Just because they’re not throwing their hats into the ring in 2012 doesn’t mean there aren’t a slew of people working now to try to succeed Rep. Pete Stark, D-Fremont.

We’ve known for a while that state Senate Majority Leader Ellen Corbett, D-San Leandro, had formed a campaign committee, but I was told week before last that she won’t challenge the 20-term incumbent in 2012, preferring to just fundraise and network in this cycle. Indeed, I now see she’s planning an Oktoberfest fundraiser Thursday, Oct. 27 at San Leandro’s Englander Pub “to benefit Ellen’s run for Congress in 2014 for the new 15th Congressional District.” She’s asking from $100 to $5,000 a head.

Then there’s Ro Khanna, 35, a lawyer at Silicon Valley mainstay Wilson Sonsini who until recently was a deputy assistant secretary at the U.S. Commerce Department overseeing 108 U.S. Export Assistance Centers in 47 states. Khanna challenged the late Rep. Tom Lantos, D-San Mateo, in the 2004 primary when he lived on the Peninsula but has building ties to prominent Democrats ever since. Now he’s in Fremont, and when we chatted over coffee a few months ago, he said he was interested in Stark’s seat but supports Stark and would never challenge him.

Today, I see noted Silicon Valley venture capitalist Vinod Khosla and his wife will host a fundraiser for Khanna – they’re asking $1,000 or $2,500 a head – at their Portola Valley home on Oct. 18, with Reps. Anna Eshoo, D-Palo Alto, and Mike Honda, D-San Jose, scheduled to attend. An e-mail announcing the fundraiser says former U.S. Secretary of Transportation Norm Mineta; hotel and realty mogul Penny Pritzker; Symantec Chairman John Thompson; Francisco Partners cofounder Sandy Robertson; venture capitalist Bill Draper; Kleiner Perkins Caufield & Byers managing partner Ted Schlein; KPCB partner Brook Byers; salesforce.com Chairman and CEO Marc Benioff; Esprit founder Susie Tompkins Buell; and Hummer Winblad Venture Partners managing director Mark Gorenberg are Khanna supporters, too.

That’s a lot of money, right there: a couple of billionaires in the bunch, and the crème de la crème of Bay Area/Silicon Valley Democratic fundraising. In fact, it’s so much so that I wondered whether Khanna had a change of heart about waiting for Stark to retire. But he told me today he’s still “waiting and supporting him.”

“I admire him and will mobilize Dems as discussed and prepare for future,” Khanna said in an e-mail. “But unlike others I will be supporting him until he signals the seat is open in the future.”

The only person who has declared candidacy so far to take on Stark in 2012 is Alameda County prosecutor and Dublin Councilman Eric Swalwell, 30.

“The United States Congress does not take reservations,” Swalwell said today of the Corbett and Khanna fundraisers. “It’s walk-ins only. We take our election cycles one at a time. There’s an election in 2012 and we can’t afford to wait for a new direction. So I’m acting now.”

UPDATE @ 10:18 A.M. TUESDAY: Per the discussion of his residency in the comments below, Khanna e-mailed me late last night to say that although his voter registration shows him living within the new 17th Congressional District, that’s actually the residence he maintained here while in DC working for the Commerce Department. Since returning, he has leased a residence in Fremont’s Ardenwood area, within the new 15th Congressional District, he said: “I have not had a chance to change my voter registration, but will do that this week.”

He also mentioned that his campaign has a grassroots event planned for Nov. 19 in Hayward. “So, just wanted to let you know that we do have local community involvement too,” he wrote, not just the deep-pocketed donors.

Gov. Jerry Brown signed a bunch of bills today that he said will strengthen public safety in California, but what he didn’t sign might be just as interesting.

Among the bills he signed was one that extends from 45 days to 60 the advance notice that the state prisons must give local police and prosecutors before the scheduled release date of an inmate convicted of a violent felony. Another will incrementally increase minimum restitution fines from $200 to $300 for a felony and from $100 to $150 for a misdemeanor. Yet another lets crime victims request to be notified by e-mail when there’s a change in the custody status of their victimizers.

The governor signed two bills by Senate Majority Leader Ellen Corbett, D-San Leandro. SB 534 changes California’s sexual assault testing protocol to conform with federal requirements for Violence Against Women Act funding – for example, the bill specifies that any sexual assault victim who seeks a forensic medical exam isn’t required to engage with law enforcement in order to receive the free exam. And SB 622 requires out-of-state sex offenders to register in California upon moving here; Corbett said today this “makes it tougher for those who commit sex crimes in other states to hide in California.”

But the governor vetoed SB 296 by state Sen. Roderick Wright, D-Los Angeles, which would’ve created a process for someone subject to a gang injunction to petition for relief from that injunction if he or she meets certain criteria including no arrests, gang activity or new gang tattoos within the past three years.

“This measure would require that a special form be given to gang members when they are served with an injunction to make it easier to petition the court for an exclusion from the injunction,” the governor wrote in his veto message. “Under current law, people who are served with a gang injunction are given the full panoply of legal rights to contest an injunction against them. Prosecutors believe this bill will increase meritless litigation in our courts which are already laboring under severe cut backs. I agree.”

And conspicuously missing from the list of public safety bills the governor addressed was AB 144 by Assemblyman Anthony Portantino, D-La Canada Flintridge, which would ban the “open carry” of unloaded firearms in public places. The California Police Chiefs Association and the Peace Officers Research Association of California, along with various gun-control groups, say open-carry practices should be banned for the sake of public safety, and to protect the safety and conserve the resources of police officers checking to ensure the guns aren’t loaded, in accordance with state law.

Gun-rights activists have seized upon open-carry laws in states across the nation as a means of expressing their political beliefs, acting individually, or gathering to carry their weapons both as an exercise of constitutional rights and for self-protection. They say they’re both protecting their rights under current law as well as advocating for changes so that more people can get permits to carry concealed weapons, something that’s sharply limited under current law.

An absence of action on the bill so far certainly isn’t conclusive, but it does seem interesting that the governor apparently didn’t see it as easily categorizeable with the public safety bills on which he acted today.

At least two local lawmakers say the layoff of 1,100 workers and bankruptcy of Fremont-based Solyndra – a solar cell manufacturing company held up as a paragon of California’s burgeoning green economy by politicians such as Arnold Schwarzenegger, Barbara Boxer and Barack Obama – is because government hasn’t done enough.

Per our story, Solyndra had landed $535 million in loan guarantees from the U.S. Department of Energy, as well as $1.1 billion in private venture capital.

Assemblyman Bob Wieckowski, D-Fremont, said he’s saddened by Solyndra’s news and his thoughts are with the workers who’ll lose their jobs, but the company’s struggle “is one shared by other American manufacturers attempting to scale-up operations in a very competitive global economy.

“Although there has been criticism of the amount of public funding received by the company, we must recognize that our fiercest foreign competitors often receive substantially more assistance from their own governments,” he said. “If America is to compete globally and maintain a strong manufacturing base in our industries, we must provide the proper investments, research, and incentives to grow jobs here and assist our companies in scaling up operations. Our workers in the region are among the most innovative and productive in the world, and I remain confident that we can be competitive in the emerging clean energy field.”

State Senate Majority Leader Ellen Corbett, D-San Leandro, said it’s “devastating news,” and state lawmakers must “wake up to the fact we must act with urgency to protect jobs and help nurture California’s economy back to good health. When we don’t, our families and communities suffer. The instant loss of 1,100 jobs in my district is big blow that will have negative trickle-down effects throughout the Bay Area.”

“Unfortunately, it is too late to help Solyndra, but many other companies are struggling and could benefit from legislation I have authored that would give California-based solar companies a bid preference on state contracts,” Corbett said. “If California is going to place solar panels on state property, shouldn’t we try to use panels made in California? Isn’t it common sense to use taxpayer dollars to support California jobs? This is a simple measure that can help protect California jobs.”

Corbett’s SB 175 would’ve provided a 5-percent bid preference to companies that certify they’re using California-assembled or manufactured solar panels; the state Senate passed the bill June 1 on a 27-11 vote, but the Assembly Business and Professions Committee nixed it last month. Corbett recently revived the measure by gutting-and-amending the language into SB 134; time is growing short in this legislative session, but Corbett spokesman Andrew LaMar said today that Speaker John Perez’ office has committed to scheduling a hearing on it.

An East Bay lawmaker whose online privacy bill was narrowly defeated this summer says Facebook’s new privacy settings are better, but not good enough.

The social media giant rolled out some new protections on photo tagging and streamlined privacy controls yesterday. State Senate Majority Leader Ellen Corbett, D-San Leandro, said that’s good.

“I applaud Facebook for moving to give users clearer explanations and greater control over their privacy settings. It’s crucial that users of social networking sites understand who can access the information they provide to sites and how they can control the privacy of that information,” Corbett said in a news release today.

But while this is a good step, “much more still must be done to protect children and educate adults and children about the dangers of disclosing information on the Internet,” she added. “We know if people are not careful, they can become victims of stalkers, predators, scam artists or identity thieves.

“The pervasiveness of new social media has raised fundamental questions about public safety and privacy that we need to vigilantly explore. As a parent and a legislator, I have serious concerns about protecting children and will continue to work on this issue.”

Corbett had authored SB 242, which would have required that social-networking sites default to hiding information unless users choose to have it shown; that they create a process for new users to set their privacy settings as part of their registration, using plain language; and that they remove personal identifying information in a timely manner upon the user’s request. A violation would have been punishable by a fine of up to $10,000.

SB 242 fell two votes shy of passing the state Senate in early June, after staunch opposition and some hard lobbying by Facebook. Company spokesman Andrew Noyes in late May had said Corbett was threatening California’s internet economy by trying to impose “unnecessary regulations that ignore the extraordinary lengths that companies like ours go to in order to protect individuals’ privacy and give them the tools to determine for themselves how much information they wish to share online.”

But Corbett notes that although federal law prohibits children under the age of 13 from using social networking sites, more than 7.5 million children under the age of 13 have Facebook accounts, according to Consumer Reports magazine – a particularly vulnerable population, often unaware that sharing personal information over the Internet can make them targets for identity theft, financial scams or molestation.

An East Bay lawmaker’s bill to ban per-signature pay for ballot-measure petition circulators has been vetoed by Gov. Jerry Brown.

SB 168, by state Sen. Ellen Corbett, D-San Leandro, would have forbidden paying ballot measure petition signature gatherers on a per-signature basis, which she said would reduce fraud by reducing the temptation to pad out petitions with bogus names.

In his veto message, Brown wrote he understands the potential abuses under the current system but sees two flaws in Corbett’s bill. First, it would bar groups from even setting targets or quotas for signature gatherers; he said making productivity goals into a crime seems impractical.

And second, per-signature payment often is the most cost-effective way to get enough signatures to qualify for the ballot, he wrote: “Eliminating this option will drive up the cost of circulating ballot measures, thereby further favoring the wealthiest interests.”

“I am not persuaded that the unintended consequences won’t be worse than the abuses the bill aims to prevent,” Brown wrote.

The bill’s opponents had said there’s little evidence of such fraud, but Secretary of State Debra Bowen, the state’s chief elections officer, was among those who had endorsed the bill.

The state Senate passed SB 168 in May on a 23-15 vote, and the Assembly passed it in July on a 48-28 vote.

UPDATE: Read the full story, updated with Corbett’s comment on the veto, here.

The Legislature has adjourned for a month, and now we sit with bated breath, waiting to see which of the slew of bills it sent Gov. Jerry Brown this week – including some interesting ones from the Bay Area delegation – will actually get his signature.

For example, SB 168, by state Sen. Ellen Corbett, D-San Leandro, forbids paying ballot measure petition signature gatherers on a per-signature basis, which she says will reduce fraud by reducing the temptation to pad out petitions with bogus names. Opponents say there’s little evidence of such fraud, and outlawing per-signature payment will make it prohibitively expensive to wage ballot-measure campaigns. Secretary of State Debra Bowen, the state’s chief elections officer, is among those who have endorsed the bill. The state Senate passed SB 168 in May on a 23-15 vote, and the Assembly passed it yesterday on a 48-28 vote.

AB 459, by Assemblyman Jerry Hill, D-San Mateo, would ratify a national “National Popular Vote” plan by agreeing that California would award its Electoral College votes to the presidential ticket that gets the most popular votes nationwide. Similar bills already have passed in Hawaii, Illinois, Maryland, Massachusetts, Maryland, New Jersey, Vermont and Washington plus the District of Columbia, but approval by California – with its 55 electoral votes – would push considerably closer to the goal of reaching the 270 out of 538 needed to activate the plan. Proponents say the bill would boost California’s stature in the presidential election process. The Legislature approved similar bills in 2006 and 2008 but Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger vetoed them. The state Senate approved it yesterday on a 23-15 vote, and the Assembly passed it later yesterday on a 49-5 vote.

And SB 687, by state Sen. Mark Leno, D-San Francisco, would ensure that no judge or jury convicts a defendant, or approves an aggravating factor in a crime that allows for a stricter penalty, based solely on the uncorroborated testimony of a jailhouse informant. The bipartisan California Commission on the Fair Administration of Justice recommended this in 2006 as a means of avoiding wrongful convictions; it’s supported by the San Francisco and Los Angeles district attorneys, among others, but the California District Attorneys Association opposes it. Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger vetoed similar bills. The state Senate passed it in May on a 23-15 vote, and the Assembly passed it yesterday on a 47-26 vote.

Lots of tough words are flying back and forth across the aisle as the Legislature has sent a Democratic party-line budget to Gov. Jerry Brown.

From state Senate Majority Leader Ellen Corbett, D-San Leandro:

“Today Democrats have passed a balanced budget and respected the state constitutional deadline and voters’ wishes. While this was the responsible thing to do, it is heartbreaking. Republicans were unwilling to give voters the option to avoid cuts and slashing funding for courts and education.”

“This deadline, and our commitment to meet it, has been known to all, including Republicans, since Proposition 25 passed last November. Republicans’ steadfast resistance to putting another option before voters – to ask whether to continue taxes at their current level instead of letting them expire – is undemocratic.

“The truth is we have no other option to pass a budget that is balanced. Without more revenue, the only option left is to make awful cuts. And these come after we already made $11 billion of tough cuts in March.

“There is no doubt we can do better – we must do better – for California and its future. I call on Republicans to consider the consequences of what is happening here today, and ask all Californians to contact Republican legislators and demand another option.”

“The bill now goes to the governor, who will continue to seek Republican support for an alternative to this harsh, all-cuts budget. All Californians should contact the governor and Republican legislators today to demand a more equitable solution.”

From state Senators Tom Berryhill, R-Modesto; Anthony Cannella, R-Ceres; Bill Emmerson, R-Hemet; and Tom Harman, R-Huntington Beach, the four Republicans seen as pivotal to a budget deal:

“Today’s actions prove that the bridge tax isn’t a stumbling block – it’s political theater. The real stumbling block for the Majority Party are the unions and trial lawyers demanding they block the reform proposals we have been pushing for months.

“Instead of a political drill, today we could have had a real bipartisan budget – one that allows voters to weigh in on Governor Brown’s tax proposal as well as a hard spending cap, significant reforms to our broken pension system, and improvements to California’s business climate to spur the economy and get people back to work.”

From Lt. Gov. Gavin Newsom:

“Today, through their inexplicable refusal to engage in a responsible and balanced budget solution, Republican legislators have forced an additional $300M in devastating cuts to our public universities.

“For six months, Governor Jerry Brown and Democratic leaders have tried to work with Republican legislators to reach common-sense, common-ground solutions to California’s budget problems that would have minimized already enormous cuts to the University of California and California State University systems, the cornerstone of California’s economic engine.

“But, even after Democrats passed $12.5B of budget cuts in March, including $1B from higher education, Republican lawmakers have been incapable and unwilling to meet anywhere near the middle.

“These cuts are penny wise and pound foolish and threaten to further damage a stretched-to-the-limit public university system that was once the envy of the world. In volatile economic times, we should be investing in our universities to ensure we are producing the highly-skilled, educated workforce California needs to compete in the global economy.

“If Republicans want to walk the walk on job creation and attract and retain businesses in California, they should immediately return to the table and negotiate a good-faith solution that reverses these additional cuts to the State’s universities.”

From Board of Equalization member George Runner:

“Make no mistake, this Democrat budget isn’t about solving California’s fiscal problems—it’s only goal is to ensure lawmakers keep their paychecks flowing.

“When voters last fall granted Democrats their wish of majority-vote budgets, they demanded lawmakers forfeit their pay if those budgets are not approved on-time. But it was never the voters’ intention for lawmakers to approve a sham budget simply to keep their paychecks coming.

“What’s worse is that to protect their own pay, Democrats are poised to sacrifice the paychecks of thousands of California small businesses known as affiliates. Up to 25,000 of these Internet entrepreneurs will lose their affiliate status if Democrats approve a so-called ‘Amazon tax.’ According to the Board of Equalization’s analysis, ‘termination of affiliate programs would have an adverse impact on state employment’ and ‘lead to lower revenues.’

“The dumbest idea of all is the Democrats’ plan to sell state buildings for one-time revenue. If lawmakers want real one-time dollars, they should consider my proposals to raise billions in revenue by (1) granting an interest and penalty holiday to spur collection of delinquent tax payments and (2) selling-off aging debts owed the state.”

More, after the jump…
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Closer, but still not close enough for state Senate Majority Leader Ellen Corbett, D-San Leandro.

Corbett’s SB 242, would have required that social-networking sites default to hiding information unless users choose to have it shown; that they create a process for new users to set their privacy settings as part of their registration, using plain language; and that they remove personal identifying information in a timely manner upon the user’s request. A violation would have been punishable by a fine of up to $10,000.

Last Thursday, the state Senate’s vote on SB 242 was 16 to 16, five votes short of what it needed to pass. After several days of arm-twisting, Corbett gave it another go today – and fell two votes short. Friday is the last day for Senate-originated bills to pass out of the Senate this session, so this battle is over for now.

But Corbett vowed today to keep working on the issue and organize a summit on internet privacy dangers.

“I feel terrible for children, their parents and the many others who are at risk of being victims of identity theft or other criminal activity because their private information falls into the wrong hands,” she said in a news release. “It is clear to me that everyone, and especially children, who use social networking sites needs their personal information better protected.”

Corbett said that she has received letters and emails of encouragement from across the country, and that polls show a growing number of Americans are worried about the lack of protection of their personal information on the internet. The San Franciso-based national nonprofit Common Sense Media issued a floor alert yesterday telling legislators it supported AB 242 as “an important step forward in ensuring the privacy rights of social network users” with “important implications for kids and their families” who would be empowered “with more information and more control over how their personal information is being used and displayed.”

Facebook staunchly opposed the bill; company spokesman Andrew Noyes last week said Corbett is threatening California’s internet economy by trying to impose “unnecessary regulations that ignore the extraordinary lengths that companies like ours go to in order to protect individuals’ privacy and give them the tools to determine for themselves how much information they wish to share online.”

Noyes emailed reporters yesterday to note the company’s response to a letter he said it received from Corbett in which the Senator purportedly said she had “been unable to engage representatives of [Facebook] in any dialogue.” Facebook’s public policy people met with or talked to Corbett’s office 13 times this year, Noyes wrote, including a February meeting at the company’s Palo Alto headquarters between Corbett and Facebook’s chief operating officer, safety programs manager, chief security officer and vice president of public policy.

Hot on the heels of California’s U.S. Senators calling for inspections of the state’s two nuclear power plants in light of the still-unfolding nuclear crisis in Japan, the California State Senate is gearing up for an investigation of its own.

State Senate Majority Leader Ellen Corbett, D-San Leandro, announced today that the Senate Select Committee on Earthquake and Disaster Preparedness, Response, and Recovery will hold a hearing at 2:30 p.m. noon (time changed due to Senate floor session) this Monday, March 21, at the State Capitol to examine the damage caused in California by the tsunami after the earthquake in Japan and to explore the state’s preparedness; the hearing also will focus on the safety of the state’s nuclear power plants and natural gas infrastructure.

Representatives from San Onofre and the Diablo Canyon nuclear plants will testify, along with nuclear safety experts and the California Energy Commission. California’s two major natural gas operators and the California Public Utilities Commission will testify on the ability of our natural gas infrastructure to withstand a major seismic event.

California Emergency Management Agency Acting Secretary Mike Dayton and Secretary of Natural Resources John Laird will detail the response to the tsunami along California’s coast. And in response to concerns about radioactive fallout, the Department of Public Health will update lawmakers and the public on any necessary precautions.

Corbett was among 10 state lawmakers who wrote last month to the U.S. Energy Department’s Blue Ribbon Commission on America’s Nuclear Future, urging that it hold hearings in California on seismic safety.

State Senate Majority Leader Ellen Corbett is taking another stab at legislation to bar companies that gather petition signatures for ballot measures from paying workers on a per-signature basis.

Corbett said SB 168, introduced Thursday, would remove the incentive for signature gatherers to harass or bully voters into signing petitions, or to fabricate signatures; if they’re paid an hourly wage or salary, it won’t matter how many signatures they gather.

“Our initiative process was established at the turn of the century to give Californians more direct say in our democratic process. It was certainly not set up to create a scam to line the pockets of signature gatherers,” Corbett, D-San Leandro, said in a news release issued Friday afternoon. “Senate Bill 168 will help eliminate fraud and uphold the integrity of the initiative process.”

Some states have received reports of petition circulators forging signatures of names taken from a phonebook, she said; others inserted carbon paper and a second petition beneath the original one, without voters’ knowledge, to get signatures on two petitions at a time. And here in California, she noted, Sacramento County election officials in 2006 discovered that nearly 33 percent of signatures in a petition filed were fraudulent.

Corbett, along with senators Mark DeSaulnier, D-Concord, and Dean Florez, D-Shafter, had put forth a similar bill in 2009 that was vetoed by Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger in 2009; the governor said it would limit the initiative process by making it “difficult for grassroots organizations to gather the necessary signatures and qualify measures for the ballot.”

A few states, including Colorado, Montana and Nebraska, passed similar laws in recent years, but a federal judge last June issued a preliminary injunction against enforcement of Colorado’s in a still-pending lawsuit that claims the ban is unconstitutional.