This coming November will mark two years since the 2020 Presidential Election when a supermajority of San Bernardino County’s voters approved Measure K, a county government reform initiative that cut county supervisors’ pay and benefits to $60,000 per year and limited them to a single term in office. When the balloting is held this year for the 2022 California Gubernatorial Election, San Bernardino County’s supervisors will be asking the county’s voters to consider providing them with a total annual compensation approaching $300,000 annually, while allowing two of the board members to remain in office for six four-year terms equal to 24 years, permitting two board members to stay in office for four full four-year terms, equal to 16 years, and letting another remain in office up to four-and-a-half terms, or 18 years.
According to the supervisors, by ensuring that their $280,000 per year plus remuneration remains in place and that they are free to seek reelection over and over again, they will protect the county’s residents from the harm reformists known as the Red Brennan Group are seeking to inflict on them and their fellow and sister citizens.

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The Indian Wells Valley Groundwater Authority last week committed $449,100 toward determining the most efficient and affordable route and realistic approach toward right-of-way acquisition for the pipeline it is to construct to bring in water to mitigate the drought in the West Mojave Desert region that includes northwesternmost San Bernardino County.
In 2015, in the aftermath of a four-year running drought and a determination by the California Department of Water Resources that the Indian Wells Valley is one of the 21 basins throughout the State of California in critical overdraft, the Indian Wells Valley Groundwater Authority was formed, pursuant to a joint exercise of powers agreement involving Kern County, San Bernardino County, Inyo County, the City of Ridgecrest and the Indian Wells Valley Water District as general members and the United States Navy and the United States Department of the Interior Bureau of Land Management as associate members. Continue reading →

By Mark Gutglueck
Bob Dutton, who was able to convert the status, wealth, advantage and corporate connections provided to him by his father into a political career at the municipal, state legislative and then at the county level, has died.
Despite a relative dearth of talent and meager managerial, business, administrative and electioneering acumen, Dutton nonetheless was able, based on his familial circumstance, to find his way in the world and achieve political success that eluded far more capable and ambitious candidates for public office in San Bernardino County.
The authority Dutton came to possess surpassed that of others with more and clearer vision, superior dedication and a far stronger work ethic, all of which ultimately came to embody a metaphor for San Bernardino County itself, a geographically huge but comparatively primitive and some have argued socially challenged backwater to neighboring Los Angeles County, one of the most dynamic and culturally significant jurisdictions in California, the nation and the world. Dutton came to be a major player on the political landscape, not on the basis of ability but rather money, both that available to him through his father and those he networked with as a fellow suede shoe-shod and Italian suit-clad businessman whose first priority in office was to protect his and their collective financial interests. Continue reading →

Donavan Caver this week was convicted by a jury on a charge of vandalism for having written with chalk  on a planter at the Joshua Tree Courthouse nearly two years ago.
Caver was among a number of demonstrators, some affiliated with the Black Live Matter movement, who were protesting what they said were injustices in the form of prejudicial treatment and incorrect verdicts at the courthouse.
Caver was convicted at the same courthouse where he was charged with having engaged in the vandalism.
Officials had banned protesting on the grounds of County of San Bernardino/State of California property in Joshua Tree, to which the protesters objected. Revealed during the jury trial, which took place on July 27, 2022, was that on the day of Caver’s offense, July 31, 2020, 40 sheriff’s deputies had been assigned to the outside grounds of the government center in Joshua Tree, which includes the courthouse, as part of an effort to keep the governmental quarters free of protesters. Continue reading →

Although it is not his choice, Greg Marquez is to soon depart from the Chino Community Services Commission for the duration of this year’s election season as he campaigns for a position on the Chino City Council.
Walt Pocock, who was appointed by the city council in May 2021 to complete the District 2 council term to which Councilman Mark Hargrove was elected in 2018, must vie for election this year to remain on the council. Marquez has indicated he will be running for the post in the Chino Municipal Election to be held in conjunction with the Gubernatorial General Election conducted at polls statewide on November 8.
At City Hall, a question was raised as to whether Marquez’s position on the commission conferred upon him an advantage in the election. Continue reading →

Some 28 years after Norton Air Force Base was shuttered and roughly 27 years after they were first promised by local officials, the first commercial passenger flights out of San Bernardino National Airport are set to take off next week.
On August 4 Breeze Airways will initiate daily nonstop flights to San Francisco followed by a flight on the same plane to Provo, Utah.
According to Breeze Director of Legal and Corporate Affairs Eric Fletcher, one-way tickets to San Francisco start at $49.
In the aftermath of the U.S. Department of Defense’s announcement that Norton was to be closed, the County of San Bernardino and the cities of San Bernardino, Highland, Redlands, Colton, Loma Linda and Grand Terrace formed two separate joint powers authorities – the San Bernardino International Airport Authority (SBIAA) and the Inland Valley Development Authority (IVDA). Continue reading →