Wednesday, January 4, 2012 – 11:00 a.m.

Here’s the latest from last nights Iowa contest.

U.S. Representative Michele Bachmann (R-Minnesota) is out after garnering just 5% of the caucus voting.

Governor Rick Perry (R-Texas), after saying last night he would re-evaluate his campaign, is now looking ahead to the South Carolina primary later this month.

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Assemblyman Tim Donnelly, R-Twin Peaks, was cited and released today after being found with a .45 caliber handgun in his luggage at Ontario airport.

BY JIM MILLER
jmiller@pe.com
Published: 04 January 2012 10:38 AM

Assemblyman Tim Donnelly was stopped at Ontario airport this morning after security line officers discovered a handgun in his luggage, his office said this morning.

Donnelly, R-Twin Peaks, was cited and released, a spokeswoman said. He faces a misdemeanor charge.

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Riverside County supervisors and 2,000 retirees receive the supplemental benefit, costing taxpayers $2.5 million a year

BY DUANE W. GANG
STAFF WRITER
dgang@pe.com

Published: 03 January 2012 09:10 PM

Riverside County’s elected officials and 2,000 other employees receive a supplemental retirement benefit — in addition to the pension contributions each receives through CalPers, county records show.

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BY ALICIA ROBINSON
STAFF WRITER
arobinson@pe.com

Published: 03 January 2012 09:50 PM

A familiar face at Riverside City Council meetings is making another run at a seat on the dais.

Dvonne Pitruzzello, a teacher of at-risk students in Colton, jumped into what was a four-man race for Riverside mayor. She took out a petition to get signatures in lieu of the filing fee for the seat, which is on the June 5 ballot, City Clerk Colleen Nicol confirmed on Tuesday.

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Former San Bernardino County Sheriff’s deputy Nathan Gastineau sits during his preliminary hearing in a San Bernardino Superior Courtroom December 15, 2011. Gastineau, 30, of Redlands, is charged with sexual acts with a teenaged female Explorer. (Gabriel Luis Acosta, Staff Photographer)

Mike Cruz, Staff Writer
Posted: 01/03/2012 04:17:20 PM PST

SAN BERNARDINO – A Redlands girl who says she was sexually abused by a former sheriff’s deputy while in the sheriff’s Explorer program also alleges in a civil lawsuit that administrators at the Sheriff’s Department and the Public Safety Academy, a charter school in San Bernardino, were negligent or failed to act.

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By Ryan Hagen and Josh Dulaney, Staff writers
Posted: 01/03/2012 07:04:50 PM PST

SAN BERNARDINO – High-profile leaders of the city and school district have recently been replaced, and the new year is expected to bring more new faces and approaches.

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Morrell

By PE Politics
January 3, 2012 8:56 AM

Assemblyman Mike Morrell ended 2011 with a $67,000 ball-drop into his 2012 re-election campaign, records show.

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Wes Woods II and Sandra Emerson, Staff writers
Created: 01/04/2012 09:44:49 AM PST

UPLAND – Medical marijuana collective G3 Holistics Inc. remains open for business.

The collective at Suite F4 at 1710 W. Foothill Blvd. reopened at Friday afternoon, said Aaron Sandusky, president of G3 Holistics, and is keeping regular hours of 8 a.m. to 9 p.m. daily.

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Quincey

Sandra Emerson, Inland Valley Daily Bulletin
Created: 01/03/2012 11:44:27 AM PST

UPLAND – Former City Manager Robb Quincey must resolve his disputes with the city through arbitration.

The city recently rejected a claim filed by Quincey in November seeking unlimited damages as a result of his termination in May.

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January 03, 2012 1:50 PM
Brooke Edwards Staggs, City Editor

VICTORVILLE • An attorney is seeking to recover more than $9 million in damages on behalf of 4,300 people who’ve received tickets from Victorville’s red light cameras, claiming the system is “unfair, unlawful, fraudulent and deceptive.”

Robert Conaway, a criminal defense attorney from Barstow, sent notice in early December to the city of Victorville and Redflex Traffic Systems that he intends to file a class action lawsuit unless changes are made with the way red light cameras are handled here. He updated that notice in late December, tacking on the calculated damages.

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California High Speed Rail Authority shows an artist’s rendering of a high-speed train speeding along the California coast. (California High Speed Rail Authority / Associated Press / February 20, 2009)

By Ralph Vartabedian and Dan Weikel,
Los Angeles Times
January 4, 2012

In a scathing critique that could further jeopardize political support for California’s proposed $98.5-billion bullet train, a key independent review panel is recommending that state officials postpone borrowing billions of dollars to start building the first section of track this year.

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Bowen

PolitiCal
On politics in the Golden State
January 3, 2012 | 6:21 pm

After an embarrassing, month-long outage, California’s online database of campaign contributions and lobbying went back online in the final hours of 2011, once again allowing residents of the state that houses Silicon Valley to easily find out what corporations and unions are spending money to influence their elected officials.

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Romney

By Michael A. Memoli and Paul West
January 3, 2012, 11:37 p.m.

Reporting from Manchester and Des Moines— In the closest finish in the history of the Iowa caucuses, Mitt Romney and Rick Santorum wound up in a virtual dead heat in the first battle for the Republican presidential nomination, with Romney emerging as the apparent winner by a margin of just eight votes.

When results from the last of the state’s 1,774 precincts were tallied Wednesday morning, Romney had 30,015 votes to Santorum’s 30,007.

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