Fire chief wears favored candidate on sleeve... er, chest

If you've been wondering what's happend to Chris Bosch, Tracy's former fire chief who left his position under cloudy circumstances earlier this year, he's still around.

And evidently, from the shirt he was wearing when I saw him today when he was representing the local nonprofit Tracy Volunteer Caregivers, he's helping Larry Hite's campaign for City Council.

No word, however, on what's happening with the severance pay dispute between Bosch and the city. When there's an update on that, we'll keep you posted.

The transparency we've been talking about

In last Friday's Press, the editorial board called for the city to be more explicit when it comes to telling the public exactly what it's doing to cut costs, especially when it comes to union employees.

Earlier this week, we got exactly what we were asking for.

At tonight's meeting, the City Council will likely approve a set of consessions wheedled from the local Teamsters union, amounting to just shy of a half-million dollars in savings to the city's general fund. (Considering the savings, it should be a no-brainer of a vote.)

It might not be enough on its own to bridge the city's ongoing multimillion-dollar deficit, but it's a step in the right direction. And it's a major step in terms of the city sharing with voters exactly what employee groups are conceding.

Many will insist that union groups and city employees take more drastic cuts, so as to allow voters to turn down a proposed tax increase with a clean conscience.

But these deals with employee groups happen on Planet Earth. Unions are going to protect the interest of their employees. And in this case, Teamster jobs are guaranteed against layoffs for the rest of the fiscal year in exchange for a reduction in pay.

In this case, the interest of both the employees and the city lined up — but asking workers to give up even more without receiving something more in return is unrealistic.

The city and the union members deserve credit here for finding a compromise that helps Tracy and its taxpayers. It might not be enough to eliminate the city's stated need for a sales tax hike, but it certainly isn't going to hurt.

San Joaquin Delta scores temporary win

An $11 billion water bond that would likely help build a canal to ship water around the dying Sacramento-San Joaquin Delta will be delayed — at least by two years.

The effort to but the bond on the November 2010 ballot was losing steam, and the state Legislature figured there's a better shot of it passing if it's put on the 2012 presidential ballot.

But delay or no delay, the proposed vision of a Delta further drained and diverted isn't a healthy one. That remains the same, no matter how long the proposal is shelved.

Far from a final victory on Prop. 8

Though Second Thoughts and other backers of legalized gay marriage celebrated yesterday's court ruling affirming that California's odious Proposition 8 was nothing more than a Jim Crow-style slap in the face to the Constitution, it was a party with reservations.

Because this thing is far from over.

The folks who put the gay-marriage ban on the 2008 ballot and who went to court to defend its merits have already filed a formal appeal of Judge Vaughn Walker's ruling that same-sex couples have as much right to marry as opposite-sex couples and that the ban was based on personal moral and religious values rather than any Constitutional or legal foundation.

I hope that judges in higher courts see the wisdom and Constitutional merits of Judge Walker's argument, which you really should read. I found excerpts of his ruling here.

If you want Second Thoughts' feelings on the matter, consider some light reading here and here.

Back at the blog

After a mild case of the vacation check-outs and a week spent recharging the batteries, the Second Thoughts blog is back under old management.

My apologies to those who found no new content for that week and a half, but we'll try to make up for the recent lull in August.

Stay tuned...

Are more cops the answer?

Not according to Tracy Siska of the Chicago Justice Project, who was recently interviewed on the subject following the third fatal shooting of a police officer in Chi-town this year.

His thoughts — which appeared courtesy my Google news feed and are definitely another addition to the "Hey, that's not my Tracy" files — are relevant to discussions of budget and crime here in San Joaquin County, as Stockton has already thinned its Thin Blue Line and other entities could soon be forced to do the same.

Read the interview here.

Be a state lawmaker for a day

If you've been screaming at state lawmakers who couldn't pass a budget if their lives depended on it that you could do it better, here's your chance.

Follow the link to a nifty little widget at the Los Angeles Times website that lets you play budgetmaker.

See if you can close the $19.1 billion budget gap and still keep your re-election war chest filled!