Drummond: More transparency needed with county realignment funds

In 2011, Gov. Jerry Brown signed AB 109 into law. Realignment allowed people convicted of 500 "non-serious, non-violent and non-sex related" felonies to serve their sentences in county jail or in a supervised community release program. 

The idea was to help reduce the state's prison population and the soaring costs of incarceration. Supporters of this major corrections policy shift saw it as an opportunity to break the cycle of re-incarceration by sending more low-level offenders to evidenced-based community programs that offer drug rehab, education, job training, anger management, housing and other services to help them to re-enter society.

Yet in fact, AB 109 was set up to maintain the status quo.

The state gives each county a certain amount of money -- based on a formula -- to help absorb the costs associated with this new group of people still serving sentences and parolees that they are now responsible for.

The Community Corrections Partnership Executive Committee makes funding recommendations to the Alameda County Board of Supervisors. Six of its seven members come from law enforcement and the courts. They include LaDonna Harris, chief probation officer, Fremont Police Chief Richard Lucero, Alameda County Sheriff Gregory Ahern, District Attorney Nancy O'Malley, Public Defender Brendon Woods and court executive officer Leah Wilson. There are no community members on the powerful committee.

The Alameda County Sheriff's Department, which runs the jails, has gotten the lion's share of the money. The department has been allocated more than half of the $34.6 million AB 109 funds -- the same percentage as last year. Yet the number of inmates at Santa Rita and Glenn Dyer dropped from 10,000 to 7,000, according to a presentation by sheriff's officials before the county Public Protection Committee. The department has closed three housing units at Santa Rita and two floors at Glenn Dyer.

So with fewer inmates under its supervision, why is the department still set to get $18 million -- close to the same amount as when there were more inmates?

"The number of bed days have gone down and the number of inmates have gone down but our costs continue to rise with the cost of living," Ahern said.

Ahern said there were fixed programming costs that don't go down just because of fewer inmates. He also characterized many of the prisoners coming from state prison as having been "in and out of jail with a high level of sophistication."

Yet how could they be any more difficult for deputies to manage than the gang members and killers who are routinely housed in Santa Rita while they're on trial?

"The Alameda County jail population is the same as its always been and the people who are coming from state prison are nonviolent," says Ella Baker Center for Human Rights organizer Darris Young.

According to an Ella Baker Center analysis, the county spent just under $6 million of the $9.5 million allocated to community-based organizations in 2013-2014. Young said that the county's failure to disburse the funds to community-based organizations meant that ex-offenders with pressing housing and other needs didn't get help, which makes no sense. Activists complain that the sheriff has not given a detailed accounting of expenditures.

The Ella Baker Center "Jobs not Jails" campaign has been waging a battle to get Alameda County to reduce the sheriff's share of realignment dollars and dedicate at least 50 percent to community-based organizations that provide re-entry series. They are currently set to receive 29 percent of the $34.6 million pie under the proposed 2014-2015 budget.

"This fight is going on in almost every county in California," says Barry Krisberg, a criminologist at UC Berkeley. "Unfortunately, in a lot of places the traditional voices are winning."

The highly organized "Jobs not Jails" campaign is beginning to gain traction.

Ella Baker activists took over a board of supervisors meeting earlier this month. They sang and chanted, demanding that the supervisors dedicate nearly 50 percent of funds from the proposed realignment budget to community re-entry programs. Supervisor Keith Carson introduced a compromise proposal to up those programs to 50 percent -- starting July 1.

The activists say that's a step in the right direction but they won't concede on the current AB 109 budget vote set for Tuesday. It's going to be a wild ride.

Jerry Brown, lawmakers propose $1.1 billion drought relief bill amid increasing tension

With California trudging into its fourth dry year, Gov. Jerry Brown and legislative leaders on Thursday announced $1.1 billion in emergency funding for flood protection and drought relief.

The vast majority of the money – all but about $30 million – was already included in Brown’s January budget proposal, and the measure is similar to a bill package lawmakers approved last year.

But tension over the drought runs higher today than it did then, when Brown first declared a drought emergency and urged Californians to reduce water consumption by 20 percent. This year, California recorded its driest-ever January, and state regulators on Tuesday ordered water agencies to limit the number of days each week customers can water their lawns.

Brown, who said last month that he was reluctant to impose mandatory water restrictions, suggested Thursday that he is open to more stringent measures.

“I’m not going to second-guess (state water regulators), but I would share your urgency that we step it up in the weeks and months ahead,” the Democratic governor said at a news conference at the Capitol.

Brown said, “If this drought continues, we’ll crank it down and it will get extremely challenging for people in California.”

The Legislature is expected to hold votes next week on the drought package, whose passage will allow spending immediately – months before the July 1 start of the next budget year.

The measure includes $272.7 million in water recycling and drinking water quality programs funded by Proposition 1, the water bond voters approved last year.

But the majority of the funding – $660 million – comes from water and flood-prevention bonds voters approved nearly a decade ago, in 2006.

Brown said, “The fact is, these projects take a long time.”

Outside the Capitol, patience appears to be waning.

According to a February Field Poll, 94 percent of California voters consider the drought situation in California “serious,” with nearly 70 percent calling it “extremely serious.” Public support for water rationing, though still just more than one-third of voters, has grown in the past year.

“I think, for the public, an increasingly large proportion is becoming alarmed,” said Mark DiCamillo, director of the poll. “The governor is taking actions which I think make him at least appear to the public that he’s attending to the problem.”

Contributing to the public’s growing concern was a widely circulated editorial in the Los Angeles Times last week in which Jay Famiglietti, senior water scientist at the NASA Jet Propulsion Laboratory, said the state was at risk of running out of water altogether.

“Right now the state has only about one year of water supply left in its reservoirs, and our strategic backup supply, groundwater, is rapidly disappearing,” Famiglietti wrote. “California has no contingency plan for a persistent drought like this one (let alone a 20-plus-year mega-drought), except, apparently, staying in emergency mode and praying for rain.”

Speaking at the Capitol, Senate President Pro Tem Kevin de León said the one-year water supply estimate and the lack of water this year “is creating a renewed sense of urgency.”

He said the drought package “is just the first round” in the Legislature’s effort to address the drought and that “we have much work to do.”

The water bond voters approved last year includes $2.7 billion for storage projects such as dams and reservoirs. Brown said “these are big projects, and I’m certainly looking very carefully at how we can get more storage as quickly as possible.”

Republican lawmakers have been more insistent, seizing on the drought to criticize the lack of water infrastructure investments in the past, as well as the current pace of project approvals.

“I’m calling on the state water agencies, on state government to get projects out of the red tape, to get them moving because they’ve been hung up for decades,” said Assembly Republican leader Kristin Olsen of Riverbank.

Nevertheless, Olsen and Bob Huff, the Republican Senate leader, stood with Brown and Democratic lawmakers for the drought package’s announcement.

Last year’s version was approved by the Legislature with nearly unanimous support, as is expected for this drought package.

Though Republican lawmakers appeared to have no hand in crafting the measure – having only been made aware of it shortly before the announcement – Brown said the Republicans’ support was evidence “we’re doing well.”

He dismissed the timing of their involvement as a “narrative that’s not particularly interesting.”

Still, it made for awkward stagecraft.

After first planning to address reporters after the news conference Thursday, Republican leaders changed course at the last minute to appear with Brown and the Democratic legislative leaders.

Republicans attended their first meetings on the plan Wednesday, and the governor contacted Olsen on Thursday morning, Olsen spokeswoman Amanda Fulkerson said.

She declined to elaborate further on Republicans’ role in discussions.

“I’ll let the governor’s remarks stand for themselves,” Fulkerson said.


DROUGHT RELIEF

Here is how most of the proposed drought funds will be spent:

$660 million for flood management planning and infrastructure improvements, including levee work.

$272.7 million for drinking water quality, water recycling and desalination projects.

$24 million for emergency food aid for people, such as farm workers, out of work due to drought.


Via: http://www.sacbee.com/news/politics-government/capitol-alert/article15381434.html#storylink=cpy

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The future of health care in America is on the table.

After more than an hour of arguments Wednesday, the Supreme Court seemed divided in a case concerning what Congress meant in one very specific four-word clause of the Affordable Care Act with respect to who is eligible for subsidies provided by the federal government to help people buy health insurance. If the Court ultimately rules against the Obama administration, more than 5 million individuals will no longer be eligible for the subsidies, shaking up the insurance market and potentially dealing the law a fatal blow. A decision likely will not be announced by the Supreme Court until May or June.

The liberal justices came out of the gate with tough questions for Michael Carvin , the lawyer challenging the Obama administration's interpretation of the law, which is that in states that choose not to set up their own insurance exchanges, the federal government can step in, run the exchanges and distribute subsidies. Arvin argued it was clear from the text of the law that Congress authorized subsidies for middle and low income individuals living only in exchanges "exstablished by the states." Just 16 states have established their own exchanges, but millions of Americans living in the 34 states are receiving subsidies through federally facilitated exchanges.

But Justice Elena Kagan, suggested that the law should be interpreted in its "whole context" and not in the one snippet of the law that is the focus of the challengers. Justice Sonia Soto mayor was concerned that the challenger's interpretation of the law could lead to "death spirals" in states that hadn't established their own exchanges. Justice Anthony Kennedy, another potential swing vote, asked questions that could be interpreted for both sides, but he was clearly concerned with the federalism aspects of the case. He grilled Carvin on the "serious" consequences for those states that had set up federally-facilitated exchanges. At one point he told Carvin that his argument raised "a serious constitutional question."

President Obama has expressed confidence in the legal underpinning of the law in recent days."There is, in our view, not a plausible legal basis for striking it down," he told Reuters this week. Wednesday’s hearing marks the third time that parts of the health care law have been challenged at the Supreme Court. In this case -- King v. Burwell -- the challengers say that Congress always meant to limit the subsidies to encourage states to set up their own exchanges. But when only 16 states acted, they argue the IRS tried to move in and interpret the law differently.

Republican critics of the law, such as Texas Sen. Ted Cruz, filed briefs warning that the executive was encroaching on Congress' "law making function" and that the IRS interpretation "opens the door to hundreds of billions of dollars of additional government spending."In a recent op-ed in the Washington Post, Orrin Hatch (R-Utah) and two other Republicans in Congress said that if the Court rules in their favor "Republicans have a plan to protect Americans harmed by the administration's actions."Hatch said that Republicans would work with the states and give them the "freedom and flexibility to create better, more competitive health insurance markets offering more options and different choices."

Via: http://www.cnn.com/2015/03/04/politics/obamacare-supreme-court-oral-arguments/index.html

                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                

Obama: ‘Now is the moment’ for police to make changes

WASHINGTON >> President Barack Obama said Monday the deaths of unarmed black men in Missouri and New York show that law enforcement needs to change practices to build trust in minority communities, as a White House task force called for independent investigations when police use deadly force.

The president said last year’s deaths of Michael Brown in Ferguson, Mo., and Eric Garner in New York City exposed “deep rooted frustration in many communities of color around the need for fair and just law enforcement.” He said a policing task force that he appointed found it’s important for law enforcement to improve training, data collection and cooperation with the communities they cover.

“The moment is now for us to make these changes,” Obama said from the White House during a meeting with members of the task force, who worked for three months to develop the recommendations. “We have a great opportunity coming out of some great conflict and tragedy to really transform how we think about community law enforcement relations so that everybody feels safer and our law enforcement officers feel — rather than being embattled — feel fully supported. We need to seize that opportunity.”

The task force made 63 recommendations after holding seven public hearings across the country that included testimony from more than 100 people. The panel also met with leaders of groups advocating for the rights of blacks, Hispanics, Asians, veterans, gays, the disabled and others.

Obama said the task force found the need for more police training to reduce bias and help officers deal with stressful situations. He recognized a particularly controversial recommendation would be the need for independent investigations in fatal police shootings.

“The importance of making sure that there’s a sense of accountability when in fact law enforcement is involved in a deadly shooting is something that I think communities across the board are going to be considering,” Obama said.

Specifically, the task force recommended external independent criminal investigations and review by outside prosecutors when police use force that results in death or anyone dies in police custody, instead of the internal investigations that are the policy of some law enforcement agencies. The task force suggested either a multi-agency probe involving state and local investigators, referring an investigation to neighboring jurisdictions or the next higher level of government. “But in order to restore and maintain trust, this independence is crucial,” the report said.

Bill Johnson, the executive director of the National Association of Police Organizations, said an outside investigation of a police-involved shooting may make sense in limited circumstances when a police department has few resources. But in the vast majority of cases, he said, it is unnecessary and perhaps even counterproductive.

“I think it helps to drive a wedge between a local police department and the community it serves, which is exactly contrary to what the intent of this police task force was supposed to be,” said Johnson, whose organization is an umbrella group of police unions. “I think it sends a message that your local police can’t be trusted.”

The task force echoed calls from officials including Attorney General Eric Holder and FBI Director James Comey for more complete record-keeping about the numbers of police-involved shootings across the country. Such data is currently reported by local law enforcement on a voluntary basis, and there is no central or reliable repository for those statistics.

“There’s no reason for us not to have this data available,” said Philadelphia Police Commissioner Charles Ramsey, a task force co-chair, who said he was surprised to learn that there were no reliable records kept. “Now that we know that this does not exist, it is our responsibility to do everything we can to develop that information.”

Ramsey also pointed out that the task force recommended decoupling immigration from local law enforcement to help improve police relationship with immigrant communities where residents may fear calling for help if they or someone in their family is in the country illegally. He said information on immigrant felons would remain available under the panel’s recommendations.

Obama earlier had called for Congress to help fund the purchase of 50,000 body cameras for police to wear and record their interactions with the public. But the task force found that the cameras raise extraordinarily complex legal and privacy issues.

“There’s been a lot of talk about body cameras as a silver bullet or a solution,” Obama said. “I think the task force concluded that there is a role for technology to play in building additional trust and accountability but it’s not a panacea. It has to be embedded in a broader change in culture and a legal framework that ensures that people’s privacy is respected.”

Laurie Robinson, a professor at George Mason University and co-chair of the task force, told reporters the type of community-police relations envisioned by the report does not happen quickly.

“It takes time, it takes relationship-building and it doesn’t happen overnight,” she said.