(December 10)   The San Bernardino County Housing Authority has moved to refinance the $15.7 million arrangement it entered into with Bank of America last year for the 168-unit Andalusia Apartments in Victorville.
The housing authority’s  $16 million loan agreement with Prudential Mortgage Capital Co. at an all-in rate of 4.02 percent supplants the existing  $9.7 million, 6.75 percent-rate loan and  $6 million line of credit with Bank of America.
The change was unanimously approved last week based on the recommendation of the county housing commission. The switch will result in savings of $70,000 annually for the housing authority’s account with regard to the Andalusia property.
The housing authority houses over 30,000 residents countywide. Some 9,100 vouchers issued to in-need residents cover almost $70 million paid annually to the county’s landlords, according to the county.

(December 9)  The Yucaipa City Council has approved the formation of the Yucaipa Community Arts Foundation, which is to be dedicated to raising operating funds for the Yucaipa Performing Arts Center.
Capital is needed for the facility’s construction and subsequent operation,  management and the “broader mission of enhancing the role of the arts in the community.”
The foundation will be a non-profit 501 C (3).
The first order of business, according to a city staff report, is to  establish and register the foundation, set up its financial structure, its budget and  accounting system. Yucaipa Director of Community Development Paul Toomey. estimated that it would cost roughly $2,000 to jumpstart the effort by filing for non-profit status.
The city has already picked out a site for the performing arts center.

(December 12)  The California Supreme Court this week denied a petition by defense attorney Stephen Larson to review Superior Court Judge Michael Smith’s rulings against dismissing criminal charges facing  defendant Jeff Burum in the Colonies Lawsuit Settlement Public Corruption Prosecution  on grounds of improper grand jury instruction and the withholding of exculpatory evidence.
Larson  petitioned the Supreme Court on behalf of Burum  after the 4th District Court of Appeals in Riverside rejected two writs Larson filed in October. Last summer,  Smith dismissed a central conspiracy charge against Burum and former county supervisor Paul Biane, former assistant assessor and sheriff’s deputies union president Jim Erwin, and former Second District supervisorial district chief of staff Mark Kirk, who are also charged in the case, on statute of limitations grounds. .Smith allowed charges pertaining to the misappropriation of public funds and the provision of bribes to public officials to proceed in the case, which Larson had appealed.

By Mark Gutglueck
Eugene Mueller was San Bernardino County’s first and arguably only reformist sheriff.
He was born in Chicago on December 12, 1904 to Alfred Mueller, a veteran of the Spanish-American War, and his wife, Clara.
Alfred was wounded in the leg while in battle in the Philippines, which left him disabled for the remainder of his life. To support his parents, who moved to California in 1919, Eugene Mueller went to work at an early age and therefore never received an academic education beyond high school.
He began working as a policeman with the Pasadena Police Department in 1927, walking a beat in his first assignment.  In 1932 he was lent to the Southgate police department, where he reorganized operations and served as police chief for three years. He returned to the Pasadena Police Department in 1935.
While with the Pasadena department, he was given the assignment of escorting the Stanford football team around town during one of its appearances at the Rose Bowl. This led to Mueller’s lifelong association with Stanford as both an athletic scout and a booster.
In 1941, Mueller left Pasadena for Upland, where he had been ofered the assignment of police chief. When he arrived in Upland, he found accommodations for his family, which included his wife Norma, his daughter Marilyn and two sons, Don and Ken, at a citrus grove estate on what is now 20th Street. Concerned about maintaining stability for his children in their educational setting, he committed to remaining in Upland.
While overseeing the Upland force, he made the noteworthy stride of hiring the department’s first minority members, including Felix Quesada. As chief, Mueller involved himself in the rudimentary elements of police work, walking a beat, patrolling and personally investigating crime within his department’s jurisdiction. He was close to his officers and played second base on the department baseball team, and was averred to be a good hitter.
During the late stage of World War II, Mueller traveled to Washington, D.C., where he attended the National Police Academy, bringing back concepts on how to modernize and improve the department.
While in Upland, his children attended Chaffey High School. He created a quarterback’s social club, which entailed Monday morning breakfast meetings of participants. He promoted youth sports programs such as Golden Gloves. As a scout for Stanford, he recruited three Chaffey High gridiron standouts for the Stanford football team: Jim Vick, Jim Hayes and Don Lucas.
In 1950, Mueller ran for San Bernardino county sheriff against incumbent Jim Stocker and another challenger, former sheriff Emmet Shay in the June primary. After qualifying for a run off against Stocker, Mueller prevailed by 992 votes in what was the closest election for county sheriff in San Bernardino County history. Out of 85,362 votes cast with all but three of the county’s precincts accounted for, 43,177 votes went to Mueller and 42,185 votes were captured by Stocker.
The impetus for Mueller’s candidacy had been his backers’ call for him to make inroads with regards to what the Los Angeles Daily News had exposed as a $3 million vice ring operating in San Bernardino County in which none of the major principals had been indicted  and of which only a single pimp had been arrested.
As the newly elected sheriff, Mueller inherited an organization with a checkered past, conflicting loyalties, and questionable alliances, political, legal and moral. For generations those in power and those with money had been able to utilize the sheriff’s department much like a private security force to protect their interests first and those of the public second. Protection rackets were an inherent part of the system. Houses of ill repute flourished throughout the county unmolested, as did gambling enterprises. Law enforcement officers were paid to look the other way, if they were not invited to outright participate in illicit enterprises directly or indirectly.
Gambling houses and bookmaking operations operated with seeming impunity in San Bernardino County throughout the 1940s and into the first year of the 1950s. Occasional raids on such enterprises were staged by Stocker and his men, but reports on the activity were not consistently provided to the district attorney’s office and the gaming operations carried on.
Mueller set his sights first on these elements of the county’s vice activity, seeking to spur his department into action.
Upon coming into office in 1951, Mueller undertook what would be described in the press as “a sweeping shake-up of his office.”  Mueller said the changes were being made “to bring about closer supervision, thereby ensuring greater efficiency, and to broaden deputies with a wider orientation of duties in various areas.”
He had some success in changing the complexion and tenor of his department’s operations, but felt his deputies were not moving with the alacrity he envisioned was necessary to achieve the goals he had set out for the department. In response, he moved to reorganize the department’s command structure, demoting five people holding administrative echelon positions, including 69-year-old undersheriff  Harry R. Heap, whom Mueller perceived as being too lackluster in his performance.  Heap was reduced in rank to chief investigator.
Mueller settled upon the one senior administrator under Stocker in whom he saw the most promise, Ray Deakins, as his best bet for serving him in the role of second-in-command. Thus, Deakins became undersheriff. Mueller further used his authority and autonomy as sheriff to promote those men in the department he felt made the best fit with his goals and management style.
He created the office of acting chief of detectives in the bureau of investigations and installed deputy L.L. “Zeke” Eblen in that post.  He named lieutenant James M. Holloway chief of the administrative intelligence squad, to be assisted by detective lieutenants Robert Graefe and James Willis. He put inspector H.C. English in charge of all uniformed patrol deputies and their activities, jail operations, the department’s substations and its rescue operations. He further created the office of chief of plans and training, assigning captain Lester Liess to oversee it.
But the series of changes Mueller instituted touched the lives of roughly two of every five of his deputies and his approach triggered protests and grumbling. And his challenge to Heap’s turf  as well as to two of the other five members of the department he demoted resulted in official appeal filings with the San Bernardino County Civil Service Commission.
Relatively early on, the new sheriff would get a glimpse of what he was up against. Ten months into Mueller’s tenure as sheriff, in November 1951, George C. Fitzwatter, who was then 66 years old, was arrested and charged with collecting money under false pretenses. Fitzwater had been the local coordinator for a pension collective. He was accused of bilking Lawrence Harpham, the proprietor of an establishment near Colton and just north of the Riverside County line, of $350.  Fitzwater was arrested after Mueller’s deputies raided Harpham’s gaming house on November 10, 1951 and an outraged Harpham told them they were making a mistake. He then explained that he had paid “fix” money to Fitzwater with the understanding that $150 of the money would be kept by Fitzwater and the other $200 would be paid to Deakins, the acting undersheriff. The purpose of his payment, Harpham thought, was to keep his gambling operation from being raided.
The event was a learning experience for all involved. Hapham and other gambling house operators learned that Mueller and Deakins’ enforcement of the law was not subject to monetary influence as had apparently been the case during the Stocker  administration when Heap was undersheriff. And Mueller and Deakins learned something about why their vice suppression operations were less effective than they intended.
Meanwhile, Mueller’s reassignment of deputies to different duty stations, ones that were in some cases a hundred miles or more away from their previous assignments, rankled some of his men. Mueller was dealing with the reality of the sheer size of the county, from its northeast corner where the Inyo County line meets the Nevada border to Carbon Canyon near Chino Hills in the southwest and from Trona at the county’s northwest corner nestled against Inyo and Kern counties at the gateway into Death Valley down to San Timoteo Canyon along the frontier with Riverside County and everything in between. At, 20,014 square miles, San Bernardino County is a land mass larger than New Jersey, Connecticut, Delaware and Rhode Island combined. Mueller wanted his men to familiarize themselves with all aspects of the county, from its desolate and seemingly boundless expanse of desert to its snow capped peaks in the San Bernardino and Angeles Mountains as well as its agricultural zones, its railroad towns such as Needles, Barstow and Colton, its stretches of lonesome highway and its urban centers such as San Bernardino, Ontario and Redlands.  Working counter to Mueller was not simply the inbred corruption he detested, but the very geography of the county itself.
The challenges to Mueller’s department reorganization were eventually heard by the civil service commission.
Heap, the dean of the department as he approached his 70th year, was reinstated as undersheriff, though only temporarily. In reinstating Heap, the commission took into consideration that he was scheduled to retire within two months, while recognizing that Mueller was looking for more dynamic leadership for his department. “The big issue seemed to be that Heap had outlived his usefulness and lacked in initiative and administrative ability,” the civil service commission’s finding stated. “This may be true but little or no evidence was submitted to substantiate the sheriff’s position.”
The other two department members who had contested Mueller’s action were Roy Cornelison, the former Fontana substation captain who had been replaced in that assignment by sergeant J. M. Staudemmayer and  transferred to the central division in San Bernardino as a patrol deputy, and P. T. Coleman, who had been relieved of his post as resident deputy in Trona and was likewise sent back to San Bernardino to do patrol work.
The commission approved the one-grade demotion of Roy Cornelison, whom the commission characterized as using “poor judgment” at times. The commission further found that occasionally Connelison’s “conduct, manners and language were unbecoming a substation captain.”
The commission approved the demotion of Coleman from resident to patrol deputy, finding there was evidence “of conduct unbecoming an officer, poor judgment while on duty and poor public relations over a long period of time which did not enhance the prestige of the sheriff’s office in the minds of a substantial number of citizens in the Trona-Argus desert area.”
A citizens’ group formed to fight the changes and, utilizing representatives from a number of the communities around the county, lodged assertions with the commission that civil service regulations were not being followed by the new sheriff. Mueller was able to allay those concerns with the commission and most of the public.
Emblematic of how the new ethos Mueller advocated did not sit well with at least some of his men was the dissolution of the sheriff’s posse. Mueller rode horses, but was not a devout equestrian. On the other hand, his predecessor, Stocker, had the reputation and mindset of a cowboy. Stocker had founded in 1947 the sheriff’s mounted posse, a throwback to the days of old. The posse consisted of horsemen sworn in by Stocker, who were in a perpetual stand-by status, ready to be called out to search the county’s considerable expanses for fleeing criminals, jail or prison escapees, lost hikers or hunters or fishermen or for any rescue operation where they might be useful.
Mueller, though appreciative of the posse in concept, had not put as high of a priority on its contributions as Stocker and, busy with other matters, did not get around to swearing the posse in until four months after he took office. The posse members, who yet counted Stocker among them, took this as a slight. Claiming that politics was not involved, the horsemen disbanded the posse, saying Mueller had allowed it to “drift.” In its place, they immediately formed a new riding club – the San Bernardino County Rangers.
Mueller then did some maneuvering of his own, creating the sheriff’s reserve mounted posse and forming the sheriff’s reserve motorcycle posse, with 30 members chartered to assist with traffic emergencies, search and rescue and forest fire response.
Following Heap’s retirement, Mueller was able to assert authority over the department he headed.
Mueller assigned a deputy to do occasional patrol of Lake Arrowhead to discourage reckless speeding by boaters there.
One facet of Mueller’s direction of the department that distinguishes him from both his predecessors and his successors is the sartorial standard he set for the department. He insisted that his men adopt uniforms that were reminiscent of the dress regalia of the Marine Corps, complemented by World War II National Park ranger hats, which he believed conveyed an image befitting the esteem he believed the public should have for officers of the law.
Mueller was also the first San Bernardino County sheriff to add women to the ranks of the department and it was under him that the department’s ladies auxiliary was organized.
He participated in and often led department raids, signaling  commencement of the enforcement team’s charge with the call “Geronimo.”
Mueller had an effective way of commanding the attention of his men or others in a crowd who had slipped off into a myriad of separate private conversations when it was time for him to convey something of importance. He kept a blank bullet in his gun and he would take aim at the ceiling and shoot. The loud report would bring the focus back to him.
On June 29, 1953, the sheriff’s department’s aeronautical unit was formed with the acquisition of the department’s first aircraft. Also in 1953, the sheriff’s reserve emergency unit was organized.
By his fourth year in office, the department had made significant strides in eroding the gambling component of the region’s vice activity.
Nevertheless, Mueller never fully recovered politically from the dissension that was sowed in the ranks over his effort to change the culture of the force under his command. In 1954, Frank Bland, exploiting some of the deputies’ expressions of discontent over their transfers and the newfangled way of running the department Mueller represented, challenged him in the sheriff’s race. Bland, a railroad policeman and detective from Needles who had joined the Needles Police Department and had risen through the ranks to become police chief there, was like Mueller, a graduate of the National Police Academy.  Bland campaigned on three issues: He charged Mueller with being a city slicker from Upland who had neglected the more remote and rustic areas of the county. Bland vowed to close down all of the pinball parlors around the county where youngsters were squandering too much of their time, he claimed, instead of staying home and doing their chores and homework. And he vowed to close down the houses of ill-repute which proliferated at various spots of the far flung county along its myriad of highways and outback reaches.
Mueller was one of the first San Bernardino politicians to be buried under the avalanche of a negative campaign. In addition to being attacked for slighting the county’s backwaters, he was attacked for dressing his deputies in fancy and overly flamboyant uniforms.
Ultimately, too much reform too soon undid Mueller politically in San Bernardino County. Elected at the halfway mark of the Twentieth Century, Mueller gamely attempted to modernize and professionalize a department that yet had one foot firmly planted in what was at least the mystique if not the reality of the ”Old West.” Moreover, the wide open lawlessness of the unbridled frontier that was much of San Bernardino County resisted the regulation and order he was seeking to impose. He lost convincingly to Bland 20,926 to 16,591 in a head-to-head, two-man race held in June 1954, during that year’s California primary election.
Bland’s victory that year was the first of seven successive electoral victories he racked up, allowing him to serve a record 28 years as sheriff in San Bernardino County. A horseman, Bland was able to pool the support of Stocker and utilize the discontent over Mueller’s reforms to canter to victory, posing as a reformer of sorts and creating in the process a political machine that has outlived him and survives to this day. Each sheriff that has succeeded him – Floyd Tidwell, Dick Williams, Gary Penrod, Rod Hoops and the current incumbent John McMahon – did so with the assistance of the political machine Bland created. Each of those sheriffs came into office with the political endorsement of his predecessor. And though Bland initially made good on his commitment to take a stand against vice and in particular close down some of the houses of prostitution in the county, in time that effort lapsed. In 1966, information surfaced that Bland himself had pilfered thousands of dollars from a fund that had been set up to provide his deputies working the vice/narcotics detail with money for drug buys, place bets with bookies or make the monetary exchanges needed to arrest  pimps and prostitutes. Despite the revelation, Bland remained in office and was never molested by the district attorney as he was often returned to office without electoral challenge or was able to bury the negative publicity under an avalanche of positive sounding mailers and handbills and gain re-election when he was opposed.
In 1978, Bland again dodged a mortal bullet when a scandal enveloped his campaign that showed 24 years after his maiden campaign for sheriff based upon eradicating the county of the scourge of prostitution Bland’s department had become mired in questionable ties with ladies of the evening. At a Bland campaign fundraiser in April of that year at Sweeten Hall in Rancho Cucamonga, donors and others in attendance with Bland were offered the services of prostitutes inside a trailer within the hall’s parking lot. A bust of the proceedings corralled a couple of the girls, a member of the sheriff’s department and one of Bland’s supporters. The ensuing case was prosecuted by deputy district attorney Bill Parker, leading to revelations about the matter that came too late to prevent Bland from being elected to serve a seventh term.
In 1982, Bland, then 69, chose not to seek reelection to an eighth term as he was mired in controversy relating to sheriff’s officers helping themselves to stolen property that had been recovered by his department. Instead, he handed off the reins to his second-in-command, undersheriff Floyd Tidwell.
To this day, Mueller has a legitimate claim to having been the leading reformist sheriff in San Bernardino County history.
Mueller’s work as a lawman did not end with his defeat in the 1954 election. In 1955, California Governor Goodwin Knight appointed Mueller to work with attorney Jim Cox on rooting out racketeering in boxing.
Meanwhile, in Culver City in Los Angeles County,  a laissez-faire atmosphere with regard to vice had persisted for some time. Gambling in particular was a wide-open phenomenon there, and the atmosphere of tolerance was at one with the political leadership of the time. But in 1956, Culver City Mayor Harold Shields, who had reformist leanings, was able, with three other successful reformist council candidates,  to get control of the city’s reins of power. Together, they eased police chief W. N. Hildebrand, who had a modus vivendi with the gaming interests in town, toward the door. Hildebrand would become eligible for a disability retirement on June 11, 1956 and that was the date set for his retirement.
Shields conferred with then-Los Angeles Police Chief William Parker, asking for his recommendation as to a replacement for Hildebrand, in particular someone who would aggressively step up enforcement against gaming and bookmaking operations. Parker suggested Mueller. Shields then prevailed upon Mueller to leave his Sacramento assignment and become police chief in Culver City.
Mueller lit into the city’s illicit gaming establishment.
“Some of it moved out when the mobsters heard I was coming and we took care of the rest,” Mueller later said.
Mueller remained as Culver City police chief for thirteen-and-one-half years, retiring on January 1, 1970.
One noteworthy change Mueller made toward the end of his career was that he lightened up on his requirement that the officers under his command wear officious looking uniforms. By 1969, Mueller had changed the dress code for Culver City police officers to allow them to wear typical street clothes with the sole requirement that they wear only one common item of apparel –  a gold blazer with a pocket insignia identifying the wearer as a policeman.
Sometime prior to his retirement, Mueller sat down for an interview with the Los Angeles Times, at which he sized up the challenges facing society, vis a vis cops vs. crooks.
“There is far too much sympathy for the criminal and not enough for the victim,” he said. “The bleeding hearts talk of the ‘poor fellow’ -and they’re not referring to the victim, but the criminal All judges need to get a little tougher. There must be a day of atonement for the commission of a crime. The individual must be held responsible for his actions. Otherwise there is chaos.”
The mission of a police department administrator should be, he said, “toward increasing the professionalism of policemen, through selection, training and improved human relations.”
Mueller died in 1977.

By Diane Dragotto Williams
Wildhaven Ranch, though over 5,000 feet in altitude, has had its share of stray pelicans often blown off course.  These distinctive birds of North America, with their oversized orange-salmon bill and vast wingspan of 8 to 9 feet are one of the largest waterbirds, standing 4 feet tall! Pelecanus Erythrorhynchos winters in California looking for lakes as they migrate, causing unexpected visits in our mountains as they are caught up in a storm.  Clumsy on land, the pelican is a good swimmer and graceful in flight as they fly in flocks, with their necks bent back on their bodies. Using its long neck and expandable pouch, the pelican catches its fish by scooping up water, holding its head up and draining out the water, while swallowing its prey!  Eating up to 3 pounds of fish a day, its pouch can hold up to 3 gallons of water! Another pound of crayfish and amphibians can also be speared for meals.
Its plumage is almost entirely white, except for black primary and secondary feathered edges, sometimes visible only in flight.  Pelican groups of a dozen or more will work communally by herding fish into shallow inland lakes.  Making their summer home near inland lakes, they then prefer to forage alone, or may steal fish from other waterbirds.  Their nests are made of built-up dirt with twig, stick and reed debris, holding 1-2 dull or chalky white eggs.  The young often grow up in pods, in colonies where an abundance of pelicans provide protection. Colony predators include foxes, coyotes and large avians.  Young pelicans are sometimes hunted by great horned owls and bald eagles.  Avian interlopers will be met by aggression with jabs of their enormous pelican bills. But mammals usually force pelicans to abandon their nests.
Soaring high on thermals, pelicans fly in a straight line or V formation, migrating across the western, southwestern and Gulf Coast states into Canada, and as far as Central and South America.  Braving storms, weather changes, different topography and sometimes toxic waters has made this striking aquatic bird quite a survivor.   At Wildhaven Ranch, visits from White American Pelicans gave us great amusement as we watched our guests easily consume pounds of fish, only to wait patiently for more to materialize! They always left with a smile on their beaks!
Wildhaven Ranch is a wildlife sanctuary in the San Bernardino Mountains specializing in educating the public about wildlife in our ecosystem. Visit them at www.wildhavenranch.org or call for tours at (909) 337-7389.

You can download a PDF of the December 5 San Bernardino County Sentinel by clicking on the portal below.

Sentinel 12-05-14

(December 2) San Bernardino County District Attorney has laid the groundwork for a 2018 run for California Attorney General.
A recent addition to the internet, the website http://www.joinmikeramos.com/ heralds Ramos’s 2018 bid, providing visitors to the site with information about Ramos’s philosophy, history and stated accomplishments.
The website celebrates Ramos as a prosecutor “seeking justice for victims. Mike Ramos is working every day to get things done on the issues that matter most to victims of crime and their family members.”
In this regard, Ramos is represented as a bulwark against unlawful gang activity. As San Bernardino County’s top prosecutor, Ramos is quoted: “The rise of criminal streets gangs in this county is a real threat to our communities, but I refuse to allow these local terrorists to determine how we live our daily lives. Coming down hard on gang crime and keeping our citizens safe will always be an important mission of this office.”
The website invites those interested to get involved in the campaign by taking action and donating to his campaign war chest. “Together, we can make great strides addressing issues that impact public safety.,” the web site states. “The strength of any campaign is in the power of the people who come together because they believe in something bigger, something achievable. Together, anything is possible.”
A link on the website allows donors to make contributions by credit card.
On the page’s biographical link, the reader is informed that Ramos was first elected in 2002, and that he was “innovative and persistent in his fight to protect victims’ rights” from the outset of his tenure in office and assumed chairmanship of the “Death Penalty Initiative Reform Committee,” a collective effort to prevent the death penalty from being banned in California and instead “speed up the execution of the 733 prisoners California holds on its death row at San Quentin.”
The website further states that “Mike has also been an outspoken advocate against Human Trafficking at the local and state level” and that he “campaigned heavily in favor of Proposition 35 which voters overwhelmingly passed in 2012” and created a Human Trafficking Prosecution Unit. In an effort to further reduce the demand for victims of human trafficking, he also began releasing the names and photographs of defendants convicted of solicitation in San Bernardino County.
One of the site’s webpages touts Ramos’s efforts at gang affiliation prevention.
“I know from my years in law enforcement in and out of the courtroom, that if we only focus on adult offenders, we will never effectively address the crime problem,” Ramos states on the webpage. “Most adult criminals started by getting into trouble as juveniles and eventually dropping out of school. It is in those early years when we have the best chance of steering them back on course. A ten percent increase in graduation rates would reduce murder and assault rates by about twenty percent. The San Bernardino County District Attorney’s Office takes truancy very seriously. We know that it is often the “gateway” to juvenile delinquency and, later, more serious adult crime. Making sure that kids go to school and stay in school is very important to me for two reasons.”
The quotation of Ramos continued, “One is because as district attorney of San Bernardino County I want kids to stay out of trouble and out of the court system. The best way to do this is by making sure kids stay in school. The second reason is that, since I served seven years on the Redlands’ School Board, I know how important a good education is to a child’s future. Successful students generally make productive, law-abiding citizens in the long run. If we don’t invest in education programs now, we’ll have to pay more to incarcerate later.”
In a video posted on the website, Ramos said he was opposed to Proposition 47, which reduced drug possession crimes from felonies to misdemeanors because it “takes away the initiative for people to attend drug programs.” Proposition 47, Ramos said, amounts to “a get out of jail free card. This approach is not the answer.”
Ramos’s declaration of his intent to run for state attorney general comes four years before that election will be held. He was reelected to a fourth term in office as San Bernardino County District Attorney in June. Kamala Harris was reelected California Attorney General this year as well. Under California’s term limits, she cannot seek reelection in 2018.
In addition to his early declaration of candidacy, Ramos embodies other potential strengths as a candidate for state attorney general. He is a Hispanic Republican, a relative rarity in California. His ethnic identification could attenuate the advantage a Democratic opponent might otherwise have over him in 2018, given that an overwhelming number of Latino voters in California are registered Democrats. And while Republicans are the state’s minority party, he has built political bridges to the Democrats, in particular Harris and Governor Jerry Brown, the former attorney general, whose office co-prosecuted with the San Bernardino County District Attorney’s Office some high profile cases. Ramos and Harris endorsed one another in this year’s election.

(December 3)  San Bernardino Mayor Carey Davis will be without a chief of staff as of January 1, pursuant to a vote of the San Bernardino City Council on Monday.
The council voted 5-2 against renewing the city’s contract with the consulting firm MICA-PR to serve in the capacity of chief of staff. MICA-PR is owned and managed by Michael McKinney, such that McKinney for the past eight months, since shortly after Davis assumed office in March, has been the de facto chief of staff.
Only council members Rikke Van Johnson and Virginia Marquez, the two members of the council remaining strongly aligned with Davis, voted to extend MICA-PR’s contract. The city’s contract with MICA-PR, at an annual rate of $125,000, ran until December 31, with two one-year extension options.
Davis’s reliance on McKinney for guidance thus far in his tenure as mayor has created some difficulty for Davis, who has enjoyed reasonably good relations with the rest of the council otherwise.
McKinney is not an uncontroversial figure. Through MICA-PR, he was involved, along with entrepreneur Scott Beard, in a 2013 effort to recall the entirety of the San Bernardino City Council and city attorney James Penman. That effort failed to qualify recall questions against then-mayor Pat Morris, Johnson, Marquez, councilman Fred Shorett, and then-councilmen Robert Jenkins and Chas Kelley, but did get adequate valid signatures on petitions to force recall questions against councilwoman Wendy McCammack and councilman John Valdivia, as well as Penman. The committee that sponsored the recall, San Bernardino Residents for Responsible Government, founded by Beard and directed by McKinney, raised and spent over $154,000, much of it put up by Beard, on the recall. The recall question against Valdivia failed but McCammack and Penman were removed from office.
Despite being recalled in the November 2013 municipal election. McCammack placed first among ten candidates vying for mayor that year. Davis finished second. With no single candidate garnering a majority of the vote, a runoff was held. McKinney served as Davis’ political consultant during that campaign. Davis defeated McCammack in the runoff election, which was held in February.
The affable Davis, an accountant, was a political neophyte unacquainted with the rough-and-tumble of politics, holding office or the bare-knuckled nature nor the subtleties of governance. He turned to McKinney, who had been largely responsible for his successful campaign, for guidance. Originally McKinney was brought in, under the guise of MICA-PR, on a purchase order that does not require a council vote and subsequently was given the contract through December 31, which the Council supported on a 4-1 vote with 2 absences. In agreeing to the contract, the council signed on to the rather uncommon arrangement of hiring his firm in the capacity of chief of staff.
McKinney, whose affiliation with Beard is no secret, ruffled feathers from the outset. In the first several months he was in office, Davis enjoyed a honeymoon with the new council, which included newcomers Henry Nickel, Benito Barrios and Jim Mulvihill. Indeed, Davis, who leads the council but is not empowered to vote, headed a coalition that numbered Mulvihill, Shorett, Johnson and Marquez as firm and fast members on practically all issues and Nickel and Barrios on a majority of issues.
In recent months, however, informed sources tell the Sentinel, McKinney’s abrasiveness has offended more and more members of the council and, according to one of those sources, he has “run roughshod” over city manager Alan Parker. He has burned bridges with the city council members one by one, to the point that Davis’s authority has eroded and the council is exerting its own influence.
One example of the contretemps that now exists between McKinney and various city officials is his effort to keep the city contracted with Westbound Communications for public relations services. The consensus of the council and city administration was that the city should get out from underneath its existing sole-source vendor relationship with Westbound, an Orange County-based public relations firm, which employs Carrie Gilbreth to oversee its work in San Bernardino on behalf of the city. Sentiment appeared to be running in favor of a competitively-bid and analyzed contract. One of the key points in reconsidering what firm the city should be using is that a local firm headquartered in San Bernardino would have a deeper understanding of the city, the region and local and regional politics. McKinney intervened when an effort was made to hold a request for qualifications (RFQ) recruitment process for public relations services going forward. McKinney, in an effort to keep the city contract with Westbound, with its corporate offices in the city of Orange, and Gilbreth intact, substituted in a less exacting request for proposals (RFP) recruitment process for the continuation of the public relations contract. The city council demanded recision of the RFP and demanded the RFQ be issued per the council’s order and an RFQ was reissued. Responses were received by the city and city manager Parker was said to have been holding back on a staff review of the responses until McKinney’s future status with the city was made clear.
In the run-up to Monday’s vote on renewing MICA-PR/McKinney’s contract, things became testy. Beard apparently threatened some council members, Nickel among them, with an electoral opposition effort if they did not vote to keep McKinney in place as Davis’s advisor.
Fred Shorett, who was considered to be Davis’s biggest ally on the council, was the councilman leading the charge to end McKinney’s contract.
Davis has been described as something of a fish out of water when he must function within a political context without the benefit of McKinney’s guidance and talking points. The growing rift between the mayor and the council, which ironically came about because of the Davis’s close association with McKinney, foreshadows a difficult time for Davis.

(December 3)  The defense in the Colonies Lawsuit Settlement Public Corruption Case has cited the prosecution’s own previous filings with the California Supreme Court to convince the Supreme Court to again consider several pithy legal questions arising out of the matter.
The case, which revolves around charges of conspiracy, bribery, extortion and the corruption of public officials, involves the activity leading up to the November 26, 2006 vote by the board of supervisors to confer a $102 million settlement on the Colonies Partners to bring to an end litigation brought against the county of San Bernardino and its flood control division over drainage issues at the company’s Colonies at San Antonio residential and Colonies Crossroads commercial subdivisions in northeast Upland.
In 2010, prosecutors told a grand jury that Jeff Burum, one of the managing principals in the Colonies Partners, with the assistance of one-time sheriff’s deputies union president Jim Erwin, first threatened and coerced then-supervisors Bill Postmus and Paul Biane into supporting the lawsuit settlement along with their board colleague Gary Ovitt. Prosecutors further alleged that after the vote was made Burum provided separate $100,000 bribes to Postmus and Biane as well as Ovitt’s chief of staff, Mark Kirk, in the form of donations to political action committees the three set up and controlled. In February 2010, that grand jury indicted Postmus and Erwin on a variety of political corruption, bribery, perjury and conspiracy charges. They pleaded not guilty to those charges but the following year Postmus pleaded guilty to 14 charges against him and turned state’s evidence. He then testified before a second grand jury, which on May 9, 2011 handed down a superseding 29-count indictment that renamed Erwin and indicted Burum, Biane and Kirk.
All four pleaded not guilty and the case, known as People vs. Biane, et al, has been contentiously litigated all along.
After the 29-count May 2011 indictment was handed down, defense attorneys filed demurrers challenging the sufficiency of the case on a host of legal, factual and technical grounds. In August 2011, Judge Brian McCarville granted several of those demurrers, throwing out a number of the charges. The prosecution appealed McCarville’s ruling to the Fourth District Court of Appeal, a move which was matched by defense attorneys, who asserted that McCarville should have dispensed with even more of the charges than he actually did. The Fourth District Court upheld McCarville on all but one of his rulings favoring the defense and, in addition, threw out even more of the charges. Prosecutors then filed a last-minute appeal of the Fourth District Court’s ruling with the California Supreme Court, arguing the case itself, involving the alleged bribing of public officials and a creative approach in providing those bribes, merited the Supreme Court’s review. The prosecution at that point asserted the California Supreme Court should review the Fourth District Court of Appeal’s rulings because the matter represented a “high-profile public corruption case…important… to the citizens of California [that] is being closely watched, and will be used as a benchmark to inform the conduct of both public officials and those seeking to influence them as to what acts they can commit without subjecting themselves to prosecution.”
The California Supreme Court elected to consider the case and, after a year-long delay, reinstated the charges and sent the matter back to the trial court, where it is being heard by Superior Court Judge Michael A. Smith.
Earlier this year, defense attorneys filed a series of five motions with Smith seeking the dismissal of the entirety of the case, based on a number of grounds, including statute of limitations, lack of probable cause, jury misinstruction, prosecutorial misconduct in having raided the defense camp and seizing privileged materials crucial to the defense, along with prosecutorial and investigator misconduct. In his first ruling on those motions, entered on July 24, Smith granted the dismissal of the issue at the heart of the case, a single conspiracy charge against each of the defendants, upon which the primary narrative of the case was hinged, including 43 overt acts. Smith granted that motion on his interpretation of the law that held conspiracy charges are subject to a strict three-year statute of limitations rather than the four years alleged by the prosecution. Because the last overt act of the conspiracy, that is, the final deliveries of the alleged bribe money in the form of the contributions to the political action committees, occurred in June and July of 2007 and the indictment did not come until May 2011, Smith concurred with the pleadings of Burum’s attorney, former federal judge Stephen Larson, that the statute of limitations had been exceeded.
Larson and the defense camp seemed to be making headway with Smith’s next ruling, which likewise was based on statute of limitations grounds, that sought the dismissal of twelve other charges in the case. Larson cogently argued that the statute of limitations on those charges had likewise been exceeded in that the victim, i.e., the county and its officials, knew of or had strong grounds to suspect as early as 2006 that the illegal activity described in the indictment had taken place, thus making the May 2011 indictment too late given the three-year statute of limitations. Smith granted that motion but then attenuated that defense victory by granting the prosecution the opportunity to amend the complaint to clarify that both law enforcement officers and county officials had no substantial indication that the alleged crimes had occurred until November 2008. Prosecutors in August availed themselves of that option by filing an amended indictment with that clarification, preserving those charges.
When Smith turned to the motions for dismissal based on lack of probable cause, jury misinstruction, prosecutorial misconduct and investigator misconduct, he uniformly denied those motions, allowing that portion of the case relating to misappropriation of public funds – Penal Code Section 424 – to proceed, as well as sustaining the charges of tax fraud and perjury against Erwin that were based upon his not having properly reported having received gifts from Burum. Smith did dismiss another set of perjury and tax fraud charges against Erwin, Biane and Kirk relating to the contributions to the political action committees they controlled, ruling such political donations cannot be considered income to the founders of the political action committees (PACS) or those in control of them. Smith also dismissed conflict-of-interest charges against Burum and Erwin, reasoning that Burum was never a public official and Erwin was not one at the time of the events in question.
In all, Smith threw out eleven of the 29 charges, but left nearly two thirds of the case, consisting of 18 of the counts, intact.
In response, both the prosecution and defense again sought to second guess the trial court, appealing Smith’s decisions to the Fourth District Court of Appeal. For its part the prosecution, consisting of Supervising Deputy California Attorney General Melissa Mandel and San Bernardino County deputy district attorneys Michael Abney, Lewis Cope and Reza Sadeghi, has indicated it wants the single conspiracy charge against each defendant thrown out by Smith reinstated. In his first filing with the appellate court, Larson on September 16 filed a writ of prohibition, challenging every ruling Smith made in favor of the prosecution relating to the motions to dismiss the charges against Burum. On September 26, Larson followed the writ for prohibition with a writ of mandate to the Fourth Appellate District Court in Riverside.
The Fourth Appellate Court, however, summarily dismissed both of Larson’s writs on October 14.
After an already pitched battle, with both sides fighting tooth and nail to scratch each others’ eyes out with regard not only to the facts of the case but both plainly understandable as well as arcane elements of law, Larson is refusing to give up an inch of legal ground and has now appealed the Fourth Appellate Court’s summary dismissal to the California Supreme Court.
The prosecution is hoping the Fourth Appellate District Court will reverse Smith and allow the conspiracy charges, around which so much of the case revolves, back in. Mandel, Abney, Cope and Sadeghi are looking forward to moving the case, now more than three-years old and dealing with events from eight and nine years ago, to trial. Accordingly, in response to Larson’s appeal of the Fourth Appellate Court’s summary dismissal, they asserted that the Supreme Court should simply refuse to entertain Larson’s appeal because the issues involved do not constitute matters worthy of the court’s scrutiny.
In their answer to Burum’s petition for review by the California Supreme Court, Supervising Deputy California Attorney General Melissa Mandel and San Bernardino County Deputy District Attorney Michael Abney assert, “This is the wrong case for this court to consider the issues presented in Burum’s petition for review, because the issues arose within the framework of the trial court’s comprehensive analysis of evidence presented to a grand jury during four weeks of testimony, resulting in more than 2700 pages of transcript and 266 exhibits. As such, review of the trial court’s fact-based rulings will not serve to guide future courts analyzing different evidence. Moreover, the petition seeks clarification of a recent decision of this court before its holding has been applied or interpreted by any appellate court, and it seeks intervention in this case before any of the issues have been decided by the Court of Appeal. At this stage in the proceedings, there is no chance of a different outcome even upon review and transfer, because Burum’s failure to create an adequate record precludes consideration of his claims on the merits.”
Mandel and Abney continue, “Burum seeks the exceptional remedy of a second grant of pretrial review by this state’s highest court, but granting his extraordinary request at this time will unnecessarily delay his trial with no resultant development in the law. The right time and proceeding to consider Burum’s claims is once the Court of Appeal has a complete record of the proceedings in the event of a post-judgment appeal. In the interim, it is time for trial in this important public corruption case.”
Mandel and Abney assert that the case of “People vs. Paul Biane, et al is now in its second phase, having been sent back to the trial court by the Supreme Court late last year. As such the case is “less than a year old” Mandel and Abney maintain, and thus it is not ripe for review by the California Supreme Court. “No appellate court has yet considered or interpreted its holding, including the Court of Appeal here which summarily denied Burum’s petition for writ of prohibition,” according to Mandel and Abney. “This court’s intervention is premature without any indication that appellate courts will apply People vs. Biane in a manner that triggers Burum’s concerns. Further, the claims raised in the petition are unlikely to arise in future cases in light of the guidance provided by People vs. Biane. This court [i.e., the California Supreme Court] has already found the allegations in the indictment sufficient to allege Burum aided and abetted bribery. Now, Burum asks this court to review the trial court’s findings that the evidence supported those allegations. That endeavor is unworthy of a grant of review.”
Noting that “Burum claims the requirement of ‘additional conduct’ beyond the mere offer of a bribe is an element of the crime” was needed to establish that he had engaged in facilitating bribery, and that “as such, the absence of a grand jury instruction on the issue invalidates the indictment” and that Burum has claimed “the trial court erred in finding sufficient evidence of additional conduct in the grand jury record,” Mandel and Abney assert that “The record reveals the trial court engaged in an extensive, fact-specific analysis, and reached a different conclusion than Burum about the sufficiency of evidence of additional conduct. The court found the grand jury record established two categories of ‘additional conduct.’ First, the evidence established that Burum used threats, coercion and intimidation to compel the recipients to accept bribes, which was additional conduct beyond his offer of a bribe, such that when the offer of a bribe seemed not to be sufficient, ‘the evidence supports the Grand Jury’s finding of probable cause that Mr.Burum then applied additional pressure to accept the bribe and subsequently vote on the settlement by the use of threats, intimidation and coercion.’ Second, the court cited the testimony of Adam Aleman that Burum suggested a sophisticated plan for the recipients to hide the payments by creating political action committees that the board members secretly controlled, which was additional conduct that aided and abetted the receipt of bribes by individuals who might otherwise have been concerned about the crimes being discovered.”
Adam Aleman was a staff member working in Postmus’ office.
In making their pitch to the California Supreme Court to review the case, Burum’s legal team, according to Mandel and Abney, “provided ‘selected excerpts’ of the grand jury transcript totaling 325 pages of a record which was at least 2716 pages long. The inadequacy of the record precludes the possibility of a different result upon review and transfer. Burum’s real complaint is the manner in which the trial court applied those holdings to he facts of his case. Review should not be granted to reconsider the trial court’s factual findings following its exhaustive review of the voluminous evidence provided to the grand jury. Nor is such review by the Court of Appeal available at this pretrial stage, because of the inadequacy of the record.”
Mandel and Abney assert that the “omitted portions of the trial court’s ruling belie Burum’s interpretation. In fact, the trial court did not find that any bribe would suffice as an act unauthorized by law. Rather, the court found the bribe in this case created a financial interest in the settlement, in the form of an expectation of kickbacks from the settlement proceeds, which was the unlawful act upon which the misappropriation charge was based.”
In his rebuttal to the prosecution’s answer to the petition to the California Supreme Court, Larson wrote “The fundamental flaw in the People’s answer to defendant Jeffrey Burum’s petition for review is exposed by comparing the following two statements, both made by the People, to this court, about this case: [1] ‘This is the right case for this Court to offer guidance on these important issues, and it comes at the right time.’ [2] ’This is the wrong case for this Court to consider the issues presented in Burum’s petition for review….’ The People made the first statement in 2012 when seeking review of the trial court’s dismissal of all bribery charges against Mr. Burum, and it led to this court’s decision in People v. Biane.”
According to Larson, “Nothing has changed between the People’s statements in 2012 and their statements now—except for the party seeking review.”
At issue, according to Larson, is “the same question for which the People successfully sought review in 2012, albeit in a different procedural context: When can an alleged bribe-giver be charged with aiding and abetting the receipt of the same bribe?”
The Supreme Court two years ago, Larson said, “answered that question for purposes of the charging phase. But on remand, the trial court failed to correctly apply the standard established by this court in People vs. Biane in the context of a Penal Code section 995 challenge to the grand jury’s probable cause finding.”
Penal Code Section 995 allows a defendant who has been indicted to petition the court to dismiss or set aside an indictment if the court determines the defendant has been indicted without reasonable or probable cause.
“The trial court’s misapprehension of People vs. Biane in that context is more than enough reason for this court to again take up the predominant legal issue in this case, and to provide needed guidance that will benefit not only these parties, but assure that future grand juries and courts correctly apply this court’s standard at the pivotal probable-cause stage of a criminal proceeding,” according to Larson. “Moreover, because of the important nature of the legal issues being addressed in this complex and novel prosecution, this remains the ‘right case’ at the ‘right time’ for the court to address the other two issues raised by Mr. Burum in his petition: The knowledge element of Penal Code section 424; and the remedy for grand jury misinstruction in the context of a Section 995 motion.”
Penal Code section 424 pertains to misappropriation of public funds, which Burum and the other defendants are charged with. It is Larson’s contention that Penal Code Section 424 was inappropriately applied to his client and the other defendants. In his writ to the Fourth Appellate Court which was summarily dismissed, Larson asserted a Penal Code Section 424 offense “must necessarily involve intent,” which he said his client and the other defendants lacked. “The trial court mistakenly held that the People’s admitted failure to instruct the grand jury on the intent element of Section 424 was harmless error,” Larson and another attorney working for Burum, Dennis Fischer maintain. “The factual record did not support a finding of probable cause as to the Section 424 charge.”
In his petition for review to the California Supreme Court, Larson wrote, “The second question raised in this petition is whether a defendant can be indicted for aiding and abetting an alleged misappropriation of public funds (Penal Code § 424) where the grand jury received no evidence that the public official ‘knew’ that a portion of the appropriation was without authority of law. The People’s primary argument against review of this issue is that it is a ‘disguised’ attempt to seek review of the trial court’s factual findings. [W]hen the trial court applied the law it had misinterpreted to the evidence that had been presented to the grand jury, it incorrectly held that a finding of probable cause on the bribery charges necessarily satisfied the knowledge element for the Section 424 charge. What Mr. Burum asks this court to review is the first stage of the trial court’s incorrect ruling: The misinterpretation of the law regarding the requisite knowledge for a Section 424 violation. That issue is an important one. There had to be probable cause that the supervisors knew, at the time of their vote, that they were appropriating a portion of the settlement funds for themselves in violation of the authorizing laws governing their conduct. Failing to understand this specific probable cause requirement, the trial court improperly based its ruling on the mere fact that the grand jury had found probable cause ‘that [the supervisors’] vote would be unlawfully influenced by the bribe that they were receiving,’ theorizing that this demonstrated knowledge that ‘the acceptance of a bribe in exchange for a vote was not authorized by law.’ In essence, the trial court borrowed the grand jury’s finding of probable cause for bribery and grafted it onto the knowledge requirement for the Section 424 charge. But that is not the standard articulated in People vs. Paul Biane, et al, and it is not consistent with the knowledge requirement.”
Pointing out that “The People actually concede instructional error on the Section 424 charge,” Larson asserts “Review is needed to instruct this trial court and future courts that there must be a specific finding that the defendant knew the appropriation of funds was without authority of law and that lack of evidence of such knowledge cannot be cured by evidence demonstrating knowledge of some other alleged wrongful conduct.”
Pointedly, Larson told the California Supreme Court that the prosecution was exercising out and out unprincipled intellectual dishonesty and legal discrimination by delaying the progression of the case to trial through filing an appeal of its own while asserting that the defense was retarding justice by also engaging in the appeal process.
“The People argue that Mr. Burum is ‘seek[ing] the exceptional remedy of a second grant of pretrial review by this state’s highest court,’ and that ‘granting his extraordinary request at this time will unnecessarily delay his trial,’” Larson wrote in his reply in support of the petition for review. “This argument merely confirms that the People are promulgating a double standard regarding appellate review. Two years ago, the People sought review in People vs. Biane, et al precisely because they asserted that the legal issues involved in this case were important enough for the highest court of California to consider despite the resulting delay. And now, at the same time they seek to block review here, they have chosen to pursue an appeal of the trial court’s dismissal of the conspiracy count. The People display no concern for a speedy trial when faced with adverse rulings in their case against Mr. Burum, but loudly decry his attempts to seek appellate review of incorrect legal rulings in their favor under the guise of wanting to advance this case to trial. In doing so, the People display a fundamental lack of fairness and an eagerness to obtain an unconstitutional tactical advantage.”
Larson continued, “Moreover, the People’s ‘delay’ argument is moot given that two of Mr. Burum’s co-defendants have recently been declared indigent by the trial court, leading to their previously retained counsel being relieved, and new counsel being appointed by both the trial court and the Court of Appeal, a development the People fail to mention in their answer. Given the complexity of this case and the hundreds of thousands of pages of discovery produced by the People, this will significantly delay any trial regardless of whether this court grants review. In the totality of these circumstances, it is far more important for this court to review the legal issues at stake here now, rather than have the parties and the trial court spend years preparing for and conducting a criminal trial only to find that the legal premises on which the trial was based were incorrect and require reversal. In fact, there is no better case for the Court to not only clarify the rule established in People vs. Biane, et al, but also to provide much needed instruction on these two other critical legal issues.”
The California Supreme Court is due to decide on or before December 26 whether it will consider the matter.

By Ruth Musser-Lopez
(December 4) Some labor representatives and even more corporate interests have hailed Congressman Paul Cook’s flip-flop on the Cadiz water project as a good thing. They say his recommendation, contained in his clandestine September letter to the Department of the Interior which was not released to the public until two days after the election, calling for the Bureau of Land Management to drop its effort to carry out strict environmental review of the project will allow what they consider to be an economically beneficial project to proceed. This position that these proponents take blurs the distinction between environmental issues and economic issues. Because of this they come to the conclusion that the project is good on both scores. They are doubly wrong.
Speaking to the environmental impact of the project, thoughtful and intellectually honest analysis of the project by United States Geological Survey scientists and other experts shows that pumping billions of gallons of water from the desert to Orange County will not conserve water in the desert. In fact, it will deprive the desert of the very elixir of life needed to sustain economic activity: water. The claim that by pumping water from deep within the water table will prevent evaporation on the surface of the desert would be laughable were it not so environmentally damaging. Same as anywhere, including the coast, surface evaporation occurs at the surface of the desert. This will continue, regardless of whether water is being sucked out from the water table hundreds of feet belowground or not. A huge host of species too numerous to list here which are highly dependent upon water being present in springs and other manifestations of water near the surface will be irrevocably harmed by withdrawing the water from the water table which feeds these springs.
The Cadiz Valley Water Conservation Recovery and Storage Project is a misnomer. It was prepared and pushed onto us by predatory attorneys, not scientists. It will not conserve water in the desert. It will steal it. This is a treacherous precedent-setting project that privatizes now public water and changes California law that currently requires ground water to be used above the aquifer it is from and not be transported away. Proponents of the project engage in sleight-of-hand when they attempt to mislead the public by changing the focus away from the environmental effects to the supposed economic benefit of the project. With regard to this alleged economic benefit, let us be clear: there is no lasting economic benefit to the desert or its citizens from this project. And whatever temporary economic benefit the project represents is dwarfed by the long-term economic disadvantage it represents.
While it is true that for the relatively short duration that project’s infrastructure will be constructed there will be some temporary jobs created, these jobs will be gone as soon as the pipeline is completed. Once that pipeline is in place it will convey billions of gallons of water from the desert to a location more than 230 miles away. By the time it is clear that too much water has been pumped, it will be too late to reverse the damage. Any future economic benefit in the East Mojave Desert or within its sphere will be much more difficult to pursue because of the lack of water. As water that the East Mojave Desert aquifer possesses is sucked out and sent to Orange County to enrich a business based in Los Angeles, those wishing to pursue projects in the desert will be confronted with the reality that water, already a precious commodity today, will be even more scarce and more expensive in the future. The paltry tax revenue from the Cadiz project is offset by greater lost revenue from potential business not developed here, including agribusiness, that fail or cannot come to fruition due to lack of water. After the Cadiz water project is in place, local well owners will need to drill even deeper at their own expense to reach the desert’s overdrafted water supply. We will not have the water to build the economy or increase jobs here–we can blame the labor union bosses teaming up with Orange County and Los Angeles County corporate interests and Paul Cook for that.
Contrary to what Cadiz proponents assert, the California Environmental Quality Act (CEQA) does not have authority to grant Right-of-Way’s. The authority to grant a right-of-way on federal land is the Department of Interior’s through its agent Bureau of Land Management. If the sole benefit of the water pipeline was to service the railroad, then definitely the pipeline would be for a railroad purpose and allowed under the terms of the railroad’s right-of-way. Cadiz has argued such and now Colonel Cook who is not an attorney, not a scientist, but instead a corporate sponsored politician, sides with Cadiz. People should bear in mind that the recent court ruling dismissing the environmental lawsuits challenging the project was made by an Orange County Superior Court, which is hardly an equitable forum, since it is Orange County which stands to benefit from this project. That judgment is under review. The Center for Biological Diversity and the National Parks Conservation Association filed independent appeals last week. In October, Tetra Technologies Inc. challenged four of the six judgments. All six of the challenged findings are now before the California Court of Appeals, Fourth District and are expected to be heard in 2015.
A lack of independent hydrology data in Cadiz Inc.’s California Environmental Quality Act document which is based only on Cadiz, Inc.’s contracted engineering firm’s findings, which are contradicted by the scientist at the U.S. Geologic Survey, should be reason enough for the United States Department of the Interior to move forward on obtaining its own empirical data concerning annual natural recharge of the aquifer and how much water can be safely pumped from the desert basin.
We anticipate a more objective judgment from a court further removed from Orange County and that the environmental and water laws passed by the people of California will be upheld. Unfortunately, Cadiz, Inc. is planning to move ahead on implementation and pre-construction activities for its water-exploitation-and-export-to-Orange County plan.