Elections 2007 and beyond

It's official but I think the Press Enterprise is really the last to find out about this, but political candidate Mike Gardner has changed his mind about eminent domain in terms of taking people's properties and turning them over to private development firms.


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"I've talked to lots of people about this including small business owners and I've done some reading on it," Gardner said. "I guess I just think it's wrong to take anyone's private property unless they need it for a legitimate government use."



In response, incumbent Dom Betro goes into full snark mode saying the following in response.


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"I don't think Mike Gardner has defined or clear stands on any issues," Betro said. "He's just willing to say anything or do anything to try to get elected."


Actually, Gardner does have strong stands on issues. He believes in public input in the city government, he believes in keeping the city's parks as parks and he believes in the rights of small business owners in this city. That's a sensible platform unlike one which supports the expulsion through threat of eminent domain of entire blocks of local businesses, many of which are owned by people of color. This is done by blaming them for "blight" when many of these businesses contributed their shares of the downtown business tax annually to their representative body, the Downtown Neighborhood Partnership, which spent all of their money beautifying the pedestrian mall while promising their turn would come but it never did. Instead, the contrast between the renovated mall and their own business strips was later used to take their properties away from them.

When these business owners showed up, many upset and in tears about what was going on, Betro's attitude at meetings is to wave his hand and say, we've negotiated enough, let's just do it already, like he did with the owners of the Fox Theater as their young children wept later in front of a reporter outside the chambers.

The irony is, several of the city council members themselves are business owners and see no problem with this situation, as long as it's someone else's business. One wonders how they would handle it if it were their own businesses on the chopping block.

They probably would hire the most expensive attorneys they could afford and fight it.

But if you don't understand how Gardner stands on issues at this point in the game, you haven't been paying attention and listening just isn't one of Betro's strongest skills.

And you know what about Gardner? People know his stances on issues because not only does he get out there, but he manages to stick around for entire public forums, something Betro struggled to do during round one of Election 2007.

When it comes to saying anything to get elected, one of the issues that Betro ran on for both elections is his alleged support of the Community Police Review Commission but in actuality, Betro sat by the past year and watched the CPRC get as columnist Dan Bernstein put it, hollowed out from the inside and his response to City Manager Brad Hudson's actions was to vote him a generous pay hike.

Gardner also doesn't have a bad temper when he's out in public, but Betro does and many people have seen that side of him and it isn't pretty. So if he gets elected, hopefully the tantrums from the dais will be reduced. I've watched him serve on the CPRC for seven years including three as chair and why I didn't always agree with him, he was very even tempered and unflappable.

My turn to receive the brunt of the famous Betro temper took place when he told community members at a meeting around Oct. 5 last year that the city was finalizing the paperwork on a contract it had made with an independent contractor who was to be hired to do consulting. In fact, he seemed optimistic that said contractor would be providing input on a report that was to be given to the city council meeting the next week.

In actuality, negotiations between that contractor and the city manager's office had been at a stand still for several months. I had simply challenged Betro's assertion by asking for an offer of proof that what he said was true.

What I got in return from saying one sentence was a yelling diatribe, first in the third person and then directly at me in front of a group of his supporters who later said I read him wrong. It's very difficult to read Betro wrong when he's yelling in your face or storming out of public forums and meetings. The only words I remember is that he told me I had done some good and was losing credibility, which was interesting because I wasn't the one yelling in the room.

I'm sure it's hard to read him wrong when he's crumpling a piece of paper and throwing it in your face as well.

Maybe the people who read him wrong were those who initially backed his grass-roots campaign including the people who now support his opponents, but that's nothing to be embarrassed about because everybody wants to believe that the candidate they support is genuine on the issues that are important to them. No politician is going to do your bidding and none should or else they would be puppets.

However, they should be honest about who they are and what they stand for and deliver through actions on promises they make to the best of their abilities. They shouldn't run under one image and then become someone else when they are elected to the dais.

When I watched Betro run the first time, I didn't exactly see the tool of the development firms that unfortunately he has become, including those who donated generously to his election campaign this time around.

The truth is with Betro and also with Gardner and everyone else who is running is that none of them is a proven product until they get elected and have the opportunity to serve(and yes, politicians are supposed to serve the public, not the other way around) and transparency is maintained in terms of what they are doing as an elected official. It's up to the people to hold their elected officials accountable through their voices and through the vote.











Columnist Dan Bernstein of the Press Enterprise is asking for help to save the Jurupa Community Services District, which was under investigation by the Riverside County Grand Jury and ultimately pushed to pay back over $1 million used in a controversial land sale.

Also in Bernstein's column was some sort of verbal slip made by a Riverside County supervisor about a current Riverside councilman.


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RivCo Supe Marion Ashley has solved the touch-screen voting problem! During a meeting of the March Joint Clown Act Authority, Ashley called fellow commission member "Supervisor Schiavone." Frank Schiavone is merely a Riverside councilman, who is running for supervisor. But if everyone kept calling him "supervisor," it'd eventually stick and we could forget about an election.








Schiavone is running to be a county supervisor but the election is still off in the distance of 2008. Also taking place next year is the mayoral election and the picture's changed on that race so much in the past several months that the situation is completely different than it was earlier this year.



Remember several months ago, when both Dom Betro and Art Gage were interviewed by the Inland Empire Magazine about their mayoral aspirations? Both men were giving it serious thought.



But that was back when both councilmen expected to win their reelection bids outright, sail into their seats and hopefully have enough money in their respective coffers to launch a second election bid for the mayor's seat in 2008.



Today, both men are fighting to hold on to their seats caught up in a wave of anti-incumbent sentiment which has swept the city's voters.



Betro was forced into a runoff against Mike Gardner in the Ward One election where votes were split between four candidates. Gage lost the first round and neophyte, William "Rusty" Bailey's attempt to avoid a runoff was thwarted by a relatively small number of votes. So there's a hotly contested runoff in Ward Three as well.

Both candidates are planning fundraisers to try to refill their depleted campaign chests to get them through the final round of Election 2007.

And what of the current mayor?

Well, everyone is always so sure that the current term is the one where he really does step down and return back to academia, but there's speculation that he might remain in the hunt next year because it's his aspiration to leave a mark in municipal politics by serving as the president of the League of California Cities and it seems you have to be mayor to do that.

Some people say that he will be joined in the race by outgoing Ward Five Councilman Ed Adkison, who will throw his hat and perhaps his new gavel into the mayor's race so that he can preside over city council meetings and ribbon cutting ceremonies in true style.

Some people said that former Interim City Manager Tom Evans should run, but he's having fun on the local water board which is apparently a happening place for both aspiring and veteran politicians to hang out these days.

But what if were Loveridge versus Adkison? Would people turn out to vote?

That would be a hotly contested contest for a position which doesn't really do all that much except pull in a fairly nice salary and allow for the person to preside over the weekly meetings of both the city council and the redevelopment agency, which are pretty much the same people in both groups.

Would Loveridge get support from the dais if he ran again?

Some veteran political watch dogs said if so, do not expect it to come easily or quickly.

It seems that his style of running public meetings has brought on some ire from the BASS quartet, which prefers the style of somebody like Adkison who is not shy at ordering police officers to expel elderly women from the council chambers.

After all, 100% of the calls of order, ordered expulsions and letters written by City Attorney Gregory Priamos threatening arrest in the future that are carbon copied to the police department have been done by members of the latest quartet that began its rise after the untimely deflation of its predecessor, GASS after one-time grass roots candidate, Betro apparently decided rather than taking on GASS, he would take a seat in it.

In contrast, Loveridge has not expelled any person and has probably not ordered Priamos to slap any hands with verbose prose written on city stationary. He raises his hand when people speak past the three-minute limit but allows them to wrap up their speeches, though he does seem to allow the male speakers more leeway than the women at the podium.

But at this point, Loveridge's leaving the gavel and perhaps in the future, a powered wig to Adkison.








I've received some positive responses on the posting on what's been going on with the Community Police Review Commission including by people who had questions about the dynamics played out by the various "stake holders" as they have been called by those at City Hall in connection with a report scheduled to be presented next month on more recommended changes to the CPRC.

Hopefully, these changes will be helpful to the CPRC. Hopefully, they will strengthen it and help it to be more independent and won't just be window dressing.

However, I've been asked questions about this process since I addressed it in the previous posting, because very few people even know what's going on with the CPRC.

Some were dismayed that City Hall's not the least bit interested in their suggestions on how to improve the operations of the CPRC. You see, City Hall came out with this term at the latest meeting of the beleaguered commission that it has already received input from all of the CPRC's stake holders. That was a statement made by Mario Lara who's the administrative analyst working under Asst. City Manager Tom DeSantis who's been running the CPRC for the past seven months.

If you've never heard of him, that shouldn't be surprising. Even though he holds an important position, Lara's never been formally introduced to the community. The city manager's office didn't find that necessary to do so.

The several of us who regularly attend CPRC meetings turned our heads around looking for these designated stake holders that Lara mentioned, then we shook our heads and laughed ruefully. All of the designated stake holders are perhaps a few people in a city this big? What is this, a homecoming dance and they're picking the royal court? Then we shrugged and the meeting continued.

Business as usual, River City style.

To take a model that was created for the people, by the people and say, well it needs to be fixed and we'll fix it for you whether you like it or not, but we're sorry that we're limiting input to its stake holders whoever they are because no one can seem to figure out who they are. Who are these stake holders that Lara mentioned as being exclusively referred to in this fashion as being all of them?

There's nothing wrong with admitting that the city's taken input or is even only interested in receiving input from some of the stake holders of the CPRC, because most likely, that's the truth. I and other people who attended the last CPRC meeting found what was said instead to be pretty insulting, given how hard many people in this city had worked to turn civilian oversight into a reality in this city and the backlash that was faced. To have a lot of people rendered invisible by one tossed out phrase by an interim employee most of the city's residents have never seen is just not right. And it's not even an accurate assessment of the situation.

I've talked to people I believe to be included in the group of 300,000 stake holders for several days now since that meeting and none of them were even asked by City Hall for what they think about this important process, let alone any suggestions they would have to improve the CPRC. And it was a shame because they offered up some pretty good ideas to help it run more effectively. Ideas that hopefully those who were permitted to participate in this process held as well because whoever they are, they're speaking for a lot of people including individuals who may or may not have chosen them to represent them if they were even asked by the city.

The CPRC needs some rehauling, not the least of which is to decrease the politicization of its selection process, more training especially involving incustody death investigations and review, a more representative balance of members and independence including from the city attorney's office. That's just to start.

Maybe that's too radical an opinion to be counted as a stake holder in the process. It's probably way too radical for City Hall which has its own plans for the commission as we've all seen.


None of the people who have spoken to me about the CPRC in the past several days or months would be considered in this group of people who are deemed qualified enough to provide input on the future of this panel, but they are stake holders in a body that was created by city ordinance in April 2000 in response to a community push for civilian review over the Riverside Police Department's complaint system, which was found by an investigation conducted by the state attorney general's office to be in violation of state law. There's also a lot to be said by the hundreds of individuals who have utilized the CPRC's complaint system since it began receiving complaints in January 2001. But the city doesn't care what they think. It just wants what it wants which is to follow a list of actions that one think tank group who alas, aren't considered stake holders either said would all be included in the perfect plan to weaken the effectiveness of the CPRC.

These include the following.




Marginalizing the executive director by prohibiting him from performing his job responsibilities in an effective manner or even at all.

Pushing the executive director out.

Create an environment of chaos and uncertainty that causes many commissioners to resign. "Help" the ones who are slow to do so.

Reduce outreach in many communities by claiming that it's biased against police. Spread this message to the executive manager first, then the commissioners second.

Put the location of the CPRC in a place where few can access it or even find it.

Try to radically change or reduce its ability to perform its duties under the city's charter and ordinance.

Deny the commission its own legal counsel and use the city's legal counsel to obstruct the commission's ability to perform its functions under the city's charter. This includes offering multiple legal opinions on the same legal issue.

Politicize the selection process to replace outgoing community members with candidates who comprise the desired demographics of the city.

Use the selection process of commissioners to make political appointments.

Do not produce an annual report in a timely manner.

Do not have subcommittees meet in a timely manner or even at all.

Conduct the election process of the chair and vice chair in private and in such a manner that few commissioners even understand what's going on.

Cloud the issue of public comment by either changing its location on the agenda or postponing it on agenda items until after the vote's taken.

Stick a police officer in closed sessions. Candidate X who interviewed for the executive manager position was amazed that the CPRC actually followed this practice.

Deny or restrict public input in the process except for carefully designated individuals who won't challenge what City Hall is doing, in this case "stake holders". Render everyone else invisible by omitting them from this classification.





What the city cares about is civic liability and the five law suits traveling through the federal and state court systems in relation to incustody deaths. It consists of a majority of elected officials who oppose the CPRC sitting in the midst of a city of people who on the majority side, support it. It's got a city manager's office that micromanages any entity within reach and a city attorney's office who spends more time telling commissioners what they can't do than what they can do. And now the number of stake holders in the CPRC, all of them, just got a lot smaller.


How many of people have ever been asked by anyone through City Hall about what they think the process should be like? How many times has City Hall or its representatives ever promised that the community would have a voice in the process and then rescinded that promise, by saying that we have to stick to the "stake holders" which I guess is their idea of a focus group?

It's too bad that none of the individuals involved in the current process to rehaul the CPRC are cognizant of the history that led to its creation.

The communities of this city pushed for this form of civilian oversight long before the current city manager, assistant city manager, city attorney, interim executive manager, police chief and members of the current city council were holding their positions. They pushed for this board before the state imposed its stipulated judgment on the city in order to reform the police department. In fact, during a CPRC workshop conducted in 2004, former councilwoman Maureen Kane said the creation of the CPRC was one element in the city's favor while it was negotiating with the state over the consent decree that would change the police department from the inside out.

Kane was no real supporter of civilian review. In fact, she and her fellow councilwoman, Laura Pearson had opposed the Berkeley model that had narrowly passed the muster of the research committee set up by the city council to address the issue of civilian review in the summer of 1999. But by 2004, she appeared to be in some sense, a convert. After all, it's likely that her support and votes towards both civilian review and the stipulated judgment narrowly cost her the election.

Now, the current leadership at City Hall and the police department which is under the city manager's office have been pushing their own changes on a panel that belongs to the city residents while keeping the vast majority of residents including those in the communities most impacted by the existence of civilian oversight out of the process.

But it's been like that for over a year now, since the new city management team came to Riverside. This latest installment of this ongoing saga is more of the same with more to come. Interestingly enough, readers have said that they see parallels in the struggles faced by the CPRC with what's going on in other areas of the city including the fight involving eminent domain, the selling off of park land and public participation in city council meetings. And labor unions trying to be heard by a management that claims to be pro-union but through its actions is anything but. After all, it's hard to be convincingly "pro-union" when anonymous threats of retaliation are being mailed out to city employees before they are interviewed for a very sensitive city investigation.

Of course that could be a gross misinterpretation of the circumstances. Titling a written notice, with the words "Be Prepared for the Consequences" could mean something else entirely.

Some said they had no idea that a commission consisting of dedicated volunteers was being treated this way and being thwarted in its efforts to fulfill its mission for the communities of Riverside.

A bit of good news is on the horizon.

The CPRC may have an annual report by the end of the year, as current executive-something-or-another, Mario Lara is finishing up the first draft which formerly had been written by the CPRC's chair. He asked the commissioners for input and they were pretty quiet. The community wasn't asked, but since state law requires that city residents be allowed to speak publicly on agenda items, that opened the door for suggestions from the public.

A suggestion was raised that the CPRC annual report include a statistical breakdown on the handling of differential findings on complaints. For example, if a complaint is sustained by the police department but determined to be unfounded by the CPRC or vice versa, what finding is reached by the final arbiter of complaints, the city manager's office?

In the past, the city manager's office said it didn't keep track of these statistics even though previous administrations had done so. In fact, in at least one annual report, these statistics were included. The interesting thing is that according to Lara, there appears to be some efforts by the city manager's office to keep records of these statistics even as it apparently forbade former executive director, Pedro Payne from doing this last year.

Commissioners Steve Simpson and Jack Brewer pushed for these statistics. Lt. Mike Perea, the department's liaison to the CPRC seemed to think the topic and its discussion was humorous. I guess he knows something that the commissioners and the public do not. Lara looked a bit peaked as Brewer and Simpson pushed him on the issue but he recovered. He'll probably be glad to step down as CPRC executive-something-or-another as soon as City Manager Brad Hudson decides which one of the two police attorneys he wants to hire as the new executive manager of the CPRC.

There is no reason that these statistics should be kept secret and there's been no reason for two responses to come out of the city manager's office in terms of whether or not this office is even keeping them. And you don't even have to be a designated stake holder to push for them. In fact, it's probably easier to do so if you're not.

Not everyone can be a tool of the city manager's office. Not everyone wants to be. If that's what it takes to have a voice in this city, then it's probably better perhaps not to be counted.




The police chief and police union are clashing in Rochester, New York over the handling of an investigation into gay bashing, according to the Rochester Democrat and Chronicle.

The police union president, Ron Evangelista called for action to be taken. They are the words which make it clear who or what really runs law enforcement agencies.


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"Let's have a vote of confidence on Chief Moore," Evangelista said in a news conference today, barely veiling his anger.







The department launched an investigation of its handling of an incident of gay bashing which caught the ire of the police union which said that the administrative investigation was contaminating the work done in the criminal investigation of the hate crime.




Conflict has arisen in Seattle, Washington between the mayor and the Office of Professional Accountability Review Board, according to the Seattle Post-Intelligencer.

The board demanded that Mayor Gary Nickels take back some accusations that he made against the office. Nickels doesn't want to do so. They've been fighting back and forth since a report from the board criticized Chief Gil Kerlikowske for interfering with an internal investigation involving two offices in his department.



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Review board members believe that on the July 11 program, Nickels accused the board of leaking to the media a draft of one of its reports that was critical of Chief Gil Kerlikowske.

"It is irresponsible for anyone -- let alone Seattle's mayor -- to make such false charges," board Chairman Peter Holmes wrote in his July 18 letter.

The review board's report was an examination of the internal investigation of two officers accused of misconduct related to a Jan. 2 drug arrest. The officers were cleared of wrongdoing, but the report argued that the chief was too involved in the OPA's internal investigation.







And in Denver, Colorado, clashing is the police monitor and Denver CopWatch, according to this article in the Rocky Mountain News.



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CopWatch's Stephen Nash struck a nerve with Denver Independent Monitor Richard Rosenthal when he wrote that the monitor's office has been "notably absent" on the Rice case.

The release implied that Rosenthal was part of "the city's failure to take steps to improve (jail) conditions after Ms. Rice's death and the long delays in even releasing the most basic information on the case indicate a failure in the reforms instituted by Mayor Hickenlooper which were supposed to increase government transparency in death while in custody cases."

Rosenthal fired off an e-mail reply expressing disappointment with the "incorrect assertions" in the news release that was inadvertently sent to news organizations on CopWatch's e-mail list.

"My office has been anything but 'absent' in the case of Emily Rice," Rosenthal wrote.





The two sides traded responses, regarding an investigation into the incustody death of Emily Rice, who died from fatal injuries she suffered in a car accident. Instead of being taken to a hospital, Rice was taken to jail where she complained of her injuries. A correctional deputy allegedly told her to sleep it off.



Rice didn't sleep it off. She died soon after.