Homeless Empowerment Project: Volunteers Wanted!

Time for Change Foundation is currently seeking volunteers who are willing to be a part of our Homeless Empowerment Project as focus group leaders in our training workshop designed to empower homeless people.  Currently, we have two upcoming dates where we need your help: When: March 1st & 3rd, 2012 Time: 9am - 12pm Place: Perris Hill Park, San Bernardino, CA (1001 E. Highland Ave, 92404) PLEASE NOTE that we will be conducting a focus group leadership training session prior to the actual workshop dates on Wednesday February 29th, 6:00pm at 1255 East Highland Avenue, San Bernardino, CA.  Please call 909.886.2994 for additional information. We look forward to hearing from you! Sincerely, Time for Change Foundation

Occupy movement stages day of protests at US prisons

via: theguardian

Occupy demonstrators participated in a nationwide day of action to protest against the US prison system on Monday, with demonstrations carried out at over a dozen sites across the country, including prisons in California, Chicago, Denver and New York.

The call to protest was issued by activists with the Occupy Oakland movement and was co-ordinated to coincide with waves of prison hunger strikes that began at California's Pelican Bay prison in July. Demonstrators denounced the use of restrictive isolation units as infringement upon fundamental human rights. The hunger strikes followed a US supreme court ruling in May which stated that overcrowding in the California prison system had led to "needless suffering and death." The court ordered the state to reduce its overall prison population from 140,000 to 110,000, which still well-exceeds the state's maximum prison capacity.

Sarah Shourd, Josh Fattal and Shane Bauer – the American hikers who were held for over a year by Iranian authorities – took part in demonstrations outside San Quentin prison in Marin County, California. Addressing the crowd, Shourd described the psychological impact of solitary confinement, saying her 14 and a half months without human contact drove her to beat the walls of her cell until her knuckles bled. Shourd noted that Nelson Mandella described the two weeks he spent in solitary confinement as the most dehumanising experience he had ever been through.

"In Iran the first thing they do is put you in solitary," Fattal added.

Bauer said "a prisoner's greatest fear is being forgotten." He described how hunger strikes became the hikers' own "greatest weapon" in pushing their captors to heed their demands. According to Bauer, however, the most influential force for changing their quality of life while being held in Iran was the result of pressure applied by those outside the prison. It was for that fact, Bauer argued, that "this movement, this Cccupy movement, needs to permeate the prisons."

Occupy supporters are calling for a fundamental change in the US prison system, which today houses one quarter of the planet's prisoners; more than 2.4 million people. As of 2005, roughly one quarter of those held in US prisons or jails had been convicted on a drug charge. Activists point out that in the past three decades the nation's prison population has increased by more than 500%, with minorities comprising 60% of those incarcerated. The number of women locked up between 1997 and 2007 increased by 832%.

Demonstrators are broadly calling for the abolition of inhumane prison conditions, and the elimination of policies such as capital punishment, life sentences without the possibility of parole and so-called "three strikes, you're out" laws.

Some demonstrators were also demanding changes in their own specific states. Activists in Columbus, Ohio, for example, highlighted the fact that their state is second only to Texas in rates of capital punishment and planned to deliver letters to several elected officials, including governor John Kasich.

Ben Turk, an activist with Red Bird Prison abolition, noted that rising prices in prison commissaries have also been an issue with many Ohio prisoners. According to Turk, prices at the commissaries where prisoners purchase food and other amenities have risen, while the amount of money prisoners are able to make have largely remained the same.

"We work with prisoners and ask them what their grievances are," Turk said. "A lot of them talk about how commissary prices have been continually rising for the last couple of decades, while state pay remains the same."

At least 20 prisoners at Ohio State Penitentiary chose to fast for the day in solidarity with Monday's action.

In Washington DC, demonstrators protested new prisoner visitation policies that will include the installation teleconference TV screens in place of glass partition.

In New York City, Mercedes Smith, a Brooklyn mother, took the streets along with roughly 250 others who marched from the Lincoln Correctional Facility through Harlem. Smith said she and her 21 year-old son had both been personally impacted by the criminal justice system. Smith said her son had been stopped and searched by the police throughout his life and is now incarcerated.

Smith carried a sign that read "End the War On Drugs". She said that people who were addicted to drugs had a "sickness" that was "not a reason to put them in prison."

"This war is costing more money. All the money that they using to keep this war going on, they could open up more centers, more programmes to help people," Smith told the Guardian.

Many Returning Home from Prison, War: More Services Needed

By Carla María Guerrero

After leaving prison, Stacy Johnson (left) and Lori Hogg found the services they needed at A New Way of Life to stay off the streets and reintegrate into the community. (Photo by Joshua H. Busch)

Stacy Johnson had no idea what to expect when she was dropped off last August in front of a well-kept home in a quiet neighborhood in South Los Angeles. The 45-year-old had just been released early from serving her third prison sentence. She arrived at A New Way of Life Reentry Project hoping to make a fresh beginning after what had been a tumultuous twenty years.

Every year thousands of men and women like Johnson leave California prisons and return to South L.A. in need of jobs, housing and other supportive services. Their numbers could grow even higher under the state’s new prison “realignment” law, which transfers responsibility for “nonviolent, nonsexual, nonserious” felony offenders from state to county authorities.

According to Los Angeles County’s Criminal Justice Committee, an estimated 9,000 men and women who have served their prison sentences will be released to the county’s supervision by midyear and nearly 15,000 by mid-2013.

At the same time, the end of the Iraq War means the return of a significant number of veterans to the community. They share many of the same critical needs for jobs, housing and health services as those exiting prison. For both populations, locating these services in a community affected by deep budget cuts and the economic recession can be difficult.
But once found, these services can make a huge difference in whether an individual coming back from war or prison successfully reintegrates into the community.

Crucial Help
For Johnson, connecting with A New Way of Life and its founder, Susan Burton, has already changed her life immeasurably. She is in school full time and has been sober for almost three years. Eventually she would like to find a full time job and get her own place.
“I owe [Burton] everything. I came out of prison with nothing. I would’ve been back on the streets, probably using [drugs] again and staying in motels,” said Johnson, who knows firsthand how easy it is to fall prey to addiction.

At 22, Johnson started using crack cocaine and her life started unraveling. That same year, she was convicted of voluntary manslaughter after she picked up a knife to protect herself from being raped. Her assailant died and Johnson got twelve years in prison. After leaving prison she tried to rebuild her life around a new job and a new boyfriend. But he was abusive. She turned to drugs again, lost her job and her freedom, and gained one strike.
After serving two years, she lived in motels or on the streets and took drugs to numb the desolation. “When you are on drugs, you are weak. You are so vulnerable,” Johnson said. She went to jail a third time after being arrested for crack cocaine possession.

According to the California Department of Corrections and Rehabilitation, the state has one of the highest recidivism rates in the country. Nearly seven in ten former inmates will return to prison within three years.

Realign Priorities
For Cpl. Lauren Johnson, a 28-year-old African-American veteran of the Iraq War, knowing about the services and support available is key to successfully reintegrating back into communities.

“My experience was different from most veterans returning home because I was knowledgeable about the resources and services available to me,” she said. Originally from a Texas community with a strong military presence and culture, Lauren Johnson knew what benefits to tap into to help pay for school after her tour in Iraq.

Now working for Congresswoman Karen Bass, Lauren Johnson connects veterans with resources and services in South L.A., including referrals to Veterans Affairs and local organizations that provide housing, employment training and other services.

“It is imperative for us to mobilize for veterans once they come home. They’re used to unit cohesion and sometimes it can be a bit scary when you no longer have that camaraderie and that network you’ve been used to,” she said.

Social service advocates fear additional budget cuts will further erode the safety net in South L.A. at one of the most crucial moments.

“There needs to be an investment in housing, prevention, intervention and education … instead of systems of supervision and further incarceration,” A New Way of Life founder Burton said. “There needs to be a realignment of investment into people and communities so that crime won’t rise but opportunities for jobs and training programs will.”

Carla María Guerrero is the communications assistant at Community Coalition

State convicts arrive in L.A. County with costly mental illnesses

Via latimes.com

Newly released state prisoners are arriving in Los Angeles and other counties with incomplete medical records and mental illnesses that have officials struggling to provide treatment.

As California begins shifting supervision of thousands of newly released state prisoners to local probation agencies, ex-convicts are arriving with incomplete medical records and more serious mental illnesses than anticipated. And mental health officials are scrambling to provide appropriate — and often costly — treatment.

"At the start, every day ... there was a crisis," said Dr. Marvin Southard, director of the Los Angeles County Department of Mental Health. "There was somebody we didn't know what to do with."

In some cases, he said, released inmates have had to be immediately transferred to hospitals or residential centers for psychiatric care.

A new state law designed to reduce prison crowding and cut costs requires that certain nonviolent convicts serve their time in county lockups rather than state prisons. It also makes counties — rather than the state parole agency — responsible for supervising such inmates after their release.

The transition, called "realignment" by Gov. Jerry Brown, has raised well-publicized concerns among law enforcement officers across the state, as they try to accommodate more inmates in already crowded local jails. But realignment also presents less-visible challenges for local probation and mental health officials dealing with an influx of patients with drug and alcohol addictions, schizophrenia, bipolar disorder and depression.

Mental illness and drug addiction are common in California prisons, where more than half of inmates report a recent mental health problem and two-thirds report having a drug abuse problem, according to a Rand Corp. study. Many don't receive the treatment they need while incarcerated and may skip care once released, said the study's author, Lois Davis.

"If you have individuals struggling with depression and anxiety ... they are going to have a much harder time linking to services," she said. "It limits their ability to find a job and reunite with their family, and they will be at greater risk for recidivism."

Roughly 3,300 people have been released to Los Angeles County so far. The probation department is expecting about 6,000 more. County mental health officials estimated that about 30% will require mental health services and about 60% will have drug addictions.

Continuing treatment after inmates are freed is essential to preventing them from relapsing, having mental breakdowns, ending up in hospitals or landing back behind bars, officials said.

"We took it very seriously from the start," said Reaver Bingham, deputy director of the Los Angeles County Probation Department. "We knew that if we didn't address those risk factors, people would revert to what they know, and that is committing criminal activity."

Realignment, which began Oct. 1, has been bumpy. Many released inmates came without comprehensive medical records. It was up to the patients to pass along information about their diagnoses and medications to probation and mental health staffers. When county workers requested mental health records from the state, they often were told to get the information from individual prisons.

Communication has improved, but getting complete medical and mental health records remains difficult, officials said. One complication: Prisoners can block the transfer of records.

"A lot of it depends on the inmates' attitude at the point of the release — do they want to be treated more or to be left alone?" said Don Kingdon, deputy director of the California Mental Health Directors Assn.

Kingdon stressed the importance of counties having complete information on prisoners before they are released to local supervision. "That can create a problem in the community if they release prisoners and they have mental health needs and you didn't know," he said.

California prison officials "made a whole lot of effort to make the [transition] be as smooth as possible," said Denny Sallade, deputy director of the state's Division of Correctional Health Care Services. But inmates may be in one mental state when they leave the prison and another when they arrive in the community, often because they stop taking their medication along the way, she noted.

The inmates also may turn down help once they arrive. In Los Angeles County, about 30% of the released state inmates seen by mental health staff refused to either meet with clinicians or be referred for treatment.

Bingham, of the probation department, said the state has tried to address problems. "If we can be successful in Los Angeles County, we can be successful in the rest of the state," he said.

But county officials are warning there may not be enough resources to accommodate former inmates in need of supervision. The state allocated $18 million to Los Angeles County to pay for mental health and substance abuse treatment and other social services. But the money isn't guaranteed to continue past June.

"Supervisor Mike Antonovich is very concerned about the inadequacy of realignment funding to effectively rehabilitate this population, which includes costly mental health services, housing and supervision," said his justice deputy, Anna Pembedjian. "It all boils down to resources."

Los Angeles, like most counties around the state, is already stretched thin after years of budget cuts and may not be equipped to close gaps in health and social services for the newly released inmates, said Davis, of Rand. To help defray some costs, counties across the state are working to enroll the eligible released prisoners in public programs such as Medi-Cal.

Counties are at the very early stages of understanding how to make realignment work, especially for those former inmates with mental illness, Davis said. "It is going to be a challenging time for the next couple years," she said.

Officials ponder next step after loss of redevelopment tools

via San Bernardino Sun

With the elimination of redevelopment agencies - the preeminent financing tool for local economic development in California - Inland Empire officials are just beginning to discuss how to make do without them.

Rancho Cucamonga Mayor Dennis Michael said he'll be part of a task force that involves the elected officials and staff members from member agencies within the California League of Cities and the California Redevelopment Association, in order to come up with ideas on how to move forward without the former redevelopment agencies.

"We'll be looking into the next generation of economic development tools," said Michael, who will meet with the group this week. "The purpose of the task force will be to explore recommendations to the Legislature that would be essential not only for local government but for the state of California to remain economically viable."

Redevelopment agencies, through the use of property tax increment revenue, were able to buy land and float bonds for major projects without having to ask voter permission to do so. The tax increment refers to additional taxes generated by a redevelopment-related project.

With these agencies, local officials in partnership with developers were able to finance major projects such as Victoria Gardens, Ontario Mills, some of the rehabilitation of the historic Fox Theatre in Pomona, regional storm drains, and affordable housing for the poor and seniors throughout the Inland Empire.

Michael said it was time to move forward on the path ahead.

"Continuing to argue with one another, filing litigation and challenging one another on the decision is in the past," Michael said. "Let's move forward and look for a new day. We're all here to make sure the state of California remains the Golden State and we have to move forward in a positive manner to make sure we have the tools for economic development, infrastructure, housing, and for job creation. Those are the four critical elements we've lost."

Jim Kennedy, executive director of the California Redevelopment Association, and other experts said it will be tougher for successor agencies to raise money for projects.

"I know a number of cities have given serious thought to doing what they can with their own resources, not be beholden to the state for authority, and come up with creative ideas on their own, whether it's the use of their own general fund revenues, or a variety of financing districts that they have the authority to create," Kennedy said. "I think it's going to end up having people start giving a lot of serious consideration to tools that have been there a long time and not utilized as pervasively because they're not as effective. In the absence of RDAs, they rise on the feasibility list."

Rancho Cucamonga City Manager John Gillison said the idea is to re-establish a financing tool similar to the original tax increment funding mechanism in place for redevelopment since the 1950s, but there are no real specifics yet on how that might work.

"The conversation on what might take its place is at the very beginning phase," Gillison said. "It has to be statewide. Cities don't have other options. We can't do it on our own. It has to be authorized in the law."

In San Bernardino, redevelopment will be folded into city responsibilities, according to Jim Mulvihill, a redevelopment agency expert and professor of geography and environmental studies at Cal State San Bernardino. Mulvihill expects this to be the case throughout the state, with California cities creating new departments to handle the function of economic redevelopment.

"Ultimately, I just see the present economic development organizations being folded into being a department of city government," Mulvihill said. "Cities like San Bernardino are always going to need to be able to sell the city to developers, to get jobs and to promotes sales tax."

Redevelopment essentially took over a lot of the functions that cities provided anyway, Mulvihill said.

"The catch is that redevelopment had the tax increment," Mulvihill said. "They had a free hand to take all the additional taxes generated by these businesses to reinvest in their activities, whereas now, they're not going to have that."

Policymakers throughout the state aren't the only ones having to shift gears in the wake of the elimination of redevelopment agencies. The major project for political science professor Jason Neidleman's class has been for students to go to city hall and learn what they can about redevelopment agencies.

Now he must change his syllabus to ask students to find out what they can about how city managers will make do without them.

"You hear a lot of stories about California redevelopment agencies being abused to advance the agenda of the downtown elite, but more often than not, CRAs are used for their expressed purpose, which is to address blight, serve underrepresented communities, and maybe, more importantly than anything else, provide affordable housing in regions where there isn't enough."

Gov. Jerry Brown and the majority Democrats in Sacramento decided to do away with the state's redevelopment agencies this year in order to divert property tax funds to schools and public services as the state faces major budget shortfalls.

Local officials have derided the decision because issues of borrowed money and remaining revenue for existing projects remain unresolved. Regional leaders say they now lose the ability to finance major development projects, attract businesses and create jobs.

Proposed legislation in Sacramento seeks to retain remaining funds for affordable housing.
Assemblywoman Norma Torres, D-Chino, expects the proposed legislation, from Assembly Speaker John P rez, and Senate Pro Tem Darrell Steinberg, to be heard through the Assembly Committee on Housing and Community Development sometime within the next month.

Both pieces of legislation, SB 654 and AB 1585, would allow $1.4 billion remaining in tax revenue, set aside for low and moderate income housing, to be used toward such projects.

Torres said she's receptive to the plan.

Ed Starr, Montclair city manager, said AB 1585 goes further than 654, in that it helps successor agencies to the former redevelopment agencies take care of existing contracts. Starr said the legislation would have to be passed as an urgency ordinance, with action needed soon before contract disputes and financing become more of an issue.

SB 986, which was recently introduced by state Sen. Bob Dutton, R-Rancho Cucamonga, also aims to close up unresolved bond issues. Under the law that shuts down redevelopment agencies, officials said they might have to be forced to write off money spent, and return borrowed money, which puts existing projects at risk.

Such projects in Rancho Cucamonga include an I-15 interchange project at Base Line Road, widening of Foothill Boulevard and storm drain work.

"Unfortunately, when the governor decided to end redevelopment, it was very disruptive and frankly you create a whole bunch more problems than what you're trying to solve," Dutton said. "My bill would provide clarity and would provide the ability to complete projects in the works, without litigation."

Reach Neilvia email, call him at 909-483-9356, or find him on Twitter@InlandGov.


Read more:http://www.sbsun.com/ci_19998785#ixzz1mwR0XROX

Crowding hampers L.A. County hospitals' handling of mentally ill

Via latimes.com

Psychiatric patients at Olive View-UCLA Medical Center and Harbor-UCLA Medical Center often sleep on mattresses on the floor. A complaint to supervisors calls conditions 'dangerous and unsanitary.'

The psychiatric emergency services at two county-run hospitals are so overcrowded that mentally ill patients have to sleep on mattresses on the floor, health officials acknowledged this week.

The packed conditions at Olive View-UCLA Medical Center and Harbor-UCLA Medical Center make it more difficult to de-escalate the emotions of patients who arrive at the hospital agitated and anxious, said Christina Ghaly, deputy director of strategic planning for the Los Angeles County Department of Health Services.

"We fully agree this is not an optimal placement," Ghaly said Friday. "This is not the best way to care for patients. But at the county hospitals, we are at the mercy of who comes to our door."

Ghaly said the issue of overcrowding is not new and that county health officials recognize that something has to be done to accommodate more people.

Olive View has 12 beds in its emergency room set aside for psychiatric patients but typically houses about 20 and occasionally has as many as 30, Ghaly said. The hospital cannot add full-sized beds because of fire safety concerns. So, in addition to sleeping on the floor, patients are regularly housed in an overflow area or in interview rooms, she said.

Harbor-UCLA has space for 16 beds but on an average day has 20 psychiatric patients.

This week, a patient advocate sent a complaint to the Board of Supervisors, The Times and the federal government, saying that it was "dangerous and unsanitary" for patients to sleep on the floor.

"Psychiatric patients are being housed in appalling conditions at Olive View Hospital's psychiatric ward; hazards caused by severe overcrowding require immediate attention," the complaint read.

In response, Department of Health Services Director Mitch Katz said in a letter to the board that the hospitals receive more psychiatric patients than they were built for, but that they still provide a safe environment.

The county is taking several steps to address the crowding, Ghaly said. Officials ordered smaller beds for Olive View's psychiatric area so more can fit in the available space and they are trying to get a nearby mental health urgent care center designated as a facility that can take overflow patients.

Health officials are also improving training for law enforcement officials on determining which patients need to go to the emergency room. They are also trying to reduce the number of patients who cycle in and out of the emergency room and are trying to expedite the process for getting patients either discharged or admitted.

Advocates for the mentally ill said that crowding at the emergency rooms underscores a chronic problem of lack of funding for psychiatric beds across the state.

"Anybody sleeping on the floor is disturbing," said Jessica Cruz, executive director of the California chapter of the National Alliance on Mental Illness. "You can't get the right kind of care necessary."

Other hospitals also face space issues, said Sheree Kruckenberg, vice president of behavioral health at the California Hospital Assn. "I don't know of an ER in the state that doesn't have a similar problem," she said.

But a hectic and crowded emergency room is not the best place for patients with mental illness. "It exacerbates their symptoms and increases the opportunity for them to strike out," she said.

Molly Munger's tax proposal makes her a major player in California ballot wars

Via SacBee.com

When Molly Munger's name surfaced last year as a potential partner on efforts to provide more funding for schools, California State PTA President Carol Kocivar had to turn to Google to find out who she was.

While Munger is a longtime champion for civil rights and education policy issues, the 63-year-old attorney was a virtual unknown in California political circles.

That changed the moment she submitted a $10 billion tax proposal for the ballot.

Munger's proposed initiative to raise state income taxes for all but the poorest Californians to fund schools and early childhood development programs – and the personal cash she has pledged to spend to put it on the ballot – makes her a major player in the 2012 ballot wars and a thorn in Democratic Gov. Jerry Brown's side.

Her measure, one of at least three tax proposals that could qualify for November's ballot, is seen as a threat to the one Brown is pushing. His would generate nearly $7 billion in budget relief by raising income taxes on high earners and enacting a half-cent increase in the sales tax.

Brown and his allies have called for proponents of rival tax initiatives to drop their efforts, arguing that a ballot featuring multiple tax hikes will lead voters to reject them all.
The argument hasn't moved Munger, a Democrat and Pasadena resident, who says her polling shows a tax hike earmarked for schools can win even with other tax measures on the ballot.

"We think the governor doesn't have as good of an idea this year as we do," Munger told reporters this week. "And that's part of democracy, to put that out in the marketplace of ideas and let the voters decide."

That tenacity doesn't surprise people who have worked with Munger on education issues in recent years.

"As someone who's been involved for a while on trying to get more funds for schools, I don't think I've ever met anyone quite as ferocious about it as Molly," said Ted Lempert, president of the nonprofit Children Now.

Lempert, who worked with Munger when she served on the Children Now board, said Munger brings both a lawyerly attention to detail and passion to her work.

"She is certainly someone who's going to fight for what she thinks is right, even if powerful folks don't agree," he said.

Munger has decades of experience on that front.

As a student at Pasadena's John Muir High School, she campaigned against the repeal of California's fair housing law and supported the student government's interracial slate.

She graduated from Harvard Law School and launched her career at a time when being a woman at a law firm was still considered "pioneering" work.

"That was meaningful to me," Munger said of often being the only or first woman at the table. "I liked the work, and I enjoyed getting those barriers down."

She spent 25 years working variously as a federal prosecutor and attorney in private practice, making partner in two firms. After the 1992 Los Angeles riots, Munger decided to return to the activism roots of her high school days.

"We had this wake-up call in Los Angeles about what had happened to communities of color … it just seemed to me that I ought to go out on a quest to see if I could be useful," she said.

That took her to the Los Angeles office of the NAACP Legal Defense and Educational Fund.

She went on to found the Advancement Project, a legal action group focused on civil rights, with fellow NAACP colleague Constance Rice and her husband, attorney Steve English.
Personal experience also fueled Munger's passion for public schools.

After spending early years at what she calls the "ivy-covered" Westridge School, a private, all-girls academy, Munger, at 14, successfully petitioned her parents to let her go to Pasadena public schools. She said that experience "changed me forever."

"We had a rich mix of visual arts and music programs and drama and debate and science and sports and student government and clubs and classes and all kinds of wonderful materials and teachers," she told PTA members gathered in Sacramento this week.

"And there we were, this rainbow collection of kids all being supported by this wonderful education system that was helping us be everything that we could be."

But when she returned to the halls as a volunteer decades later, as she was considering sending her two sons there, she found a very different environment. After offering to fetch costumes and props for an English class performance of "Romeo and Juliet," she was shocked to learn that the drama department had been closed for 15 years.

Now that California ranks near the bottom nationally in per-pupil spending, Munger said, things are even worse.

"When you say you're 47th in the country it sounds bad enough – and it is bad enough – but then when you see what it's actually doing to kids, it certainly really gets me up every day," she said.

Munger is joining forces with the PTA, which helped craft the initiative language and has pledged to rally volunteers to help with signature-gathering. They say her measure, which generates money on top of funding guaranteed by voter-approved Proposition 98, will do the most to send money to classrooms.

The effort has also put her at odds with some of the Capitol's most influential players.

"Her intentions are good and her goal is pure … but I continue to believe that if there are multiple tax measures on the ballot it hurts all of us," said Senate President Pro Tem Darrell Steinberg, who has met with Munger. "I believe that tie base goes to the runner. All things being equal, deference ought to be given to the elected governor of California."

The California Teachers Association has endorsed Brown's plan, and the California Federation of Teachers has launched its own initiative to raise taxes on those earning at least $1 million.

CTA and other unions supporting Brown's plan can bring big dollars to the table.

So can Munger. Her father is a wealthy business partner to Warren Buffett. Her brother, Stanford physicist Charles T. Munger Jr., is a major GOP donor and financier of redistricting reform. The two are close, but given their ideological split, Munger joked that her brother
"isn't the first deep pocket" she would ask for help.

She's already contributed nearly $1 million to her measure's campaign committee and says she will spend whatever it takes to qualify it.

With the measure expected to be cleared for signature gathering next week, Munger shows no signs of giving up.

"We're going to get this on the ballot," she said. "And we're going to win."

Kamala Harris has key role in mortgage settlemen

Via SFGate.com

There were two people without whom the $26 billion mortgage settlement would not have been done. One is the attorney general of California. The other is the president of Wells Fargo's home mortgage division.

Four months ago, Attorney General Kamala Harris walked away from a proposed settlement that the banks, the Obama administration and other state attorneys general thought was in the bag, for two reasons: The money wasn't enough, and immunizing the banks from further legal liability wasn't acceptable.
Because California, the most populous state in the nation, was also far and away the worst hit by the mortgage meltdown, Harris' signature, on terms closer to what she demanded, was essential for any deal to stand up.

"It was a tough, 13-month-long strategy," said a source in Harris' office. "In the last 10 days, it's been 24/7, round-the-clock negotiations."

California's $18 billion share of a pot that could reach $45 billion, depending on negotiations with other banks, is considerably more than the $4 billion originally on the table, especially given that a central issue of the settlement , the robo-signing of foreclosure affidavits, doesn't apply to California because such documents are not used in foreclosure proceedings here. (The final amount of the settlement will be arrived at by a complicated formula.)

And then there's the law. Under a separate "California commitment" in the settlement, banks failing to enact agreed-upon principal reductions face heavy fines in state court. Other "enforceable guarantees" call on the five banks involved in the settlement - Wells Fargo, Bank of America, JPMorgan Chase, Citigroup and Ally Financial - to focus early in the agreement's three-year period on mortgage relief for the state's hardest-hit areas, like Stockton.

That, said Harris in a news conference on Thursday, is to avoid a repetition of Countrywide Financial's $8.7 billion national settlement. While half the money was supposed to go toward principal reductions for California homeowners, many of them never saw a dime. 

"Countrywide got relief based on a promise. We made sure we won't be in the same situation," she said.

Many of the provisions are similar to ones in the national settlement. Harris and state attorneys general in New York and elsewhere succeeded in limiting the banks' traditional immunity from further legal action in such cases.
Exclusions from immunity include potential criminal cases, private and class-action suits, and the right of states to continue investigating mortgage and other financial fraud.

California can also continue pursuing cases under the state's False Claims Act, under which pension funds like the California Public Employees' Retirement System can sue for treble damages if mortgage-backed securities they have invested in were falsely packaged and dropped in value.

"We didn't get everything we wanted," said the source in Harris' office. "But we can continue our investigations and continue to use the False Claims Act. This is a big deal for us."

Finding common ground: On the other side of the table from Harris' staff sat Mike Heid, president of Wells Fargo Home Mortgage.

Heid, a 26-year mortgage banking veteran, became the point man for the other bankers in the room, said an industry source close to the negotiations. "He took on the role of the spokesperson for the industry."

As one can imagine, there was a fair degree of Sturm und Drang on the bankers' side of the room, but Heid, who was in the negotiations from the beginning, "is known to have a calming influence, to remove the emotions and find common ground," said the source. "One of his greatest strengths is to focus on the business aspects of the deal."

He managed to find common ground on a particularly noxious issue for the banks, including Wells Fargo: loan reductions. That's partly because Wells has had some experience in the area, having written down $4.1 billion in principal forgiveness for 128,000 homeowners since January 2009, according to the San Francisco bank.

Heid also was involved in the equally fraught issue of legal immunity, which ended up freeing the banks from state civil suits relating to issues in the settlement, such as loan origination and certain foreclosure practices.

A government negotiator was quoted elsewhere as saying Heid was a "real honest broker," without whom the deal would "never have gotten done."
Here's the $5.3 billion Heid got his employer to commit to:

-- $3.4 billion in principal reduction for "qualified (Wells) borrowers with financial hardship."


-- A $900 million refinancing program for little or no (i.e. underwater) equity in their homes.

-- $1 billion for state and federal coffers to help foreclosed homeowners.
Wells and the other banks already have set aside the money they calculated it would take to cover the settlement. While taking some hits, Wells executives can be at least cautiously optimistic that the affair is behind them.
The "agreement represents a very important step toward restoring confidence in mortgage servicing and stability in the housing market," Heid said in a statement.

That, of course, remains to be seen, as will the banks' promptness in completing its part of the bargain. What it does to restore the confidence of the millions of troubled homeowners - 2.2 million underwater in California, which accounts for 11 percent of foreclosures nationwide - also remains to be seen.