Author: SacBee — Opinion

With California reeling from a deep recession and deficits that have hobbled government services, voters are understandably alarmed at the current state of the Golden State.

In a poll last month by the Public Policy Institute of California, only 13 percent of likely voters thought California was heading in the right direction; 83 percent thought it was heading down the wrong path.

Given those numbers, you might think that candidates for office would bring a sense of urgency to their campaigns, as we approach the June primary.

Some are, but far too few. In both state and local races, candidates are largely going through the motions. Many are uttering the same stale platitudes, offering vague answers on specific policy choices and ignoring important issues that should be central to their platforms.

Overall, there is a somnolent air to the current campaign season, and the race for governor is partly to blame.

On the Democratic Party side, Jerry Brown is the presumptive nominee and, after waiting for months to make his candidacy official, has done little to engage voters.

In the GOP primary, Meg Whitman is far ahead in the polls, and has used her vast wealth to fund what is effectively an air campaign, waged primarily through television advertisements.

These kinds of “contests” only serve to fuel public cynicism about politics, leaving voters dispirited. Yet the gubernatorial contest is just one of many. In June, those who head to the polls will be selecting county sheriffs, tax assessors, city council members, county supervisors and school leaders. Nine candidates are vying to be attorney general, the most important law enforcement job in the state. There are also competitive races for U.S. Senate, state Assembly seats and the Board of Equalization.

We urge you to pay close attention to these contests, and even more than that, pay attention to what the candidates are not saying.

What issues are they avoiding? Are they clearly responding to specific questions with yes or no answers? Are they focused on issues of immediate concern, or exploiting issues in a bid to appeal to narrow constituencies? Are they willing to act independently of party machines? Is a candidate’s agenda ambitious or incremental?

If a candidate is an incumbent, what has he or she done to contribute to the current condition of state or local finances? If the candidate is an outsider, does he or she have the experience and temperament necessary to hold public office?

Regardless of one’s political bent, these are all concerns that Californians should share as we prepare to exercise a rare privilege – the right to vote.

In coming weeks, The Bee will be offering its own endorsements for office, but beyond that, we will also be devoting space to issues often overlooked on the campaign trail – the Voter’s Agenda.

Below are a selection of these issues, along with questions the candidates should be prompted to address in debates, forums and policy statements. By no means comprehensive, this checklist is a starting point for ensuring candidates don’t duck the big issues.

STATE GOVERNMENT

Budget shortfalls

Barring an economic miracle, California faces multibillion-dollar budget deficits for many years into the future. The only way to close such a massive shortfall is with a mix of spending cuts and new revenue. As allies of state employee unions, Democrats must be pressed on how they would reduce payroll costs and restructure state government. Republicans who have made no-tax pledges must be pressed on how they close huge deficits through cuts alone, without undermining law enforcement, shutting down public schools or releasing thousands of prisoners.

Creating jobs

California has more than 100 economic development programs, and the state spends millions on these efforts, with uncertain results. On Thursday, Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger created a Governor’s Office of Economic Development, which supporters hope will better assist prospective businesses and bring more coherence to the state’s job creation functions. Candidates need to be pressed to articulate their own strategy for the state’s economic development. What type of businesses should the state be recruiting? How can its regulations and incentives be aligned to better attract new businesses?

Corrections crisis

California’s prisons are overcrowded and threatened with court takeovers. They are failing to rehabilitate inmates and consume an increasing proportion of the state budget. Candidates can’t duck this issue. How would they reduce overcrowding? Build more prisons? How? With what money? Institute medical parole? Shave time off sentences for certain nonviolent offenders? Answers aren’t easy, but the status quo is unacceptable.

Water wars

Certain agricultural interests seek to frame the water crisis as fish vs. farmers. But California’s water challenges are more complicated than that. To avoid shortages, the state must use water more efficiently. It must create incentives for smart use of water, and penalties for waste. So when candidates talk about “more water for farmers,” voters should ask: Where does this water come from? Who pays for it? Who loses water? And does this create the right incentives?

Graying of California

Average life expectancy in California is expected to rise from 79 years to over 84 by 2050. Partly because we are living longer, the number of Californians 65 or older is expected to triple by 2050.

California is unprepared for this demographic shift. In fact, state and local governments are cutting services that serve the elderly, such as transit, adult day care and in-home supportive services. Where do candidates stand? Should the state expand its role in serving a graying population? If so, how will it pay for it?

Health care reform

With passage of the national health care overhaul, California has an opportunity to cover uninsured residents, increase preventive care and begin the task of reducing costs. How will the state set up a health insurance exchange for small businesses and individuals not covered by their employers? How will the state prepare for Medi-Cal expansion that starts in 2014? Initially that will be paid for by the federal government, but gradually the state’s share will increase to 10 percent by 2020.

SACRAMENTO REGION

Pensions

Following the lead of state government, many local bodies increased pension benefits for their employees in the early part of the last decade.

Some retired public safety officers are now earning pensions of $100,000 to $200,000 per year. Candidates for local office must be pressed on how these payouts can be justified when services are being cut back and new employees are being laid off. Would they push to reduce benefits for new hires? If not, why?

Public education

All local candidates – not just those vying for school boards – must articulate a vision for our public schools. The choices are clear. Where do they stand on offering real turnaround strategies for struggling schools? Do they support holding teachers and schools accountable for student improvement from the beginning of a school year to the end? Do they support offering parents options, such as sending their children to public charter schools? Do they support a range of options in recruiting teachers, especially in hard-to-staff schools and subject areas such as math, science and special education?

Open space

With the downturn in the economy, the Sacramento region has a chance to plan its future landscape, reserving appropriate lands for housing, job centers, farming, open space and recreation. Yet it may have only a few years before rising land prices complicate the task of planning this future. Where do candidates stand on open space and preservation of farmland? What opportunities do they see? Do they support the SACOG Blueprint?

Consolidations

Across California, cities, counties and special districts offer duplicative services – solid-waste disposal, animal control, water delivery and parks maintenance, to name a few. Do candidates support consolidation? Where do they see opportunities? Are they willing to confront the fiefdoms that protect the status quo of service delivery, no matter how inefficient or redundant that system might be?

Bruce Maiman

Even if you use it responsibly, marijuana is the only drug you can get fired for using legally in California.

Each day, many of Californians show up for work medicated, even hung over, and the only person the employer can legally fire is the pot smoker.

Christian Hughes managed a senior citizens apartment complex near Redding for five years. A new company bought the complex and implemented drug testing. Hughes failed and was fired despite:

• Informing his new employer that he used medical marijuana outside the workplace under his doctor’s advice.

• A five-year work history with no evidence of impairment on the job. Residents never even knew he smoked medicinally.

• The irony that pot probably made it easier for him to do his job, as it helped relieve pain from a shattered jaw sustained in a car accident.

Pot helped him get back to work. We want folks to work, don’t we? Christian’s new employers saw it differently. But after a month on unemployment, Christian found similar work with another company at a facility in Red Bluff.

Christian’s biggest mistake: He wasn’t using something worse, like Vicodin, OxyContin or Percocet. Such prescription drugs are far more dangerous. Over-the-counter allergy medicines warn us not to operate heavy equipment. Alcohol can have immediate debilitating effects.

In most cases those trace elements in a drug test will get you fired.

The problem: We’re conflating usage with impairment.

No impaired employee should be on the job, and employers should be able to fire an impaired employee if his condition impacts job performance, jeopardizes the safety of individuals, co-workers or customers, or puts companies at risk of liability.

But that’s not what this is about. Whether it’s the 2008 state Supreme Court ruling allowing employers to fire medicinal users or federal laws making marijuana illegal no matter the use, what this really boils down to is zero tolerance based on old-school paradigms, arcane drug laws, hypocritical prejudices and outright ignorance.

It’s a bias based on underlying beliefs within lingering remnants of society that pot smokers are dopers, hippies and Dorito-munching deadbeats leeching off the system while listening to Grateful Dead albums on vinyl.

For instance, the California Chamber of Commerce argues that an employer’s right to maintain a drug-free workplace is critical in order to protect the safety of all workers and limit exposure to potentially costly litigation.

Please! What the chamber really thinks is that pot smokers and only pot smokers are dangerous. Otherwise they’d insist that all drug-tested employees who show traces of prescription drugs, allergy medicines and alcohol be subject to firing.

Indeed, they should be subject to termination, if they smoke on the job, drink on the job, are impaired on the job. Someone who smokes medicinally after dinner is no more impaired the next morning than the employee in the afternoon who had a cocktail at lunch. But our preconceived notions tell us the pot smoker is a subhuman lawbreaker and the cocktail drinker is a white collar professional.

Christian Hughes wasn’t fired for performing tasks made more dangerous by smoking pot. He was fired simply for smoking pot despite its medical approval by a licensed physician, its legal protection under Proposition 215 and his responsible usage as an exceptional employee.

It’s not the substance that makes an employee a liability; it’s the behavior that makes the employee a liability. You fire the behavior, not the drug.

A 2008 bill introduced by then-Assemblyman Mark Leno, D-San Francisco, would have allowed employers to fire workers who were impaired on the job, but protected employees from being targeted because of their medical status as marijuana-medicating patients.

“Otherwise,” says now-state Sen. Leno, “you might as well have passed a law that stipulates you can’t smoke medical marijuana unless you’re unemployed. That’s the logic.”

The bill passed both houses of the Legislature, but Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger vetoed it. Leno says he’ll try again with a newly elected governor.

Back when I went to work for ABC News, I took a drug test. In private, I took the cup handed to me by the attendant and poured in a bottle of warm apple juice. I immediately felt better knowing this would befuddle some poor lab technician.

It didn’t get that far.

With a quizzical look on her face, the attendant held the cup to the light and said, “My, this sure looks peculiar.” I grabbed the cup and said, “Well, maybe we better run it through again.” I drank it, and the woman shrieked in horror and fainted to the floor.

I still got hired.

I don’t do drugs, don’t smoke or drink. But targeting pot smokers just because they’re pot smokers is beyond unfair.

If we think it ludicrous to suspend a third-grader for bringing nail clippers to school, then it’s equally absurd to fire someone for traces of pot smoked at home despite a job history showing no evidence of impairment at work.

Let’s address the abuse and not the use of a drug – any drug. We’re smart enough to know the difference.

One of my favorite novels of the last decade is Cormac McCarthy’s “The Road,” which chronicles the journey of a father and his young son as they struggle to survive in a bleak, post-apocalyptic landscape. Though McCarthy cleverly avoids naming the cataclysm, it was natural for me to suspect nuclear war.

Natural, because my generation was born during the age of the atom and shadowed by the threat of nuclear annihilation. In my youth, Hollywood reveled in odd radiation disasters (“Them!” remains a personal favorite), the landscape was dotted with civil defense shelters, and my mother stocked canned goods in the crawl space under the house during the Cuban missile crisis. (No kidding. My father poked fun, but she would not be deterred.)

That era has ended, but the threat of nuclear annihilation is still very much with us. I don’t agonize, as my parents did, over the prospect of wholesale nuclear war with another superpower. I’m not teaching my toddler to duck under a desk. But I do worry that she is growing up in a world still haunted by nuclear weapons.

That’s why I’ve been heartened by President Barack Obama’s compelling promise to “seek the peace and security of a world without nuclear weapons.” And this week, the president made a small down payment on that pledge. He and Russian President Dmitry Medvedev signed a new treaty in which both countries – which together control 90 percent of the world’s nuclear weapons – promised marginal cuts in their nuclear arsenals (assuming the treaty is ratified by legislators here and in Russia).

Let’s be clear about this: Both countries will maintain nuclear arsenals powerful enough to destroy the planet several times over. This hardly amounts to disarmament – by either side. The treaty doesn’t even reduce each nation’s arsenal by half.

But alongside Obama’s revised policy on the use of nuclear weapons, New START, as the treaty is called, does provide prominent leadership from the world’s remaining superpower. The United States can never hope to persuade other countries to forgo development of nuclear weapons if we remain committed to a bristling arsenal, refreshed every 20 years or so by new technology.

Obama’s interest in reducing the world’s nuclear capacity also helps to reinvigorate an effort that hasn’t gotten the attention it deserves: keeping nukes out of the hands of terrorists. A suitcase-size nuke could wreak widespread and lasting havoc, and the United States needs cooperation from other countries, including Russia, to secure them.

Despite the modest changes Obama has made in U.S. nuclear policy, he’s already facing a barrage of criticism from conservatives, who, predictably, argue the president’s proposals will embolden our enemies and make us weaker. In fact, Obama’s policy revisions and treaty proposals are less dramatic than I would have liked, since they take only small steps away from our Cold War posture.

But at least they’re steps in the right direction. I’ve long since given up my dream of living long enough to see nuclear weapons abandoned and dismantled, but I still have hope for the world in which my daughter grows old. As the president said in a speech in Prague last April, a year before the historic treaty:

“I’m not naive. This goal will not be reached quickly – perhaps not in my lifetime. It will take patience and persistence. But now, we, too, must ignore the voices who tell us that the world cannot change. We have to insist, yes, we can.”

Here’s hoping he’s right.

The debt crisis in Greece is approaching the point of no return. As prospects for a rescue plan seem to be fading, largely thanks to German obduracy, nervous investors have driven interest rates on Greek government bonds sky-high, sharply raising the country’s borrowing costs. This will push Greece even deeper into debt, further undermining confidence. At this point it’s hard to see how the nation can escape default.

It’s a terrible story and clearly an object lesson for the rest of us. But an object lesson in what, exactly?

Yes, Greece is paying the price for past fiscal irresponsibility. Yet that’s by no means the whole story. The Greek tragedy also illustrates the extreme danger posed by a deflationary monetary policy. And that’s a lesson one hopes American policymakers will take to heart.

The key thing to understand about Greece’s predicament is that it’s not just a matter of excessive debt. Greece’s public debt, at 113 percent of gross domestic product, is indeed high, but other countries have dealt with similar levels of debt without crisis. For example, in 1946, the United States, having just emerged from World War II, had federal debt equal to 122 percent of GDP. Yet investors were relaxed, and rightly so: Over the next decade the ratio of U.S. debt to GDP was cut nearly in half, easing any concerns about our ability to pay what we owed. And debt as a percentage of GDP continued to fall in the decades that followed, hitting a low of 33 percent in 1981.

So how did the U.S. government manage to pay off its wartime debt? Actually, it didn’t. At the end of 1946, the federal government owed $271 billion; by the end of 1956 that figure had risen slightly, to $274 billion. The ratio of debt to GDP fell not because debt went down, but because GDP went up, roughly doubling in dollar terms over the course of a decade. The rise in GDP in dollar terms was almost equally the result of economic growth and inflation, with both real GDP and the overall level of prices rising about 40 percent from 1946 to 1956.

Unfortunately, Greece can’t expect a similar performance. Why? Because of the euro.

Until recently, being a member of the euro zone seemed like a good thing for Greece, bringing with it cheap loans and large inflows of capital. But those capital inflows also led to inflation. Greece found itself with costs and prices way out of line with Europe’s big economies. Over time, Greek prices will have to come back down. And that means that unlike postwar America, which inflated away part of its debt, Greece will see its debt burden worsened by deflation.

That’s not all. Deflation is a painful process, which invariably takes a toll on growth and employment. So Greece won’t grow its way out of debt. On the contrary, it will have to deal with its debt in the face of an economy that’s stagnant at best.

So the only way Greece could tame its debt problem would be with savage spending cuts and tax increases, measures that would themselves worsen unemployment. No wonder, then, that bond markets are losing confidence and pushing the situation to the brink.

What can be done? The hope was that other European countries would guarantee Greek debt in return for a commitment to harsh fiscal austerity. That might have worked. But without German support, such a deal won’t happen.

Greece could alleviate some of its problems by leaving the euro, and devaluing. But it’s hard to see how Greece could do that without triggering a catastrophic run on its banking system. Indeed, worried depositors have already begun pulling cash out of Greek banks. There are no good answers here – actually, no non-terrible answers.

But what are the lessons for America? Of course, we should be fiscally responsible. What that means, however, is taking on the big long-term issues, above all health costs – not grandstanding and penny-pinching over short-term spending to help a distressed economy.

Equally important, however, we need to steer clear of deflation or even excessively low inflation. Unlike Greece, we’re not stuck with someone else’s currency. But as Japan has demonstrated, even countries with their own currencies can get stuck in a deflationary trap.

What worries me most about the U.S. situation right now is the rising clamor from inflation hawks, who want the Fed to raise rates (and the federal government to pull back from stimulus) even though employment has barely started to recover. If they get their way, they’ll perpetuate mass unemployment. But that’s not all. America’s public debt will be manageable if we eventually return to vigorous growth and moderate inflation. But if the tight-money people prevail, that won’t happen – and all bets will be off.

Imagine a job that pays $25,000 a month, plus a guarantee that you would fly first class, and be chauffeured to the finest hotels. And if you landed a deal, your piece of the action would be $2.5 million, minimum.

Indeed, life is sweet for some placement agents, the middlemen who help investment houses win business from public pension funds. Yet the time has come for California to put a lid on the sugar bowl. To reduce the potential for kickbacks and corruption, state lawmakers must rein in these behind-the-scenes deal-makers and make their dealings more transparent.

The initial read is not good. Legislation to regulate the worst excesses of placement agents passed the Assembly Public Employees, Retirement and Social Security Committee on Wednesday. But it faces more Assembly hearings, and since it changes the Political Reform Act, it must get a two-thirds vote in both houses.

Four Democrats voted for it, the bare minimum. Assemblywoman Diane Harkey, a Republican from Dana Point, voted against the bill. Assemblyman Brian Nestande, R-Palm Desert, abstained.

The bill, Assembly Bill 1743, would require that placement agents register like lobbyists. Importantly, it would bar placement agents from collecting contingency fees based on success. California lawmakers banned such fees for lobbyists 60 years ago, knowing such arrangements are corrupting.

That ban faces stiff resistance from the investment firm Blackstone Group and a trade group, as The Bee’s Dale Kasler reported.

There are other opponents.

Former Sen. Richard Polanco was in Sacramento working to weaken the bill, arguing that newer or small-scale money managers, many of them Latinos, need placement agents who receive contingent fees in order to get to pension fund managers.

Polanco has a stake in the outcome. He worked with Alfred Villalobos, the former California Public Employees’ Retirement System board member who earned more than $60 million in placement agent fees.

One Villalobos-Polanco contract with a Wall Street firm included a $25,000 monthly retainer, plus a 1 percent fee so long as they won a CalPERS commitment worth at least $250 million.

Treasurer Bill Lockyer is leading the charge for transparency. He knows the bill is in trouble, but has a suggestion. If it stalls, he will push to have CalPERS and the California State Teachers’ Retirement System halt all business with funds using placement agents.

The fate of AB 1743 will be a test of Democratic leaders, John Pérez and Darrell Steinberg, and also of Assembly GOP leader Martin Garrick and his Senate counterpart, Dennis Hollingsworth. Will they side with placement agents that have brought disgrace upon the state’s pension funds? Or will they stand behind the interests of taxpayers and open government?

Celebrating his 90th birthday next week after 35 years on the U.S. Supreme Court, Justice John Paul Stevens has announced that he will retire in June.

The fourth-longest-serving justice and the last of the moderate Republicans, appointed in 1975 by President Gerald Ford, Stevens will be remembered most for his defense of civil liberties in wartime – when the temptation is to allow fear and expediency to prevail and to dismiss the niceties of the law and the U.S. Constitution.

Stevens will go down in history for his staunch defense of “habeas corpus,” the notion that any time a person is detained, the government must produce the prisoner in person and state why he or she is being detained. This has been a bulwark against arbitrary power since the Magna Carta in 1215.

During the presidency of George W. Bush, in the aftermath of the 9/11 attacks on the United States, that long-standing doctrine came under threat with indefinite detentions at Guantánamo Bay, a legal netherland where neither the U.S. Constitution nor any law applied.

Stevens drew upon his World War II experience, where he had earned a Bronze Star, to challenge the Bush practice. As a clerk for Supreme Court Justice Wiley B. Rutledge after the war, Stevens had written key memos in a 1948 case on the wartime detention of 120 German-born U.S. residents, who were being held at Ellis Island even after the war.

Did they have the right to challenge their detention in a U.S. court? Stevens wrote to Justice Rutledge, “I should think that even an alien enemy ought to be entitled to a fair hearing on the question whether he is in fact dangerous.”

A half-century later, Stevens wrote the key decisions rejecting Bush administration practices in the detention of prisoners at Guantánamo Bay. In Rasul v. Bush (2004), Stevens wrote that the detainees did have the right to challenge their detention in American courts (a 6-3 decision). In Hamdan v. Rumsfeld (2006), Stevens wrote on the issue of military tribunals that “the Executive is bound to comply with the Rule of Law.”

Stevens believed, courageously during wartime, that liberty and security can be reconciled. He stood for the principle that fair process, even in wartime, is no threat to the United States.

Still spry as he approaches 90, Stevens may be around for a long time to continue defending that enduring principle.

Overshadowed by the presidential signing of the historic health reform bill was a restructuring of the federal student loan program, signed last Tuesday.

While some private lenders understandably are squawking – the bill would end $8 billion a year in lucrative subsidies for them – much of the backlash is misplaced.

The latest legislation resolves what has been a running battle in the last half-century over which type of student loan program the federal government should offer.

Since the 1950s and 1960s, the federal government has offered two types: “direct student loans” (where the government makes loans directly to students) and “guaranteed student loans” (where the government pays fees to private lenders who make risk-free loans to students).

The legislation signed by President Barack Obama resolves the issue in favor of direct loans, signed originally by President Dwight D. Eisenhower in 1958. It would eliminate the more recent guaranteed loans, added in 1965.

This is not a new “government takeover” of student loans, which have been a government-subsidized program from the beginning.

The reality is that the direct loan program costs taxpayers a lot less than the guaranteed loan program. A 2005 U.S. Government Accountability Office study found that the federal government’s cost in the guaranteed loan program is $9.20 per $100 in loans, compared with $1.70 per $100 in the direct loan program. That’s a huge difference: five times more per loan in the guaranteed program – and it goes to lenders, not students.

The guaranteed loan program also has been plagued by scandal – state and federal investigations in 2007 that found that lenders were providing special favors, perks and kickbacks to get colleges to steer students to the guaranteed loan program.

According to the Congressional Budget Office, cutting out the middleman in favor of the direct loan approach is expected to save the U.S. government $61 billion over 10 years. That savings will be used to expand student financial aid (including the Pell Grant program).

Though private lenders fought the change, they will continue to benefit: They can compete to win lucrative contracts to service direct student loans.

For students, the direct loan program is easier: The college determines eligibility, sends out paperwork for signature and it’s done. Interest rates for the 2009-2010 school year are 5.6 percent for financially needy students and 6.8 percent for non-needy students – and this will be reduced in coming years.

There are also cost advantages for middle-class parents. The Parent Loan for Undergraduate Students (for costs not covered by grants and student loans) has better interest rates in the direct loan program: 7.9 percent, vs. 8.5 percent for PLUS loans provided by private lenders.

Both the direct and guaranteed student loan programs are government programs. Neither is market-based. The issue is who should benefit from the government subsidies – students and taxpayers, broadly, or private lenders?

Despite some misguided backlash, the president and Congress made the right choice in favor of the direct student loan program.

Don Mette, the recently retired Sacramento Metropolitan Fire District chief collects $20,083 a month in retirement, $240,999 a year. Mette just made the infamous top 10 list of public employee pensioners in California. Compiled by the California Foundation for Fiscal Responsibility, pension reform activists, Mette is No. 8 on the list.

The public knows the size of Mette’s pension because Sac Metro Fire contracts with the California Public Employees’ Retirement System. To its credit, CalPERS voluntarily discloses such information.

By troubling contrast, Sacramento County Employees’ Retirement System refuses to disclose the names of its retirees and their pension earnings. Unlike CalPERS, the county retirement system is governed by the 1937 Retirement Act. County officials claim state law bars them from disclosing confidential information. But other 37 Act counties – including Fresno, Contra Costa and Stanislaus – have released it. Sacramento should too.

It’s not idle curiosity that motivates newspapers to seek such information. Soaring pension costs have put additional pressure on Sacramento County’s dangerously depleted finances. High pension obligations are part of the reason the county has been forced to reduce services and lay off hundreds of its employees.

After prodding by The Bee, SCERS released some information but not the most important – the identity of the biggest pensioners and the size of their pensions.

Still, as The Bee’s Robert Lewis reported in Public Eye on Thursday, what has been released is troubling enough: 245 former Sac County employees collect more than $100,000 in pensions. Some 125 of those $100,000-plus pensioners worked for the Sheriff’s Department, and 80 percent retired after 2003, when county supervisors substantially boosted retirement benefits.

In a visit to The Bee last year, CalPERS’ Rob Feckner surprised us by saying the $100,000 club “is something that needs to be looked at.” He’s right. State and local governments must reduce pension benefits for new hires to a reasonable level.

Ralph C. Carmona

I was deeply moved by the movie “Stand and Deliver”, the 1988 motion picture starring actor Edward James Olmos, about the recently deceased Jaime Escalante. The public school teacher and Latino immigrant found fame at my alma mater, Garfield High School in East Los Angeles, by bringing national attention to racial discrimination involving Latino students.

Through sheer personality and drive, Escalante not only taught Garfield’s Mexican American students calculus but prepared them to pass college entrance exams – only to be wrongfully accused of cheating. It was classic racial profiling: Poor and segregated Mexican kids were not supposed to pass such tests.

His tireless effort rose above lowered student expectations integral to racial segregation. Escalante’s bilingual endeavor to push ganas, or desire, onto Garfield students turned conventional wisdom on its head. He was a life-changer for those aimless Latinos confined by the benign neglect of his colleagues and the structure of public schooling.

Then came the corporate and political influence, seeking to benefit from a teacher’s incredible classroom accomplishment. Escalante played along, failing to adequately apply his momentous fame to enhance public teaching. He became a motivational speaker and a “go-to Latino” for Republicans supporting voter-passed anti-Latino state measures during the 1990s to end emergency services for undocumented immigrants, affirmative action and bilingual education. He dismissed Latino critics, claiming that he “put East Los Angeles on the map” and squandered his goodwill with hostility toward other teachers. This blinded Escalante from seeing that his ganas or desire-driven charisma in a segregated Garfield environment was not automatically transferable to non-Latino classrooms in Sacramento.

I was one of those who experienced Garfield’s segregated Latino world. Like many of Escalante’s students, I intuitively avoided pondering and felt conflicted over my self-worth. The school’s internecine variations were there; be it immigrant status, gradations of color, linguistic or generation differences. A small percent of us were non-Latinos of different color or religion.

At our first-year orientation, the vice principal wished us well in our effort to avoid an expected 60 percent dropout rate. Like many, I was a non-college student destined for dead-end work, Vietnam or community college. The prevailing sentiment was that lingering sense of what Betty Friedan, in her classic “Feminine Mystique,” defines as a problem with no name.

The 1960s fundamentally changed that. My Escalante ganas came when some students became “Chicanos” and dared to see life as more than a “Mexican problem.” University of Southern California Chicano student protests gave me an affirmative action ticket to the campus; an admission based less on college exams or grades than my potential desire to learn and perform. My opportunity was not because of any single person, but a civil rights movement that opened doors for the poor and people of color on life’s margins. It reflected President Lyndon Johnson’s policies that created a political climate of outreach, integration and opportunity.

Before his portrayal of Escalante in “Stand and Deliver,” Olmos was among those who helped me in my life journey. I organized from scratch a 1982 Latino scholarship event in Pasadena. Following months of effort, I successfully recruited the actor, fresh from his starring role in “Zoot Suit,” to be my master of ceremonies. Over breakfast, Olmos shared the years of effort it took for him to find success. Impressed with my words of community engagement, he stopped me cold when I talked of a doctoral degree that I probably “will never finish.”

I will always remember his affirming response: “You will finish that degree, you understand? You will finish it.“

Those words changed my life. Like Escalante with his Garfield students, Olmos emboldened me to complete my doctorate.

In 1997, I opposed an English-only initiative and sought out Escalante at Sacramento’s Hiram Johnson High School. I wanted to know why he publicly supported a state ballot proposition that would undermine his bilingual approach to Latino students. Taking time to observe him in a Sacramento classroom, it became obvious that his teaching did not live up to the “Stand and Deliver” expectations. His Bolivian accent and bilingual assertions of ganas did not readily connect with a mostly non-Latino poor student class.

Over lunch, I quickly realized that he was clueless about the initiative he endorsed. Acknowledging this, Escalante left open a reconsideration of his position if I brought in Olmos and the late Sacramento Mayor Joe Serna to meet with him. However, he soon decided against any future meeting, leaving further discussion about his position with those pushing the initiative.

It was all about partisan politics – not teaching. Among the initiative’s supporters was Republican Gov. Pete Wilson, who earlier considered appointing Escalante to fill an elected state superintendent of public instruction vacancy. Fortunately, he concluded that Escalante’s world was that of a classroom – not California public policy.

Students like those in Escalante’s Garfield class now permeate many of California’s public schools. We need more bilingual teachers like Escalante and public policies that positively affect student performance. A decade of failure to do either has contributed to the Golden State’s growing public school multiracial segregation, achievement gaps and dropouts.

To understand that is to know that Escalante stood and delivered for a classroom of Latino students at Garfield High School – not the broader world of public education.

Will no one utter a word in defense of Republican National Committee Chairman Michael Steele? With attacks pouring in from both the left and the right, won’t someone at least pretend to take his side? Sigh. Must I do everything around here?

All right, I’ll give it a shot. Looking past the fact that I disagree with Chairman Mike on just about everything, and the fact that he has brought most of his trouble on himself, and the fact that letting party funds be spent at a bondage-themed Hollywood lounge was definitely not a smooth move for the titular head of the “family values” party, let me try to make the argument that he’s getting a bad rap. Kind of.

Chairman Mike committed his latest sin Monday, when ABC’s George Stephanopoulos asked him whether “as an African American, you have a slimmer margin for error than another chairman would.”

“The honest answer is yes,” Steele said. “It just is. Barack Obama has a slimmer margin. We all – a lot of folks do. It’s a different role for me to play and others to play, and that’s just the reality of it.”

Well, it’s obvious that race is not the reason why Steele is in such trouble with the pooh-bahs of his party. They’re angry at him for being such an indefatigable self-promoter, for seeming to care more about his own career as an author, lecturer and television talking head than about the party’s fortunes, for spending the party’s money lavishly at a time when many Americans are suffering economic hardship, and for handling the party’s money so carelessly that $1,946.25 was spent at Voyeur West Hollywood, a topless club with a sadomasochistic theme.

That’s more than enough to get any party chairman in trouble, regardless of race or creed. But if you look narrowly at what he said, he’s surely right.

We’ve come a long way in this country, but it’s still true that the first woman or Latino or African American to hold any high-profile job inevitably comes under extra scrutiny. Does that enhanced scrutiny translate into a “slimmer margin for error,” as Stephanopoulos volunteered? Often it does.

Now, it’s also true that they don’t make margins wide enough to contain Chairman Mike’s transgressions. But consider the context. He is the first black leader of a party that has no African American members of Congress and that many black Americans, rightly or wrongly, see as indifferent or hostile to their interests. Steele has to deal with Republican officials who make boneheaded moves that perpetuate the party’s estrangement from African Americans, such as Virginia Gov. Bob McDonnell’s proclamation that celebrated “Confederate History Month” without mentioning the tiny little detail known as slavery. Say what you want about Chairman Mike, he doesn’t have an easy job.

Republican grandees such as Mississippi Gov. Haley Barbour, a former party chairman, huffed and puffed at Steele’s sociological observation as if they wouldn’t dream of even noticing he’s black. Conservative commentators and irate party activists called for him to resign. But meanwhile, the RNC was reporting that it had raised an impressive $11.4 million last month. Steele has indeed been a big spender, but he has proved to be a tireless and talented fundraiser as well.

Some high-powered Republican operatives are trying an end run around Steele’s RNC by forming a separate group, American Crossroads, to raise $52 million for GOP candidates nationwide. Among those involved are former party Chairmen Mike Duncan and Ed Gillespie, and Karl Rove, George W. Bush’s political czar.

It’s not really possible to marginalize the party’s basic machinery, however, and unless his critics somehow get him to resign, Steele will be around at least through the year. So far, state party officials have been happy with all the attention that Steele has paid to them and nonchalant about the scandals that have the inside-the-Beltway crowd so exercised. Nobody’s going to be able ignore the chairman, if only because the people who book guests for television talk shows have his number on speed dial. He’s the perfect guest: You never know what he’s going to say.

OK, I realize that wasn’t a very effective defense. Sorry, Chairman Mike, I did the best I could. Give me a little more to work with next time.

Nuclear doctrine consists of thinking the unthinkable. It involves making threats and promising retaliation that is cruel and destructive beyond imagining. But it has its purpose: to prevent war in the first place.

During the Cold War, we let the Russians know that if they dared use their huge conventional military advantage and invaded Western Europe, they risked massive nuclear retaliation. Goodbye Moscow.

Was this credible? Would we have done it? Who knows? No one’s ever been there. A nuclear posture is just that – a declaratory policy designed to make the other guy think twice.

Our policies did. The result was called deterrence. For half a century, it held. The Soviets never invaded. That’s why nuclear doctrine is important.

The Obama administration has just issued a new one that “includes significant changes to the U.S. nuclear posture,” said Defense Secretary Bob Gates. First among these involves the U.S. response to being attacked with biological or chemical weapons.

Under the old doctrine, supported by every president for decades, any aggressor ran the risk of a cataclysmic U.S. nuclear response that would leave the attacking nation a cinder and a memory.

Again: Credible? Doable? No one knows. But the threat was very effective.

Under President Obama’s new policy, however, if the state that has just attacked us with biological or chemical weapons is “in compliance with the Non-Proliferation Treaty (NPT),” explained Gates, then “the U.S. pledges not to use or threaten to use nuclear weapons against it.”

Imagine the scenario: Hundreds of thousands are lying dead in the streets of Boston after a massive anthrax or nerve gas attack. The president immediately calls in the lawyers to determine whether the attacking state is in compliance with the NPT. If it turns out that the attacker is up-to-date with its latest IAEA inspections, well, it gets immunity from nuclear retaliation. (Our response is then restricted to bullets, bombs and other conventional munitions.)

However, if the lawyers say the attacking state is NPT noncompliant, we are free to blow the bastards to nuclear kingdom come.

This is quite insane. It’s like saying that if a terrorist deliberately uses his car to mow down a hundred people waiting at a bus stop, the decision as to whether he gets (a) hanged or (b) 100 hours of community service hinges entirely on whether his car had passed emissions inspections.

Apart from being morally bizarre, the Obama policy is strategically loopy. Does anyone believe that North Korea or Iran will be more persuaded to abjure nuclear weapons because they could then carry out a biological or chemical attack on the U.S. without fear of nuclear retaliation?

The naiveté is stunning. Similarly the Obama pledge to forswear development of any new nuclear warheads, indeed, to permit no replacement of aging nuclear components without the authorization of the president himself. This under the theory that our moral example will move other countries to eschew nukes.

On the contrary. The last quarter-century – the time of greatest superpower nuclear arms reduction – is precisely when Iran and North Korea went hellbent into the development of nuclear weapons.

It gets worse. The administration’s nuclear posture review declares U.S. determination to “continue to reduce the role of nuclear weapons in deterring non-nuclear attacks.” The ultimate aim is to get to a blanket doctrine of no first use.

This is deeply worrying to small nations who for half a century relied on the extended U.S. nuclear umbrella to keep them from being attacked or overrun by far more powerful neighbors. When smaller allies see the United States determined to move inexorably away from that posture – and for them it’s not posture, but existential protection – what are they to think?

Fend for yourself. Get your own WMDs. Go nuclear if you have to. Do you imagine they are not thinking that in the Persian Gulf?

This administration seems to believe that by restricting retaliatory threats and by downplaying our reliance on nuclear weapons, it is discouraging proliferation.

But the opposite is true. Since World War II, smaller countries have agreed to forgo the acquisition of deterrent forces – nuclear, biological and chemical – precisely because they placed their trust in the firmness, power and reliability of the American deterrent.

Seeing America retreat, they will rethink. And some will arm. There is no greater spur to hyper-proliferation than the furling of the American nuclear umbrella.

I’m a Catholic woman who makes a living being adversarial. We have a pope who has instructed Catholic women not to be adversarial.

It’s a conundrum.

I’ve been wondering, given the vitriolic reaction of the New York archbishop to my column defending nuns and the dismissive reaction of the Vatican to my column denouncing the church’s response to the pedophilia scandal, if they are able to take a woman’s voice seriously. Some, like Bill Donohue of the Catholic League, seem to think women are trying to undermine the church because of abortion and women’s ordination.

I thought they might respond better to a male Dowd.

My brother Kevin is conservative and devout – his hobby is collecting crèches – and has raised three good Catholic sons. When I asked him to share his thoughts on the scandal, I learned, shockingly, that we agreed on some things.

This is what he wrote:

“In pedophilia, the church has unleashed upon itself a plague that threatens its very future, and yet it remains in a curious state of denial. The church I grew up in was black and white, no grays. That’s why my father, an Irish immigrant, liked it so much. The chaplain of the Police and Fire departments told me once ‘Your father was a fierce Catholic, very fierce.’ “

My brothers and I were sleepily at his side for the monthly 8 a.m. Holy Name Mass and the guarding of the Eucharist in the middle of the night during the 40-hour ritual at Easter. Once during a record snowstorm in 1958, we were marched single-file to church for Mass only to find out the priests next door couldn’t get out of the rectory.

The priest was always a revered figure, the embodiment of Christ changing water into wine. (Older parishioners took it literally.) The altar boys would drink the dregs.

When I was in the seventh grade, one of the new priests took four of us to the drive-in restaurant and suggested a game of “pink belly” on the way back; we pulled up a boy’s shirt and slapped his belly until it was pink. When the new priest joined in, it seemed like more groping than slapping. But we thought it was inadvertent. And my parents never would have believed a priest did anything inappropriate anyway. A boy in my class told me much later that the same priest climbed into bed with him in 1958 at a rectory sleepover, but my friend threw him to the floor. The priest protested that he was sleepwalking. Three days later, the archbishop sent the priest to a rehab place in New Mexico; he ended up as a Notre Dame professor.

Vatican II made me wince. The church declared casual Friday. All the once-rigid rules left to the whim of the flock. The Mass was said in English (rendering useless my carefully learned Latin prayers). Holy days of obligation were optional. There were laypeople on the heretofore sacred ground of the altar – performing the sacraments and worse, handling the Host. The powerful symbolism of the priest turning the Host into the body of Christ cracked like an egg.

In his book, “Goodbye! Good Men,” author Michael Rose writes that the liberalized rules set up a takeover of seminaries by homosexuals.

Vatican II liberalized rules but left the most outdated one: celibacy. That vow was put in place originally because the church did not want heirs making claims on money and land. But it ended up shrinking the priest pool and producing the wrong kind of candidates – drawing men confused about their sexuality who put our children in harm’s way.

The church is dying from a thousand cuts. Its cover-up has cost a fortune and been a betrayal worthy of Judas. The money spent came from social programs, Catholic schools and the poor. This should be a sin that cries to heaven for vengeance. I asked a friend of mine recently what he would do if his child was molested after the church knew.

“I would probably kill someone,” he replied.

We must reassess. Married priests and laypeople giving the sacraments are not going to destroy the church. Based on what we have seen the last 10 years, they would be a bargain. It is time to go back to the disciplines that the church was founded on and remind our seminaries and universities what they are. (Georgetown University agreeing to cover religious symbols onstage to get President Barack Obama to speak was not exactly fierce.)

The storm within the church strikes at what every Catholic fears most. We take our religion on faith. How can we maintain that faith when our leaders are unworthy of it?

UC President Mark Yudof wasn’t aware of the ad, his office said.

Over the last year, UC President Mark Yudof and other higher education leaders have been crisscrossing the state, making the case for Californians to reinvest in their public universities and community colleges.

Speaking to the UCLA Daily Bruin in October, Yudof noted that extra tax revenue may be needed. “I wish they’d pay a little bit more in taxes and support us, but we’ve been unwilling to do that,” he said.

Why are taxpayers reluctant? One reason is the rhetoric and aggressive campaign tactics of anti-tax groups, who relentlessly claim that new taxes and fees – whether on oil extraction, alcohol sales or other vices – are disastrous to the state economy.

One of these groups is the California Chamber of Commerce, which, as it turns out, has a large board of directors that includes Yudof, CSU Chancellor Charlie Reed and Community Colleges Chancellor Jack Scott.

This week, the Cal Chamber fired off its latest cannonball of dishonesty, by claiming that the state’s current economic troubles have something to do with Jerry Brown’s past support for tax increases.

“California’s lost 1 million jobs,” says a female narrator in an attack ad financed by the Cal Chamber. “We’re $200 billion in debt. And Jerry Brown has a 35-year record of higher spending and taxes.”

We have no problems with the chamber taking shots at Jerry Brown. He has an extensive track record, and all of it is fair game for groups that want California to be more business friendly.

Yet on the issue of taxes, the chamber’s television ad is both misleading and hypocritical. While Brown supported tax increases as governor, so did Ronald Reagan and Pete Wilson (another chamber board member) during their terms in office.

The ad also hits Brown for initially opposing Proposition 13, the 1978 initiative that limited property taxes. Apparently the chamber has forgotten its own opposition to Proposition 13, with its president at the time calling the initiative “a can of worms, horribly flawed, poorly written and researched.”

Soon after the chamber launched this week’s hit on Brown, we contacted Yudof to see if he had reviewed the advertisement beforehand or supported its message.

“President Yudof was not aware of this ad and did not participate in its approval,” Yudof’s office said in a statement. “As a leader of a public university, he is nonpartisan. He is looking into the circumstances surrounding the advertisement.”

We hope he does.

But he shouldn’t stop there. Yudof, Reed and Scott need to send a clear message to the chamber’s executive team that its attack ads are unacceptable. They stamp out debate on how California can rebuild itself, and undermine the credibility of higher education leaders who are trying to spark this debate.

Judging by its editorials, The Bee seems to think that Curtis Park Village is primarily a test of the city’s ability to do an infill project.

It’s not that simple.

The Curtis Park railyard is a state Superfund site. Its soil is laced with lead, arsenic and other cancer-causing pollutants. The central issue that’s haunted this piece of property for 23 years is that every time someone sticks a shovel into the ground, more hazardous waste turns up. That’s because this property was more than a “railyard.” For decades, it was a large, very dirty, locomotive repair shop and unlicensed, unlined industrial landfill.

So what should be done with the mountain of hazardous waste that has been dug up and left piled up in recent years?

The developer Paul Petrovich and Union Pacific want to renege on the railroad’s 1995 cleanup agreement to ship the hazardous waste to a licensed landfill in Utah owned by the railroad. They prefer to bury the waste on site beneath a planned 7 acre “park.” Petrovich told the City Council the other night that he would “try” to bury it under other on-site locations, but he makes no enforceable promise. In fact, he issued a not-so-thinly-veiled threat: Prohibit use of the park as a disposal site, he told the council, and I will walk away from this project.

Many Curtis Park residents and city officials fear Petrovich will do exactly that and leave the hazardous waste stacked high on the site. But it’s an empty threat. First, it’s illegal. The soil he has dug up is a public nuisance, and he and the railroad can be prosecuted for leaving it in its current condition.

Even more significant, more than 10 years ago, Mayor Joe Serna and the City Council sponsored Senate Bill 120 (Deborah Ortiz-Darrell Steinberg) that gives the city the authority to use its zoning powers to force the promised cleanup. This law requires the Department of Toxic Substances Control (DTSC) to order a cleanup based on the city’s land-use plan for the site. Councilwoman Lauren Hammond erroneously stated: “DTSC, not the City Council, determines the final cleanup.” That’s flat wrong.

The city attorney read from SB 120: DTSC can’t give final approval on cleanup until “all response actions necessary to conform to the approved land-use plan are complete.”

When Gov. Gray Davis signed the measure into law, he stated: “SB 120 provides additional assurance that Union Pacific will clean up the Union Pacific Railroad site to allow land uses consistent with a final land use plan.”

Ignoring the authority granted under SB 120, the council voted 9-0 to approve an inadequate environmental impact report and kicked the cleanup decision back to DTSC. Instead of exercising its SB 120 authority and rezoning the 7-acre “park” to prohibit the “toxic park,” the council passed a “compromise” resolution asking DTSC to tell them where the disposal site should be placed.

The developer persuaded the council to ask DTSC what it should do about allowing a hazardous waste facility to be placed beneath a city park. The developer hopes DTSC will bless this mess so a judge might be persuaded to certify the massive development on top of a Superfund site without adequate cleanup legal. It isn’t.

It’s time for the city to get tough with Petrovich and Union Pacific Railroad. The city should:

• Rezone the 7-acre “park” to prohibit its use as a hazardous waste disposal facility.

• Require Petrovich to make public the contract between him and Union Pacific Railroad that he claims ties his hands and makes off-site disposal impossible.

• Request a state audit of Union Pacific’s compliance with its DTSC cleanup plan and SB 120.

The protection contained in the Ortiz-Steinberg law terminates at the point the city approves the final land-use plan. That’s why flatly prohibiting the toxic park must be made a part of any rezoning of the property. After the compliance audit is complete, then and only then, should the city consider other disposal alternatives.

As for the threat to “walk away,” it’s important to realize that the railroad is under a legally enforceable DTSC cleanup order. SB 120 specifically forbids DTSC from releasing Union Pacific from any liability for cleanup until the city approves the final land-use plan. If either the railroad or Petrovich attempts to walk away from the mess they’ve created at the Curtis Park railyard, the city attorney can and should prosecute.

By any human standard, Pope Benedict XVI and the American Catholic Church are getting a bad rap in the current outbreak of outrage over clerical sexual abuse.

Far from being indifferent or complicit, then-Cardinal Joseph Ratzinger was among the first in Rome to take the scandal seriously.

During much of his service as head of the Congregation for the Doctrine of the Faith, the future pope had no responsibility for investigating most cases of sexual abuse. Local bishops were in charge – and some failed spectacularly in their moral duties. It was not until 2001 that Pope John Paul II charged Ratzinger with reviewing every credible case of sexual abuse. While poring through these documents, Ratzinger’s eyes were opened. The church became more active in removing abusive priests – whom Ratzinger described rightly as “filth” – both through canonical trials and administrative action.

“Benedict,” says the Rev. Thomas Reese of Georgetown University, “grew in his understanding of the crisis. Like many other bishops at the beginning, he didn’t understand it. … But he grew in his understanding because he listened to what the U.S. bishops had to say. He in fact got it quicker than other people in the Vatican.”

And the American Catholic Church – once in destructive denial – has confronted the problem directly. It is difficult to contend that justice was done in the cases of some prominent offenders and the bishops who protected and reassigned them. But it is also difficult to deny that the church has made progress with a zero-tolerance policy.

The vast majority of abuse cases took place decades ago. In 2009, six credible allegations of abuse concerning people who are currently minors were reported to the U.S. bishops – in a church with 65 million members.

Some will allow none of these facts to get in the way of a good clerical scandal. Editorial cartoons engage in gleeful anti-clericalism. The implicit charge is that the Catholic Church is somehow discredited by the existence of human depravity – a doctrine it has taught for more than two millennia.

Most of the current accusations, as I said, are not fair by human standards. But the Christian church, in its varied expressions, is not merely accountable to human standards because it is supposed to be more than a human institution. Apart from the mental, emotional and spiritual harm done to children, this has been the most disturbing aspect of the initial Catholic reaction to the abuse scandal over the last few decades: the reduction of the church to one more self-interested organization. In case after case, church leaders have attempted (and failed) to protect the church from scandal – like a White House trying to contain a bad news story, or an oil company avoiding responsibility for a spill.

From one perspective, this is understandable. A church exists in a real world of donor relations and legal exposure. But the normal process of crisis management can involve a theological error – often repeated in the history of the religion.

It is the consistent temptation of faith leaders – Catholic, Protestant, Muslim or Hindu – to practice the religion of the tribe.

The goal is to seek the public recognition of their own theological convictions and the health of their own religious institutions. For many centuries of Western history, the Christian church vied and jostled for influence along with other interests, pursuing a tribal agenda at the expense of Jews, heretics, “infidels” and ambitious princes. The mind-set can still be detected, in milder forms, whenever Christian leaders talk of “taking back America for Christ” or pay hush money to avoid scandal for the church. The tribe must be defended.

But the religion of the tribe is inherently exclusive, sorting “us” from “them.” So it undermines a foundational teaching of Christianity – a radical human equality in need and in grace.

The story of modern Christian history has been the partial, hopeful movement away from the religion of the tribe and toward a religion of humanity – a theology that defends a universal ideal of human rights and dignity, whose triumph benefits everyone. And the Catholic Church has led this transition. Once a reactionary opponent of individualism and modernity, it is now one of the leading global advocates for universal human rights and dignity.

The Catholic Church’s initial reaction to the abuse scandal was often indefensible. Now, through its honesty and transparency, it can demonstrate a commitment to universal dignity – which includes every victim of abuse.

Why is it so hard?

With the city of Davis facing a $1.2 million deficit, why can’t Davis City Council member Don Saylor step down early for the good of the city, specifically to save money and to give voters a chance to elect their city leaders?

Saylor is running unopposed for the Yolo County Board of Supervisors. When he assumes that seat in January, his seat on the Davis City council will be open. Yolo County’s election officials say it will cost the city as much as $300,000 to hold a stand-alone special election to replace him.

That’s money Davis can’t afford to waste.

There’s a much cheaper alternative. If Saylor resigns in July, as the Davis Enterprise has urged him to do, his fellow council members can appoint a replacement to serve in his seat until the November general election, when his successor would be elected. The Enterprise and others have suggested that Davis council members appoint Saylor himself to the seat, a good idea, one that would clearly comport with the wishes of Davis voters who have twice elected Saylor to the council.

Rather than pursue that sensible and cost-effective option, Saylor says he’s determined to remain in his council seat until he is sworn in as a Yolo supervisor in January. He points to important unfinished business – the city’s financial struggles, its wastewater treatment program and an effort to improve civility among council members – that he wants to be a part of.

If Saylor stands by his pledge to hold unto his City Council seat until January, the council does not have to call a stand-alone special election. It could appoint a replacement to serve out the balance of Saylor’s term, until 2012. But that denies voters a chance to choose their city leaders.

Two goals ought to guide Davis officials as they consider this issue – saving money in these tough economic times and giving voters an opportunity to elect their leaders. By resigning in July and having fellow council members appoint his replacement – preferably Saylor himself – Saylor and the Davis City Council could achieve both goals.

In his short story “Harrison Bergeron,” the writer Kurt Vonnegut described a dystopian society where the strong had to wear body weights and the beautiful had to don face masks.

This is the situation facing California’s new Delta Stewardship Council, which, as originally envisioned, was supposed to be a powerful voice for the Sacramento-San Joaquin Delta.

Created last year by lawmakers as part of their water reform deal, the Delta Stewardship Council has the twin mission of restoring Delta habitat while also ensuring that water reliability is a “co-equal” goal.

Yet to meet this mandate, a strong Delta Stewardship Council would need to have a stable source of funding, created by assessing fees on water users.

It doesn’t.

It would have a board relatively unencumbered by conflicts of interest.

It doesn’t.

By design, lawmakers and water interests that want to retain control over Delta decisions have ensured that the Delta council will be handicapped by body weights, with little independence or autonomy.

The council’s immediate challenge is Gloria Gray of Inglewood. On her way out of the Assembly speaker’s office, Karen Bass used her appointment to the council to select Gray, a board member of the West Basin Municipal Water District, a Los Angeles County water agency. Gray has a clear conflict of interest.

How can she represent a Southern California water district that depends on the Delta for its supplies and also enforce the co-equal goal of protecting the Delta? It a clear violation of the law.

Despite an opinion confirming her conflict by the Legislative Counsel, Gray still hasn’t said if she will resign from either the West Basin water district or the stewardship council. If she were wise, she’d follow the example of Phil Isenberg, who ended his relationship with his Sacramento lobbying firm when Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger appointed him to the Delta panel.

Environmentalists are heated up over another appointee to the council – Richard Roos-Collins, an attorney who works for the Natural Heritage Institute – but on this score, there is more smoke than fire.

Roos-Collins is clearly qualified to serve on the council, and in that role, he will be a strong advocate for restoring the Delta and assessing all options for water reliability.

The stewardship council has much work ahead of it, especially with the body weights lawmakers have left it with. The sooner it has a sitting membership free of conflicts and manufactured controversy, the better off it will be.

The Sacramento County grand jury’s report on the Rio Linda/Elverta Community Water District is the equivalent of a fourth alarm sounding at a fire station.

County and state officials must respond to protect the safety and pocketbooks of the district’s 14,000 residents. Now.

If there were any doubt about the need for sweeping reform – and given the shameful record of mismanagement and incompetence, there shouldn’t have been any – the report should put it to rest.

In her cover letter, grand jury forewoman Rosemary Kelley could not have issued a sterner warning: “All citizens should have continuous access to safe, palatable water and enough water to fight fires.”

Unfortunately, she said, those living in the district “do not have that access.” Because the district relies on outdated wells and pipelines and because the district’s leadership is so dysfunctional, residents cannot be confident that if a well gets contaminated, the district will professionally handle the response.

When Sacramento Metropolitan Fire District crews responded to an 18-acre fire in Rio Linda last September, they brought their own water. Homeowners and business owners in the district are already paying higher insurance premiums – at least $100 a year more for a single-family house – because of the low water pressure.

The situation is inexcusable.

The state Department of Public Health ordered the district to fix the deficiencies in 2007 and again last December, to no avail.

The grand jury said it’s patently obvious that the district won’t fix the problems without outside help and prodding.

So far, Sacramento County and the Sacramento Local Agency Formation Commission have shirked their responsibilities.

LAFCO has the power to reorganize the district, including forcing a merger with a neighboring utility such as the Sacramento Suburban Water District. Pushed by the Rio Linda Chamber of Commerce, LAFCO looked at a possible consolidation in 1995, but the effort fell apart by 1997.

Peter Brundage, LAFCO’s executive director, acknowledged Tuesday that the district is not meeting basic standards. But he said while the grand jury report will rebuild momentum for a merger or other reorganization, it’s too early to say what LAFCO will do.

The time for bureaucratic dilly-dallying is over. The district now covers 18 square miles in northern Sacramento County and could eventually add 5,000 more homes in planned developments in Elverta.

What are officials waiting for? Certainly, they don’t want to wait until after a tragic house fire that can’t be put out because of low water pressure? Right?

Bob Fletcher

During its March 3 meeting, with one simple vote, California’s Fish and Game Commission once again betrayed the public trust and exposed the biased nature of the state’s Marine Life Protection Act planning and implementation process.

In a 3-2 vote, the commission eliminated three proposals submitted by a group of citizens, the South Coast Regional Stakeholder Group, which were the product of thousands of hours of research and planning, and took more than a year to develop.

The commission voted to keep in consideration only the alternative created by the Blue Ribbon Task Force, effectively terminating consideration of the three proposals created by citizens selected to participate in the process. This includes a plan (Proposal 2) that is supported by the recreational fishing and boating communities throughout Southern California and the state. This plan meets the required scientific standards while at the same time reducing the size and extent of proposed no-fishing zones, maintaining access to healthy fisheries and jobs.

The original intent of the MLPA, passed in 1999, was to re-evaluate and redesign existing marine protected areas to increase ocean conservation. These areas provide an additional, but potentially unnecessary, layer of resource protection by restricting or prohibiting recreational and commercial fishing.

Implementation of the MLPA was delayed for years by a lack of funding. Although ocean habitat and fisheries have decidedly improved, the state and the Resources Legacy Fund Foundation partnered to get the process moving. This foundation has invested millions of dollars establishing an extensive system of protected areas along the coast. That left it up to California citizens to find funding to scientifically monitor and enforce the new marine protected areas at an estimated cost of $30 million to $40 million annually.

What is driving this headlong attempt to complete the MLPA process? The answer is simple. Our state does not have the financial resources to evaluate all four South Coast proposals, and instead of maintaining a fair playing field for all the proposals, the commission’s solution was to eliminate everything but the task force proposal.

In addition, the foundation wants the entire process completed by the end of this year – an arbitrary, political deadline – and well before decision-makers in Sacramento finally realize the state does not have the money to fairly and thoroughly implement a program that could do significant economic harm to coastal communities.

The commission’s decision to single out the task force proposal and not give stakeholder proposals an opportunity for review is an outrage and a decision with consequences we will all regret.

The March 3 vote demonstrates a blatant disregard for promises and commitments for a fair and open process, and is yet another among biased decisions that have plagued this process.

For example, the task force created its preferred proposal over the course of two meetings in a closed-door process that sport-fishing representatives contend was rife with backroom deals and biased decision-making.

During the commissioners’ discussion, a large body of testimony, both written and by way of video clips, clearly showed the bias inherent in the task force.

At one point, Commissioner Richard Rogers even lectured the public on the fact that the task force, as an advisory body to the commission, was exempt from provisions of state open-meeting laws.

Setting aside that this legal question has yet to be resolved, the state signed a memorandum of understanding with the Resources Legacy Fund Foundation stating that implementation would be done in accordance with open-meeting laws.

The idea of using closed areas as a tool in fisheries management is not new, has value in some situations and is being used elsewhere in the country. People charged with managing California’s MLPA implementation co-opted the process and are forcing numerous, extensive no-fishing zones on recreational and commercial fishing industries already suffering from the economic downturn and restrictive fisheries regulations.

It comes as no surprise that California is being used throughout the country as an example of what not to do when it comes to fisheries management. A thorough investigation of these allegations by agencies or individuals with no stake in the outcome of the MLPA should be conducted. This investigation needs to take place sooner rather than later, as the economic blow to the state’s coastal communities has already begun.

When you’re Michael Steele, there’s no waking up and thinking: Ahhhh, at least the worst is over.

Whatever the week, Monday is the start of another very bad one. No exception to the trend, this week began dramatically.

First, Steele’s chief of staff, Ken McKay, resigned in another Republican National Committee stab (cue soundtrack from “Psycho”) at damage control in the wake of profligate spending and that whole bondage-stripper thing.

Next, Steele’s longtime political consulting firm, On Message, severed ties with the RNC head. His relentless off-messaging apparently was hurting the company’s brand.

Nothing personal, of course. High regard and all that. “We wish him well,” said consultant Curt Anderson, as he lowered himself into the Titanic’s last lifeboat.

And that was the good part of the week. Still to come was reaction to the latest on the list called “Things Michael Steele Shouldn’t Have Said” It’s about race.

Appearing recently on ABC’s “Good Morning America,” Steele told George Stephanopoulos that being African American has magnified his travails. Stephanopoulos had asked Steele whether his race gave him a “slimmer margin for error.” “The honest answer is yes,” said Steele. “It just is. Barack Obama has a slimmer margin. We all – a lot of folks do. It’s a different role for me to play and others to play, and that’s just the reality of it.” Except that African American Republicans aren’t buying it. For starters, Steele was elected by the predominantly white party. After months of unforced errors, he can’t turn around and charge his party with racism. Actually, racism would mean expecting less from an African American than from a white counterpart.

If you can’t play the race card with your own race, you might be in a heap of denial. As Juliette Ochieng wrote in a blog item picked up by BookerRising.net, the black, moderate-conservative news site: “Mr. Steele’s margin for error is smaller than it was when he first became RNC chair due entirely to the fact that he has made so many errors and due to the fact that he seems incapable of learning from them.”

It’s not clear who Steele thinks his audience is when he deals the race card. Meanwhile, black Republicans have their own complaints about Steele, principally that the RNC leader has failed to support African American candidates.

One of the more outspoken among these is Jean Howard-Hill, a University of Tennessee-Chattanooga political science professor, lawyer and Republican activist. And, some might say … a troublemaker? “I wear the label very proudly,” she says.

Howard-Hill is a familiar name in party politics, especially in Tennessee, where she is running for Congress after decades of recruiting blacks to the GOP. A Georgia-born scholar whose childhood memories include a cross burning in her front yard, she seems an unlikely Republican.

“You have to be a little crazy to be an African American Republican. I admit that,” says Howard-Hill. But she sees the Republican Party as her natural home and, importantly, the best route for economic empowerment.

When she goes into black churches to preach the GOP gospel, Howard-Hill reminds congregants that blacks were first elected to Congress as Republicans during Reconstruction and that their birthright was stolen by the Dixiecrats.

In South Carolina, rising Republican star Marvin Rogers, a candidate for the South Carolina Legislature, is telegraphing the same message with his book “Silence Makes the Loudest Sound.” Basically, conservative blacks want their party back.

But many political candidates are being hampered in part by a lack of access to the RNC coffers, says Howard-Hill. She blames Steele, and amends his different-standards defense accordingly.

“I would say we’re (blacks) treated differently within the party. But in terms of integrity, the standard is the same. Michael needs to own up because it’s not race. From day one, he has messed up. … If he wants to play the race card, play it with us.”

To be fair to Steele, he didn’t introduce the race issue and was responding to a question. Nevertheless, his answer and the African American Republican response have shed light on Steele’s central flaw. As always, it isn’t the mistake that brings you down; it’s the cover-up.

In Steele’s case, the cover-up is pride – an unwillingness to take personal responsibility. Whether it’s the poor staffer who approved $1,900 for a strip club or the chief of staff who got the boot, it’s always someone else’s fault.

Steele needs to face the truth and set himself – and his party – free.