*Brown to announce bipartisan tax deal

See update below

Well, bipartisan with the Assembly. Capitol Alert says it's unclear whether the governor can win Republican support in the Senate. It's a cumbersome, quite untested plan in which companies would be required to base their corporate tax calculations only on the share of sales they have in California. In exchange, start-up manufacturers will receive a 4 percent sales tax reduction on equipment purchases (other firms will get a 1 percent reduction). The package would raise about $1 billion annually starting in the 2012 tax year, or so the proponents claim. Brown holds a press conference at this hour to announce the deal.

*Update: Brown has a group of Democratic and Republican assembly members at his side in announcing the package. Assemblyman Nathan Fletcher, Republican of San Diego, calls it "real and permanent tax relief for California." And everyone in the group is talking about how this will generate jobs. Here's the webcast.

**Kind of a bizarre press conference in which Brown ducks questions about the number of jobs that would be created under the tax plan - as well as potential revenue losses by offering these breaks to businesses. At one point, he was questioning whether members would understand what they will be voting for (good luck trying to figure out this bill). And of course there's no telling what might happen in the Senate. The governor said he hoped the Assembly agreement might create a little "mo" in the other chamber. "We celebrate small victories," he said of the gathering of Democrats Republicans (and representatives of labor and small business). By the way, he wouldn't engage the reports of a deal with Amazon, in which Democratic leaders agreed to hold off on the collection of an online sales tax for a year. That's more lost revenue.