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Open dialogue among community members is an important part of successful advocacy. Take Action California believes that the more information and discussion we have about what's important to us, the more empowered we all are to make change.

Friday, June 29, 2012

California Bill Would Help Job-seekers Move Into Self-employment


A Central Coast congresswoman is pushing a new bill to help job seekers move into self-employment.


Rep. Lois Capps, D-Santa Barbara, introduced the Entrepreneurial Training Improvement Act of 2012 in late May. The bill would make training available for would-be entrepreneurs through local Workforce Investment Boards.

California unemploymentIn 2010, the Department of Labor assigned Workforce Investment Boards to provide self-employment training. But they have shied away from training because present Labor Department guidelines are geared toward traditional job creation and placement, Capps said.

In California, Workforce Investment Boards oversee One-Stop Career Centers, including the Sacramento Employment & Training Agency.

"As we work to help small businesses grow and create jobs, we can't overlook the importance of the smallest of businesses -- our innovative entrepreneurs," Capps said in a statement introducing the bill.

Today, the bill is in committee. It focuses new attention on job seekers who are looking to create their own jobs by starting their own businesses.

Though entrepreneurial activity nationwide fell slightly in 2011 compared to 2010, Californians remain among the most likely to start their own businesses, according to the Kauffman Foundation, which promotes and tracks entrepreneurship.

In California, 440 adults per 100,000 started businesses each month in 2011, tying Texas and trailing only Arizona's 520 per 100,000, according to the Kauffman Foundation's Index of Entrepreneurial Activity.
Nationwide, about 543,000 businesses were created each month in 2011, according to the Kauffman index.

Supreme Court Upholds Health Care Law, 5-4, in Victory for Obama

WASHINGTON — The Supreme Court on Thursday upheld President Obama’s health care overhaul law, saying its requirement that most Americans obtain insurance or pay a penalty was authorized by Congress’s power to levy taxes. The vote was 5 to 4, with Chief Justice John G. Roberts Jr. joining the court’s four more liberal members.

The decision was a victory for Mr. Obama and Congressional Democrats, affirming the central legislative achievement of Mr. Obama’s presidency. 

“The Affordable Care Act’s requirement that certain individuals pay a financial penalty for not obtaining health insurance may reasonably be characterized as a tax,” Chief Justice Roberts wrote in the majority opinion. “Because the Constitution permits such a tax, it is not our role to forbid it, or to pass upon its wisdom or fairness.” 

At the same time, the court rejected the argument that the administration had pressed most vigorously in support of the law, that its individual mandate was justified by Congress’s power to regulate interstate commerce. The vote was again 5 to 4, but in this instance Chief Justice Roberts and the court’s four more conservative members were in agreement. 

The court also substantially limited the law’s expansion of Medicaid, the joint federal-state program that provides health care to poor and disabled people. Seven justices agreed that Congress had exceeded its constitutional authority by coercing states into participating in the expansion by threatening them with the loss of existing federal payments. 

Justice Anthony M. Kennedy, who had been thought to be the administration’s best hope to provide a fifth vote to uphold the law, joined three more conservative members in an unusual jointly written dissent that said the court should have struck down the entire law. The majority’s approach, he said from the bench, “amounts to a vast judicial overreaching.” 

The court’s ruling was the most significant federalism decision since the New Deal and the most closely watched case since Bush v. Gore in 2000. It was a crucial milestone for the law, the Patient Protection and Affordable Care Act of 2010, allowing almost all — and perhaps, in the end, all — of its far-reaching changes to roll forward. 

Mr. Obama welcomed the court’s decision on the health care law, which has inspired fierce protests, legal challenges and vows of repeal since it was passed. “Whatever the politics, today’s decision was a victory for people all over this country whose lives are more secure because of this law,” he said at the White House. 

Republicans, though, used the occasion to attack it again. 

“Obamacare was bad policy yesterday; it’s bad policy today,” Mitt Romney, the presumptive Republican presidential nominee, said in remarks near the Capitol. “Obamacare was bad law yesterday; it’s bad law today.” He, like Congressional Republicans, renewed his pledge to undo the law. 

The historic decision, coming after three days of lively oral arguments in March and in the midst of a presidential campaign, drew intense attention across the nation. Outside the court, more than 1,000 people gathered — packing the sidewalk, playing music, chanting slogans — and a loud cheer went up as word spread that the law had been largely upheld. Chants of “Yes we can!” rang out, but the ruling also provoked disappointment among Tea Party supporters.   

In Loudoun County, Va., Angela Laws, 58, the owner of a cleaning service, said she and her fiancĂ© were relieved at the news. “We laughed, and we shouted with joy and hugged each other,” she said, explaining that she had been unable to get insurance because of her diabetes and back problems until a provision in the health care law went into effect. 

After months of uncertainty about the law’s fate, the court’s ruling provides some clarity — and perhaps an alert — to states, insurers, employers and consumers about what they are required to do by 2014, when much of the law comes into force. 

The Obama administration had argued that the mandate was necessary because it allowed other provisions of the law to function: those overhauling the way insurance is sold and those preventing sick people from being denied or charged extra for insurance. The mandate’s supporters had said it was necessary to ensure that not only sick people but also healthy individuals would sign up for coverage, keeping insurance premiums more affordable. 

Conservatives took comfort from two parts of the decision: the new limits it placed on federal regulation of commerce and on the conditions the federal government may impose on money it gives the states. 

Five justices accepted the argument that had been at the heart of the challenges brought by 26 states and other plaintiffs: that the federal government is not permitted to force individuals not engaged in commercial activities to buy services they do not want. That was a stunning victory for a theory pressed by a small band of conservative and libertarian lawyers. Most members of the legal academy view the theory as misguided,if not frivolous. 

“To an economist, perhaps, there is no difference between activity and inactivity; both have measurable economic effects on commerce,” Chief Justice Roberts wrote. “But the distinction between doing something and doing nothing would not have been lost on the framers, who were practical statesmen, not metaphysical philosophers.” 

Justice Ruth Bader Ginsburg, in an opinion joined by Justices Stephen G. Breyer, Sonia Sotomayor and Elena Kagan, dissented on this point, calling the view “stunningly retrogressive.” She wondered why Chief Justice Roberts had seen fit to address it at all in light of his vote to uphold the mandate under the tax power. 

Akhil Reed Amar, a Yale law professor and a champion of the health care law, said that it was “important to look at the dark cloud behind the silver lining.” 

“Federal power has more restrictions on it,” he said, referring to the new limits on regulating commerce. “Going forward, there may even be laws on the books that have to be re-examined.”
The restrictions placed on the Medicaid expansion may also have significant ripple effects. A splintered group of justices effectively revised the law to allow states to choose between participating in the expansion while receiving additional payments or forgoing the expansion and retaining the existing payments. The law had called for an all-or-nothing choice. 

The expansion had been designed to provide coverage to 17 million Americans. While some states have indicated that they will participate in the expansion, others may be resistant, leaving more people outside the safety net than the Obama administration had intended. 

Although the decision did not turn on it, the back-and-forth between Justice Ginsburg’s opinion for the four liberals and the joint opinion by the four conservatives — Justice Kennedy and Justices Antonin Scalia, Clarence Thomas and Samuel A. Alito Jr. — revisited the by-now-familiar arguments. Broccoli made a dozen appearances. 

“Although an individual might buy a car or a crown of broccoli one day, there is no certainty she will ever do so,” Justice Ginsburg wrote. “And if she eventually wants a car or has a craving for broccoli, she will be obliged to pay at the counter before receiving the vehicle or nourishment. She will get no free ride or food, at the expense of another consumer forced to pay an inflated price.” 

The conservative dissenters responded that “one day the failure of some of the public to purchase American cars may endanger the existence of domestic automobile manufacturers; or the failure of some to eat broccoli may be found to deprive them of a newly discovered cancer-fighting chemical which only that food contains, producing health care costs that are a burden on the rest of us.”
All of the justices agreed that their review of the health care law was not barred by the Anti-Injunction Act, which allows suits over some sorts of taxes only after they become due. That could have delayed the health care challenge to 2015. The conservative dissenters said that the majority could not have it both ways by calling the mandate a tax for some purposes but not others.
“That carries verbal wizardry too far, deep into the forbidden land of sophists,” they said. 

As a general matter, Chief Justice Roberts wrote that the decision in the case, National Federation of Independent Business v. Sebelius, No. 11-393, offered no endorsement of the law’s wisdom.
Some decisions, the chief justice said, “are entrusted to our nation’s elected leaders, who can be thrown out of office if the people disagree with them.” 

Justice Ginsburg, speaking to a crowded courtroom that sat rapt for the better part of an hour, drew a different conclusion. 

“In the end,” she said, “the Affordable Care Act survives largely unscathed.”

Reporting was contributed by John H. Cushman Jr., Robert Pear, John Schwartz, Ethan Bronner and Sabrina Tavernise.

Wednesday, June 27, 2012

Move toward 'inclusion' sparks class size debate



An ambitious plan to move San Francisco special education students into mainstream classrooms is getting mixed reviews from teachers and sparking a debate over class size as the school district and teachers union try to reach an agreement on a new labor contract.

The shift is part of an effort to improve special education by teaching students in the least restrictive environment possible, a model known as inclusion. Last fall, under the new plan, special education students in kindergarten and sixth and ninth grades were given a wider choice of schools they could attend and, in some cases, placed in general education classes.

Although teachers support the concept of inclusion, they worry that the district’s implementation has been haphazard.

“It’s great, provided that it meets the students’ needs, but there seems to be a push toward this whether or not it meets the students’ needs,” said Patty Golumb, a special education teacher at A.P. Giannini Middle School.
“Some of the kids are five or six grade levels behind in reading, and they’re saying that they should be able to access mainstream classes.”

Leaders of the teachers union argue that the district's contract proposals could actually undermine special education.

One proposal to raise the cap on the number of students allowed in special education classes would make it nearly impossible for teachers to give kids the individual attention they need, according to Linda Plack, vice president of the United Educators of San Francisco, the union that represents the district’s 6,000 teachers and other school staff.

Plack said the district's goals seem to be contradictory. It wants to allow more students in special education classes at the same time it is trying “to make general education classes larger and put as many kids as possible into general ed," she said.

Dr. Elizabeth Blanco, assistant superintendent of special education, said the district needs the flexibility to place students in whichever classes suit them best.

“It’s not about trying to overload teachers and give them more work,” Blanco said. “It’s a matter of giving our students more access to the least restrictive environment. Some of the current caps don’t allow us to do that.”

Class preparation time is another divisive issue. For years, special education teachers in secondary schools have been allowed two periods per day to prepare lessons, work with families and meet with colleagues. General education teachers are allotted one such period a day. The district now wants special education teachers to work with students during one of their two preparation periods.

“There’s nothing in the contract that delineates an extra preparation period,” said Tom Ruiz, the district’s chief negotiator for labor relations. “Every preparation period costs about $13,000 per year. Before we were kind of going above and beyond what the contract provided, but you have to look at the fiscal issues.”

But Plack said teachers need time to manage the additional paperwork and meetings associated with special-needs students.

“You can call it what you want,” she said, “a counseling period, conference period, coffee at Starbucks, but they did a lot of work during that period. I don’t see how they’re going to get it all done now.”

The teachers union and the district began meeting with a mediator last week, after contract negotiations broke down this spring. Both sides say they want a new labor agreement before school starts in August.

Two months ago, the California Department of Education found the district in violation of more than 100 special education regulations during the past year. The violations include failures to properly assess students’ disabilities, implement federally mandated services and employ qualified staff to work with special-needs students.

The report angered parents who have argued for years that the district has failed their children. Last month, at a meeting of the Community Advisory Committee for Special Education, parents had the opportunity to speak directly to the district’s incoming superintendent, Richard Carranza.

He asked to hear their concerns but said he was also interested in “what’s working, what’s going well.”

Patrick McAllister – who pulled his son out of Alamo Elementary School in March, citing a sharp decrease in services for special education students – rose from his seat and said: “I get really upset, Mr. Carranza, for you coming here when the district is under investigation by the state and saying, ‘What’s going right?’ ”

Carranza tried to reassure the group. “How many superintendents have come to your meeting? This is my third time. I’m invested," he said.

McAllister and other parents at the meeting complained that teachers – even those with specialized credentials – are unqualified to work with students struggling with physical, developmental and emotional challenges.

“While there are dedicated special educators that have a tremendous, positive impact on their students, the overall lack of qualifications is a serious issue,” McAllister said. “Just ask the state.”

Teachers say they want more training, too.
“I couldn’t agree with them more,” Maggie Englesbe, a special education teacher at Sutro Elementary School, said of the parents’ concerns. “We get a lot of feedback about writing compliant Individualized Education Programs” – written agreements with parents outlining which services a student will receive – “but not a lot of professional development around teaching and learning.”
At the meeting, Carranza and Blanco promised that would change in the coming months. The district will have to provide more training for teachers in order to comply with state regulations.
“I think there has to be a basic cycle of training for anybody coming into an existing system,” Blanco said. “General education teachers should be trained as well as special education teachers on how to work with students who have challenging behaviors.”
The move toward inclusion began in 2010, when independent auditors hired by the district found that students with special needs were largely marginalized and viewed by administrators as an encroachment on school resources. Special education students were flailing in a web of isolated programs, “resulting in fragmented and disconnected services for these students,” according to the report.
The district lacked “a clear agenda for how it can provide equity and access to students with disabilities, improve expectations for their achievement and implement the accountability structures necessary to ensure results,” the auditors wrote.
They recommended the district abandon its traditional special education programs and instead provide services to students in mainstream settings. In September 2010, the district adopted those recommendations and began gradually moving toward inclusion. Carranza, then assistant superintendent, vowed to fully implement the plan.
He acknowledges the move will take years.
“We’re not looking at special education as a place where you go,” he said. “We’re looking at special education as a service that takes place in a general education classroom.”
Still, he said, “We’re changing the paradigm, and it’s going to be messy.”



Monday, June 25, 2012

New Pew Study Finds 36 Percent Increase in Prison Time Served

Prisoners released in 2009 served an average of nine additional months in custody, or 36 percent longer, than offenders released in 1990, according to a report released today by the Pew Center on the States' Public Safety Performance Project. The study found that for offenders released from their original sentence in 2009 alone, the additional time behind bars cost states $23,300 per offender, or a total of over $10 billion, more than half of which was for nonviolent offenders.
The report, Time Served: The High Cost, Low Return of Longer Prison Terms, also found that time served for drug offenses and violent offenses grew at nearly the same pace from 1990 to 2009. Drug offenders served 36 percent longer in 2009 than those released in 1990, while violent offenders served 37 percent longer. Time served for inmates convicted of property crimes increased by 24 percent.

"Violent and career criminals belong behind bars, and for a long time," said Adam Gelb, director of the Public Safety Performance Project. "But building more prisons to house lower-risk nonviolent inmates for longer sentences simply is not the best way to reduce crime."

Though almost all states increased length of stay over the last two decades, the overall change varied widely between states. Among 35 reporting states representing nearly 90 percent of 2009 prison releases, time served rose most rapidly in Florida, where terms grew by 166 percent and cost an extra $1.4 billion in 2009. Prison terms increased in Virginia by 91 percent, North Carolina (86 percent), Oklahoma (83 percent), Michigan (79 percent), and Georgia (75 percent). Eight states reduced their overall time served, including Illinois (25 percent) and South Dakota (24 percent).

Among prisoners released in 2009 from the reporting states, Michigan had the longest overall average time served, at 4.3 years, followed by Pennsylvania (3.8 years). South Dakota had the shortest average time served at 1.3 years, followed by Tennessee (1.9 years). The national average time served was 2.9 years. Download the report and state fact sheets.

A companion analysis Pew conducted in partnership with external researchers identified the public safety impact of longer prison terms, using data about nonviolent offenders released in 2004 from Florida, Maryland, and Michigan. The study revealed that many of those nonviolent offenders in each state could have served prison terms between three months and two years shorter with little or no public safety consequences: 14 percent of all offenders released in Florida, 18 percent in Maryland, and 24 percent in Michigan.

"Taxpayers, today more than ever, want their dollars to produce the best possible public safety results," said Gelb. "The idea behind longer prison terms is that they will cut crime and recidivism. But for a large number of lower-risk offenders, that just isn't the case. There's a high cost and little to no crime control benefit."

The study outlines a variety of steps that leaders in each of the three branches of state government have taken in the last few years to reverse growth trends in overall time served, including:

Reclassifying offenses or raising dollar thresholds and drug quantities required to trigger stiffer penalties. (Alabama, Arkansas, California, Delaware, Montana, South Carolina, Washington)

Expanding opportunities for inmates to earn time off of their sentences by completing programs. (Colorado, Kansas, South Carolina, Pennsylvania)

Reducing the percentage of sentences that must be served before inmates are eligible for parole. (Georgia, Mississippi)

The report also summarizes recent public opinion polling that shows strong support nationwide for reducing time served for nonviolent offenders. The January 2012 national poll of 1,200 likely voters, along with similar surveys in Georgia, Missouri and Oregon, revealed that the public is broadly supportive of a wide range of policy changes that would shorten time served and reinvest prison savings in stronger probation and parole supervision programs.

The report is based on National Corrections Reporting Program data from 35 states that was collected and verified by the U.S. Census Bureau and the Bureau of Justice Statistics. The reporting states covered 89 percent of the inmates released in 2009, the most recent year for which figures are available. States not included in the study had not reported sufficient data over the 1990-2009 study period.



Via: http://www.sacbee.com/2012/06/05/4541301/new-pew-study-finds-36-percent.html

BREAKING: U.S. Supreme Court Rules Against Mandatory LWOP for Juveniles

BREAKING: U.S. Supreme Court Rules Against Mandatory LWOP for Juveniles

 Today, the United States Supreme Court found that sentencing juveniles to life in prison without the possibility of parole (LWOP) for murder is unconstitutional. The court’s 5-4 decision specifically ruled against mandatory LWOP, or the practice of state laws automatically sentencing juveniles who commit murder to LWOP. Chief Justice John Roberts and justices Antonin Scalia, Clarence Thomas and Samuel Alito were the four justices in dissent.


Friday, June 22, 2012

L.A.'s lost opportunity for job creation

On April 30, the L.A. Metropolitan Transportation Authority voted to award an $890-million contract for 235 light rail cars to Kinkisharyo International, a Japanese firm that will build a significant portion of the cars in Osaka, Japan, rather than in California. Just a week later, on May 9, the Bay Area Rapid Transit agency voted to award a $2.5-billion contract for the manufacture of 775 rail cars to a
Canadian firm that will build many of the car components in Mexico. With the awarding of these two
contracts, California lost the opportunity to create more than 2,000 good American jobs building rail cars for our transit systems.

That argument was made clearly and repeatedly by a broad-based coalition of labor, community and
business leaders who supported the losing bidders. But not everyone agreed that creating jobs should
be a top priority in awarding a contract. The transit agencies said that when giving out a contract for
rail cars, the most important thing is building the best possible rail cars at the best possible price. Jobs are a nice side benefit, they argued, but they are secondary in the contracting process.

I disagree, and I think that in both of these cases, the transit agencies made a mistake. In fact, I'd go
further: It's critically important that we build consensus among public officials across the country in
the years ahead that job creation should be considered one of the primary criteria in the purchase of equipment for public use. In Los Angeles, taxpayers will be spending billions of dollars over the next decade building and retooling their 21st century transportation system; creating good middle-class jobs for local workers should not be given second billing.

We are already part of the way there. The federal Buy America law, in effect since 1983, requires that all transit-related goods and equipment purchased with federal dollars need to be substantially made in America. This means that at least 60% of the rail car components must be made in America, and final assembly must occur in the U.S. Last year, the California Legislature went further and allowed local transit agencies to give extra points to bidders that commit to building more of their rail cars in the U.S. than their competitors.

That's an important start. Now we need to create a process in which the quality and number of U.S. jobs to be created can be legally considered by public officials in a manner equal to the consideration of things like cost and performance.
In the recent L.A. rail car procurement process, MTA officials started out on the right path. They
included language in the request for proposals that required all bidders on the rail car contract to create a "U.S. employment plan" that emphasized the creation of permanent living-wage jobs and training opportunities for unskilled people. And they promised to conduct a "trade-off analysis" in which the value of the jobs plan could be deducted from the proposed cost of the rail cars.

But the MTA staff didn't follow its own criteria. It rejected a proposal from Siemens Industry Inc. that would have created 1,100 direct full-time equivalent U.S. jobs in favor of Kinkisharyo's plan, which will create 438 direct FTE jobs, according to our analysis. While Siemens proposed to spend $5 million on workforce training and to build a rail car factory in East Los Angeles, Kinkisharyo made vague promises to work with local nonprofit groups and to build a temporary facility somewhere in the U.S.

The MTA staff claimed to have chosen Kinkisharyo because of a 5% lower cost and "better expected performance," but it failed to answer the fundamental question of why Kinkisharyo wasn't required to fully comply with the sensible requirements of the U.S. employment plan language.

In 2008, L.A. County voters adopted Measure R — the primary source of funding for the purchase of these rail cars — precisely because public officials promised that the tax revenue would be invested in desperately needed job creation and traffic reduction. Measure R itself stated that one of the purposes of the half-cent sales tax increase was to "stimulate the local economy [and] create jobs." A 2008 study by the L.A. County Economic Development Corp., commissioned by the MTA to support the tax, projected that Measure R would create more than 500,000 jobs, including 33,000 manufacturing positions.

Even once everyone agrees on the importance of job creation in the procurement process, transit agencies will still need to establish clear procedures on how to value jobs and job creation. Should a part-time, temporary job be counted the same as a full-time job with extensive training opportunities?

Is the creation of a temporary facility as valuable as the construction of a permanent manufacturing facility in a poor neighborhood? These are questions that the MTA failed to address in its procurement decision. Yet research shows that building permanent, environmentally sound manufacturing facilities in poor neighborhoods can breathe life into those communities and into the larger regional economy.

Public officials charged with expending precious tax dollars on equipment need to select companies that manufacture their products in the United States.

Thursday, June 21, 2012

A soda ban, L.A.-style

For too many years, Los Angeles city schools were purveyors of empty-calorie, health-jeopardizing, sugary soda pop, sold to captive audiences of young students who were forming the eating and drinking habits they would take with them into adulthood. The Los Angeles Unified School District boldly and wisely banned sodas from school vending machines and cafeterias in 2002. But in an era in which people are experiencing increases in obesity and diabetes, the city continues to peddle sugar-loaded drinks to Angelenos via vending machines in libraries and parks. Now Councilman Mitchell Englander wants to end such sales. It's a good idea. The ban should move forward.
Englander's proposal is nothing like the clunky, nanny-state tactics of New York Mayor Michael Bloomberg, who is seeking to ban big cups of sugary drinks from his city's restaurants, movie theaters, stadiums and street carts. Unlike Bloomberg, Englander isn't trying to tell private companies what they can sell or private citizens how much they can buy, eat or drink. No one would be blocked from leaving the basketball court and crossing the street to the food truck to buy and guzzle 64 ounces and 700-something calories of carbonated sugar water, if that's what they really want to do. The point is that the city should be providing its people with healthier refreshment choices on site. It need not be in the junk-drink business. At a Tuesday hearing, vending machine operators complained, predictably, that a ban would cost them money and jobs. And to be sure, the city library and parks vending machine contracts are huge, and they supply drink companies with thousands of thirsty potential customers. But no one is suggesting tossing out the vending machines. They could and should be stocked with more wholesome options.

Others testified that too little fresh, clean — and free — water is available at city facilities. Drinking fountains used to be commonplace but are harder to find. Properly operated and maintained, they need not be public health hazards. Los Angeles, after all, owns and operates a water utility, and shouldn't we make its product more freely available to young (and middle-aged and old) athletes and readers? We should — and the council should make sure its study addresses how to make certain that city parks and libraries supply enough opportunities for a fresh drink of water even to those who don't want to stuff a dollar in a machine.

But we can have both free water and vending machines that dispense healthy beverages. The primary purpose of cities should not be to package their citizens and sell them to soda pop vendors. Public parks and libraries, like schools, should be refuges from the  sugar-smack frenzy of the commercial world.


Via: LA TIMES

Wednesday, June 20, 2012

Who's crowding California's jails



Bail

According to a new report, California's jails are full of people who can't afford bail.


California's county jails are overcrowded, and a new report from the Center on Juvenile and Criminal Justice, a criminal justice reform think tank based in San Francisco, says much of the blame lies with California's commercial bail bond system. In "The Commercial Bail  Industry: Profit or Public Safety?" author Amanda Gullings warns that jails will remain overcrowded until they develop alternatives to monetary bail.


According to the report, a large number of people are sitting in California jails because they can't afford bail. Seventy-one percent of California's jail population is pretrial--meaning, people are locked up in county jail but not because they've been convicted of a crime. There are various reasons these inmates are locked up despite not having been found guilty yet--immigration holds, warrants in other states--and the actual number of bailable inmates sitting  behind bars varies from county to county.


In Los Angeles County, roughly 33.75 percent of the county's jail inmates could be out of jail if they could afford (or, in some cases, chose to afford) bail, according to a report prepared last month for the Los Angeles County Sheriff's Department (LASD). Another 11.25 percent are being held without bail by a judge. Theoretically, that means Los Angeles could have about 5,500 fewer jail inmates, if those inmates could afford to bail themselves out, or pay for the standard 8-10 percent premium charged by most commercial bail bonds companies.


This population of bailable, unsentenced inmates is becoming a hot topic for sheriff's departments around the state, as prison realignment kicks into gear. Under realignment, a large number of convicted offenders who used to be sent to state prison have become the domain of county sheriff's departments. LASD expects the daily jail population in LA to increase by 7,000 inmates by the end of 2014.


Steve Whitmore, spokesman for LA Sheriff Lee Baca, says Baca is focused on the bailable population "like a laser beam." Actually doing anything to get that population onto bail alternatives, like ankle bracelet monitoring, is a complicated process, he says. "It's a very difficult negotiation and everyone has to be involved, like the Board of Supervisors."


CJCJ's Gullings says the coming political battle over the pretrial population will be fierce, with the bail industry lobby playing a big role. Between 2000 and 2012, the bail lobby spent $456,480 on political campaigns in California, according to Gullings.


"Right now is a real pivotal moment for the bail industry to sort of undermine the accountability of pretrial services," she says. "Because this is an opportunity for counties to really expand those pretrial services if that’s what they wish to do."


But those in the bail industry insist that bail is still the most effective form of pretrial release. Eric Granof, chief marketing officer for AIA, the largest underwriter of bail bonds in the country, says the bail industry is widely misunderstood because the media perpetuates the "Dog the Bounty Hunter" image of bail agents as just in it for the money. Really, Granof says, they're insurance agents who perform a professional service. Bail, he says, serves its purpose.


"When someone has money on the hook, they’re going to show up,"says Granof. "When they have something on the hook that affects a family member, they’ll show up. When a bail agent has financial responsibility and they’re on the hook, they’re going to make sure that person shows up."


As for political influence, Granof says, "just like any other industry, we have lobbyists, ok? Is it big lobbyists, like the automobile industry or tobacco? It’s nothing like that."


There's a role for pretrial services, Granof says. "Our issue is that we think sometimes it goes a little too far."


That debate is just at its inception: what to do with the pretrial population to free up jail space for new inmates will be a county-by-county battle in California.

Monday, June 18, 2012

Drug laws panel supports reducing possession crimes to misdemeanors



Most but not all members of a drug-law-reform panel convened Tuesday by San Francisco Public Defender Jeff Adachi supported reducing simple drug possession from a felony to a misdemeanor.

The panel, which included San Francisco District Attorney George Gascon, was part of a Justice Summit held annually by the Public Defender's Office.

Gascon led off in supporting a change in California law, as is currently being proposed in SB 1506, sponsored by state Sen. Mark Leno, D-San Francisco.

SF Medical Marijuana Rally"For me, this has been a long journey," said Gascon, who is also a former police chief. But "I truly have felt, in my years of working in public policy, that the war on drugs has been a failure," he said.

Gascon said sending young people to prison for drug possession is equivalent to sending them to a "university of crime" and making them more likely to re-offend in the future.

A dissenting voice came from Martin Vranicar, the assistant chief executive officer of the California District Attorneys Association.

Vranicar said some drug users may need the threat of a possible felony conviction and sentence to motivate them to go into treatment programs.

Vranicar noted that most counties currently have diversion programs, but some offenders don't make use of them.

"We've got these programs that allow offenders to escape from criminal sanctions, but people just don't take advantage of them," he told the audience in the Koret Auditorium of the San Francisco Main Library.

At present, California law requires that possession of certain drugs, such as cocaine and heroin, is a felony punishable by 16 months to three years in jail. Possession of some other drugs, such as concentrated cannabis, sometimes known as hashish, can be either a felony or a misdemeanor punishable by no more than a year in jail.

Possession of less than an ounce of marijuana, however, is now only an infraction, punishable by a fine.

Leno's bill, as of Tuesday pending in the Senate, would change the drug possession crimes now classed as felonies to misdemeanors.

In a video message to the conference, Leno said felony convictions make it harder for reformed drug users to obtain the housing, education and jobs they need to turn their lives around.

"We really perpetuate a chronic underclass, which benefits none of us," under the current drug laws," Leno said.

The three other panelists -- San Francisco Probation Chief Wendy Still, Deputy Public Defender Tal Klement and Drug Policy Alliance Executive Director Ethan Nadelman - supported changing the law and also called for broader societal reforms.

"You have to look at the underlying problem, and not just lock people up," Still said.


Via: http://www.ktvu.com/news/news/local-govt-politics/drug-laws-panel-supports-reducing-possession-crime/nPGy9/

Friday, June 15, 2012

Agency that runs California courts 'dysfunctional,' report says

The agency that runs the California court system has become "dysfunctional" and bloated with high-salaried bureaucrats and requires a major overhaul, according to a report ordered by California Chief Justice Tani Cantil-Sakauye.

The 300-page report, which will be presented to judicial branch leaders next month, comes as the courts are trying to stave off large budget cuts from Sacramento. Although ordered by Cantil-Sakauye and written by a committee she named, the highly critical evaluation may undermine the chief jurist's efforts to roll back projected budget cuts of about $544 million.

The committee of 11 judges said the Administrative Office of the Courts, the San Francisco-based agency that runs the court system, is overstaffed, "top-heavy" and unwieldy. The office has strayed from its required task of serving the courts and become controlling, deceptive and secretive, the judges said.

"The top-level decision-making process of the AOC became insular, with a top-down management style limiting input from those within the organization," the report said. The judges cited 17 positions with maximum annual salaries at or above $175,000, "numerous positions" with salaries in excess of $100,000 and a staff attorney who was permitted to telecommute from Switzerland.

The problems occurred during the tenure of retired Chief Justice Ronald M. George and retired administrative office Director William Vickrey, the report said. During that time, new committees, rules and programs were established at the behest of the Judicial Council, the courts' governing body headed by the chief justice, the report said. The council failed to keep a close eye on management and bureaucracy as staffing swelled to 1,100, according to the analysis.

The report recommends greater oversight by the Judicial Council, a restructuring of the bureaucracy, regular internal audits, staff cuts and possible relocation of the Administrative Office of the Courts from pricey office space in San Francisco to Sacramento.

Cantil-Sakauye acknowledged that the report contains "hard criticisms" and noted that downsizing and restructuring are already occurring. She said staffing will be down to 860 by June 30 because of ongoing layoffs.

The Alliance of California Judges, a dissenting group that has complained about the court bureaucracy, called the evaluation "an A to Z indictment of an out-of-control organization." The group said the report confirmed what the Alliance has been saying for years: "The AOC is broken at its very core and has been allowed to run itself … for well over a decade."


Via: http://www.latimes.com/news/local/la-me-court-costs-20120530,0,4305785.story

Wednesday, June 13, 2012

Justice Dept. Defends Public’s Constitutional ‘Right to Record’ Cops


As police departments around the country are increasingly caught up in tussles with members of the public who record their activities, the U.S. Justice Department has come out with a strong statement supporting the First Amendment right of individuals to record police officers in the public discharge of their duties.

In a surprising letter (PDF) sent on Monday to attorneys for the Baltimore Police Department, the Justice Department also strongly asserted that officers who seize and destroy such recordings without a warrant or without due process are in strict violation of the individual’s Fourth and Fourteenth Amendment rights.

The letter was sent to the police department as it prepares for meetings to discuss a settlement over a civil lawsuit brought by a citizen who sued the department after his camera was seized by police.

In the lawsuit, Christopher Sharp alleged that in May 2010, Baltimore City police officers seized, searched, and deleted the contents of his mobile phone after he used it to record them as they were arresting a friend of his.

Last year, the Baltimore Police Department published a General Order to officers explaining that members of the public have a right to record their activity in public, but the Justice Department said in its 11-page letter this week that the order didn’t go far enough and pointed out several areas where it should clarify and assert more strongly the rights that individuals possess.

The right to record police officers in the public discharge of their duties was essential to help "engender public confidence in our police departments, promote public access to information necessary to hold our governmental officers accountable, and ensure public and officer safety," wrote Jonathan Smith, head of the Justice Department’s Special Litigation Section.

Smith cited the 1991 videotaped assault of Rodney King while he was being beaten by law enforcement officers as an incident that "exemplifies this principle" of public oversight.
"A private individual awakened by sirens recorded police officers assaulting King from the balcony of his apartment," Smith wrote. "This videotape provided key evidence of officer misconduct and led to widespread reform."

He noted that the issue was particularly important in Baltimore, "given the numerous publicized reports over the past several years alleging that BPD officers violated individuals’ First Amendment rights."

The Justice Department’s interference in the local civil case was surprising yet significant in that it put not only Baltimore but also every other city police department around the country on notice that interference in such recordings was unconstitutional. It was sent to Baltimore days after several media and civil rights organizations sent U.S. Attorney General Eric Holder a letter insisting that the Justice Department take action against agencies that arrest people who record officers.

"Since the Occupy Wall Street movement began, police have arrested dozens of journalists and activists simply for attempting to document political protests in public spaces," the letter to Holder stated. "A new type of activism is taking hold around the world and here in the U.S.: People with smartphones, cameras and Internet connections have been empowered with the means to report on public events."

While individual cases didn’t necessarily fall under the Justice Department’s jurisdiction, the letter acknowledged, the suppression of speech was a national problem that had to be addressed at the federal level.

"Freedom of speech, freedom of assembly, and freedom of access to information are vital whether you’re a credentialed journalist, a protester, or just a bystander with a camera," the organizations asserted.

In the document he sent to Baltimore, Smith said that, except under limited circumstances where a person recording police activity engaged in actions that violated the law, jeopardized the safety of a police officer, a suspect, or others, or incited others to violate the law, police officers should not interfere with a recording and should never seize recording devices without a warrant. They should also be advised "not to threaten, intimidate, or otherwise discourage an individual from recording police officer enforcement activities or intentionally block or obstruct cameras or recording devices."

Policies should prohibit officers from destroying recording devices or cameras and deleting recordings or photographs under any circumstances, Smith wrote.




Video above shows a New York City police officer attempting to prevent a New York Times photographer from capturing images during a public demonstration.

Tuesday, June 12, 2012

Cities' homeless crackdown: Could it be compassion fatigue?

A growing number of cities across the United States are making it harder to be homeless. Philadelphia recently banned outdoor feeding of people in city parks. Denver has begun enforcing a ban on eating and sleeping on property without permission. And this month, lawmakers in Ashland, Ore., will consider strengthening the town's ban on camping and making noise in public.

And the list goes on: Atlanta, Phoenix, San Diego, Los Angeles, Miami, Oklahoma City and more than 50 other cities have previously adopted some kind of anti-camping or anti-food-sharing laws, according to the National Law Center on Homelessness & Poverty.

The ordinances are pitting city officials against homeless advocates. City leaders say they want to improve the lives of homeless people and ensure public safety, while supporters of the homeless argue that such regulations criminalize homelessness and make it harder to live on the nation's streets.

"We're seeing these types of laws being proposed and passed all over the country," said Heather Johnson, a civil rights attorney at the homeless and poverty law center, which opposes many of the measures. "We think that criminalization measures such as these are counterproductive. Rather than address the root cause of homelessness, they perpetuate homelessness."

A number of organizations including the American Civil Liberties Union of Pennsylvania filed a lawsuit against the city of Philadelphia this month in response to its feeding ban.

Mark McDonald, press secretary for the city's mayor,Michael Nutter, said the measures are about expanding the services offered to the homeless, adding dignity to their lives and about ensuring good public hygiene and safety.

"This is about an activity on city park land that the mayor thinks is better suited elsewhere," he said. "We think it's a much more dignified place to be in an indoor sit-down restaurant. … The overarching policy goal of the mayor is based on a belief that hungry people deserve something more than getting a ham sandwich out on the side of the street."

If people come inside for feeding programs, they can be connected with other social service programs and possibly speak with officials such as substance abuse counselors and mental health professionals, McDonald said.

Critics argue that bans on feeding and camping often leave people with no where to eat or sleep because many cities lack emergency food services and shelters. Meanwhile, citing people who violate such ordinances costs cities money when officials try to follow up on such cases and hurts people's ability to get jobs and housing, because many develop criminal records.

In 2007, the National Law Center on Homelessness & Poverty filed a lawsuit against Dallas contesting its ordinance that restricted locations where groups could share food and prohibited many groups from providing food in locations where they had served homeless people for years. A trial is scheduled to begin this month.

"It is a good thing when you see municipal governments paying attention to the homeless population and trying to find a number of solutions to the crisis," said James Brooks, theNational League of Cities' program director for community development and infrastructure. "Cities have an obligation not only to the people in the parks but to people in the wider community to prevent a public health problem."

Brooks' group supports the ordinances and said they are holistic approaches to solving a problem that will not simply end by giving people shelter. The key to helping homeless people is to get them indoors where social service workers can help them, Brooks said.

An opponent of the measures, Neil Donovan, executive director of the National Coalitionfor the Homeless, sees the ordinances as possible signs of "compassion fatigue."

"People are getting frustrated and getting angry at the issue," he said. "The person who is asking for money outside a coffee shop, the person who is camping just outside the ballpark, the chronically homeless are getting the brunt of this anger."

Monday, June 11, 2012

L.A. Unified Can Apply for Federal Race to the Top Funds


Supt. John Deasy
Los Angeles Unified School District Supt. John Deasy. (Bob Chamberlin / Los Angeles Times)

For the first time, L.A. Unified and other individual school districts can apply for federal Race to the Top grants, bypassing California officials, including the governor, who had objected to the rules for receiving the education-reform incentives.

The draft rules, announced Tuesday by the U.S. Department of Education, will allow school systems to vie for funds that had been unavailable to any state that was unable or unwilling to compete for the grants.

"We're wide open to new strategies, new approaches," said U.S. Secretary of Education Arne Duncan in a conference call. "Every district in America can apply."

Race to the Top was launched by the U.S. Department of Education under President Obama in 2009. It was intended to spur states into adopting education policies favored by the administration, including revamping teacher evaluations to include student test score data. Three times California applied and lost.

Most recently, in 2011, senior state officials took California out of the running: They declined to endorse an application submitted by a consortium of districts, including those in L.A., Long Beach, San Francisco and Sacramento.

The money was too little to pay for what was required, a particular burden during the current budget crisis, according to state Supt. of Public Instruction Tom Torlakson, Gov. Jerry Brown and other officials. But there also were philosophical objections to using student test scores as one measure to evaluate teachers.

The largest state teachers unions also have opposed using this data in performance reviews, unless teachers approve it as part of a collective bargaining agreement.

In 2010, the state's first application was weakened by the unwillingness of some teachers unions and school districts to sign on.

The new guidelines for the $400-million pool include the requirement that districts remake teachers evaluations. In Los Angeles Unified, schools Supt. John Deasy is moving in that direction.

"We intend to apply," Deasy said. "We've been waiting for this. We're ready for this. Everything we've done has laid the groundwork for a strong application."

If successful, L.A. could receive $25 million, much less than the $100 million the district could have obtained in an earlier funding round.

Still, the money would prove valuable for advancing such district initiatives as an evaluation system now being tested by volunteers in some schools.

Deasy is planning to expand the program districtwide, but faces a legal challenge by United Teachers Los Angeles, the teachers union.

UTLA could play a role in the Race to the Top bid.

"Local buy-in," including from teachers unions, "and commitment to reform is very important," Duncan said.

Stanford education professor Linda Darling-Hammond believes the emphasis is misplaced.

"Evaluation is actually a tiny aspect of the entire puzzle," Darling-Hammond said at a talk Monday to teachers and union activists at the Robert F. Kennedy Community Schools in Koreatown. "The big issue for the U.S. is inequality." The nation has "continually disinvested in schools that serve children who live in poverty."

A contrasting view appeared in a report released Tuesday by Communities for Teaching Excellence, a locally based organization funded by the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation.

The report called for linking improved evaluations — including the use of student data — to decisions on whether teachers should receive and retain tenure protections.

The group saluted recent changes to tenure laws in other states. In Tennessee, teachers now must work five years to earn tenure; California teachers earn tenure after two years. Tennessee teachers also must rank in the top two of five categories for overall performance in the two years before achieving tenure. And teachers can lose tenure if they are rated ineffective for two consecutive years.


Friday, June 8, 2012

Governor wants to cut funding in school science


Science and technology may stimulate the state's economy, but the governor wants to cut funding for a second science requirement in high school.

The California finalists for Intel's Science Competition have developed truly amazing things; they began their projects in high school. The genetic test James Thomas of San Jose generated will be helpful.

"I created a model that actually has 92 percent accuracy in predicting the on-set of alcoholism in individuals," said Thomas.

The technology Jessica Richeri of Riverside developed will change the way we drive.

"My research finds a way to avoid traffic jams in the future with an autonomous robotic vehicle," said Richeri.

Supporters believe this illustrates how innovation can stimulate California's economy, that these kids are tomorrow's 
job creators, and it all begins with STEM: science, technology, education and math.

But because of California's continued budget crisis, the governor proposes to cut the second year science 
requirement in high schools to save $245 million.

For decades, schools have always gotten reimbursed by the state for teaching a second science class, but Gov. 
Jerry Brown wants to move away from state mandates because they're too expensive. He dropped by the science fair and said the cuts mean districts will have to find the money themselves to continue the program.

"I personally went to the School Board and said this is a good requirement, but we want the locals to pick up that up. Otherwise, they charge us," said Brown.

Critics say, though, after years of decreased state funding, schools can barely keep the lights on, let alone pay 
for science curriculum.

"The problem is all of this is being done during a time when other states and other countries are boosting their 
science and technology education to make their students and their population more competitive in this global 
market," said Matt Gray from the California STEM Learning Network.

The other problem is University of California and Cal State both require two years of science for admission. So if 
you're in a school where you can't take a second class, it'll be tough to get in.


What are the options?

"I go to Carnegie Mellon University," said Richeri.

"I'm going to MIT this fall," said Thomas.

Sounds like a California brain drain.

Via: http://abclocal.go.com/kgo/story?section=news/politics&id=8674570