Bills Propose Penalty Box for Rowdy Sports Fans
Sacramento smackdown!
The Assembly approved Saratoga Democrat Rebecca Cohn's bill to levy fines of up to $250 on anyone throwing objects on the court or the playing field during a professional sports event. (This would probably not apply to the tennis players who toss their cookies on the court now, nor to college basketball coach Bobby Knight's throwing a chair.)
The Assembly also thumbs-upped a measure by Montebello Democrat Ronald Calderon, allowing a maximum six-month jail sentence and a $2,000 fine for striking a fan or an athlete during a sports event, whether pro or amateur.
Coaches, refs and umps are evidently on their own.
The Senate has yet to make its call.
Green Party Wants a Financial Accounting
The state's Green Party was looking a little red over a contretemps about how to account for missing party funds.
It urged -- not ordered, mind you, but urged -- Greenster Mike Feinstein to "temporarily withdraw" from Green Party work.
At least until he makes public what became of a $10,000 check that was intended for the L.A. County Green Party but "apparently deposited into a credit union account he controlled," said a party news release quoted by the Santa Monica Daily Press.
That paper has been following the matter closely, inasmuch as Feinstein, a fixture on the progressive political landscape, is also a Santa Monica City Council member.
The money went for rent and supplies at a Green Party office, but the state party contended it never OKd such an office space, and Feinstein has passed on all invitations to turn over the banking records on how the money was handled.
Feinstein just lost a big one to the U.S. Supreme Court, which rejected his city measure barring banks from ATM "double-dipping" -- charging customers for using automated teller machines at banks where they do not hold accounts.
An Idea for Boosting City Election Turnout
The cure for low voter turnout? Throw the rascals in longer.
VICA, the Valley Industry and Commerce Assn. in the San Fernando Valley, is on record with its board of directors as tsk-tsking at the 9% turnout in last month's L.A. city elections, and suggesting that the problem be remedied by holding city elections at the same time as federal congressional elections, in even-numbered years instead of the present odd-numbered years.
That, VICA noted, would require these remedies in the city charter:
