Although it is struggling with a four-year $250 million deficit, BART may yet reach San Jose. The California Transportation Commission will be voting today whether to extend the service. To date, some $400 million has already been allocated to the project, which would add 16.1 miles of track to the line. Today’s vote is for another $40 million, the first installment of an expected $240 million. The total cost is expected to hover around $6.1 billion, much of which will come from federal funding. Santa Clara County voters narrowly approved a 1/8-cent sales tax to help pay for the extension in November.

Santa Clara County Prosecutor Ben Field announced yesterday that he would be leaving the District Attorney’s Office to work for the South Bay Labor Council. The announcement comes after a State Bar judge issued a harshly worded report recommending that Field be suspended for four years for ethical misconduct. Charges included withholding evidence from defense attorneys and disobeying a judge’s orders.

Former San Jose mayor Ron Gonzalez has been named as a potential candidate to head the Hispanic Foundation of Silicon Valley, a small but highly visible charity that caters to the needs of the local Latino community.

Gonzales had a meteoric rise in Santa Clara County, starting with his selection as the first Latino mayor of Sunnyvale. He later served as a county supervisor and was elected mayor of San Jose with a promise to rebuild the city’s neglected neighborhoods. Seen as a rising star in the local Latino community, Gonzales was tapped as a keynote speaker at the 2000 Democratic National Convention. But all was not well for Gonzales. In the coming years he had a well-publicized romance with an aide and was charged with backroom lobbying. Though Gonzales later married the aide and the charges against him were dismissed, Gonzales left office with his reputation tarnished.

Lt. Jose Salcido will be leaving the Santa Clara County Sheriff’s Office after more than three decades to become a senior policy advisor to San Jose Mayor Chuck Reed. Salcido is currently the sheriff’s liaison to the county Department of Corrections and has taken out papers to run for sheriff. The mayor, who has known Salcido for 12 years, says the new appointee will be doing “community outreach’ on “community issues” and will advise him on law enforcement policy issues.

In the midst of the city’s worst budget crisis and a worldwide recession, San Jose Mayor Chuck Reed headed a panel yesterday that focused solely on the city’s upside, and new efforts to stimulate local business. “This is a no-bad-news zone,” Reed announced to a crowd of business leaders, investors, building owners and realtors gathered in the San Jose City Hall Rotunda for lunch.

Last week saw Bay Area electric car maker Tesla sign a deal with Daimler, making it worth half the value of Big Three car manufacturer GM. Yesterday, the company hit a snag when it was forced to recall all 345 of its Roadster vehicles because some bolts on the rear chassis were improperly torqued.

In a growing controversy with the local Vietnamese community, San Jose police have refused to release 9-1-1 tapes that would clarify what they knew about Daniel Pham’s mental health. Pham, 27, was shot dead in Berryessa on Mother’s Day after allegedly slashing his brother’s throat. His family claims they informed police that he was mentally ill.

After radically downsizing the editorial department of the Mercury News and its once high-flying digital media empire, MediaNews Group CEO Dean Singleton now wants to charge for online access to its content. A May 8 memo from Singleton and MediaNews exec Jody Lodovic outlined the company’s interactive strategy, noting “not only does [free online news distribution] erode our print circulation, it devalues the core of our business — the great local journalism we (and only we) produce on a daily basis.”

It’s official: the wave of defaults sweeping California and the nation is the result of irresponsible lending practices, which peaked in late 2006, according to a just-released report.

MDA DataQuick, a real estate analyst, reports that three lenders were on the tip of that wave, making a stunning number of bad loans. Between 65 percent and 75 percent of the loans made by the three—ResMAE Mortgage, Master Financial and Ownit Mortgage Solutions—have since gone south, DataQuick reports. They sold almost all of these loans to other banks, which then repackaged them into the now-familiar house-of-cards arrangements that have since collapsed.

San Jose’s newly named police auditor resigned this evening following community reaction to the disclosure that his brother is a San Jose police officer.

Chris Constantin was appointed to the $169,000-a-year post last week in a closed session meeting of the San Jose City Council.

He succeeded Barbara Attard, whose contract was not renewed after she sought expanded powers to review investigations into complaints of police misconduct.

An entire generation has grown up with colorful pyrotechnics painting the skies each Fourth of July above downtown’s Discovery Meadow park. Now, after 18 years, the anniversary of America’s independence will be a dark night in San Jose. Belt-tightening by sponsors, shrinking city grants and mushrooming costs for city services all conspired to douse the fireworks. “It’s a business decision,” says Fil Maresca of Filco Events.

BREAKING NEWS: At 9:15 p.m. with 7 of 25 precincts and the absentee votes counted, it looks like San Jose City Councilwoman Madison Nguyen is headed towards victory in the hard-fought recall election. The San Jose Police Officers Association headquarters on North Fourth Street in San Jose is packed with supporters, and the parking lot is thick with TV trucks with extended antennae. People are speaking loudly in Vietnamese on cell phones.

At the time of this posting, members of the San Jose Restaurant & Entertainment Association are presenting a plan to the San Jose City Council for “community policing” in the downtown entertainment district. The plan, a response to the city’s efforts to impose up to $80,000 in fees on a number of downtown nightclubs, calls for instituting a new version of the “shared employment” model, in which police officers are directly compensated by club owners. It also calls on Chief Rob Davis to use the powers given to him by the urgency ordinance passed in 2006. View the Powerpoint of the San Jose Restaurant & Entertainment Association community policing proposal.

State Sen. Abel Maldonado, who is playing the lead role in this week’s chapter of the California budget fiasco, laid out a four-item “wish list” Monday, as the governor and Democratic leaders courted his vote.

On Thursday, January 22, President Obama named Tony West to head the US Department of Justice’s Civil Division. The division handles claims and recoveries involving billions of dollars, and its scope includes national security issues, criminal violations of consumer protection laws and constitutional issues.
Clearly, West’s career, San Jose’s present and now the United State’s future are different because the voters of District 3 didn’t elect Tony West in 1998.