County News
May 22, 2013 11:39am
Los Angeles County Supervisor Zev Yaroslavsky has a plan which he claims would improve county jail inmate rehabilitation efforts, while also saving precious county funds. Yaroslavsky wants the Board of Supervisors to consider removing a portion of the Men’s Central Jail and replacing it with a facility for inmates who suffer from mental illness and drug addiction.
“The way we handle mental health and substance abuse is not good,” Yaroslavsky said. “My view is, if we’re going to spend any serious money on the jail, it should be in those areas.”
Nearly 70 percent of the county’s...
May 22, 2013 11:36am
Riverside County may soon enact a bold, new measure which would help court the state’s rapidly aging population. On Tuesday, the Board of Supervisors voted 4-1 to draft an ordinance which would allow senior citizens to buy homes in Riverside, while paying the same taxes incurred on their former homes in other counties. Such a program has been optional for counties since the passage of Proposition 90 in 1988, which allows for the transfer of property tax assessments from one county to another for buyers 55 and older. In effect, many senior citizens who move to Riverside may soon be receiving...
LA County Sheriff's 911 Response Time and Crime-Solving Compromised by Understaffing and Budget Cuts
May 22, 2013 11:32am
Although the LA County Sheriff’s Department seems to be helping the crime rates in communities they patrol based on recent statistics, budget cuts have significantly slowed 911 response times and crime solving times.
The LA County Board of Supervisors is considering looking into what they call “unintended consequences” of recent budget cuts and slashed overtime expenses. The Sheriff’s Department has stayed within their budget, but there have been more impacts than originally thought when the cuts were implemented. Also, the amount of sheriff’s deputies number approximately 7,500, which...
May 22, 2013 11:29am
A recent study of LA County Sherriff’s Department’s crime fighting tactics reveal that too much energy is being put into gang suppression and not gang intervention. Experts suggest that by connecting with the communities they police, the Sherriff’s Department would be more effective in gaining the public’s trust and stopping gang activity before it has a chance to get out of hand.
Despite these criticisms, the study also reported a significant drop in crime rate inside the sheriff’s jurisdiction. While this is good news, Department spokesman Steve Whitmore said that the Sheriff’s Department “...
May 22, 2013 11:21am
The City of San Bernardino is facing a council-wide recall effort for all seven council members and even a separate effort to remove its city clerk. The only problem is, no one wants to actually administer the recall, and there are no elected officials other than the city treasurer that are not currently wrapped up in a recall effort. Meaning it is a very short list of those that do not have a conflict of interest on the matter.
The council voted unanimously to let the county administer the recall efforts. However, the trouble doesn’t end there. County CEO Greg Devereaux has advised the...
May 20, 2013 11:14am
Riverside County’s unemployment recently dipped below 10 percent, its lowest rate in 4 and a half years reported county and state officials. After examining the data from the job market in April of this year, state officials in the California Employment Development Department reported that the unemployment rate was 9.6 percent, an impressive drop from March’s 10.5 percent, and an even bigger drop compared to the 11.6 rate in April of last year.
November of 2008 was the last time Riverside just barely dipped below 10 percent with an unemployment rate of 9.9. It peaked in August of 2010 at 15.2...
May 20, 2013 10:51am
Riverside County property and business owners who think they might be eligible for property tax refunds need to get a move on. They have until August 1 to file claims, according to Riverside County Board of Supervisors Chairman John J. Benoit. After that, the money becomes county property.
Riverside County Treasurer-Tax Collector Don Kent said there are 1,844 refunds totaling over $1,937,449.17, which have yet to be claimed. The unclaimed money is largely a result of corrections and cancellations to the tax rolls. Under California law, after four years, the money may be transferred to the...
May 20, 2013 10:47am
It’s like something straight out of CSI: facial recognition technology software which can pinpoint the identity of a suspect in an instant. And it could soon be coming to a law enforcement agency near you.
The new system has just been tested in San Diego, where suspected criminals’ photos were run through a database of more than 1,000,000 county booking shots, yielding 250 positive matches within seconds. "The results of the test have been overwhelmingly positive," said Pamela Scanlon, executive director of the Automated Regional Justice Information System (ARJIS). ARJIS is a part of the San...
May 20, 2013 10:38am
With the final phase of the Affordable Care Act slated for implementation in January, a recent report from the nonprofit website HealthyCal says California counties are in a for a rude awakening, particularly when it comes to mental health. According to the report, providers across California are completely unprepared for the large influx of mental health patients about to come down the pike. That’s troublesome news for the Golden State, which has the highest number mental health sufferers in the nation.
Officials in the Central Valley have pointed to numerous causes for the lack of...
May 20, 2013 10:29am
By Rich Atwater, Executive Director, Southern California Water Committee
The Sacramento-San Joaquin River Delta east of San Francisco Bay is so far from Southern California that most of our residents probably don’t know where it is or why it matters. Simply put, the Delta provides drinking water for as many as 25 million California residents, including those in Southern California.
This vast and vitally important ecosystem is home to hundreds of aquatic and terrestrial species as well as more than 500,000 people, a thriving agricultural economy and a distinctive recreational...
