Politics, Government & Business in California's Inland Empire
Uffer
10:00 PM PDT on Thursday, April 1, 2010
By IMRAN GHORI
The Press-Enterprise
San Bernardino County’s former top administrator filed a claim Thursday accusing supervisors of firing him in November in retaliation for his cooperation with prosecutors and the grand jury in ongoing corruption investigations.
Former County Administrative Officer Mark Uffer is seeking $15 million in damages, alleging wrongful termination, defamation, breach of contracts and fraud.
Joe Nelson, Staff Writer
Posted: 04/01/2010 07:14:15 PM PDT
The California Department of Justice is investigating the San Bernardino County Department of Public Health, according to county officials and an internal county e-mail obtained by The Sun.
The news comes a day after top county officials announced that Public Health Director Jim Lindley, who was hired in 2008 amid allegations he lacked the necessary qualifications for the job, had been fired.
10:00 PM PDT on Thursday, April 1, 2010
By JIM MILLER
Sacramento Bureau
SACRAMENTO – The 37th state Senate District is entirely within Riverside County, but San Bernardino County has a major role in the political backgrounds of the two leading GOP candidates on the April 13 special election ballot.
Over the years, Assemblyman Bill Emmerson and former Assemblyman Russ Bogh have had ties to the people and places at the center of San Bernardino County’s months-long corruption drama.
Hiring freeze, raise deferrals save more than $100 million
April 01, 2010 5:01 PM
Natasha Lindstrom
SAN BERNARDINO • As private businesses, school districts and some cities turned to layoffs, San Bernardino County has trudged through the national recession largely by increasing the workloads and freezing the pay of its more than 18,000 workers.
The extra burdens on county employees have left the general public coping with longer waits, shorter hours and fewer locations of county offices servicing residents, from getting land use permits to accessing public health services.
10:00 PM PDT on Thursday, April 1, 2010
DAN BERNSTEIN
Going into the RivCo budget season, I thought DA Rod Pacheco’s PR mill should get an unconditional release.
Sending his “executive division” to the showers could save taxpayers $500K to $1 million, depending on who’s poking the calculator. But after watching the DA present his multimedia budget promo to the Board O’ Supes, I changed my mind. This PR operation needs an emergency cash infusion.
10:30 PM PDT on Wednesday, March 31, 2010
By CASSIE MacDUFF
The Press-Enterprise
Cell phone records released this week cracked open a tiny window on what happened at 3 a.m. Feb. 8 when Riverside Police Chief Russ Leach was pulled over for drunken driving.
But the records only show who traded phone calls; they don’t show what was said.
Leach’s first call was to Sgt. Marcus Smail, a longtime friend. Smail supervises the Internal Affairs unit.
By PE Politics
April 2, 2010 6:38 AM
Southwest would have been a lot cheaper.
Assemblyman Bill Emmerson’s dash home from Sacramento to beat the candidate filing deadline for the April 13 special election cost $4,515.70, according to Emmerson’s latest finance report.
The money paid for a charter flight by Golden State Air Charter of Bakersfield.
To read entire post, click here.
By Jim Sanders
jsanders@sacbee.com The Sacramento Bee
Published: Friday, Apr. 2, 2010 – 12:00 am | Page 3A
Attorney general candidates Tom Harman and John Eastman cannot call themselves prosecutors for doing a few weeks of part-time work.
Separate Sacramento Superior Court judges ruled Thursday that Eastman cannot use “assistant attorney general” and Harman cannot use “prosecutor/attorney/ senator” as ballot designations for the June 8 primary.
Los Angeles District Attorney Steve Cooley, the third candidate in the GOP primary, had challenged the two ballot designations as deceptive.
Poizner
PolitiCal
April 1, 2010 | 8:44 pm
Steve Poizner, a Republican candidate for governor, was confronted by hundreds of protesters at a Barnes & Noble bookstore in East San Jose on Thursday evening for a signing of “Mount Pleasant,” about a year he spent guest teaching at a public high school.
Current and former students and teachers are upset about Poizner’s depiction of Mount Pleasant High School as, in the words of one student, a “ghetto school,” and those who study there as unmotivated and, generally speaking, better equipped for vocational school, if anything, than for college.
Brown
L.A. NOW
Southern California — this just in
April 1, 2010 | 6:21 pm
California Atty. Gen. Jerry Brown said in a report Thursday that the community organizing group ACORN engaged in “highly inappropriate behavior” in the state but violated no criminal law.
Brown’s office launched an investigation of ACORN’s California operations at the request of Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger last September after the release of videos that appeared to show ACORN employees advising people about how to engage in prostitution and other other illegal activity.
INVESTING
The giant public pension fund and some California state officials say the fee system invites corruption. But Blackstone and other firms contend that so-called placement agents play a useful role.
By Marc Lifsher
April 2, 2010
Reporting from Sacramento – Legislation to ban commissions paid to intermediaries for steering California’s public pension money to investment houses has spurred a lobbying war led by Wall Street’s powerful Blackstone Group, allied with such major banking firms as Wells Fargo & Co.
The battle over fees for so-called placement agents is heating up as the bill gets its first hearing in the state Legislature next week.
By Samantha Young
Associated Press
Posted: 04/01/2010 07:58:43 PM PDT
Updated: 04/02/2010 06:31:24 AM PDT
SACRAMENTO — When California lawmakers prepare to take a key vote — say when deciding state spending or last year’s $11 billion water bond — how often are they meeting with lobbyists, special interest groups or others who have a stake in the outcome?
Are constituents given the same kind of access to politicians as campaign contributors?
Such questions arose last year after a Republican lawmaker was caught on tape bragging about his sexual exploits with female lobbyists, including one whose client had business before the lawmaker’s committee. How much time, a constituent might wonder, was former Assemblyman Mike Duvall spending with lobbyists?