Vanguard Report: Genesis of DJUSD's Fiscal Problems

The Vanguard has recently received a public memo from former Davis Joint Unified Superintendent David Murphy to the Board of Education dated September 20, 2006. The memo was a response to questions, requests, and comments pertaining to a proposed teacher salary hike of 6.5% and a concurrent proposed administrative salary hike.

In this memo are factually incorrect statements that ultimately led the school board to approve a 6.5% teacher pay hike based on claims in it that the district had the funding available over a three-year period to pay for this pay increase. At the time this was a factually incorrect assessment. According to sources however, it is likely that neither the Superintendent nor the interim CBO were aware of this fact.

At the outset, it is important to realize that this assessment should not be construed as an attack on teachers, the Davis Teachers' Association, or their worthiness to receive a pay increase. On the contrary, the Vanguard believes that in general, teachers are well underpaid for the services they render to a community and to society as a whole. Rather, this points to specific problems in DJUSD at the time, that led to the need for changes to be made both in terms of fiscal accounting practices and personnel.

Finally, it should be pointed out that the problems that led to this incorrect assessment have been taken care of. The District's commissioning of FCMAT as discussed in our investigative series on the district's former Chief Budget Officer revealed key flaws in the district accounting practices--flaws that have now been corrected by current CBO Bruce Colby and new Superintendent James Hammond. In other words, these problems will not repeat themselves in the future, however, they do have a lasting impact the district's current budget situation.

According to Bruce Colby, this pay increase cost the district roughly $2 million in salary increases. Looking at that within the context of the original and now current budget shortfalls, one quickly realizes the magnitude of such a situation.

The Memo

Beginning on page 2 of the memo the former Superintendent writes:

"Our budget experts, Cathi Vogel [Ms. Vogel was the interim CBO who was hired to temporarily fill Mr. Tahir Ahad's position and occupied the position until the hire of Bruce Colby in 2007] and Maureen Fitzerald, both of whom are fiscally conservative in a responsible way, have said that the three-year projections of ongoing expenditures have ongoing revenues. Maureen has assured me of this. Thus, the funds are there to support whatever the board wants to do--to fund the 6.5% for all employees or to use some or all of those funds for other purposes. Thus, a fiscally conservative superintendent would say that the funds are there for board decision-making, according to board priorities about what is in the best interests of the district, all things considered."

He continues:

"Given that the funding is available, given the other considerations of funds for the district programs, and given the effect on ALT members of board choices, I do think and would recommend that the board fund the 6.5% improvement to the ALT salary schedules as the next priority item to fund. In fact, I do think that would be in the best interests of the district and board priorities, all things considered."

A board member then asked:

"Since I have been on the board, the unappropriated amount of the ending fund balance has always been considered "one time money." How can we justify this change?"

The Superintendent responds in his memo:

"The fiscal solvency of the district's budget is detailed in the three year projected budgets, based on a 6.5% increase to all employee salary schedules [this included administrative pay raises at 6.5% in addition to teacher pay raises]... Maureen assures us that the ongoing expenditures of 6.5% increases to employee compensation packages have ongoing revenues to support those expenditures."

Inaccurate Information Provided to the Board

The board was told that they would have to use one-time reserves the first year of this pay increase in order to cover the expenditures. After that, monies would become available on an on-going basis to pay for the salary increase. The board was told that this increase would thus only require a one-time use of one-time money. As it turned out, this was not accurate either.

The three-year ongoing fund projection was wrong. There were at least two glaring errors in it.

First, the budget was missing some positions that were being paid $400,000. FCMAT discovered this in their report to the school district.

Second, there were changes to special education funding that were not factored in and this accounted for nearly half a million dollars in expenditures. Both of these errors accounted for $900,000 or just under half of the money spent in the salary increase.

The district would keep itself fiscally solvent and the budget on the positive side by spending the district's voluntary (as opposed to the state mandated) reserves. As those reserves have become depleted however, the district has run into huge fiscal problems. [On a side note, districts such as Woodland right now are using their reserves in order to remain fiscally solvent and they will likely run into similar budget problems in the next few years if this economic downturn continues].

What is the root of these problems? According to a board member at that time, the problem largely consisted of problematic budget tracking procedures that were in enacted under Tahir Ahad.

Again please see our four-part series on the former CBO for a more detailed explanation.

Basically the money in the district was poorly tracked. It was difficult to distinguish on-going funds from one-time money. Carry-over money and other one-time money was rolled into the general fund masking the differences between funds and funding sources.

It is the best guess that the Superintendent probably did not know at the time he was providing the board with incorrect information.

During this time, the role of keeping track of the money had fallen to interim CBO Cathi Vogel. Ms. Vogel repeatedly told the board that it was difficult and murky to figure out what was going on in the books. As the FCMAT report makes clear, the former CBO had left the district with the books in a complete mess. In addition to FCMAT and the work of an independent auditor, it would take present CBO Bruce Colby nearly a year to figure out the district's fiscal situation. These problems are now corrected and this type of problem will not happen in the future.

Nevertheless, the damage was largely done. The district has to heavily rely on their professional staff to make assessments about the viability of new spending programs. There is little doubt that the district is inclined to give teachers salary hikes when the money is available. However, they need to be able to make fiscally sound decisions based on the advice given by professional staff. They need to be able to make informed decisions.

During this incident they received incorrect information based on sloppy accounting practices of past employees and poor decision making by present employees. As a result, the district has dismissed employees who were not providing them with good advice, and put into those positions, individuals who they trust to accurately tell them the truth of their fiscal situation.

One cannot stress enough the importance of the FCMAT report or the changes that the district enacted as a result of that report.

Again, for further information please take a look at the Vanguard's reporting on FCMAT and the problems with the previous accounting system and subsequent changes to the system that have made the district far more sound in its fiscal decision-making.

---Doug Paul Davis reporting

Vanguard Radio Tonight from 6 to 7 on KDRT

Guest will be Davis City Councilmember Lamar Heystek. He will be an in-studio guest from 6 to 7 PM tonight on KDRT 101.5 FM. We will be talking primarily about the Charter City Measure that will be on November's ballot. Listeners are encouraged to call in at 530.792.1648.

Housing Element Workshop Brings Growth Debate and Complaints About Process

The city council held a short workshop on the Housing Element Steering Committee’s recommendations along with recommended modifications posed by the Planning Commission and agreed to by the planning staff for the city.

Unfortunately, the Mayor Ruth Asmundson, only scheduled a short period of time for the workshop. It went from 5:00 PM to 6:30, with only a fifteen minute time period for public input. By the time the staff presentation finished, the council had only about five to seven minutes each to speak.

One has to question the usefulness of such a brief discussion on such an important issue. Nevertheless, even the brief time, sharp policies differences erupted between members on the council over the amount and direction of growth.

Councilmember Sue Greenwald questioned why we need these specified new sites. “We have dramatically decreasing home prices right now.” Median home sales prices since 2005 between first quarter of 2006 and first quarter of 2008, we have a 26% decline in home prices according to the Sacramento Bee home sales database. According to the San Francisco Chronicle—“Bay Area home prices plunge 27% in the last year.” She said these numbers are consistent with Davis. “These are areas that are considered higher end and immune to decrease.” Furthermore, she continued with the argument that there is no correlation between new housing permits and housing prices in Davis. Other trends are what are driving the market. She believes that this trend will continue for the next few years. So given the fact that we have already completed our regional fair-share of growth, she does not see the need to grow before 2013.

Councilmember Greenwald also discussed senior housing briefly. “In terms of senior housing, I think we need to separate out housing that is desirable for seniors from senior only housing complexes.” She suggests that a condo-complex downtown would be much more appealing to seniors, than a senior-only complex on the periphery of town.

Mayor Pro Tem Don Saylor on the other hand, argued that we need more growth.

“I think that we do have needs for housing.”

He continued,

“I think there is several categories of need, and when I see the page in the report that you’ve just shared with us, I am concerned that we are not providing virtually any supply or addition. However, you cut it, building 44 in one year and 14 the next year, doesn’t get at the need that I believe that our community has.”

“As we work through this process, from my perspective, I am interested in balancing how we address those community needs for additional housing supply with a careful respect for the character of the community as we change.”

Mayor Ruth Asmundson:

“I also agree with Don, we need to have some housing. We can’t stay at zero housing. There has to be some growth to stay healthy.”

She wants to determine what our housing needs are and she wants them to determine how we grow and how much.

“There has to be growth in Davis to keep us healthy. I always have an analogy you know it’s like a baby. The baby is so cute, so adorable, that you wish that this baby wouldn’t grow. But if this baby doesn’t grow, then this baby will become retarded. And so it’s the same thing with the city.”

Sue Greenwald briefly said that we do not need to grow to be healthy. She cited the example of Pittsburgh, PA, which has declined in population but is now thriving as a city more so than several decades ago. She said we have to be realistic about growth and sustainability. She argued that more growth does not lend itself to sustainability.

A number of members of the public came to speak. Due to the abbreviated speaking period, some only spoke for one minute. Others spoke for two minutes.

Matt Williams made some interesting observations during this time.

“I was taken Mayor Asmundson about your comment about nurturing a child. One of the things that we do when we nurture a child is that we feed it. But we also take it to the doctor and we rid it of parasites. We treat the things that are eating up the city from the inside. One of the biggest effects on our city is UCD—in both positive and negative ways. Growth can happen by adding additional houses. What I’m hearing from Councilman Saylor and you, is that what would seem to be the only way to growth would be to add houses. It would seem to me that if UCD steps up and does what it needs to do. If it helps us rid the city of the negative effect of the university, by skewing the supply and demand curve. Using up all the supply of rental housing for students. Instead accommodates the students on the campus, the way other UCD’s do, we would indeed be able to grow. We would grow with our existing amount of housing. And we would see the people who would be added to the city, be close to the core, contribute to the businesses downtown by being more demand for their services, and their products. And we would end up with a more vibrant Davis.”

A numbers members of the public then came up during the public session of the regularly scheduled meeting to complain both about the timing of the meeting and the very short length of the public comment period for such an important issue.

One of those people was Eileen Samitz who made the point:

“Also the scheduling of these issues… to have a controversial issue like the general plan update, which was affecting the entire community, to schedule it at 5:00, when people like myself have to take off from work to get here… This is not what our city is about. Davis is supposed to be a model of democracy.”

Mayor Ruth Asmundson responded to these complaints from the public.

“Let me just talk a little about the public comment… At first this was supposed to be just a workshop. But we decided to put 15 minutes for those to speak that couldn’t make it to public comment at the regular meeting. If there are needs to have more discussion we’ll have it at the end. What I’m trying to do here is trying to juggle conflicting demands. Some council members don’t want to have too long meetings. Some council members don’t want to have that many meetings. But we are trying to make sure that we are having a healthy public engagement. And we’re going to be looking into how we can do that. The fifteen minute rule, if we have to go on, we have business to take care of. The council met at five o’clock, we have other business to do. I wanted to make sure council had an opportunity to have dinner before too long. And so that’s why the fifteen minutes.”

Councilmember Lamar Heystek asked for a future meeting to discuss some of the operating procedures. He is concerned about council communications being so late in the hour under the new policies.

Councilmember Sue Greenwald also disagreed with the new policy limiting public comment to fifteen minutes.

“I share the concerns that a number of the members of the public had. For example, when you said that initially you were going to have a workshop without any public comment, we always, when we discuss any item, have always had public comment. It’s been understood that it is not something that is at the discretion of the mayor.”

She continued:

“I personally feel that limiting public comment is a huge mistake in terms of time. There’s been very few times when public comment really is very long. And when it does, it’s usually because there is a room full of young children who want to keep a hockey rink open or something. And you’re not going to want to cut them off. I guarantee you. And it’s going to look very bad when you let them talk for a half an hour but you haven’t let other citizens talk for over fifteen minutes. It will look arbitrary and capricious.”

It is unclear what will come of the discussion of process. From a personal standpoint, I have always had much more grave concerns about process issues than policy issues.

From a policy standpoint, there will be future discussion in September on the Housing Element. There is a clear disagreement in the direction that the city needs to go. I think there is some opportunity however, even within that disagreement for consensus building.

There seems to be a joint desire for development in the core. I think the ideas that Matt Williams brought up about the university taking a larger share of the responsibility to house students, faculty, and staff, make a lot of sense. This came up during the campaign. I do not see disagreement on that particularly issue by the council. Mayor Pro Tem Don Saylor, while suggesting that was not enough, did seem to support the idea of more housing on campus. If we begin where there is agreement, we can see a less rancorous council.

On the other hand, if we begin with some of the more controversial proposals, if we push Measure J projects like Covell and Nishe first, then we will see more discord on the council and a stronger divide between those who favor a more measured approach to growth taking into account current housing needs within the city, regional trends, and those who would like to see closer to the 1% growth cap.

---Doug Paul Davis reporting

State Senate Majority Leader Calls For New Rules Protecting Public Access to Court Rooms

The recent problems in the Yolo County Courtroom have led one of the foremost legislative advocates for open government, State Senate Majority Leader Gloria Romero (D-East Los Angeles) to call for the Judicial Council of California to adopt new rules protecting public access to courtrooms.

In addition to Senator Romero's role as Majority Leader, she also chairs the Senate Committee on Public Safety.

According to a release from the Majority Leader's Office on Monday, the California Supreme Court, upholding the constitutional right to public trials, has held that a judge may close a courtroom only under very limited circumstances and after making specified findings on the record in open court.

“The recent incident in Yolo County is a shocking reminder of how easily these constitutional rights can be violated... Open, public courts are a cornerstone of our system of justice.”

“Sheriff’s deputies must provide bailiff and security services to county courts in a manner that protects the constitutional right of defendants to a public trial and the right of the public to attend court proceedings... The Judicial Council’s pending rulemaking on courtroom security provides an ideal opportunity to be proactive and ensure that courtrooms throughout California are open to the public.”

In a letter to William Vickrey, the Administrative Director of the Court on the Judicial Council, Senator Romero wrote:

"The recent incident in Yolo County is a shocking reminder of how easily these constitutional rights can be violated. On June 18, 2008, during the arraignment of a defendant charged with murdering a sheriffs deputy, courtroom deputies locked the media and public, including the defendant's family, out of the courtroom. The deputies allowed the victim's family and other law enforcement officers into the courtroom through a side door. An internal investigation concluded that the deputies did not follow the presiding commissioner's order that entry be on a first-come, first-served basis. The sheriff said locking the courtroom was a mistake but that he did not intend to discipline the deputies involved. The county's presiding judge said that he lacked authority to take action against these deputies because they provide security services to the courts pursuant to contract."

Furthermore she was concerned with the fact that this was not simply an isolated incident that indicated a simple mistake:

"News reports indicate that this was not an isolated case of denying access to court proceedings in Yolo County. Moreover, anecdotal evidence indicates that bailiffs in other counties have unlawfully locked courtrooms, such as during the start of afternoon session while a judge finishes up cases left over from the morning calendar."

The Senator is proposing new language to the Superior Court Law Enforcement Act of 2002 which requires the presiding judge and sheriff in each county to develop a security plan. The suggested language would require sheriff's deputies to provide courtroom security services in a manner that protects the right to public court proceedings.

The proposal adds two key sections. First:

"Each court security plan must address how the presiding judge and sheriff will ensure that security services are provided in a manner that protects the Sixth Amendment right of criminal defendants to a public trial and the right of public access to court proceedings under the First Amendment and Section 124 of the Code of Civil Procedure."

Second:

"Describe policies and procedures for ensuring that security services are provided in a manner that protects the Sixth Amendment right of criminal defendants to a public trial and the right of public access to court proceedings under the First Amendment and Section 124 of the Code of Civil Procedure. Describe the training to be provided to ensure that courtrooms remain open to the public unless a lawful court order authorizes closure. Describe outreach efforts to local media and any Bench-Bar-Media Committee to facilitate discussion of concerns about fair trials, the free press, and other key issues affecting the courts, the media, and the public."

According to the Senator, requiring counties to address these constitutional rights will:

"will guarantee that county judges and sheriffs specify how they will protect these rights when they develop their security plans before the November 1, 2009, deadline. It will enable them to identify education and training necessary to ensure that no deputy or court staff mistakenly denies the public or media access to court proceedings. It will help counties avoid the expense of having to retry a defendant if a conviction is overturned because the constitutional right to a public trial was violated."

Senator Romero continues:

"As you know, open court proceedings are a cornerstone of our system of justice. Openness assures the public that justice is administered fairly and guards against prosecutorial bias and perjury. Public confidence in our judicial system will quickly erode if we do not take steps now to ensure that courts do not operate in secret. Thus, I strongly urge you to revise your pending rules to help protect the constitutional right of public access to courts."

Senator Gloria Romero has a long track record in advocating for open government. She has been outspoken in several attempts recently to open up police records to public scrutiny. She has successfully modified the Brown Act to facilitate open government in local meetings. And now she has proposed strong new language that at the very least will make presiding judges cognizant of their responsibility to provide open court proceedings. Such changes will, if nothing else, force presiding judges to consider the consequences of locking courtroom doors.

Yolo County must continue to sort out this situation on their own. However, it is clear that the rest of the state has taken notice, and that can only be a good thing in terms of bringing down pressure to resolve the situation in the best possible way.

---Doug Paul Davis reporting

Commentary: Back to Square One in Case Involving the Killing of a Yolo County Sheriff's Deputy

It was not surprising that a Sacramento court of appeal rejected the petition from the Yolo County Public Defender's Office. The public defender had asked the court to order the response of seven Yolo County judges to defense allegations that they could not hear the case because of apparent biases against the defendant.

It was a curious strategy from the start but perhaps was aimed to get information about the judges in order to seek a change of venue which seemed from the start the more logical course of action.

Here we are now, over a month after the death of Sheriff's Deputy Jose Diaz. And really not much has changed.

The case for change of venue seems so clear, so straightforward. The question has to be at this point what are we missing.

We know Diaz worked as a bailiff in Yolo County. We know that his colleagues in the Yolo County Sheriff's Office conduct the security. Any claims that they might have had that they could do their job in a professional and non-biased way, went by the wayside on June 18, when sheriff's deputies, under orders from someone that has not been identified in public, locked the doors of a county court building, preventing public access while filling the courtroom with fellow officers through a side door.

We also know that the Sheriff himself dismissed this as a mistake. This was no "mistake" in the sense that the doors were not accidentally locked. It was intentional.

There is also evidence it seems that Yolo County Judges put their court in recess in order to allow the Sheriff's Deputies to fill the court. What we do not know and has not been proven is that this action rose to the level of collusion as the defense has claimed.

Finally this has been the first major incident since Dave Rosenberg took over as presiding judge. As such, he has been quick to put blame on the Sheriff's Department and slow to step up with any kind of solution to the problem.

People keep wondering the same thing--why is Topete getting this kind of attention. There are two key points here. First, everyone is entitled to due process under the law.

The sixth amendment, which is not one of the amendments you normally see quoted in spaces like this, is very clear in terms of constitutional requirements in the right to a fair trial.

In all criminal prosecutions, the accused shall enjoy the right to a speedy and public trial, by an impartial jury of the State...

The second point is that really the constitutional issue of the right to a public trial is trumping the actual crime committed. Topete will get his day in court and in all likelihood will be convicted of his crime and sentenced to the appropriate punishment.

However, the bigger issue at stake extends beyond this somewhat simple case of man shooting officer of the law. It extend to the very foundations of our justice systwm. To the very core of the right to a public trial.

Why did the framer's specifically require trials to be public?

One of things that separates tyranny from democracy is the notion of transparency. The ideal that people will know the charges against them and not be held in some sort of Kafka-esque state of confusion. By forcing a public trial where the charges have to read against the defendant, the state itself has to answer for and support the deprivation of life, liberty, and property. The due process of law as spelled out both in the constitution and in 200-plus years of common law is what prevents the government from taking arbitrary action against defendants and thus protects us all from the potential for a tyrannical government.

That notion seems abstract and far-fetched today, but when the constitution was written it was a very real danger. Moreover, if you look over the history of this country, you will find shocking abuses through out.

In fact, this is precisely the type of case where you need such protections the most--where a perpetrator is accused of killing a law enforcement officer, someone that the law enforcement establishment is more likely to seek to protect.

Finally, this is big because once again it exposes the dark underbelly of our county government and its justice system. Once again people are forced to question those in charge and why business seems to be conducted in this manner on a consistent basis.

As we learned through this process, this is not the first time that this kind of "mistake" has occurred. And mistakes that repeat themselves are hardly mistakes anymore.

So you will forgive me as we demand that our justice system acts appropriately. You will forgive me if I revisit this issue yet again all the while transferring the attention from the crime allegedly committed by Mr. Topete to the abuse allegedly committed within our justice system.

At the end of the day, we will unfortunately survive the common street crimes of Mr. Topete far better than we could ever survive a justice system that has run amuck with favoritism, cronyism, and the random violation of constitutional rights. I am not saying that these things occurred, only suggesting that those are my top priority to prevent. We have ways to deal with street crime. The latter is far more insidious.

---Doug Paul Davis reporting

Early Meeting Set for Housing Element Discussion

Covell Village II Big Issue on the Table

There will be a special workshop to open this week's council meeting from 5 pm to 6:30 pm. Then the council will begin its normal meeting with a full agenda including public comment at 6:30 or 6:45.

The question one might automatically ask, is why put the most important topic, that of the housing element discussion at 5 pm when people are not paying attention and many are just getting off from work?

One of the things that will happen during this meeting is that there will be modifications to the site rankings as laid out by the Housing Element Steering Committee.

A key change that will occur is that the Housing Element Steering Committee (HESC) rank ordered all the sites. They also divided the top 20 into "green light" sites where development would be given a priority and was expected to occur during this general plan cycle and "yellow" and "red" light sites where they saw develop occurring in future general plan cycles depending on the growth rate set by the city council.

Now the Planning Commission and city planning staff recommends removing the ranking numbers from the 20 "green light" sites.

According to the staff report:

"Development applications should be allowed for these highest ranked sites. Although the property owners of several of these sites are likely not ready to submit applications in the near term, development status will be monitored to ensure that the 1% growth cap resolution is not exceeded."

Other recommended changes:

• Move Oakshade Affordable Housing from #26 to green.
• Move Nugget Fields from #28 to Green.
• Keep Lewis Cannery at #21.
• Move Wildhorse Horse Ranch to #22 from #27.
• Willowbank Church: Move from green to yellow.

The rationale on Lewis Cannery and Wildhorse is:

"This site and the Wildhorse horse ranch site (below), with current development applications, are recommended for the top two rankings of the “alternate” sites because they are relatively large sites currently in the city not used for agriculture and can provide a mix of housing types to meet housing needs."

An additional reason might also be that both Lewis Cannery and Wildhorse Horse Ranch have been moving forward with actual development proposals while some other properties are in the more theoretical stage.

One of the groups hoping to move up as the result of this meeting are the Covell Village Developers. The Vanguard has received word that these developers have been working hard to mobilize a huge turnout of seniors who will advocate for the Covell Village Senior Project Proposal.

Having seen their large development that was proposed in 2005 voted down by a 60-40 margin, the Covell Village Developers have broken down their latest proposal into three phases. The first phase is to develop a senior housing facility on the southern portion of the 386 acre parcel.

Few of the seniors who have met with the Covell Village Developers have been told this is only the first part of their plan.

The Housing Element Steering Committee spent considerable time on the Covell Project. There are concerns about prime agricultural land in the bottom portion of the land, where the senior housing facility would be. And there are concerns that the upper two-thirds of the project rests in a flood plain that would represent considerable liability for the city both physically and financially. State legislation in recent years has placed the financial burden on cities who build in flood plains and will no longer bail out cities in the event of a flood.

In addition, the Covell Village developers have purchased additional land north of original property to act as their 2:1 Ag mitigation.

As a result, the Housing Element Steering Committee, composed of a number of very strong supporters of Covell Village including Chair Kevin Wolf, who was a huge advocate for the project in 2005, ranked Covell Village very low as a site. The developers who own the property have been working hard to change that ranking. And are expected to pack the chambers with seniors that they have worked with to bring on board.

Opinions by leaders in the Senior Community vary as to whether or not we actually need additional senior housing. Recent events at Covell Gardens have suggested the need for extreme scrutiny when building and opening senior care facilities. Many seniors have expressed an interest to not downsize and move into a senior community. Many like to live with the general population to begin with. The demand from the local senior population is unclear.

Personally, while I favor slower growth in an environmentally sustainable manner, if I am looking to add housing first, I would look to see infill projects on sites already incorporated within the city. As the HESC indicated, we have plenty of those type of sites and projects to meet our housing needs for the next general plan period.

Second, if we are to add housing I would look toward workforce housing, housing for UC Davis faculty, and student housing first. Those people who work in Davis but do not live in Davis should get the first priority for new housing. Concern has been expressed about the vacancy rate in Davis for apartments and student housing. This is where the priority should be.

It should be noted in the staff report, the only mention of Covell Village is the preference to plan for the Lewis Cannery site in consideration of the adjacent Covell Village site. This remains a chief concern of mine with regards to the Lewis Cannery site. Many have suggested that the site is better suited for high tech or light industrial use. I am circumspect on the type of development that needs to go there and for the most part agnostic. What I am bitterly opposed to would be the use of Lewis Cannery to facilitate development on the adjacent Covell Village site.

Any effort to get the property to move up is coming entirely from the developers and not from the HESC, the Planning Commission, the city planning department, or even the Davis City Council Majority.

I am not one who believes that the 2005 Measure X forever precludes development on the Covell Village site. However, there are many places that should be developed before we even start considering this. It appears that the Covell Village developers will not take no for an answer here. And that at some point we will go through this process once again.

---Doug Paul Davis reporting

Field Poll: Gay Marriage Ban Losing Right Now

This week, the Field Poll was released showing that Proposition 8, the Ban on Gay Marriage was trailing by a 51-42 margin. This bodes fairly well for the efforts to defeat it.

From my experience it seems very rare that a measure that is initially trailing to reverse course and pass. The tendency in most proposition is once the ads start flying and the mudslinging begins, people develop more uncertainty and uncertainty in propositions leads to no votes.

I think there are a number of other factors that will also lead this measure to ultimately be defeated. But first, some interesting, if not altogether unpredictable splits in terms of demographics.

There is of course a very strong split between Democrats and Republicans on this. 63% of Democrats oppose Prop. 8 while 68% of Republicans support it. Non-partisans also oppose it by a 66% to 27% margin. Given predictions that this will be a Democratic electorate this fall, that bodes well for it going down to defeat. Another Field Poll showed Obama with a 24 point lead over McCain in California and there was a huge enthusiasm gap of nearly 2:1 with around 56% of Democrats excited to cast their vote for Obama but only 20-something percent of Republicans feeling the same.

The age factor is interesting as well. Not surprising the greatest support is among those voters under 30. I've always said that it is just a matter of time because those in my generation, gay marriage is really not an issue. We grew up with gay friends, family members, openly gay people in the community. As such it is just a matter of time before younger generations become a majority. What is interesting is that the baby boomer demographic, those 50-64 for whom gay rights first emerged, is also strongly supportive. It is then somewhat surprising that my demographic would be evenly split being between 30 to 50, although I wonder if there is a break point there.

Ethnically, Latinos are the only group supporting Prop. 8 with whites, African-Americans, and Asians opposing it.

The strongest religious group favoring Prop. 8 are the Protestants at 56-40%, Catholics interestingly enough are evenly divided, but all other religions and those with no religious preference are strongly opposed. Evangelicals favor the amendment by a 66-31 margin while non-evangelicals are opposed 59-34. From these splits, you can basically see where the support is coming from, and that is almost entirely from Evangelical Christians, again not surprisingly.

Here is another reason I think this proposition will lose. Those who personally know or work with gays and lesbians oppose the proposition by 54-40. That group includes three-quarters of the voters statewide. That ties in with my prediction about demographic shifts ultimately rendering this a non-issue. Familiarity tends to neutralize a lot of fears.

And along those lines, I think one of the reasons that this will fail is not captured in the Field Poll analysis. Basically, by the time the election rolls around same-sex couples will have been married nearly six months. The electorate will see that these marriages are not really the threat that they are made out to be. That will help neutralize a lot of the scare-tactics that proponents of the proposition will employ. People will see that same-sex marriages are not a threat to the institution of marriage. They will see that the sky is not falling. Playing into that is that nearly three-quarters of the people in this state know gay people, many will know married gay couples, and this familiarity will lead most likely to people voting against this amendment.

In the end, the best thing that could have happened for this cause for marriages to actually occur. You will have a strong Democratic electorate this fall, enthusiastically coming to polls in huge numbers to vote for Obama, the Republican electorate is not enthusiastic about McCain, they may not come out in huge numbers.

In short, I think this proposition which is already trailing will not pass. Already 62% of likely voters know something about this proposed amendment and I think the trends in propositions are for the no side to gain rather than lose strength.

---Doug Paul Davis reporting

Programming Alert

I will be a guest on KDVS 90.3 FM this morning from 9 am to 9:30 am with Don Gibson, who is the President of the UC Davis College Democrats. I will be talking about a variety of local political issues. Call in number 530.754.KVDS. You can also listen live on the internet by logging onto http://www.kdvs.org/ .

Friday Strike Update

Today is the final day of the UC service workers' strike. After five days of picketing across the state at 10 UC campuses and five medical centers, the 8500 striking workers will begin returning to their jobs at the end of the day.

According to a statement from AFSCME 3299:

"Though the strike has produced an outpouring of public and political support, UC executives have given no indication that they are willing to lift workers from poverty."

Those who listened to the Vanguard Radio Show on Wednesday, undoubtedly realize listening to both the representative from UC, Nicole Savickas, as well as a worker Matt Tidd, a UC Davis parking officer, that both sides remain far apart.

[To listen to the full Vanguard Radio Show from Wednesday, please click here]

One of the big questions is what will happen to the workers when they come back to work, most of them on Monday.

There have been threats made by UC officials about sanctions for those workers.

Elizabeth Meyer, director of UC Davis employee and labor relations called the strike illegal and suggested that workers could be disciplined.

"We're going to take appropriate discipline up to the fullest extent with the law and in accord with past practice."

Senator Leland Yee and other key legislators have pledged to stand by any UC worker who is unjustly disciplined by an executive on State payroll.

In a letter sent to UC President Mark Yudof, Senator Leland Yee wrote that he was “dismayed by the comments of Elizabeth Meyer and other UC spokespersons who have stated the administration will discipline striking workers to the ‘fullest extent.’”

The Senator wrote in a statement that was released on Tuesday:

“Service workers gave adequate notice of their strike and the law explicitly provides workers the right to strike for fair wages, working conditions, and basic equity. If even one worker is retaliated against or disciplined for exercising their right to strike, I will do everything in my power to appropriately respond to the University.”

Now we learn that State elected officials, many of whom walked the picket line, chastised UC executives for threatening to take disciplinary action against any worker who participated in the strike and thirty-four Assemblymembers wrote a letter to UC executives with their concerns that the threats were counterproductive to reaching a settlement.

On Wednesday the Vanguard reported that a Davis motorcycle officer had been pulling over and ticketing some of drivers who honked their horns in support of the strikers.

The Vanguard spoke to Police Chief Landy Black who confirmed that people had been pulled over for honking their horns, but told us that no tickets had been written for such offenses.

He cited California Vehicle Code as justification for the action by his officers.

California Code: Vehicle Code "27001. (a) The driver of a motor vehicle when reasonably necessary to insure safe operation shall give audible warning with his horn. (b) The horn shall not otherwise be used, except as a theft alarm system which operates as specified in Article 13 (commencing with Section 28085) of this chapter."

Apparently neighbors called into the police complaining about the noise from the honking vehicles.

As someone else pointed out, a lot of the people who live off of College Park Drive work in the University Administration including Chancellor Larry Vanderhoef, so it is little surprise that they might complain about motorists using their horns in support of the striking workers.

This is probably a good example of a case where the police should use their discretion as to whether this constitutes a real public safety risk and a true nuisance to residents, or if this is an attempt by some to silence people whose views they do not agree with.

Nevertheless, the fact that apparently no tickets were issued puts this in the realm of a curiosity rather than a huge issue.

The Vanguard will have more on the strike in the coming days as we look at the impact of the strike and the prospects that a settlement might be reached at some point.

---Doug Paul Davis reporting

City Moves Forward with Charter Proposal

It was a 4-1 vote on Tuesday night in favor of the charter. The chief proponents of the charter really wanted a unanimous vote, frankly they were fortunate that they got even four votes.

A charter city is the first step towards allowing the city to enact choice voting. There is a whole lot more they can do with a charter city--both good and bad--but for now it is a very simple charter.

Getting four votes was a chore as it was. Mayor Ruth Asmundson for instance did not want a charter that specified choice voting. So the two main proponents of the measure--Councilmembers Stephen Souza and Lamar Heystek, changed the wording to make the proposed charter very broad and which does not specifically mention choice voting. The council now has to place a separate measure either on the November ballot or a later election to amend the charter and allow choice voting.

Given those changes, Mayor Ruth Asmundson was on board.

Next you had Councilmember Sue Greenwald. She was not that concerned either about the city charter or choice voting. However, she would not support a charter that allowed for binding arbitration.

Just last month, the city of San Luis Obispo, the town where I grew up, was placed in huge bind due to binding arbitration. An Oakland-based arbitrator awarded substantial raises to San Luis Obispo police officers, dispatchers, an evidence and field technicians through binding arbitration.

The San Luis Obispo City Council has no power to change the decision, and instead will have to come up with a long list of expected cuts in order to balance their budget.

According to the July 13, 2008 San Luis Obispo Telegram-Tribune:

"Under the arbitrator’s decision, San Luis Obispo police officers at the highest step on the salary schedule will make $102,600 by January, before overtime pay. That will make them the highest paid public safety officers in the county and most of the Central Coast. Top dispatchers will make $76,780 before overtime.

The raises amount to 27 percent for officers and 33 percent for non-sworn staff over four years. Finance Director Bill Statler said the raises will actually be 30 percent and 37 percent after compounding one salary increase upon another over the length of the contract.

All five council members have decried the arbitration process, saying San Luis Obispo’s budget health should not be left to an unelected outsider with no stake in city affairs."

San Luis Obispo is a charter city but it is one of only 25 cities in the state with binding arbitration. The voters in the year 2000 approved binding arbitration with a 57% vote after a long campaign by police and firefighters to include it in the city's charter. The sitting city council in 2000, strongly opposed binding arbitration and put an opposing measure on the ballot that same year which was rejected with a 61 percent vote.

Davis City Councilmember Sue Greenwald noted San Luis Obispo during her comments on Tuesday. It will be interesting to note if something similar could happen in Davis by initiative despite the efforts of the Davis City Council.

The lone dissenter was Don Saylor. Don Saylor has been consistent on this issue, questioning whether there was a reason that we need to do this right now and calling it a solution in search of a problem.

Councilmember Heystek responded that the fact that the state was looking to encroach on local control was reason enough to do it.

In my own opinion, I remain somewhat stuck in the middle. In principle, I like the ideal of home rule. I am a believer in local control. There are a number of things that we can do with a charter city that we could without. On the other hand, what happened in San Luis Obispo is a warning that we need to take seriously. We can build protections into the charter, but at the same time, those protections can be undone by a vote of the people.

Toward the bigger issue, I remain circumspect about the idea of choice voting. I respect a lot of people who are strongly in support of it, but I really do not see the added advantage that they do. Frankly, I think a lot of the points that Don Saylor makes on this issue are worth considering. The biggest electoral reform that we need may not be choice voting, but a combination of district elections and campaign finance changes. I don't see a lot of election outcomes likely to be changed by choice voting nor do I necessarily think they should be changed. Don Saylor made the point during a previous discussion, that the moment that choice voting changes the outcome of an election, we may have a huge problem on our hands.

None of these are reasons why I oppose either the city charter or choice voting at this time. Only to say that I remain skeptical of the added value of choice voting and cautious about the possibility of unintended consequences for the charter city.

If the election were held tomorrow, I would probably support the charter city. But these concerns are real.

---Doug Paul Davis reporting

Analysis: Examining Parcel Tax Poll Results

The Vanguard ran two polls simultaneously from Thursday July 10, 2008 until Monday July 14, 2008.

The first poll asked people who they would vote for in the Presidential Election if the election were held now. 127 people voted in that poll, 95 of them (74%) voted for Obama, 19 (14%) for McCain, 7 (5%) for Nader and 6 (4%) were undecided.

The second poll was asking people how they would vote on the parcel tax. 117 people voted in that poll, 57% said yes and 35% said no with 8% undecided.

The second poll is actually the result we were most interested in. As some people figured out, we ran the Presidential poll in order to get some kind of baseline reading. The poll itself is not scientific, it is not a random poll, we have no idea who did or did not participate in it, we have no idea how representative it is off the population. However, having the Presidential election results give us some clues about the profile that make the second poll more useful than it otherwise would have been.

So now a few observations. I was actually a bit surprised there was only a 10 vote drop off in participation from the Presidential poll to the Parcel Tax poll. It makes it a little easier to evaluate with such a narrow gap. After all, while the blog is focused on Davis, people from outside of Davis also read this blog.

Despite the lack of scientific polling, the results for this poll were almost identical to the district's poll results when they polled for the $140 parcel tax. Theirs was 56% to 36% with 8% undecided.

What's interesting as well is that back in October we ran a poll on Measures P and Q and those numbers showed around 70% percent support, about the same percentage as voted in the actual election.

So the raw numbers of the Vanguard polling seems to be close to the actual results at least on this issue.

What was most important I think, is comparing the results of the Presidential poll to that of the Parcel Tax. The district is relying on the Presidential election and the enthusiasm for Obama to bring out a strong liberal vote that they hope will also support the parcel tax.

However, our results show a significant fall off from Obama to the Parcel Tax in terms of support. Yes on the Parcel Tax got 28 fewer votes than Obama. No on the Parcel Tax got 23 more votes than McCain. That indicates as much as a 33% fall from support to Obama to support for the parcel tax. That's a pretty sizable drop off and it is a drop off in a key group--people who are inclined to vote for a perceived liberal Democrat are less inclined to vote for a school tax increase.

Clearly if you are a strategist for the school board this is a group that you want to target. Ordinarily you would think that people inclined to support Obama would also be inclined to support the parcel tax. However, that is not what is occurring in this case. There appears to be a segment of Obama supporters who are not supporting the parcel tax.

A final observation, there is a lot of expressed opposition in the comments section of the Vanguard. It does appear that these comments represents a very vocal minority of the readership of the Vanguard. Unfortunately, it is a large enough minority to prevent the parcel tax from winning the poll with the super-majority that it needs to pass in an actual election.

As I have stated in the past, I think the school district has made it difficult on itself by putting the parcel tax on the ballot in November. They have also made it difficult asking for $120 rather than $80. Their logic for the latter is that $120 is what they actually need rather than necessarily what they believe they can easily pass. They also do not want to put teachers through a potential layoff process again, like they did last winter and spring.

I understand that rationale, but this election is clearly going to require a tremendous educational campaign. The district understands the concerns of the public and their desire for accountability. They have already built in protections for a number of the expressed concerns.

The district also believes, as do I, that they have no other reasonable choice but to try to pass a parcel tax. If the vote fails, and right now it looks like that is a distinct possibility, it means cutting core programs. I have asked opponents to suggest where they would make cuts--to this point no one's proposal has come anywhere close to the $2.3 to $2.7 needed to balance the budget that the parcel tax will provide. This last winter and spring, was an awful time, with students marching to save their classes and their teachers. The district does not want to relive that, but it will if this parcel tax does not pass.

Key questions still remain. We saw last week people passing around fliers trying to get renters to oppose the parcel tax. A few renters came to the school board meeting in opposition. The question is whether this reflects a larger movement to organize against the parcel tax or if this was an isolated incident.

Nevertheless, the district should be concerned about these results. This is going to be a long, hard and expensive battle and key constituencies may be surfacing in opposition. The next few months will be very critical for the district to organize a strong educational campaign to the public about why this parcel tax is necessary and why this is not a permanent tax increase and it does not represent a new tax every year.

---Doug Paul Davis reporting

Vanguard Radio Show Tonight from 6 to 7 PM

This evening on KDRT 101.5 FM, the Davis Vanguard Radio Show will discuss the current UC Strike strike from 6 PM to 7 PM.

At 6:10 PM by phone will be Nicole Savickas, UC Human Relations Communications Coordinator, who has been one of the spokespeople for the University of California in this work stoppage.

Then at 6:35 PM, in the studio we will have AFSCME Labor Organizer Cody Duane-Potter and also a service worker who will talk about the strike from their perspective.

We can take your calls the second half hour at 530.792.1648.

If you have questions that you want posed, please post them in the comment section by 5 pm this evening.

Wednesday Strike Update

The strike will continue today for a third day. There were a number of interesting developments yesterday.

Community members from across the state donated groceries and provided food assistance to the strikers who are struggling to make ends meet to begin with and now face disciplinary action for the striking.

UC President Mark Yudof who has just literally taken over in that position, has threatened to take action against the workers for conducting an illegal strike. Mr. Yudof was hired at a beginning salary of $828,084--a salary nearly twice what his predecessor received. With benefits, he receivers nearly one million per year. Yudof quipped at a press conference, “As you can see from my compensation package, I'm not starving to death."

Elizabeth Meyer, director of UC Davis employee and labor relations called the strike illegal and suggested that workers could be disciplined.

"We're going to take appropriate discipline up to the fullest extent with the law and in accord with past practice."

In a letter sent to UC President Mark Yudof, Senator Leland Yee writes that he is “dismayed by the comments of Elizabeth Meyer and other UC spokespersons who have stated the administration will discipline striking workers to the ‘fullest extent.’”

The Senator wrote in a press release yesterday:

“Service workers gave adequate notice of their strike and the law explicitly provides workers the right to strike for fair wages, working conditions, and basic equity. If even one worker is retaliated against or disciplined for exercising their right to strike, I will do everything in my power to appropriately respond to the University.”

One thing that Mr. Yee might suggest is reforming the UC system. UC Regents are largely unaccountable officials, appointed by the Governor. The legislature could move to increase their accountability by putting limits on their term and making them up for reappointment every two to four years. In addition, the amount of money that the UC President receives is beyond absurd. People complain about the demands of people making $10 per hour. The UC President makes almost as much in a month as these workers make in FOUR YEARS.

The Vanguard yesterday evening received an interesting report from one of the AFSCME 3299 organizers. There is a large contingent of strikers at the corner of Russell and College. As cars pass by, they will often honk in support of the cause. However, apparently a Davis Police Officer on a motorcycle began pulling people over for honking and issuing them tickets. According to this organizer, he saw at least three people given tickets for honking in support of the strike. The Vanguard will be investigating this matter and may have more to report later on.

---Doug Paul Davis reporting

New Mayor and Council Alters Public Comment

Last night, a citizen came at 7:05 PM to speak to council and was surprised to discover that the public comment period was already over. If that citizen had seen the agenda last night, they would have noticed that public comment period was supposed to begin at 6:45 PM instead of 7:00 PM.

This part of the new change in the council under new Mayor Ruth Asmundson. But it is worse than simply a change in time, it represents a change in the entire procedure by which public comment has operated for the last two years.

Under the previous Ruth Asmundson Mayorship, public comment allotted two minutes per person. When Sue Greenwald took over as Mayor in 2006, she extended the time to three minutes per person, thereby opening up the process. Mayor Asmundson was notorious for cutting people off. We still have on video a scene where a UC Davis official who spoke beyond the allotted time was told by the Mayor, "We're not listening."

However, that pales in comparison to the new policy which seemingly aims directly at cutting the public out of the process almost altogether. Now, the public comment period runs from 6:45 PM to 7:00 PM. Anyone who wishes to speak past 7:00 PM must come back to the meeting after it all of the business is done and speak then.

The Brown Act governs the ability of the public to address of given governance board.

"Every agenda for regular meetings shall provide an opportunity for members of the public to directly address the legislative body on any item of interest to the public, before or during the legislative body's consideration of the item, that is within the subject matter jurisdiction of the legislative body, provided that no action shall be taken on any item not appearing on the agenda unless the action is otherwise authorized by subdivision." (54954.3).

This policy falls within the realm of (b):

"The legislative body of a local agency may adopt reasonable regulations to ensure that the intent of subdivision (a) is carried out, including, but not limited to, regulations limiting the total amount of time allocated for public testimony on particular issues and for each individual speaker."

So this policy clearly does not violate the Brown Act. However, cutting off and limiting public violates the spirit of the open government act. There are both practical and philosophical reasons to allow the public better access to addressing their elected representatives in local government. Frankly, the previous policy worked quite well. There was rarely a lengthy public comment period and when there was it reflected a large concern in the community about a particular issue.

The Vanguard hopes this is not an attempt by the Mayor to speed up council meetings. If that is the case, there are better ways to accomplish this. Public comment is a very small component of the meetings to begin with except in rare occurrences.

However public comment is vital toward an engaged electorate. If the school board could listen to hours of public comment for weeks on end when programs and schools were threatened to be cut, so too can the city council.

---Doug Paul Davis reporting

More on the UC Worker Strike

Overall, day one of the strike seemed to go as planned. The university threatened letters of reprimand for the workers who walked off the job and onto the picket line. There were a few verbal skirmishes with those few workers who crossed the picket line, but all in all, a pretty good day.

One of the big issues that has led to the work stoppage is that of wages. The union is calling wages that run at roughly $10 per hour, poverty wages.

According to the union's release, these low wages are exacerbated by rising gas and food prices.

"Many are forced to take second jobs or go on public assistance just to meet their families’ basic needs. Skyrocketing gas and food prices have deepened the crisis for UC families that are already living paycheck to paycheck. Typically, service workers live in low income communities farther away from campus, forcing a longer commute and higher fuel costs that use a disproportionate portion of their budget."

Furthermore, the impact of low prices, mean that tax payers are having to flip the bill. Again, according to the union's release:

"Roughly 96% are eligible for at least one of the following taxpayer-funded programs: food stamps, WIC, public housing subsidies, and subsidized child care. By not paying workers enough to support their families, UC executives are pushing these costs onto California taxpayers in a difficult budget year."

The UC Regents have justified their salary offer based on the affordability to taxpayers, but this seems to amount to a shuffling of the deck. UC may not pay for these subsidies directly, but the taxpayers do. All of this occurring as top UC Regent and other top campus officials are getting huge salaries and sometimes huge pay increases on top of those already large salaries.

Lakesha Harrison, President of AFSCME said in their release Monday:

“UC executives don’t pay service workers enough to survive, but expect taxpayers to pick up the tab in the form of public assistance. We expect that from Wal-Mart - not from a public institution – that’s double dipping."

The union is complaining that the workers are receiving 25% less than their private sector counterparts. While the UC's have proposed a pay increase of up to 26% over five years, none of those pay increases are actually guaranteed. Rather they are based on state budget projections, which figure to be in tough times over the next few years as the economy and state budget crisis continue to deepen according to many experts.

Meanwhile, PERB and the UC attempted to head off the strike before it started, going to court to stop the strike. However, the union and the UC did not even agree on the interpretation of the strike.

Matt Tidd, a UC Davis Campus worker said in the AFSCME 3299's release:

“UC executives are not only paying us poverty wages, they are trying to take away our right to stand up for our families. This is a crisis, and we are going to do whatever it takes to put a roof over our families’ heads and put food on the table.”

The strikers were also joined by among other top officials, Senator Leland Yee, who represents San Francisco.


Photo Courtesy of Senator Yee and PolitickerCA.com

Senator Yee's office issued a statement on Friday:

"These workers do everything from cleaning and disinfecting hospitals and dorm rooms, to providing cafeteria service for patients and students, to providing security throughout the UC system."

Senator Yee continued:

"It is unconscionable what the UC administration is doing to these workers and their families... The wages of these workers are dramatically behind other hospitals and even California's community colleges, where workers average 25 percent more for the same work. UC hospitals made over $371 million in profits last year, yet they refuse to provide the workers a fair wage... While UC executives live high on the hog, workers, students, and patients are left in the cold."

He concluded:

"In contrast, UC executives have consistently received double digit pay increases on already exorbitant salaries. Recently, the UC Board of Regents approved over $800,000 for the system’s incoming president. "

Meanwhile the Governor Schwarzenegger issued a statement in support of the court injunction:

"Public safety is my No. 1 priority and this strike could affect the health and well being of many people who rely on the critical services provided by medical support staff. While there may be legitimate issues to be resolved, it is unacceptable to use the welfare of innocent people as a bargaining chip."

The UC Strike is expected to continue until Friday. The Vanguard will continue to provide periodic updates throughout the week.

---Doug Paul Davis reporting

City Names Robert Aaronson Independent Investigator

Davis City Manager Bill Emlen told the Vanguard by phone yesterday afternoon, that the city had in fact asked Police Ombudsman Robert Aaronson to conduct the investigation that examined allegations laid forth by the Grand Jury now two weeks ago. These allegations included sleeping in the fire station while intoxicated, improper union influence, hostile work environment, among other things.

One of the chief concerns that Mr. Emlen has expressed has been the lack of sufficient detail to allow for a follow up investigation. The report heavily relies on confidential witnesses, many of whom went to great lengths to avoid discovery that they reported feared would bring retaliation. This included a number of witnesses who apparently parked several blocks away and then walked in the back door rather than parking in the grand jury parking lot.

As the City Manager told the California Aggie in an article that appeared in Monday's paper:

"I've seen these [reports] over the years and I think it is pretty broad in terms of scope and the things they looked at... There are issues in there we wish we had more information on, but we understand why it can't be there due to the need for confidentiality."

The Vanguard asked City Manager Emlen if the investigator would possess the ability to compel testimony, i.e. some sort of subpoena power, and he said they were looking into whether he did or did not have subpoena power. During the course of the debate on what type of police oversight system Davis would have, back in 2006, one of the key questions was whether a civilian review board could have subpoena power. Research indicated that generally such boards had special investigators like the Ombudsman position, that could in fact compel witnesses to come forward and testify. The city ultimately went with the straight Ombudsman in part because of concerns of confidentiality in such matters.

A similar problem exists in this case. In some ways, this report is a personnel complaint as much as anything else and those matters are protected by confidentiality. In fact, Mr. Emlen in the California Aggie article again asserted that some of the findings in the report there are legitimate explanations, but confidentiality prohibits the city from providing those explanations.

There is considerable question on the timing of this report. The law requires the city to respond within 90 days. Mr. Emlen believes that at least some kind of response could occur at that point in time, but there might be aspects that go beyond the 90 period.

City Councilmember Lamar Heystek was the first to call for an independent investigator:

"I think we need to bring in outside help to look into the Grand Jury allegations."

A few days later, Mayor Ruth Asmundson expressed her concern for the situation:

"I was really surprised and concerned that there's something amiss in our fire department."

The California Aggie finds both Mayor Pro Tem Don Saylor and Councilmember Stephen Souza responding for the first time.

Mr. Saylor:

"The grand jury report contains several very serious allegations about practices within the Davis Fire Department. I support the city manager's independent review of these allegations to determine the accuracy of the charges and guide any necessary corrections or other actions."

Mr. Souza:

"The allegations about activities by some in the Davis Fire Department need to be investigated by an independent source like the ombudsman to substantiate or exonerate those individuals... I am very pleased that the city manager has initiated the hiring of an independent investigator and a report to the council will follow."

In a release last Monday, City Manager Bill Emlen stated his goals for the investigation:

• Be clear to the public that we are committed to a thorough, objective evaluation of the Grand Jury’s report.
  
  
• Be clear to all sources that we will retain their confidentiality in bringing information forward.
  
  
• Ensure that those affected in the report are treated fairly and in an impartial manner.

While this is a difficult process, Mr. Emlen said that he looks forward to a speedy conclusion to this process and will be curious to see what the outcome is.

Robert Aaronson as we mentioned last week now undertakes his first major assignment since being named Ombudsman just under two years ago.

For more information on Mr. Aaronson, please see an early Vanguard story from September of 2006: Aaronson handed down major finding in a police spying investigation.

Also see the Vanguard's August 2007 interview with him.

For the full story on the Grand Jury Report, please click here.

---Doug Paul Davis reporting

Service Workers Strike At UC Davis

This morning, across the state thousands of service workers went on strike against the UC system seeking higher wages than the $10 per hour many currently receive. This despite efforts by PERB and UC to stop the strike. Last Friday, a judge issued an injunction to prevent the union from striking until at least July 22, 2008 due to supposed lack of notice.

The union in a release responded:

"In an effort to prevent UC workers from standing up for their families, the University sought to stop the strike by going to court. Friday a judge said that workers could not go on strike unless they had given the University the exact strike dates with enough notice. Since UC was served notice of the planned strike dates on Thursday, workers clearly had met the judge’s requirements and expect to prevail in court. UC’s legal action on the eve of the strike was a clear attempt to shift attention away from its refusal to improve poverty wages."

The workers, who do everything from cleaning and disinfecting hospitals and dorm rooms, to providing cafeteria service to patients and students, to ensuring hospitals and campuses are secure, have been negotiating in good faith with UC executives for almost a year. They have remained deadlocked over poverty wages for months.

According to a release from AFSCME yesterday:

Many are forced to take second jobs or go on public assistance just to meet their families’ basic needs. Skyrocketing gas and food prices has deepened the crisis for UC families that are already living paycheck to paycheck. Typically, service workers live in low income communities farther away from campus, forcing a longer commute and higher fuel costs that use a disproportionate portion of their budget.

Poverty wages not only affect workers and their families, but UC executives are pushing the costs of paying poverty wages onto California taxpayers in a difficult budget year. Roughly 96% are eligible for at least one of the following taxpayer-funded program: food stamps, WIC, public housing subsidies, and subsidized child care.

UC wages are dramatically lower than other hospitals and California’s community colleges, which pay 25% higher wages on average. In addition, UC insist on passing on benefit costs, pushing families deeper into poverty. When workers have stood up for better lives for their families and better working conditions, the University has retaliated by violating labor laws.

The Vanguard joined several workers at 5:00 am this morning as they shut down a number of construction sites on campus. This particular site was shut down by just three picketers as construction workers refused to cross the picket lines.

UPDATE AT NOON



It is beginning to get warm outside, but the strike is going strong. Here are the latest photos from Russell and College where as many as 100 striking workers were marching on the four corners of the intersection.

---Doug Paul Davis reporting

UC Strike Moves On Today Despite Injunction

At the request of the Public Employment Relations Board (PERB), a San Francisco Superior Court judge on Friday issued a temporary restraining order which prohibits AFSCME from holding a five-day strike at UC facilities today.

Or maybe it doesn't... At least not according to AFSCME officials who dispute the interpretation of the ruling.

According to Saturday's San Francisco Chronicle:

"Judge Patrick Mahoney said in his ruling that the strike likely would cause irreparable injury to the university and the union was enjoined from "calling, engaging in, continuing, sanctioning, inducing, aiding, enticing, encouraging, abetting or assisting" employees from a strike or slowdown without adequate notice."

Furthermore, the ruling prevents the union from:

"engaging in any strike, walkout, slowdown or strike-related work stoppage of any nature against the University of California without adequate notice of the exact dates of the strike."

William Schlitz, spokesperson for AFSCME said:

"We are going on strike as planned. First and foremost, it is the workers' constitutional right to strike."

Mr. Schlitz told another news service:

"We're confident this strike is legal... The reason we're striking is because the university denies its moral responsibility to pay its workers."

The union does not believe that its action would be in violation of the restraining order since the order enjoins the workers from striking without adequate notice or without giving exact strike dates. The union says it provided this notice on July 10 when it called for the July 14 strike.

Lakesha Harrison, who is the president of AFSCME interprets the ruling to mean that the union has to notify the university of the strike dates, something that it has already done.

She told the Davis Enterprise in Sunday's paper:

"We're in compliance... It's our constitutional right to strike, and UC can't take that away from us."

On the other hand, the UC human relations communications coordinator, Nicole Savickas is under the impression that the ruling prohibits the union from striking until a week from Tuesday on July 22. The UC news release says that the university expects its employees to obey the order and report to work as scheduled.

However, the union is moving ahead with plans to strike starting at 7 am this morning, which ought to make for a pretty interesting day.

The Vanguard will be in the field and report on the latest happenings throughout the day. Log on for breaking news and other exclusive coverage.

---Doug Paul Davis reporting

Commission Finds Blacks Disportionately Face Death Penalty

In recent weeks, Yolo County has seen the conviction of one man in a death penalty case for killing a police officer. Just three days after that sentence was handed down, another man gunned down a Yolo County Sheriff's Deputy. The Vanguard at the time had had a lengthy discussion on the death penalty. Now, we look into the findings of a study on California's Death Penalty by the California Commission on the Fair Administration of Justice (CCFAJ), a nonpartisan statewide advisory board.

What began as a simple question has evolved into a lengthy study about California's death penalty, the results of which would be startlingly were it not for the fact that most people have known or at least suspected this problem all along.

Why is it that 87 percent of first-degree murders in California could be prosecuted as death-penalty case--but most are not? A state commission that attempt to discover whether race has played an inappropriate determining factor as to who gets the death penalty and who does not. The answer is that that data is not available. However, the commission, led by former Attorney General John Van de Kamp is now calling on legislation that requires prosecutors to collect and report all information on their decisions whether to seek the death penalty.

Here is what we do know about the death penalty in California and these findings are chilling.

• Of 12,000 first-degree murders now in prison, only 5.6 percent of them have been sentenced to death.
  
  
• Five times the percentage of blacks are on death row to their actual share of the state population. The national average is three to one.
  
  
• Since 1977, when the death penalty was reinstated, death sentences have been disproportionate for black defendants to their overall population, to the rate of homicide convictions, to victim data, and to sentencing patterns of other states.
  
  
• Blacks make up just under one-quarter of those arrested for homicide, yet blacks make up 36 percent of the current death row population. Compare that even to Latinos and you find, Latinos make up 46 percent of those arrested for homicide but only 20 percent of the current death row population.
  
  
• It turns out, one of the biggest determinants of whether one faces the death penalty is the race of the victim. 59% of victims in death penalty cases are white. However, only 22 percent of homicide victims are white. This is true across the country--those who murder white victims are most likely to be sentenced to death nationally.

The report makes it clear that none of these numbers prove that race is the reason why some convicted of first degree murder receive a death sentence but others do not.

One possible explanation arises at the law enforcement level, where some have suggested that police investigators work harder to collect evidence in cases involving the deaths of white victims.

In fact this but one problem cited in the 116 page report from the California Commission on the Fair Administration of Justice.

One of the other stunning findings is that the state spends an additional $117 million per year as the result of just 673 people on death row. That translates to nearly $175,000 per inmate, per year. On June 10th, the California State Auditor revealed that a proposed new death row facility will cost at least $395 million to build, and more than $1 billion to operate over the next 20 years.

The reports also faults the state for failing to provide adequate council.

"The appointment and performance of qualified trial counsel, and the resources available to counsel to adequately investigate and prepare the case, are subjects of serious concern in the administration of California’s death penalty law."

Naturally groups such as the ACLU who have long fought against the death penalty for precisely the reasons highlighted in the report have had a strong reaction to this report.

Several groups have suggested that the death penalty actually makes it more difficult to fight crime because it saps resources that otherwise could be used toward more effective violence prevention programs.

Natasha Minsker from the ACLU who the Vanguard interviewed regarding the Topete Case a few weeks ago issued a statement on the ACLU website.

“We are pleased that the Commission has revealed the honest truth about the excessively high costs of California’s death penalty, and the many costly reforms that are still needed... But we are very disappointed that the Commission failed to call for immediate action to remedy racial and ethnic disparities in death sentencing in this state. Californians expect and demand a criminal justice system that treats all people equally, regardless of race and class... We cannot continue to ignore the evidence that our death penalty is not fairly applied.”

If there is a weakness in this report, it is that the commission did not provide for any remedies toward the immediate problem of apparent racial discrepancies in the rate of death penalty convictions. Instead it focused its recommendations on more expansive data collection in order to determine why some individuals are sentenced to death but others are not.

As the Sacramento Bee reported last week, even these remedies are being opposed by police, prosecutors, victims' representatives.

These groups claim that there is no evidence found in the report to suggest abuse by prosecutors.

"The critics also don't want prosecutors to adopt formal, written, public policies on when they'll seek the death penalty, as the commission has recommended. Such documents would serve primarily to create new grounds for condemned prisoners to challenge their convictions, the critics say."

However, those critics are missing a bigger picture here. The public's support for the death penalty has been trending downward over the last decade. States like Illinois had stopped executing death row inmates while reviewing their system, others like New Jersey have outright abolished the death penalty altogether.

New Jersey's death penalty study "recommended that the death penalty be abolished and replaced with life imprisonment without the possibility of parole."

High costs of prosecuting death penalty cases, lack of evidence that the death penalty deters future crime, in addition to discrepancies in the racial component of death row inmates, have led many to begin questioning the effectiveness and ethical nature of a practice when alternatives such as life imprisonment without parole have been shown to be just as effective at getting dangerous criminals off the streets and away from places where they pose a threat to the public.

Unfortunately, as the ACLU points out, the California commission stopped short of the recommendations by the New Jersey Death Penalty study. However, these findings may renew efforts to either reform or abolish the death penalty in California in the coming years.

---Doug Paul Davis reporting

PERB Trying to Stop UC Strike

The Public Employment Relations Board (PERB) is seeking a court injunction in order to prevent UC service workers from carrying out a five-day strike planned to begin on Monday.

PERB, which is the state agency that oversees collective bargaining for public employees, filed a complaint against AFSCME for allegedly engaging in bad faith bargaining in its negotiations with UC for new contracts for patient care and service workers. According to the complaint, the union failed to give adequate notice of the strike and encourage patient care employees to participate in the service workers' strike despite the fact that their absence presented a danger to public health and safety.

This is just the latest in a string of anti-labor rulings by the board that is filled with Arnold Schwarzenegger appointees. It is composed of five governor-appointed members. PERB acts as a judicial body responsible for administering bargaining statutes for California’s public schools, colleges and universities.

At this time, the union denies the complaint has validity and is moving ahead as though they strike on Monday.

This is the second time that PERB has attempted to stop the UC strike. Back on May 29, 2008, AFSCME rescinded its strike notice after PERB ordered the union to resume negotiations. At that time, the union withdrew its strike notice after PERB announced that it would support UC in seeking a restraining order in the event of a strike. The restraining order would have prevented striking outside UC health centers.

According to AFSCME, these workers receive poverty wages as low as $10 per hour. Many work 2-3 jobs and qualify for public assistance to meet their families’ basic needs. UC wages have fallen dramatically behind other hospitals and California’s community colleges where workers are paid family-sustaining wages that are on average of 25% higher. In addition, when workers have stood up for better lives for their families and better working conditions, the University has retaliated by violating labor laws.

96% of service workers are eligible for at least one of the following forms of public assistance: food stamps, WIC, public housing subsidies and subsidized child care, creating a potential burden for CA taxpayers. Increasing wages would not only help lift workers out of poverty, but could positively impact CA and the low- and moderate-income areas where UC workers live as they contribute more to their local economy.

California State-appointed neutral Factfinder Carol Vendrillo, who independently evaluated the viability of a service workers’ labor agreement, found that the university system has the ability to increase pay to these workers.

“U.C. has demonstrated the ability to increase compensation when it fits with certain priorities without any demonstrable link to a state funding source…It is time for UC to take a broader view of its priorities by honoring the important contribution that service workers make to the U.C. community and compensating them with wages that are in line with the competitive market rate.”

Here is a video, put out by AFSCME that chronicles the conditions that these workers live under.



Follow the Vanguard next week, as we cover the UC Service Workers strike and get exclusive coverage and interviews.

---Doug Paul Davis reporting