With a supermajority, Democrats would be able to increase taxes, override gubernatorial vetoes and send measures to the ballot without Republican support. Democrats need two seats in the Assembly and one in the Senate in order to hold a supermajority — both chambers are a must.

Holding in the Senate

Around 2 a.m., Republicans were holding their seats in the Senate. The biggest question mark was the Southern California seat held by Bob Huff, the termed-out, former Republican leader. However, Republican Assemblywoman Ling Ling Chang led Democrat Josh Newman, 51.6 percent to 46.4.

But Republicans were behind in their best chance to pickup in the Senate, in the seat held by termed-out Sen. Carol Liu, D-La Cañada Flintridge, where Mike Antonovich, a termed-out Los Angeles County supervisor, trailed Democratic former Assemblyman Anthony Portantino by almost nine percentage points.

Losing in the Assembly

In the Assembly, Democrats were ahead in a few competitive interparty races. In the Los Angeles South Bay, Republican Assemblyman David Hadley trailed the man he knocked out of office in 2014, Al Muratsuchi, by almost seven points.

In another rematch from 2014, Young Kim, the Orange County Republican incumbent, trailed Sharon Quirk-Silva by just a few hundred votes. 

Democratic challenger Sabrina Cervantes had a slight, two-point lead over Eric Linder, the Republican incumbent, in this south Inland Empire district.

But some Republican incumbents were holding their ground. In yet another rematch, this time in the Antelope Valley, Republican Assemblyman Tom Lackey led Democrat Steve Fox, who Lackey bested in 2014 by 13 points. 

In San Bernardino County, Republican incumbent Marc Steinorth was pulling away from challenger Abigail Medina, a Democrat. Steinorth led by five points.

And Catharine Baker, the only Republican incumbent in the Legislature from the Bay Area, beat back challenger Cheryl Cook-Kallio by nearly a dozen points to retain her seat.  

The Baker seat was considered a the top target for Speaker Anthony Rendon, D-Paramount. In fact, President Barack Obama endorsed Baker’s Democratic challenger, Cook-Kallio, as well as three others: Newman, Medina and Muratsuchi. 

None of these competitive seats were called by the time this story was published, so the results may change. We’ll update accordingly. 

Editor’s Note: This story was originally published on July 19.

Republicans in the state Legislature are thought to have a challenging election cycle this year. The outcome in November will determine whether the GOP has enough seats in the state Assembly and state Senate to maintain relevance in legislative matters.

Many factors are contributing to the angst, not the least of which is that Donald Trump as the GOP nominee is a wild card. No one knows yet how the reality T.V. star and real estate tycoon will affect down-ticket races — although Democrats are anticipating it will drag down GOP candidates. 

Regardless of the top of the ticket, this year looks to be tough for Republicans — who are largely hoping to just hold seats — as presidential election turnouts are generally more favorable to Democrats, when the electorate becomes more diverse. 

Republicans need to keep Democrats from achieving a two-thirds majority in the Assembly and Senate to have a meaningful impact on state lawmaking. Dipping below that line would mean losing their ability to weigh in on tax increases, gubernatorial veto overrides and legislatively-referred constitutional amendments — their last remaining points of legislative leverage.

To stay above a superminority, Republicans can afford to lose only one seat in the Assembly while Senate Republicans can’t afford to lose any.

Adding intrigue is the fact that it’s not just a war between the parties. The relatively new primary system where the top two candidates advance from the primary to the general election regardless of party has pitted some Democrats against each other, largely playing out proxy wars from outside interests. Of course in some races, a few candidates are termed-out of one chamber and aren’t ready to go home just yet.

Here are some of the top races to watch:

In the fight of their lives 

Catharine Baker, an East Bay Area Republican assemblywoman, led the primary 53.2 percent to 46.8 percent over Democrat Cheryl Cook-Kallio, a former Pleasanton City Council member. Baker is a the only Bay Area Republican in the legislature, so her seat is important both functionally and symbolically. 

Baker narrowly won the open seat in 2014 by about three points, and this time should be close too. Democrats in the district have a 10 percent registration advantage, with 24 percent of voters claiming no party preference. 

In one of several rematches, Republican Assemblyman David Hadley faces Democrat Al Muratsuchi, whom Hadley booted from office in 2014 by only 706 votes — or about 0.5 percentage points — in this Los Angeles south bay district.

In the June primary, Hadley received only 44.6 percent of the vote, with Muratsuchi and another Democrat splitting the majority. Democrats in the district enjoy a nine percentage point registration advantage, with 22 percent of voters claiming no party preference. Winning this seat was a major coup for the GOP in 2014, and retaining it would be as well.

Key holds

In the Antelope Valley, Republican Assemblyman Tom Lackey faces a strong challenge from the man he unseated in 2014, Democrat Steve Fox (who used to be a Republican). In 2014, Lackey destroyed Fox by 20 percentage points. But in the June primary, Lackey advanced with only 48.2 percent of the vote; three Democrats split the rest. Democrats have a six percentage point registration advantage with 19 percent of voters claiming no party preference. 

In the north Inland Empire, first-term Republican Assemblyman Marc Steinorth of Rancho Cucamonga finished second of two candidates in the primary behind Democrat Abigail Medina, a San Bernardino City Unified School District board member, trailing by three percentage points. Democrats have a one percentage point registration advantage with 22 percent of voters claiming no party preference.

And in the south Inland Empire, Republican Assemblyman Eric Linder — who is surprisingly supported by the SEIU, a formidable union — got only 45.6 percent of the vote in the primary with the rest split between two Democrats. In the general, Linder faces Democrat Sabrina Cervantes, the district director for Assemblyman Jose Medina. Democrats have a slight, two percentage point registration advantage with 21 percent of voters claiming no party preference.

Former Republican Senate Leader Bob Huff is termed out and Republican Assemblywoman Ling Ling Chang is hoping to fill Huff’s seat on the other side of the rotunda. Chang faces Democrat Josh Newman — a political neophyte who runs a non-profit aimed at helping veterans find employment — in this Orange County race.

Despite superior name recognition, Chang — the only Republican in the primary — drew 44 percent, while Newman and another Democrat nearly evenly split the majority. Republicans have a one percentage point registration advantage with 24 percent of voters declining to state a party preference.

Another rematch

Republican Assemblywoman Young Kim faces the woman she knocked off in 2014, Democrat Sharon Quirk-Silva, in this Orange County district.

Last cycle, Kim won by 10 percentage points. But in June, Quirk-Silva led the primary by 8.6 percentage points. And Democrats have a four percentage point registration advantage, with 23 percent of voters claiming no party preference.  

Competitive by chance

The race to replace the late Sen. Sharon Runner — the Republican incumbent from Lancaster — is wide open. Runner passed away in July, but had previously decided against running for re-election for health reasons (her second such decision). Runner won the seat in 2015 in a special election after Steve Knight won a Congressional seat. 

Republican Assemblyman Scott Wilk of Santa Clarita came in first in the primary with 46.7 percent of the vote over Johnathon Levar Ervin, an engineer and Air Force reservist, who drew 33.7 percent of the vote. Among four candidates, the results were almost evenly split with a slight edge to the Republicans, but voter registration in the district is closely split as well. Democrats have a two percentage point registration advantage with 21 percent of voters claiming no party preference. 

Republicans best shot to pickup

What would have otherwise been considered a noncompetitive Senate election to replace termed-out Democrat Carol Liu became competitive when longtime Los Angeles County Supervisor Mike Antonovich threw his hat in the ring.

Antonovich brings strong name recognition and a vast fundraising network from his more than 40 years in elected office, but he has a tough path forward having only won 39.5 percent of the vote in the primary. The rest of the vote was split among Democratic candidates, with former Assemblyman Anthony Portantino coming in second. Democrats have a 14 percentage point registration advantage with 24 percent of voters declining to state party preference. 

Dems v. Dems and the proxy wars

While this Silicon Valley election featuring two Democrats won’t affect whether or not there’s a supermajority, it may help fortify a group of business-friendly moderates. Incumbent Senator Jim Beall, of the liberal environmentalist ilk, is facing the more business-friendly Nora Campos, who is termed out of the Assembly.

This race is actually one of a few proxy wars between Big Environment vs. Big Oil, which have both spent considerable money in the race. Beall was a hair away from a majority of the vote in the primary.

So far Campos has stuck to the narrative that both Beall and Senate President Pro Tem Kevin de Leon, a Beall supporter, have bullied her. Campos said de Leon tried to dissuade her from running (party leaders generally dislike having to spend money and energy protecting incumbents from members of their own party). And Campos said Beall attacked her husband through a third party — as they say, it’s complicated.

A moderate Democrat is under fire in the Inland Empire, as incumbent Cheryl Brown faces attorney Eloise Reyes in this competitive Assembly district. Environmentalists and unions dislike Brown and have already spent big money opposing her through the primary, while Big Oil and charter schools have spent more than a half million dollars in support of Brown.

But surprisingly, word leaked that Senate President Pro Tempore Kevin de Leon — a powerful environmentalist — would be endorsing Brown. It’s unclear if this will have any effect on the race. 

In the primary, Brown received 44.1 percent of the vote to Reyes’ 35.6 percent. The Republican challenger received 20 percent of the vote, and how that’s divvied up could decide the race.

As CalWatchdog reported in April, supervisors had taken initial steps to mandate that the costs involved in collecting and disposing of unused prescription drugs and syringes be shifted from Los Angeles County to U.S. and international pharmaceutical companies.

The measure wasn’t justified with claims that these companies somehow had a moral and ethical responsibility to pay for disposal of their potentially dangerous products. Instead, officials asserted that it was a costly and difficult task that the county was ill-suited to handle. This type of trash is “one of the things we’re completely ill-equipped to take. … We just had one of our biggest days ever just a few months ago where we had almost 27 1/2 pounds of needles come through the line. The workers up there have leather gloves, but there are no gloves made that can stop a fine, little puncture from a needle,” a Burbank recylcing manager told KPCC.

Board disregards testimony of county health executive

But this week, three of five county supervisors went against the proposal, bucking the testimony of interim county Health Officer Jeffrey Gunzehauser, who linked ineffective drug disposal policies to the nation’s opiate overdose epidemic.

Instead, Supervisors Mark Ridley-Thomas, Don Knabe and Mike Antonovich accepted the pharmaceutical companies’ offer “to pay for an education and outreach program about existing take-back options and to explain how to dispose of unused medications in the trash, a method opposed by county public health officials,” the Los Angeles Times reported.

This didn’t sit well with the Sheila Kuehl and Hilda Solis, according to the Los Angeles Daily News. They wanted the program adopted and hold out hope it can be revived.

While the L.A. County plan is unusual, it has a precedent. In 2013, lawmakers and Gov. Jerry Brown enacted Senate Bill 254. The law requires mattress manufacturers “to create and manage a mattress recycling organization that will provide recycling services to municipalities for free. The program will be financed by a visible mattress recycling charge, or ‘eco-fee,’ which will be collected from consumers at the point of sale.”

Mattress manufacturers complained intensely about the law, but talk of a lawsuit was never followed up on.

These developments put project supporters on the spot in two different ways.

The Los Angeles hearing suggests attitudes about the bullet train in Los Angeles County are moving against the project. That’s what happened in Silicon Valley, where voters supported Proposition 1A in 2008 to provide $9.95 billion for a statewide bullet train system but shifted to intense opposition when the real-life effects of building a high-speed rail system through wealthy communities triggered a powerful, well-financed campaign to force the state to back off.

This and $30 billion in cost savings led Gov. Jerry Brown and the rail authority to adopt a “blended”plan in which high-speed rail would extend from Fresno to northern Los Angeles County, with slower rail on each end connecting riders to downtown San Francisco and downtown Los Angeles, respectively.

But after the rail authority decided last year to accelerate construction in Southern California, community opposition began to build. This has helped fray the loose coalition of the region’s politicians who have long supported the idea of a bullet-train system but are uncomfortable with the emerging specifics.

Is Antonovich’s proposal actually a ‘poison pill’?

Los Angeles County Supervisor Mike Antonovich — who once lobbied to make sure the bullet train’s route went through his district — now is the leading proponent of minimizing disruption to his district by tunneling through the San Gabriel Mountains for the train’s 15-mile Palmdale-to-Burbank link. Given that this would add billions of dollars in construction costs to a project that already can’t identify how it’s going to pay for its first $31 billion segment, that’s close to asking the rail authority to do the impossible. Such “poison pills” are one way for politicians to oppose a project in indirect fashion.

Antonovich’s 2014 proposal, in turn, led to concerns in January from two other elected Democrats who previously backed the bullet train project enthusiastically. This is from the Los Angeles Business Journal:

Rep. Adam Schiff came out in opposition on Thursday to a proposed alignment of the state’s high-speed rail project that would require a tunnel beneath the Angeles National Forest – damaging chances the plan will be carried out.

 

In a letter sent this month, Schiff, D-Burbank, and Rep. Judy Chu, D-El Monte, told California High Speed Rail Authority Dan Richard to scrap any consideration of a route under the San Gabriel Mountains between Palmdale and the San Fernando Valley because it would be harmful to the environment.

Wealthy environmentalists don’t like Antonovich’s plan. But some poor and middle-class homeowners of the San Fernando Valley don’t like the rail authority’s alternative, and they depict their fight as akin to David vs. Goliath. This is from Glendale resident Stephen Mills’ letter in Friday’s L.A. Times:

California High Speed Rail Authority board member Lou Correa said that he detected “a little bit of NIMBYism” regarding the reaction to bullet train plans. He should get used to it.

 

Affluent neighborhoods have successfully fought intrusive development that would have affected their quality of life, and now working-class neighborhoods are doing the same.

How much is CA project an Obama priority?

Meanwhile, in Washington, the House’s action to pull back federal funds from the state’s high-speed project may prove as consequential as the developments in Los Angeles County. The provision was included in the Transportation, Housing and Urban Development, and Related Agencies Appropriations Act for fiscal 2016, a multibillion-dollar measure that includes many provisions the White House supports.

If the Senate approves this funding bill, would President Obama actually veto it in the name of preserving federal grants to an embattled, increasingly unpopular project that would help only one of the 50 states?

That’s not clear. Doing so would likely prompt a sharp reaction from the Washington Post’s editorial page. It has long been a harsh critic of California’s project.

A 2011 editorial, headlined “California’s high-speed rail system is going nowhere fast,” noted that the state “hasn’t credibly identified a source of funds for the system” and questioned Gov. Jerry Brown’s enthusiasm for the project.

On Friday, President Obama carries his “executive orders” controversy to Southern California. In town since Thursday, he will redesignate half of the Angeles National Forest a national monument at the behest of Rep. Judy Chu, D-Monterey Park. According to the Los Angeles Times, “The designation will give the U.S. Forest Service greater ability to manage the crowds and protect its natural wonders.”

Chu is running for re-election against Republican Jack Orswell.

Republicans have criticized the president for using the executive orders to bypass Congress’s authority, under the U.S. Constitution, to pass laws.

In this case, Chu sponsored H.R. 4858, the San Gabriel National Recreational Area Act. Chu’s bill would designate the Angeles Forest a national recreation area, an even higher designation than a national monument.

But H.R. 4858 has been buried in the Public Lands and Environmental Regulation Subcommittee of the Committee on Natural Resources in the Republican-controlled U.S. House of Representatives. However, if Obama signs the executive order, the new national monument may have no increase in its appropriation of funds unless Congress approves Chu’s bill.

More funding would mean more forest rangers to police the huge litter problem in the mountain canyons of the forest today.

After one Labor Day weekend in 2011, 40,000 pounds of trash was picked up. And in 2014, three campers started the Colby Fire by throwing toilet paper into a campfire; then the wind scattered the embers.

Not vetted

Kathryn Barger, chief deputy to Los Angeles County Supervisor Michael Antonovich, said Chu’s proposal had not been fully vetted with all stakeholders.

Barger said Los Angeles County has camps, dams, reservoirs, roads and other public works inside the forest. About 33 percent of L.A.’s drinking water comes from the Angeles Forest watershed. Lake Castaic, the main reservoir for Los Angeles that is supplied by northern California water, is in the Angeles Forest.

“We welcome more resources,” said Barger. But the county has a lot of investment in the forest that might be wasted.  On Sept. 30, 2014, L.A. County sought to build a $600,000 water pipeline in a portion of the Forest.

Class warfare

According to the Times, environmentalists are cheering the executive order. But working-class locals are worried about losing access to a popular recreational area that also supports middle-class jobs.

In 2013, the San Gabriel Valley Tribune ran a story titled, “Mountain bikers, environmentalists clash over Angeles National Forest plan.” It reported, “For the past seven years, the the U.S. Forest Service has been attempting to find a way to protect 37 roadless areas while keeping the public happy.” It detailed discussions and hearings involving mountain bikers and environmentalists. Now Obama’s sudden designation of the area as a national monument short-circuits that democratic process.

Young people and families use the forest for a cheap recreation place instead driving down to the beach. But environmentalists want forest access limited.  The forest attracts 32 million visitors each year, more than Yosemite or Yellowstone national parks.

Mt. Baldy residents and businesses protested in front of Chu’s office on Oct. 6. The residents don’t want to live inside a national monument. They feel they would no longer be able to access their cabins in the forest, hunt, hike, bike and use off-road vehicles.  Thousands of Southern Californians travel to Mt. Baldy to enjoy the ski resort.

On Oct. 8, Chu announced only half of the forest would be designated a national monument, leaving out the Mt. Baldy area.

Funding

The result of Obama’s executive order will be a new national monument without any additional funding, but with legal restrictions imposed on access and use. Today, any parking along the roads through the forest requires a National Forest Adventure Pass.

However, L.A. County has declared that passes are not required on county maintained roads and other areas. That might end once the area declared a monument. The forest already is registered as California Historical Landmark No. 717.

President Benjamin Harrison established Angeles National Forest in 1893.

By Troy Anderson

In the early morning hours of Dec. 2, 2012, four people were found brutally shot and killed just outside an unlicensed boarding home in Northridge.

Not long afterward, four suspects allegedly involved in the crime were arrested at the Silverton Hotel and Casino in Las Vegas, according to a Los Angeles Police Department statement.

The primary suspect was Los Angeles resident Ka Pasasouk, 31, who was under the supervision of the Los Angeles County Probation Department, according to a motion Los Angeles County supervisors Michael D. Antonovich and Zev Yaroslavsky filed on Dec. 11 requesting a comprehensive report on the case.  Pasasouk, according to the LAPD, was charged with murder.

“Pasasouk is one of over 11,000 post-released supervised persons currently under the supervision of the Probation Department pursuant to [Gov. Jerry Brown’s] Public Safety Realignment program — AB 109,” Antonovich and Yaroslavsky wrote. “Absent AB 109, Pasasouk would have been the responsibility of the state and under the supervision of a parole officer instead of being the responsibility of the county and under the supervision of a probation officer. Counties across the state have been grappling with the enormous burden shifted to them under AB 109 since it took effect on October 1, 2011.”

Pasasouk, the supervisors wrote, “has a long criminal history, including robbery and drug-related offenses.”

“AB 109 was supposed to shift ‘low level’ offenders to counties; in reality, it shifts high and ultra-high risk offenders because it ignores the offender’s prior criminal history, including serious and violent offenses, and only considers the last offense,” Antonovich and Yaroslavsky wrote. “It has been reported that Pasasouk repeatedly failed to comply with the terms and conditions of his release, resisted rehabilitative programs, and was arrested multiple times over the past 11 months.”

Criminals freed

Michael Rushford, president of the Criminal Justice Legal Foundation in Sacramento, says Pasasouk is one of many potentially dangerous criminals freed as a result of AB 109 — the law Brown signed in April 2011 to “stop the costly, ineffective and unsafe ‘revolving door’ of lower-level offenders and parole violators through our state prisons.”

“[Pasasouk] was a realignment baby,” Rushford says. “A 46-year-old mother was stabbed to death in Fresno in September by a guy free because the state will no longer take people to prison for violating parole. I can go on and on with the anecdotes. Local law enforcement officials are reporting the crime increases in the double-digits, but the official numbers won’t come out until this summer.”

Dumped on counties

Former state Assemblyman Jim Nielsen, R-Gerber, says AB 109 “dumped the state’s criminal justice problems on our counties and cities and has unleashed an unprecedented crime wave.”

In response, Nielsen, who expects to be elected to the state Senate following a runoff election in January, says he plans to introduce legislation next year to correct problems created by realignment.

“There are a number of problems undergirding AB 109 that have to be addressed and corrected,” says Nielsen, the longtime chairman of the California Board of Prison Terms. “That’s why we anticipate legislation or an initiative will be necessary to correct this tragic course that is occurring in public safety in California.”

It’s now been more than a year since AB 109, a bill Brown described as a “landmark law that realigns certain responsibilities for lower-level offenders and parolees from state to local jurisdictions,” went into effect on Oct. 1, 2011. Shortly before that time, Brown issued a statement saying the law would give local law enforcement “the tools to manage offenders in smarter and cost-effective ways. AB 109 will help reduce recidivism, ease prison overcrowding and save taxpayers’ dollars.”

The law followed a U.S. Supreme Court decision ordering California to reduce its prison population from 143,000 to 110,000 inmates by 2013. Realignment provides for a reduction in the state prison population over time.

Population reductions

“The whole point behind realignment is to comply with the U.S. Supreme Court-affirmed population reductions in California’s 33 prisons,” says Dana Simas, spokeswoman for the California Department of Corrections and Rehabilitation. “The U.S. Supreme Court said we have to get down to 137.5 percent of our designed capacity, which is approximately 110,000 inmates.

“If we don’t do that by the court-ordered date of June 2013, then the court can order the wholesale, early unsupervised release of state prisoners.  That means anyone due for release in a specified amount of time is free to go. There is no supervision, no follow-up. We won’t know where these people are. They will get out of prison early. That is what is facing California if we don’t follow this court order.”

The law, according to a recent report by the Public Policy Institute of California, redirected 30,000 recently convicted offenders who would have gone to state prison to county jail, shifted the after-prison supervision of about 50,000 offenders from state parole agents to county probation departments and revised procedures dealing with sentencing, good-time credits and parole.

“Altogether, these changes represent the most significant shift in California corrections policy in decades,” author Dean Misczynski wrote. “Proponents of realignment believe that counties can achieve higher levels of offender rehabilitation, correspondingly lower levels of recidivism, and less (or at least not more) crime — and all for a lower cost than accomplished by the state.”

However, the law has generated a great deal of controversy. While some officials have touted it as a great success, others have warned “the streets are going to run with blood” as a result.

Supervision

The law, according to the Criminal Justice Legal Foundation, requires that some felons released from prison be placed on post-release community supervision rather than state-managed parole. The law also prevents habitual criminals convicted of new felonies such as assault, auto theft, drug dealing, identity theft, fraud and commercial burglary from receiving prison sentences, instead requiring that they receive sentences in overcrowded county jails, probation or “treatment” in county-managed rehabilitation programs, according to CJLF.

Law enforcement officials throughout the state have expressed concerns that counties don’t have the jail capacity or the resources to house or supervise the thousands of repeat felons they are now required to deal with, according to the CJLF.

“It’s still too early to really see what realignment is going to do, although we certainly are seeing increases in crime because people who would have been incarcerated previously are not in custody because the county jails don’t have room for all the types of people who can go to county jails — whether it’s pre-conviction or post-conviction,” says Scott Thorpe, the chief executive officer of the California District Attorneys Association.

But Simas claims critics of Realignment are misconstruing how it works.

“Well, first off, there is no one being released under realignment that would have been released anyway,” Simas says. “CDCR can’t hold anyone past their court-ordered release date. So there are no early releases.  The biggest fallacy is that there is this notion that people are out in the community that should have been behind bars. No one has been released early because of realignment. The only difference is who is supervising them. If they are serving a term for a nonviolent, non-serious, non-sex offense, then they report to county probation for their post-release community supervision.”

$1.3 billion saved

In a June report examining the first eight months of realignment, the Center on Juvenile and Criminal Justice found a 41 percent reduction in new prison admissions and a drop of 28,300 in the prison population, which stood at more than 144,000 prior to realignment. At an average cost of $46,000 to imprison one inmate for a year, the authors wrote the decline in the prison population should reduce prison costs by more than $1.3 billion.

“Overall, the state prison population is declining according to expected projections,” the authors of the CJCJ report wrote. “Generally, counties that have historically over-relied on state prison are experiencing larger reductions in their imprisoned populations and new commitments to state prison.

“In addition, it appears the reductions are occurring specifically within the low-level offender categories, rather than the more violent, serious offenders, which alleviates many public safety concerns. The decreased reliance on state incarceration should also produce significant cost savings for California taxpayers.”

Despite these savings, officials throughout the state are expressing growing concerns about Realignment’s impact on crime rates.

In its recent report,  “Corrections Realignment: One Year Later,” the PPIC report wrote that preliminary data indicates some communities around the state are experiencing an increase in property crime, particularly burglary and motor vehicle theft.

“Unfortunately, the cause and effect relationships within these communities are confounded by a prolonged recession and severe budget cuts to local law enforcement and social service programs,” according to the PPIC report. “Crime rates and realignment need to be closely monitored and carefully analyzed.”

Matt Cate, executive director of the California State Association of Counties, notes crime rates are up nationwide.

The Justice Department’s Bureau of Justice Statistics reported in October that violent crime rose 18 percent last year — the first year-to-year increase in nearly two decades — and the number of property crimes also jumped by 11 percent.

“California crime numbers have not come in yet,” Cate said. “But no criminologist worth his or her salt will be able to tell you whether realignment has a cause and effect relationship with crime going up or down. It’s very complicated. It’s really difficult to correlate crime rates with a change in certain policies.”

One year later

In a December report by the CJCJ, “One Year into Realignment: Progress Stalls, Stronger Incentives Needed,” author Mike Males noted that, while “some law enforcement and prison interests have cited anecdotes and selective local offenses to charge that managing tens of thousands of formerly imprisoned criminals at the local level has brought a new wave of violent crime … the latest statistics reveal no evidence of such a trend.

“New prison admissions for violent and other sex and serious offenses — which are still allowed under realignment’s guidelines as in the past — were actually slightly lower in the 3rd quarter of 2012 compared to the same period in 2011. In particular, new imprisonments for murder, robbery, rape, and most sex offenses showed modest declines from the 1st to the 3rd quarters of 2012, while assaults showed slight increases ….”

In a prepared statement, Los Angeles County Supervisor Michael D. Antonovich says recent data from the county’s Probation Department revealed that the state is releasing mentally disordered offenders to the counties — threatening public safety and adding to the county’s fiscal burden.

The state, Antonovich says, is decertifying mentally-disordered offenders just prior to release from prison to place them under local supervision instead of state supervision. In addition, several mentally-disordered offenders that were released from prison directly to a state hospital were later decertified by the state hospital and, again, shifted to local supervision instead of remaining on state supervision.

By decertifying mentally-disordered offenders prior to release from prison, who are ineligible for local supervision by county probation departments under Realignment, Antonovich says the state is effectively relieving itself from the obligation to supervise them.

“We see this as a significant concern because mentally-disordered offenders have to meet certain criteria to be certified as such, one of which is to have a severe mental illness,” says Anna Pembedjian, Antonovich’s justice deputy.

“These types of individuals require intensive care and supervision and they require a lot of resources. So this is a significant concern, which our board will discuss publicly in the coming weeks and potentially seek necessary legislative changes to prevent it from happening.”

New legislation

To address these and other issues, Rushford says Nielsen and other lawmakers are expected to introduce legislation in 2013.

“I know there is a move afoot to demand a repeal of the bill,” Rushford says. “There are groups around the state who are working on reforms. We have put together a working group. The idea is to repeal the measure and replace it with something that makes public safety a priority.”

But Rushford doesn’t expect quick legislative action given that Democrats now control two-thirds of the seats in both the Senate and the Assembly.

“This is going to be an issue for a long time,” Rushford says. “The state is broke and we really can’t take these guys back unless we spend more money on prisons. We are going to go forward with the $6 billion bullet train and we don’t have space in our prisons. They are going to have to drop other priorities and put this one back on top or, as former Los Angeles County District Attorney Steve Cooley says: ‘The streets are going to run with blood.’

“When this first started — when I first heard about this bill running through the Legislature, I called Cooley. He said: ‘You won’t be able to stop them.’ He said, ‘It will be like it was back in the 70s. There is going to have to be so much crime that the public insists on a new policy.’ I don’t want it to get that bad again. I was around during that period and the train is running in that direction now.”