** The California Recovery Team, Governor Arnold Schwarzenegger’s 2005 special election initiatives committee, settled a case brought before the state’s Fair Political Practices Commission today by the Alliance for a Better California. (ABC) public employee unions coalition. ABC had charged that the Arnold campaign committee violated state elections law last year by not filing daily reports detailing its large expenditures on behalf of the governor’s four unsuccessful “Year of Reform” initiatives. The committee has agreed to pay a fine of some 200.000 dollars. That is less than the 263,000 levied against Democratic gubernatorial candidate Cruz Buistamente in the 2003 recall election and slightly more than the fine against Senator Dianne Feinstein in 1992.

The CRT prevailed in a trial court action brought during the election on the same grounds. But an appeal was made. Meanwhile, the CRT made the filings in dispute and ABC filed a complaint with the FPPC.

>** State Senator Chuck Poochigian, the Republican challenger in the race for state attorney general against former Governor Jerry Brown, is on the air without fanfare. An eagle-eyed New West reader — there is a reason why Slate’s Mickey Kaus calls you all “bizarrely useful” — spotted a Pooch TV spot running on Fox News in Sacramento.

The Poochigian campaign confirms the report. But won’t say where else, or how often, the spot is running. The spot, incidentally, is the humorous one first linked to here depicting “famous fictional crime fighters” … Batman, Dick Tracy, Dirty Harry, and Jerry Brown.