Susan Hartley and John Witt are amazing. I don’t even know them, and since 95% of FR readers don’t hail from San Diego County, you probably don’t either. As a matter of fact, if you are from San Diego, you might not know that these are two GOP members of the County Board of Education. That said, they have, at best, betrayed their own political party by voting with a Democrat colleague to install a Democrat onto the County Board of Education. At worst, they may have violated state law in doing so… Let me explain…

I received a phone call last night from San Diego FR correspondent Barry Jantz just before 6 p.m. saying that current La Mesa-Spring Valley School Trustee Sharon Jones would be appointed to the vacancy on the San Diego County Board of Education. (As you know, Jantz has been covering the vacancy created by Ernie Dronenburg’s resignation extensively on the FR.) He indicated that the vote would be 3-1, that Bob Watkins would be in the minority, and that if he were wrong, he would eat his hat, take a photo of him doing so, and post it here.

About an hour and a half later, at… Read More

My day-job is in media relations for the Sheriff’s Department in Orange County. I was working very late last night at our county’s Emergency Operations Center as we are battling some large wildfires in the eastern canyons of our county. Hence the late update of the homepage this morning.

You can read more about the fires here.

That said, I don’t have time to pen a commentary today, though I will give a quick ‘shout out’ to Republican State Senator Bob Dutton. He and I were speaking recently, and he was expressing his extreme frustration with the proposal to hike by $1 and hour the minimum wage mandate on California businesses. After our discussion, he sent me a column he has written on the subject, which is featured on the… Read More

When I moved to the Bay Area in 2000, I was amused to have Governor Moonbeam as my mayor. At election time, I was suprised to find myself voting for the guy because Jerry Brown actually was the more mainstream of the two candidates (that’s mainstream for the Bay Area–both candidates loudly proclaimed their vegetarianism during the 2002 race).

With Brown termed out of office, it looked like City Council President Ignacio De La Fuente was going to be elected Oakland’s new mayor in 2006. De La Fuente has been madly holding neighborhood coffee klatches around the city and many people I know, even the few Republicans around here, have given him good marks after meeting him. The multiple rape charges against his grown son do pose a problem, but it is likely that voters may not hold the father accountable for the son’s sins.

But De La Fuente’s easy mayoral race got tougher when former… Read More

My day-job is in media relations for the Sheriff’s Department in Orange County. I was working very late last night at our county’s Emergency Operations Center as we are battling some large wildfires in the eastern canyons of our county. Hence the late update of the homepage this morning.

You can read more about the fires here.

That said, I don’t have time to pen a commentary today, though I will give a quick ‘shout out’ to Republican State Senator Bob Dutton. He and I were speaking recently, and he was expressing his extreme frustration with the proposal to hike by $1 and hour the minimum wage mandate on California businesses. After our discussion, he sent me a column he has written on the subject, which is featured on the… Read More

Got you with my headline.

This post isn’t about the global chess match between Kevin McCarthy and Fabian Nunez to pick up Assembly seats. It’s about Placer County Supervisor Ted Gaines — he will walk into termed out Assemblyman Tim Leslie’s (pictured at right) Assembly seat this November.

For those not familiar with the district, the 4th Assembly District includes, Roseville, Rocklin, South Lake Tahoe, Auburn, Lincoln, Markleeville, Placerville and Loomis.

With Registration at 47 Republican to 31 Democrat, this is a safe Republican seat and so far Gaines has been able to keep his GOP primary field clear. He’s done it by securing the big endorsements early from Congressmen Doolittle and Lungren and the the overlapping State Senator Dave Cox. Gaines’ hired fundraiser extraordinaire Wendy Warfield to help him raise money and he raked it in last year —… Read More

Well known is LA Mayor, Antonio Villaraigosa’s attempt to take control of the Los Angeles Unified School District. His ambition is shown by his response to the State of the Union.That is not enough.

The La Mayor has four appointments on the all-powerful, semi-public Metropolitan Water District. If you want to control water politics control the MWD. The Mayor campaign to choose Democratic Assemblyman and lobbyist Richard Katz to head the agency is making waves. Read about it here.or is this really linked to Katz, Anonio trying to help a aplan to takewater from the Mojave Desert. See it here. Will the rest of the MWD board resist?… Read More

I’d like to see a debate between Mark Leno and Pete Wilson. Not on the subject of Jessica’s Law, which will be decided in November when California voters pass a ballot initiative that, reasonably, separates child molestors from children. No, the debate I’d like to see is a larger one on government spending priorities that is not going to be settled anytime soon.

In today’s Los Angeles Times, Leno tells George Skelton that the peculiarly named Assembly Public Safety Committee that he chairs is not too liberal. Rather, his committee "kills ‘a lot of bad bills’ that are just too costly." He goes on to say that: ""The percentage of our general fund spending on corrections is out of control. Growing, growing, growing. After all, we’re dealing with a Legislature that refuses ever, ever to raise a tax."

So Leno is a fiscal conservative, which is heartening. Except that it is completely and totally at odds with his voting record since the day he arrived in the state… Read More

Assemblyman Sam Blakeslee introduced legislation that would strengthen punishment for patients at Atascadero State Hospital (ASH) who escape or attack their healthcare workers. According to an article in this morning’s San Luis Obispo Tribune, last year there were 393 acts of aggression toward staff, 26 of which resulted in serious injury. At a hospital where recruiting quality healthcare professionals is already a challenge, the threat of attack with little to no consequence is hardly helpful.

A similar measure in 2002, proposed by then Assemblyman Maldonado would have made it illegal for those housed in state hospitals to escape. The bill died in Public Safety committee as a result of pressure from patient’s rights advocacy groups who contend that the bill unfairly punishes the mentally ill housed at ASH.

As the laws are currently written it is lawful for those committed at ASH to escape as they are technically “patients” and not “prisoners—“even if the patient is a sexually violent predator.… Read More