The final chapter of the Vincent Brothers murder trial played out Thursday and it was every bit as weird and tragic as all the other twisting turns this case has taken since the bodies of his family were found in July 2003.

As Brothers was being sentenced to death for the murders of his wife, mother-in-law and three sweet young children, he turned toward Californian photographer, Felix Adamo, and gave a big, fat wink, followed by a looney wide-eyed stare into the camera. (go to www.bakersfield.com and see for yourself, it’s the video called “Death sentence imposed”)

Judge Michael Bush was about to condemn him to death, and Brothers was winking at someone in the courtroom. OK, maybe the wink was for his mother or another family member. But with this guy, there’s an “ick” factor I just can’t get past, starting with his creepy and often smug testimony about his enthusiastically wide-ranging sex life.

It’s hard to believe Brothers rose to such a trusted position in this community.

Makes you wonder what else he did, you know, besides his full-throttle philandering, threatening a female co-worker and madly driving across the country to shoot and stab five human beings to death.

Talk about a real-life “Dorian Gray.” Somewhere there’s a portrait of Brothers where his face reveals all his sins.

I’d like to think if the people I’m close to are potential mass murdering, narcissistic psychopaths I’d have an inkling. But probably not.

Other than his two previous wives and the mother of his last surviving child who all said he was verbally or physically abusive and a few others, no one seems to have known how truly dark his heart was.

In a Californian profile in 1996, Brothers is described as caring and committed. He was a “father figure” to the mostly minority, low-income children of Emerson Junior High school.

“You know how some people say, ‘If I can just reach one of these kids?’ Not me. I want ‘em all,” he told our reporter back then.

Too bad he didn’t have the same soft spot for his own children Marques, 4, Lindsey, 2, and Marshall, just six weeks old.

Touting his own rise from poverty, Brothers says twice in that article that if it weren’t for a few key people in his life, he would have ended up dead or in prison.

Kind of ironic he’s getting both now, huh?

We first got a glimpse of Brothers’ audacious gall when he matter-of-factly answered prosecutor Lisa Green’s questions about his sex life.

“We didn’t have a relationship,” he testified about one of the many women he dallied with. “We just had sex, no agreements. ... We call each other and if we feel like having sex, we have sex.”

In describing the happiest day of his life:

“Well, actually the night before was the happiest day,” he said of the night before his marriage to Joannie Harper who he would later shoot and stab to death.

Green: Why?

“We had sex. It was fun that night. ... We had, uh, food,” he said — and smirked.

EW! EW! EW!

I’m pretty sure that’s the moment he sealed his own fate, given that the prosecution’s case otherwise was mostly circumstantial — no direct evidence. (Well, that and getting caught lying about his alibi.)

Other than the “wink,” Brothers was fairly stone-faced during his sentencing Thursday.

I thought I saw a flutter of emotion when his daughter, 18-year-old Margaret, told the judge she no longer has a father. For her, Vincent Brothers is already dead.

But he just looked away.

Kern’s tearful and articulate statement was hard to watch. But you had to admire her fortitude. I couldn’t have done what she did.

She took four years of confusion, pain, loss and some very hard realizations and she turned it into a manifesto for her future.

She loved the Harper family, her baby brothers and sister, and she had loved and respected her father, she said. But it was all gone now, incinerated by a man lost to his own self-obsession.

What should have been an exciting time in her life — high school and preparing for college — was instead clouded with fear and anger culminating in an attempted suicide.

But as of Thursday, Margaret told the world, she was moving on without her father, even shedding his name.

Goodbye Margaret Kern-Brothers. Good luck and best wishes to Margaret Kern.

Lois Henry’s column appears Wednesdays and Sundays. Comment at people.bakersfield.com
/home/Blog/noholdsbarred, e-mail her at lhenry@bakersfield.com or call her at 395-7373.

What is the deal with Harvey Hall and his lectures?

He hammered the audience after the vote on Couch's and Benham's resolutions that they should be happy for being listened to, it's a hard job FOR THE COUNCIL and these resolutions were about positiveness, that they were put forth in a heartfelt manner.

I really hate it when politicians bleat about what a hard job they have and how everyone should appreciate their efforts. They spent a lot of money and scratched and clawed  and sometimes fought pretty dirty (we've written about it many many times) to get on that dias. If they didn't know what it was gonna take once they were there, they should GET OUT.

He made it sound like listening to people's opinions about this very emotional and divisive issue was such a hardship on the COUNCIL.

Gimme a break! If you don't like the heat, don't go to the jungle!

So far, and it's early, the meeting is much tamer than the last go round.

It started off interestingly with Jess Nieto pegging the whole thing to politics, saying Councilman David Couch is using this issue to burnish his conservative credentials for a run at the Board of Supervisors, for Ray Watson's seat. Watson hasn't said he's retiring but everyone pretty much assumes it.

Couch's resolutions would make Bakersfield a non-sanctuary city, declare English the official language and find which services can be denied to illegal immigrants.

Anyway, then Mayor Harvey Hall lectured everyone in the audience to behave themselves. And, SIGH, so far they are!

Hmmm. Ed Herrera points out that declaring Bako a non-sanctuary city would mean police would have to enforce immigration laws. If that's true, that could be a problem. I mean, don't they have enough to do? What about the FEDS! (The City Attorney says it wouldn't have any affect on local policing.)

Ok wait a minute, one speaker is upset because there haven't been any Latinos on the council and talks about gerrymandering. BUT I happen to know that the most heavily Hispanic parts of Bakersfield have routinely and vociferously refused annexation into the city.

One young gal gets points for speaking up in public, no easy feat, but she loses mega points for not knowing that the resolution's English portion would NOT affect bilingual printings of city material.

Wow, former Supervisor Pete Parra doesn't sound so good. I don't remember his voice being so shaky when I was covering Supes.

You know, regardless of what you think of Couch's resolutions, it got people to get involved. I hope they stay involved!

Couch speaks:

His resolutions are anti-illegal immigration or pro-legal immgration, he says, not anti immigrant.

Symbolism over substance: Couch says the city flags, seals and motto took up council time, why not adopting English as the official language?

What about the feds? Yes, they have ultimate responsibility but that doesn't mean we shouldn't weigh in. We have in the past, such as opposing trucks from Mexico coming through the U.S.

Ooooooooooh, he calls out Councilwoman Sue Benham as having brought the Mexican trucks up...she's the one who's said repeatedly and offered a resolution saying immigration is a federal issuel. He even says it's "intellecutally dishonest" to say this isn't a local issue.

And it's not English only, but just English as our official language, though, as he's said before city publications would still be bilingual. But on the symbolic side, he said, if all cities adopted this, it might get the attention of the feds.

In July, he said, a member of the Delores Huerta Foundaton asked the Council to consider becoming a sanctuary city and that, combined with a question on the Inga Barks radio show, prompted him to bring these resolutions and he's stickin' by em.

Why'd you do this? It's totally under our authority to say English is our official language and if we can declare ourselves a sanctuary city, we can say we're a non-sanctuary city. Was it for political gain? He doesn't actually address his politial aims. It's just an urge to see something done on this issue, he says.

He says he'll support all the resolutions, his and Benham's.

Benham up: She says the Mexican truck resolution Couch mentions is similar to her resolution that the feds need to address this. Intellectual honesty is important to her!

Her proposal is the city calls on the feds to enact real immigration form and to enforce current laws and reimburse local governments for costs of illegal immigration.

Jacquie Sullivan highlights:

We're a country of laws. If it's a law, it's a law. You can't go against the law. We're a country of immigrants. This is certainly not a city issue. This is an issue I have not welcomed. It's not an easy issue. At the same time, it is easy: you're here legally or you're here illegally.

Whew!

Benham's resolution: Six ayes w/Carson no. (Which is weird because she seemed to be against Couch's English-only resolution, which wasn't in Benham's)

English as the official language of Bakersfield: Only Hanson and Couch voted yes.

City of Bakersfield not a sanctuary city: Hanson, Couch and Sullivan vote yes, MOTION FAILS.

So, despite all the attention on Couch beforehand, it turns out to be Benham's night.

So I heard that Councilman Zack Scrivner was on the Jaz McKay radio show today talking about the immigration resolution at tonight's Bakersfield Council meeting.

He wouldn't say what his vote would be claiming to do so would be a violation of the Brown Act.

Uh, no.

The Brown Act regulates public meetings to make sure they are conducted in public. Under Brown, politicians can't get together outside of public view in numbers that would constitute a quorum, nor are they allowed to communicate with each other in a "daisy chain" such as by phone, to organize their votes outside of public view.

But council members can certainly announce their support or opposition to measures as individuals, not to mention it was a very PUBLIC forum.

It's ironic and kind of disturbing that Scrivner would use a well-established and highly noted act for public access in order to keep his vote hush hush.

Why not just say, he's going to listen to all viewpoints and make up his mind after that? Or just that he doesn't want to talk about it before the meeting?

Sheesh!

Click here to listen.

Ok, I wasn't going to add a comment, but I can't resist.

Everything he mentions, ranchers, hunting, his house, are subject to government regulation, fees and/or taxes.

But he's drawing the line at his dog's testicles!

I suppose he has a point about government intrusion.

But, as I said in the column, animal overpopulation caused by irresponsible pet owners and to some extent breeders have created a huge problem, a community problem.

Regulation is the only way large groups of people living together (communities) can solve such problems.

Forgot to post this last night. Sorry!

When were people guaranteed an inalienable right to own, breed or sell animals without government regulation?

I missed that one in civics class.

A proposed county ordinance that would have required breeders to get a permit and register their litters was gutted last week after vocal and unrelenting opposition from local animal breeders squealing about their so-called rights. Which amendment was that again?

Anyway, it would have been unenforceable without at least eight new positions at the Kern County Animal Control Division. So the proposed ordinance was watered down even more and now mostly just addresses people who keep large numbers of animals. There are some increased incentives to alter animals and if your animal routinely jumps the gate, it will be fixed on its third escape.

Big whoop.

That’s not going to do anything to stem Kern County’s animal kill rate — 16,000 dogs and cats a year.

We need a mandatory spay and neuter law with government assistance for the poor and permitted breeder exemptions. And yes, exemptions would include fees and inspections. What other businesses (legal ones anyway) operate for free and without government involvement?

People can holler at me all day long about too much regulation, government intrusion in their personal lives.

Whatever.

If people behaved responsibly this wouldn’t be an issue.

But they haven’t. So it is.

It costs taxpayers money to catch, feed, house and, ultimately, kill strays and unwanted animals. And we all know that in some neighborhoods it’s not safe to walk around without Mace and a billy club for the pit bull welcoming committees.

All of which makes this a community issue.

After the Kern County Animal Control Commission was formed a little more than a year ago to oversee the Animal Control Department, it was tasked with finding ways to control animal overpopulation and deal with people who house large numbers of animals. It’s been a long, tough haul and this draft ordinance will give the county some tools, but not nearly enough.

Some say baby steps like this are the best Kern County can do.

Baloney.

People in this county screamed bloody murder about mandatory trash pickup. Trash, for crying out loud! Well, we’ve had mandatory trash pickup in metro Bakersfield for seven years and no one has keeled over because of it. It did take the county board of supervisors more than 10 years to approve it. A decade.

How much illegal dumping might have been avoided if lawmakers hadn’t been so worried about laying down the law earlier?

Same thing with mandatory spay/neuter.

Animal Control Commissioners, and the Board of Supes, which will ultimately decide on our ordinance, need look no further than Los Angeles County to see how it’s done.

L.A. County enacted a mandatory spay/neuter policy for dogs last year. It includes assistance for the poor and exemptions for breeders. Far as I know, the county’s still humming right along, no mass suicides or anything.

And, by the way, I was told by our local Animal Control office, a mandatory spay/neuter policy would be easier to enforce than focusing on breeder permits.

It can be done. It’s past due.

However, at the risk of repeating what’s become a common refrain in these columns, we need at least a smidgen of political courage to make it happen.

The proposed ordinance goes back to the Animal Control Commission on Oct. 17 for tweaking and more public input. The commission will then make a recommendation on the ordinance to the Board of Supervisors, possibly sometime in November.

I say throw the whole thing out and start over with a mandatory spay/neuter program.
Otherwise, it’s just a waste of time and effort.

Lois Henry’s column appears Wednesdays and Sundays. Comment at people.bakersfield.com
/home/Blog/noholdsbarred, e-mail her at lhenry@bakersfield.com or call her at 395-7373.

Nine days ago the first shovelful of dirt was moved on a project funded by the Thomas Road Improvement Project money.

Smiling dignitaries gathered round at Fairfax Avenue and Highway 178 where a new interchange will be built using a slice of the $630 million that former Congressman Bill Thomas secured for local roads.

If you couldn’t make the groundbreaking because you were stuck in traffic on Stockdale Highway, Ming Avenue, Rosedale Highway or White Lane, get used to it.

As the city patted itself on the back over the Thomas project with one hand, it signed off on ever-worsening traffic in northwest and southwest Bakersfield with the other.

And if the public doesn’t start pitching a screaming fit — and soon — the city and county may decide to “solve” the problem by simply lowering our traffic standards.

Perhaps you’re thinking, “What standards?” But we do have them. Right now, the city and county Metropolitan General Plan, a sort of growth blueprint, insists that our traffic should not drop below a “Level of Service C.”

The scale goes from “A” (free flowing) to “F” (gridlock). So “D” is not good.

At least Level C is “in the range of stable flow” but you have to watch out for other drivers. Level D brings “poor levels of comfort and convenience.”

That’s what we need, more inconvenience.

In reality, the city already is allowing Level D and below in some areas.
Most recently, it was allowed for many roads and intersections surrounding the 2,000-acre 7,500-home West Ming project by Castle & Cooke, approved at the Council’s August 15 meeting.

But the city has “priors,” including the 1,600-acre, 6,400-home Rosedale Ranch project and the 2,000-acre, 6,400-home Old River Ranch project, both of which were approved on Nov. 16, 2005.

The city acknowledged each of those projects will create significant traffic burdens, but there’s nothing they can do about it — so oh, well.

Despite the contribution of impact fees and even with developers building or widening some roads — in West Ming’s case, Castle & Cooke has promised to build two lanes of the proposed West Beltway — traffic will get worse.

West Ming’s environmental documents say over and over that even without this project, traffic will be bad from the southwest up to Rosedale Highway because of cumulative growth.

I find that a little convenient. They’re essentially saying, “We approved too much growth for our roads, therefore there’s nothing we can do about our roads.”

City Manager Alan Tandy told me there is a method to the madness.

Yes, he acknowledged, there are some intersections that will get worse and there’s nothing to be done about it. Truxtun Avenue and Coffee Road, for example. You can’t build it into something else.

But, he said, traffic impact fees will go to the Westside Parkway, and that’s the ultimate solution. (Of course, it’s not fully funded and doesn’t connect to any other major routes, such as Highway 99, but that’s another story.)

What about not approving new development until we have our roads in order, as the county has done?

The county and the City of Shafter, both of which opposed West Ming because of traffic, have wondered the same thing, griping that all this city-approved development isn’t being done with the entire region in mind. (In fact, Shafter is now suing over West Ming.)

No growth means no impact fees and no road improvements, Tandy countered.

 Cities can’t cold-shoulder developers whenever the whim strikes and then expect a good working relationship. Developers need to be able to count on consistent standards as they deal with up and down markets.

Essentially, there’s only so much the city can do.

I don’t buy that. And I certainly don’t accept that our next move should be to drop our traffic standards to a “D.”

If we can’t handle more traffic from new development, stop approving it until we can. In the city alone, we already have at least 75,000 housing units approved but not yet built. I think we’re good on new housing.

Move those Thomas projects along, increase impact fees, stop sprawling ever outward and find ways to bolster public transit. And for cripes sake, sit down with the county and other agencies and come up with a regional plan that works for our future.

We need creativity and boldness. Not the same old politically expedient moves that benefit a few and leave the rest of us idling in gridlock.

Lois Henry’s column appears every Wednesday and Sunday. Comment on this column at http://people.bakersfield.c... or e-mail her at lhenry@bakersfield.com or call her at 395-7373.


You still have a chance to let the city and county know how you want Bakersfield to grow in the future.

Do you think dropping our traffic standards to a Level “D” is acceptable? Or do you want them to work harder to maintain at least a Level “C”?

Let them know what you think.

The city and county have had four public outreach meetings and will bring those issues to a joint city/county planning commission meeting sometime this fall. A date has not been set.

Keep reading The Californian for that info.

Meanwhile, you can send your concerns and comments to:
Kern County Planning Director Ted James
2700 M Street, Suite 100
Bakersfield, CA 93312
Or email him at tedj@co.kern.ca.us, or call 862-8600.

You can also send comments/concerns to the city to:
Bakersfield City Assistant Planning Director Jim Eggert
1715 Chester Ave.
Bakersfield, CA 93301
Or email him at jeggert@bakersfieldcity.us  or call  326-3754.

Vision 2020 also has a survey you can take.
Go to this site:
http://www.bakersfieldcity....
Click on “Take Our Public Survey.”
A PDF will be downloaded to your desktop. When you open it, click on the box at the bottom that says “Vision 2020.”
A web page will pop up with the survey.

I was amazed and annoyed listening to/watching the Board of Supervisors meeting on Tuesday (I had it up on the web, so cool!).

Issue at hand: Whether the county should reconsider it's very good rule to not allow septic systems on fewer than 6 acres, which was passed in 2005 and landowners have been trying to topple ever since.

It's cleaner and smarter and makes infrastructure keep up with development. DUH!

They have an exemption process so it's not arbitrary. But still developers are chipping away at the rule.

And because NO POLITICIAN wants to be seen as "anti property rights" (news flash: all zoning laws are inherently "anti property rights") some supes are starting to sway.

GRRR!

Supervisor Jon McQuiston, in particular, really chapped my hide.

He was lecturing staff and demanding to know if they had any evidence that septic systems were bad for the groundwater.

Then in the same breath, he turned around and agreed that he doesn't want to see thousands of homes on septics. That, of course, just wouldn't do.

Bluster, bluster, bluster...

Dude, pick a side!

If they aren't harmful then stick 'em in the ground all over. Heck, that's a lot cheaper  than having a pesky sewer system and treating all that wastewater.

We don't do that for a reason.

Septic systems  can, and have, gone bad. They have a finite lifetime and if they're not installed or cared for properly that lifetime is shortened considerably and, YES, it can be harmful to the groundwater, not to mention to potential to pollute whole neighborhoods.

They're needed in remote areas where sewer hookup just isn't an option, but otherwise, we want sewer systems to properly handle our massive amounts of wastewater.

It's one of those nifty little things that separates us from third world countries!

We've allowed too many homes w/septics already and when you get a sewer out to those areas it's almoste impossible to hook those homes on it and proceed further out with development in an orderly fasion.

I just thought McQuiston was making an extremely lame argument in order to be seen as "pro private property rights"  while at the same time trying to be seen as "pro public health."

Lame - O!

What do you think? Septic or sewer?

If this writing thing doesn't work out, maybe bullriding? Hmmmm....

Ladies night out...

It looks like would-be local real estate magnates Carl Cole and David Crisp are going down faster than they went up during the boom a couple years ago.

Did they or didn’t they commit fraud? Will they or won’t they get jail time?

Who knows? Certainly not me. I’ll leave that to the experts.

Speaking of experts, I’m getting a little fed up with the “I told you sos” from the so-called experts these days. Mostly, they’re having their say anonymously on blogs, but we’ve received a few emails and phone calls as well.

The number of people in Bakersfield who apparently KNEW what was GOING ON with Crisp and Cole is amazing, considering how many people our reporters contacted in the local real estate industry over the last two years who refused to talk to us — or would only talk about rumors off the record.

That’s right, I’m taking the task takers to task.

Rumors are one thing, but we need hard information before we print a story.

After television commercials and magazine articles portrayed the two men as high-flying tycoons, The Californian felt our readers would be interested in just who this David Crisp was.

So in 2006 we profiled him and his partner. Yes, we’d heard rumors even then and we brought them up to Crisp and mentioned them in the story. But back then there were no defaults, lawsuits, bankruptcies or investigations. And no rumor mongers would go on the record.

We were slammed for the story. It shouldn’t have been on the front page, critics said. 
Shortly after that profile we did a full story on all the rumors, but again, there was no hard source to support them.

When the defaults started rolling in, we knew we finally had our hard source and we started to dig. Two reporters, Gretchen Wenner and Vanessa Gregory, spent hundreds of hours at the Hall of Records (affectionately nicknamed the “Rec Room”) and schooled themselves on the thousands of records they uncovered.

They didn’t just look at Crisp and Cole, but went through defaults for dozens of other real estate-related people to make sure we were being fair, that the Crisp and Cole default numbers were truly out of whack. Which they were.

They created a database to sort and study the information trying to understand the intricacies of the many many deals they were trying to unravel.

They knocked on doors, lots of doors.

Every time we dug up another piece of the puzzle, we put it in the paper — the front page even. New critics accused us of having a vendetta against Crisp.

As the editor overseeing Wenner and Gregory, I know first-hand how much work they did. I also know the lack of response we got from the so-called experts now flogging the media as do-nothings guilty of blindly building up Crisp and Cole. Whoever believes that wasn’t reading this newspaper.

As we published story after story based on Wenner’s and Gregory’s findings, we hoped for help from the experts now coming out of the woodwork.

Other than a few real estate professionals who did help confirm some information — nothing. Crickets chirping.

On a side note, our investigation has been stymied by our inability to see documents that aren’t public, such as appraisals. What’s really needed is for someone (Perhaps State Sen. Dean Florez, D-Shafter, is already planning a press conference on this issue? Hint, hint) to look at why the names of appraisers aren’t included in public documents. If they were, perhaps we could see patterns of inflated home prices, which could be an early indication of fraud. But that’s another story.

Anyone who bothered to read the paper over the last year knows our coverage of Crisp and Cole has been full, detailed and fair.

One reader wrote to Executive Editor Mike Jenner’s Sound Off column after that 2006 profile and demanded to know when/if Crisp were brought down whether we’d have the guts to put that on the front page.

Uh ... yeah.

Lois Henry’s column appears Wednesdays and Sundays. Comment at people.bakersfield.com
/home/Blog/noholdsbarred, e-mail her at lhenry@bakersfield.com or call her at 395-7373.

Don't forget to tune in to KGOV tonight at 5:30 p.m. to see the city/county joint meeting.

I won't be able to watch live. I'll have to wait for reruns.  I have a wine tasting class I signed up for. Hey! It's legit! I swear....

If you want to see real power at work, tune in to the joint city/county meeting on KGOV Monday night and watch the handiwork of former Rep. Bill Thomas.

What you’ll see during the transportation portion of the meeting will be a lack of fireworks. No childish meeting takeover antics. And maybe even a glimmer of forward movement.

“Brief and quiet and positive. Yes, a bit different,” chuckled City Manager Alan Tandy.

What that means is the city and county may finally be operating under a newfound spirit of cooperation when it comes to roads.

As we’ve all learned, the spirit “moved them” a couple of weeks ago after a verbal head-thwacking by Thomas himself, who wasn’t pleased by the constant city/county bickering while his grand legacy of $630 million in federal road money was left languishing.

After what has been referred to as Thomas’ “come to Jesus” session, city and county planners actually did have a very productive meeting, by all accounts.

They’ve so far agreed on a way to study our road system and what to study, Tandy said.

“We’re on the same page,” said Craig Pope, director of Kern County’s Roads Department.

OK, so that doesn’t exactly sound like a love fest, but believe me, it’s practically a hair-braiding slumber party compared to where they were a couple weeks ago.

The main bone of contention has been the Westside Parkway.

The county says it’s cool with how the city is moving on the Thomas projects. What’s stuck in their craw has been the city’s stubborn refusal to reconsider the Westside Parkway.

For the uninitiated, the parkway is planned as an east/west freeway slicing through the middle of town from Allen Road to F Street just north of the Kern River. It uses state dollars, not Thomas money.

The county doesn’t like that it doesn’t connect with either Interstate 5 or Highway 99. They want it cheaper and with solid connections. The city believes it does have a plan to connect to Highway 204 and the planned West Beltway.

Those sound like reasonable issues to discuss. Unfortunately, the discussion has, until recently, been anything but reasonable.

Hopefully, the new attitude will prevail.

Either way, the dysfunctional but highly entertaining city/county joint transportation task force championed by Supervisor Mike Maggard and hijacked by Councilman Zack Scrivner likely had its first and last meeting Aug. 20. The Board of Supervisors is expected to kill it at its meeting on Tuesday.

That’s for the best. I think it served its purpose, though maybe not the purpose it was originally intended for.

In its naive infancy the task force was supposed to be a way for the city and county to solve road issues (i.e. Westside Parkway) because meetings between planners had failed miserably, frequently devolving into screaming matches.

In reality, a public forum wouldn’t have worked. While I’m all for public input, never-ending discussion means never coming to a decision. And we’ve had enough of that.

But the task force did serve one important purpose — it showed how bad things were between the city and county.

Like lancing a boil, it was painful and ugly, but it got the festering gunk out in the open.

Only time will tell if the healing continues.

•••
I was glad the City Council voted to continue making sure employees in the National Guard who are deployed overseas get their full pay and benefits.

Council members Scrivner and Ken Weir had floated a measure to limit the city’s obligation and instead argued a fund should be established where other city employees could donate vacation or comp time for use by folks who are deployed.

OK, I see their point. These employees chose to join the Guard. But, come on, they aren’t going on vacation. And frankly, if there weren’t the kind of folks who did choose to serve, we’d have a draft. Don’t be chintzy; it just looks mean.

But Weir insisted that if the city wanted to help these employees, then “the city as an organization” — meaning other city employees — should donate the time.

 Then he whipped out a check and handed it to the city clerk as a demonstration of his own willingness to chip in. When asked by a Californian reporter how much the check was for, Weir demurred saying it was “personal.”

Two things:
1. The city “as an organization” isn’t the employees, it’s us, city residents. We collectively, through our elected city representatives, set city policy. So it shouldn’t be up to the charity of other employees to determine how and how much people deployed overseas receive. It should be up to us via our electeds.

2. Giving any document to the city clerk at a public meeting makes it public, not “personal.”

By the by, the check was for $500 from Weir and Associates, Weir’s accountancy business. Because the fund measure failed, the check was returned to Weir, according to the city clerk.

•••
Alert! Alert! Backbone appears to be slipping at the Board of Supervisors!

Anyone concerned about the future of our groundwater must attend the supervisors’ meeting on Tuesday during the afternoon session, which begins at 2 p.m.

Supervisors are considering weakening a very good ordinance passed in 2005 that limited septic tank use. It requires homes on six acres or less to hook up to a sewer system.

Aside from the obvious pollution potential that comes with too many septic systems, this ordinance makes sure our infrastructure keeps up with development.

The county has been hanging tough on not allowing development without roads and I see no difference with septics. In fact, considering the potential impact to groundwater, it’s even more imperative to hang tough on this.

Politicians worried about developers packing up and leaving town should look at how developers have responded to lawsuits brought by the Sierra Club over air pollution. They’ve paid!

They’re still selling houses and planning even more developments.

Developers can easily live up to this sewer requirement. That is, if our elected officials have the guts to make them.

Lois Henry’s column appears Wednesdays and Sundays. Comment at people.bakersfield.com
/home/Blog/noholdsbarred, e-mail her at lhenry@bakersfield.com or call her at 395-7373.

A friend who lives in the Harte Flat area reminded me there's another good reason not to cover the national veterans cemetery in the hills above Arvin with grass — wild pigs.

There are herds of them up there and they love to root around and tear up grass. Apparently the golf course has a heck of a time with them.

Now how would that look at the veterans cemetery!?

I was glad to read that the National Cemetery Administration intends to construct Kern County’s national veterans cemetery off Highway 58 using “water-wise” landscaping.

That means no grass.

I wish all cemeteries in the southwestern United States were held to such a standard. Golf courses too, for that matter.

We live in a desert. We get an average of six inches of rain a year, if we’re not in a drought — which we are. Arlington, Va., home to the iconic national veterans cemetery with its hundreds of acres of rolling hills covered in verdant lawn, enjoys 40 inches of rainfall a year.

Grass is a heck of a lot easier to grow, not to mention less expensive, when Mother Nature takes care of the watering.

At the 80-acre Union Cemetery in Bakersfield, which has a four-acre section set aside for veterans and their spouses, more than 300,000 gallons of water are needed every year to keep up the grass. And that’s only April to October. The rest of the year, they turn off the sprinklers and let the Bermuda go dormant.

The nonprofit organization that runs Union Cemetery pays more than $4,000 a year to the Kern County Water Agency for the groundwater assessment. That doesn’t include the energy ($6,000 a month for PG&E) and maintenance costs to pump the water from the cemetery’s wells, nor does it include costs for chemicals and manpower that come with lawn care.

I can’t even imagine how much it would cost to keep Kern’s national veterans cemetery lush with grass across its 500 acres.

And that’s assuming wells onsite will have enough water. The National Cemetery Administration has planned for test wells of 1,000 feet, which is really deep. The only other way to get water up there might be a pipeline or canal employing massive pumps similar to those that shove water from the California Aqueduct over the Grapevine.

That seems unfeasible and unnecessary.

“Lawnless” doesn’t automatically mean our service men and women will be entombed beneath a moonscape scattered with crushed rock.

I do admit, photos of the veterans cemetery in Phoenix, barren save for a few barrel cactuses, look pretty depressing.

But the cemetery in Jamestown near Sonora doesn’t have grass. The graves are spread over the hills separated by walkways, rock walls and antique wrought iron fences. Trees provide abundant shade.

Even at the veterans cemetery at Fort Bliss in Texas, where families are upset over plans to rip out lawn on 50 acres of the oldest section and xeriscape it using drought-resistant plants, they’re going to put in nearly 500 new trees and 4,000 shrubs and other plants.

The acreage in Kern County, in the oak-dotted hills above Arvin, is a beautiful piece of property with or without grass. I’m sure it can be designed using the natural landscape to be inviting and respectful.

A grassless approach offers another benefit: Headstones can be used, instead of plaques set flat against the ground to facilitate mowing.

My grandfather, a World War II Navy veteran, was not buried in a national cemetery. Instead, he and the love of his life, my grandmother, are in a nice spot with a view of the foothills in Santa Clara County.

An avid outdoorsman, he abhorred waste of any kind. Making do and keeping things simple appealed to his engineer’s mind.

He had a code of conduct he lived by. Really, an actual code. In 1995, he had my cousin type it up on her computer for safekeeping because he realized, without telling any of us, that his memory was already going.

The last line of that code seems appropriate to this discussion.

“Treat God’s earth gently and try each day to make the world a better place than you found it.”

I think he would have liked a grave in the hills under the shade of an oak tree, enjoying the sound of a passing breeze uninterrupted by incessant sprinklers, mowers and leaf blowers. That is, only if his Velma was there with him.

Lois Henry’s column appears Wednesdays and Sundays. Comment at people.bakersfield.com
/home/Blog/noholdsbarred, e-mail her at lhenry@bakersfield.com or call her at 395-7373.

No matter what the weather brings this fall, we will be inundated with water.

A major battle is brewing and you’ll be asked to pick a side, even if the only time you’d care about water is if you turn on the tap and nothing comes out.

Brace yourselves.

The Kern County Water Agency has chunked $1 million into a multi-million dollar statewide advertising campaign to educate voters on how to fix California’s water system.

Ads will be coming to a TV/radio station or newspaper near you in the next two weeks. This on the heels of a summer barrage of those incessant “fix the Delta” commercials that saturated local cable stations. Ugh.

In a nutshell, it’s the return of the “peripheral canal.”

No, it isn’t a weird ear infection, though the canal has induced plenty of headaches over the years.

Here’s some background.

We’re in a drought. It’s just one year so far, but water watchers are worried.

Then on Aug. 31, a federal judge you never heard of made a ruling about a fish you probably don’t care about. The ruling means significantly less water will be pumped out of the Sacramento-San Joaquin Delta down to Kern County and points further south.

Who cares, right?

Considering about 100,000 people in the Bakersfield area get their drinking water directly from those very pumps, courtesy of the Kern County Water Agency, maybe you should care just a little. Though most of the Delta water coming to Kern does go to ag.

If you know nothing about the Delta, it’s the clearinghouse for water draining out of the Sierra Nevadas north of Sacramento. It’s a massive estuary shaped sort of like a lumpy hourglass. The middle opens to the San Francisco Bay to the west. Rivers flow in from the north and Southern California farmers and cities take water out of the south end via massive state and federal pumps. Levees on the east protect homes and farmland.

OK, so you’re up on the Delta, the drought, the court ruling and why you should care. Now to the peripheral canal.

Farmers and water wranglers (L.A.’s Metropolitan Water District being the biggie) in Southern California have been crying for a canal to take water around the Delta for years. It blew up into a major fight in 1982 Northern Californians feared it was another water grab by grabby L.A. Consequently, it was overwhelmingly, I mean trampled to a fly speck in the dirt, defeated.

It was such a bloody fight that for years after the words “peripheral canal” carried such a taint they weren’t even whispered in mixed (SoCal & NorCal) company.

Either way, Jim Beck, head of the Kern Water Agency,  said we must have it, or life in Kern County will change drastically over the next 15 years.

A peripheral canal, said Beck, “is essential for us to continue our way of life here.”

Even our elaborate water banking system won’t save us if we can’t get enough water out of the delta on a regular basis to recharge the bank. We’ll just tap that account more each year until it’s dry.

The stakes are high. Opposition to the canal will be virulent.

But Beck and others believe it’s worth the fight, even though he acknowledged a peripheral canal will not “fix the Delta,” a phrase repeated ad nauseam in those annoying television ads this summer.

There’s a 75 percent chance an earthquake will happen in the next 30 years that will wipe out the levees protecting the Delta, predicts Jeffrey Mount, a U.C. Davis scientist who’s studied the issue. Fresh water will flood inland, followed by salt water that will wipe out the ecosystem.

Without the canal, folks like Beck fear, Southern California’s water supply will be irreparably damaged.

What they want is a 46-mile long canal connecting to the Delta at Hood, just south of Sacramento, and ending up in Tracy, at the far south end. It would cost $4 billion, which he said water users could pay for over time. They would also want to oversee construction and be in charge of operation and maintenance.

Though I believe Beck is underestimating the opposition, he insists things have changed from 1982.

Wildlife agencies, some Northern California cities that nearly ran out of water when the pumps were shut down for 10 days last May and even Sen. Dianne Feinstein, against the canal 25 years ago, now support it, he said. And Gov. Schwarzenegger has been touting it at every bake sale and hoedown he can get invited to.

Schwarzenegger is pushing for $5.9 billion in water bonds, which would include $4.5 billion for dams, $1 billion to study overall Delta issues including the canal and $450 million for conservation and restoration projects. But that proposal has already failed once in the Senate.

Water agencies are giving the Legislature until winter or early spring to get some traction, Beck said. After that they may decide to push a ballot measure on their own.

Now the flip side.

While the Natural Resources Defense Council said they would look at any proposal with an open mind, other environmental groups, Delta farmers and Northern Californians are adamantly opposed.

When I asked Beck if water users in the valley would be willing to consider options such as land retirement in exchange for Northern support for the canal, he said absolutely not. They're willing to pay for it, he said, but they will not negotiate for it.

 

I’m afraid that stance will send all sides back to their corners and nothing will get done. To get a canal, which may or may not be the best “Delta fix,” everything has to be on the table.

 

Lois Henry’s column appears every Wednesday and Sunday. Comment on this column at http://people.bakersfield.c... or e-mail her at lhenry@bakersfield.com or call her at 395-7373.

A colleague just brought to my attention that my blog on Jacquie Sullivan could be misinterpreted.

She did not vote "no" on the conditional use permit. She ABSTAINED (after saying she would support Zack Scrivner.)

Sorry for the confusion!

A colleague has just asked me:
Would it be cheaper to evacuate Arvin and shut it down rather than try and clean up its air?

Declare it an "air disaster area" and tell people not to go there. Since, geographically speaking, it's a bad air sump and we pretty much can't change that.

Hmmmmmm......

Councilwoman Jacquie Sullivan wins the prize for the two best "Huh?" moments from the meeting Aug. 29. (Yes, I was watching reruns!).

A family was asking for a conditional use permit to continue operating their gardening business in a residential neighborhood in Zack Scrivner's ward. Scrivner voiced his opposition to the permit and then Jacquie took the mike.

She wanted to know if there were any "conditions" that could be placed on the business that would make it more ammenable to the neighbors who opposed the CONDITIONAL use permit.

Poor Stan Grady, Planning Director, haltingly explained that, well, the permit was a "conditional" use permit meaning it would apply conditions to the business.

Instead of a graceful exit, Jacquie opted to again ask if that meant there already were conditions on the business. Ummmmmmmm....

So she rounds out her questions by saying she'll go along with Scrivner's point of view.

It comes to a vote and as all the council members are reaching for their buttons, Jacquie says to no one in particular, "I'm going to stay neutral on this," and pushes her no vote button.

Classic!

Open government is absolutely necessary to win the trust of the governed.

A number of local agencies would do well to remember that.

Instead, the County of Kern, the Golden Empire Transit District and the City of Bakersfield play games using semantics in order to keep accusations of public employee misbehavior — and how those agencies deal with it — secret.

We’re not asking for employee personnel files so we can steal their Social Security numbers and snicker at their medical conditions. We’re not asking for anything remotely resembling that.

We are, very specifically, asking for any substantive, well-founded complaints of misbehavior involving employees in positions of authority.

And we do have a court ruling backing us up.

In 2004, The Californian won a ruling by the 5th District Court of Appeal that stated unequivocally the public’s right to know outweighs an employee’s right to privacy in cases where complaints are substantial and well-founded — even if the employee is later cleared.

In that case, Bakersfield City School District was fighting tooth and nail to keep complaints about mass murderer Vincent Brothers secret. Turns out he had a history of making violent threats against female co-workers and, instead of dealing with it, the district shuffled him to another school.

That is a clear illustration of why the public has a right to know about these things.

This being Kern County, however, the Appeals Court and it’s stinkin’ ruling doesn’t mean squat.

Take, for example, our favorite moonlighting former Director of Public Health, B.A. Jinadu. We already know the state ratted him out to the Board of Supervisors for running clinics on the side and overcharging Medi-Cal in 2003.

Supes said they dealt with his unapproved and clandestine moonlighting back then but won’t say how.

Considering he was sued by the state in 2006 for not making good on the Medi-Cal overpayments and Supervisors did not know about it, I’m not sure their little wrist slapping session “took.”

Personally, the supervisors’ word isn’t good enough for me. I want to see for myself.

Unfortunately, the county isn’t the only local agency that has confused itself with a fiefdom.

Former Golden Empire Transit District Director Chester Moland had several DUI arrests during his career but, apparently, that wasn’t enough to get him booted. Then in July he was put on a month’s leave without pay.

Still, there was no explanation to the public that pays the bills to fund that job and that agency. Again, we cited the 5th District Court of Appeal ruling and got bupkiss.

GET’s attorney, James A. Worth, quoted a section of the public records act that is somewhat of a catchall exemption, 6254(c), which says giving out personnel, medical, or similar files would be an unwarranted invasion of privacy.

Yes, the 5th District Court of Appeal looked at that section of the law, too. But other rulings have established case law that says when wrongdoing is involved, public agencies can’t hide behind that exemption.

In fact, agencies have to show a “clear overbalance” on the side of keeping information secret.

Ultimately, the question isn’t about Moland or Jinadu. It’s about how the board or agency handles the complaint.

As for how the City of Bakersfield ties in to all of this, we asked for the names of the four Parks Department employees fired earlier this year for taking overly long breaks, according to the city. We wanted to ask them their side of the story.

After some letter writing back and forth, City Attorney Ginny Gennaro basically told us that because  we didn’t know the names we were asking for, we weren’t entitled to them.

Huh?

But back to the county.

In mid-August I asked for complaints regarding half a dozen former county department heads, several of whom had been publicly on the hot seat for a variety of reasons.

The answer on all counts was “No.”

“We have to have protection,” said County Counsel Bernard Barmann last week. “We’ll turn them over if you indemnify us or we get coverage from a court ruling.”

Apparently the 5th District Court of Appeal ruling is too skimpy for the kind of coverage Barmann wants.

The employees might sue, he moaned. Yes, they might. That’s not an excuse to ignore the law.

Barmann was also confused about the documents we wanted. Employee evaluations? What about employment applications?

See what I mean? Semantics. We asked for exactly what we want: substantive, well-founded complaints.

On a side note, I find all this lawsuit hand-wringing rather humorous. The county had no problem dragging out futile appeals against The Californian when we sued to get the names and exact pay of firefighters back in 2002 (a ruling that was recently reaffirmed by the California Supreme court in a different case).

I guess when you have unlimited public money to play around with, doing what’s right can wait for a court order.

Lois Henry’s column appears Wednesday and Sunday. Comment on this column at http://people.bakersfield.c... or e-mail her at lhenry@bakersfield.com or call her at 395-7373.

Orange is apparently the new Friday color...

1.  

Cover your ears. I’m about to commit Kern County heresy.

Labor unions are not the devil’s spawn.

Unions have helped improve working conditions and wages for countless Americans in all walks of life.

Without unions, average workers would not enjoy the benefits of middle class life — safe working conditions, health insurance, retirement, livable wages — that most of us now take for granted.

Union members turn right around and spend those livable wages on (gasp!) living.

Their money is pumped back into the community through mortgages, shoes, groceries, car payments, cell phones, dance lessons, home decorating — did I mention shoes? — and so on and so on. Why those socialist fiends!

No one bats a capitalistic eyelash when industry strives to get the best price for its products.

In fact, right here in Kern County there are several industry cooperatives that band together for just that purpose. Calcot and the Independent Oil Producer’s Agency are two that come to mind. Cotton growers and oil producers pay dues to those associations that then help market the products for the best prices.

This is how Calcot touts its services on its Web site:
“If Calcot did not exist, cotton growers would have a far more difficult time getting a fair price for their crop, since they would be at the mercy of independent buyers.”

Workers’ products are their time and their skills. Unions help get a better price for both.

What could be more American than that?

And while many bemoan the political power some labor unions wield, it surely isn’t more than that of say Castle & Cooke, Chevron, ConAgra, or, I don't know, Halliburton.

For those who want to limit labor unions’ access to politicians (and we all know campaign contributions = access) I say, fine. Do it. But be fair and curtail industry just the same.

Yes, I know some union members don’t want their dues supporting political causes or candidates espoused by the union leadership. Well, I don’t want the money I spend on frozen broccoli or gasoline to go to some political causes or candidates either, but realistically, I don’t have much control over that.

In the interest of full disclosure, I was the vice president of the Bakersfield Newspaper Guild, Local 202, here at The Californian for several years. Ten years ago, I moved into management and have, on several occasions, been at odds with that same union.

I’ve seen both sides and I don’t believe unions are the enemy.

I was interested to see that despite national trends, unions are not on their deathbeds here in candy-apple red Kern County.

While membership has been declining steady across the country, down from 20.1 percent in 1983 to 12 percent in 2006,to the Bureau of Labor Statistics, it’s up locally.

Between 1996 and 2006, overall union membership in the Bakersfield metropolitan statistical area increased 82 percent, according to the Current Population Survey, a joint report put out by the U.S. Census Bureau and Bureau of Labor Statistics. During that same time frame, the total number of employees increased by 28.3 percent.

Though there was a healthy increase in union membership in the private sector, 56.8 percent, the majority of the increase was driven by public employee union membership, a whopping 106.4 percent.

That’s a reflection of a similar whopping increase in public employment overall, 70.4 percent versus 18.2 percent in the private sector. That’s another story.

Those numbers mean some public employee unions have gained strength and the scales have tipped heavily, perhaps too heavily, in their favor, especially in terms of benefits.

Kern County officials acknowledged to The Californian several years ago that it is cheaper to pay hundreds of thousands of dollars a year in overtime to fire fighters rather than hire much-needed extra hands largely because of the lucrative benefits fire fighters enjoy. (This, by the way, is just one of the many reasons it’s important for public employee salaries to be open to the public, as was recently affirmed by the California Supreme Court.)

Not to mention all the municipalities now facing enormous unfunded liabilities because of generous retirement benefits promised to a variety of public employee unions in recent years.

Who’s to blame for that? The unions? Or public officials who forgot to bring their backbone to the bargaining table and act on behalf of all their constituents, not just the few with potentially powerful campaign endorsements?

But that’s what negotiation is all about.

Happy Labor Day.

Lois Henry’s column appears every Wednesday and Sunday. Comment on this column at

http://people.bakersfield.c... target="_blank">http://people.bakersfield.c... or e-mail her at lhenry@bakersfield.com or call her at 395-7373.