Jim Costa News

Thumbs up to Valley lawmakers working to obtain an interstate designation for Highway 99.

Central Valley lawmakers this week briefly summoned House attention to the region's water shortages, challenging the environmental rules that have curtailed irrigation deliveries.

Temperatures outside the building climbed to 108 degrees as a standing-room-only crowd of 800-plus farmworkers, growers and environmentalists squeezed into an auditorium on the California State University-Fresno campus June 28 to hear how the Obama administration plans to address the state's ongoing water woes.

Republican strategists are now roughing up San Joaquin Valley congressional Democrats with radio ads linking them to the region's water woes.

The Social Security Administration has continued to pay millions of dollars in benefits to dead Americans, and other elderly U.S. residents are at risk of losing badly needed aid because they're improperly recorded as deceased, federal investigators warn in a new report.

Interior Secretary Ken Salazar on Sunday announced several steps he hoped would ease the toll of the state's water shortage on farmers, and said he would assign a top deputy to help find solutions.

After all the arms had been twisted, only two four Democrats gave their leadership an unpleasant surprise at the end of the climate change vote -- and are firmly in Pelosi-Obama doghouse: Texas Rep.

The following is Dan Bacher's view of the town meeting in Fresno. This will be a significant event for the media in the battle over California Water.

The U.S. House of Representatives passed sweeping climate change legislation just after 7:15pm tonight by 219-212. The bill is House Speaker Nancy Pelosi's signature issue and a top priority of the Obama Administration.

Say this much for Rep. Dennis Cardoza: He certainly knows how to get his colleagues' attention.

Under increasing political pressure to address California's water crisis, the Obama administration said Wednesday that it will dispatch Interior Secretary Ken Salazar to a hastily organized town-hall meeting Sunday in Fresno.

Interior Secretary Ken Salazar and his top staff will soon be feeling Fresno's pain, in a high-profile town hall meeting now being organized for Sunday afternoon in the drought-stricken city.

That's what Stockton is, two Valley congressmen said at a hearing Friday in Washington.

Highway 99 would move a step closer to becoming an interstate under legislation that Reps.

Fri, Jun 19, 2009 Officials in Los Banos, a city of 36,000 on the western edge of the San Joaquin Valley, received a call they didn't expect shortly after they submitted an application for federal money to hire more police officers.

Central Valley lawmakers this week briefly summoned House attention to the region's water shortages, challenging the environmental rules that have curtailed irrigation deliveries.

Valley counties differ sharply over renewed congressional efforts to promote Highway 99 into a federal interstate.

Developer World Oil, which wants to build the big Bakersfield Commons project in northwest Bakersfield, is irking the city manager.

This from FLORIDA TODAY's Eun Kyung Kim in Washington: WASHINGTON - Rep. Suzanne Kosmas plans to bring along some fellow lawmakers when she returns to the district this weekend.

Frustration over pitiful milk prices spilled over into a dairy farmers protest Thursday outside the downtown Modesto office of Rep.