The Swarm

A reader has pointed to yet another candidate who is making an explicit partisan appeal as the focus of an ad in a nonpartisan school board race: Teri Burns, a long-time incumbent on the Natomas Unified school board.

One side the mailer reads: DEMOCRAT in large letters that spread across the whole front. Then, "IT'S OFFICIAL: Teri Burns is the Democratic Party's Candidate."

The reverse side reads:

CALL TO ACTION

REPUBLICANS ARE TRYING

TO TAKE OVER THE SCHOOL

BOARD. Their agenda could

devastate essential programs.

THE DEMOCRATIC PARTY

knows a vote for Teri Burns

ensures our students and

teachers will be supported.

Burns, who was first elected to the board in 1986 and who has served as a former state deputy superintendent of public instruction should know that the California Constitution states that, "All judicial, school, county and city offices shall be nonpartisan" (California Constitution, Article II, Section 6a).

While political parties often send out ads touting their endorsements (and candidates post lists with all their endorsements, party and non-party, and identify their party registration discreetly), it is unusual for a candidate to make an explicitly partisan appeal the focus of an ad in a nonpartisan race.

Do voters really want their school board elections turning into partisan races -or should candidates at least attempt to abide by the spirit of nonpartisanship in the California Constitution?

The Bee's editorial board endorsed Burns for this race.  We are deeply disappointed that she has decided to rely on partisanship, rather than her record, to win a new term of office.

The editorial board met with University of California, Davis Chancellor Linda Katehi this afternoon in a wide-ranging recap of her first year on campus.

Last year, she spoke to the board about the challenges of fulfilling the public mission of the university in an era of reduced state funding. "That mission," she said, "has been compromised by the inability to fund it. ... The struggle is to keep quality in place and to keep it affordable."

That challenge remains.

On Monday, she handed out a pie chart showing that only 21 percent of UC Davis operating funds came from the state in 2008-09. Public universities that once were publicly funded and free to students, she said, now "are only partially supported by the state...but the mission remains the same: access to excellence."

The more the state cuts, she acknowledged, the more pressure there is to raise funds from other sources. She, herself, spends at least one day a week fundraising out of the office.

She responded to a question on action last week by the University of California Board of Regents and UC President Mark Yudof endorsing the idea of developing a fully online undergraduate degree, which UC Berkeley Law School Dean Christopher Edley had said would make a UC degree "available to people in Kentucky and Kuala Lumpur."

Chancellor Katehi made it clear she does not support the idea of "an education without placing a foot on campus." But she could support a "hybrid model" with parts of a course online and part in the classroom, which she believes allows more students to have access to courses.

She thought there may be some areas where students could do a full degree online, "but not a bachelor's degree." She said that UC Davis "will be cautious" and "will not be the first" in pursing online degrees. She said UC Davis would look at a hybrid model.

The editorial board will explore some of the chancellor's other ideas in future editorials. Stay tuned.

A June 25 editorial encouraged candidates to step forward to run in the so-far uncontested Area 6 race (covering the Pocket area, and including Kennedy High School, Sam Brannan Middle School and six elementary schools) in the Sacramento City Unified school district.

Since then, people have asked who is running in Area 1, the downtown district, against incumbent Ellyne Bell.

The candidate is Paige Helen Powell, who has lived in Land Park for seven years. Her husband is a McClatchy High graduate. Her sons went to McClatchy High and New Tech High. She's a graduate of Sacramento State University.

For the past 12 years, she has been an English teacher at Roseville High, where she's been recognized as a Placer County "Teacher Who Makes a Difference," received a commendation from the City of Roseville and received a district Award of Excellence.

She says she's running for the school board to:

Put the focus back where it belongs, the kids and education. An observer of board meetings will hear a lot of discussion about adults but very little about students. Too many of our students are failing to achieve at the level necessary to be productive, happy, functioning members of society, and I don't see the necessary alarm that this failure should generate from the current board. This board has spent a lot of time in workshops and meetings talking about how they should govern themselves. We need board members who care more about our kids."

She continues:

"I'm running for the board because we need board members who are deeply alarmed by the precarious financial situation of this district. My opponent has been on this board for almost four years, and it has taken recent grand jury reports and a media spotlight to get a hint of action."

She observes that she has "experience from two different sides of education, a parent and a teacher...The board needs this unique perspective."

This should be an interesting contest.

Mayor Kevin Johnson posted a truly odd response on his campaign blog Thursday to critics of his move to ferret out a City Hall leaker.. He loves accountability, he wrote in his first line. "Not one day has passed without me talking about accountability," he said. 

Now, he continued, he is asking the city council for accountability:

At the October 20 city council meeting, in a brief remark, I asked the City Manager to investigate how privileged city documents were being leaked to the media. My request puts several people in uncomfortable positions. The people who leaked the material are uncomfortable. And the media are uncomfortable. But the comfort of those people and organizations is not my concern.

Leaking, he writes, is "sneaky and dishonest." It "destroys" the government's ability to function. Really?

He further notes that the leaked documents were "written under the attorney-client privilege." Doesn't he know that the clients are under no obligation to keep documents secret? The council and mayor have the right to share legal memos with the public (and, some might even say, a duty to do so if they involve public issues).

As for the leaker or leakers, he essentially calls them cowards for not publicly stepping forward.

Johnson's blog post is an apparent response to an editorial The Bee published on Thursday:

Through his actions and words, he seems to care more about who leaked a confidential memo to The Bee detailing serious violations of city policy and federal regulations than about the violations themselves. At Tuesday night's council meeting, a steaming Johnson called for a closed-door council session attended by the city police chief. He wanted the chief there to discuss what he called "the crime" committed when a memo written by City Attorney Eileen Teichert about the Natomas permit violations was leaked to The Bee. ...This incident demands a thorough, open and independent investigation, not closed-door meetings intended to plug leaks and hide information from the public.

We're glad we got the mayor's attention.

In today's lead editorial, we urge neighborhood groups to help fill the gap caused by budget cuts to local police patrols.

One place to start is by participating on National Night Out on Tuesday, Aug. 4.

Below are some links to the event and resources for residents who want to organize neighborhood watch programs.

National Night Out

Sacramento County Sheriff's Department Neighborhood Watch

Sacramento Police Department Neighborhood Watch

City of Roseville Crime Prevention

City of Folsom Crime Prevention

Elk Grove Neighborhood Watch

For the first time in Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger's numerous visits to The Bee's editorial board, I noticed that his security entourage - and it's a big one - includes a dog.

Taz, a German Shepherd, Belgian Malinois mix was posted outside the 3rd floor editorial board room.

To guard against what, exactly? Not drugs, it turns out.

The CHP handler teamed with the dog told me the dog was a bomb sniffing dog. Taz did a very good job. There were no blow ups, metaphorical or otherwise, during the editorial board's first ever live webcast meeting with the governor.

We're working on a Monday editorial taking up the idea that the City of Sacramento should aggressively go after money owed to the public to help fill a $50 million budget gap.  Council members Kevin McCarty and Rob Fong have identified at least one prime target, worth millions of dollars.

 

In a rush land deal in December 2006, the city gave Thomas Enterprises $55 million to help the developer close on its $70 million purchase of 240 acres in the downtown railyard.

 

The city's $55 million was called an "advance payment" on city purchase of 32.8 acres, which included the historic I Street train depot.

 

With no appraisal, the city paid roughly $1.7 million per acre for the 32.8 acres (while on the same day, Thomas Enterprises paid roughly $292,000 an acre for 240 acres in the railyard).

 

However, the purchase and sale agreement did lay out a three-month negotiation/mediation/arbitration process to determine the fair market value of the 32.8 acres and to have Thomas Enterprises pay up if the city's $55 million advance payment was more than the final purchase price. 

 

Yet two years have passed and the city still has no final purchase price or settle up.

What do you think the mayor and city council should do?

By voting for these budget packages and allowing their leaders to negotiate them in the dark, lawmakers of both parties are ensuring an odious outcome. In essence, they are abdicating their responsibility to legislate and govern, further diminishing their standing in the public eye. To read the full editorial, go here.

Related content:
SacBee: "State's Big Five keep talks secret for fear of dooming budget deal"

Tim Herdt: "When the deal hits the fan"

As of Jan. 31, Sacramento Mayor Kevin Johnson had raised $131,500 for his bid to create a strong-mayor form of government in Sacramento. But after collecting 37,000 signatures to put the measure on the ballot, Johnson recently backtracked amid protests from the city council and said he'd hold off on the measure.

Contributors to his campaign may have been surprised to read in today's Bee that the mayor's supporters may not place the proposal on on the ballot until 2010.

One wonders: What happens to their money? Will they get refunds?

A wider levee in Natomas could be the foundation for bicycle and hiking trail that could stretch from Sutter County to Sacramento. To read the full editorial, go here.

Sacramento Bee Photo/ Lezlie Sterling

The California Teachers Association is running television ads urging legislators to reject proposals to give school districts funding flexibility to mitigate inevitable reductions. Teachers at the local level need to tell their leaders at the state level that flexibility is better than draconian cuts. To read the full editorial, go here.

Our lead editorial today urges Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger and Attorney General Jerry Brown to start negotiating with the state's prison receiver, instead of wasting time on what is surely to be a unsuccessful court effort to end the receivership.

States the editorial:

Delays mean that thousands of prisoners have to be transported from prison to local community hospitals, costing hundreds of millions a year. The shadowboxing between Schwarzenegger, Brown and Kelso provides great entertainment, but is getting the state nowhere - at great expense.

In an editorial today, The Bee notes that rank-and-file state workers would have been far better off if their leaders had quickly agreed with Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger to implement one-day-a-month furloughs as an alternative to layoffs or two-day furloughs.

Had the governor been able to implement one-day furloughs two months ago, the state would have banked the savings quickly and there would have been less pressure to seek other payroll savings.

An excerpt from the editorial:

Now that so much time has passed and Schwarzenegger has been given new leverage by the court decision, he may continue pressing for the full two days rather than agreeing to a compromise.

We still think a cut that large puts too much of the burden for solving the state's budget problems on its employees. Unfortunately, that is the price they might have to pay for the intransigence of their union leaders.

Today's lead editorial looks at "sneaker bills" that inevitably enter into closed-door deliberations as lawmakers try to close out a budget deal. The editorial highlights one such bill that came across our desks -- an attempt by state judges to hike the benefits they could receive on top of their existing salary and compensation.

After we flagged it and inquired about it, the office of Senate President Pro Tem Darrell Steinberg said he would not introduce it this session:

You can read the draft language in question here at
Judges bill

Today's lead editorial in The Bee states that Sacramento County "has made a bad fiscal situation worse" by stubbornly clinging to wishful revenue projections and refusing, in past weeks, to disclose the extent of the county's red ink.

The bottom line:

"The time for wishful thinking is over. The county is experiencing an epic slide in property values and sales tax revenues, and this isn't a blip. It's a monumental challenge, and it will require sacrifices and realism from everyone - beginning with the people elected to run Sacramento County."

What do you think? If you want to send a letter to the editor, you can submit one here.

Following up on an earlier Swarm item, an editorial in The Bee today hits Republican lawmakers for seeking rollbacks of environmental regulations as the price of a state budget deal.

The editorial notes that some of these environmental regulations -- including limits on diesel pollution from construction equipment -- were enacted after months of public hearings.

"Now, at the 11th hour, Republicans want to use a closed-door process to gain regulatory relief for construction companies that, instead of investing in cleaner equipment, have put their money into a lobbying campaign."

You can read the full editorial here.

Today's lead editorial urges the House to approve a public lands omnibus package that could expand wilderness areas in California by 700,000 acres, and create new snowmobile parks and other recreation areas.

The editorial highlights a proposed addition to the Hoover Wilderness that will protect dozens of gorgeous alpine lakes and meadows near Sonora Pass, just west of Bridgeport. The photo to the right shows Bonnie Lake, one of the areas that would become part of the Hoover Wilderness.    
 
To read a copy of S. 22, the omnibus package passed by the Senate and now in the House, go here.

So what do you think? A step forward for our public lands?

Photo couresty John Dittli, special to The Bee.