Wednesday, March 3, 2010

Morning News Round-Up -- 3.3.10: Gambling Good. Family Camp Bad...

Division on the San Jose City Council doesn't happen that often, if you ask Watch Dog. But it did yesterday, twice and they sent a pretty interesting message about their priorities:

Division 1: On a 6-5 vote, the City decided to prepare language for another tax on card clubs that would increase the City's rake but also allow the card rooms to become Las Vegas-esque. The pro-gambling six were Mayor Reed, Vice Mayor Judy Chirco, along with Councilmembers Pete Constant, Pierluigi Oliverio, Rose Herrera, and Nancy Pyle. The anti-gambling five were Councilmembers Sam Liccardo, Ash Kalra, Kansen Chu, Nora Campos, and Madison Nguyen. We'll see what happens next week...

Division 2: On an 8-3 vote, the City decided to close San Jose Family Camp for the season. The (losing) pro-Camp camp included Liccardo, Herrera, and Pyle.

Just so we are clear about what message the San Jose City Council's sent yesterday: gambling good, family camp bad.

District Attorney Dolores Carr will announced today whether or not she is charging any of the San Jose Police Officers with the beating of Phoung Ho. Watch Dog is on record predicting that no charges will be brought against the Officers, based solely on the San Jose Police Officers' Association endorsement of Carr's reelection campaign. Scott Herhold of the Merc doesn't think charges will be brought, independent of politics...

On the other side of the courtroom... the Merc Editorial Board gives mad props to the County Board of Supervisors on their decision to provide a public defender for those charged with crimes... imagine that.

It was a strange day in San Jose yesterday. First, a man jumped off a bridge to commit suicide. Then, a second man tried to do the same thing, but was talked down by SJPD.

Unfortunately, this sounds like a story from San Jose, not Mountain View... a woman is claiming she was the victim of "negligence and/or excessive force" at the hands of the Mountain View Police and has filed a $1 million lawsuit.

It looks like the new California Assembly Speaker has been reading the Mercury News and/or following the San Jose City Council... he is proposing that lawmakers be disallowed from getting text messages from lobbyists. (We will leave obvious the texting/ Tom McEnery/ lobbyist jokes up to San Jose Revealed...)

2 comments:

Anonymous said...

Well, to be more accurate, they voted that gambling will help bring in money for the city and San Jose family camp won't.

Watch Dog said...

If that's the measure of what the City Council will vote for, why did they all (but one) vote for a money-losing Convention Center expansion?...