The California Transparency in Supply Chains Act, heralded by political leaders as a measure to police poor working conditions in companies doing business in California “has little influence on the labor conditions of these suppliers” in China, Li Qiang, executive director of China Labor Watch, said in a statement to CalWatchdog. “As such, labor rights violations are still prevalent in these factories.” A study released in late August from China Labor Watch reported that at the Shanghai, China, facility of Apple supplier Pegatron, “working conditions are terrible, and workers are subject to terrible treatment. Currently, Apple’s profits are declining … to mitigate the impact, Pegatron has taken some covert measures to exploit workers.”

It’s the seventh report to allege worker abuses by Apple’s Chinese suppliers from New York-based China Labor Watch since 2012.

The California Transparency in Supply Chains Act directs companies of a certain size to declare through a public posting that they are attentive to potential abuses along their supplier base. The goal is to stem human trafficking and slavery, advocates say. Companies last year received a letter from the state Attorney General’s Office, informing them that “your company must post on its Internet website the required disclosures if it meets the eligibility criteria – namely, if your company is a retail seller or manufacturer doing business in California and has annual worldwide gross receipts that exceed $100,000,000.”

But the act doesn’t mandate action to address shortfalls in the supply chain. The disclosures are the only requirement, although they have led to lawsuits filed by citizens who allege companies have filed misleading or false disclosures, using California’s liberal laws regarding consumer rights.

“This bill, it’s a very simple bill, it requires businesses to disclose their efforts to eradicate slavery from their supply chain,” former Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger said during the ceremonial signing of Senate Bill 657, which created the supply chains act. “This would increase transparency, allow consumers to get more information and make more choices and motivate businesses to ensure humane practices.”

The measure is responsible for several current investigations of companies based on the disclosure required by the supply chains act, state Department of Justice spokeswoman Kristin Ford said.

She declined to comment on Apple’s performance with regard to the act.

Apple, founded and based in Cupertino, Calif., since 1976, has complied with the reporting requirement. In its latest filing in March, Apple said it has a “robust auditing process which has expanded deep into the supply chain over the past ten years. This statement reflects our progress … to combat and prevent human trafficking, slavery, servitude, and forced, compulsory, or involuntary labor in our supply chain.” Apple, though, changed its primary supplier for the iPhone in 2013, handing the deal to Pegatron. Since then, Pegatron has handled other technology for Apple. Last year, according to its annual corporate report, Pegatron worked on Apple CarPlay, which delivers information from an iPhone to a vehicle’s display panel.

Taiwan-based Pegatron is a public corporation with an octopus of subsidiaries throughout Asia. It supplies electronics to a number of companies including Microsoft. But the 19-page labor study from China Labor Watch insists that “Apple is the real reason working conditions are deteriorating.”

Despite Schwarzenegger’s declaration that consumers will “make more choices” with information gleaned from the supply chain act, Apple this year ranked as the world’s most valuable brand for the sixth consecutive year in Forbes magazine’s annual study. Apple’s $154 billion worth is 87 percent higher than that of second place Google, according to the magazine.

Apple’s press office did not return a call.

China Labor Watch said that Apple’s favor among consumers has allowed it to skate on its alleged violations in China.

“Apple’s use of public relations and their popularity here in the U.S. may be why they are able to escape regulation/examination,” Qiang, the executive director of China Labor Watch, said in his statement to CalWatchdog. “In addition, Apple is very much concerned about their shareholders, as opposed to that of workers overseas. “

Richard Stefanik also died while in police custody in September, and it could be said the cause was a broken heart. In November 2014, Stefanik was arrested for the murder of his wife of 58 years. She was suffering from cancer, and by most accounts it was a failed murder-suicide.

The death of Stefanik, in county jail, was also ruled natural.

Ornelas, 47, and Stefanik, 81, were among the 744 individuals who died last year in the custody of law enforcement or a state agency, an increase of 8 percent over the average in the last decade. The deceased included 47 women. One in five were either convicted of homicide or were awaiting trial on homicide-related charges.

Half the deaths were determined to be due to natural causes, according to data from the California Department of Justice. Thirty-four of the deaths were classified as accidental, including two by hanging or strangulation and a drug overdose.

There were also 62 deaths ruled suicides, and 96 deaths, or 13 percent, were determined to have resulted from justifiable shootings by law enforcement. One-hundred fifty-eight cases are pending investigation, 41 of them connected to an arrest in progress and 51 of them at state facilities.

In-Custody Deaths

In 2005, 62 percent of custodial deaths were determined to be natural, and 8 percent justifiable, according to a report from the state’s Attorney General.

In-custody deaths have drawn national attention following last year’s high-profile cases of Freddie Gray in Baltimore and Sandra Bland outside Houston.

Gray died while being transported to jail by police officers. Six officers are charged with murder in his death. The first case ended in a mistrial in December.

Bland’s death was ruled a jail cell suicide by hanging after she was stopped for a traffic violation and was taken in for allegedly assaulting a police officer.

Dubious classifications of death

The classifications for the recently released data in California, though, are often dubious and open to interpretation.

Among the deaths ruled suicides were those of Syed Rizwan Farook and Tashfeen Malik, who in December killed 14 people in a terrorist attack on a social services office in San Bernardino County. News accounts have said the couple was killed in a shootout with police.

Also included in the death total are homicides committed by inmates, mostly referred to as accidental. And the jurisdiction is sometimes hazy in the reporting.

For example, Choi Saeteurn, 68, was allegedly beaten to death by a 35-year-old inmate in January 2015 in Sacramento County’s main jail.  In records, the death is attributed to the Azusa Police Department, located 400 miles south of Sacramento.

Also, of the 47 women’s deaths, four were attributed to suicide, including Malik’s. Six were determined to be justifiable homicide, including that of Angela Slack, who was arrested on misdemeanor prostitution charges and whose relatives posted a graphic YouTube video of her in her last days alleging that Slack was abused by police. Slack’s cause of death is listed as hanging/strangulation.  

One female death was deemed accidental, that of Sara Corliss, who died Jan. 2, 2015, and whose death in a Los Angeles County Jail is still being investigated.

In an email, the state Attorney General’s office said that each department is responsible for investigating their own custodial deaths, including the detail of those deaths.  

The California State Auditor in January released a list of agencies that have failed to address perceived problems in their operations. The state’s Department of Corrections and Rehabilitation has failed for six years to implement changes that would give inmates more supervision and to protect the safety of both inmates and corrections officers.

More than half of custodial deaths since the early 2000s have occurred in facilities run by the state.

Meantime, though, the county’s payroll increased from $7 million in 2013 to $8 million in 2014, while the county’s top wage earner, former Sheriff John Evans, saw his overall pay package increase 13 percent.

Inyo County’s population dropped a modest seven-tenths of a percent, and managed to keep its payroll package total to a minor jump, from $35.3 million in 2013 to $36.6 million in 2014.

But the price of mental health apparently increased in Inyo; Jeanette Schneider, a county psychiatrist, received an 18 percent hike in her employment package in a year, from $164,000 to $195,000.

In isolated pockets around the state, government salaries, with their accompanying benefits, continue to go up.

Even in areas in which there seems little need due to declining population, politicians like Sierra County’s Evans, who worked first as a reserve officer and moved up the ranks, are rewarded with pay increases that rival those in the private sector.

The state still stings from the public salary debacle in Bell, where in 2010 it was revealed that city officials were taking outsized salaries. The discovery led to a 12-year prison sentence for former City Manager Robert Rizzo.

At publicpay.ca.gov, the public can see who is getting paid what at all levels of government

Today, anyone can check salaries in a number of cities, counties and schools via State Controller Betty Yee’s payroll database. Go to publicpay.ca.gov or transparentcalifornia.com, an endeavor hatched by the Nevada Policy Research Institute. The latter is used for this report.

Numerous smaller counties have refused to produce the requested information. Most of the refusals have come from smaller counties losing population, including Trinity, Alpine and Modoc counties.

The state’s population increased 4.2 percent between 2010 and 2014, according to Census Bureau data. Few municipalities lost people, making Sierra County an outlier.

In cities with modest growth, though, double-digit raises have been handed out freely.

San Benito County experienced growth of 4.5 percent between 2010 and 2014. Between 2011 and 2014, the county’s payroll increased 10 percent. The county’s highest paid employee is District Attorney Candice Hooper, whose compensation went from $190,870 in 2011 to $233,061 in 2014, a 22 percent raise.

Then there’s Kern County, which grew 5 percent while County Administrative Officer John Nilon received an $83,210 raise between 2011 and 2014.

The county pay increases have wide variances, and in some cases, both population and overall payroll has remained the same.

The population of Nevada County, for example, has remained the same for five years at around 98,000. Its payroll, at $68 million, has also stayed the same.

“We have wide differences in the state’s 58 counties, and the number of people and the pay scale will vary just as widely,” said Greg Fishman, a spokesman for the California State Association of Counties. He ventured that some of the larger increases in pay are being made up after some years of zero raises, or “catching up.”

RELATED – Public-as-watchdog: Public salaries at your fingertips

The pay of county administrators like Nilon has always been high, and some might say outsized when considering the number of people in a county.

In a number of counties, the boards of supervisors have set higher pay rates for both administrators and elected positions such as sheriff or tax assessor.

Sometimes, pay cuts don’t take.

In El Dorado County, the Board of Supervisors in 2013 vowed to cut the pay of some top positions in the government, including the auditor-controller and the treasurer-tax collector.

The culprit was pay package add-ons, the board said.

“They just started getting more and more and more,” Board of Supervisors Chairman Ron Briggs told a reporter. The changes were to go into effect last year. Current total payroll is not yet available, but the episode typifies how compensation can get out of control, especially when collective bargaining contracts are in play.

Epitomizing the “more and more” concept are three physicians in Kern County, all of whom earn over $1 million in total compensation.  

But despite calls for reform of the financially-troubled Kern Medical Center, where the three are employed, there has been little reform of the generous publicly-funded pay practices.

In December 2013, county leaders said the salaries at the medical center needed attention.

“We need to have a payroll review over there,” Kern County Supervisor Mick Gleason told a local newspaper. “Cost control has to be paramount in everything we do over there.”

His colleague, Supervisor Leticia Perez, added that “we are making dramatic and significant changes at KMC — to better the organization. It’s good to revisit these contracts.”

In 2014, one of the three physicians, Andrea Snow, saw no boost to her regular salary of $498,429 or the cost of her benefits. Instead, her “other pay,” which can include allowances and bonuses, was boosted by $300,000, a 29 percent compensation increase.

But not all teachers want to pay that much; 12,212 teachers in 2014 opted for “fee payer” status, which docks them around $650 a year.

The fees are supposed to cover only non-political activities, like hammering out contract agreements. Those opting out of the union, despite paying the fee, are ineligible to vote in union matters.

Wherever it goes, the money represents an estimated $7.8 million annually for the California Teachers Association, and many feel that it is being extracted from the unwilling.  

Which means that a victory in the legal crusade of teacher Rebecca Friedrichs to overturn the mandatory assessments would inflict a heavy hit on the union, which collects and uses the money. Given the choice, some teachers currently paying the $1,000 a year would forego any payment if it were not mandatory, diminishing the union’s power.

Friedrichs v. California Teachers Association, which was heard by the U.S. Supreme Court Jan. 11, has drawn 57 amicus filings, or documents in support of one of the two parties. Most of the filings offer legal opinion or expertise, and the originators break down along the lines of conservative and liberal.

The filers in favor of Friedrichs include 17 Republican attorneys general led by Michigan’s Bill Schuette, the Goldwater Institute and former California Gov. Pete Wilson.

Those supporting the teachers association include the state of California, the California School Employees Association and the Obama administration.

What’s at Stake

The plaintiffs seek to overturn a 1977 Supreme Court decision, Abood v. Detroit Board of Education, which allows the fees to be taken against the will of the employee.

“Abood failed to recognize the full extent to which teachers unions advocate positions during collective bargaining on intensely divisive public-policy issues, some of which — from the perspective of nonmember teachers — are harmful to both teachers and students,” reads the filing on behalf of Wilson.

The state’s school employees association contends in its amicus filing that “the essence of exclusive representation is that the union represents, and speaks for, all unit employees on employment issues pertaining to wages, hours, and terms and conditions of employment (hence the term “collective bargaining”) … the characterization of union representational activity as per se ‘political advocacy’ or ‘influencing public policy’ is so far outside the real world of public school employment and labor relations as to be ludicrous.”

RELATED: Read the transcript of the oral arguments here and listen to the arguments here.

According to one analysis, .08 percent of CTA political money went to Republicans between 2003 and 2012.

Since 1997, the association has donated $184 million to 583 filers, 50 of them Republicans, according to the National Institute on Money in State Politics. The top individual recipient is Gov. Jerry Brown, who has taken $3.25 million from the association. The union group also spent $3 million to help Brown defeat Meg Whitman in the 2010 gubernatorial race.

It spent $21 million in 2012 to defeat the unsuccessful Alliance for a Better California ballot measure, which would have ended payroll deductions for political activism.

It has also given money to other unions, including the Los Angeles County Federation of Labor and a Nevada measure backed by teachers unions to require additional funding for public schools.

The union also receives money from offshoot groups, including the California Teachers Association for Better Citizens, which donated $1.5 million in 2010 to its independent expenditure arm, and Teachers and Families Supporting O’Donnell for Assembly 2014, which backed the successful campaign of Assemblyman Patrick O’Donnell, D-Long Beach,  a public school teacher seen as a political ally of the union.

The union has 65 paid staffers, including two staffers working full time on political issues – one at a gross salary of $138,087 and another at $105,004 – and three others who spent 80 percent of their time on political activities, the union’s most recent federal filing shows.

“Every year, petitioners are required to provide significant support to a group that advocates an ideological viewpoint which they oppose and do not wish to subsidize,” Michael Carvin, an attorney representing Friedrichs and her co-plaintiffs told the Supreme Court justices in his argument Jan. 11. He said the problem was not that the union was the sole representative of the workers, but that the workers were forced to subsidize the union’s political positions.

In his argument, Edward DuMont, representing the state, said that the union had to be funded and not by the state. “It’s very important that we do not fund it directly and that we not be perceived as controlling the speech of that representative.”

Union Influence Under Pressure

The decision by the Supreme Court “may mark a sea change in the way in which we understand labor law going forward,” Richard Epstein, a law professor at New York University School of Law, said in a post-argument podcast.

Epstein’s analysis explains that the five conservative justices regarded the plaintiffs  as “‘compelled riders’ who are obligated to pay fees to a union even if they felt they were better off without a union “even if the union offered them membership for free.”

It’s the opposite of what the union has referred to as free riders, who reap the benefits of a union without paying a full price, he said.

Epstein predicts that Abood will be overwritten in a 5-4 ruling with the conservative justices prevailing, and “the agency shop will be ended on constitutional grounds.”

Steve Miller can be reached at 517-775-9952 and avalanche50@hotmail.com. His website is www.Avalanche50.com

In Los Angeles Superior Court, $2.8 million in fines had been collected and more than 28,000 driver’s licenses restored by the middle of December, according to a new KPCC report. The law passed in September after advocates for the downtrodden urged the Legislature to lessen the effect of some of the nation’s heaviest traffic violation fines.

Three measures, passed last session, provide relief to motorists in trouble:

• Senate Bill 85 requires counties to implement an amnesty program. Amnesty runs through March 31, 2017.
• Assembly Bill 1151 provides a way for drivers facing parking ticket fines to pay by installments.
• Senate Bill 405 allows drivers to contest fines before paying the fine by a set deadline and gives those in arrears more time to make good. The previous law made it difficult for drivers to contest tickets and added penalties for prolonged pay periods. Traffic tickets for $35 violations were turning into $200-plus fines once a state fee, a court cost fee and a county assessment were tacked on.

Now, though, the state and municipalities will have to deal with a loss of revenue.

Following the Money

The money ends up funding any number of government projects and enterprises, depending on the location, the issuing agency and the type of violation.

Source: Los Angeles Superior Court

The state attaches 20 percent onto any traffic ticket, of which 70 percent is distributed to a number of operations. Leading that is a restitution fund (32 percent) followed by driver training assessment (25 percent) — which pays for driver training in schools — and police training (24 percent). Eight percent also goes to the corrections training fund, which exists “for the development of appropriate standards, training and program evaluation.”

“California is unique in that traffic fees go to so many different funds as a revenue source,” said John Bowman, vice president of the National Motorists Association. “You just don’t see it to that degree in other states.”

Diverting portions of the revenue to things like officer training, he said, makes no sense.

“It seems logical that the proceeds of the fine should be tied to the nature of that fine.”

In some cases, cities and counties battle for the revenue. The city of San Jose in 2011 complained in a report that the $4 million it had been receiving for 50,000 violations has been tapped by outside government sources.

“Most revenue from traffic citations benefits the state of California and the county, not the city,” the report stated.

Legislative analysts found that amnesty would have no effect on local or state coffers.

But that seems unlikely, unless SB405 was simply a feel-good measure to make motorists feel like their representatives were offering them some relief.

“This sounds like a gesture,” said Kris Vosburgh, executive director of the Howard Jarvis Taxpayers Association. “If a person feels they have a good chance to win in court, why wouldn’t they in the first place?”

But language in SB85 does give more money to state funds supported by traffic fines and fees:

The bill would, following the transfer to the Judicial Council of the first $250,000 received, increase the percentage of specified penalties to be deposited in the Peace Officers’ Training Fund and the Corrections Training Fund, which are continuously appropriated funds.

Source: National Motorists Association

California, with 13 million registered vehicles on the road, ranks second to Texas in the number of speed traps over the last five years, according to a recent study by the National Motorists Association.

The state also ranks in the top 10 based on speed traps per 1,000 of lane miles.

The crowd-sourced speedtrap.org website has tracked trouble areas and warned drivers since 1999.  Los Angeles tops the list of speed traps in the state with 57, with San Diego second with 48.  San Jose, Riverside and Fresno round out the top five.

For more information about how to qualify for the program, organized by county, see http://www.courts.ca.gov/trafficamnesty.htm

Steve Miller can be reached at 517-775-9952 and avalanche50@hotmail.com. His website is www.Avalanche50.com

Schools and universities from the smallest unified school district to the top-tier university systems in the state issued more bonds in 2015 than they had i

A CalWatchdog analysis of data for the year shows 465 securities issuances from education entities. Some were refunding issuances — refinancing existing bonds — but the majority were general obligation bonds, which rely on taxation for repayment.

Most of the issuances came from school districts, charter schools and education districts, while 64 were directly tied to a single community college district or public university system.

A driving factor in the boost in issuances is the increase in real estate values in much of the state, said Kevin Carlin, a San Diego-based public interest attorney with a public works construction background.

“There is a limit in bond measure (regulations) that says you can’t issue more than a certain percentage of assessed value in a district. So once you get maxed out on the value limit, you have to wait for those limits to go up.”

The voter-approved bonds are part of a continued spending surge on education in the state.

In November, voters will decide on $9 billion in school construction bonds. It’s the first statewide education bond measure since 2006. The issue is propped up by big money from the construction and engineering industries and so far has drawn little opposition. The measure was qualified for the ballot via a push from the California Building Industry Association.

Bond measures are easier to pass now than they were before 2000, when Proposition 39 allowed for passage with 55 percent of the vote rather than two-thirds, as before, said Mike Turnipseed, a watchdog in Kern County.

“The threshold was changed, and today, over 80 percent of bond proposals are approved,” he said. “If cities want to issue bonds, it takes the two-thirds approval, but not schools.”

With the bond issuances come big projects. Add to that numerous funding mechanisms. The state’s School Facility Program earlier this year signed off on $113.6 million for 22 districts to use for various voter-approved projects. The program helps school districts with matching funds or to reimburse districts for finished endeavors.

Higher education spending grows faster than enrollment

At California State University in Sacramento, where enrollment grew 2 percent between 2003 and 2014, a $91 million science building has been approved.

The University of California Board of Regents approved spending $7 million for what will eventually be a $150 million research building for the Riverside campus. It will house 40 to 50 new faculty members. Enrollment at UC Riverside has increased 2 percent since 2012. Full-time employee ranks, meanwhile, have grown 20 percent.

“The only way to best serve our students and California is to grow our faculty,” UCR Chancellor Kim A. Wilcox told a subcommittee of the Regents at a September meeting.

The Milpitas School Board in San Jose agreed to pay architectural firm Gould Evans $2.2 million for the design of an elementary school. The school board is set to purchase 6.7 acres from the city for $21 million.

The school district in Oakland this month issued a request for proposals to upgrade kitchens in 16 schools with a budget of $15 million.

Meantime, schools and colleges continue to hire.

The City College of San Francisco will bring on 55 new full-time faculty and 46 administration workers.

University of California regents in July approved salary increases to executives. One executive, UC Berkeley Chancellor Nicholas Dirks, received a 3 percent increase to $516,446 annually.

RELATED:  Developer lobby promoting $9 billion education bond

Between 2001 and 2014, California voters approved $146.1 billion in bond debt for school and college districts, according to a study published in July by the California Policy Center.

“The idea that people are forming is this assumption that property values will skyrocket forever,” said Kevin Dayton, the author of the study. “That way it won’t be so painful for the kids to pay it off as adults. But this is all built on predictions and we have no idea if this will come true.”

The bond debt comes in addition to the billions of dollars handed over to school districts from the passage of Proposition 30 in 2012 which included an additional levy on income over $250,000 as well as a ¼ cent increase in the state sales and use tax.

The revenue is earmarked for education. To date, $13.1 billion has been raised through the taxes.

Many of the schools are spending the money on salaries and benefits, according to the state’s Proposition 30 tracking site. For example, at Harnett Community College District, $5.3 million went to salaries and benefits while $103,000 went to athletics, art, diesel mechanics and a theater group, Western Stage.  

The figures cover the 2012-2013 school year; the usage report for the 2013-2014 year is not completed yet.

Steve Miller can be reached at 517-775-9952 and avalanche50@hotmail.com. His website is www.Avalanche50.com

Los Angeles County Sheriff’s deputies are accused of shooting a mentally ill teenager in the street in a lawsuit filed in U.S. District Court just two weeks after the county

The lawsuit also comes on the heels of an agreement by the department to release deputy-involved shooting records to the county’s Office of Inspector General.

The lawsuit claims Fernando Escobedo, 19, was shot and killed by deputies on Nov. 30, 2014.  Escobedo was known to the department through past brushes with the law. Shortly before his death, his mother had sought help from the Sheriff’s Department and explained his mental health problems, the complaint says.

A video of the shooting obtained by CalWatchdog appears to show Escobedo running from the home of his mother, Hilda Alvarez, away from two squad cars parked in front of the home and into the path of two other arriving squad cars.

An officer comes out of the last car and points his weapon at Escobedo, who turns and runs away before dropping to the ground. The video is embedded at the bottom of the page. 

From the complaint:

“Ms. Alvarez immediately heard three gunshots and yelled ‘don’t shoot.’ One of the officers then hollered ‘watch your crossfire.’ Immediately thereafter, four more shots were fired at Mr. Escobedo.”

Deputies told local media at the time of the incident that Escobedo charged an officer with a steak knife, which the family disputes. The video does not show the victim charging any of the officers.

The Sheriff’s office did not respond to emails and calls for comment.

The shooting is classified in the department’s database as a “hit shooting incident,” one of three in the month of November 2014. The shooter, unnamed in the lawsuit, was a 50-year-old Hispanic deputy who had been on the force for eight years according to Sheriff’s Department records. 

The records indicate that Escobedo’s alleged weapon was recovered. They also indicate Escobedo was under the influence and had a criminal history. Records show Escobedo was arrested in July 2014 and charged with possessing stolen property.

The “hit shooting incident” designation does not indicate a fatality. Since 2010, the department has recorded 175 hit shootings, and 91 of them resulted in a fatality, a review of records shows.

In about half of all shooting incidents involving L.A. County deputies since 2010, the suspect had a criminal history.

California counties have worked to open their records in the months since 18-year-old Michael Brown was shot in an altercation with a police officer outside St. Louis in 2014.

The San Diego County District Attorney’s office now lists the shootings it reviews. In Kern County, law enforcement and the district attorney’s office hammered out an agreement in July for enhanced review of officer-involved shootings. L.A. County has a database with all deputy-involved shootings. 

In the city of Richmond, a new police chief initiated policies to reduce police shootings, including reviews of all uses of force and providing officers with Tasers and pepper spray to be used as an alternative to a firearm.

California’s law enforcement community has been embroiled in controversies over excessive force, including shootings, for decades.

The violence reached a flash point in the late 90s. A gang unit in the Rampart division of the Los Angeles Police Department was plagued by beatings of suspects and officer-involved shootings.

The Los Angeles County Sheriff’s Department, in particular, has in the past five years battled with rogue officers.

Three deputies were found guilty in June, 2011 of the beating of a jailhouse visitor. In November, the department paid $8.85 million to the family of Alfredo Montalvo, who was shot by deputies after a brief car chase in 2009.

In October, 2015, a man suspected of driving under the influence was shot. Deputies claimed he began to drive toward them after being pursued and cornered by squad cars. The deceased had no criminal history, according to records.

Since 2009, Los Angeles County has paid out $22 million in 43 wrongful death lawsuits as of July.

The Escobedo complaint alleges that the shooters were not properly trained in dealing with the mentally ill.

“The department fails, refuses and neglects to keep a centralized database of those reported to it as suspected of being mentally ill,” the lawsuit claims. “Neither [past sheriff John] Scott nor [current sheriff Jim] McDonnell provided training necessary for officers faced with the challenge of bringing such people safely under the custody and control of patrol officers, thus placing the mentally ill … at greater risk of death at the time of arrest or when officers seek to question them.”

Norm Pattis, the Connecticut-based lawyer handling the lawsuit for Escobedo’s mother, did not return calls or emails.

Legislation passed in September requires law enforcement officers in California to get more training in handling mental health cases.

The bill requires the state provide at least 15 hours of basic training in dealing with the mentally ill, up from six hours.

Video of Nov. 30, 2014 shooting of Fernando Escobedo:

U.S. Sen. Barbara Boxer made the day of conservative media outlets when, in the wake of the San Bernardino massacre, she said, “In California, since the ‘90s, we have passed a number of important gun safety laws. And over that period of time, we’ve had a reduction in gun violence of 56 percent. Sensible gun laws work, we’ve proven it in California, and we’re not gonna give up.”

How accurate was the 56 percent figure? And does it mean California is really getting safer because of gun restrictions?

Boxer’s data point comes from the Law Center to Prevent Gun Violence, which found gun violence dropped between 1993 and 2010 in a study released in 2013:

Over the last 20 years, the number of people injured or killed by guns in California has decreased dramatically. In 1993, 5,500 Californians were killed by gunfire; by 2010, the most recent year for which data is available, that number had dropped to 2,935. In just two decades, the state’s gun death rate has been cut by 56 percent, a reduction that translates to thousands of lives saved every single year.

Boxer and the Law Center are correct that gun-related deaths are down.

The rate has wavered since the late 1990s, peaking at almost 9.6 deaths per 100,000 residents in 2002 before dropping to 7.7 in 2013, according to stats kept by the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention.

There were about the same number of people killed in incidents involving guns in 1999 and 2013 — just under 3,000 — even as the population grew by 5 million.

Those deaths — the “gun violence” Boxer is referring to — are not limited to street gang shootings, domestic disputes that ended in death, or the murderous rampage of the couple in San Bernardino.

The figures also include suicides involving guns and accidental shootings, said Lindsay Nichols, senior attorney with the Law Center.

Is an accidental shooting really “gun violence”?

“Yes, I would say when someone gets shot, it is pretty violent,” Nichols said.

Other stats call into question the assertion that the state’s “sensible gun laws work.”

Four California cities – Compton, Oakland, San Bernardino and East Palo Alto – remain among the top 30 “murder capitals” in the U.S., according to an analysis of murder rates by the site NeighborhoodScout.

The state’s overall murder rate of 4.4 per 100,000 people is the same as Texas’, a state with no assault weapons ban that has recently adopted “open carry” for licensed gun owners.

California has seen other violent crimes rise recently.

Between 2013 and 2014, the state’s rate of aggravated assaults increased by two per 100,000 residents, to 236. Rapes increased by almost 11 per 100,000 to 30.

Gun sales up

While California continues its widespread reputation as a haven for gun control, weapons purchases are up.

Since the terrorist shootings, Californians have been buying more weapons, according to a story this week in the Los Angeles Times:

San Bernardino County Sheriff’s Deputy Adam Cervantes said 75 applications for concealed-weapons permits were submitted last weekend, about seven times the department’s normal application volume.

 

Orange County Sheriff’s Department Lt. Jeff Hallock said his office saw 130 applications for concealed-weapons permits last weekend, up from the roughly 30 applications that typically come in. Sheriff’s officials in Riverside and San Diego counties said they had likewise seen new interest from people asking about concealed-carry permits.

Gun sales in California were increasing even before the shooting. Sales more than doubled between 2008 and 2014, from 425,244 in 2008 to 931,037 last year. Handgun sales went from 208,312 in 2008 to 512,174 in 2014.

A comparison of maps showing the number of gun stores per 100,000 residents in California with the number of firearm homicides shows that more murders happen in areas with fewer gun stores. (See graphic)

Nichols, of the Law Center, said people buying guns to protect themselves is the way the law is supposed to work.

“It’s not my business to agree or disagree that guns make people safer,” she said. “Data shows that it doesn’t work that way, but I’m not going to argue with people who are law-abiding citizens who want to own guns. The problem is the people who shouldn’t own guns having them.”

At 20.1 percent of the adult population, California has one of the lowest rates of gun ownership in the U.S., and aside from Nebraska, the lowest this side of the Mississippi.

The move to get a new accreditation plan in place could take a decade, while the state’s 2.1 million community college students look for guidance in a complex system.

The fatal action for the Accrediting Commission for Community and Junior Colleges was its challenge to City College of San Francisco. The commission in 2012 began raising concerns about financial and governance practices at the college and at one point threatened to revoke the college’s accreditation, landing the two parties in court.

City College has acknowledged its precarious financial position and its revolving door of administrators. The school has pruned expenses and tightened its finances, according to a bond filing issued earlier this year.

Which leaves the state with a black eye in terms of accreditation of community colleges. Is the accreditation commission being punished for doing its job? Or was it unfairly severe in its application of standards?

Need for Accreditation

Accreditation is crucial for most institutions as it is required to access federal student loan money.

The state’s community colleges have seen a decline in enrollment over the past five years and faced an $18 million revenue decline in 2014, although state legislation propped up the San Francisco Community College District — of which the City College is part of — through additional funding last year.

The commission has been on the radar of the California Community Colleges Board of Governors for over a year.

In a report issued by a review committee from the community colleges board, the fate of the accreditation board was sealed.

From the report:

“Between 2009 and 2013 the ACCJC issued 143 sanctions out of the 269 accreditation actions it took. This sanction rate is approximately 53 percent, compared to approximately 12 percent sanction rates within the other six regional accreditors. The quantity and frequency of sanctions issued by the ACCJC, in conjunction with other controversial actions and practices of this accreditor, have led to frequent calls for reform of the accrediting process from member institutions of the ACCJC.”

The accreditation commission responded with a four–page announcement of new practices and noted that as of 2014, there were 30 percent fewer benchmarks required for approval.

“The new standards will be the basis for comprehensive institutional evaluations for reaffirmation of accreditation beginning spring, 2016,” a spokesman for the commission said.

The commission also announced it would host annual conferences for schools to receive input and answer questions about the accreditation process. The first conference is to be held in October 2016.

RELATED – State agency struggling to police for-profit colleges

The commission is part of the Western Association of Schools and Colleges, one of six regional groups in the U.S. that are charged with ensuring higher education institutions adhere to standards that begin at the federal level. The accreditors are overseen by administrators at the U.S. Department of Education and a board called the National Advisory Committee on Accreditation and Institutional Eligibility.

In addition to angering the state community college board of governors, the accreditation commission in California has drawn the ire of teachers unions and their powerful allies. The California Federation of Teachers filed a lawsuit against the commission to keep the San Francisco City College open and registered a complaint with the U.S. Department of Education against the commission.

The American Federation of Teachers said the commission has “failed to focus on improving learning and academic achievement.”

Democratic U.S. Reps. Nancy Pelosi, Jackie Speier and Anna Eshoo called the ACCJC’s actions “outrageous.”

The commission is accused in one complaint of “extensive financial and political relationships with advocacy organizations and private foundations representing for‐profit colleges and powerful student lender interests.”

The commission accepted a $450,000 grant from the Lumina Foundation for Education, a group that has endeavored to change community college education and create a more universal accreditation system. Some onlookers have noted what they call the libertarian roots of Lumina.

But the practice of accreditation stems from federal regulation, which has increased in recent years. Community colleges in the U.S. collectively spend up to $6 billion to keep in compliance, according to a Vanderbilt University study. The study also listed 29 categories that colleges and universities are subject to monitoring and reporting.

Community colleges are subject to review every six years.

Steve Miller can be reached at 517-775-9952 and avalanche50@hotmail.com.

The audit released in January strongly suggested the council move its headquarters from pricey San Francisco, where the median price of a two-bedroom apartment is now $5,000 a month, to Sacramento and save $5 million annually. The auditors also noted that the move would save in both travel and salary costs. One administrator spent $22,000 over three years in travel between the offices, the audit noted.

But the council has refused to make the move, instead opting to close its small Burbank operation, which it claims will save between $10 million and $12 million.

The council, which operates California’s state and local courts, is given fiscal autonomy to a degree, but has forever lamented that it lacks the proper funding from the state to handle its caseloads.

Records show that while the council has pruned its employee ranks since 2009, its pension costs have increased 15 percent and its wages have jumped 7 percent. Thirty percent of the agency’s 786 employees in 2014 received six-figure salaries.

The legacy costs have been among the forces driving increased fines and fees in the courts for taxpayers, as well as the closing of over a dozen courthouses in the state since 2012.

Earlier this year, Martin Hoshino, administrative director of the Judicial Council, told San Francisco NPR affiliate KQED that closing the courts causes “great concern among a lot of the judicial officials or court administrators that I speak to in terms of what are the real impacts of saying that a courtroom or courthouse is closed and really unavailable.”

But when it comes to moving his own headquarters out of one of the most expensive cities in the world, Hoshino cites the need for further analysis.

He’s known of the money sap the San Francisco office has been since at least 2012, according to an evaluation done by the judicial State Evaluation Committee.

“From a strictly economic standpoint, lease costs are generally lower in Sacramento than San Francisco,” reads the report, which, like this year’s audit, was critical of the cost of the court system. “Labor costs generally are lower as well. The [Judicial Council] partly recognizes this through its geographic pay differential system, whereby some Sacramento region employees are paid 7 percent less than San Francisco-based employees performing the same type of work.”

Reacting to Audit

Hoshino in March appeared before an Assembly budget subcommittee and explained that the office had taken some steps on the heels of the audit.

“The office directors, which are eight in total, will no longer receive the option of receiving reimbursement for parking at their office headquarters,” he said. “That also would be effective July 1, 2015.”

But changing the location of the headquarters was never broached. Union representatives spoke of the effect of cutbacks on their ranks. Marsha Slough, presiding judge in San Bernardino County, noted that her staff had been cut 27 percent.

The Alliance of California Judges, which backs the move of the headquarters, said in a statement last week, “… San Francisco is now the world’s most expensive place for visitors to spend the night. Parking, gasoline, groceries — everything costs more in the city. So why does the [Judicial Council] insist on staying there? Why won’t it move to Sacramento, thereby freeing up millions of taxpayer dollars that could go to our cash-strapped trial courts?”

In an interview with CalWatchdog, Alliance member Judge Maryanne Gilliard noted that many judges refer to the Judicial Council’s San Francisco headquarters as the “crystal palace.”

“They do not desire to give up those plush digs for a more modest utilitarian building in Sacramento, where there would also be a greater ability for the Legislature to have fiscal oversight of what they are doing,” Gilliard said.

The council, which has been criticized for poor handling of public money, will also be forced to use funds on deposit as payment on a $231 million courthouse in Santa Clara County that was supposed to open this summer but is now running at least six months behind.

The Judicial Council, like other state agencies, often rents buildings from the State Public Works Board, which issues bonds to pay for construction.

The State Public Works Board will have to pay for debt service on the Santa Clara courthouse from another fund as a result of the delayed opening, according to a financial disclosure filing last month.

Thereafter, the Board “intends to take steps as necessary to apply lawfully available funds from March 1, 2016 until rent on the facility commences to accrue,” the state reported on the disclosure.

In an email, Judicial Council spokesman Peter Allen said:  “The first rental payment is due in August 2016 … and is for rent during the 6 month period from 3/1/2016 to 8/30/2016.  We are currently projecting that we will be in the building by 4/14/2016… .”