Patricia Nazario: The staff of Planned Parenthood doesn’t want the state’s budget trimming to touching its turf. The organization is rallying patients, volunteers, and supporters to show up for a noontime protest and an evening vigil in front of the governor’s downtown L.A. office.
Health care activists say that for every dollar California puts into family planning and women’s cancer screening programs, the federal government matches $9.
Last week, the governor acknowledged that every cut in state programs and services will inflict real pain. But, he added, California’s government could become insolvent unless he and Sacramento lawmakers dramatically scale back spending. Analysts say the state faces a $24 billion budget gap next fiscal year.
]]>Adolfo Guzman-Lopez: Sacramento funding cuts have already forced the district to slice more than half a billion dollars from its current budget. The red ink keeps flowing. By cancelling summer school, L.A. Unified will save $34 million. The district will still have to cut more than $100 million elsewhere. Superintendent Ramon Cortines doesn’t relish the task.
Ramon Cortines: How would the public deal if it was their own home, that if they got a bill on the latter part of May, that they had to make a payment on July 1 and didn’t have a savings account to do that? And that’s what’s happened to this district.
Guzman-Lopez: Cortines spared a summer school program for about 74,000 high school students short of graduation credits. He said he fears for the safety of some students who won’t have a place to go to this summer. Without offering specific suggestions, Cortines suggested that more taxpayers take action to protect vital services like public schools.
]]>Molly Peterson: Public works and sanitation officials have been re-thinking how Angelinos make products, use stuff, and recycle it – or throw it away. Planners have fielded comments from thousands of people at neighborhood meetings in recent years.
All this groundwork is supposed to lead to a 20-year plan for the way the city of Los Angeles manages its waste. A key goal of the plan is to divert 70 percent of waste from landfills, for recycling, composting, or reuse within six years.
Last January, Mayor Antonio Villaraigosa said that within 21 years he’d like to see the city divert all its waste from landfills. City officials hope these plans could deliver financial benefits, too. After it hears feedback on the plan this weekend, the Department of Public Works will finalize it later this year.
]]>Eventually, he was able to start painting again, but he kept taking and posting photos online, including pictures of his paintings. He would post pictures as they evolved, blogging his work, and getting lots of feedback from fans along the way.
Several of those paintings will be on display through June 20th at the Corey Helford Gallery in Culver City.
(Click to enlarge)
(Click to enlarge)
Images courtesy Chris Cooper, a.k.a. COOP
Link: Coopstuff.com
]]>Douglas Barry: “Sad but proud moment was the funeral that I, as the fire chief was presiding or gave a speech at for Brent Lovrien last year. I was very sad that we lost a member. I’m always sad of that.
“As the fire chief, you kind of feel like the father figure and everyone’s kind of your children, so you kind of feel hurt when those things happen. But when I looked out across the Cathedral and saw the support of the firefighters – not just our department, throughout the region. It made me very proud to know that that connection really exists.
“And the proudest moment is, seeing how the department has handled many of the major incidents, being it the Metrolink, the brush fires, the devastating brush fires. And even how we’ve addressed some of the issues that were highlighted when I first came in. I’m very, very proud of that, and I think that as a department, we should be proud.”
Douglas Barry is the first African-American to lead the Los Angeles Fire Department. His last day on the job will be August 30th.
]]>Julie Small: A year ago, federal receiver Clark Kelso announced he wanted $8 billion to upgrade prison medical facilities – and to build seven new ones. His goal was to provide 10,000 medical beds for prisoners with chronic conditions.
State lawmakers and prison officials howled at the cost. The budget crisis virtually guaranteed Kelso wouldn’t get what he wanted. But now he says he can get the job the done with just a couple new hospitals for less than $2 billion.
The facilities would treat 3,400 inmates – far fewer than his earlier plan. But Kelso says he can compensate if he renovates more prison medical facilities already in place. Last year, Kelso asked a federal judge to hold the governor and other state officials in contempt for refusing to release the money he needed to build new prison hospitals.
The Schwarzenegger administration countered that move by asking a federal judge to dismiss Kelso. If the judge and state lawmakers agree to Kelso’s new plan, the court fight will be over – and the rebuilding can begin.
]]>Brian Watt: South Bay native Douglas Barry attended Narbonne High School, Harbor College, and Cal State Long Beach. He spent 34 years moving up the ranks of the city fire department.
Three years ago, Mayor Antonio Villaraigosa appointed Barry interim chief as the department was burning with racial and sexual harassment scandals. Barry believes he’s turned the department around. But he understands that some people might think controversy drove him out.
Douglas Barry: To the contrary. Everyone, from the mayor, the City Council, the Fire Commission, the controller, and the fire department members have been extremely supportive of me and my leadership and have expressed to me their desire that I stay longer.
Watt: Barry is the L.A. Fire Department’s first African-American chief. His announcement comes as the department prepares to address a deficit of $56 million. The tough budget year begins on July 1st, and Barry says he’ll stay on until August 30th to make some of the tough calls.
]]>Nick Roman: Housing prices over the last year are down nearly 44 percent in the Inland Empire, down 31 percent in L.A. County, down almost 27 percent in Orange County. But percentages mean nothing. What matters are dollars – so the house priced at the Inland Empire median of $157,000 is $68,000 cheaper than it was a year ago.
The realtors’ association says home prices might be as low as they’re gonna go – and first-time homebuyers are jumping in. April sales in the Inland Empire were double what they were a year ago. They’re up 43 percent in L.A. County – but up only 13 percent in Orange County.
Homes are more expensive there – and getting a big loan is tough. The California Association of Realtors says that’s why the inventory of homes above a million dollars is up to 17 months. But for houses under a half-million dollars, sales are booming – and the inventory is down to only three months.
]]>Jim DeBoo: We’ve just closed a $530 million deficit.
Julie Small: That’s Jim DeBoo – the City of L.A.’s man in Sacramento. He told members of the budget conference committee Mayor Villaraigosa could sign a balanced budget by the end of the week. But DeBoo also says if the state decides to borrow 8 percent of the city’s property tax – as Governor Schwarzenegger proposes – that will push Los Angeles back into the red.
DeBoo: It could be anywhere between $85 million and around $100 million in additional deficit. If it does happen, the fear is we’d have to go look at public safety cuts. And that’s something that the mayor and the city council at least in L.A. would really, really like to avoid.
Small: Representatives from cities across the state told lawmakers they face similar – and equally bad – choices.
]]>Shirley Jahad: The camp accommodated 35 to 40 men, women, and children, L.A. County Sheriff’s spokesman Steve Whitmore said. He called it the most squalid, heinous homeless encampment he’d ever seen. The people lived under the freeway bridge, behind a walled-in area. Whitmore said ventilation holes were their only way in and out of the camp.
Steve Whitmore: There’s no light in there. They would hang the food. So the rats wouldn’t get it. You know how people when they camp they hang their food so the bears won’t get it? They did the same thing with their food. But it’s not pretty. This is heinous. It is unfathomable. It is unlivable. It is wrong.
Jahad: Whitmore said half a dozen babies lived in the enclosure, next to human and animal waste. He said officials are trying to place the camp’s inhabitants in adequate shelter and offer them medical attention and mental health care.
]]>Cheryl Devall: Summer school won’t happen for most elementary and middle school students in the Los Angeles Unified School District. Its officials there say they have to cut more than $130 million before the current school year ends, and summer school was one place to do it.
They say that’s because California may cut more than $5 billion from its education budget – and because sales and property tax revenues are down. L.A. Unified high school students who need to make up graduation requirements and core classes will be able to take courses this summer.
So will students with disabilities in the Extended School Year program. Students who’d hoped to take summer courses in the L.A. Community College District won’t be as lucky. Several of its campuses are also cutting summer sessions to save money.
]]>Molly Peterson: The federal government will transfer authority over some wildland development to the secretary of agriculture. It’s also placing on hold the so-called “roadless rule” – a regulation first developed under President Bill Clinton.
Friction between the timber industry and environmentalists over how to manage these lands drove the rule into two federal courts that have issued conflicting opinions about what should happen. In California, the Clinton rule has held sway over about 4 million acres – 20 percent of the state’s federal forests.
Governor Arnold Schwarzenegger supported that. But the Bush Administration petitioned, and another judge allowed states to make their own plans less restrictive to development – so Idaho and Colorado have been doing that for their forests.
This latest move by the Obama Administration also requests that federal lawyers reverse previous policy and stop arguing against this kind of wildland protection.
]]>Governor Arnold Schwarzenegger:
Gay rights groups are planning to place an initiative legalizing gay marriage on the ballot, perhaps as early as next year.
The bill would place a constitutional amendment on the ballot. If approved, it would strip the UC of its immunity. San Francisco Democratic State Senator Leland Yee is a co-sponsor. He told KPCC’s “Patt Morrison” that many lawmakers are angry about the high salaries paid to UC executives.
Leland Yee: “They make more than the president of the United States. They make more than the governor of this state. It seems that their perspective, the regents perspective, of what is appropriate given these tough economic times, given their position relative to other positions in the this country and this state that are just not, not adequate.”
UC chancellors make $300,000 to $400,000 a year – that goes up to as much as half a million with perks.
]]>Los Angeles County Fire chief Mike Freeman says he’s concerned about the state’s plan to borrow property tax revenues from counties. Freeman says that even though emergency programs are a state priority, he’s responding to more emergencies these days.
Mike Freeman: “Buying equipment, buying fuel, fuel has come down but it’s still very expensive. All these things come into play, so we do have a little bit of a fallback right now. But that money is going fast and the basic principle of public funding is that you do not pay for ongoing costs with one-time monies.”
Along with chiefs from Orange County and Ventura County, Freeman supports the new regional “ready, set, go” action plan. That advises people who live in wildfire-prone areas to prepare their homes and leave early when there’s a risk.
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