Saturday, January 1, 2011 – 08:00 p.m.

Many of San Bernardino County’s elected officials have decided not to forgo their pay increases.

Even though the county is looking at millions of dollars in new budget cuts this year and most employees have already voted to cancel previously negotiated raises.

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Zellerbach

10:49 PM PST on Saturday, January 1, 2011

By RICHARD K. DE ATLEY
The Press-Enterprise

On Monday, six tumultuous months after he was elected Riverside County’s top prosecutor, Paul Zellerbach will be sworn in, walk from the downtown Historic Courthouse to the nearby district attorney’s office, and go to work.

Zellerbach will become the first Riverside County district attorney in more than a century to take office by defeating an incumbent. He beat one-term DA Rod Pacheco in an upset win June 8.

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10:00 PM PST on Saturday, January 1, 2011

By IMRAN GHORI
The Press-Enterprise

The San Bernardino County clerk-recorder’s office will be formally transferred to the assessor Monday in the final part of a series of mergers approved in early 2010.

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Sandra Emerson and Monica Rodriguez, Staff Writers
Posted: 01/01/2011 07:06:22 AM PST

The approach to addressing illegal immigration is expected to shift as Republicans take control of the House of Representatives in the new year.

In a matter of weeks, Congress will switch from working on legislation geared toward legalization to stricter enforcement of immigration laws.

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California’s outgoing governor, who replaced the recalled Gray Davis in 2003, defends his record but admits to errors that were key to his inability to fulfill the promise of ending the state’s ‘crazy deficit spending.’

Arnold Schwarzenegger, at the state Capitol in Sacramento, is about to finish his second and final term as California governor. (Rick Loomis / Los Angeles Times / January 2, 2011)

By Evan Halper, Los Angeles Times
January 1, 2011, 3:06 p.m.

Reporting from Sacramento —

State government was failing at every level. There was an electricity crisis, a water crisis, a prison crisis. Car taxes had tripled. State contracts were tainted by corruption.

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Foreclosures in the state are still high. Sales of new homes are at historic lows. And millions of homeowners are underwater on their mortgages. So what’s the outlook for 2011 and beyond?

In Mission Crest, 373 homes — nearly 40% of those in the housing development — had been lost at one point to foreclosure, the San Bernardino County assessor’s office said. About 100 lots had been left graded and bare. (Katie Falkenberg, For The Times / May 18, 2010)

By Alejandro Lazo, Los Angeles Times
January 1, 2011, 3:22 p.m.

As housing recoveries go, this one is in need of a cure.

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