and the way it markets itself that may not comport with the reality of boots on the ground,” Rosenstiel said.

Locally, no local station covers as many stories in a week as The Bee does in a couple of days, nor should they be expected to, given how many more reporters work in our newsroom than in the average broadcast shop.

New research, set for release in March, will show more erosion for local TV newscasts, Rosenstiel said (and more circulation losses for papers, already widely reported). Part of the reason is technology – DVRs, online viewing, YouTube – and some comes from people’s changing habits of “snacking” on bits of media all day.

“The last few years, we’ve seen local TV stations lose ratings and viewership much like newspapers are in print, but they’re not getting the build-back from the Internet that newspapers are,” Rosenstiel said.

The community connection

I’m not here to beat up on local TV stations, which are both competitors and frequent partners on coverage or community efforts. A vibrant region relies on strong coverage from many media sources.

But the drift away from local newspapers and local TV might be part of a larger disconnect from local affairs. That should concern those of us who believe journalism’s biggest civic value is engaging people in public life by providing information to take part in community decisions, education and economic success.

Rosenstiel said other research data, not released yet, show that “the shift to online news consumption may be causing a shift in interest somewhat away from local news.”

The research stands out because it focuses not on what people say they want, Rosenstiel said, but on what information they’re actually using online. Other than sports and weather, he said, “local news is well down the list, much lower than any research I’ve seen before about what people say they’re interested in.”

What would explain that? Rosenstiel infers a couple of possible drivers of the trend.

“One is that people have a limited amount of time that they can devote for hunting for news” and that they’re using that time for national, world and niche interests such as hobbies or “affinity” sites, he said.

Social networking sites like Facebook offer a different kind of local community for people he said – “it’s a community of friends, it’s a community of interest.”

The next State of the News Media report will be out March 15 at www.stateofthemedia.org.

At The Bee, we see people’s changing information habits not only as context for what we do, but as critical factors in how well we serve what might be our most important role: connecting people to the common interests we do share.

As Rosenstiel noted, some of that is news about local government and focused geographic communities. Some of “local” is the broader destiny interests we share – for instance, why in Sacramento a snowpack total in the Sierra feels like a backyard interest, because that snowpack affects water supplies.

As we do on an ongoing basis, we’ll use reader feedback, formal research, conversations with leaders in our communities and other information to help us improve coverage in both new and traditional ways.

We hope you’ll weigh in.

Cable listings to expand

One service we provide is TV listings, and we disappointed a portion of our readers in January when we reduced our daily listings to save newsprint.

Beginning Tuesday, a modified daily grid will restore almost all the cable listings for evening programs. The tradeoff is that the listings will cover a smaller time window, beginning at 7 p.m.

Based on conversations with readers who’ve called or written about the changes, we think this choice will satisfy more readers.

Thanks for the feedback.

We don’t know whether Richard Nary’s reunion with the family he abandoned 35 years ago will work out, but we do know lots of people will be interested to see.

Bee readers met Nary and his grown daughter, Krista Szymborski, through a front-page story by reporter Cynthia Hubert and photographer Renée C. Byer on Jan. 29.

The rest of the world met them later that day after Yahoo! featured the story on its news site; the story drew nearly 1.2 million page views at sacbee.com, and an accompanying photo gallery saw more than 550,000 views.

To recap briefly, Nary had been homeless in Sacramento before meeting a man named Todd Reiners, a computer specialist who works at The Bee. Reiners took Nary in, moving him out of a cardboard box near a gas station.

A Bee editor learned of the situation, and Hubert (aided by Bee researcher Sheila Kern) began reporting, checking out the backgrounds of the key players and verifying elements of the story.

Hubert and Byer were there when Szymborski arrived in Sacramento to meet the father who had left a wife and five children in upstate New York decades ago. Their story was published the next day, sharing Nary’s long struggles with alcohol abuse and the Facebook post by Szymborski that brought them back together.

“What made the story so successful, I think, is that everyone was willing to ‘play ball,’ to be honest about everything that happened and all the water under the bridge,” Hubert told me the other day in an e-mail. “There was no sugar-coating from anyone.”

Their story connected with scores of readers on a personal level. Many began their online comments by sharing experiences of their own separation from children or parents.

Others were skeptical, if not cynical, warning of dire results from the reconnection.

For me, this underscores the enduring power of a compelling story. It also shows the value of careful reporting and the importance of honesty – among story subjects and journalists.

I asked Hubert about the story’s impact. She has been a reporter for 24 years, and said this piece ranked in her Top 10 in terms of reader response.

Szymborski, meanwhile, “tells me that they never imagined such a response and that it has been mostly gratifying though they were a little disturbed by some of the comments of the ‘haters’ online,” Hubert said.

The daughter has answered all the e-mail and phone calls she has received, Hubert said, and “is hopeful that their story can inspire others to find long-lost loved ones, and to forgive the ‘sins’ of the past.”

A few days after the first story ran, Hubert followed up with a report that Nary had decided to move in with his daughter in Wisconsin. There were worries (Nary was drinking beer again), but Szymborski remained hopeful, saying, “I hope he stays with us.”

I admire this family’s candor. And like many readers, I’ll hope to hear, eventually, how things turn out.

The Bee’s Data Center, a rich and frequently updated online resource, won national recognition from the American Society of Newspaper Editors in a report released last week, but its value is greatest here in our community.

The center includes dozens of databases of local, regional, state and federal information.

One of the newest tools helps you look up contributors to the California governor’s race.

Find the Data Center at www.sacbee.com/datacenter and the campaign database at www.sacbee.com/gov2010money.

The other day I heard from a reader who wanted to know more about Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger’s “private” lunch for legislators, held after the State of the State address a few weeks ago with public and press excluded.

The reader, C.S., thought there was more to the story.

“As a state worker, I have to follow the state rules mandating that any expenses I may claim show a valid state purpose,” he e-mailed. “If any one of the attendees claimed any expenses (e.g. taxi fare) relating to this private lunch, and cited the purpose as ‘official state business’ then that is something the people deserve to know.”

I’m with C.S., but I have to tell him that he’s singing a different song from the governor and many of those in the Legislature.

The lunch, at the venerable Sutter Club near the Capitol, clearly violated the spirit of the state’s open-meetings law. When the governor convenes the Legislature, for any purpose, the gathering should be public.

According to the Associated Press, Schwarzenegger’s invitation to the lunch said this, in part: “I plan to lay out some bold ideas for helping our great state through this troubled time and building an even brighter future, and I don’t doubt that we will have plenty to talk about.”

Californians would love nothing more than help through this troubled time, and better yet a brighter future. That’s a discussion worth having – in public.

According to the AP, a Schwarzenegger spokesman said about 70 lawmakers came to the lunch, which would have been a majority of the 120-member Legislature.

Despite the shrugging among the political crowd – “this was a social event,” etc. – Schwarzenegger’s clubby approach underlined a theme of arrogance that has become too common: that the rules don’t apply except when those in power want them to, and that a governor can more or less do whatever he wants.

One of my Bee colleagues, veteran political columnist Dan Walters, sees this differently. His column Monday called the private lunch flap overblown.

I’m newer here, but I think the lunch is another bad note from a tone-deaf leadership. I hear recurring themes in public discontent with government: Citizens want common sense. They want government to work. They want value for their tax money.

They want respect.

California voters have used strong measures to keep elected officials accountable: Term limits, the resounding rejection of budget-balancing initiatives last year and a constant drumbeat of disapproval that has led to pay cuts for legislators.

Such tactics, along with threats of recrimination against legislators who vote their consciences, haven’t always produced good government. Yet voters aren’t wrong to yearn for elected officials who report back to citizens, not to big political money.

Those who want a voice in government need first to know what’s happening. That’s why a private gathering of the governor and the Legislature is emblematic rather than trivial.

Californians know our state faces enormous financial challenges. Recent Field polls underscore their concern about the struggling economy and high unemployment.

Their elected leaders could show respect by including them in the discussion about how to solve budget problems and support economic recovery.

Schwarzenegger and the legislators might take notes from C.S., the state employee who e-mailed me, about responsibility and accountability.

Maybe they should invite him to their next lunch.

If you caught the news the other day that the New York Times plans to start charging for frequent online readership in 2011, you probably also know that this idea seems as dangerous to some critics as barbed wire once seemed to Western ranchers.

“This won’t work,” concluded one commenter on the Media Decoder blog written by the NYT’s David Carr.

Via Twitter, another man posted several updates declaring he would never pay and saying how angry he was at the Times for proposing this. (I’m guessing he finds the Web site useful.)

But amid the criticism was encouragement from others who said they valued the Times online, would gladly pay and wondered why it was taking so long to begin charging.

Such comments echo suggestions and outright entreaties I hear often from readers who want Bee journalism to remain strong or improve, and who don’t like seeing the effects of advertising revenue declines on our operation.

Some ask if they can pay extra; others encourage us to stop offering Bee content online for free. These aren’t simple questions, since advertising (including online ad dollars) still accounts for most of The Bee’s revenue. Still, we’re all tuned in to the paid content discussion.

The New York Time’s plan, announced Wednesday, involves “metering” usage. Readers would be allowed to view a certain number of stories or links free before being asked to sign in as paid users.

There’s nothing new about either charging online readers or about the polarized debate as to whether that will work. The Wall Street Journal and Financial Times, among internationally known titles, and many other smaller newspapers, specialized magazines and Web sites work on a subscription model.

The argument boils down to a question that faces anyone trying to provide reliable, accurate news and information – small startups and major media companies alike. How do you pay for such coverage, not just this week or next month, but for the longer term?

The trite saying that information online “wants to be free” overlooks reality.

Good coverage is not done for free, at least not on any sustainable level. Someone pays.

The Bee’s best stories take dozens of hours, sometimes months of work. While there’s much talk from people who consider news a “commodity,” original reporting is increasingly scarce and still provided in great part by newspapers, as a recent Pew study showed.

Definitions of news are changing. Some news is what happened today: that’s the commodity part. But research and reporting, along with intelligent analysis, number crunching and storytelling craft, are not commodities.

The debate over how to pay for journalism or other specialized information isn’t only for people in the business. It’s also not just about journalism, as TV and movie companies begin to struggle with their own version of the Internet shift to free content.

All kinds of ideas are being tried, some involving volunteer or community contributors with professional moderation and others focused on subscriptions for specialized content. Nonprofit foundations are funding experimental newsrooms, and news organizations including The Bee are redefining how our journalism serves readers whose lives and habits are being reshaped by new technology.

The Bee’s answer has been to focus on quality and on coverage we provide that can’t be found elsewhere; on original reporting, including investigative work, that provides real value in our community.