On Wednesday, the Democratic majority in the Senate Budget Committee passed Steinberg’s bill, AB84. Among its features:

* Authorizes spending an additional $200 million this year on prison rehabilitation programs.

* Calls for settling the hundreds of prison inmates’ lawsuits against the state alleging inhumane prison conditions.

* Asks for a three-year extension on the federal court ordered deadline.

* Proposes the state spend $200 million a year to expand rehabilitative programs for prisoners — specifically mental health programs and drug treatment. Steinberg said his approach is aimed at reducing the high recidivism rate in California.

But Corrections Secretary Jeffrey Beard testified it is implausible that the federal court panel that ordered the prison inmate population cap would approve Steinberg’s proposed three-year delay. Instead, Beard said Brown’s plan would put California in a better position to deal with inmates’ attorneys, as well as the courts.

Brown plan

That Brown plan is SB105, by state Sen. Steve Knight, R-Lancaster. It calls for $315 million in spending next year to expand prison capacity. It is not advancing in the Legislature.

Brown’s plan would expand prison capacity by 12,500 beds by December. This can be achieved by:

* Expanding use of out-of-state prisons.

* Reactivating two in-state private prison contacts.

* Leasing another California facility.

However, this would also increase the number of prison guards on the state payroll. The plan has no specific detail of how many prison guards would be added to the membership of the California Correctional Peace Officers Association, the prison guards’ union.

Moving nearly 8,000 inmates to out-of-state and private prisons is a big change for Brown, who has been reluctant to use those less costly solutions.

Brown’s plan is backed by Democratic Assembly Speaker John A. Perez, D-Los Angeles; Assembly Minority Leader Connie Conway, R-Visalia; and Senate Minority Leader Bob Huff, R-Brea. It’s also supported by law enforcement groups and victims’ rights groups.

But the governor’s plan was rejected in a party-line vote by the Senate Budget Committee Wednesday in favor of Steinberg’s.

Rancorous debate

“The plan approved by the Senate Budget Committee is an inmate release plan by another name, totally dependent on an illusory legal settlement,” Brown said in a statement following the committee vote.

“The Senate Democrat plan before us spends hundreds of millions in additional funding to locals to improve criminal justice outcomes,” Sen. Bill Emmerson, R-Redlands, said at the hearing.  “Yet I recall this very committee killed SB144 by Sen.  Cannella that would have implemented the same policy by reinvesting in savings resulting from realignment.  At the time, the Chair referred to it as a ‘budget breaker’ and said Republicans had a lot of ‘chutzpah’ for even proposing it. Now that it’s your proposal, we’re told it’s an act of genius.”

Emmerson called on committee members “to work in a bipartisan nature to craft a comprehensive approach that includes both recidivism reduction and a realistic plan for current and future prison capacity needs to provide a durable solution.”

Unfortunately, during the contentious debate throughout the four-hour hearing headed by Committee Chairman Mark Leno, D-San Francisco, there was little bi-partisan cooperation.

Sen. Jim Nielsen, R-Gerber, presented four amendments to Steinberg’s bill, concerning the early release of thousands of inmates. But the amendments were rejected along party lines after rancorous procedural challenges by Leno.

Nielsen, who served on the California Board of Prison Terms from 1990 to 2007, said he was particularly concerned about allowing convicted substance abusers out of prison for merely promising to attend rehab. Nielsen asked for some kind of penalty for failing to attend drug rehabilitation.

Legislative Analyst recommendation ignored

In testimony at the committee, Drew Soderborg with Legislative Analyst’s Office warned Steinberg’s plan would cost hundreds of millions of dollars each year, and may not achieve a sufficient prison population reduction. He even said Steinberg’s plan could result in the early release of criminals back into California communities.

The LAO’s written report found the governor’s plan would likely result in compliance with the federal court order to reduce overcrowding in the short-term. However, “[T]he administration’s proposal to submit a plan for long-term solutions in January 2015 would leave little time for the Legislature to consider and implement any proposals before the contracts proposed by the administration would expire after June 2015.”

The report warned that Steinberg’s plan would not meet the current court-ordered prison population cap by Dec. 31, and “is unlikely to achieve such a large population reduction in 2013-14.”

The LAO also warned Steinberg’s plan could negatively impact public safety by allowing convicted prisoners to serve time in the community rather than incarcerated in prison, but largely depends on which offenders are released. Either way, the county jail population and county probation caseloads will increase in size, and would need to be offset by state funding.

According to the LAO, long-term compliance with the federal prison cap should be the goal of the Legislature. That can be achieved through lower prison admissions, reduction in length of time in prison, a reduction in parolee recidivism, contracting with other prisons and additional prison construction.

By Chris Reed

There are so many killer facts in the Bloomberg News story from Tuesday on how California went to hell that I barely know where to start. So many have never been exposed by the state’s mainstream media. (John Seiler blogged earlier on one of those killer findings from Bloomberg’s investigation.) I urge everyone to read the whole thing. Here is the striking opening:

“Nine years ago, California Democrat Gray Davis became the first U.S. governor in 82 years to be recalled by voters. The state’s 20 million taxpayers still bear the cost of his four years and 10 months on the job.

“Davis escalated salaries and benefits for 164,000 state workers, including a 34 percent raise for prison guards, the first of a series of steps in which he and successors saddled California with a legacy of dysfunction. Today, the state’s highest-paid employees make far more than comparable workers elsewhere in almost all job and wage categories, from public safety to health care, base pay to overtime.”

Pulitzers usually go to much flashier work than exposing government profligacy, but this is Pulitzer-worthy journalism, for sure.

Commentary

Oct. 31, 2012

By Mark Cabaniss

If you have the stomach, listen to Jesuit seminary dropout (1957)  Gov. Jerry Brown out on the campaign trail recently, selling his newest tax hike, Proposition 30:  “I like to quote from St. Luke: ‘From those who have been given, much will be asked.’”

To Brown and others of his ilk, it is always “the other” who has been given and from whom much should be asked.  People like him don’t own mirrors, or at least, don’t know how to use them.

He was talking to a teachers union. But since California teachers are the highest paid teachers in the nation, shouldn’t anything be asked back of them? Like maybe making it easier to fire teachers who have been accused of acts of perversion against schoolchildren? This past summer, the Democrats killed a bill in the legislature that would have done just that.

Maybe the governor should sit down with his Bible and find some scripture where it says we are supposed to protect the little children from those who would abuse them; I seem to remember something like that.  Then you could quote that same scripture at a press conference announcing your effort to get rid of child molesters in the schools.

How about California prison guards, among the highest paid in the nation. Should they be asked to give up anything, such as the “right” to commit crimes like smuggling in and selling drugs and cell phones to prisoners?  His Democratic pals in the Legislature gutted a bill that would have made such smuggling felonious, keeping such crimes mere misdemeanors instead, arguing that it would be “wrong” to be too hard on the li’l fellers just because they had made a mistake like commit a crime or something.  Er, the guards, not the prisoners.

Pension hogs

Or how about some of these pension hogs we read about, people like Randy Adams, former police chief of the city of Bell.  Remember him?  At a hearing for all the other former Bell officials who had been charged, the judge herself asked the befuddled prosecutor why Adams wasn’t one of the defendants.  Randy Adams is on the notorious CalPERS top ten list of highest paid pensioners in the state, currently receiving a pension of $265,437.48 per year.

Most people would say that he has been given a lot. Do you think he should give anything back, like some of the loot?  No?  Can’t reform pensions?  No matter what?  Never?

Here’s the governor in a non-scripture-quoting mood, talking about his own significance, or lack thereof: “At this stage [of his life], as I see many of my friends dying — I went to the funeral of my best friend a couple of weeks ago — I want to get s*** done.”

Like what?  Building a giant 19th century choo-choo to nowhere, the cost projections for which actually assumed that gasoline would be $40.00 a gallon?  If gasoline doesn’t get to $40.00 a gallon, the choo-choo won’t be cost effective, and shouldn’t be built.  Even worse, it may be built anyway, becoming a huge and ongoing cost for the state, literally taking food from the mouths of babes.

Is that the kind of “stuff” the governor wants to get done?  Snatching food from the mouths of the 99 percent to stuff it into the faces of the 1 percent, his overfed, gluttonous supporters?

No reforms

What a joke.  As long as Brown and his pals insist that child-molesting teachers shouldn’t be fired without the sort of endless due process rights that make it literally impossible to fire them; as long as he and his pals insist that cleaning up the worst abuses of the prison guards should emphatically not be part of cleaning up our ridiculous, absurdly expensive prison system; as long as there are more than 15,000 retired state and local government workers receiving “pensions” of more than $100,000.00 per year, for life, no one should be paying higher taxes, no matter what the fig leaf “purpose” dreamed up by the taxers.

For myself, I think it is wise to be mindfully reticent about trying to co-opt the words of the Bible to use as ammo in partisan political battles.  However, I recognize that some people, people who like to put on a Jesuitical affectation, disagree with me, and indeed, find it necessary to quote from the Bible to put on that very same Jesuitical affectation.

To them, a word of caution:  Before you go quoting the Bible, read it.  Deeply ponder the idea that it might apply to you as well as those you are lecturing.

I know California’s economy is in tough shape. But I’m happy that the state’s prison guards are meeting in Las Vegas, where Gov.-elect Jerry Brown just addressed them. Their union leaders have tough jobs making sure every last taxpayer penny is spent wisely, for the benefit of all Californians. They need a place to “let it all hang out” before returning to California with all its problems. And what better place to do it than in Elvisland?

Reported the L.A. Times:

On Monday he could be found at a major resort in Las Vegas, addressing the prison guards’ union, which spent more than $1.8 million on Brown’s behalf during the campaign. Just don’t ask us what he said. The Times was barred from covering the brief speech.

A reporter who traveled to the Rio All Suites to catch the Brown address was initially told that the governor’s staff had vetoed her presence there.

However, union officials later said it was their policy to keep the media out of the event. Even spouses of convention delegates were blocked from listening to Brown’s remarks, they said, for which the ballroom’s doors were closed.

Brown, who spoke of transparency often on the campaign trail, has held few public events and had little engagement with the media since defeating Republican nominee Meg Whitman on Nov 2. Attendees described his less than 10-minute speech as a thank you to the group.

The union is the largest public union still without a contract.

I checked out the Rio All Suites hotel where Jerry and the prison gang had their party. Gov. Brown’s reputation for frugality is lived up to. Here’s how the hotel describes its rooms:

Every room is a suite at the Rio! The Rio hosts more than 2,500 suites, providing spectacular views of Las Vegas. Every suite offers more than 600 square feet of spacious luxury, including a separate dressing area, couch, 32-inch TV, table with chairs, hairdryer, in-suite refrigerator, iron, ironing board and complimentary in-suite safe.

What do our abstemious public servants need an “in-suite safe” for? Oh, I know. That’s where they can keep safe and secure all the wonderful things they do for us.

After a hard day of working out a contract with Gov.-elect Brown that’s a good deal for the taxpayers of California, no doubt Our Guardian Servants retire to their Suites to read their Gideon Bibles. They would never do this at Rio Las Vegas’ Bikini Beach:

Every Thursday through Sunday, part of VooDoo Beach is transformed into “Bikini Beach”, a European-style pool at Rio All-Suite Hotel and Casino.  Designed specifically for adults over 21, this pool allows guests to bask in the sunshine while listening to the music of a live DJ and watching go-go dancers on the pool deck.  Rent a daybed and receive chilled towels, complimentary water, and a five-minute massage.  For added exclusivity, guests can reserve one of five luxurious cabanas, which includes bottle service, freshly cut fruit, and your own personal bikini server.

After a relaxing day at the pool, it’s time to party!  Your admission into Bikini Beach gets you free admission into VooDoo Lounge the same night.  In addition, each guest will receive a coupon, redeemable at any time, for free admission into Crown Theater & Nightclub, VooDoo Lounge, and 2 for 1 cocktails at Carnaval Court at Harrah’s.

No one under 21 permitted in Bikini Beach; valid ID required for entry.

And I’m sure the ASPCA is wagging its tail at how the guards are treating their pets. Mistreating animals can get you thrown in prison, you know. Here’s how Rio Las Vegas describes its PetStay Las Vegas amenity:

Rio All Suites Hotel & Casino is rolling out the red carpet for traveling dogs, with the launch of “PetStay,” the resort’s new pet-friendly hotel program.

Guests participating in the PetStay program are greeted by several canine-friendly in-room amenities including a mat, food and water dishes, disposable waste bags and dog treats.

Rio All Suites Hotel & Casino features a designated PetStay area within the hotel, equipped with welcome packets that direct guests to outdoor relief areas and dog walking routes as well as specialty room service menus. Additional information about dog-friendly items for purchase and nearby dog services (such as grooming, walking and veterinary care) is available upon check-in at each of the participating resorts.

And here’s an actual YouTube taken at the VooDoo Lounge on the rooftop of the Rio Las Vegas. I don’t think I can see any actual California prison guards are in this YouTube, proving how they behaved themselves while in Vegas.

Suitably relaxed, I’m sure the guards will return to their prisons and treat the inmates in their charge with extra-special care, and pinch every taxpayer penny.

Dec. 6, 2010