Wednesday, August 31, 2011

Sac Bee Dan Walters: The politics of trash plays out at end of session

Dan Walters: A big trash pile means big politics

Published: Wednesday, Aug. 31, 2011 - 12:00 am | Page 3A

California's businesses, farms and 37 million residents generate 30 million tons of trash each year, and collecting and burying it is a multibillion-dollar activity.

But while we generate all that garbage and want it whisked away, we don't want its smelly, noisy and unsightly disposal anywhere near where we live.

Not surprisingly, therefore, creating enough landfill space to handle our trash is a perpetual political issue.
As the Legislature churns toward adjournment, lawmakers and lobbyists for stakeholders in the trash trade are engaged in sharp conflicts over controversial waste disposal sites. And two bills are polar opposites in thrust.

One by Sen. Juan Vargas, D-San Diego, would block a local project called Gregory Canyon that has survived the permitting process and even a popular vote.

The other, by Assemblywoman Fiona Ma, D-San Francisco, would override local opposition, including a popular vote and an adverse court decision, for expansion of a Solano County disposal site called Potrero Hills.

Vargas' Senate Bill 833, backed by environmentalists and an Indian tribe, has cleared the Senate and is pending in the Assembly.

Ma's measure, Assembly Bill 1178, backed by a coalition of trash disposal firms and opposed by environmentalists, sailed through the Assembly but may be stalled, at least for the moment, in the Senate.
While AB 1178 is particularly aimed at facilitating Potrero Hills, which is owned by Waste Connections Inc., it also could affect another controversial expansion project in Yuba County sought by Recology, a prominent San Francisco trash collection firm. And Recology's advocacy has a déjà vu quality.

A quarter-century ago, the firm, then called Norcal Solid Waste Systems, had a lucrative and exclusive franchise for collecting trash in San Francisco and also employed a lawyer named Willie Brown, who happened to be the speaker of the state Assembly.

Norcal, through a subsidiary called Tri-County Development, was trying to establish a waste disposal site in Solano County called Lynch Canyon. Legislation floated around the Capitol to fast-track approval. But it vanished after Solano County Assemblyman Tom Hannigan told Norcal's lobbyist and close Brown friend, former Assemblyman John Knox, to knock it off.

A few years later, the San Francisco Bay Guardian obtained a confidential memorandum written by a San Francisco city official in 1986 that described Brown's pledge to "push through" a state permit for the project. The FBI, which had raided Norcal's offices, investigated, but nothing came of it.

The Lynch Canyon blowup was the chief inspiration for a Solano County ballot initiative aimed at limiting the amount of trash brought into the county for disposal.

It's that ballot measure, as later applied by court decision to Potrero Hills, that the Ma bill would overturn.

LA Times: Another busy week for feature filming in Los Angeles

On Location: Another busy week for feature filming in L.A.

by Richard Verrier, Los Angeles Times

August 30, 2011 | 2:36 pm

Photo: Christian Bale as Batman in a scene from "The Dark Knight." Follow-up "The Dark Knight Rises" is currently filming in L.A. Photo Credit: AP/Warner Bros.

Feature film activity in Los Angeles continued to grow at a brisk pace, with on-location shoots for movies once again posting double-digit increases.

Filming for features generated 189 production days for the week ended Sunday, up 66% from the same time a year earlier, according to recently-released data from FilmL.A. Inc., which handles permits for film shoots on streets and noncertified soundstages in the city and unincorporated areas of the county.

Feature film activity was virtually flat in the first half of this year but has steadily grown in recent months. The category is up about 60% so far in the third quarter compared with a year earlier, according to FilmL.A. data.

The surge in feature filming last week led to an overall 6% increase in production days across all categories.
Projects fueling the increase range from obscure independent features to star-packed studio movies including
“The Dark Knight Rises,” the upcoming Batman sequel that recently moved production from Pittsburgh; “Savages,” an Oliver Stone directed movie starring John Travolta about pot growers who battle the Mexican mafia; and “End of Watch,” a crime drama starring Jake Gyllenhaal, Michael Pena and Anna Kendrick.

Activity is expected to remain strong as two other high-profile movies get underway: “Argo,” about the Iranian hostage crisis, starring and directed by Ben Affleck; and “The Gangster Squad,” a star-packed period drama with Sean Penn, Josh Brolin and Emma Stone about the Los Angeles Police Department’s anti-mafia unit in the 1940s and 1950s.

Both films received approval for state film tax credits under a program whose future is being debated in Sacramento. The state Senate is expected to vote next week on a bill to extend the credits beyond 2012, though it’s unclear whether the final bill would extend the $100 million in annual funding for five years or just one.

In other sectors, television production, which has been nearly flat so far this quarter, generated 337 production days last week, down 11% from a year earlier. Filming for commercials accounted for 139 production days, up 4%.

This week’s scheduled film shoots include those for the Judd Apatow comedy “This is Forty,” which will film downtown; "Savages," which will be in Studio City; and the CBS TV show “The Mentalist,” which is taking its crew to Palmdale.

Meanwhile, the reality TV series “Pit Bulls and Parolees” will set up in Castaic, in northern L.A. County.

LA Times: State legislature moves to limit cities' ability to impound cars

State moves to limit cities' ability to impound cars

In response to practices in Bell, the California Senate approves restrictions for DUI checkpoints. The measure goes back to the Assembly for final approval. Brown has not taken a position.

Authorities impound car that was stopped for lack of tail lights. The state Senate on Tuesday voted to restrict cities' ability to impound cars driven by people caught at sobriety checkpoints without driver's licenses. (Photo by Steve Osman / Los Angeles Times / May 1, 1997)

By Patrick McGreevy, Los Angeles Times

August 31, 2011

Reporting from Sacramento—

The state Senate on Tuesday voted to restrict cities' ability to impound cars driven by people caught at sobriety checkpoints without driver's licenses. The action came as a direct response to the city of Bell, which made it a practice to confiscate vehicles from unlicensed motorists — many of them illegal immigrants — and then charge high impound fees or sell them in order to fill city coffers.

Currently, cities can hold cars taken from unlicensed drivers for 30 days, with impound fees accruing each day. If unclaimed, the vehicles may then be auctioned off, something that often happens when fines and fees exceed the car's value.

Under the legislation, if a sober driver is caught at a DUI checkpoint without a valid license, officers must release the car to a qualified driver representing the registered owner.

If a licensed driver isn't immediately available, the car can be released to one later by the impound yard.

But some Republican lawmakers said that public safety would be jeopardized by AB 353, which was previously approved by the Assembly but must go back to that chamber for action on amendments. The bill would then go to Gov. Jerry Brown, who has yet to take a position on it.

"If we lower this standard, what we are doing is encouraging more people without driver's licenses to be on the roads," said state Sen. Joel Anderson (R-San Diego). "There is a reason they don't have a driver's license. It's not because they are a good driver."

Anti-immigration activists also warned that the legislation would remove one deterrent to illegal immigrants driving without a license.

"It seems if there is a law that inconveniences illegal aliens, they [legislators] are willing to change it," said Ira Mehlman, a spokesman with the Federation for American Immigration Reform.

Bell police officers impounded hundreds of cars because the drivers were unlicensed. But according to the bill's sponsor, Assemblyman Gil Cedillo (D-Los Angeles), and other lawmakers, the practice is not isolated to the troubled Los Angeles suburb.

"What is really going on here is, some local governments, including the city of Bell, are using this impoundment to make money," said Senate President Pro Tem Darrell Steinberg (D-Sacramento) "Folks on the other side of the aisle who rightfully sometimes rail against government running amok and hurting people with its police powers ought to recognize this for what it is — an abuse."

A handful of Republican senators joined in voting to pass the bill, which Democrats said was narrowly tailored to respond to DUI dragnets that are purely predatory.

Steinberg noted that 24,000 cars were impounded in 2009 at DUI checkpoints in California but that only 3,200 of those behind the wheel were charged with driving under the influence.

The impound measure was one of dozens that lawmakers approved Tuesday.

Among them, the Senate voted to bar cities and counties from enacting laws prohibiting male circumcision. Assemblyman Mike Gatto (D-Silver Lake) had introduced the bill in response to petition drives in two cities. Activists in Santa Monica eventually dropped their effort, and a judge ordered a San Francisco measure off the ballot.

"When you have a situation where a group of extremists is trying to take away the rights of parents and others, I think it is an appropriate role for government to step in and preserve liberty," Gatto said. His bill, AB 768, goes back to the Assembly for action.

The Senate also voted to ban the chemical bisphenol-A (BPA) from baby bottles and sippy cups on grounds it is toxic and poses a health threat. Senators sent AB 1319 back to the Assembly, which previously approved a stricter bill, for concurrence on amendments.

Sac Bee Capitol Alert: Steinberg Bill would allow local govt. fuel surcharge

The latest on California politics and government

August 30, 2011 The Sacramento Bee
Posted by Torey Van Oot

Steinberg bill would give locals power to raise fuel surcharge

Senate President Pro Tem Darrell Steinberg is pushing last-minute legislation to give local governments power to seek new fuel surcharges to fund certain transit projects.

Senate Bill 791 would allow local transportation agencies to seek voter approval for a "regional transportation congestion reduction charge" on gasoline or diesel. The bill language, introduced in the form of amendments to existing legislation last week, would also allow a new vehicle registration charge on electric vehicles. Revenues raised by the fees, which would require approval of a majority of voters in the impacted region, would fund transit proposals developed by the local transportation planning agencies to reduce vehicle congestion.

The Sacramento Democrat called the bill an effort to create a "local option" for funding transit projects, saying it is "very consistent with the work that we've done this year on bringing services closer to the people" through realignment of state and local functions.

"The state does not have the financial capacity to adequately fund transit and road improvements, and if we can't afford it we ought to at least give the regions of this state the ability to go to the voters and raise money for important priorities like transit and road improvements," he said.

Steinberg said he is hopeful that the majority-vote bill will clear both houses before the legislative session ends next week, though he left to door open to working on the bill next year.

The California Taxpayers Association has issued a letter to members of the Assembly outlining opposition to the bill and raising concerns that it believes the measure should be subject to a two-thirds vote of the Legislature, not a majority vote.

"While we recognize the need to repair and maintain the state's roads and highways, we note that Californians already pay the highest gas taxes in the nation. Yet, our transportation system ranks near the bottom in national surveys," the letter reads. "We are also concerned that these new tax revenues will fund projects that are unrelated to and do not benefit the payor, including but not limited to projects related to bicycle and walking trails, etc."

SB 791 is in the Assembly and would have to win approval there before returning to the Senate for a vote before being sent to Gov. Jerry Brown .

SF Chronicle: Federal Government comes down hard on PG&E, California

Feds come down hard on PG&E for San Bruno blast

Jaxon Van Derbeken,Demian Bulwa, Chronicle Staff Writers

Photo by Carlos Avila Gonzalez / The Chronicle

San Bruno Mayor Jim Ruane listens to findings during the NTSB hearings on the 2010 PG&E pipeline blast in Washington DC, on Tuesday, August 30, 2011.

Washington --
Federal investigators pinned blame Tuesday squarely on Pacific Gas and Electric Co. for the natural gas pipeline blast in San Bruno, condemning shoddy company safety practices for the devastation of a neighborhood and the deaths of eight people.

The National Transportation Safety Board, wrapping up a nearly yearlong investigation, also said federal and state pipeline regulatory efforts need to be overhauled to prevent another city from suffering such a disaster.

A seam weld in the pipeline segment that ruptured Sept. 9 in San Bruno was so obviously deficient that it would not have passed even a cursory visual inspection when a PG&E crew installed it in 1956, investigators with the safety board said. The weld flaw, and PG&E's failure over more than 50 years to conduct an inspection that would have detected it, made the line's rupture inevitable, they said.

"It was not a question of if this pipeline would burst," safety board Chairwoman Deborah Hersman said at a hearing at which the agency presented its findings. "It was a question of when."

PG&E compounded the danger through "poor record keeping, inadequate inspection programs and an integrity management program without integrity," Hersman said before the five-member safety board voted unanimously to blame the explosion on the company.

PG&E's final mistakes happened the day of the blast, the safety board said, as a botched repair job set the disaster in motion and control-room operators failed to recognize what had happened for several precious minutes as the San Bruno neighborhood burned.

Homeowners paid the price for PG&E's longtime resistance to installing automatic pipeline shutoff valves, as it took the company more than 90 minutes to close manual valves and cut the flow of gas to the inferno. When the flames finally were extinguished, 38 homes were destroyed and 70 were damaged.

Lax regulation

It wasn't just what Hersman called PG&E's "litany of failures" that came in for criticism. The board chairwoman said the company had "exploited weaknesses in a lax system of oversight, and regulatory agencies that placed a blind trust in operators to the detriment of public safety."

Many of the 29 recommendations that the safety board approved Tuesday were aimed at turning the San Bruno explosion into a wake-up call both for government and for the pipeline industry nationwide.

The board called for federal regulators to repeal "grandfather" regulations that allowed pipelines installed before 1970, including the one in San Bruno, not to be tested using high-pressure water, a method that is effective at finding defective welds.

The safety board also pushed for requirements that PG&E and other utilities install automatic shutoff valves in pipelines in populated areas.

In a proposal that hints at the monumental task ahead, the safety board asked that gas transmission pipelines around the country be reconfigured to allow for testing for defects with in-line tools known as smart pigs.

Currently, more than half of the nation's gas transmission lines cannot accommodate such tools because they are filled with narrow turns and bends.

'Too late' for city

San Bruno sent a delegation of leaders to the hearing, and Mayor Jim Ruane said he was satisfied with the federal findings that PG&E was solely to blame.

"It's too late for our city, but it's not too late for other communities," Ruane said.

As for the city regaining confidence in PG&E, he said, "They have a long way to go."

Bill Magoolaghan, who is living with his wife and four young children in a Belmont rental while they rebuild their burned-out home in San Bruno, watched the hearing on the Internet. He welcomed the safety board's conclusions, but remained uneasy about the future.

"Now what?" he asked. "Recommendations and suggestions don't cut it. I need something much more firm. I need requirements. I need legislation. I need the safety board to tell the California Public Utilities Commission to fine PG&E an ungodly amount of money. It should be a staggering, record fine that PG&E will take seriously."

PG&E issued a statement after the hearing that said, "We fully embrace the recommendations of the NTSB and will fully incorporate them into our plans. Although we have much to learn and do, we have already taken many immediate and long-term steps to promote safety."

State promises changes

California Public Utilities Commission Executive Director Paul Clanon said he, too, welcomes the recommendations, including a call for a federal audit of his agency's effectiveness as well as a state audit of PG&E's safety program.
He said his agency had ordered utilities to "test or replace all grandfathered pipes" and is looking at "plans that include valve automation and retrofitting pipelines to accommodate in-line inspection tools."
Hersman traced the Sept. 9 disaster to PG&E's installation of a "woefully inadequate pipe," whose source remains unknown. At the rupture site at Earl Avenue and Glenview Drive, which sits at the low point of a canyon, PG&E cobbled together six short pieces known as pups, allowing the line to negotiate the curve of the canyon.
Hersman and safety board investigators said five of the pipe pieces did not met PG&E or industry standards in place at the time. The one that failed had been welded along its longitudinal seam from the outside, but not the inside, leaving it prone to a break. The board concluded that it was not a factory-manufactured piece of pipe, rejecting PG&E's claim that a defunct steel company had made it.
The safety board said the weak pups would not have withstood specialized testing, such as the use of high-pressure water, for defective longitudinal seam welds. But PG&E never did such tests on the line and checked the pipe only for corrosion. Company records erroneously indicated that the line was seamless and thus had no seam welds.
"That pipe should not have been installed," said Donald Kramer, a metallurgical expert for the safety board who found the pipe to be riddled with substandard welds. "It's not supposed to be there."
Another investigator, Robert Hall, criticized PG&E's pipeline safety program for its approach to potential risks. He said the company had put too much emphasis on spotting problems caused by ground movement and third parties like construction crews, and too little emphasis on detecting design flaws.

Poor reactions

The federal safety board said PG&E had missed two earlier opportunities to fix problems in its gas operation - a 2008 explosion of a distribution line in the Sacramento suburb of Rancho Cordova, in which a leak in a substandard pipe caused a blast that killed a homeowner, and a 1981 incident in San Francisco's Financial District in which the utility took nine hours to shut off gas from a pipe that exploded.

The problem in San Francisco was with manual shutoff valves, one of which had been paved over, investigators found. Despite being warned, PG&E resisted adding automatic valves, a stance it didn't change until after the San Bruno disaster.

The immediate cause of the San Bruno explosion was PG&E's loss of control of the gas pressure on the pipeline late the afternoon of Sept. 9, due to problems with the power supply during a repair job at the pipeline's southern terminus in Milpitas.

The federal probe found that the power problems resulted in erroneous indications of low pressure being sent to pipeline valves, causing those valves to swing wide open and pressure on the line to surge. The crew doing the repair job had no contingency plan to deal with the problem, investigators said.

PG&E's lack of an emergency plan, muddled communications and the absence of automatic shutoff valves resulted in the company taking 95 minutes to halt the flow of gas, the safety board said.

"We believe they had information within 10 minutes to know they had a line break," investigator Robert Trainor said of PG&E's pipeline operators. "That should have prompted an urgent response, but it did not."

While saying they could not identify exactly what caused earlier cracks on the defective seam weld, federal investigators said previous stresses to the line included pressure spikes that PG&E ordered in 2003 and 2008.

Hall, the safety board investigator, said after the hearing that investigators can't be certain about what role pressure spikes played because PG&E records are incomplete.

"We only had pressure records over the last 10 years," Hall said. "There's 40 years of history where we don't have a record on how it operated."

The safety board ruled out the possibility that a sewer line replacement project that San Bruno commissioned in 2008 had stressed the line and contributed to the accident. A blue-ribbon panel commissioned by the California Public Utilities Commission had said the sewer project was a likely contributing factor, as did a pipeline industry group.

Recommended changes

Some of the National Transportation Safety Board's recommendations in response to the explosion of Pacific Gas and Electric Co.'s gas transmission line in San Bruno on Sept. 9.

To the U.S. Pipeline and Hazardous Materials Safety Administration

Tests: Require pre-1970 gas pipelines to undergo high-pressure water tests designed to detect substandard welds.
Rules: Change regulations to allow pipeline operators to consider manufacturing defects as safe only if they have survived a pressure test.
Inspections: Require that all natural-gas transmission lines be able to accommodate in-line inspection tools that can find defective welds.
Information sharing: Require pipeline operators to provide key details about their systems to local emergency officials, and to alert 911 when a pipeline ruptures.
Leak detection: Require pipeline operators to improve leak-detection systems.
Shutoff valves: Require that pipeline operators increase the number of automatic or remote-controlled shutoff valves in urban areas.

To the governor of California

Fines: Give the California Public Utilities Commission's pipeline safety division the direct authority to fine pipeline operators for safety violations.

To the California Public Utilities Commission

Audits: With federal regulators, audit all aspects of PG&E's operation, including the company's record keeping, integrity management program, emergency planning and control room operations.

To PG&E

Shutoff valves: Expedite the installation of automatic and remote-controlled gas shutoff valves.
Leak detection: Improve the system for detecting pipeline leaks.
Maintenance: Overhaul the company's pipeline integrity management program.
Emergency response: Establish a comprehensive emergency response plan for pipeline disasters.

History of ill-fated pipeline

1944-48: Pacific Gas and Electric Co. installs Line 132, a 30-inch gas transmission line, from Milpitas to the Dogpatch neighborhood of San Francisco.

1956: To make way for the Crestmoor subdivision in San Bruno, PG&E reconfigures a section of Line 132 in a slight canyon. The new portion includes several short sections of substandard pipe, joined by what are later determined to be inferior girth welds. One section of pipe contains an incomplete seam weld, which held for 54 years before rupturing in September 2010, leading to the pipe's explosion. The pipe sections' manufacturer remains a mystery, but PG&E says its crews installed the pipe.

1961: California starts regulating gas pipelines, including their design, construction, safety and operation. The rule requires operators to maintain accurate records for the life of a pipeline.

Jan. 2, 1963: Line 109, similar to Line 132, explodes in San Francisco's Bernal Heights neighborhood, injuring nine firefighters and causing the heart-attack death of a battalion chief. PG&E loses records for the line, including a key document explaining what caused the explosion, but insists the line failed at a girth weld.

March 4, 1965: A pipeline explosion kills 17 people in Natchitoches, La., prompting the federal government to consider oversight of gas pipelines.

1968: Congress passes a law imposing federal regulation on gas pipelines, but includes a loophole that would contribute to the San Bruno disaster 42 years later. A grandfathering provision allows PG&E and other pipeline operators to skip pressure tests that would have discovered the defective weld that ruptured in September.

1970: The new federal Office of Pipeline Safety issues the first federal pipeline safety regulations enforcing the 1968 law. Key is a requirement that pipelines built after March 1971 have superior welds. With some exceptions, older pipelines like the one in San Bruno don't have to be upgraded or retrofitted.

Aug. 25, 1981: A 16-inch natural gas main ruptures at Sacramento and Battery streets in San Francisco, forcing 30,000 people to flee as the line spews gas laced with toxic PCBs. It takes nine hours for workers struggling with manually operated valves to shut off the gas.

1988: PG&E crews replace 12 feet of Line 132 after a routine inspection uncovers a leaking seam weld 9 miles south of where the pipe eventually exploded. PG&E had to review records for the line after passage of a 2002 law and should have inspected for other bad seam welds, based on this incident, but never did so.

1993: PG&E begins converting paper records to a computerized system. The effort is marked by disorganization that results in the loss of much information, including the fact that Line 132 was built with longitudinal seams that were held together with welds. A manager warns in a 1993 memo that failure to keep and track records "may be costly to PG&E in the future."

2000: PG&E sharply curtails a program that in the previous 15 years had replaced hundreds of miles of aged gas-transmission pipe, including portions of Line 132 near the eventual blast site.

2002: The federal government passes a law requiring operators to periodically inspect all their pipelines in populated areas. Regulators allow an inspection method that PG&E uses widely that is well-suited to find corrosion on pipes, but does not detect problem welds. The law also sets urban pipeline pressure maximums at the highest point at which a line has operated over a five-year period, and requires weld inspections if that maximum is exceeded.

2003: PG&E increases pressure on Line 132 to 403 pounds per square inch for two hours. The following year, it classifies the line as urban and therefore subject to inspections - setting the spiked pressure level as the legal maximum. Some experts express concern that the spike may have exacerbated problems such as Line 132's incomplete seam weld in San Bruno.

March 2008: PG&E adopts a policy that allows it to exceed maximum federal pipeline pressure levels by 10 percent.

December 2008: PG&E spikes Line 132 to just above the legal maximum.

Dec. 24, 2008: A leaking gas distribution line causes an explosion in the Sacramento suburb of Rancho Cordova, killing one person. State investigators later find that PG&E installed substandard pipe and sent an untrained worker to find the leak that led to the blast.

December 2009: PG&E inspects Line 132 with a method best-suited for finding corrosion, not bad welds, and declares the line problem-free.

May 2010: The state PUC again audits PG&E safety practices and finds that the company is improperly favoring the anticorrosion inspection method over a more expensive test, using high-pressure water, that can find bad welds. PG&E receives the audit a month after the San Bruno explosion.

Sept. 9, 2010: A power outage at Line 132's southern terminus in Milpitas causes a pressure surge. At 6:11 p.m., the line ruptures at Earl Avenue and Glenview Drive in San Bruno, sparking a fireball that kills eight people and destroys 38 homes. Gas continues to feed the flames for 90 minutes as PG&E sends an untrained worker to shut off manual valves.

January 2011: At the urging of the federal government, the state PUC orders PG&E and other pipeline operators to produce records vouching for the safety of their urban gas transmission lines. Three months later, PG&E admits that complete documentation is missing for about a quarter of its 1,800-plus pipeline miles. The company is still looking for records, including much of the documentation for Line 132.

March 2011: PG&E announces plans to conduct water-pressure tests capable of finding bad welds on 152 miles of gas transmission lines by the end of 2011. The company later admits it has fallen behind on the tests. The utility says it will increase the number of automatic shutoff valves on its pipelines. The valves can stop the flow of gas in less than 15 minutes.

June 2011: A panel of experts convened by the state PUC rips the agency's regulation of PG&E as excessively hands-off, and criticizes the company for developing an insular culture that minimized safety.

Sacramento Bee: City Council approves legalization of chickens in yards

Council OKs up to three hens in city back yards

Published: Wednesday, Aug. 31, 2011 - 12:00 am | Page 1B

Chickens are no longer backyard outlaws in Sacramento.

With a unanimous vote Tuesday night, the City Council passed an ordinance that will allow city residents to keep up to three egg-laying hens in their back yards starting Nov. 1.

The new law was lauded by advocates of the slow-food movement and environmentalists.

"Allowing people who have a home and a yard in our city to not only grow fresh produce for themselves but also to have chickens goes a long way toward addressing food security," said Councilman Rob Fong.
Households that want to keep chickens will be required to pay $15, plus an annual fee of $10 per chicken.

No roosters will be allowed.

And for those concerned that the new law will lead to chickens roaming city streets, the law requires that hens be kept in pens, coops or cages at all times. Those holding areas must be at least 20 feet from a neighbor's home.

Chickens will be tagged for identification.

Despite the overwhelming support of city officials, not everyone is sold on the keeping of hens.
Land Park resident Ken Caldwell wrote in an email to the council that he was concerned by the noise, smell and regulation of chickens. He also said backyard chickens could become health hazards.

"It is a bad idea to allow barnyard animals in an urban environment," he wrote.

Dr. Glennah Trochet, the county's public health officer, said she has spoken with state health officials and poultry experts at UC Davis and neither recommended striking down a backyard chicken ordinance because of concerns over disease, including the bird flu.

While some residents still have their reservations, one person who has changed his mind and supports backyard chickens is Mayor Kevin Johnson. And all it took was a chat with one of Northern California's best-known chefs.

Johnson spoke Monday with Alice Waters, founder of Berkeley's Chez Panisse restaurant. Waters is a chief member of the slow-food movement, which advocates for locally-grown products and healthy, organic food.
Waters told Johnson there should be "a strong commitment to healthy food and understanding that a community can raise its own food and eat its own food that's healthy and affordable, and her point is that Sacramento should be leader (in that movement)."

As for whether Johnson will keep backyard chickens of his own at his new digs in east Sacramento?
"Let me be really clear," he told reporters, "my house will not have any hens in the backyard."

The number of chickens already residing in Sacramento backyards is unknown, but city officials hear from as many as 500 residents a year complaining about chicken noise, chicken smells and other chicken-related effects. Those calls are expected to continue, even with the new law.

However, for east Sacramento's Irmagaard, Magdalena and Elvira and what could be hundreds more chickens across the city, the ordinance provides amnesty.

Sarah Weaver, who keeps the three chickens in a pen in her backyard, couldn't be happier.

"They're cheap, easy and fun," she said. "And our neighbors love them. We give them all eggs."
Weaver considers herself a responsible chicken owner, having traded in a rather noisy bird for the much quieter Elvira recently. Elvira, who Weaver said lays "chocolate brown eggs," had ended up in an Oak Park backyard from points unknown and is now a rescue chicken.

Said fellow backyard chicken supporter Randy Stannard, "This isn't really just a fad anymore. This is something we have an opportunity to lead on."

Tuesday, August 30, 2011

Sacramento Bee: Redistricting, term-limits opens opportunities for groups

Interest groups see opportunity in California Legislature's turnover

Published: Tuesday, Aug. 30, 2011 - 12:00 am | Page 1A

California's Legislature is on the brink of unprecedented turnover next year, prompting interest groups to intensify their efforts to raise money and recruit candidates.

Seat-shuffling caused by term limits and the decennial redistricting process could mean upward of 40 percent of the Legislature's 120 seats will be filled by freshmen come next December, some observers and analysts project.

At least a dozen incumbents, including some elected for the first time just last year, are eyeing bids for Congress or other legislative offices.

"This will be probably the biggest turnover in modern memory," said Robert Stern, president of the nonpartisan Center for Governmental Studies.

Roughly one-third of Assembly members must vacate their seats every two years due to term limits. But the new political boundaries, drawn for the first time by the independent Citizens Redistricting Commission, produced more competitive districts in some cases and a handful of open seats.

"There's a ton of opportunity out there," said Douglas Herman, a Democratic consultant who serves as political adviser to Assembly Speaker John A. Pérez. "When these redistricting years come around … those are when you see the big changes in terms of the composition and the makeup of the bodies of the Assembly and Senate."

New faces mean new opportunities for interest groups seeking allies to fight for their causes under the dome. Some groups already are mobilizing to make sure that, come 2012, at least some of those empty seats are occupied by legislators who share their views.

The efforts include candidate recruitment and training as well as fundraising to support a new crop of prospective legislators on the ballot.

"These advocacy groups are in essence filling the void of the political parties in California," said Republican consultant Kevin Spillane, a former Assembly Republican Caucus political strategist. "These groups are doing it earlier and more systemically then they ever have before. And they're doing it more aggressively than the parties are."

A new political fundraising committee, Californians for Fiscal Accountability and Responsibility, has reported raising $600,000 to spend on the next election. Contributors include several labor unions and statewide associations representing doctors, dentists and Realtors.

Paul Hegyi, a vice president for the California Medical Association, has cast the committee as part of a larger movement to "look for new leaders, new candidates to try to shake up the Legislature" in light of the new maps and the state's new top-two primary system.

The fundraising efforts are in part a response to the anticipated increased cost of competing under the new districts and a primary system in which the top two vote-getters regardless of party advance to the general election. The changes are expected to make more seats competitive in the primary and general elections.

California Chamber of Commerce President and CEO Allan Zaremberg said his organization has launched a fundraising campaign to explain to members, businesses and local chambers that "fairer representation and more competitive races requires more resources to compete."

Securing funding for the campaigns is only half the battle for groups gearing up for 2012. They also need to find candidates they feel are worth the investment.

"Especially with term limits, you just constantly have to be looking for good people," said Zaremberg, noting that the chamber works with local business groups to identify new individuals to back.

The role of interest groups – and their money – in shaping the freshman class is problematic in the eyes of some government watchdogs.

One concern, said California Common Cause Policy Advocate Phillip Ung, is that new legislators who lack experience start their jobs "beholden to the special interests that funded their way though" the campaign.

Some groups start the process of grooming potential legislators far before the filing deadlines to run for office.
EdVoice, an education advocacy organization, hosted 16 prospective candidates at Lake Tahoe this summer as part of an ongoing campaign training effort.

"Our objective has been to take champions for kids and teach them 'Politics 101,' what it takes to run for office," political director Gary Davis said of the program, which he said has attracted participants from both sides of the aisle.

Davis said EdVoice sees the upcoming election as an "opportunity to shake things up" by supporting candidates who will put education issues ahead of caucus politics.

Voter-approved caps on service – six years in the Assembly and eight in the Senate – give interest groups less time to develop relationships with lawmakers once they are in office. Now they start before they get to Sacramento.

For Lea Ann Tratten, political director for the Consumer Attorneys of California, that means working with attorneys and political organizations – including labor unions and environmental groups – to identify and support candidates early in the process. The unknowns of the new district lines and primary system have made that help even more valuable, she said.

"I do think it's more important than ever to build relationships with all the candidates," Tratten said, "while they're navigating their way through these campaigns."

Riverside Press Enterprise: State legislative office budgets still not clear

State lawmaker spending costs still unclear

10:00 PM PDT on Monday, August 29, 2011

BY JIM MILLER
SACRAMENTO BUREAU

SACRAMENTO - Does Assemblyman Kevin Jeffries' office payroll rank among the highest in the Assembly, as shown in the Assembly expenditure data for the first seven months of 2011?

Or is the Lake Elsinore Republican's payroll actually among the lowest, based on employee salary data available on the Assembly website?

Inland Southern California lawmakers largely have been on the sidelines during a weeks-long squabble over legislative office expenditures that has led to scrutiny of how lawmakers' offices spend their money.

Jeffries said his office has nothing to hide. He and other GOP lawmakers, meanwhile, scoff at the idea that any Republican office spends more than that of someone in the Democratic majority.

"The expenditure of public dollars should be fully disclosable and obtainable by anybody at any time," Jeffries said. "Why it's been kept in this cloud of secrecy ... is beyond me."

That cloud largely remains in place following Assembly and Senate leaders' release late Friday afternoon of updated expenditure data.

The data, in the same format as what's released every fall for the previous legislative year, leave unclear the extent to which lawmakers benefit from party caucus and committee spending.

In the new Senate data, for example, Senate Minority Leader Bob Dutton is listed as having 2010 office expenditures of $1.2 million -- almost a half-million dollars more than the $709,344 attributed to Senate President Pro Tem Darrell Steinberg, D-Sacramento, who controls the upper house.

Dutton spokesman Larry Venus said the Rancho Cucamonga Republican accepted the figures for his office. Venus, however, called it impossible that "the Senate minority leader has expenditures twice as high as the Senate pro tem."

The office expenditure controversy began when Assembly Speaker John Perez cut the budget of Assemblyman Anthony Portantino, D-La Canada Flintridge, alleging Portantino was spending too much money.

Portantino claimed he actually was being punished because he voted against the June budget package. Monday, Portantino criticized the Assembly data as misleading.

"The figures released by Assembly leaders make it impossible to determine what lawmaker's real budgets are and what lawmakers are spending," he said in a statement.

As the standoff continued, some lawmakers -- all Republicans -- began releasing their own office budgets, including Assemblyman Mike Morrell, R-Rancho Cucamonga.

Records posted on Morrell's Assembly website show he has averaged less than $18,000 in monthly spending so far this year. He is on pace to have about $53,000 left over from his $263,000 base budget allocation.

Other Inland lawmakers have refused to release more detailed data.

"I'm not really sure what the information would be used for. Until I find that out, I won't be making a decision about releasing a budget," said Assemblywoman Wilmer Amina Carter, D-Rialto. Her office ranked 13th in total spending in the data released Friday.

SJ Mercury News: Delta test levee tested with earthquake simulator

Earthquake simulator gives model levee a big shake

By Mike Taugher
Contra Costa Times

Posted: 08/29/2011 04:13:21 PM PDT

SHERMAN ISLAND -- A model levee wobbled and tossed as if it were on a giant waterbed but held up nearly intact during a series of simulated earthquakes Monday.

The tests were meant to investigate a deep concern among water suppliers around the state -- that an earthquake in or near the East Bay could cause massive flooding in the Delta and foul water supplies.

But a series of simulations on a 6-foot-high levee appeared to show that the soupy foundations that stirred such concern are surprisingly resilient. The experiment was believed to be the first time field tests have been done to determine how levees on peat soil fare during earthquakes.

"The news is good, although I certainly wouldn't give an all-clear," said Jonathan Stewart, a professor of civil and environmental engineering at UCLA. "It could have been that this thing could have plunged into the ground. That wouldn't have been a shocker to anybody out here."

In test after test, the model levee, built to perform like many of the 1,100 miles of levees that separate Delta channels and islands, held up.

A 3-ton ground-shaker shook the levee as hard as if it had been on San Francisco Bay during the 1989 Loma Prieta earthquake. Then it shook with the force of a magnitude 7.0 rupture directly atop the Hayward Fault.

Each time, the result was the same -- visible waves rolled along the ground, work trucks bounced on their springs and squeaked and the levee tossed about and eventually settled back into place.

It only sank about a quarter-inch on its foundation.

The peat foundations of Delta levees have received attention in recent years because of the possibility that earthquakes could turn them to mush and cause wholesale levee failures and floods.

If that were to happen during a dry season, it could draw brackish water into massive water intakes near Tracy that serve much of the Bay Area and the rest of the state, potentially for a long time.

The biggest worry is in the western Delta, which is closest to Bay Area earthquake faults and has the deepest peat. A levee failure there could draw more salty water toward pumps than other parts of the Delta.

That threat is a big reason why many water agencies support a $13 billion plan to build tunnels to deliver Sacramento River water beneath the Delta.

Monday's results may cast doubt on the conclusion that the levees are highly vulnerable to earthquakes, but researchers cautioned more work is needed.

The ground in the western Delta is like a 3-foot-thick mat of felt floating atop about 30 feet of black goo, said Bob Nigbor, manager of UCLA's Network for Earthquake Engineering Simulation.

"We were half expecting this thing to settle down noticeably," Nigbor said. "Our results could very well show that peat is stronger than we thought. The fact that it can move this much and not tear is pretty amazing."
Levee engineers in the Delta have long argued the earthquake threat in the Delta might be manageable without resorting to tunnels.

There is about $500 million in voter-approved bond funds available for levee repair and upgrading in the Delta, said Gilbert Cosio of MBK Engineering, which helps maintain and repair about one-third of the Delta's levees for landowners.

"By 2016, when the bond money is gone, these levees are going to look a lot different," Cosio said.
Monday's test was the highlight of a four-year, $375,000 study funded by the National Science Foundation.
The study is meant only to provide information about how the peat foundation would perform in an earthquake.

Unlike the Delta's key levees, the model levee was dry because it did not have water pushing against one side of it and the water table beneath it was low.

And researchers said the levee could still sink somewhat in the coming days.

Stewart, whose father Farrel "Bud" Stewart was city manager of Concord from 1960 to 1986, said he pursued the study because he thought there was insufficient information about the nature of the earthquake threat in the Delta.

"I felt this was one of the more important problems in the state," he said. "I wasn't satisfied. We really don't know anything about this peat."

Sacramento Bee: State initiative to repeal death penalty advances

Group announces bid to eliminate death penalty in California

Published: Tuesday, Aug. 30, 2011 - 12:00 am | Page 3A

After a losing a round in the Legislature last week, advocates of abolishing the death penalty in California announced a new effort Monday to take the matter directly to voters next year.

Organizers say they will push for a ballot measure to focus the public's attention on the high cost of keeping inmates on death row – $4 billion since 1978, according to one estimate – and offer guarantees that condemned prisoners could never win release from prison.

"It is time to replace California's dysfunctional and horribly costly death penalty," former Los Angeles County District Attorney Gil Garcetti said at a Sacramento news conference. "The death penalty in California is broken and it is unfixable."

Garcetti was joined by former San Quentin Warden Jeanne Woodford, who presided over four executions; Sacramento attorney Don Heller, who wrote the 1978 initiative that restored the death penalty in the state; and crime victims who said the money spent on death row should be used to fight crime.

Under the plan offered by the group, which calls itself Savings Accountability and Full Enforcement, or SAFE, condemned inmates would be given life without the possibility of parole and would be required to work in prison.

Contending that $184 million is spent annually in California on the death penalty, the group said the initiative would take savings from abolishing it and instead spend $30 million a year in the first three years on unsolved murder and rape cases.

The notion that the campaign will focus on saving money by abolishing executions left one death penalty advocate bemused.

Kent Scheidegger, legal director for the Criminal Justice Legal Foundation in Sacramento, said the people pushing for abolition are the ones who have contributed to the high cost of the death penalty.

"The death penalty doesn't need to cost anywhere as much as it does," he said. "The only reason it does is that the very same people who are complaining about costs have succeeded in killing every reform we have."
Scheidegger contends reforming the appeals process could cut years off the average time it takes from sentencing to execution, eventually cutting that time down to five years.

Currently, death row houses more than 700 inmates, some of whom have been there for decades.
Since the death penalty was reinstated in 1978, 13 inmates have been put to death at San Quentin, two by cyanide gas and 11 by lethal injection.

The last inmate to be executed was Clarence Ray Allen in January 2006. Legal fights and a shortage of one of the injection drugs used in the process have derailed other planned executions.

Advocates of repealing the death penalty say they will need up to $1.5 million to gather the more than 500,000 valid signatures needed to get the measure on the ballot.

San Jose Mercury News: Showdown on strict California oil spill legislation

Oil spill showdown looms in California legislature

By Paul Rogers

The San Jose Mercury News

Posted: 08/29/2011 03:58:49 PM PDT

With California's pristine coastline providing a dramatic stage, a showdown is heating up over the state's efforts to prevent and clean up catastrophic oil spills -- the toughest standards in the country.

The state agency tasked with protecting ocean waters and beaches from an oil spill like the Exxon Valdez disaster is running short of money, and a battle is raging over a new bill to force oil companies to pay less than two cents a barrel more to keep the safety programs from running aground.

"We are already doing less today than we were before the Gulf oil spill last year to inspect, monitor and prevent oil spills in California," said Assemblyman Jared Huffman, D-San Rafael. "Do you feel lucky? Do you want to cross your fingers and hope that something doesn't go wrong? Or should we maintain a vigilant system of monitoring and inspection?"

In 1990, the year after the Exxon Valdez oil spill, California lawmakers passed sweeping new rules on oil tanker safety.

The strict rules -- which required more emergency drills, insurance coverage and cleanup gear -- have largely worked, with the amount of oil spilled in California waters falling about 95 percent since then.

Increasing the fee

Huffman introduced a bill this spring to increase the fee that oil companies pay to fund California's oil safety programs from the current 5 cents per barrel they import to 6.75 cents a barrel. The fee, which the state originally set at 4 cents per barrel in 1990, was increased once before, in 2002, to the current level.

The money provides about $25 million a year to a division of the state Department of Fish and Game called the Office of Spill Prevention and Response, making up the bulk of its operating budget.

In the past 20 years, its staff members have conducted oil spill drills with tankers in San Francisco Bay, Los Angeles and other harbors; required oil companies to draft extensive emergency plans; set up a network of oiled wildlife care facilities; helped clean spills; and required tankers to have $1 billion each in insurance.

But now money is running short and layoffs among the 205 employees are a possibility, said Capt. Scott Schaefer, acting director of the agency. Without any changes, the fund that pays for most of the agency's operations will have only $1.7 million by next June 30 and will be $5.2 million overdrawn by June 30, 2013.
The reason? Inflation, and new costs imposed by state lawmakers.

"The expanded programs have put additional strain on the fund," Schaefer said. "If we have to make program cuts, we are reducing the level of safety we can provide."

After the cargo ship Cosco Busan hit the Bay Bridge in 2007, dumping 53,000 gallons of bunker fuel into San Francisco Bay, then-Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger signed several new spill laws.

One required the state to provide containment booms and other gear to waterfront cities that request it. Another required the state to conduct scientific tests within 24 hours to determine whether fish in affected areas are safe to eat. And the state has stepped up oversight of marine oil terminals after the BP spill in the Gulf of Mexico last year.

But the oil industry, led by lobbyists for BP -- the company whose offshore rig exploded off the Louisiana coast, spilling more than 200 million gallons of crude oil into the gulf -- is trying to kill the bill.

"The fact that the fee has not gone up in a certain amount of time is not the question," said Tupper Hull, a spokesman for the Western States Petroleum Association. "The question is whether the oil industry and consumers are paying adequate funding to operate an exceptionally good program. In our view the answer is yes. There is sufficient money to prevent and respond to oil spills in California."

'Playing Scrooge'

Hull said the agency is spending its money on activities other than oil spill safety. He cited a 2008 report by the state auditor that found 23 warden positions in the agency had at times done other Fish and Game work, including fisheries management, but were paid almost entirely from the oil fund.

Trying to head off opposition on that issue, Huffman, who saw Schwarzenegger veto a similar bill he wrote last year, has asked the Joint Legislative Audit Committee to audit the program again.

Environmental groups are pushing hard for Huffman's bill, AB 1112, which passed the Assembly in June on a Democratic Party-line vote and faces a vote as soon as this week in the state Senate.

"The oil industry is playing Ebenezer Scrooge with oil spill cleanup costs," said Warner Chabot, CEO of the California League of Conservation Voters. "In the last 20 years, California has increased the oil spill cleanup fee by one penny per barrel. Adding an additional penny or so will not break the industry's billion-dollar profits, and it will prevent the state cleanup agency from having to gut its own programs."

A close vote

The final vote is expected to be close. A key swing vote is state Sen. Sam Blakeslee, R-San Luis Obispo. Blakeslee, a former Exxon employee, represents a district that stretches up the coast from Santa Barbara County to San Jose. With redistricting, he will be in a tight re-election race next year in a largely Democratic, pro-environment area. But Republicans have opposed raising state fees.

When the bill passed the Senate Environmental Quality committee in July, Blakeslee didn't vote. He did not respond to requests for an interview, but his office on Monday released a statement: "I am open to a compromise that increases the fee temporarily to cover legitimate costs, but I am concerned that the current version of the bill generates millions in extra revenue and could become yet another government slush fund. I am willing to work with the author on an amended version of the bill."

OC Reg Total Buzz Blog: State Senate kills Speaker's disincorporation bill

Senate pulls plug on Perez priority

By Brian Joseph, Timothy Sandoval and Ramon Solis
The Orange County Register

August 29th, 2011, 4:52 pm

One day into the final two weeks of the legislative session, lawmakers and their staffs are bracing for gridlock in Sacramento as the State Senate rejected the Assembly speaker’s top legislative priority Monday.

Legislators and Capitol staffers are concerned that Assembly Speaker John A. Perez will take some sort of punitive action against them in response to the defeat of his Assembly Bill 46, which sought to disincorporate the Los Angeles County city of Vernon. A tiny city, but plagued by corruption, Vernon is home to fewer than 100 residents but roughly 1,800 businesses. The speaker made it his top priority this year to dissolve the city.
The Senate, however, had other ideas. Amid concerns that disincorporating the city would affect businesses and jobs, senators of both parties spoke loudly against Perez’s bill, saying it was a drastic step that would needlessly hurt the economy. The bill died on a 13-17 vote, with a whopping 10 senators abstaining.

The concern now is what Perez may do in response to this public defeat. Perez has developed a reputation for confrontation and retribution. For weeks now, he’s been engaged in a war of words with Assemblyman Anthony Portantino, who has challenged the speaker over cuts to his office budget and the secrecy surrounding them.

Members of the Senate and their staff suspect their bills currently under consideration in the Assembly may not be passed.

Shortly after the vote, Perez released this statement:

“Today’s action by the Senate is a deep disappointment to the men and women of the Southeast Communities. I introduced AB 46 to finally end the toxic corruption that has poisoned the Southeast Communities by disincorporating Vernon. The Senate chose to ignore decades of corruption in Vernon, and AB 46, like multiple bills that came in response to the Bell scandals last year, could not gather a majority of senators. The fact is clear: Senators [Ron] Calderon and [Kevin] De León, along with their colleagues, have given Vernon a free pass to continue doing business as usual, and those senators will own the responsibility for any misdeeds that may occur in the future. I am proud of the fact that I stood with the men and women of the Southeast communities in this effort.”

This vote is sure to color the final days of the legislative session, which is arguably the most important time in Sacramento, when the fate of literally hundreds of bills stand in the balance. Stay tuned to Total Buzz for developments. The Legislature ends its work year on Sept. 9.

LA Times: Wal-Mart online sellers skirt state sales tax

Wal-Mart online sellers skirt taxes

The world's largest retailer has attacked Amazon for refusing to collect state sales taxes for Internet purchases but says it's not obligated to force companies that sell products through WalMart.com to collect California sales tax.

Walmart's online shopping site, based in Brisbane near San Francisco International Airport, offers hundreds of products from a third-party retailer, CSN Stores in Boston, that are sold without collecting taxes when California residents buy them. (Photo by Seth Perlman, AP / August 30, 2011)

By Marc Lifsher, Los Angeles Times

August 29, 2011, 10:06 p.m.

Reporting from Sacramento—

The world's largest retailer, Wal-Mart Stores Inc., has been leading the attack against Internet giant Amazon.com Inc. for refusing to collect sales taxes on online purchases. But Wal-Mart doesn't always collect sales tax on items sold on its site, either.

The Walmart.com site, based in Brisbane near San Francisco International Airport, offers hundreds of products from a third-party retailer, CSN Stores in Boston, that are sold without collecting taxes when state residents buy them.

Wal-Mart insists that it's not its responsibility to require companies that sell products through its site's Marketplace Retailers program to collect California sales tax, even though the billing and the credit card transactions take place on Walmart.com.

But state Board of Equalization board member Betty Yee said she believes that Wal-Mart does have an obligation under the California law that took effect July 1 to collect the taxes.

"As a leader in trying to enforce the new [law], they also should be leading the charge in terms of being very clear about the application of the tax on all transactions with California consumers," Yee said.

Yee has asked board staff to determine whether Wal-Mart should be collecting the tax. Wal-Mart spokesman Daniel Morales said that if a vendor doesn't ask the company to collect the tax, it doesn't do so.

"Marketplace Retailers are responsible for requesting us to collect and remit the sales tax," he said in an emailed statement. "We collect for them upon their request and they are responsible for remitting it to the states."

Morales referred all questions about sales tax collection to CSN, a privately held company, which says on its website that it has annual sales of more than $380 million. CSN did not respond to requests for comment.

On its site, CSN states that "one of the best things about buying through CSN Stores is that we do not have to charge sales tax" except for sales shipped to Massachusetts and Utah.

CSN has not obtained a permit to collect California sales taxes, state officials said.

According to a 1992 U.S. Supreme Court ruling, a brick-and-mortar presence, known as a "nexus," is the only basis for a legal requirement to collect sales taxes. Amazon and other Internet sellers cite the lack of such facilities as a legal reason for not collecting hundreds of millions of dollars in California sales taxes each year.

The new California law, being challenged in a referendum campaign by Amazon, broadens the nexus definition so that Amazon and others would be required to collect taxes on sales in the Golden State.

Nexus also is created, under the law, if a firm has a related business operation in the state. For example, Amazon runs an affiliated lab in the Silicon Valley that develops its Kindle e-reader.

Wal-Mart's obligation to collect sales tax for CSN sales appears to be at least as strong as Amazon's obligation, said Richard D. Pomp, an expert in state taxes at the University of Connecticut law school.

"What you've got is a company with nexus, physical presence in California, acting as an agent for an out-of-state seller," Pomp said. "That certainly seems to create nexus in my mind."

Legal theories aside, Pomp said he was surprised that Wal-Mart would try to avoid the same California law it's been campaigning to pass and enforce against its Internet rivals.

Wal-Mart should avoid getting into a dispute with California "at the same time it is at war with Amazon," he said.

Monday, August 29, 2011

About The Honorable Jere Mello, Ft. Bragg City Councilmember

Photo Courtesy of Evan Johnson

My heart is broken this morning as I reflect on my friend, Ft. Bragg City Councilmember Jere Mello.

Saturday morning, Ft. Bragg City Councilmember and former Mayor Jere Mello was senslessly murded on private property as he ran into heavily armed man guarding an illegal marijuana field.

A student of mine at Sac State this semester asked me who my political heroes were. I told him I didn't really know - his question threw me for a loop. I almost blurted out RFK, MLK or someone like that. I never knew them and while they were big picture leaders it felt disingenuous to say that.

I think my political heroes include Jere Mello- because he was such a man of integrity, belief, incredible energy and a commitment to his family and city. He never preached and he led by example. That is a person who deserves to be a political hero.

Thank you for your leadership and friendship Jere. Rest in peace my friend.

Santa Rosa Press Democrat: Ft. Bragg Councilmember Mello Murdered

Fort Bragg official slain

Mendocino County law enforcement agents arrive at the Skunk Train depot in Fort Bragg on Sunday afternoon after spending the day hunting for the suspect in the fatal shooting of City Councilman and former Mayor Jere Melo in a remote wooded area about four miles east of the city. Photo by BETH SCHLANKER / Santa Rosa Press Democrat

By JULIE JOHNSON & GLENDA ANDERSON

Santa Rosa Press Democrat Published: Sunday, August 28, 2011 at 12:28 p.m.

The news reverberated rapidly through Fort Bragg on Sunday: Community leader and timber man Jere Melo had been shot to death in the forestland where he had worked most of his life, an apparent victim of the illicit backwoods drug trade.

A man identified only as Aaron Bassler of Fort Bragg is being sought as a suspect in the case.

Melo, a former two-term mayor who was serving his 15th year on the City Council, devoted much of his life to helping Fort Bragg, raising funds and political will to build firehouses and a first-class high school football stadium, city officials said Sunday.

“He was always the first one there, and the last one to go,” said Fort Bragg Mayor Dave Turner. “No one put in as much as Jere did, and I don't think they ever will,” Turner said.

Melo, who spent five decades in the timber business, most recently was working as a forest land manager. Early Saturday, he was patrolling forestland about four miles east of Fort Bragg along the Noyo River when he was shot to death, Mendocino County sheriff's officials said.

Melo was looking for a suspected marijuana operations, but law enforcement agents who searched the area found what appeared to be opium poppies and not marijuana, according to sources close to the investigation.

Mendocino County Sheriff Tom Allman identified Bassler as the suspect, but declined to discuss any details of the investigation.

Bassler was “last seen with a firearm. He should be considered armed and dangerous,” sheriff's officials said.

The killing is certain to inflame debate about the dangers of the illegal drug trade that has become an economic force along the North Coast.

Mike Delbar, a former member of the Mendocino County Board of Supervisors and a friend of Melo's, expressed a common view along the North Coast that the forests are being overrun by people exploiting the area's rugged and rural terrain to make money in the drug trade.

“When law-abiding, taxpaying citizens can't use their own property without real fear, and now consequences, of this runaway illegal drug problem, then we as a society will never succeed with healthy and secure communities,” he said in a Facebook post.

Melo worked for Campbell Timber Management company, overseeing and guarding land that was formerly owned by Georgia-Pacific, his longtime former employer until it left Mendocino County in 2002.

Melo was patrolling rugged forestland, accessible only by dirt roads, with another man, officials said. The two apparently were looking for a marijuana operation when they encountered a gunman.

Sources close to the investigation said that Bassler had been squatting on the land.

At about 10 a.m., passengers aboard the historic Skunk Train heading from Fort Bragg to Willits heard seven or eight shots.

Melo's companion, who has not been identified, ran out of the woods toward the tracks and flagged down a smaller train car that follows the main train, said Marnie Elder, a photographer for Skunk Train who was aboard the train Saturday.

Authorities described Melo's companion as an “independent witness” and said he alerted authorities of the shooting by cellphone.

Law enforcement officers, including members of a SWAT team, searched the area assisted by helicopter crews. Passengers aboard the tourist train were on lockdown in the area of the shooting for about eight hours. They were taken by bus to Fort Bragg, arriving at 7 p.m., Elder said.

At the Sears store in downtown Fort Bragg on Sunday, Dodie Christian was preparing to mail a card to Melo's wife, Madeleine.

“My heart just goes out to his family,” Christian said.

He was “the definition of civic-minded,” said Richard Shoemaker, executive director of the Ukiah Valley Cultural and Recreation Center. Shoemaker worked on several campaigns with Melo, including a successful 2009 effort to keep development decisions in the hands of local officials.

“There was probably nobody more involved in community improvements in a serious way than Jere Melo on the coast,” Shoemaker said.

A pall of despair hung over the city as people learned about the loss of the beloved and prominent member of the community. “People are shocked,” said Fort Bragg City Manager Linda Ruffing.

City officials met Sunday to discuss how to handle what they expected would be overwhelming grief among city staff. “Jere was just loved and respected by so many people,” Ruffing said.

Fort Bragg, a town of just over 7,000 people, is nestled on the bluffs above the mouth of the Noyo River, 34 miles west of Highway 101 at Willits.

“It's a horrible thing,” said Anne Turner, a friend of the Melo family and wife of the mayor.

Melo lived with his family in a ranch-style home in a modest neighborhood of the city. His family Sunday declined to comment.

A large stack of firewood in the driveway was testament to Melo's continued work in the forest, a place where he felt so comfortable that he often would not carry a gun while working, according to people who knew him.

Melo was a wonderful person, said neighbor Karen La Marr. “Everyone in this whole town knew who he was,” she said.

A dozen exhausted law enforcement agents returned to Fort Bragg at about 5:30 p.m. Sunday after a day of searching the rugged terrain for Bassler. Earlier, Melo's body was flown out of the forest and taken by vehicle to Ukiah for an autopsy.