I had some calls last week on the topic of pensions and the June ballot measure. Several people were under the impression that San Jose will eliminate pensions altogether, which is not the case. Other callers wanted to replace the current system with a 401K-type benefit. I think there are other options to pension reform that would save San Jose money. For one thing, we should eliminate spending on all items not in the City Charter.

A 9-year-old boy in Washington, described as frightened and crying, sat in front of a judge in juvenile court waiting to see if he would be granted bail for a charge of assault with a deadly weapon. The boy found a gun at his mother’s house, put it in his backpack and took it to school. When he put his backpack down, the gun went off, critically wounding an 8-year-old girl. This comes from a brief Associated Press article in a local paper. There are questions that went through my mind about this story: How is a nine-year-old competent to stand trial? And, Washington State grants bail for kids? Thee state of California doesn’t do that–isn’t bail to make sure someone shows up for court? And why did he bring the gun to school?

Recently, a SJI columnist who also is a city councilmember suggested that libraries should be staffed with volunteers to avoid closure and increase hours of operation. I applaud this outside the box type of thinking, but why stop at libraries?

Two of San Jose City Hall’s most prominent political figures are causing quite a dustup in Milpitas. The mayor’s budget director, Armando Gomez, also a Milpitas councilmember, has been battling behind the scenes with Chuck Reed’s longtime political consultant, Vic Ajlouny. As recent as four years ago, the two men sat in on Reed’s senior staff meetings. While maintaining decorum in Silicon Valley’s capital, the political paintball has busted loose a couple exits up the freeway.

Earlier this month, I attended my fourth California Democratic Party Convention as an elected delegate to the State Central Committee (or DSCC). If I tried to explain how CDP functions, I’d blow my word limit, and you’d still be confused. At its core, the DSCC exists to set a platform for California Democrats and endorse candidates for state and federal offices. Primary endorsement contests generally amount to two formerly cordial Democrats nitpicking their respective records to death.

The Santa Clara County Board of Education is nearing completion of its most important statutory responsibility: the hiring of a new county superintendent of schools. The new county superintendent must be willing to encourage the utmost in school district transparency relative to the dollars expended, the test results, the grades, etc. Without transparency, public education can continue to obfuscate rather than improve.

Last week, the council discussed a poll of residents/likely voters regarding their views about tax increases. The majority of the Council appears to be considering a June ballot measure for a tax increase. Since the poll respondents are anonymous and nearly everyone on this blog is anonymous, I thought I would ask the question: Which tax do you want? How much of it?

Today is President’s Day, which means no one is working at City Hall. And because the national holiday falls on a Monday, as usual, this means the City Council won’t be meeting until next week. After taking a quick look at the committee agendas, it doesn’t seem like much of anything important will happen this week. But there was one item about a newcomer to the District 6 City Council race that garnered some attention.

It has been a tough week for Mayor Chuck Reed. An enterprising investigative reporter, Jenna Susko, from KNTV News challenged the mayor’s veracity of the “fiscal crisis” and exposed his administration’s exaggeration of the unfunded liability facing San Jose. The mayor’s opponents were quick to jump on the news and quickly filed an ethics complaint. A complaint which, ironically, is justified under Reed’s own ethic reforms, which state that public officials shouldn’t lie. But the regulation—like many Reed Reforms—is unenforceable. A lawyer for the ethics commission advised the body not to investigate as they have no jurisdiction over the matter. That is lawyer-speak for you can’t do anything even if he did lie.

In his outstretched palm, Atul Lall holds a molar, a wisdom tooth and four fragments of teeth that broke free when a tequila bottle encountered his jaw. Three days before last Thanksgiving, the 32-year-old San Jose native was driving away from the Lucky’s grocery store on South White Road in east San Jose. As he pulled his car out of the lot, Lall says that three men, without apparent reason, ripped him from the driver’s seat and beat him while dousing him with liquor. They called him a terrorist. Almost three months since the incident, the second-to-last of San Jose’s 32 hate crimes reported last year has sparked two separate police investigations. The first continues to search for the three men suspected of beating Lall.  The other, sources confirmed, is being conducted by Internal Affairs, the police department’s watchdog, which is looking into claims that investigators bungled the case and blamed the city’s budget problems for their inability to find the culprits.

Electing a judge for the Santa Clara County Superior Court is usually more about comfort level than name recognition. To put it bluntly: People prefer female judges. That might be why an unknown attorney named Alex Cerul listed his first name as Alexis on the ballot for the June 5 primary. Cerul, a staff attorney for the county, faces the battle-tested Paul Colin out of the District Attorney’s office. With more than 35 judges endorsing Colin in the race, one would think the deputy DA is a shoo-in to replace the retiring Jerome Brock on the bench (he got Brock’s endorsement). But insiders think Cerul has a shot based on “The Ritchie Effect,” named after the shocking 2008 upset scored by Superior Court judge Diane Ritchie.

The bi-weekly meeting of the Santa Clara County Office of Education (SCCOE) board convenes Wednesday evening this week at Anne Darling School, 1550 Marburg Way. At the meeting, the county board of education will be presented with an oral report on special education services the office provides to approximately 2,150 special needs students from ages 3 to 22. The services—albeit very costly due to the enormous physical, emotional, and educational needs of the students—are a moral imperative.

Last Friday, Joint Venture Silicon Valley (JVSV) hosted its annual State of the Valley. I was one of the 1,000 people in attendance at the convention center. JVSV started in 1993, during a recession, to promote economic growth through public-private partnerships. Several interesting demographic statistics were pointed out during the presentation.

If recommendations from the Rules and Open Government Committee are accepted, the City Council will repeal its medical marijuana ordinance at Tuesday’s meeting. If not, the council will prepare the matter to go before voters on June 5. Other matters include an audit of Team San Jose and a list of the city’s top priorities for the fiscal year.

Sounding an optimistic note that 2012 would be a year of “hope, optimism and recovery,” San Jose Mayor Chuck Reed delivered his State of the City address at the San Jose Civic Auditorium Thursday night. Hours after being pummeled in the media over an actuary’s claim of inflated pension projections, Reed sounded confident and statesmanlike, saying that he wanted “ to thank the leaders of our employee unions who have remained engaged and stayed at the table for many hours, days and months of difficult discussions.“

The $250 million question: Did Mayor Chuck Reed and other city officials knowingly lie about the worst-case scenario for San Jose’s pension crisis? An ethics complaint that included almost 800 city employee signatures was turned into the Elections Commission Thursday. The complaint, filed on the heels of an NBC Bay Area report, states that Reed, Director of Retirement Services Russell Crosby and former city actuary Michale Moehle knowingly used false information to bolster the mayor’s push to declare a fiscal emergency, which may have also had an adverse effect on pension reform negotiations. In an interview Thursday, Mayor Reed defended the worst-case scenario projection.