Los Angeles City Controller Ron Galperin

Los Angeles City Controller Ron Galperin released an audit on Tuesday outlining excessive overtime use in the Department of Transportation. The controller’s office received an anonymous tip from its Fraud Waste & Abuse Hotline and was able to “identify four supervisors in the Traffic Paint and Sign Section who received at least $70,000 in overtime pay during FY 2013-14.” The findings also included a superintendent that received “$155,319 in overtime on top of his normal $78,000 yearly earnings—effectively tripling his salary.”

“This report should put everyone on notice,” said Controller Galperin. “We are watching overtime and we will not permit it to be abused.” The release continued:

[blockquote style=”3″]In FY 2013-14, 93% of Traffic Paint and Sign employees received overtime. Citywide, among full-time employees excluding LAPD, LAFD and DOT, the number was 49%.

Among the other findings:

• Super-human work schedules: One employee was paid for 261 hours during a two-week period. He claimed to work 10 18-hour days and 4 days of at least 16 hours.
• Doing the jobs of two full-timers: 30 out of 67 Traffic Paint and Sign employees, including supervisors, claimed more than 1,000 hours of overtime in FY 2013-14; seven of the 30 claimed to work at least 2,000 hours of overtime. (A full-time employee is paid for 2,080 hours per year. 2,000 hours of overtime in a year equates to, on average, working more than 38 hours of overtime every week of the year. An employee who does this is constantly working double shifts, doing the job of two full-timers.)
• The Tab: Traffic Paint and Sign employee overtime cost the City $3.3 million dollars in FY 2013-14. The average overtime pay for each Traffic Paint and Sign employee was $48,100, compared to $8,377 for other departments, excluding LAPD, LAFD and DOT. [/blockquote]

Due to budget problems, the California Senate cut its budget 4 percent. The Times reported:

After years of turning down cost-of-living increases for its budget, the state Senate on Friday notified its workforce that 39 employees will be laid off at the end of the year to avoid a multi-million-dollar deficit, a cut of about 4% of the total staff in the upper house. 

Fifty other positions are being cut through attrition and employees will pay about $30 a month more for health care insurance premiums, officials said.

The good news:

• Fewer functionaries living off us with massive pay, perks and pensions.
• Fewer functionaries to write bills increasing our taxes.
• Fewer functionaries to write bills controlling and repressing us.

Now, if they just could get lay off the other 96 percent in the Senate and 100 percent in the Assembly and the executive and judicial branches.

Last week, in the lawsuit targeting the arena deal orchestrated by Mayor Kevin Johnson, a former NBA star, Sacramento Superior Court Judge Eugene Balonon had issued a tentative order on the depositions. But he said he would deliberate a little longer on the case law before issuing a final ruling.

The judge's order issued Tuesday supports petitioners’ requests that they be allowed to depose McCarty and Rhinehart.

The plaintiffs are a group of citizens known as STOP (Sacramento Taxpayers Opposed to Pork) who are fighting the arena subsidy deal. According to the lawsuit filed by STOP, the city subsidy is actually $338 million — not the $258 million the city claims.

STOP has tried to get the details of the arena deal and purchase of the Sacramento Kings to be made public.

'Undiscoverable, privileged' information?

The attorney for the defendants insisted in court and in legal filings that the information the petitioners seek from McCarty and Rhinehart is “undiscoverable, privileged information.”

“The court disagrees,” wrote Judge Balanon. “Defendants have not met their burden in asserting this privilege as to Councilman McCarty.”

An order protecting Rhinehart from being deposed was also denied by the judge.

Deposition notices were sent to city officials in September. But according to the plaintiff's attorney, Patrick Soluri, the mayor and city officials have engaged in various avoidance tactics, including filing numerous objections to deposition notices, rolling demurrers, and refusing to comply with a court order directing them to reschedule a further hearing. Soluri said these were stall tactics designed solely to delay the inevitable discovery until after the city’s expected formal approval of the arena in April.

“Defendants request for a stay of all discovery pending a ruling on another demur is DENIED,” the judge wrote in Tuesday's ruling.

Following the hearing last Thursday, Sacramento Bee columnist Marcos Breton ridiculed the lawsuit.

“Did you hear about the 'secret deal' between the city of Sacramento and the Kings? It’s supposedly a backroom, off-the-books, under-the-radar, 'sweetener' that was cooked up secretly between city officials and Kings owners. It would secretly provide hidden subsidies from the city to the Kings for the purpose of secretly making the Kings owners financially whole for 'overpaying' to buy one of the worst franchises in the NBA.”

essay to buyToday Breton may be eating crow for lunch. He's openly championed the arena deal and mocked anyone opposed to it.

Councilman McCarty has consistently opposed the arena deal. He sent a letter to City Manager John Shirey and the news media last February, challenging the use of public money for an arena, questioning whether the city would get a return on its investment and asking who would be accountable if revenues don't meet expenses.

Ballot initiative on subsidy

Beyond the legal challenge to the city’s deal, there is also a ballot initiative petition to require a public vote on any public subsidy for a professional sports franchise.  The petition signatures are currently being counted.

However, it appears Mayor Johnson and the City Council will attempt to moot the result of that vote by pushing up their approvals of the arena prior to the June vote that would thereafter require voter approval.  Approval of the deal and related bond sales were previously scheduled for summer or fall 2014.

See recent CalWatchdog stories covering the Sacramento arena deal here, here, here  and here.

And go here for all of the CalWatchdog stories on the arena deal.

There was no fast break at a recent court date concerning a suit by Sacramento activists opposed to tax subsidies for a new arena. The activists are Issac Gonzalez, James Cathcart and Julian Camacho.

CalWatchdog.com attended the Dec. 19 hearing before Judge Eugene Balonon, who was expected to decide the case one way or another. Instead, the judge postponed the hearing date out to Jan. 9, 2014.

Just before that date, the plaintiffs and their attorneys, Patrick Soluri and Jeffrey Anderson, hope to be deposing the defendants, Mayor Kevin Johnson, City Manager John Shirey, Deputy City Manager John Dangberg and other city officials. The deposition dates are on Jan. 6, 7 and 8.

“I think we are starting to see the light at the end of the tunnel where we can actually start engaging in some serious discovery to obtain evidence to support the allegations we have made,” said attorney Anderson after the hearing. The attorneys said they are trying to force city officials and staff to reveal an alleged secret deal.

“We believe that will develop additional evidence that we can then take and do further depositions of other city officials and other document request,” Anderson said.

The lawsuit accuses the officials of making a secret deal with arena investors to provide an extra $80 million of public money to help an investors’ group beef up an offer against a Seattle group vying for the Sacramento Kings professional basketball team. Instead of a $258 million subsidy, as the city claims, the city allegedly was really going to deliver $338 million for the arena, according to the lawsuit. In the lawsuit’s wording from its May filing:

“Rather than risk a groundswell of public opposition that would be generated by accurately disclosing the combined subsidies for the arena and purchase of the Kings franchise, Mayor Johnson, Mr. Shirey and Mr. Dangberg determined that it was more politically expedient to simply misrepresent to the taxpayers the true value of the city’s subsidies.”

The entire case file is available at Sacramento Superior Court services.

Response

In response, Mayor Johnson, a former NBA player, the other plaintiffs and their attorneys insist the information the petitioners seek is “undiscoverable, privileged information.” According to a search on the Court website, they claim the discovery “is not permissible.” And they insist:

Solura said of the judge’s ruling on the depositions, “It informed the city that these stunts and tricks to prevent us from getting to discovery will simply not be tolerated anymore.”

The court documents tell the other side, that of the mayor and the other respondents, who maintained:

“Despite the pending demurrer, Petitioners began conducting discovery, but later conceded that their proposed discovery would not assist them in alleging a ripe claim. In light of this irrelevant discovery, respondents were forced to seek – and obtain – a stay of discovery pending its demurrer. A short time later, this Court agreed that the Petition did not raise a justiciable controversy but granted Petitioners leave to amend.”

Initiative

The court case also is competing on time with an initiative aimed at forestalling the arena. Gonzalez is the campaign manager for the group, Voters for a Fair Arena Deal. Reported the Sacramento Business Journal of the signatures the group gathered, “ ‘The overwhelming majority should be approved,’ Gonzalez said, pointing out another group involved in the effort, Sacramento Taxpayers Opposed to Pork, initially said they’d collected over 40,000 signatures, but the total submitted only ended up around 34,000. ‘There was an exhaustive scrubbing going on at the end.’”

The groups working for a ballot measure used a validation service before submitting the 34,000 signatures and think their valid signature percentage will be high, according to a recent Sacramento Business Journal story.

However, reported the Bee, “So far, the council has only tentatively approved the financing plan, and a vote on issuing the bonds won’t come until next spring. What isn’t known is whether the subsidy issue will come to a public vote in June.”

Public funds

The City of Sacramento’s approval of a term sheet on the arena deal “constitutes the illegal expenditure of public funds,” according to the lawsuit. Despite the city calling the term sheet “non-binding,” Gonzalez et al. argue the city has already “committed monies to the hiring of consultants and other services.”

Mayor Johnson and city officials approved the $447.7 million arena deal at the Downtown Plaza in March, insisting it was a public-private partnership, with the private contributions amounting to only about one-third of the deal.

The lawsuit also alleges the public subsidy will enrich the Sacramento Investor Group, at the expense to taxpayers. The Sacramento Investor Group purchased the Sacramento Kings NBA franchise.

In response, the mayor and other backers of the arena cite a city-sponsored study saying the arena will bring $7 billion in economic benefits to the city over 50 years. “That includes spinoffs such as sales at restaurants and hotels, as well as $6.7 million in taxes,” according to a Sacramento Bee story.

Sacramento’s publicly funded arena deal has been billed as “the largest redevelopment project in city history” in Sacramento, as CalWatchDog.com explained in an article.

Voters in 2006: ‘No’

However, for more than 13 years, there have been numerous attempts to gain city approval for a new, publicly subsidized arena. Sacramento voters even turned down two ballot measures in 2006 that would have approved a public subsidy through a ¼-cent sales tax.

In 2011, Johnson formed an “independent” non-profit group to develop the new arena. The “Think Big Sacramento” group conducted a bold public relations campaign to push the publicly subsidized arena plan.

But Johnson’s group turned out to be so closely linked to the Sacramento Kings organization, the Fair Political Practices Commission fined him $37,500 for his failure to report more than $3.5 million in “behest” payments from the Kings. According to the FPPC, “[T]hese payments are not considered campaign contributions or gifts, but are payments made at the ‘behest’ of elected officials to be used for legislative, governmental or charitable purposes.”

Freshman Assemblyman Ian Calderon, D-Whittier, authored two bills in 2013, AB 344 and AB 533, involving the movie industry.

His uncle, Ron Calderon, D-Montbello,  is the chairman of the Senate Select Committee on California’s Film and Television Industries. He stands accused of offering to help provide a state tax credit for films that cost less than a $1 million.

The younger Calderon went one for two. AB 344 did not pass and was shelved. It would have authorized the Labor Commissioner to collect into the existing Entertainment Work Permit Fund from child actors, and use the proceeds from this fund to pay the costs of administrating and enforcing the permit  program.

But AB 533 was passed by both houses of the Legislature, and was signed into law in August by Gov. Jerry Brown. AB 533 “exempts an employer of a minor under a contract for services as an extra, background performer, or in a similar capacity from the requirement that the employer set aside 15% of the minor’s gross earnings in trust for the benefit of the minor,” the bill analysis said.

The bill’s support came from BizParentz Foundation, Children in Film, Inc., Entertainment Partners, and The Actors Fund of America.

Affidavit shows case against older Calderon

An FBI affidavit obtained by Al Jazzera America detailed alleged bribe-taking by Ron Calderon.

“Undercover FBI agents posed as independent movie executives interested in taking advantage of a program in which films with budgets of $1 million or more are eligible for special tax credits,” Al Jazeera reported. “The agents, focusing on Calderon, asked the senator to help lower the budget threshold to $500,000. Calderon, who chairs the Senate Select Committee on California’s Film and Television Industries, agreed to help lower it to $750,000 but wanted financial assistance provided to his grown children, the affidavit says.”

The document alleges that Calderon accepted $60,000 for bribes from an FBI agent posing as a Los Angeles film producer, to help change a tax credit law and hire a woman posing as the agent’s girlfriend as a Senate staffer, the affidavit says.

“According to the affidavit, the FBI agent gave Calderon $30,000 for work the senator’s daughter never did,” the Los Angeles Times reported. “In return, Calderon offered to help provide a state tax credit for films that cost less than a $1 million. The FBI agent alleges he made another $30,000 in payment to Calderon for hiring his ‘girlfriend’ to work on his office staff. The woman was actually an FBI agent.”

AB 533 passed the Senate floor five days after Sen. Ron Calderon’s office was raided by the FBI. Ron Calderon voted in favor of nephew Ian’s bill.

But that decision was tossed and other “officials” voted to adopt a “temporary fix” to the new bridge, to meet the Labor Day opening. We don’t yet know what the “temporary fix” is.

In March, one third of the 96 threaded steel rods cracked as workers tightened them down.

When confronted by reporters in May with the new construction setbacks, Gov. Jerry Brown said, “Don’t know if it’s a setback. I mean, look, s**t happens.”

Will “s**t happen” again? The cracked bolts weren’t the first problem with the new bridge, under construction since the 1989 Loma Prieta earthquake.

The oversight committee is made up of state and local transportation officials. A permanent fix to the bolts will be ready in mid-December.

The bridge oversight committee voted to reestablish the Labor Day opening at a meeting last week. The old Bay Bridge bridge closes at 8 p.m. on Wednesday, August 29 and the new span will open to commuter traffic by 5 a.m. on Tuesday, September 3.

A legacy on the line

With his legacy on the line, Brown is banking on several major infrastructure projects: The $25 billion Delta twin water tunnels, the $68 billion high-speed rail, and the $6.4 billion new eastern span of the San Francisco/Oakland Bay Bridge.

Brown has  been banking on the bridge project since he was Mayor of Oakland, 1999-2007.

Brown has justified the massive infrastructure projects because California “is in a building mood.”

Cost overruns have escalated the total cost to build the bridge to a whopping $6.4 billion, $4 billion over the original estimate.

After the 1989 earthquake, Caltrans decided to retrofit both the eastern and western spans of the bridge. “The 1.8-mile western span retrofit was completed early last year at a cost $471 million — which was $82 million less than originally budgeted,” the San Francisco Examiner reported.

However, the eastern span is $4 billion over budget, and a decade behind schedule. But that’s not the only problem.

According to CBS San Francisco in May, retired Bechtel metallurgist Yun Chung prepared an unsolicited 32-page report stating that Caltrans engineers “were ignorant to the threat of hydrogen embrittlement — a process in which high strength metals, such as steel, become brittle and fracture due to hydrogen exposure.” He said Caltrans “fell on its face.”

Caltrans with egg on its face

In May, I wrote a story offering a little history and perspective about the post-Loma Prieta earthquake damage:

Immediately after the Loma Prieta earthquake in 1989, the civil construction bridge building contractor, C.C. Myers of Rancho Cordova, rebuilt two damaged bridges on Highway 1 near Watsonville under budget, and ahead of schedule.

Caltrans allowed only 100 days for completion of the project, and offered Meyers cash incentives to make the project happen under budget, and ahead of schedule. Meyers finished the job 45 days earlier than the Caltrans deadline, and earned $1 million in incentives.

In 1994, the Northridge earthquake in Southern California, 6.7 on the Richter Scale, damaged four bridges on the Santa Monica Freeway in Los Angeles. Myers’ successes with the projects after the Loma Prieta earthquake made his company a natural for this project.

C.C. Myers, Inc. won the contract to replace and replace the freeways with one caveat: the work had to be completed in 140 days. But this was L.A., notorious for congested freeways. The State of California offered Meyers $200,000 per day as a bonus for every day ahead of schedule the project was completed. Meyers’ company finished the job in 66 days, 74 days ahead of schedule, and received a $14.8 million bonus for his outstanding work.

Experts said Myers managed to perform what would have taken Caltrans 18 months of work, in only 66 days.

Caltrans leadership

Matthew Dougherty was just reconfirmed as Caltrans Director, by the Senate in May. It was a controversial decision because it’s been under Dougherty’s watch, with decades of management at Caltrans, many mishaps, corruption, mistakes and cover ups, have taken place. Dougherty’s behind is on the line with the re-opening of the Bay Bridge next Tuesday. But more are worried about long-term structural safety, well beyond Tuesday.

Have taxpayers actually purchased the $6.4 billion bridge they were promised, or a structure that will require costly repairs relatively soon?

Caltrans receives failing marks on other projects as well. A January report from the California League of Cities , California State Association of Counties and other transportation organizations found only 56 percent of California’s local streets and roads were deemed to be in “good” condition, and 49 of the state’s 58 counties were rated “At Risk” or in “Poor’ condition.

But hey, “s**t happens.”

By Katy Grimes

What would Cesar Chavez say? The iconic co-founder of the United Farm Workers union organized across California to improve farm laborers’ pay, benefits and working conditions. Cesar Chavez Day is a state holiday on March 31.

Now the UFW is resisting its own employees’ efforts to improve their situation. In the middle proudly stands longtime UFW ally, Assemblyman Luis Alejo, D-Salinas, who has tried to intervene and mediate for the two sides. But the union bosses are rebuffing his attempts to mediate another neutrality agreement.

UFW split

Last month, farm workers in the Salinas and Watsonville area protested in front of the UFW’s Salinas headquarters over the firing of several organizers, and charged that farm workers were inadequately represented. Joining the protest were some UFW employees, who charged the UFW management and bosses with preventing the employees from forming or belonging to their own union separate from the UFW. For now, the protesters have no official organization or Web site.

Claiming that some of the UFW employees (not the protesters) had been threatened and harassed, the UFW asked a judge to put a halt to such protests. The UFW successfully filed a restraining order on its own employees to keep them from protesting in front of the UFW office, and from organizing, according to the Inland Valley Daily Bulletin. It took an appeal by the UFW employees for the restraining order to be overturned by a higher judge.

Luis Alejo

I talked with Alejo about the union split and whether he would intervene. The son of Salinas farm workers, while giving speeches and in Assembly floor debates Alejo expresses impassioned concern for farm workers and their families.

Alejo told me he had been asked by both sides of the UFW to mediate for them last fall. He said he mediated 11 hours one day, 14 hours the next, and helped the two sides hammer out a neutrality agreement. That’s a contract between a union and an employer under which the employer agrees to support a union’s attempt to organize its workforce. In this case, the contract involved the UFW and its employees.

UFW employees speak

The road to organization within the United Farm Workers union has been wrought with obstacles and roadblocks for the UFW employees.

I interviewed two of the organizing UFW employees. Both said they had been so harassed by the UFW for participating in the organizing that they would not allow their names to be used in the story out of fear of future targeted harassment. One of the UFW employees said that, after months of harassment and trumped up workplace discipline, he was fired by the UFW. The second employee still works for the union and fears for her job.

The first employee did not speak English, and used a translator for our discussions. He said he was a field worker for many years, and worked for many good employers, but the UFW was not one of the good ones.

He said the fight between UFW management and UFW employees was only because the employees wanted their own union contract. But the request was met with so much vehemence, the 33 original UFW employees who requested the union contract have been whittled down to 21. Twelve have been terminated or felt they were forced out.

On October 12, 2012, the 33 UFW employees approached three UFW board members after a board meeting, and told them they wanted a union contract.

“We were told, ‘We are the employer, you are the workers,'” the second UFW employees told me. “We thought the union had an understanding of our rights to want a contract,” she said. “They have done this for 50 years [negotiating with large food companies employing farm laborers]; they should have known better.”

Alejo now a ‘contra’

UFW employees heard one UFW director tell Alejo, “I’d tell you to go f*** yourself if you weren’t a legislator.”

“They no longer care about the worker; they are blinded by greed and power,” she added.

“Luis’s role is pro-worker,” she said, referring to Alejo. “He has seen the injustice we’ve gone through. He has been neutral, but stands up for the worker. The UFW now looks at him as a ‘contra.‘ In the eyes of the UFW, he’s the enemy.”

Capitol politics

In a surprising turn of events, earlier this month a controversial labor union bill, SB 25, by Senate President Pro Tem Darrell Steinberg, D-Sacramento, was killed in the Assembly Labor and Employment Committee. Usually, the Senate leader’s bills sail into passage.

Sponsored by the UFW, SB 25 would make numerous and dramatic changes to the mandatory mediation process added to the Agricultural Labor Relations Act in 2002. It would have permitted an agricultural union to serve a request for mandatory mediation upon an agriculture employer to demand bargaining immediately, and forego existing requirements in the law currently used to invoke the mandatory mediation process.

In other words, the UFW would have been granted rights no other labor union has.

Alejo did not vote on the bill, which caused quite an uproar in the already split UFW in Salinas, Alejo’s home turf.

Alejo told the Salinas Californian he had concerns about the bill and had reached out to the union prior to the hearing. “We had a meeting set up for Tuesday [prior to the vote] and [the UFW] canceled,” Alejo said. Shortly after the vote, the UFW was protesting at Alejo’s Capitol office.

UFW bosses’ salaries

The ironic battle between the UFW management and its employees is at the heart of the legal challenges. The UFW employees said Cesar Chavez was a volunteer, and only received a stipend for expenses. But today’s UFW Board of Directors are paid generous salaries.

“UFW President Arturo Rodriguez is paid $105,000 a year,” the UFW employees told me. “Sergio Guzman, the union secretary, makes even more — $110,000 a year.” The UFW offices would not confirm the salaries.

But I was able to independently confirm the UFW Salinas salaries through the California Office of Labor. And UnionFacts reports Rodriguez made $88,379 in 2012. But in 2010 he was paid $125,000, and $105,000 in 2011.

Guzman was paid $105,000 in 2010, and $110,000 in 2011. In 2012, Guzman was paid $85,661.

Union vs. employees

Patrick Semmens with the National Right to Work Committee said it’s not all that uncommon to see a union turn against its own employees when they want to organize. “It shows the hypocrisy that goes on,” Semmens said. “Any possible opposition or skepticism of unions is seen as union busting. But when the shoe is on the other foot, they are the ones calling the horrible names.”

Semmens said unions demonize employers and talk about employee choice, but finds it hypocritical that the UFW won’t let its own employees organize. “This shows they are really only after the dues,” Semmens said.

“They’ve lost focus,” the two UFW employees from Salinas told me. “UFW workers used to do the jobs for the injustice — for farm workers. Now it’s big business.”

By Katy Grimes

SACRAMENTO — A Sacramento couple recently had their baby ripped from their arms at their home by Sacramento Child Protective Services workers, with the help of local police, after telling a Sacramento hospital they wanted a second opinion on treatment for their baby.

According to the family, Anna Nikolayev tried to leave Sutter Memorial Hospital and take her baby Sammy, 5 months old, to another hospital for a second opinion, when she was threatened with a call to the CPS. Sammy was born with a serious heart condition. After a nurse at Sutter Memorial tried to give Sammy medicine that a doctor later explained should not have been administered, Anna became nervous about the quality of Sammy’s care. She expressed her desire to receive a second opinion from another doctor.

Anna Nikolayev said she didn’t like the care Sammy was receiving from Sutter, and felt the doctors and nurses were “pressing us to do surgery.” She was told by the hospital workers, “You are free to leave this hospital, but your baby is not.” The hospital refused to discharge Sammy.  And they notified the CPS.

Anna put Sammy in his stroller, left Sutter Memorial and went directly to Kaiser Hospital. She met with a doctor there who said Sammy was free to go home, and didn’t need immediate surgery. The second doctor wrote that Sammy was cleared to go home with his parents. “I do not have concern for the safety of the child at home with his parents,” the Kaiser doctor wrote in the medical release from the hospital.

CPS shows up

The next day, CPS and the police showed up at the family’s home, claimed they had a warrant and the authority to take Sammy. Anna asked to see the warrant, but the authorities wouldn’t show it to her. What they had was a CPS order, generated in their offices, not a court order signed by a judge.  Thanks to Anna’s quick thinking, there is a home video of this abusive government action, in which one police officer can be heard telling Anna, “I’m going to grab your baby and don’t resist and don’t fight me, okay?”

Second doctor’s note

The Nikolayevs showed police the note from the second doctor, but to no avail. Police forced Alex Nikolayev to the ground. “This is like living under communist regime,” Nikolayev told News 10 the next day, as shown in the above YouTube. He and Anna are immigrants from Russia, which for 74 years was run by a communist government.

CPS took the baby away, claiming “severe neglect.” Sutter Memorial released a media statement explaining the qualifications of the doctors and nurses, but said, “Our nurses and physicians are bound by law to call Child Protective Services if they believe a pediatric patient’s health is in danger.”

Lawmaker wants audit of CPS

Assemblyman Donnelly is now demanding an audit of Child Protective Services.

Donnelly first contacted a Deputy Director at CPS. “The first question I asked them is, ‘Are these parents abusive? Do you suspect that they are guilty of neglect or something along those lines.’ And they said, ‘Absolutely not; 99.9 percent these are just normal parents.’ And I said then, ‘What the Hell are you doing?'”

Donnelly said CPS told him, “We don’t answer to Assemblymen.”

Donnelly wrote a letter to Sherri Heller, CPS Director, demanding to know under what authority was CPS acting by removing Sammy from the Nikolayev home for seeking a second medical opinion.

Heller responded to Donnelly in a two-page letter filled with legal codes justifying the CPS decision to take the Nikolayev baby:

“The law is clear: if there is imminent risk of serious harm to the child and there is insufficient time to obtain a court order to remove the child from the care of the parents, the social worker or law enforcement officer can remove the child. The legal term is ‘exigent circumstances.’…

“The laws and policies that guide agency practice are designed to ensure that there are adequate protections for the rights of everyone involved, while placing priority on children’s health, safety, and well-being.” 

“I am shocked and appalled an agency of Sacramento County would go so far to remove a child from the care of his able and loving parents,” Donnelly said.

On June 5 at 9 a.m. there will be a rally for the baby on the South steps of the State Capitol led by Donnelly. After that, he will lead a 10 a.m. hearing to audit the policies and procedures of the Sacramento County Child Protective Services regarding child seizures.

By Katy Grimes

The Caltrans Bay Bridge debacle is worse than just a case of embarrassment for government infrastructure projects. The bridge is unsafe, according to engineering experts across the country, after the discovery that a third of the of the 96 massive, high-strength steel rods, installed for seismic safety, cracked under pressure when the nuts affixed to the rods were tightened.

Under construction for more than a decade, the Bay Bridge project has not only taken much longer to build than planned, but cost overruns have escalated the total cost to build it to a whopping $6.4 billion. And that’s not the half of it.

According to CBS San Francisco, retired Bechtel metallurgist Yun Chung recently prepared an unsolicited 32-page report stating that Caltrans engineers “were ignorant to the threat of hydrogen embrittlement — a process in which high strength metals, such as steel, become brittle and fracture due to hydrogen exposure.” He said Caltrans “fell on its face.”

Chung, who specialized in high-strength steel analysis for the nuclear power industry, reported that Caltrans only focused on the hydrogen effects during the production process.

This is the result of the close alliances between government and public employee labor unions which make the purpose of the work appear secondary to union interests, even when public safety is involved.

1989 Loma Prieta earthquake

The Loma Prieta Earthquake, 7.1 on the Richter Scale, which caused the Oakland Bay Bridge to break, took place 24 years ago in 1989.  During the 15-second earthquake, the freeway buckled and twisted, causing the support columns to break. The upper freeway deck crashed onto the lower deck; 41 people were crushed to death in their cars.

Today, 24 years later, the Oakland Bay Bridge is still under construction.

In 1989, George H.W. Bush was President, Margaret Thatcher was Prime Minister of the United Kingdom, the Soviet Union finally left Afganastan, the Exxon Valdez spilled 11 million gallons of oil in Alaska’s Prince William Sound, and students from Beijing, Shanghai, Xian and Nanjing protested in Tiananmen Square.

Mortgage interest rates hit 15 percent, and California’s minimum wage was $4.25.

1989 seems like a lifetime ago. And Caltrans has been working on the Bay bridge the entire time.

Free market infrastructure successes

Immediately after the Loma Prieta earthquake in 1989, the civil construction bridge building contractor, C.C. Myers of Rancho Cordova, rebuilt two damaged bridges on Highway 1 near Watsonville under budget, and ahead of schedule.

Caltrans allowed only 100 days for completion of the project, and offered Meyers cash incentives to make the project happen under budget, and ahead of schedule. Meyers finished the job 45 days earlier than the Caltrans deadline, and earned $1 million in incentives.

That’s the free market at work.

Myers rebuilt the Santa Monica freeway the same way after the 1994 Northridge earthquake.

1994 Northridge earthquake

In 1994, the Northridge earthquake in Southern California, 6.7 on the Richter Scale, damaged four bridges on the Santa Monica Freeway in Los Angeles. Myers’ successes with the projects after the Loma Prieta earthquake made his company a natural for this project.

C.C. Myers, Inc. won the contract to replace and replace the freeways with one caveat: the work had to be completed in 140 days. But this was L.A., notorious for congested freeways. The State of California offered Meyers $200,000 per day as a bonus for every day ahead of schedule the project was completed. Meyers’ company finished the job in 66 days, 74 days ahead of schedule, and received a $14.8 million bonus for his outstanding work.

Experts said Myers managed to perform what would have taken Caltrans 18 months of work, in only 66 days.

C.C. Myers is a shining example of the free market. “Six years ago, C.C. Myers and his team proved dramatically that if bureaucracy will simply get out of the way, we can build highways cheaply, quickly and safely,” Rep. Tom McClintock said in year 2000 at a press conference, commenting about the rapid opening of the freeways.

Bay Bridge debacle

Compare these two fantastically successful projects with Caltrans’ handling of the Oakland Bay Bridge project —  years behind schedule and billions of dollars over budget, along with all of the other malfeasance, dishonesty, payola, and shadiness I wrote about recently in, “Despite Caltrans boondoggles, acting director to be confirmed.”

“In March, anchor bolts meant to secure seismic equipment on the new bridge broke — an event attributed partly to water-induced corrosion,” the Sacramento Bee reported. “Caltrans similarly failed to take basic precautions to protect many skyway tendons from water even after the agency completed its study. Those lapses and others, said nine leading experts in the corrosion of bridge tendons, introduced uncertainty about the durability of the skyway.”

“Experts said that while a total collapse seemed unlikely, if Caltrans miscalculated corrosion estimates a major quake could cripple sections of the skyway.”

The Bee continued: “Experts agreed that strong skyway foundations and piers, plus the factor of safety — ’10 percent extra tendons,’ according to Caltrans — make a disastrous collapse of the bridge improbable, even in a devastating quake.”

But if tendons are more corroded than Caltrans’ study indicates, said Hawkins of the University of Illinois, a massive temblor might render one or more sections of the skyway unusable.

Another looming question, experts said, is whether taxpayers have purchased the $6.4 billion bridge they were promised, or a structure that will require costly repairs relatively soon.

Caltrans Director Matthew Dougherty was just reconfirmed by the Senate. It’s under Dougherty’s watch and decades in management at Caltrans that many mishaps, corruption, mistakes and cover ups have taken place.

Caltrans officials know C.C. Myers would have had this project wrapped up years ago, delivered under budget and ahead of schedule.  It is not too late to bring them in to clean up this mess.

By Katy Grimes

SACRAMENTO — A corruption exemption remains in Assembly Bill 173, by Assemblywoman Shirley Weber, D-San Diego. But calls I made to all the members of the Accountability and Administrative Review committee, which had reviewed the bill, indicated resistance by some Assembly members.

As I wrote earlier this week, the bill would increase the amount of money California’s public universities and colleges could spend without adhering to the state-required competitive bidding process. Weber also amended the bill to exempt state employees from felony charges of corruption under the public contract code.

The amendment was added to the bill after it had already gone through the Accountability and Administrative Review committee. This should be a no-no because doing so circumvented vetting by the committee. 

Calling committee members

Since my first article, I called each of the committee members and asked if they would vote in favor of the bill if it made it to the floor of the Assembly, even with the amendment. Most said they would not. Several said they would have to talk with the author. A couple of the committee members did not call me back.  The committee chairman, Assemblyman Jim Frazier, D-Oakley, had the committee consultant call me back. “Almost all of the amendments were cost-driven,” Bill Herms said in a voice mail message to me. “They are  looking to bring down the costs of the bill.”

I also called Weber, the bill’s author, to ask why the amendment was made, what was the purpose, and why it was put into the bill long after the policy committee heard and approved the bill.

I did not hear back from her office before my original story was published on Monday. On Tuesday, her office called to tell me a quote they had sent me in an email bounced back. They asked for my correct email. I gave it and waited. Still no email, or response. And even when they had me on the phone asking for my email address, her office did not answer any of my questions.

Appropriations Committee

At the Assembly Appropriations Committee Wednesday, Weber’s AB 173 once again was heard. Fortunately this time, Assemblywoman Diane Harkey, R-Dana Point, asked Weber about the amendment, and why it was made. Before Harkey could even complete her question, Weber interjected that she was removing the amendment. “We were asked to include it, as a request,” Weber told the Committee. “It is going to be eliminated.”

But Weber did not say who asked her to put the amendment in AB 173 which would have exempted state college and university employees from corruption prosecution under the California Public Contracts Code.

I called Weber’s office again to ask who requested the Amendment, but was told no one was available to take my call; nor was my phone call returned.

The newest version of AB 173 still includes the corruption exemption for state employees.

Wednesday, Weber made the bill sound as if its purpose was to support small business and disabled veterans.

A new bill analysis, published by the Appropriations Committee May 15, explained the fiscal effect:

“To the extent UC, CSU, and community college campuses use this authority, contract costs could increase if only two small businesses or two DVBEs were solicited rather than allowing all potential vendors to competitively bid on the contracts. Any additional costs should be largely offset due to administrative cost savings in soliciting quotations rather than preparing bid documents, advertising for bids, and receiving, evaluating and awarding competitive bids on relatively small contracts.”

(The new analysis so far only is available here, and is not found on the Assembly website)

Corruption potential

Allowing state employees to no-bid public contracts up to $250,000 is rife with opportunities for corruption, cronyism, favoritism and malfeasance; $250,000 is a significant amount of money. Ten $25,000 cars could be purchased for $250,000. Fifty small printing jobs could be bought for $250,000. A great deal of travel could be bought for $250,000.

But amazingly, there is nothing in the newest analysis about exempting UC or CSU employees from charges of corruption should the “bidding on relatively small contracts” go really wrong, or should real corruption take place.

The state is hardly transparent when it comes to monitoring state agency contracts.

California received an “F” grade when it comes to government spending transparency, according to “Following the Money 2013: How the States Rank on Providing Online Access to Government Spending Data,” the fourth annual report of its kind by the CALPIRG Education Fund.

Recently, the nonpartisan Sunlight Foundation gave California a “D” grade on its transparency report card on how it made legislative information available to the public.

Demonstrating how he feels about transparency, Gov. Jerry Brown shut down California’s old transparency website in 2011. Information on state contracts is now managed by the Department of General Services eProcurement branch in a fox-guarding-the-henhouse scenario.