COLTON—(December 8) In the immediate aftermath of Frank Gonzales’s departure from the Colton City Council, the newly composed council last week enacted a host of ethics reforms that included a nepotism prohibition to prevent the council from appointing family members to city commissions.
Many Colton residents, and even Gonzales himself, saw in that action a slap at Gonzales, who over the course of all of or portions of six decades, two centuries and two millennia proved himself to be the most formidable political force in Colton.
Gonzales was first elected to the city council in 1966, the first of nine elections that he won. In all, he would run for office eleven times. Of the nine elections he won, six were for mayor and three were for city council. He was reelected to the city council in 1970. In 1974, he ran, successfully, for mayor. Every four years thereafter for the next four terms – 1978, 1983, 1986, and 1990, Gonzales was reelected mayor.
Along the way, he had developed a dependable political rivalry with another established Colton politician, councilman Abe Beltran. Gonzales consistently bettered Beltran at the polls in those mayoral races, even as he served on the same council with Beltran for nearly two decades. Both had achieved prominence in Colton, a blue collar city where, long before most other cities in Southern California, the dormant Hispanic political giant had awoken.
But in 1994, George Fulp, a bombastic demagogue from Cleveland, Ohio who was a regional representative of Domino’s Pizza living in Reche Canyon who had run and lost numerous times for a position on the Colton school board, challenged Gonzales. In doing so, Fulp counted upon Beltran making his standard run for mayor. Beltran did not disappoint. Fulp shrewdly convinced another Colton resident, Jesse Valdivia, to run for mayor as well, inducing Valdivia to toss his hat in the ring by buying him a pickup truck. Fulp’s stratagem worked. With three Latino candidates on the ballot, the city’s Hispanic vote was fragmented just enough for Fulp to eke out a razor-thin victory over Gonzales, who finished in second place.
That was seemingly the end of Gonzales’s political career. But it came, in a very real way, at a fortuitous time for Gonzales. The Colton mayor’s post from that point on seemed to have some sort of curse on it. Fulp, already in the throes of alcoholism when he won the seat, slid further into a besotted state. As the seeming king of Colton, he would on a regular basis drink himself into intoxication, spray himself with cologne to mask the tell-tale odor of his inebriation and drive around Colton in his Cadillac without fear of being arrested for driving under the influence, given his station as the city’s mayor and the authority that implied over the police department.  His alcohol-fueled tirades, with residents on the street as well as at the city’s council meetings, began to wear thin on the city’s electorate and even many of his former political supporters. Two years after his election, he was ignominiously recalled from office.
Fulp, most certainly inadvertently, had saved Gonzales from himself and what was likely an untoward fate and the curse that had seemingly descended on the office of Colton mayor. In the same 1994 election that had sent Gonzales toward the door and pulled Fulp into office, Dennis Stout had been elected district attorney. Stout and the man he had appointed assistant district attorney, Dan Lough, came into office with an agenda to prosecute politicians in the county they considered corrupt. On that list were San Bernardino council members Ralph Hernandez and Valerie Pope-Ludlum and Colton politicians Abe Beltran and Frank Gonzales. As fate would have it, Gonzales dropped off Stout and Lough’s radar screen by virtue of the fact that he had failed to achieve reelection. But Hernandez, Pope-Ludlum and Beltran were not so fortunate; indeed, Stout and Lough would prosecute or otherwise hound all three out of office. In the case of Beltran, Stout detailed a then-up and coming prosecutor in his office, Mike Ramos, to go after him. Beltran was charged with corruption in office in 1996, just as the election that year was approaching. As a result, Beltran was defeated by Kelly Chastasin.
Fulp was succeeded by Karl Gaytan, Gaytan was forced from office along with two other sitting Colton council members, James Grimsby and Don Sanders, when he, Sanders, Grimsby and Beltran were named in a federal indictment relating to their having received bribes for voting to allow a company to  place billboards along the I-10 Freeway.   Gaytan was succeeded as mayor by Betty Cook, who suffered a stroke within days of being chosen as mayor and died shortly thereafter. Cook was succeed by councilwoman Deirdre Bennett, who invited her council ally Kelly Chastain to oppose her in her run for mayor as a ploy to ward off any other candidates. Chastain, in a development that shocked her as much as anyone, won that election. Chastain’s victory resulted in a major break with Bennett, who two years later made a political return as a council member, in which role she became a major opponent/rival to the mayor. Chastain’s mayoralty was marred in large measure by fiscal challenges facing the city, which was worsened by the economic downturn/recession of 2007. To avoid bankruptcy, the city was obliged to engage in massive layoffs in 2009 and 2010. Consequently, one of those forced to leave the city, community development director David Zamora, opposed Chastain in the 2010 election. In that election, Chastain was chased from office. Elected the same day as Zamora, after a political absence of 16 years, was Frank Gonzales, this time as a councilman. The following year, the curse on the Colton mayoralty continued when the 56-year-old Zamora had a heart attack while driving home from City Hall for lunch. He suffered massive injuries in the resultant accident and died a few hours later.  He was succeeded by his wife, Sarah, who was chosen by the city council during a fit of mourning over her husband.  This year, she chose not to seek reelection when Gonzales announced his intention to run for mayor. In that election, Gonzales was opposed by former councilman Richard DeLa Rosa, who handily beat him, after every sitting member of the city council refused to endorse Gonzales and instead backed DeLaRosa.
While Gonzales was supported and admired by a portion of the Colton electorate, his 32 years in office in many ways had begun catch up with him.
One of the issues which Stout and Lough  had intended to pursue back in the mid-1990s were reports of political patronage, cronyism and out-and-out quid-pro-quos at Colton City Hall, including reports that individuals had been rewarded with municipal posts in exchange for political support when Gonzales had been mayor. This was backed with reports that an overwhelming number of Colton municipal employees were Gonzales’s family members. One report, perhaps apocryphal or anecdotal, was that 32 of the city’s employees were blood relations of Gonzales, his wife or were otherwise one of his in-laws.  That report had never been substantiated with any documentation. Nevertheless, the city appeared to be suffering from a reputation that held the quality of city employees had been compromised by nepotism. That stigma was greatly attenuated by Gonzales’s 16-year absence from the council, but upon his election as councilman in 2010, the insinuations resumed.
While Gonzales remained in office and as he campaigned for mayor earlier this year, the issue did not get much play officially. But in lighting quick action after Gonzales rode off into Colton’s political sunset, an ethics reform measure was brought before the city council on December 2.
Ironically, DeLaRosa was one of the newly constituted council’s members who opposed it. Also voting against it was councilman Isaac Suchil and, of note, newly-elected councilwoman Summer Zamora Jorrin, the daughter of David Zamora and Sarah Zamora.
Summer Zamora Jorrin had served, while her mother was mayor, on the Colton Recreation and Parks Commission. She noted that had the anti-nepotism restriction been in place previously, she would have been barred from serving in what she said was a volunteer capacity. Jorrin said she did not perceive there to be anything untoward  with relatives and city employees serving on committees and commissions. She pushed for limiting the prohibition to family members living under the same roof and disallowing a council member from nominating his or her own relative to a city panel but not going beyond that. Jorrin said volunteerism would be “discouraged. We’re excluding groups from being part of our commissions. We’re welcoming one group [and]  we’re discriminating against people, taking away their right to serve. We should embrace… and encourage them to give back their time and their knowledge and help and serve on a committee.”
Council members Deirdre Bennett, Frank Navarro, David Toro and newly elected councilman Luis Gonzalez politically outmuscled Jorrin, DeLaRosa and Suchil, voting to insert into the city’s  ethics policy a prohibition on city employees and relatives of council members from sitting on city commissions and committees. The most passionate advocate of the policy change was Navarro, who asserted that Colton has built up an “unsavory reputation” of favoritism to relatives of city officials. “We need to promote a sense of honesty, integrity and transparency,” Navarro said, suggesting that the city start the reform process by preventing those with familial connections to the city’s decision makers from serving on commissions and committees.
Also contained in the ethics reform package was a prohibition on city employees serving on commissions. That, too, could be interpreted as being aimed at Gonzales. In the 1990s, the city’s public works director was John Hutton. Hutton was perceived by many as being a Gonzales ally. As a Colton resident, Hutton ran for city council and was victorious. He was thus simultaneously serving as a city staff member and council member.
Navarro hinted that the city should take the reforms even further by ending the hiring of  council members’ family members.
“For too many years the city of Colton was identified as the city where all relatives work for the city,” Navarro said in what was a veiled reference to Frank Gonzales. “There was a level of nepotism that was going on at that time that kind of put a cloud over our community.”
Gonzales told the Sentinel he saw the change in the ethics policy by the insertion of language pertaining to relatives of city council members as a gesture against him.
“Yeah, I think it was,” he said.
He said putting such restrictions in place in Colton was creating a pretty exacting standard that would not easily be adhered to.
“You have to remember that anybody who is a native of Colton probably has relatives here,” he said. “A lot of them have many relatives. I have a lot of people who are part of my family here, between me and my wife. How can you discriminate against them? I don’t think it’s right or fair. They don’t have the same restriction on business owners being on a commission but residents who live here, pay taxes and spend money here are discriminated against. And you can’t be on a commission for two years after you leave the council. You cannot place a family member on a commission. How will the family benefit? Those are volunteer positions. But a businessman can be on a commission when they could be making a decision that will benefit their business, such as tax fee structure. That is a conflict of interest. They are playing favorites. We want someone on those commissions who will fight for the citizens and do what is best for the city.”

ADELANTO—(December 11)  The Adelanto City Council this week stayed the course and gave a key second approval to LCS Holdings’ plan to construct a 3,264-bed detention facility to house Los Angeles County’s overflow inmate population.
That approval came on a 4-1 vote, the same margin the project was favored with on a vote taken by the council on November 20. Two votes of approval, known as a first and second reading, were required to confirm project approval by the city. Since November 20, the council’s make-up has changed substantially. Councilmen Charles Valvo and Steve Baisden, along with mayor Cari Thomas, were unsuccessful in their reelection bids on November 4. Thus, the council meeting of November 19, which lasted into the wee hours of November 20, was the last official exercise of their elected authority before they left office this month. All three, along with councilman Ed Camargo, voted to approve the project. This Wednesday, December 10, Charley Glasper and John Woodard were sworn in to replace Valvo and Baisden, while Rich Kerr replaced Thomas.
There was some degree of drama when the item pertaining to the LCS Holdings project came before the council, since the possibility that two or even three of the newcomers might register votes opposite to their predecessors’ votes existed, whereby the project would ultimately have been denied approval. The drama and tension mounted as the council chambers was filled to near capacity, mostly with residents and others opposed to the project, and 21 of the 24 people who addressed the council on the topic spoke out in opposition to it.
Ultimately, however, Glaspar, Woodard and Kerr voted in favor of the project, as did Camargo. Councilman Jermaine Wright, as on November 20, was the lone dissenting vote against the project.
Wednesday night’s confirming vote in favor of LCS Holdings’ proposal puts the city of Adelanto squarely behind the project, representing an important but not final element needed to bring the Los Angeles County inmate overflow holding facility project to fruition.
In May, the two principals behind LCS, Newport Beach-based developer Buck Johns and Corrections Corporation of America Founder Doctor Crants of Nashville, Tennessee, presented the plan to alleviate crowding in Los Angeles County’s detention facilities to the Los Angeles County Board of Supervisors. Johns and Crants told the board the project would save Los Angeles County $674 million in capital costs and could be in place to receive inmates in two years. Johns and Crants asked Los Angeles County for no capital contributions toward the project, but wanted a commitment from the county that it will house its overflow inmates there for 20 years at a cost of $88 per inmate per day, or roughly $104 million per year.
Los Angeles County, the largest county population-wise in California, has been hit particularly hard by the mandates in Assembly Bill 109, legislation aimed at closing California’s so-called “revolving door” of low-level inmates cycling in and out of state prisons. Assembly Bill 109 was drafted in an effort to comply with a U.S. Supreme Court order to reduce the number of inmates in the state’s 33 prisons to 137.5 percent of original design capacity. The law sent inmates deemed low risk – those who were convicted of non-violent offenses – back to the county where they were convicted for incarceration.
Johns and Crants sought to wed the needs of Los Angeles County to those of Adelanto, which is San Bernardino County’s sixth smallest city population-wise at 31,765 residents and is teetering on the precipice of bankruptcy. Last year the city council declared the city was in a state of fiscal emergency, but its residents have refused to consent to impose on themselves a tax that city officials say is needed to stave off bankruptcy. With little in the way of sales tax revenue-generating commercial development, the city is in need of some kind of significant cash infusion. Adelanto does have land that can be used for a prison and it is already host to two large detention facilities and has another federal prison at its border with Victorville.
Johns and Crants are proposing that the $332 million cost of constructing the jail, which is to be located on 160 acres on Adelanto’s eastern boundary, be defrayed with bonds issued by a public finance authority or other agency. The city of Adelanto would own it. Once operating, Johns and Crants say, it would generate enough revenue to debt service the bonds and would provide the city with water and sewer connection fees of $11,317,482, development impact fees of $3,713,750, public schools impact fees of $215,220, and engineering department fees of $91,046. In addition, Johns and Crants maintain the project would involve off-site infrastructure installation expenditures of $5,734,000 that would be of tremendous future benefit to the city and would create an estimated 3,769 construction jobs and an estimated 1.250 permanent jobs once the facility is in place.
Nevertheless, the concept of another prison in Adelanto garnered significant opposition. A group calling itself Defund Detention has been very active in opposing Johns and Crants. Its members maintain that constructing more detention facilities in a city that already has three is not in the city’s long term interest, no matter what economic benefits might be derived from hosting such facilities. In addition to arguing that the proliferation of prisons in Adelanto is harming the city’s image, Defund Detention asserts that public sentiment and rehabilitative theory is moving away from incarceration as a cure for social ills. One anti-prison activist, Sarai Herrera, said that detention facilities are “inhumane” and that the city has grown to be part of a “Prison Industrial Complex.”
At Wednesday night’s meeting, a group of project opponents held a prominent banner which read:  “No more cages. Build strong communities.”
Another of those involved in Defend Detention, Victoria Mena, maintains that California residents on general principle are opposed to the construction of more jails. She asserts that California residents, in passing Proposition 47, which reduced property and drug crimes from a felony to a misdemeanor status in order to reduce jail crowding, have initiated a trend against detention facility construction. Warehousing large numbers of criminals in the community will compromise public safety, Mena asserts.
Indeed, in its reaction to Mena, the city narrowly avoided creating a  cause célèbre that could have undone all of the progress Johns and Crants had made with regard to their proposal.
On August 16, Mena orchestrated a Defund Detention protest she dubbed “Schools Not Jails.” Initially, she intended to concentrate the activity at Adelanto City Hall. The city insisted that for her and her group to do so, they would need to first obtain a $1 million insurance policy. Refused the permit to protest, Defund Detention retreated to a vacant lot across the street from City Hall. Mena was cited by city officials there and charged with criminal violations. She had been scheduled for arraignment on three misdemeanor charges earlier in the day on December 10, the same date the city council was scheduled to vote on the project.
The American Civil Liberties Union leapt into the breach, alleging the city had violated Mena’s Constitutional rights, and threatened to sue the city. ACLU lawyers armed themselves with an admission from Adelanto City Manager Jim Hart that the city had acted to prevent Defund Detention and Mena from getting the demonstration permit through the inflated insurance coverage ruse because he had made a determination that the protest was contrary to City Hall’s interests.
The ACLU dashed off a letter to the city, demanding that the charges against Mena be dropped, while alleging officials had overstepped their legal authority. “It appears that city officials may have acted out of disagreement with the protesters’ message, and sought to use [their] permitting scheme to silence them,” the ACLU letter charged.
With the prospect of even wider scrutiny over the city’s action mounting as media outlets were picking up on the story of the prosecution of Mena, the city on December 9 in an ex parte motion moved to have all of the charges against her dropped “in the interest of justice.”
That move may have attenuated the protest, already substantial, that manifested on the evening of December 10 in the council chambers. Had the city council been served with a lawsuit on Mena’s behalf that evening, the three new council members may well have been dissuaded from supporting the project.
As it was, opposition to the project was reaching a crescendo. The Victorville City Council on December 9 declared  it was “fundamentally opposed” to incarcerating Los Angeles County inmates near the Adelanto-Victorville border and in a letter signed by newly-elevated Victorville Mayor Gloria Garcia, requested that the Adelanto City Council table its vote on the project until a discussion on the matter could take place.
“The need for jobs is abundantly clear, however, we are concerned with other undesirable elements and the stigma the high concentration of correctional facilities could have on the region’s ability to attract new industry,” the letter stated.
Simultaneously, town officials in Apple Valley and city officials in Hesperia expressed concern about the project.
The out-of-town meddling in Adeanto’s affairs, however, may have backfired.
Glaspar, who was newly sworn in to the council Wednesday night, but had previously served on the council, including a term as mayor, put it somewhat indelicately. “You can take your letter and shove it,” Glasper said in reference to Garcia’s missive. “I don’t need them telling us what we should be doing.”
The rest of the council, sans Wright, dug in their heels and approved the project.
Johns told the Sentinel that he appreciated the wide range of input regarding the project as well as the outcome. “We are, frankly, very pleased with the questions raised by the public and the questions raised by the council,” he said. “I think they came away satisfied that this will create a significant income stream for the community. And 5,000 jobs will be very good for Adelanto.”
Johns said the project is not out of the woods yet and he and Crants yet have to get the Los Angeles County Board of Supervisors to buy into it.
‘It will be a different kind of conversation in Los Angeles County,” Johns said. “They told us that they would not take it up before Adelanto weighed in on this and we would have to be where we have the project located and we have permits and we have to be fully ready to build. That’s what we have done. They did not want to hear about what we would like to do. They wanted to know about what we had ready to go. Now, we are ready to go and we will be reaching out to the [i.e., Los Angeles] county on an ongoing basis. We will have discussions with the board of supervisors. We would like to get started right away, but realistically, with the holidays, we probably won’t be taking this to them formally until January.”

(December 12)  The Orange County District Attorney’s Office this week obtained and served arrest warrants for two private investigators who worked for a once-powerful but now defunct Upland-based police union law firm.
Christopher Joseph Lanzillo, 45, of Lake Arrowhead, and Scott Alan Impola, 46, of Canyon Lake, are each charged with two felony counts of conspiracy to commit a crime of unlawful use of an electronic tracking device, one felony count of false imprisonment by deceit, and one felony count of conspiracy to commit a crime of falsely reporting crime to an agency. If convicted, Lanzillo and Impola face a maximum sentence of four years and four months in jail, as well as revocation of their private investigators’ licenses.
The law firm of Lackie, Dammeier, McGill, and Ethir specialized in the representation of police officers and their collective bargaining units. A significant number of the firm’s lawyers were former peace officers themselves. The firm had an impressive track record in court defending officers who had been charged with crimes and was no less successful at the pre-trial level in dissuading prosecutors from proceeding with cases against the firm’s clients as well as in obtaining favorable outcomes in representing officers being subjected to departmental discipline procedures.
Moreover, the firm had a defining reputation as an aggressive advocate for police unions with regard to contracts, salaries and benefits in  negotiations with the cities and agencies employing those unions’ officers. Indeed, the firm employed what many considered to be ruthless tactics in intimidating the elected leaders  and senior administrators of those municipalities and agencies, directing political campaigns that variously rewarded by keeping in office elected officials who cooperated with the union during collective bargaining sessions and opposing and thereby drumming out of office politicians who resisted the union’s demands. Some accused the firm, those in its employ and the members of at least some of the unions Lackie, Dammeier, McGill, and Ethir represented with crossing the line by seeking to or actually using extortion against elected officials.
In making a case against Lanzillo and Impola, the Orange County District Attorney will be attempting to verify, document and establish that such extortion attempts tool place.
According to the Orange County District Attorney’s Office, at the time of the crimes Lanzillo and Impola were under the employ of  Lackie, Dammeier, McGill, and Ethir, engaging in political skullduggery. It has been established that the Costa Mesa Police Officers’ Association retained Lackie, Dammeier, McGill, and Ethir to conduct “candidate research,” including surveillance on Costa Mesa city council members, in the months leading up to the November 2012 election.
On June 19, 2012, according to Orange County Senior Deputy District Attorney Robert Mestman of the special prosecutions unit, Lanzillo is accused of purchasing a GPS monitoring device using the alias of Robert Teller with Teller Investigations. According to Mestman, between July 25, 2012, and August 22, 2012, Lanzillo and Impola conspired to place a GPS tracking device on the vehicle of Costa Mesa City Councilman Stephen Mensinger without his knowledge or permission. Lanzillo and Impola are accused of using the GPS device to illegally track Mensinger’s  location and movements.
Further, according to Mestman, Impola conducted an operation searching for evidence to use against Costa Mesa Councilman Gary Monahan to damage his political career. The criminal complaint against Impola states that on August 22, 2012, Costa Mesa City Councilmen Jim Righeimer and Monahan were at  Monahan’s Skosh Monahan’s restaurant and bar in Costa Mesa. Lanzillo is accused of arriving near the restaurant a short time later.
“Impola and Lanzillo communicated with each other and Lackie, Dammeier, McGill, and Ethir Managing Partner Dieter Dammeier by calling on their cell phones and through text messages,” according to Mestman. “At approximately 5:45 p.m. on August 22, 2012, councilman Righeimer left the restaurant in his vehicle and drove home after he had consumed two non-alcoholic beverages. Lanzillo called 911 and falsely reported that he observed a man stumble out of the location and into a vehicle that matched the description of councilman Righeimer’s vehicle.”
Lanzillo is accused of falsely reporting that the vehicle was swerving on the road and that the driver may be under the influence of alcohol or disabled.
The Costa Mesa Police Department dispatched an officer to conduct an investigation. Councilman Righeimer was detained outside his home during this investigation for driving under the influence. Righeimer had in his possession two receipts for Diet Cokes he had purchased at Skosh Monahan’s. After administering a sobriety test and not observing any objective symptoms of intoxication, the officer determined that Councilman Righeimer was not under the influence and he was released. “It was later determined that councilman Righeimer did not stumble out of the bar and was not swerving when he drove,” according to Mestman.
Further, according to Mestman, between June 21, 2012, and July 12, 2012, Lanzillo and Impola placed a GPS tracking device on the vehicle of an attorney at a law firm that was a competitor to the Lackie,  Dammeier, McGill, and Ethir firm without the victim’s knowledge or permission. Lanzillo and Impola are accused of using the GPS device to illegally track the location information of the victim.
According to Mestman the Costa Mesa Police Department cooperated in the matter and “provided reports and information to the Orange County District Attorney’s Office. We conducted an extensive investigation into all matters surrounding this incident. The investigation is on-going.”
Efforts to obtain statements from the former principals of the Lackie,  Dammeier, McGill, and Ethir firm were unsuccessful.

BARSTOW—(December 9) Like the county of San Bernardino did before it, the city of Barstow is surrendering to the state of California the major tool it has at its disposal to crack down on the proliferation of prostitution.
Last week, the Barstow City Council voted 5-0 to give first reading to an amendment to the city  ordinance relating to massage parlors and clinics. That amendment essentially defers the city’s regulatory reach to the California Massage Therapy Council. The California Legislature, through enactment of Assembly Bill 1147 on September 18, 2014, significantly revised this state law pertaining to massage parlors.  Known as the Massage Therapy Act. the new  state law routes regulation of massage parlors and clinics to the California Massage Therapy Council, which was created in 2008, to oversee implementation and enforcement of the state law. Under this state law, those persons who wish to provide massage services may apply to the California Massage Therapy Council for issuance of a certificate. Such certificate holders are exempt from any county’s or city’s massage technician licensing requirements.
The action by the Barstow City Council last week, which must be followed up with a second confirming vote known as a second reading to go into effect, was intended, city officials say, to bring the city’s massage therapy ordinance in compliance with the Massage Therapy Act.
Such action on the city’s part was not mandated by the state. Massage technicians and massage parlors could still be subject to local regulation under the act where those massage professionals themselves choose to remain under local authority.  Operators and masseuses would have had the option of either getting state licensing and bypassing local regulations or conforming with local regulations. Barstow’s massage therapy ordinance was originally adopted in 1999 and was amended in 2000.
The Massage Therapy Act takes effect January 1, 2015. The new law establishes standards of conduct for state certificate holders, even if such conduct does not constitute criminal behavior. Given these standards and the consideration that the California Massage Therapy Council has greater expertise and resources, some local officials, including those in Barstow, have reasoned that it is no longer necessary or efficient for the county or city to maintain and enforce their own regulations.
The amendment to the city ordinance shifts the licensing and regulating authority over massage parlors and clinics as well as those that work at such establishments from the city’s planning and land use divisions to the California Massage Therapy Council.
While the Massage Therapy Act does not prohibit a local police department or agency from investigating massage clinics for potential criminal conduct, removing local control over the issuance of massage practitioner permits as previously required could complicate or lessen local authorities’ ability to actually carry out those investigations, as information pertaining to the employees would be reposited into a state data base in Sacramento. Moreover, both Assembly Bill 1147 and state legislation passed in 2008, Senate Bill 731, which created the California Massage Therapy Council, grew out of  complaints that local regulations relating to massage operations  are or were burdensome to legitimate massage service providers.
County officials, including clerk of the board of supervisors Laura Welch, have acknowledged that the county has long recognized that massage parlors have been utilized as a front for houses of prostitution.
“Although most massage technician services are legitimate, the historical concern of local governments has been that some massage clinics use massage technicians to engage in prostitution,” Welch told the board of supervisors last month.
Some public officials, such as city managers in San Bernardino County cities where prostitution has been a persistent problem, have expressed the view that by liberalizing regulations for legitimate massage businesses, the state may have created leeway for illegitimate ones to flourish
Historically, San Bernardino County has been a haven for the prostitution trade, with scores of houses of ill repute located along its major thoroughfares such as Highway 66, Highway 395, Old Highway 60, and elsewhere, in both sparsely populated and remote areas as well as in its population centers such as San Bernardino, Ontario and Barstow. For decades, a close relationship existed between many of the brothel operators and county law enforcement, which essentially entailed a semi-institutionalized government protection racket.
Members of the Barstow City Council, including Councilman Richard Harpole, who retired from the Barstow Police Department as a lieutenant, offered assurances that entrusting the licensing, permitting and zoning authority over massage parlors to the state would not, in the words of Harpole “limit our options against any criminal actions that may occur at these businesses.”

(December 10)  JOSHUA TREE—The Hi-Desert Memorial Health Care District board of directors on December 3 voted to enter into an affiliate relationship with Dallas, Texas-based Tenet Healthcare.
In response to falling revenues and continuous budget shortfalls, the board hired Jon Spees, the senior vice president of the Camden Group to serve as a consultant to map out a strategy for achieving economic stability while continuing to provide adequate and comprehensive care for patients in Twentynine Palms, Joshua Tree, Yuccaa Valley and Morongo Valley, including the hiring of more medical care specialists. Spees’ recommendation was that the hospital enter into a partnership with a large corporation that possesses the resources to help Hi-Desert Memorial achieve its goals.
After soliciting letters of intent from health care provision entities, the district received responses from Strategic Global Management and Tenet Health
Ultimately, the board voted 5-0 in favor of Tenet, a $4.2 billion company, which has a working relationship with 81 hospitals nationwide, over 200 outpatient centers and 36,000 physicians.
Board member Joe Sullivan was particularly laudatory of Tenet’s reach throughout the medical profession and its ability to attract physician specialists of all type.

Some 4,100 feet in elevation below me and 25 miles distant, in the county seat at the very foot of the mountains here, a most interesting scenario is playing out. The dramatis personae are, in descending order, San Bernardino Mayor Carey Davis; his departing chief of staff, Mike McKinney; city manager Alan Parker; the city council, the most prominent of whom in the current scene is councilman Fred Shorett, an erstwhile Davis political ally; and an assortment of lesser courtiers, courtesans and liegeman…
Davis is a political neophyte and naïf, if ever there was one. I do not dislike him for that, and actually, I am in favor of installing our political posts with non-politicians. I cannot resist liking Davis. He appeals to me on several levels. As an accountant by trade he is sensitive to the need for parsimony in the management of government. He has gamely taken on a formidable assignment with San Bernardino, mired in financial challenges, and I cannot help admiring his fortitude. What’s more, he is a Republican, which elevates him in my estimation…
Yet, despite all these advantages, he has shown himself as something of a stumblebum when it comes to running his city and riding herd on the city council. The first indication that something was amiss came shortly after he took office, when he prevailed on the council to allow him to hire Mike McKinney, or more accurately, Mike McKinney’s public relations firm, MICA-PR, to serve in the role of his chief-of-staff. This is troubling because one should never make the mistake of substituting public relations or propaganda for policy. Running a government, as in running a corporation, requires substance before  form. Form and beauty and window dressing are luxuries you can afford only after you have addressed basics. And the hiring of McKinney and MICA-PR were doubly troubling because McKinney had been recommended to Davis by a cabal of Democrats, the very group of Democrats who had championed the wholesale recall of the city council, the mayor and the city attorney in 2013. There are times, I will allow, that bipartisanship is called for. But I find more than questionable Mayor Davis’s reliance, indeed obsequious dependence, upon guidance from someone so obviously in the Democratic camp…
Lest I be accused of some form of partisan hair-splitting, bear in mind that I am merely observing reality and reflecting upon its impact.  One strong indication that Davis had gone in the wrong direction consists of the defection from his camp that came when his greatest ally on the council, Fred Shorett, parted company with him over the McKinney issue. In fact, it was Shorett that infused the remainder of the council with the backbone to refuse Davis’s request that McKinney’s contract as chief of staff be extended into 2015…
This debacle sunk to a yet further level this last week, when Davis, miffed over his isolation on the McKinney contract extension, took aim at city manager Alan Parker. The ostensible justification that Davis gave in calling to have Parker tossed out of his $210,000 per year job was that he had not made fast enough progress in formulating the city’s bankruptcy exit strategy. In 2012, which was well before Parker was brought in to manage the city, San Bertnardino had filed for Chapter Nine bankruptcy protection. Federal bankruptcy judge Meredith Jury has patently indulged the city as it is struggling to get its financial house in order but more recently signaled that she wanted San Bernardino to hurry things toward a recovery plan that will allow its debtors and creditors to be made whole…
Curiously, Davis had no problem with leaving Parker in place all these many months, despite the rather common knowledge that Parker was no stranger to the inside of a bankruptcy court, himself. Indeed Parker had twice filed bankruptcy personally, and his detractors and creditors have alleged that he was leading an extravagant lifestyle, both before and after his filing, including purchasing and receiving expensive items and services and thereby increasing his debt obligations as well as transferring property or assets just prior to both filings. Last June, when councilman John Valdivia was pushing for an exacting performance review for Parker with what appeared to be any eye for terminating him, Davis quashed that effort…
Davis’s timing in wanting to sack Parker now has eroded his political credibility. This week, the council held a special session to consider doing just that. Under the city’s charter he needed a 5 to 2 vote to accomplish that. He had to know going in that he was far short of that threshold. When the meeting was over, Parker was still city manager and Davis had one fewer friend at City Hall. With every move, it seems, Davis confirms what a political novice, and ineffectual novice, he is…

(December 11) Highland City officials are growing increasingly impatient with Southern California Edison over a delay in the removal of a light pole in the public right-of-way on Greenspot Road near Boulder Avenue.
As part of its effort to widen the road to allow for three eastbound  lanes, the city requested that Edison dispatch with the pole, in so doing paying the utility company’s expenses. The pole, at press time, remains in place.
According to Highland Mayor Sam Racadio, who was formerly Highland city manager, “The Edison company is not responding like they should.”

(December 10)  Chino Police Chief Miles Pruitt has moved into retirement after 31 years with the department.
Pruit began with Chino P.D. in 1983 as a reserve police officer in the city. He was hired as a full-time patrolman in 1985.  He eventually promoted to sergeant, and in that rank served as a field supervisor, team leader on the SWAT team, watch commander and problem oriented policing team leader.
He became lieutenant in 2005. After two years in that billet he was  promoted to captain in 2007. In 2009, when then-chief Stan Stewart retired, he was elevated to chief.

TWENTYNINE PALMS—(December 10) Former Twentynine Palms councilman and mayor Larry Bowden, who was also the Twentynine Palms High School basketball coach, has been chosen to serve as Twentynine Palms interim city manager.
Bowden was one of those considered for the city manager’s spot in June when the city council sacked Joe Guzzetta. At that point the council decided to go with Andy Takata, the one-time town manager of Yucca Valley and city manager of  Banning, who was then serving as interim city manager in Calexico.
In November, Takata abruptly departed to become the chief of staff for San Bernardino County Second District Supervisor Janice Rutherford.
There is only limited prospect that Bowden will remain in the position for more than six months. The city council intends to recruit a permanent city manager, whom they hope to have in place no later than April.
Bowden was the city’s parks and recreation department supervisor.

(December 12) The academic credentials of recently-appointed San Bernardino Valley College President Gloria Fisher have come under question.
Fisher, who places the term doctor before her name and has served 18 months as interim president, had worked for 22 years as an administration of justice instructor at the college before being elevated to the interim position in June 2013.
According to Frank Peterson, an attorney and San Bernardino Valley College instructor who was on the college’s hiring committee when Fisher was hired in 1991, he recommended against granting Fisher the tenure-track position at that time. After Peterson retired in 2006, he filed a lawsuit against the community college district in which he asserted that the San Joaquin College of Law from which Fisher obtained her juris doctor degree in 1986 was unaccredited. Peterson did not prevail in the case, which was aimed at disqualifying Fisher as an instructor.
Leonard Lopez, an assistant professor in the philosophy department, since this summer has questioned Fisher’s credentials along the same lines laid out by Peterson in the context of her lack of qualification as a college president, a post traditionally held by an established educator with a Ph.D. Fisher does not have a bachelor’s degree and she is not a member of the California Bar..
A juris doctor degree is roughly the equivalent of a master’s degree, which is generally considered a six year degree awarded after two years of study that follow the awarding of a four-year bachelor’s degree. A juris doctor degree carries with it no requirement for the submission of a dissertation, as is required with a Ph.D.
Upon appointing Fisher as full college president on November 13, the college district board conferred upon her a doctorate stipend in addition to her annual salary of $186,000. The board revisit that issue and reconfirmed Fisher’s hiring last night.