Old Brown tries to fix a young Brown's mistake

— Hang around long enough and you might see things turn full circle. People included.

Like a comet, they come back around.

Gov. Jerry Brown is a comet. He dominated the Capitol cosmos two generations ago, floated off and circled back.

Now one of the major public policy issues of 40 years ago also has returned, meteor-like. It concerns criminal sentencing.

Like too many things involving government, however, the jargon is wonky: "determinate" and "indeterminate."

Put simply, it's about whether a judge determines how long a felon will be locked up, or left undetermined, with parole boards having the flexibility to retain or release an inmate based on behavior and perceived rehabilitation.

In 1976, young Gov. Brown was a reformer who signed legislation changing sentencing from indeterminate to determinate.

Last week, he proposed a new reform: Scrap that 1970s reform and return to basically the way things had been for six decades before.

Times change. Situations change. Ideas? Not so much.

I asked Brown why he and the Legislature had changed the system in the first place four decades ago.

Back then, he'd been thinking about it for a long time, he recalled, even when his father, Pat Brown, was governor in the 1960s.

"People were lingering in prisons and didn't know when they were going to get out," he said. "Racial minorities might be in longer."

Prisoners, the governor continued, were compelled "to mouth certain words" to demonstrate their readiness for freedom. White parole boards seemed to be "trying to get the prisoners to have a certain mentality, messing with their heads. It didn't seem right to me.

"It came to me that if they did the crime, they should do the time. And then get out."

That became many legislators' attitude: The whole system was arbitrary and unfair — sometimes political and racial.

What else could you expect from sentences so broad? For example, one to 14 years or five to life.

Republican Sen. John Negedly, a former Contra Costa County district attorney, had sponsored the bill that switched sentences from flexible to more fixed.

"Punishment should be swift, certain and definite," Brown said after signing the measure. But soon he began having second thoughts, mentioning "ambiguities" in the new law.

There was bipartisan criticism.

Then-LAPD Chief Ed Davis, a conservative Republican, planning to run against Brown, complained that prisoners no longer would "have to pay much attention" to guards. Brown "is going to blow these prisons up before I can take over as governor."

State Sen. Alan Sieroty, a liberal Democrat from Los Angeles, feared that fixed sentencing would lead to longer terms. That would only "further brutalize the individual and make his reentry into society less possible."

Both were right.

"Liberals thought the Legislature would jack up the sentences, which it did," Brown told me. "And it never stopped. I never imagined there'd be thousands of [increased sentencing] laws and enhancements."

State government embarked on a prison-building, lock-em-up binge. There was a political stampede in the 1990s after the L.A. riots and the gripping kidnap-murder of 12-year-old Polly Klaas. Voters and the Legislature passed "three strikes and you're out" — meaning you're "in" for life.

When Brown was governor the first time, there were 21,000 inmates in state custody. By the time he returned in 2011, the number had ballooned to 170,000 — packed like sardines into bunks and sleeping on cots in gymnasiums. At one point, taxpayers were spending more on prisoners than on college kids.

Prisoners-rights groups sued. A federal judicial panel ordered the state to knock it off. Voters and the governor got the message.

The California electorate softened three-strikes and other sentencing laws. Brown, through what he calls "realignment," began shifting control of low-level felons to the counties.

The state prison population is now down to 127,000.

Brown has wanted to eliminate determinate sentencing for years — calling it an "abysmal failure" in 2003 — but said he first needed to achieve realignment and form a political coalition.

"If I'd done it right out of the box, I might have made mistakes," he told me.

Brown added that he'd also been pretty busy.

"No one has done more than I have," he said, listing such things as pension reform, water programs and fighting climate change. "I haven't been sitting on my ass."

The governor's sentencing proposal is targeted for the November ballot as an initiative. It would affect only inmates convicted of nonviolent crimes. Murderers and rapists, forget it.

A nonviolent felon would need to complete his time for the basic crime. But he could earn credits for good behavior and rehab. And before serving added time for an enhancement — such as gang activity — he could seek parole for being a model prisoner

An "unintended consequence" of the law he signed 40 years ago, Brown told reporters, "was the removal of incentives for inmates to improve themselves, refrain from gang activity, using narcotics, otherwise misbehaving. Because they had a certain [release] date and there was nothing in their control that would give them a reward for turning their lives around."

Why the ballot and not the Legislature? It would require a two-thirds legislative vote, and that's a hassle. And he has $24 million in leftover campaign money begging to be spent.

This reform seems to make sense. The old one did, too — at the time. But this is another time.

The lingo also should change. Junk "determinate" and call it "fixed" or "flexible."

Via: http://www.latimes.com/local/politics/la-me-pol-sac-cap-20160201-column.html 

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Whites a Minority in California, but still Majority of Voters

Although whites have dropped to well under 50 percent of California's population, they are still a strong majority of the state's voters, according to new studies by the Public Policy Institute of California.

The PPIC reports also confirm the state's shift to dominance by the Democratic Party, even though its share of registered voters has declined to well under 50 percent - largely because the increasing numbers of independents lean Democratic.

The statistical studies of the partisan leanings of the state's registered voters, as well as likely voters, were generated from both official statistics and PPIC's polling.

PPIC's research found that while whites are now just 44 percent of California's adult population, they are 62 percent of the state's likely voters. In contrast, Latinos are 33 percent of adult population and just 17 percent of likely voters. With all ages counted, the white and Latino populations are virtually equal at about 38 percent each.

As past studies have shown, likely voters are "older, more educated, more affluent; they are homeowners, and born in the U.S."

Another finding: 45 percent of likely voters are Democrats, 32 percent are Republicans, 19 percent are independents and 5 percent identify with other parties. But 41 percent of independents lean toward Democratic Party candidates, while 29 percent lean toward Republicans.

PHOTO: Caption: Naomi Johnson, 93, never thought she would see the day that a black president might win as she left the voting booth where she cast her vote for Obama on Nov. 4, 2008. The Sacramento Bee/Randall Benton

Read more here: http://blogs.sacbee.com/capitolalertlatest/2013/08/whites-a-minority-in-california-but-still-majority-of-voters.html#storylink=cpy

PACE’s latest update on California’s K-12 education finds little progress, lots of challenges

The latest five-year assessment of the state of California’s K-12 public school system — conducted by the Policy Analysis for California Education, an independent research center — reports small progress in the face of persistent as well as unanticipated challenges like the recession.

Released May 3, the PACE report, “Getting Down to Facts-Five Years Later,” focuses on finance, governance, data systems and personnel issues from 2007 through 2011. It follows up on a similar investigation five years ago by Stanford University. PACE is based at UC Berkeley, Stanford University and the University of Southern California.

Authors of the first report said they hoped it would lead to new policies to streamline governance, simplify and rationalize school finance, improve educational information and assessment, and ensure that schools operate with enough topnotch staff.

“Our initial optimism was unwarranted,” says the new report, in an introduction by Susanna Loeb, an education professor at Stanford and a PACE director. She notes that while the issues raised in the first “Getting Down to the Facts” report have penetrated policy discussions, “the past five years have seen only small improvements” in the central problems identified five years ago, due in part to the severe economic recession.

The original report provided a comprehensive diagnosis of the issues facing California’s education system, and a framework for policies to move the state forward, according to David Plank, PACE’s executive director. He says that the latest report shows that the original report’s diagnosis and prescription “remain as relevant as five years ago.”  The recommendations include targeting resources to students who need them most, and reducing the burden of state regulation so local educators have more flexibility in how they use resources.

The new PACE report is being formally presented at a seminar for leading education policymakers and scholars today in Sacramento. At the seminar, USC’s Dan Schnur, who also is on the faculty of UC Berkeley’s Institute of Governmental Studies, will lead discussion about the results of a related PACE/USC Rossier School of Educationonline poll on education issues, such as reform, funding, and taxes.

The full PACE report is available online. Among its key findings:

• The economic downturn led to reduced education spending across the state, with California general fund spending on education down 15 percent by the end of the last decade compared to its peak in 2007-2008.
• A series of proposals are circulating to make education finance more flexible, including plans for a weighted formula to allow adjustments for schools’ special or differing needs.
• The state’s education system is heavy on compliance and complexity, but light on data collection that could lead to improvements. However, California’s Longitudinal Student Data System (CALPADS) has been running for two years, conducting detailed analyses of student learning as well as accurate measures of dropout and graduation rates.
• State budget cuts have led to layoffs and reduced staff development, but the California Commission on Teacher Credentialing has upped its oversight of teacher education programs.
• While educational governance at all levels remains weak, improvements include: increased resource control for local authorities; more federal support through the Race to the Top initiative and stimulus/innovation funding; elimination of the state Office of the Secretary of Education to avoid duplication; and successful local initiatives to increase district accountability, flexibility and transparency and develop new ways to evaluate, compensate and support teachers.

Bruce Fuller, a PACE director and professor of education and public policy at UC Berkeley, says he remains optimistic, noting that the report shows that “despite huge cuts to local schools, two governors have now advanced policies that cut central bureaucracy and move a richer share of dollars into classrooms” as  Sacramento tries “to lift, rather than over-regulate, teachers and classrooms.”

PACE investigators acknowledge in the latest report that they hope their research will help spur more “fruitful changes to state policy so that California can provide the educational opportunities that its students deserve.”

The current “Getting Down to The Facts” was supported by PACE’s core funders, including the California Education Policy Fund (a project of Rockefeller Philanthropy Advisors), the Dirk and Charlene Kabcenell Foundation, the James Irvine Foundation and the Stuart Foundation.

PACE works on long-term strategy for comprehensive policy reform and improved performance throughout California’s education system. It bridges the gap between research and policy, working with scholars from California’s leading universities and with state and local policymakers to increase the impact of academic research on educational policy in California.

Via: http://newscenter.berkeley.edu/2012/05/03/pace-report-updates-state-of-k-12-education-in-california/