Contra Costa Sheriff Warren Rupf

Contra Costa Sheriff Warren Rupf will not run for either the 10th or the 11th Congressional districts.

“The more I talked to people, the more I became convinced that I am not well-suited for partisan politics,” said Rupf, whose consultations included talks with national GOP officials in Washington, D.C. “The people that most want to talk you, on either side, are on the political fringes. They have a narrower view of what’s wrong with the world and how to fix it.”

Rupf said his values “don’t line up with the fringes of either party and compromising my values or my priorities is a price I am not willing to pay.”

The news will disappoint Republicans, who believed the well-known, outspoken and gregarious Rupf would have given Democrats in either district a serious challenge.

But Rupf faced considerable challenges of his own.

As a Republican, his chances of success at the ballot box were extremely slim in the heavily Democratic 10th Congressional District, just vacated by Ellen Tauscher.

Party registration is about dead even in the 11th District, but Rupf is largely unknown outside Contra Costa County except in law enforcement circles. More than half the 11th District’s voters live in San Joaquin County. He would also have had to run against an incumbent, Democratic Rep. Jerry McNerney, a task far more difficult than running for an open seat.

So, for now, the 10th District’s sole Republican in the race is political novice and attorney David Harmer of Dougherty Valley.

Several Republicans have declared in the 11th District, including San Joaquin County vintner Brad Goehring, David Bernal of San Ramon and Jon Del Arroz of Danville.

The video is now available, folks.

Watch Local One Public Employees Union chief Rollie Katz gets really passionate it at the June 16 meeting of the Contra Costa County Board of Supervisors, a lot of it targeted at Republican Supervisor Mary Nejedly Piepho’s efforts to modulate outright board support of Democrats’ in the Legislature pushing for tax increases.

Click here and move the video time button to about 2 hours and 20 minutes to watch the fireworks.

San Ramon Mayor Abram Wilson

San Ramon mayoral and council candidates in the Nov. 3 election will face voluntary campaign spending limits of $33,919 or $1 per registered voter. See Contra Costa Times reporter Sophia Kazmi’s story here.

What? San Ramon has an election this year? Yep, it’s the last odd-year election holdout in Contra Costa County. The rest of the cities consolidated with even-year elections, largely because it costs less to run an election in conjunction with other entities due to cost-sharing.

Mayor Abram Wilson is up for re-election along with councilmembers Dave Hudson and Jim Livingstone.

Wilson has said he will seek re-election and he has also said he will run again for state Assembly in 2010. Wilson, a Republican, is the city’s first directly elected mayor and he has never faced significant opposition. But it  one wonders if the Democratic Party will attempt to field an opponent in the mayoral contest in an effort to weaken Wilson’s chances for success in the Assembly.

Contra Costa County Public Employees Union Local One is circulating this flyer (see below) in response to recent county deputy sheriff and district attorney union leaders’ demands that the county restore law enforcement funding at the expense of other departments such as the county hospital.

“Apparently, the DAs and the Sheriffs (our fellow county employees) think they’re special,” the flyer reads. “Their response to the cuts in the DA’s office has been to attack the Board of Supervisors for building the County Hospital and to argue for more cuts in Health Services. That means cut more of our jobs they won’t lose theirs.”

With more budget cuts on the horizon, this type of infighting among public employee unions is likely to only get worse.

Local One flyer

District Attorney Bob Kochly

Contra Costa County’s Public Protection Committee — a subset of county supervisors Federal Glover of Pittsburg and John Gioia of Richmond — will address on Monday afternoon a new report from District Attorney Robert Kochly on how to prosecute misdemeanors.

As you may recall, Kochly sparked a firestorm earlier this month when he announced that budget cuts to his department were so severe that he could no longer punish certain miscreants.

Kochly’s report is thin on solutions. He wrote that he cannot do the job without an adequate number of attorneys. But he said that volunteer or retired attorneys are not a “reliable, ongoing substitute” for permanent staff and noted that the county already uses a significant number of diversion programs, or steps that allow small-time offenders to avoid jail through treatment or other programs.

The more interesting memo in the agenda packet comes from Deputy District Attorney Bob McMaster on whether or not the county could shift misdemeanor prosecution responsibilities to the cities and the potential oversight of Attorney General Jerry Brown.

McMaster wrote that the county could give permission to cities to handle the prosecutions but it cannot force them to do it. Given the state of most city budgets, it seems unlikely that cities want the job.

Brown could come in and prosecute misdemeanors if he determines that the county has failed to administer justice. But the state cannot force the county to do it, McMaster said. In other words, the costs would be on the state’s dime and we all know the state has no dimes.

All in all, there’s nothing in either of these memos that suggests longterm solutions to the problem of no money to pay the required number of prosecutors to go after the county’s scofflaws.

The meeting is set for Monday, May 11, 2:30 p.m., at 651 Pine Street in Martinez.

I’m sure the supervisors would love to hear your ideas.

The funding wheel goes round and round and where she stops, nobody knows.

Here is yet another example of one local agency asking another for money: Martinez schools will ask the Martinez City Council on May 6 for up to $500,000 to keep teachers in the classrooms.

We’ve already heard this week about how the county’s budget cuts might impact its ability to prosecute shoplifters and thieves, and one of the solutions is to let cities pay for their own prosecutors. Counties and cities all over California are laying off hundreds of workers and public services are being cut.

Here’s the staff report from Martinez City Manager Phil Vince:

CITY OF MARTINEZ CITY COUNCIL AGENDA
May 6, 2009

TO: Mayor and City Council

FROM:
Philip Vince, City Manager
SUBJECT:

DATE: Martinez Unified School District’s Request for Financial Support To Reduce the Number of Proposed Teacher Layoffs in FY 2009/10

April 30, 2009

RECOMMENDATION:

Consider and take action on the Martinez Unified School District’s (MUSD) request for funds.

BACKGROUND:

The MUSD approached the City three months ago requesting a one time donation of funding to reduce the layoff of up to 45 employees in 2009. The majority of scheduled layoffs include teachers.

While the MUSD successfully passed a $50 dollar parcel tax in November 2008, an anticipated $500,000 in additional funding will not be available until 2010. The school district request for funding from the City in the amount of $200,000 to $500,000, is intended to be used as a stop gap measure until further resources are available.

Although cities such as San Francisco, Pinole and Richmond have made financial contributions to their respective school districts to lessen the impact of teacher layoffs, the funding source came from Redevelopment dollars. Since Martinez does not have a Redevelopment Agency, the General Fund Reserve would be reduced by the allocation amount.

In the spirit of cooperation the MUSD and the City want to use this forum as an opportunity to share resources that would create more efficiencies for both agencies. A number of cost saving ideas were discussed, including: Read the rest of this entry »

Contra Costa firefighters have agreed to delay wage increases for two years in recognition of “current, unprecedented economic circumstances,” according to the office of Contra Costa County Supervisor Susan Bonilla of Concord.

The members of United Professional Fire Fighters Local 1230 agreed to defer  to 2011 of a 2.5 percent raise scheduled to go into effect on July 1, 2009, and to 2012 a second raise of 2.5 percent scheduled for Jan. 1, 2010.

In return, the county extended all other terms of the firefighters’ contract for two years.

“As firefighters, we experience on a daily basis the hardship many families in our community are facing,” said Local 1230 President Vincent Wells. “We wanted to work with the county in maintaining the level of public safety we have always provided … We are willing to defer our raises out a few years with the hopes that the economy will turn around.”

While the pay deferral was undoubtedly welcomed, the firefighters’ concession does not represent a permanent structural change in wages or benefits.

The county and its numerous labor unions have been in negotiations for months as the county struggles to reverse an unsustainable trajectory of rising wages and benefits. Most county employee compensation levels are prescribed in labor contracts, which cannot be changed other than through negotiation and agreement on both sides.

Unions are usually loath to agree to any concessions because it sets the stage for future talks as well as other unions’ negotiations, so it will be interesting to see if other public employee unions follow the firefighters’ example.

Click through to read the full press release.

Read the rest of this entry »

Representatives of the Contra Costa District Attorney’s Office and the Sheriff’s Office held press conferences this afternoon to call on the county Board of Supervisors to adequately fund their departments.

District Attorney Bob Kochly stirred up a firestorm when he issued a memo to area police agencies that his department would no longer prosecute some misdemeanors due to budget cuts.

I’ll have more on this for my Sunday column but here are a few video clips from the presser:

Contra Costa District Attorney Robert Kochly

Boy oh boy, is the Contra Costa Board of Supervisors mad at Contra Costa District Attorney Robert Kochly.

The board will hold a special meeting at 3 p.m. today to air their grievances over a memo (see the memo is at the bottom of this post) Kochly sent out to the county’s police chiefs and his staff, which advised them that due to budget cuts, his office will no longer prosecute certain misdemeanor crimes. (Click here to read Malaika Fraley’s CCT story.)

Late yesterday, Supervisor Federal Glover of Pittsburg announced that he will call for Attorney General Jerry Brown to investigate into how Kochly manages his office. (By way of background, the Board of Supervisors controls Kochly’s budget but the district attorney is a directly elected countywide official and the board has no jurisdiction over the management of his office.)

And prior to the board meeting this afternoon, unions representing 656 Contra Costa deputy sheriffs and 73 prosecutors in the District Attorney’s Office will hold a press conference outside the board chambers at 651 Pine Street in Martinez and call the on the board to restore the funding cuts to both the district attorney and the sheriff’s office.

This folks, to quote an old saying, is where the budget rubber starts to smell bad.

Budget cuts are no longer impacting impacting selected segments of the population, such as the poor woman without health care who needs the county hospital or that elderly man who needs an aide to care for him in his home. The budget axe has now struck the very core of what most taxpayers view as a critical government service for everyone: Public safety.

The debate over how government will pay for all the services the public demands at a time of serious financial restraints will continue, of course.

From a political perspective, this assault on Kochly, a Republican, comes at a time when he is still on the fence about whether he will seek re-election to a third term. A handful of people are reportedly chomping to run for the seat including Republican Concord Councilman Mark Peterson and a son of former District Attorney William O’Malley, Democrat, retired judge and attorney Dan O’Malley.

Alliance of Contra Costa Taxpayers chief Ken Hambrick, a vocal critic of the way the board has handled the county’s finances, has another theory.

“The board, in the form of Glover, is trying to lynch Bob Kochly as a cover-up for their own incompetence in handling the financial woes of the county,” Hambrick said. “As Charlie Brown said in one of the comic strips, ‘Find a scapegoat.’  This is a blatant attempt to move blame and responsibility from themselves to another and to smear Kochly’s name in the process.”

Read the rest of this entry »

Danville Mayor Newell Arnerich

Danville Mayor Newell Arnerich says he will run for the state Senate if Sen. Mark DeSaulnier, D-Concord, is elected to the 10th Congressional District.

The 14-year-veteran of the Danville Town Council and an owner of an architectural firm spent the weekend at the California Democratic Party convention in Sacramento talking with party leaders — Senate President Pro Tem Darrell Steinberg, DeSaulnier and Assemblyman Tom Torlakson, D-Antioch — about his prospects and came away enthused.

It was his wife who told him he ought to run for the Legislature, he said. Janis teaches school in Orinda and she urged him to try and help fix a dysfunctional state budgeting process mired in partisan muck.

The Legislature’s failure to solve the state’s fiscal problems incrementally in prior years has led to massive and nearly unmanageable deficits that are pushing businesses out of California and hurting education, he said.

“I believe the opportunity for change is over the next 24 months and the voters are looking for it,” Arnerich said. ”

Arnerich is the first declared candidate for the District 7 Senate seat, should it become open.

Former Assemblyman Joe Canciamilla of Pittsburg is also looking at the race and Assemblywoman Joan Buchanan, D-Alamo, may well have an interest in the Senate post if she is unsuccessful in her 10th Congressional District campaign.