10:00 PM PDT on Tuesday, October 5, 2010

By IMRAN GHORI
The Press-Enterprise

A private attorney for San Bernardino County District Attorney Mike Ramos was hired by the county Tuesday to represent him in a sexual harassment lawsuit by a former employee.

The Board of Supervisors approved a contract with the Riverside firm of Gresham Savage Nolan & Tilden to have one of its attorneys, Richard Marca, handle Ramos’ defense. According to the contract, Marca will bill the county $275 an hour for his services but no total budget is listed.

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06:42 PM PDT on Tuesday, October 5, 2010

By LESLIE BERKMAN
The Press-Enterprise

A new economic report paints a bleak picture of Riverside and San Bernardino’s employment prospects stemming from the collapse of the housing market bubble and the loss of 80 percent of the region’s construction jobs.

“Basically the Inland Empire is the Detroit of California, but we build houses instead of cars,” said Marc Weidenmier, associate professor of economics at Claremont McKenna College, which today is set to release its first economic forecast for the Inland region.

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Salgado

07:25 AM PDT on Wednesday, October 6, 2010

By JOHN ASBURY
The Press-Enterprise

LOS ANGELES – Former Soboba Indian Tribal Chairman Robert “Bobby” Salgado admitted Tuesday that he accepted nearly $875,000 in bribes from vendors who had contracts with the tribe and its Soboba casino.

In exchange for his admission, prosecutors dismissed 34 of 36 felony counts against Salgado. The morning his trial was scheduled to begin, he pleaded guilty to the remaining two charges of bribery and filing a false tax return. He faces up to 13 years in prison, although prosecutors say they will likely seek seven to nine years.

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James Rufus Koren, Staff Writer
Posted: 10/05/2010 03:29:53 PM PDT

Jean-Rene Basle, a longtime county attorney, will replace outgoing San Bernardino County Counsel Ruth Stringer later this year, the Board of Supervisors announced Tuesday.

Stringer, who has served as the county government’s top lawyer for about four years, said she plans to retire in December. Basle will take over as county counsel on Dec. 4 and serve a four-year term.

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Debbie Pfeiffer Trunnell, Staff Writer
Posted: 10/05/2010 07:26:30 PM PDT

SAN BERNARDINO – Angry parents asked for more financial transparency and other fixes at the beleaguered Casa Ramona Academy for Technology, Community and Education at Tuesday’s school board meeting.

The request for the board to conduct an audit of the charter school was made in the aftermath of a student protest and a heated parent meeting at the Westside school in recent weeks.

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Time sheet hours at issue

Joe Nelson, Staff Writer
Created: 10/05/2010 08:57:12 PM PDT

Former San Bernardino County Assistant Assessor Harlow Cameron took the witness stand Tuesday in the retrial of Rancho Cucamonga Councilman Rex Gutierrez, saying he reluctantly approved Gutierrez’s time sheets even though his work hours were questionable.

Cameron, who retired from the Assessor’s Office in November 2008, said that after former Assistant Assessor Adam Aleman resigned in April 2008 following his arrest in connection with a scandal at the office, then-Assessor Bill Postmus arranged to have Cameron sign off on Gutierrez’s time sheets, even though Postmus would retain the duty of assigning Gutierrez tasks.

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By Jack Chang
jchang@sacbee.com
Published: Wednesday, Oct. 6, 2010 – 12:00 am | Page 1A

Republican gubernatorial candidate Meg Whitman spent a record $140 million on her campaign through the end of September, including about $55 million since winning her party’s nomination in June, according to campaign finance records filed Tuesday.

Her Democratic rival, Jerry Brown, spent less than a tenth of Whitman’s total – about $11 million – but didn’t face any serious primary challenger and could count on unions to run anti-Whitman advertising through the summer.

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Capitol Alert
The latest on California politics and government
October 5, 2010

Nicky Diaz Santillan, the illegal immigrant who worked for nine years as a housekeeper for Republican gubernatorial candidate Meg Whitman, said this morning that she was not manipulated by anyone to come forward with accusations last week that Whitman knew she was in the country illegally.

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Capitol Alert
The latest on California politics and government
October 5, 2010

Democratic gubernatorial candidate Jerry Brown has $22.5 million in his campaign coffers to spend in the final four weeks before Election Day, his campaign said today.

Brown, the state attorney general, has raised roughly $32.5 million to date, including $9.3 million between July 1 and Sept. 30, the fundraising period covered in the campaign finance disclosures due by midnight today.

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The Republican Senate candidate says she plans to make sure Latino voters ‘understand who I am’ while making the case that Sen. Boxer is ‘no friend of the Latino community.’

Republican Senate candidate Carly Fiorina shakes hands with officials at a trucking company during a campaign appearance. (Bob Chamberlin / Los Angeles Times / October 1, 2010)

By Maeve Reston, Los Angeles Times

October 6, 2010

Reporting from San Diego —
Although she has struggled to capture the support of Latinos in her race against Democratic Sen. Barbara Boxer, Carly Fiorina said Tuesday that she was mounting an aggressive campaign to reach that key segment of voters before election day.

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By Jim Sanders
jsanders@sacbee.com
Published: Wednesday, Oct. 6, 2010 – 12:00 am | Page 3A

Republican Steve Cooley and Democrat Kamala Harris presented stark differences but no “gotcha” moments Tuesday in the only scheduled debate between the two candidates for attorney general.

Cooley vowed to be the people’s attorney, abiding by their will regardless of his personal views, while Harris said voters elect an attorney general to exercise independent judgment on issues from the environment to same-sex marriage.

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California Watch
A Project of the Center for Investigative Reporting

Submitted by Michael Montgomery on October 6, 2010

Opponents to Proposition 19 are scrambling to revitalize their campaign amid signs that public sentiment could be shifting in favor of the controversial initiative to legalize marijuana in California.

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The Assembly speaker promised that the spending plan wouldn’t be written in private. But the break in the long impasse did indeed happen behind closed doors.

By Shane Goldmacher, Los Angeles Times
October 6, 2010

Reporting from Sacramento —
The new Assembly speaker’s promise was unequivocal: Decisions about how billions upon billions of California taxpayer dollars are spent would no longer be made in private meetings or in the middle of the night.

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California’s congressional delegation and a state assemblyman call for government investigations after major lenders halt evictions and some foreclosure proceedings over concern about paperwork errors.

By Alejandro Lazo, Los Angeles Times

October 6, 2010

Political pressure on some of the nation’s biggest financial institutions grew Tuesday as a California lawmaker and the state’s congressional delegation called on regulators to investigate the foreclosure practices of big banks.

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