Thursday, June 09, 2005

Follow the Money

I’m talking here about the County money, not the Measure A money. It’s Alameda County budget time; get ready for some fancy footwork, excuses, hand wringing, charts, huge stacks of unreadable reports and self-important bureaucrats acting officious.

So get involved, its gonna be fun, you got to keep your eye on these guys or they’ll close all the schools, hospitals and libraries and build huge multi-use prisons. They don’t call it prisons, courts and cops; they call it “public safety” it’s great spin. Investing heavily in crime and punishment does not make us safer.

Shoot, Supervisor Miley’s pushing to put the Sheriff in charge of violence prevention. Yeah, why pay experts who work for lean focused non-profits, when you can pay prison guards. If current trends continue all county services will be offered out of Santa Rita Prison. Prisons have the infrastructure, the money and the political support.

Don’t give up, politicians are wimps, weenies and whiners, they’ll do the right thing if you make them.

So here’s the link to a site with a budget overview, and stay tuned, low-budget lobbying is my specialty.

http://eastbayliving.org/mediaroom/newsline.asp?ID=278

2 comments:

Anonymous said...

SPEAKING OF BUDGET, HAS ANYONE EVER SEEN A BREAKDOWN OF WHAT WENT INTO THE "LOAN" WHICH THE COUNTY SAYS ACMC MUST REPAY? IF SOMEONE TOLD YOU THAT YOU OWED THEM 180 MILLION DOLLARS, WOULDN'T YOU WANT TO SEE THE PAPER TRAIL TO SHOW WHEN YOU "BORROWED" IT AND ANY PAYMENTS TAKEN WITH OR WITHOUT YOUR CONSENT THAT WOULD OFFSET IT?

Anonymous said...

Ann, just wanted to clarify a few things about the Miley violence prevention statement. While violence prevention needs to be a countywide effort, the plan is to place the Violence Prevention Coordinator in the Probation Department, not with the Sheriff. Also, Miley's proposal was to place the Coordinator in the County Administrator's Office, not Probation. Our reasoning was that this assures more countywide participation than if the Coordinator is in any agency with a narrower mission. Other Supervisors didn't agree. At this point, it's more important to move a violence prevention agenda than it is to fight over which agency it's located in.