CaliforniaCityNews.org

L.A.'s Google Contract Open to All California Cities

From Government Technology:

Since Los Angeles decided in October to switch all its 30,000 city workers to Gmail and Google's productivity suite, dozens of governments in California have inquired about implementing similar plans.

Now those interested agencies can follow in L.A.'s wake. System integrator CSC announced on Tuesday that it's allowing all public agencies located in California to buy Google Apps and CSC Cloud Orchestration Services through a standard pricing model that's effectively a piggyback contract of L.A.'s agreement.

Google has made a pretty significant inroads against Microsoft with the score of the LA contract, and is clearly looking to parlay that into getting more cities into "the cloud."  It's all pretty techy, but sounds cool to us.  Read more here.

Online Ad Campaign Calls Cities out on "Dirty Coal" Plant Ownership

We noticed the banner ad embeded at right on a few prominent California political sites this week.  The ad may have been there for longer, but it just happened to catch our eye.  The ad  (as you can see), asks if your city "owns" a "dirty coal" power plant.  The ad is linked back to a website for the Renewable Energy Accountability Project (REAP). 

The group "is focused on exposing the lies of the Dirty Coal industry to hold it accountable for the harmful consequences of burning this old fossil fuel," and names a number of cities for their complicity in such energy generation for their ownership stake in a Utah coal plant. 

The site also has an interactive Google map displaying the coal plants and the California cities they supply.  We blog about it here not to make any judgements for or against, but the ad campaign is a pretty direct assault on cities and not an approach we'd seen before.  Take a look at the interactive map here, or the full REAP site here.

Rocky Vote Over Santa Rosa City Manager Slot

It seems there was a pretty contentious decision over who should take over as City Manager in Santa Rosa.  According to the Press Democrat, "A deeply divided Santa Rosa City Council Tuesday chose former Advanced Planning Director Wayne Goldberg to be interim city manager, edging out the city's second-in-command, Deputy City Manager Greg Scoles." 

Goldberg will take over, at least for now, for Jeff Kolin who is himself headed down to Beverly Hills.  The council remains anything but unified, as one council member put the decision to pass over Scoles as an “unnecessary, embarrassing, destructive, destabilizing and outrageous exercise.”

Yikes, read more here.

Central Valley Cities Dot MarketWatch's Bottom 10 For Business

Bad news for Central Valley cities, or as they call them on the East Coast, "Eastern California."  In a survey of 101 US Cities, the Wall St Journal's MarketWatch ranked the "Best Cities for Business" and found Bakersfield, Stockton and Fresno in the Bottom 10.  Sacramento also edged out of the Bottom 10, as did LA, but only because Riverside and Ontario were removed form its metro area for the purposes of the study.

Read more from WSJ.

CalPERS Approves Increase in Contribution to Annual Fund

Despite the protests from the Schwarzenegger Administration, the CalPERS board has approved a small increase in the state's annual contribution to the fund.

The SacBee writes "Schwarzenegger wants the state's payment to CalPERS to jump by at least $1 billion next year, to begin paying down the fund's big investment losses. But because the CalPERS board chose to raise the rate by only $200 million, Schwarzenegger will now have to hash the issue out with the Legislature, where the Democrats appear reluctant to go along with the higher payment."

Read more in the SacBee.

Public Split on Trusting the Legislature or Britney Spears with Budget Choices

In the latest blow to the California legislature's psyche, a recent poll by Wilson research demonstrates that the public is basically split on whether to trust our elected legislature, or Britney Spears with the budgetary decisions.  An excerpt from the poll as shared by CCN friend and political consultant Tab Berg:

Q17:  And, who do you think would do a better job handling your family's budget [ROTATE] California legislators or Brittany Spears?

1.    California Legislators   35%
2.    Brittany Spears          31%
3.    Don't Know/Refused   34%

Bear in mind, this is not a website poll or other informal kind of 'push-polling' -- it's a professionally administered poll by a respected firm.   Tab Berg wrote an opinion piece reacting to this latest disgrace on the conservative Flashreport blog that is worth a read. 

And the longer we look at these numbers, the crazier it sounds.  Maybe the most troubling part is the 34% of respondents who can't decide between the two!  Maybe they want to go re-watch the clip of Brittany shaving her head before making that call for sure. 

Dan Walters Grumbles About City Spending

Dan Walters took his weekly column in the SacBee in the direction of local government finance, and found plenty to grumble about.  Walters, who perhaps becasue he holds the rather unhappy distinction of being among a select few in the Capitol with some institutional knowledge and memory of a functioning state government, is known to be a pretty cynical on the subject of state governance. 

Perhaps as an extension of this malaise, Walters found occasion to take the good news of 25 California cities making the Standard & Poors 'AAA' list to take cities (mostly big cities) to task for profligate spending during the good times and union-centric thinking now that big decisions have to be made.

Walters seems preoccupied with large cities in this analysis, and would do well (in our humble opinion) to turn his eyes towards the strong fiscal practices of the dozens -- nay, hundreds -- of California cities who, unlike the state, have made responsible and difficult decisions in the past couple years. 

But take a read for yourself.  As usual, Walters does make a number of sound points and he remains one of the strongest voices of reason in Sacramento. 

US Supreme Court to Look at Privacy of Government Workers' Emails, Texts

The US Supreme Court is going to take up the case of an Ontario, CA police officer, whose text messages were exposed for the world to see -- just because he used a city-issued blackberry to send 'em.  As CNN writes:

"At issue is how far a government employer may go to monitor the private communications of its workers when they believe that the use of such equipment is being abused.

And the court will explore whether service providers can be held liable for providing those communications without the consent of the sender."

The story of the Ontario cop is worth reading.  It seems that his supervisor got a little irked at the costly texting of a number of officers, and decided to audit the use of the city-issued texting devices.  Many of the texts he discovered from this one particular officer were a bit *ahem* you know, ""to say the least, sexually explicit in nature."  And there you go.  In fact, of the 450 texts the officer received over one month period, only 3 were deemed work related. 

The outcome could, obviously, have pretty far reaching implications for everything from your city owned computer to your Blackberry. 

Read more from CNN. 

San Jacinto Council Goes Back to Work

The Press Enterprise headline says it all: "Raucous crowd greets San Jacinto council at first meeting since corruption indictments."  A citizens' group calling itself "SCRAM," for the San Jacinto Corruption Recall Active Movement, is organizing recalls for the indicted members of the city council, and that's the least of the councilmembers' problems.  They, together with several others in the community, face a 155 count indictment alleging fraud and other malfeascence.

Read the latest here.

Perez in Unanimous Choice of Assembly Dems for New Speaker

It's unanimous, on one side of the aisle at least.  John Perez is the California Assembly's next Speaker.  Just 40 years old, openly gay, a freshman lawmaker and holding his first elective office, Perez will be officially voted in net month, but with the unanimous backing of his caucus, that's just a formality. 

That the vote was unanimous was a bit of a feat in and of itself.  Perez has a long history with labor, and is Antonio Villaraigosa's cousin.  Even so, Kevin De Leon held tough in the race, and last week the talk in and around the Capitol was all about allegations and 'hurt feelings.'  Anthony York had an interesting look at how the work of current Speaker Karen Bass and the personalities of De Leon and other key players impacted the race here.

"It's obviously an incredibly moving experience to have the unanimous support of my colleagues," Pérez was quoted shortly after the caucus vote. "I think it says more about California than it does about me - it means that California is a place where everybody has a seat at the table, that we're a state where everybody brings forward their contributions."

Read more on the vote and its echoes from the SF Chron the SacBee or even the New York Times. The Bee also has a perfoile of Perez here, and Dan Walters gives his two cents here.