LA/Ontario International Airport had once been projected to serve 30 million passengers by 2030. (Staff file photo)

By Andrew Edwards, Staff Writer
@InlandGov on Twitter
Posted: 05/18/2013 04:28:16 PM PDT
Updated: 05/18/2013 04:35:54 PM PDT

Related: Union money looms big in L.A. mayor’s race

The next mayor of Los Angeles – City Councilman Eric Garcetti or City Controller Wendy Greuel – can be expected to have political influence well beyond their city’s limits.

“Anything that happens in Los Angeles city is of interest to the region,” said Raphael Sonenshein, executive director of the Pat Brown Institute of Public Affairs at Cal State Los Angeles.

Whoever ends up elected as mayor of Los Angeles immediately becomes one of the most visible public figures in the state, and a de facto spokesman for the surrounding region. Tuesday’s mayoral election may also demonstrate how voters’ opinions and demands are shifting in and around Los Angeles. Politicians seeking or holding office in other Southern California cities may adjust their platforms and governing strategies based on what they see happening in California’s most populated city.

“The mayor of L.A. can be a huge leader on local issues,” said Douglas Johnson, a fellow at The Rose Institute for State and Local Government.

“For example, Richard Riordan set the tone and was an example for much of the state.”

Johnson credited Riordan, who was the city’s mayor from 1993 to 2001, with placing an emphasis on charter reforms and attempting to improve Los Angeles’ bureaucracy to make the city more responsive to businesses.

To read entire story, click here.

Fewer offenders released from state prison after the implementation of Gov. Jerry Brown’s Prison Realignment have been rearrested and conviction rates for the same group of offenders have remained virtually the same, according to a new study from the California Department of Corrections and Rehabilitation. San Bernardino County rates, however, are lower than the state average.

There was a slight drop in the statewide rearrest rates from Oct. 1, 2011, the day A.B. 109 went into effect, to March 2012 from 62 percent to 58.7 percent among offenders released to state parole supervision and those released to county probation.

Of those offenders, about 22 percent were convicted of new crimes, a number which has remained virtually unchanged, according to the CDCR report.

San Bernadino County Probation recidivism rate for technical or new offense arrests is currently 37.5 percent, Chris Condon, spokesman for the probation department said. That is slightly more than 20 percent lower than the state’s average.

“When you eliminate the arrests for technical violations of probation and just record arrests for new criminal violations the re-arrest rate is about 32.5%,” Condon said.

The most significant drop statewide was seen among those offenders who were sent back to prison after being convicted of a new offense. The numbers fell from 42 percent before realignment to 7.4 percent after it’s implementation. However, both state and probation officials point out the major reason why there was such a steep drop is because most inmates released to local supervision under AB 109 are not eligible to return to state prison.

To read entire story, click here.

Mark Kirk

Joe Nelson, Staff Writer
Posted: 05/18/2013 07:48:47 PM PDT
Updated: 05/18/2013 07:49:35 PM PDT

Two years after being indicted in a major San Bernardino County corruption case, Mark Kirk is back in the political arena.

His consulting company, The Paideia Group, worked on Ontario Mayor Paul Leon’s unsuccessful bid for state Senate, taking in $36,145.97 in fees between January and April for services including the provision of information technology, campaign literature and mailings, office expenses and phone banks. In addition, Leon accrued $43,113.13 in unpaid expenses for services rendered by The Paideia Group for the same period, according to campaign finance reports.

Leon stressed that Kirk – the former chief of staff for San Bernardino County Supervisor Gary Ovitt, and who has denied any wrongdoing in a far-reaching corruption scandal for the past two years – was not his campaign consultant and only provided essential services that allowed him to compete with his opponent Norma Torres.

“All that Mark Kirk did was provide me with equipment and technology that he had, and he was willing to contract to me for a very good price so I could be competitive,” Leon said Wednesday, the day after Torres defeated him in a special election, capturing 59 percent of the vote to Leon’s 41 percent.

Leon, however, would not specify what technology Kirk provided, but he did say Tuesday that his campaign produced a YouTube video that was seen by 300,000 people.

Kirk, 38, of Hesperia, started the Redlands-based Paideia Group in April 2012 with his wife, Erin, listing “consulting services” as the business type. The company is operated under the umbrella corporation Legalzoom.com, according to the company’s filings with the Secretary of State.

To read entire story, click here.

Dan Walters

By Dan Walters
dwalters@sacbee.com
Published: Sunday, May. 19, 2013 – 12:00 am | Page 3A
Last Modified: Sunday, May. 19, 2013 – 8:10 am

Jerry Brown – who made “lower your expectations” a catchphrase of his first governorship – is back in that mode during his second stint, especially on spending.

When Brown unveiled a revised 2013-14 budget last week, it was evident that he and his budget “gnomes,” as he called them, had adopted a relatively pessimistic view of revenues, despite a recent surge in income taxes.

It was, Brown said, largely a one-time bump, rather than a harbinger of a dependably higher revenue flow, and because of that, he was unwilling to restore cuts in health and welfare programs for the poor, the aged and the infirm.

“The money’s not there,” he told reporters, uttering a flat “no” to a question about restoring those “safety net” services.

The response did not please Democratic legislative leaders and they hoped aloud that a revenue estimate from their Legislative Analyst’s Office would provide more room for spending on those services.

To read entire column, click here.

Greg Cappis, Staff Writer
Posted: 05/17/2013 08:09:39 PM PDT

Eloise Gomez Reyes’ campaign is taking shape in the crowded race for the 31st Congressional District seat in 2014.

Emily’s List, the powerful political organization supporting pro-choice, female Democrats, officially added Gomez Reyes to “the list. ”

They had been supporting the Colton attorney from the beginning of her campaign against the incumbent, Rep. Gary Miller, R-Rancho Cucamonga, and three other Democrats, but the official endorsement opens Gomez Reyes to support from the group’s 2 million members. There is a link to contribute to her campaign on the organization’s website, which was also included in an emailed news release on Thursday.

“They have been very supportive from the beginning, and with being added to the formal list, it makes all the difference in the world financially,” Gomez Reyes said in a Friday phone interview.

She said she is drafting a team, including a finance director, pollster and a media director, in what she calls her first campaign for elected office.

Gomez Reyes said she applied, interviewed and was nominated but didn’t campaign for an appointment to the Colton Joint Unified School District board in 2011. She lost to Laura Morales, whom Gomez Reyes called a good friend and supporter.

Much of her campaign, thus far, has revolved around support from local community members and college students from San Bernardino and Riverside counties, Gomez Reyes said.

“With the students’ involvement, they also bring with them social media, and that’s exciting to be involved with social media and the impact of social media,” she said.

Another Democratic candidate in the race, Redlands Mayor Pete Aguilar, also appears to be seeking the youth vote.

To read entire story, click here.

Liset Marquez, Staff Writer
Posted: 05/17/2013 07:41:52 PM PDT
Updated: 05/17/2013 07:42:00 PM PDT

ONTARIO — Attorneys representing several cities and San Bernardino County opposed to a plan to modernize Los Angeles International Airport say they are in the process of filing a lawsuit against the agency that oversees LAX.

Los Angeles World Airports did not respond to multiple requests for mediation on its environmental plan for the airport, which was approved by the Los Angeles City Council in late April.

Los Angeles had five days to either respond or deny the request. Ontario and San Bernardino County officials never received a response.

“It’s been effectively rejected,” said environmental attorney Barbara Lichman, who filed a joint request for mediation for Ontario, Inglewood, Culver City and San Bernardino County on May 7.

Lichman said Ontario has until May 31 to file the suit.

The Alliance for a Regional Solution to Airport Congestion, a Westchester-based group long opposed to the plan, and the first to seek legal intervention against LAWA, also never received a response, said Douglas Carstens, an attorney for the alliance.

“We’re now in the process of filing a lawsuit – that’s the only thing left to do,” he said.

The Service Employees International Union, which represents contract workers at LAX, has taken similar action.

Given the amount of lawsuits that could be filed, Carstens said the courts could combine them. For now, attorneys will most likely file the suits separately.

To read entire story, click here.

Related story: L.A. County’s jobless rate under 10% for first time in 4 years The Inland Empire’s unemployment rate fell to a 4 1/2-year low of 9.6 percent in April and the region added 900 jobs, the state Employment Development Department reported Friday.

April’s decline from a revised jobless rate of 10.5 percent the previous month also brought the index to single digits for the first time in 4 1/2 years. Year-over-year results were even better. Between April 2012 and April 2013, the unemployment rate fell from 11.6 percent to 9.6 percent and the two-county region added 18,400 jobs.

“The Inland Empire has seen year-over-year job growth of 2 percent or more since the middle of last year,” said Robert Kleinhenz, chief economist for the Los Angeles County Economic Development Corp. “It’s been happening for some time, but of course you’re looking at some big gains coming off of some significant drops. ”

April’s annual job growth slowed to 1.6 percent, but Kleinhenz said that was likely a reflection of government budget cuts under sequestration and an expiring payroll tax cut that went into effect in January.

“That has impacts on a national level and it really causes a drag on the GDP, the national economy and the local economy as well,” he said. “We’re looking at fairly weak GDP growth in the second and third quarters. ”

To read entire story, click here.

Capitol Alert
The latest on California politics and government
May 17, 2013

Legislative Analyst Mac Taylor projected state revenues Friday that are $3.2 billion higher than those projected by Gov. Jerry Brown this week in his revised budget proposal.

The difference translates into $400 million for the current fiscal year and $2.8 billion for the year that begins in July. The projection sets up a potential battle between Brown and fellow Democrats in the Legislature. who want to spend more than he proposes.

Both Brown and Taylor urge fiscal restraint, however, because revenue projections are largely dependent upon economic factors ranging from employment to housing prices. Both also agree that the bulk of the money will go to schools under state law.

Brown, in his new proposal, had lowered projected revenues by $1.8 billion from his January estimate.

Though tax revenue has run about $4.5 billion ahead of projections through April, Brown said much of that money is unlikely to carry over into future years.

The Democratic governor attributed much of this fiscal year’s tax windfall to wealthy taxpayers shifting income from 2013 into 2012 to avoid higher federal tax rates.

Revenue projections are pivotal for crafting a budget deal with Democratic legislative leaders, who face heavy pressure from social service advocates to restore key safety net services slashed during California’s budget crisis.

Assembly Speaker John A. Pérez, in a written statement, said that the LAO”s projections are consistent with his own expectations. He vowed to work with the Senate and Brown’s office to craft a “responsible budget.”

“No one should interpret these figures as an automatic green light to increase spending, but rather to pay off debt, build the reserve, and strengthen the middle class – key principles of our (Assembly budget blueprint),” Perez said of the LAO’s analysis.

The gap in revenue projections between Taylor and Brown is due partly to differing views of California’s near-term economic prospects and partly to the LAO accounting for sharp recent increases in stock prices.

To read entire story, click here.

By Alana Semuels
May 17, 2013, 11:04 a.m.

After a few robust months, the pace of hiring in California slowed in April as employers concerned about the economy cut back on adding new employees.

In a month in which the nation added 165,000 net new jobs, the Golden State gained just 10,400 amidst sluggish hiring in the education, financial services and trade sectors. Construction was the one bright spot, adding 7,400 jobs as building in metro areas such as Los Angeles continued to boom.

The state’s unemployment rate fell to 9% from 9.4% the month before as discouraged workers gave up looking for work and dropped out of the labor force.

Los Angeles County added just 200 net new jobs over the month, though its unemployment rate slipped to 9.9% from 10.2% the month before. With a boost from the leisure and hospitality sector, Orange County added 3,300 jobs, and its unemployment rate dropped to 5.7%, from 6.3% the month before. The Inland Empire, which encompasses Riverside and San Bernardino counties, gained 900 jobs while its unemployment rate fell to 9.6% from 10.5% the year before.

Though the state has added more than 77,000 jobs this year, employers seem to be suddenly holding back, said Esmael Adibi, an economist at Chapman University.

To read entire story, click here.

The IRS official who revealed the IRS had inappropriately targeted conservative groups on Friday did so on purpose — by asking a tax lawyer to ask her about it at American Bar Association tax section’s annual meeting.

Tax lawyer Celia Roady issued a statement, posted by Talking Points Memo, saying that the IRS’s Lois Lerner asked called her before the meeting and “asked if I would pose a question to her after her remarks.” Roady agreed, and said Lerner “did not tell me, and I did not know, how she would answer the question.” In congressional testimony on Friday, the now-fired-then-acting IRS commissioner Steve Miller said he’d discussed it with Lerner and thought it “may be a good idea to talk to the public.”

To read entire story, click here.

Friday, May 17, 2013 – 11:30 a.m.

Well it’s finally started!

Local newspapers trying to create distance from San Bernardino mayor Pat Morris and company.

The Sun newspaper is the first out of the gate, by way of an editorial published this week titled “Recall oversight does not belong in San Bernardino’s hands: Editorial”.

Here’s an interesting quote from the opinion piece:

“San Bernardino government, as a whole, was proven incompetent when the city found itself filing for municipal bankruptcy last summer. Elected leaders mismanaged the city’s coffers and damaged whatever credibility the oft-bickering group may have had with voters.”

Not so fast!

For years, both The Sun and Press Enterprise newspapers have given cover to San Bernardino Mayor Patrick Morris, and one other local high-profile politician, ignoring all the shenanigans both have been involved in.

Now Morris’ time has come. The other aforementioned politicians time is coming as well, with the clock slowly running.

Newspapers are meant to be the watchdogs of government. In San Bernardino County it’s more like the protector of their anointed favorite’s.

If you examine the local newspaper’s past positions on San Bernardino, you’ll find Morris could do no wrong when it came to both the city’s affairs, as well as those of the San Bernardino International Airport Authority, of which, he is president.

Now that both entities are a train wreck, the newspapers act as if they are just as shocked as the public. Even though they themselves knew what was going on all these years, and conveniently just looked the other way because it might hurt their guy.

For more than a decade, the hypocrisy of both newspapers has covered for the incompetence and abuse of power of their favorite politicians. Now the days of reckoning are before us.

But just look at the damage already done.

It’s sad that it has come to this.

Dan Bernstein

Posted on | May 16, 2013

To understand Tuesday night’s production of the Mighty MoVal Council Players, watch this brief snippet in “Godfather II” in which Michael Corleone kisses his turncoat brother, Fredo, full on the mouth.

To read column by Dan Bernstein in The Press Enterprise, click here.

The city of Riverside says the state report will allow it to go forward with title transfers

May 16, 2013; 12:41 PM

SACRAMENTO — A new state audit identifies $94.6 million worth of former Riverside redevelopment assets that it says have not been properly transferred to the agency in charge of settling the debts of the former program.

To read story by Jim Miller in The Press Enterprise, click here.

By Lori Fowler
lori.fowler@ inlandnewspapers.com @IECourtsNow on Twitter
Posted: 05/16/2013 05:31:14 PM PDT
Updated: 05/16/2013 05:31:22 PM PDT

A group of local officials are spearheading an effort to re-staff courts and provide more funds to what they call a starving court system.

Assemblyman Tim Donnelly, R-Hesperia, has co-authored a bill, introduced in March, that he says is a step toward properly funding California’s judicial system.

AB 1313 would allocate up to 12 additional judicial positions throughout the state each year to the counties with the greatest disparity between their current allocation and the state Judicial Council’s recommendation, Donnelly said.

The bill would be in effect when money is available, he added.

“The courts are literally being starved to death while our population is exploding, so the need is absolutely there,” Donnelly said about the record-high court deficit in San Bernardino County. “This is absolutely something we’re supposed to be doing. ”

Courthouses in Chino, Needles and Big Bear closed this year because of budget cuts.

Shuttered courthouses and depleting funds have created a backlog of cases and led to hundreds of staff layoffs, Donnelly said. Some residents in San Bernardino County will now have to travel two hours or more to reach the nearest courtroom.

“(AB 1313) was born out of the dire crisis that we’re facing here in San Bernardino County,” Donnelly said.

To read entire story, click here.

Millions of Californians who contact the state’s new health exchange to buy insurance will be given the opportunity to register to vote, too, a move that some Republicans fear could benefit Democrats.

Secretary of State Debra Bowen made California the first state to designate its health exchange as a voter registration agency Wednesday but others are expected to follow suit, said Shannan Velayas, Bowen’s spokeswoman.

“This is about making sure that all eligible Californians are offered the chance to register to vote,” Velayas said Thursday.

A 1993 federal law requires states to designate their agencies and offices that provide public assistance or disability services as voter registration agencies, Velayas said.

The federal law commonly is known as “motor voter” because it ensured that applicants for drivers’ licenses nationwide would be asked if they wanted to register to vote.

Public agencies in California that currently serve as voter registration outlets include the Department of Motor Vehicles and offices overseeing the state’s welfare, tax collection, and in-home supportive services.

California’s health-care exchange, Covered California, is creating a marketplace for millions of uninsured Californians to compare prices and buy health insurance policies this fall to take effect Jan. 1.

Many of Covered California’s clients are expected to be families of low and moderate incomes. Some will be eligible for taxpayer subsidized policies and others will have incomes low enough to qualify for Medi-Cal.

Senate GOP leader Bob Huff said he supports the notion of all Californians registering to vote but that targeting specific populations of people creates the possibility of partisan advantage.

To read entire story, click here.

Dan Walters

By Dan Walters
dwalters@sacbee.com
Published: Friday, May. 17, 2013 – 12:00 am | Page 3A

When voters passed Proposition 30 last year, they unwittingly accelerated one of the most perilous trends in California governmental finance – an ever-increasing reliance on income taxes from rich people to finance schools and myriad other state and local services.

When Jerry Brown became governor the first time in 1975, the broadly based sales tax was the biggest generator of state revenue.

Over the years, however, the sales tax has faded as consumer habits changed. Californians bought relatively fewer taxable goods – cars, clothes, appliances, etc. – and spent more of their incomes on untaxed services and investments.

Today, sales taxes are less than a quarter of general fund revenue and income taxes are more than half – much more. And the passage of Brown’s Proposition 30, which raised the sales tax a smidgen but hit the richest Californians with a big income tax hike, accelerates that trend.

Income taxes now exceed 60 percent of general revenue and are headed to two-thirds within a few years, according to fine print in Brown’s newly revised budget. The top 1 percent of Californians, in terms of income, now pay well over 40 percent of state income taxes or more than a quarter of general revenue.

To read entire story, click here.

By Patrick McGreevy
May 16, 2013, 3:07 p.m.

The state certified Thursday that it has a sufficient reserve fund to allow pay raises for Gov. Jerry Brown, state lawmakers and other elected officials, but members of a panel that sets pay say they will probably maintain the status quo for another year.

Meanwhile, executives for the Senate and Assembly have written to the California Citizens Compensation Commission arguing that lawmakers in California are not paid as much as their counterparts in New York if stipends for committee assignments are counted.

The letter was seen by Commissioner Chuck Murray as an attempt by legislative leaders to persuade the panel to restore some of the pay cut from elected officials’ salaries in recent years. Asked about the possibility of raises this year, Murray said, “I don’t think it is warranted.”

Thomas Dalzell, chairman of the California Citizens Compensation Commission, said the data showing six other governors paid more than Brown would support a pay increase, but the state is just emerging from difficult financial times. “It would surprise me if that’s the direction we end up going in the first year out of a budget surplus,” he said of a pay raise.

To read entire story, click here.

By Karen Gullo
May 15, 2013 9:01 PM PT

Wells Fargo & Co. (WFC) must pay customers $203 million for manipulating debit-card transactions to boost overdraft fees, a federal judge in San Francisco ruled, reinstating a 2010 damage award.

U.S. District Judge William Alsup said Wells Fargo’s practice of deceiving customers by posting debit transactions with the highest dollar amount first, rather than posting transactions in the order they occurred, was proven at trial. The practice misled consumers, who overdrew their accounts multiple times a day as a result, plaintiff attorneys said in a 2007 class-action lawsuit. The bank ended the practice in 2011.

To read entire story, click here.

By Carol D. Leonnig
Published: May 16, 2013

When the Barack H. Obama Foundation sought tax-exempt status to raise money for good works in Kenya, the Internal Revenue Service provided quick help.

The IRS approved charitable status for the foundation, which was run by President Obama’s brother and named after his father, in about a month’s time. The IRS also agreed to give the group this important financial status retroactively, back to 2009, when it had begun its fundraising.

The 34 days the IRS’s Cincinnati office took to process the foundation’s application stands in contrast to the waits of several months — and sometimes longer than a year — that several conservative groups say they experienced with the same office. Obama has apologized, saying Americans have a right to be angry that the office improperly targeted conservative groups for extra scrutiny.

The IRS handling of the Obama-named group was revealed this week by a conservative watchdog group, the National Legal and Policy Center, and reported by the Daily Caller on Thursday. The Washington Post confirmed reports through public records of the group’s application and the IRS approval letter, signed by the unit director Lois Lerner.

To read entire story, click here.

Thursday, May 16, 2013 – 10:00 a.m.

Apparently only a few are learning any lessons from 2008.

A stock market that sees nothing wrong, and a real estate market, where the Southern California real estate median, not average, price has reportedly returned to pre-2008 levels, all at the same time can make one queasy.

Last week the Dow Jones and S&P 500 indexes rallied because jobless claims fell to a five-year low. Today the same weekly claims indicator skyrocketed back to 360,000. A number obviously higher than economists expected. After all, the expert estimates really are just best guess.

April housing starts also plummeted from a five-year high.

The market reaction today? Ho hum!

More alarming is information coming from the mouths of local Realtors.

Investment funds are coming in and bidding up residential and multi-family properties above their appraised values. The overbidding is sometimes has high as $20,000 t0 $30,000 over market. Several companies are out collectively spending billions scooping up properties. The result is low inventory for the everyday buyers.

Some smaller investors are getting burned with significant costs related to evictions and rehabilitating damage inflicted to the properties by the previous occupants.

It’s nice that the orchestrated attempt at asset re-inflation is providing some relief to government coffers. But it likely won’t last long-term.

Lackluster growth in household incomes, increasing (U-6) underemployment and continued high gas prices will likely prove to be a drag.

Even projections of corporate revenue growth are already coming down.

Only time will tell.

Cassie MacDuff

Posted on | May 15, 2013

A new study from the Massachusetts Institute of Technology has bad news for Ontario International Airport.

To read column by Cassie MacDuff in The Press Enterprise, click here.

DeSantis

May 15, 2013; 07:53 PM

As a political corruption probe hangs over Moreno Valley and a day after its city manager quit, Michelle Dawson began moving quickly as the city’s new chief executive.

One of her first points of business Wednesday, May 15, was tapping city official Tom DeSantis as her top assistant.

To read story by Debra Gruszecki in The Press Enterprise, click here.

New election ahead to fill Assembly vacancy
By Canan Tasci
canan.tasci@ inlandnewspapers.com @ChinoValleyNow on Twitter
Posted: 05/15/2013 05:46:58 PM PDT
Updated: 05/15/2013 05:47:09 PM PDT

Now that Assemblywoman Norma Torres will take over as the state senator in the 32nd District, her 52nd Assembly District seat will be up for grabs.

Torres, D-Chino, won an easy victory over her Republican opponent, Ontario Mayor Paul Leon, in Tuesday’s special election.

Experts say her Assembly seat is attractive to anyone wanting to climb the political ladder, but it’s one that the candidate will have to spend a lot of money to claim.

“Open seats attract ambitious politicians the way honey attracts flies, ” said Jack Pitney, a political scientist at Claremont McKenna College, “so obviously local ties might have an inside track but we’ll see who comes forward. ”

Torres, whose Assembly district includes Chino, Fontana, Montclair, Ontario and Pomona, replaces the newly elected Rep. Gloria Negrete McLeod, who was sworn into Congress in January. The 32nd Senate District stretches from Pomona to San Bernardino.

Results from 448 precincts Tuesday showed Torres with 59 percent of the vote and Leon with 41 percent in the largely Democratic district.

To read entire story, click here.

On Friday two state agencies will release the results of their probes into departments giving salaried managers secondary jobs that pay an hourly wage.

Gov. Jerry Brown’s human resources unit and the State Personnel Board have been auditing “additional appointments” at 11 departments.

It looks like they’ll condemn the policy.

A few weeks ago, the administration banned the practice for California state managers and supervisors, signaling auditors have uncovered some abuses.

The Bee has reported that departments have interpreted and applied the 34-year-old policy in different ways.

One department, for example, paid managers the overtime rate for hourly work they performed. Another department appointed all 101 managers in a certain work group to second hour-wage positions.

But beyond the nuts-and-bolts policy question, the audits are a laboratory test of Brown’s grand vision to re-create government, starting with how it manages people.

The state’s personnel system has limped along for years with tomes of obscure and out-of-date personnel policies, as rules and laws built up over the years like layers of paint.

About two years ago, the governor pushed through a reorganization plan aiming to clean up the state’s confusing personnel system.

The arrangement stripped the State Personnel Board, created by voters in 1934, of everything but its duty to guard the state merit system.

To read entire story, click here.

County officials wary that long-term savings will materialize

By Michael Gardner7:06 p.m.May 15, 2013

California’s counties are leery of Gov. Jerry Brown’s budget maneuver to immediately siphon money from local coffers, leaving behind an IOU that would be repaid through savings realized much later.

San Diego County officials are among the skeptics, given the strained fiscal relationship historically between the state and local governments. The county, based on an early review, has $40 million on the line over the next few years.

Brown argues that overall counties will save as much as $300 million immediately — and $1.3 billion annually in three years — when thousands of low-income Californians become eligible for subsidized health care starting Jan. 1 under the new federal Affordable Care Act.

In a complicated move, Brown wants to quickly lower by a like amount state payments to counties for welfare programs, such as CalWORKS and child care. That would force the counties to shift health care savings to pay a bigger share of those programs.

Without the money swap, Brown reasons, the state would be paying twice for the same health care service: once to counties and again as part of its obligation under the federal program, also known as “Obamacare.”

“There are going to be costs imposed on the state budget. Those costs represent burdens taken away from the counties … We feel it’s only fair the counties not be paid for what they’re not doing,” Brown said.

To read entire story, click here.

By Scott Wilson and Karen DeYoung
Published: May 15 E-mail the writers

The Obama administration released 100 pages of e-mails Wednesday that reveal differences between intelligence analysts and State Department officials over how to initially describe the Sept. 11, 2012, attack on the U.S. mission in Benghazi, Libya.

The internal debate did not include political interference from the White House, according to the e-mails, which were provided to congressional intelligence committees several months ago.

Since the assault that killed four Americans, including Ambassador J. Christopher Stevens, Republicans have accused President Obama and his senior advisers of mischaracterizing the attack, largely to prevent political repercussions during what was then a close reelection campaign.

Much of the Republican concern has focused on whether administration officials acknowledged early enough that an Islamist terrorist organization was behind the attack, rather than groups of protesters participating in anti-American demonstrations that were taking place outside many U.S. diplomatic missions in the Middle East and North Africa.

According to the e-mails and initial CIA-drafted talking points, the agency believed the attack included a mix of Islamist extremists from Ansar al-Sharia, a group affiliated with al-Qaeda, and angry demonstrators.

White House officials did not challenge that analysis, the e-mails show, nor did they object to its inclusion in the public talking points.

To read entire story, click here.

By Zachary A. Goldfarb and Juliet Eilperin
Published: May 15 E-mail the writers

President Obama on Wednesday demanded and accepted the resignation of the acting commissioner of the Internal Revenue Service, Steven T. Miller, as part of a multi-pronged effort to quell controversies that threaten to dominate his second term.

The action was Obama’s first substantive step to address a political uproar stemming from the IRS’s disclosure that it had targeted conservative groups seeking tax-exempt status. It capped a day when the White House tried to dampen two other furors that had put Obama on the defensive — the Justice Department’s seizure of Associated Press phone records and the administration’s editing of talking points about the deadly attacks in Benghazi, Libya, last year.

In a brief but fiery evening statement in the East Room of the White House, Obama labeled the IRS’s actions “inexcusable.”

“Americans are right to be angry about it, and I’m angry about it,” he said, adding that he “will not tolerate this kind of behavior in any agency, but especially in the IRS, given the power that it has and the reach that it has.”

The administration also took the extraordinary step of releasing a letter from Treasury Secretary Jack Lew in which he demanded that Miller resign in order “to restore public trust and confidence in the IRS.”

To read entire story, click here.

President Obama addressed the IRS controversy Wednesday evening, announcing that the acting commissioner of the IRS has resigned. Obama reiterated that he “would not tolerate this kind of behavior.”

By Karen Tumulty
Published: May 15 E-mail the writer

The most corrosive political scandals are the ones that feed a pre­existing story line — which is why the White House could have difficulty putting the current ones behind it any time soon.

In the view of President Obama’s adversaries, recent revelations add evidence to arguments that they have been making about the president all along: that he would do or say whatever it took to get reelected; that his is a philosophy of rampant, invasive big government; that he has not acted within the constraints of the Constitution; that he regards those who oppose him with contempt.

At issue are three ostensibly unrelated sets of events: the killing of the U.S. ambassador and three other Americans in Ben­ghazi, Libya, on Sept. 11; the improper and overly aggressive Internal Revenue Service scrutiny of groups opposed to Obama’s agenda; and the Justice Department’s seizure of phone records of Associated Press journalists.

“He’s got a trifecta going,” said Don Goldberg, who worked in the Clinton White House’s damage-control operation. “When you add it all up, it’s going to be a rough few months going into the summer.”

On Wednesday, the administration was fighting back on all three fronts.

The White House released 100 pages of e-mails relating to the Benghazi attacks; Obama announced the resignation of the acting IRS director and pledged further action to correct the ­abuses; and Attorney General Eric H. Holder Jr. appeared on Capitol Hill to defend his agency — at one point, going so far as to tell Rep. Darrell Issa (R-Calif.), a frequent antagonist, that his conduct was “unacceptable. It is shameful.”

Taken together, and seen through the eyes of critics, the three controversies that confront the White House look like a tea party fever dream.

“The news has, I think, awakened the public, beginning to raise questions in their minds as to the direction of this government. And really, to whom is this government accountable?” House Majority Leader Eric Cantor (R-Va.) said Wednesday.

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WASHINGTON — Republican congressional leaders, faced with an array of crises threatening to overwhelm the White House, appear to have singled out the targeting of conservative political groups by the IRS as the most fertile — and politically advantageous — to focus on.

House Speaker John A. Boehner (R-Ohio) escalated the rhetoric Wednesday, telling reporters that his question “isn’t about who’s going to resign” over the controversy. “My question is, who’s going to jail?”

Senate Minority Leader Mitch McConnell (R-Ky.) questioned an inspector general’s report that said the problems stemmed from a poorly managed unit of the tax collecting agency in Cincinnati.

“It seems like, with each passing hour, the facts get more and more inconvenient for senior folks over at the IRS,” McConnell said. “All we’ve gotten from the IRS … is an attempt to scapegoat some folks out in Cincinnati and a laughable attempt to move past this whole issue.”

DOCUMENT: The inspector general’s report on the IRS

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May 14, 2013; 08:51 PM

Moreno Valley City Manager Henry Garcia resigned Tuesday night, May 14, at a City Council meeting at which emotions ran high over a corruption probe, grandstanding by elected officials, and the recent filing of three claims by laid-off officials alleging political interference over code enforcement action taken against a councilman.

To read story by Debra Gruszecki in The Press Enterprise, click here.