As California's new realignment effort gets under way, Los Angeles says it is shifting 150 police officers from the streets, patrol or other assignments to deal with a surge in freed offenders. Under realignment, authority over an array of programs is shifted to local governments, including some correctional responsibilities.
From the LA Times' Joel Rubin: "Beck and Mayor Antonio Villaraigosa criticized the state’s controversial attempt to relieve severe overcrowding in its prisons for not providing adequate funding to the city and warned that the move threatens to reverse the falling crime rates L.A. has experienced in the last decade."
"The plan, which went into effect Saturday and is intended to satisfy an order issued by the U.S. Supreme Court, shifts responsibility for thousands of inmates and parolees from the state to county authorities."
"As part of that shift, Beck said the LAPD and other local police departments will now have to assume a leading role alongside the county’s Probation Department in keeping tabs on a “cascading” number of ex-cons who otherwise would have been under the watch of the state's parole department."
Even as they get shifted around, they'll be getting some new authority: Showing his support for the recording industry, Gov. Brown signed into law a bill allowing warrantless searches of plants that produce DVDs and CDs to crack down on counterfeits.The Times' Marc Lifsher tells the tale.
"The bill, SB 550 by Sen. Alex Padilla (D-Pacoima), allows inspections of so-called replicating plants to ensure they are not illegally copying entertainment discs. Special high-tech, law-enforcement personnel are empowered to check that discs contain legally required identification information."
"The law imposes potentially large fines for violations."
"The crime of illegal mass reproduction of music and movies is a serious and growing problem," said Padilla. "Last year, more than 820,000 illegal discs were seized by law enforcement in California."
Even a warning from a savvy Silicon Valley venture capitalist -- one of President Obama's key supporters -- wasn't enough to warn the president away from Solyndra, the firm that ultimately collapsed despite a huge infusion of federal dollars.
From Aaron Glatnz in the Bay Citizen: "The excerpts show the advisers willingly took on the risk of associating the president with a company that stood on shaky financial footing in order to "promote cutting edge, new economy industries."
"At least one of those advisors had co-authored a memo to the president eight months earlier outlining concerns about the Department of Energy program that approved $527 million in federal loans to Solyndra."
"During his visit, Obama declared Solyndra to be “a testament to American ingenuity and dynamism.”
Sacramento-area Assemblyman Roger Dickinson is going to seek reelection -- in the newly drawn 7th Assembly District, which was created by the voter-approved independent redistricting commission.
From Capitol Weekly's Malcolm Maclachlan: "Freshman Assemblyman Roger Dickinson announced Monday that he intends to run for reelection in the newly drawn 7th Assembly District."
"The decision by Dickinson, a Democrat, could have implications in the crowded game of musical chairs around Sacramento brought on by the new district lines drawn this year by the voter-approved California Citizen’s Redistricting Commission. One possibility is a showdown with fellow freshman Assemblyman Richard Pan, D-Natomas."
Drilling tunnels through the Sacramento-San Joaquin River Delta, an option under consideration to move more Northern California water to the South, would create some 129 thousand jobs, with 50,000 in San Joaquin County alone, says a new study.
From Alex Breitler in the Modesto Bee: "Drilling large tunnels to divert water around the delta would create more than 129,000 jobs, almost all of them during the seven-year construction period, according to a recent analysis."
"The report by a University of California at Berkeley economist does not examine how the peripheral canal or tunnel plan might create or destroy jobs in other ways, such as the proposed conversion of tens of thousands of acres of delta farmland to wetland habitat."
"It is not the full cost-benefit analysis that some observers have called for before the Bay Delta Conservation Plan is put into action."
