Published: Oct. 29, 2015 – 4:10 p.m.
Riverside County’s four newest cities have been told that a one-time, $23.7 million, infusion of state money will wipe out debts that Menifee, Wildomar and Jurupa Valley owe to the county.
To read article by Sandra Stokley in The Press-Enterprise, click here.
The post The Press-Enterprise: REGION: Three new cities to see debt erased appeared first on InlandPolitics.com.
There is a new rumor floating around the rescue community about the San Bernardino County Public Health Department’s division of Animal Care and Control. The rumor is that the Attorney General’s office is looking at the Devore Shelter and at Brian Cronin in particular.
The basis of this alleged investigation is the misuse of the drugs used to euthanize animals in their care. I can tell you that rumors about such abuses have surrounded Cronin for decades including his time at Humane Society of San Bernardino Valley.
I can also tell you I know of one instance where a San Bernardino County Animal Control employee took euth drugs from the county to euthanize a friend’s dogs in that friend’s vehicle because the friend did not want to spend the money at the vet to have them put down. He was not a resident of the county nor of any of the contract cities.
Euth drugs are highly regulated controlled substances. Misuse is a federal felony, I believe. There are too many stories out there for too many years for there not to be something there. I’ve heard additional information, but am not going to share that at this point.
If anyone has any tips or inside information, please use the contact form on the menu above. You can make up a name and email address to remain anonymous.
Finally, here is a link to a blog about the Humane Society you might find interesting. Several entries down is a story from the Press Enterprise they have long since taken off of their site.
By Dan Walters
dwalters@sacbee.com
October 25, 2015
Were the El Niño phenomenon to actually generate copious rainstorms in California, it could create a dilemma for homeowners with elderly roofs – patch the leaks or spend big bucks for a new roof.
California politics present similar choices.
The state’s extraordinarily complex socioeconomic matrix makes gathering support for any major policy decision extraordinarily difficult. Our politicians’ tendency, therefore, is to temporarily patch problems as they arise and then move on.
We’ve seen lots of patchwork politics in recent years.
Republican Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger and Democrat Gov. Jerry Brown have taken swipes at such issues as unbalanced state budgets, infrastructure deterioration, public pension deficits, transportation congestion, water supply and K-12 education, settling for what an unfocused, pettifogging Legislature would accept rather than going all out to truly fix the problems.
Are such “solutions” really better than doing nothing at all? Yes, sometimes. But they also carry downside risks that have become increasingly evident.
One is that they often just don’t work and merely postpone the day of reckoning.
Severe drought struck the state four decades ago. Since then, California has spent untold billions of dollars on supposedly addressing its severe imbalance between water supply and demand. But we never really did anything concrete, leaving us extremely vulnerable when severe drought struck again.
Another downside is that procrastinating fixes provides politicians with excuses. They can – and often do – check it off their to-do lists, telling the voting and taxpaying public that they’ve done their duty diligently, but knowing very well that they’ve merely, in a phrase often used by Schwarzenegger, kicked the can down the road to their successors.
To read expanded column, click here.
The post The Sacramento Bee: Dan Walters: Half-a-loaf solutions fall short appeared first on InlandPolitics.com.
Friday, October 23, 2015 – 10:00 a.m.
It appears San Bernardino County government, which has a penchant for sweeping dirty laundry under the rug, has been busy protecting its Human Resources Director.
After being outed on a local blog, InlandPolitics.com has confirmed that Human Resources Director Andrew L. Lamberto was arrested on March 27, 2015, for violation of Penal Code section 647(b), “Engage and agree to engage in prostitution”.
On September 2, 2015, the Orange County District Attorney included Lamberto on a press release, which listed 4 other men with similar convictions. Interestingly, Lamberto’s mug shot was not included on the DA’s public website.
Click here to read the press release.
Court records indicate Lamberto received 10 days jail suspended, 10 days community service in lieu of jail, 3 years informal probation, AIDS prevention Education Program and HIV Testing.
To read the Orange County Superior Court Case Docket, click the following link: Orange County Superior Court Docket – Case Number 15HM05336 – Lamberto Andrew L
Lamberto’s physical description is listed on the court docket.
It’ll be interesting to see if there’s any fallout from this, or if any local media picks up the story.
Since the incident occurred in March, it’s likely Lamberto already disclosed the arrest to Chief Executive Greg Devereaux, and no punitive action was taken.
Here’s Lamberto’s profile on peekyou.com:
Andrew L Lamberto is 51 years old. He lives in Mission Viejo, California, but has also spent time in Gainesville, Georgia and Trabuco Canyon, California. Goodfellas is his favorite movie. On the web, Andrew goes by the alias pyrtfan.
The post InlandPolitics: San Bernardino County HR Director convicted of solicitation appeared first on InlandPolitics.com.
Wednesday, October 21, 2015 – 09:20 a.m.
Vice President Joe Biden has announced he will not seek the democratic nomination for President of the United States.
The announcement paves the way for whomever the GOP nominee is to face Hillary Rodham Clinton.
Clinton is by far the more attractive candidate for the republicans to confront.
The post InlandPolitics: Biden will not run appeared first on InlandPolitics.com.
Paige St. John
October 18, 2015
The ash of the Rocky fire was still hot when Gov. Jerry Brown strode to a bank of television cameras beside a blackened ridge and, flanked by firefighters, delivered a battle cry against climate change.
The wilderness fire was “a real wake-up call” to reduce the carbon pollution “that is in many respects driving all of this,” he said.
“The fires are changing…. The way this fire performed, it’s not the way it usually has been. Going in lots of directions, moving fast, even without hot winds.”
“It’s a new normal,” he said in August. “California is burning.”
Brown had political reasons for his declaration.
He had just challenged Republican presidential candidates to state their agendas on global warming. He was embroiled in a fight with the oil industry over legislation to slash gasoline use in California. And he is seeking to make a mark on international negotiations on climate change that culminate in Paris in December.
But scientists who study climate change and fire behavior say their work does not show a link between this year’s wildfires and global warming, or support Brown’s assertion that fires are now unpredictable and unprecedented. There is not enough evidence, they say.
University of Colorado climate change specialist Roger Pielke said Brown is engaging in “noble-cause corruption.”
Pielke said it is easier to make a political case for change using immediate and local threats, rather than those on a global scale, especially given the subtleties of climate change research, which features probabilities subject to wide margins of error and contradiction by other findings.
“That is the nature of politics,” Pielke said, “but sometimes the science really has to matter.”
Other experts say there is, in fact, a more immediate threat: a landscape altered by a century of fire suppression, timber cutting and development.
To read expanded article, click here.
The post Los Angeles Times: Gov. Brown’s link between climate change and wildfires is unsupported, fire experts say appeared first on InlandPolitics.com.
By Ryan Hagen, The Sun
Posted: 10/20/15 – 5:00 PM PDT |
SAN BERNARDINO >> After more than a year of delays and suspicion, an audit of the city’s 2012-13 financial statements should be finished Wednesday and presented to the City Council and public Nov. 2, according to city staffers and the audit firm.
That could answer the question many citizens, including candidates for City Council and treasurer, have lobbed at the city with increasing frequency: Exactly where did money go in the year after the 2012 bankruptcy filing, and how reliable are claims about the spending?
“In meeting with the city’s auditor, MGO, they have committed to us that they will have the fiscal year 2012-13 financial audit, including the independent auditor’s report on the assurance of whether the financial statements are free of material misstatement and whether they can be relied upon by the readers of those financial statements,” Deputy City Manager Nita McKay said Monday.
The also-overdue audit of fiscal year 2013-14 could be completed after that.
McKay said she would give a more detailed report Nov. 2.
And she said Wednesday also would be the likely completion date for a separate audit: the so-called single audit that, because of its absence, has led state officials to withhold $125,000 a month in reimbursements for the San Bernardino Employment and Training Agency since October 2014, which city officials hope to recoup once that audit is available.
Auditor Jim Godsey, of Macias, Gini and O’Connell LLP, was much less confident the single audit would be done this week, but he said the financial statement audit likely will be completed by Wednesday.
To read expanded article, click here.
The post The Sun: Overdue San Bernardino audits expected Wednesday appeared first on InlandPolitics.com.
By Sarah Favot, Los Angeles Daily News
Posted: 10/06/15 – 8:12 PM PDT |
The Los Angeles County Board of Supervisors Tuesday unanimously named Sachi Hamai as the county’s chief executive officer.
The board will begin negotiating a contract with Hamai and expects to formally appoint her and approve her salary at its meeting next Tuesday, Supervisor Michael Antonovich said.
Hamai had been in the position on an interim basis since December. The board emerged from a closed-door meeting late in the evening and made the announcement.
“Sachi has been an outstanding county leader throughout her career and has excelled as our interim CEO, rapidly responding to reforms critically needed inside the county and tackling reforms in service to improving the quality of life for our county residents,” Antonovich said in a statement.
Supervisor Sheila Kuehl said in an interview the board commissioned a detailed evaluation, conducted by an outside evaluator, of Hamai’s job performance in her interim role.
“Everyone is very happy with her,” Kuehl said.
To read expanded article, click here.
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