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Napa voters in 2002 approved Measure L, which allowed farm worker housing to be constructed on land zoned for agricultural purposes outside the county's five cities. In May 2003, River Ranch was opened, providing 60 beds for solo men. In 2004, the Ranch and Calistoga camps were full, but the Mondavi camp was less than 75 percent full and the Beringer camp did not open because there were no workers to fill it. At the same time, the ad hoc camp at the St. Helena Catholic Church was closed, and there were a few workers sleeping along the Napa river.

Has Napa's seasonal housing crisis ended? According to housing inspectors, more migrants are living with friends and relatives in Napa city houses and apartments during the harvest, charging the boarders rent. Napa's West Pueblo and Westwood neighborhoods show evidence of garage conversions, suggesting that many migrants prefer to live in the city rather than in camps outside.

The government of the 150,000-resident city of Salinas voted to close its $3 million a year library system to save money in June 2005; if the libraries close, Salinas would be one of the largest US cities without a public library. Salinas's John Steinbeck Library is named for the author of The Grapes of Wrath, who grew up nearby. The city has a $60 million a year budget and a deficit attributed to lower sales tax revenues and soaring healthcare costs. Salinas officials have already laid off 20 percent of the city's 300 workers.

Limoneira Company, a 111-year old company that is the largest agricultural operation in Ventura county with 7,000 acres in the county and the San Joaquin Valley and annual sales of $40 million, is opening Limoneira Mercantile, a retail complex in Santa Paula.

In northern San Diego county, Fallbrook View Apartments offers one-, two-, and three-bedroom units for $306 to $900 a month, about half of the usual rents for the area http://www.new.org). Some 60 of the 80 units are reserved for farm workers who earn less than $35,000 a year. The apartment complex includes a community center, health program, computer center, after-school program, day care Head Start program, and playground. Fallbrook is the "avocado capital of the world."

Budget. California's 2004-05 budget is $105.4 billion, and even though tax revenues are higher than expected, the shortfall is projected to be $8.1 billion. With no new taxes, the health and human services programs that account for a third of the general fund are expected to be cut (K-12 education accounts for half of general fund spending). The 6.5 million California residents enrolled in Medi-Cal each cost the state about $3,000 a year.

California's schools are in trouble, according to a 2005 Rand report that cited declining per-pupil funding, growing enrollments, relatively flat teacher salaries and large classes. If the problems are not fixed, the report concluded that California will not have the educated labor force it needs to be competitive. Among the findings: California's fourth- and eighth-graders since 1990 have consistently scored lower on reading and math tests than most of their peers across the country; California's classrooms had nearly 21 students per teacher in 1999-00, compared to 16 per teacher nationally.

California has six million public school students -13 percent of the nation's school-age children-and a rising share of them are from low-income families or are immigrants who are still learning English. The two key state initiatives affecting education were Proposition 13 in 1978, which set limits on annual property tax increases and shifted school funding power from local to state government, and Proposition 98, which set minimum spending levels for school funding.

The state as well as many California cities and counties are having budget problems because, during earlier eras of budget deficits, employees who did not get wage increases received enhanced pension benefits that were assumed to cost little extra. These extra pension benefits are now curbing spending, and newspapers have detailed the conflicts of interest and poor analysis of the future costs. San Diego, the seventh largest US city, has been tackling budget problems attributed in part to generous pension promises.

Republican U.S. Senate candidate Bill Jones, who garnered 38 percent of the vote in his loss to Barbara Boxer, attempted to jump-start his campaign in October 2004 by calling for federal aid to Mexico to create jobs and reduce the economic motive for illegal Mexico-US migration. Jones said US aid should be paired with a Mexican anti-corruption campaign and initiatives to improve its educational system to create a higher-caliber workforce for economic expansion south of the border.

The US budget, $2.3 trillion in FY04, ran a deficit of $412 billion, meaning that tax revenues were 16 percent and spending was 20 percent of the $11.5 trillion GDP. About 85 percent of federal spending is very hard to reduce, including the 20 percent going to Social Security, the 20 percent going to Medicare and Medicaid health-insurance, and the 20 percent for defense. Interest payments on the federal debt, about seven percent of federal spending, exceed federal spending on education, housing, transportation, science, space and technology combined.

Medicaid, which covers the poor and disabled, has become the nation's largest health program, and costs the states and the federal government more than $300 billion a year. States spend more on Medicaid than on elementary and secondary education combined.