Looks like prison reform is on the fast track.
the Bee's Kevin Yamamura reports, " Over objections from Republican lawmakers, the Legislature plans to take up a majority-vote prison package Thursday that is designed to reduce the state's inmate population by 27,300 and is backed by Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger.
"The overall package would save $1.2 billion in part by reducing certain property crimes to misdemeanors, placing low-level parolees on global positioning system monitoring and sending older, infirm prisoners to house arrest or medical facilities to serve the final 12 months of their sentences.
"Republican lawmakers particularly oppose the transfer of prisoners during the final year of their sentences, which they consider "early release" and believe would threaten public safety. Schwarzenegger officials dispute that characterization and have said those prisoners would be monitored by GPS or other means.
"State lawmakers last month approved a $1.2 billion corrections cut in a budget revision that tackled the state's $24 billion deficit. But those lawmakers, including some Republicans, did so without specifying exactly how the state would save that money in its prison system."
Meanwhile, Eric Bailey reports,
"Two weeks after federal judges ordered California to
reduce its prison
population, an arm of the Schwarzenegger administration
is set to vote
on increased funding to police anti-drug units, potentially putting
even more offenders behind bars.
"An
advisory board for the California Emergency Management
Agency is
expected to decide today whether to channel $33 million in federal
money to narcotics task forces around the state that
have proved
particularly adept at apprehending drug criminals.
"Critics of
government drug policies say that money should instead
be directed to
drug-treatment programs whose funding has been sliced amid
California's
budget woes."
That in a nutshell is the logic of California politics, boys and girls.
The LAT's David Kelly reports, "The state attorney general's office will join an expanding probe of
political corruption in San Bernardino County centered largely on the
past activities of the assessor's office, officials said Monday.
"So far the investigation has led to the arrest of former Assessor Bill Postmus and four
former employees in his office.
"Allegations
include using the assessor's staff to do political work, forgery, grand
theft, perjury and failure to report gifts from a developer.
Postmus
was arrested in January on drug charges."
Stu Woo ponders the possibility of Gov. Tom Campbell.
"California's fiscal crisis is giving Tom Campbell, an ex-congressman with few resources, a fighting chance to become the state's next governor.
"In a normal year, the 57-year-old would be a poor bet to win the 2010 Republican primary, political analysts say. Mr. Campbell lacks the riches of his GOP opponents, former Silicon Valley executives Meg Whitman and Steve Poizner, who can tap their fortunes to get themselves elected.
"Yet analysts say Mr. Campbell has an equalizer: a state-budget mess that plays to his strengths as an economist. When Sacramento lawmakers this year slashed spending and raised taxes to close a cumulative $60 billion budget shortfall, the candidate traveled California to tout alternative solutions that rankle loyalists in both parties, but which he said are longer-lasting and less harmful to the state's economy."
The LAT's Rong-Gong Lin looks at the state's efforts to overhaul the nursing system . "
Despite the governor’s pledge to better discipline errant health professionals
there are signs that it will be difficult to enact
sweeping changes as quickly or easily as the administration
has suggested.
At meetings in Sacramento on Monday and last week,
regulators and state
attorneys generally spoke of the need for reform but
picked apart
potential solutions presented to them. They offered
no concrete time
frames for having a workable system in place."
Even officials within the same agency couldn't agree on solutions. One lawyer within the state attorney general's office on Monday cited the benefits of having investigators who are looking into complaints against health professionals work alongside the lawyers who try such cases. But another lawyer in the office said the change wouldn't be any more efficient.
Jerry Hirsh reports California's citrus crop is being threatened by a Mexican pest.
"Leaders of California's $1.6-billion citrus industry said Monday that a
disease that was killing orchards worldwide was now
rooted in Mexico,
and experts warned that it was headed toward the state.
Citrus
greening disease has infected six citrus trees on Mexico's Yucatan
Peninsula, spread by an infestation of the Asian citrus
psyllid.
There's
a virtual insect highway across the width of Mexico,
and once the
aphid-like insect hops on, California is in trouble, said
Beth
Grafton-Cardwell, a UC Riverside entomologist and director
of the
Lindcove Research and Extension Center, east of Visalia."
Here's a good way to get pulled over -- driving a snowmobile. In August.
"Police said around 1:13 a.m. on Saturday -- one of the hottest days of the year so far -- an officer saw a snowmobile traveling on Porters Point Road in Colchester. The officer followed it for a short distance before the driver left the snowmobile in a yard on Macrae Road and ran off into the woods.
"With the help of Police K9 Tazor, Joseph Quigley was tracked down and arrested the 31-year-old him for his fifth DUI offense."