Jimmy Breslin says, "rage is the only quality which has kept me, or anybody I have ever studied, writing columns for newspapers." Amen brother
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March 30, 2007
While I've been away, Foothill Cities slaps me upside the head and adds comments.
The story from Alison Hewitt that he's talking about, and is behind our ludicrous paywall, is copied on the jump.
Paper: San Gabriel Valley Tribune (West Covina, CA)
Title: Recall recoil much in evidence
Date: March 14, 2007
GLENDORA - In the weeks before a divisive City Council election, some teens were spotted tampering with political signs.
A witness pursued the teens, called police, then guided officers to them. The incident resulted in an arrest.
This scene describes the actions of recently re-elected Glendora Councilman Gary Clifford, 47, who caught Keleigh Marshall and Cristina Giammalva vandalizing his campaign signs last month.
And, according to Glendora police, it describes the 2002 actions of Keleigh's mother, Virginia Marshall, who caught a woman and three teenagers stealing campaign signs - signs opposing the recall that booted her husband off the City Council and swept Clifford into office.
The effects and alliances from the divisive recall election, which ended five years ago, continue to impact Glendora politics.
Councilwoman and minister Karen Davis, elected in 2005, said she maintained a neutral stance during the 2002 recall but saw the hostility tear at the community.
"People would express their differences rather harshly," Davis said. "I think this last campaign picked at that wound a little bit."
The recall pitted then-incumbents Paul Marshall, John Harrold and Richard Jacobs against a slate largely led by current Mayor Doug Tessitor: Gary Clifford, Ken Herman and Cliff Hamlow.
The three challengers won, and Tessitor was elected the following year. Clifford, Herman and Tessitor were all re-elected this year.
Young women arrested
Virginia Marshall has been critical of Clifford's involvement in her daughter's arrest, and the city's failure to remove improperly placed signs.
Clifford said he spotted Keleigh Marshall and Cristina Giammalva, both 18, putting stickers on his campaign signs around 10 p.m. Feb. 19.
"I just was driving home from work," Clifford said. "I didn't know who they were or have any inclination to know, but I asked them to stop and they didn't, so I called the police."
Clifford stayed on his cell phone while he followed the young women and led police to their car. Four of the eight cars on duty responded to deal with Clifford, the women, and Virginia Marshall, who showed up at the scene.
Because police had not witnessed the vandalism, the only way to arrest Marshall and Giammalva was for Clifford to make a citizen's arrest, which he agreed to do, Ward said. The young women were booked and released by 12:30 a.m.
The stickers covered up to a third of the campaign signs. One, reading "Glendora for sale, contact:" was posted above candidates' names; another read "This sign violates Glendora city ordinance."
"They readily admitted placing the stickers on numerous signs on several occasions," said Ward. "They admitted placing the stickers ... just on the incumbents' signs, because of the recall in 2002."
According to police, the same stickers had already appeared on 600 campaign signs in recent weeks, and only on those of the incumbents - Clifford, Herman and Tessitor.
"They said they were being paid by Virginia Marshall," Ward said. Keleigh Marshall and Giammalva told police they received $10 an hour, he added.
Virginia Marshall, in early interviews, said her daughter was simply politically involved and "familiar with the city's sign code."
She did not mention her relation to Paul Marshall, and has not returned recent phone calls for comment. The young women referred questions to their attorney, former Glendora council candidate Gene Osko.
"They only put the stickers on illegally placed signs, and those were only done by the incumbents," Osko said. "As far as I know, the challengers were obeying the law."
Not quite, said police, who said the signs they found vandalized that night were next to a conspicuously untouched sign belonging to candidate Jeff Johnson.
In this year's campaign, Osko and the Marshalls threw their financial support behind one of the formerly recalled challengers, Harrold.
Harrold, 51, seized on the incident with the teens and Clifford's involvement, attacking the councilman for making the citizens' arrest.
Harrold ran against two of the same people this year as he had in the recall, and lost again.
Osko also ran for council in the 2002 recall, and lost to the same candidates as Marshall and Harrold. In the recent arrest, he came out of retirement to represent Keleigh Marshall and her friend, but insisted that he has no personal reasons for doing so.
Recall arrests
It was a few weeks before the recall election, on Feb. 1, 2002, when Virginia Marshall spotted Lorianne Mason and a few teens with "No Recall" signs and pulling them into a car.
Marshall's husband was not only targeted by the recall, he was also the largest donor to the committee that paid for the signs, according to published reports.
Marshall called police and followed Mason, leading officers to her car, Glendora police said.
Mason was found with 140 signs in her car, most of which opposed the recall, and one that belonged to Osko.
Mason was arrested and pleaded guilty to misdemeanor a month later, according to court documents. The teenagers - Mason's daughter and friends - were released.
"They were not aware it was a crime," Ward said. "She had picked up some of these juveniles from the movies, and just told them that, 'Hey, we need to go pick up these signs."'
Sign law unclear
Of the 243 signs the city removed for improper placement during the 2007 campaign, 122 were from challengers, said John Menke, the maintenance superintendent in Glendora's Public Works Department.
There were 113 from Johnson, 64 from Clifford, 33 from Herman, 24 from Tessitor, nine from "Joseph" Yousef Tweini, but none from Harrold or Kristin Parisi.
Menke pointed out that he was usually the only person handling sign removal, because of time constraints.
"I couldn't get all of them," Menke said. "I think I got all of the ones that were complained about."
Osko said the Keleigh Marshall and Giammalva did call to complain about the signs before they began placing stickers on them, and Osko, Harrold and Virginia Marshall have all targeted the city's inconsistent sign policies when defending the young women's actions.
A city sign code prohibits signs in public locations - which is where the vandalized signs were located. However, the city attorney says it is unclear whether the code was meant to apply to political signs or constitutionally can apply to campaign signs, even though the code says it applies to all signs unless the code spells out an exception.
Because of the ambiguity, the Police Department does not enforce the sign code against political signs.
To clarify the law, a campaign sign policy was enacted by the council and approved by all three incumbents that also prohibits putting campaign signs on public land.
However, because it lacks the force of law, police say they still cannot act.
Only Public Works can remove signs, and as a swamped Menke explains, the department doesn't have time.
The District Attorney's Office is reviewing the arrest of the young women, and has not yet decided whether or not to file charges.
"The bottom line on this whole thing is, it's a crime to vandalize someone else's property," said Glendora police Sgt. Brian Summers.
The next step is Keleigh Marshall and Giammalva's court date. If the District Attorney's Office files charges, the pair will be arraigned on April 20.
alison.hewitt@sgvn.com
LA Beat: "Rep. David Dreier, R-Glendora, is insistent that the MTA should prioritize a $1.1 billion Gold Line expansion that would extend the line from its current terminus in east Pasadena all the way to the Ontario Airport. (h/t Foothill cities)
"More Reporting"
Some reporters at one New York tabloid once told me how during the senate challenge between Giuliani and Hillary Clinton, stories would be killed about Rudy and stories about Clinton rushed into print. The reason given by editors for killing the Giuliani stories was that they needed "more reporting." Of course no amount of reporting would have put those stories in the paper.
As a native New Yorker, I was there when Giuliani first came to office. The city needed a law and order guy and he fit the bill perfectly. Unfortunately, as the city prospered, he never broke out of that mindset. His political career would have turned to dust, I believe, if not for his steady hand in the aftermath of the Sept. 11 attacks. Having said that, Guiliani has a lot of people who don't like him, and reporters have material never used. So be ready for more of this.. Of course, there's always the dress.
Comparing Vietnam to...Newspapers?
"A time to get over our past and get on with our future." Maybe this should be my mantra, “I didn’t get in this business to be a hospice nurse.”
March 23, 2007
I went to a talk by David Wallis the other day on the scarcity and slow demise of the cartoonist. I'll post more on my thoughts on that later.
It's raining men
make sure you have your sound on.
March 20, 2007
What's in a word?
It's a disease that creeps in slowly. Words that are made up by activists and public relations people. High on my list are:proactive, wellness and undocumented worker. The first two are uncontroversial, active and health are the benign true words. Undocumented worker is a politically potent. Those who crossed the borders illegally were at one time called illegal aliens. A bureaucratic nonesencial term. So the more accurate illegal immigrant came and there it should have stayed. Despite calls from the Latino activist groups, like the National Association of Hispanic Journalists, of which I am a member. What exactly is an undocumented worker? Does that help the reader in any way or is it made up to confuse the story. Our job is not only to be a guardian of the public's right to know but the language as well.
Robert Blake and Phil Spector, two peas of a pod
"Both Blake and Spector come from scrappy New York-area families -- Blake (né Gubitosi) from New Jersey, Spector from Brooklyn. Both men experienced major acts of violence as children. Both are short, are said to wear lifts, and have explosive tempers. And it would seem that their major left or right turns were predestined. The most crucial decision in their lives, to move west, was made by their parents."
San Gabriel Valley Paranormal Researchers
Apparently, according to the Web site, they were (?) "dedicated to investigating paranormal and unexplained phenomenon." The forums look like they have been attacked by spam, so I'm assuming they are no more. I stumbled over it when I heard that Galster Park and South Hills Elementary (!) in West Covina were haunted. Then I found out that there are places in Rosemead, Montebello, and forget about Pasadena. For some strange reason a lot of the alleged sightings were at schools, especially high schools. hmmm. Teens are pretty good witnesses...right? I e-mailed the director of the SGV group just to get at the bottom of this haunting mystery.
March 19, 2007
Just because they're applying, doesn't mean they know what's coming.
S----Disturbers
Tim Crews is the 63-year-old owner, editor and reporter of the Sacramento Valley Mirror. While he may mix his opinions with his news reporting a tad much, his type of small town newspaper journalism is important and becoming rare.
"We're s -- disturbers. It's what a small county needs," said the bespectacled editor as he sat at his cluttered desk in his office, fielding calls and listening to a police scanner. "It is really important for a place like this to have somebody hold up a mirror."
Linda Sanchez, D-Cerritos
I'm in New York for the next week or so taking care of my mother. I'll keep blogging for the fun of it because it gives me something to do in the very boring town of West Islip. Not having cable (!) I'm tooling around youtube and other places to see what's going on. I just found this video from the Colbert Show and the woman of the fighting 39th.
March 18, 2007
Portraits of the fallen
Whether you are for or against the war, you have to respect the sacrifices of our men and women in the armed forces. We tried as we move into the fifth year of the Iraqi War to honor those who have died in Iraq and Afghanistan.
This is going to be fun.
March 15, 2007
"Other than the cancer and the $25 million lawsuit, I’m doing all right.”
If I can have that sense of humor when things are bad, I'll be doing all right.
Um, duh
"And hopefully this will be some kind of subtle message to other newsrooms that if you can spare the time and the resources to turn a reporter loose for a good bit of time, then something good might happen."
Newspapers and local blogs
Claremont Insider makes some interesting points about the growing power of local blogs and how they are becoming part of the solution in covering communities.
"It's a different time, though. There are other ways for communities to communicate and share information."
Traditional newspapers no longer have the resources to cover all of our local communities as well as we should. It's something I believe and have said before.
March 14, 2007
Assignment Zero
The idea: "an attempt to bring together professional writers and editors with citizen journalists to collaborate on reporting and writing about the rise of crowdsourcing on the Web. Inspired by the open source movement, the goal of Assignment Zero is to develop a working model of an open newsroom."
- I might still have a job if this takes off, but I don't know about reporters.
A tale of small town politics
Editors need to balance what readers want and what they need. Most times stories meet both criteria, sometimes not. As I have said before, I thought these arrests were minor, a short story at best, but some believed that we should have reported on it before Election for various reasons. I still think we made the right decision. After digging through archives, finding court documents and talking, or trying to talk, to everyone involved, this is what Alison Hewitt found. And considering how some of the players in this story acted before and how some of them are acting now, it reveals an interesting tale of small town politics. But one that should have waited until after Election Day.
March 13, 2007
I still think it's overblown
Editors need to balance between what readers want and what they need.
Our government at work
Our state Sen. Ron Calderon, D-Montebello, (left) gets locked out of his office when state Sen. Don Perata, president pro tem, decides to act like a juvenile.
March 10, 2007
foodies
Forget politics and editing. What about blogging and shooting video about eating food? The only thing is can I expense it. (via Claremont Insider)
March 9, 2007
Hilda Solis has been appointed to a global warming panel.
So far it's 2 to 1 against our decision
Reader Kyle also thinks we should have printed the story about the Glendora teens arrest before the election, so he joins Foothill Cities who feels the same. Another person who sent an e-mail backed my stance, so maybe I'll get a late push.
March 8, 2007
Post-Glendora election
Foothill Cities doesn't agree with our decision on the Glendora teen arrests.
...I'm married to a Mexican.
Occasionally, we get phone calls from people angry over our coverage of immigration – illegal or legal.
While I think most people can talk about the issue in a responsible and civilized way, no matter which side of the issue they fall, some are incapable and see a vast liberal conspiracy to hide the news. One of those people called me the other day, upset that we didn't put in our story about Armando Garcia that he was an illegally in the country when he shot and killed Los Angeles County sheriff's Deputy David March.
The caller was right, it should have been in the story. We have covered it extensively and put that description in, and this time editors missed the omission. It happens. Deadline pressures and other breaking news are an enemy in the news business. I admitted our mistake and told the caller we have put it in other stories but this time blew it.
But the acknowledgment of his complaint didn't mollify him, he then went off on a 15 minute, or at least it seemed to me, rant about how illegal immigration is destroying this country and that we are aiding and abetting criminal behavior by not printing more stories about this threat.
While the facts are clear that we have a problem with the borders, his conspiracy theories don't fly and I told him about some of the stories we have put in our paper in the past. Again, this acknowledgment went unremarked and appeared to make him even more angry.
And then it came, the first part was “I have a Latino last name so can't be a racist” and then later the “epithet” that is supposed to question my credibility, “that is if you are even from this country.”
He then hung up on me. And least this person had the guts to leave his phone number and name, which I called, but seriously, if you went to have a monologue fine but let's not pretend that you're trying to win me over to your side. You're not.
Full disclosure: I consider myself a first-generation United States citizen. I see consider because, technically, my mother is from Puerto Rico and was automatically given citizenship as soon as she entered the states. My father is from Colombia and also entered the country legally.
And, I'm married to a third-generation Mexican-American.
March 7, 2007
Liberté, égalité, fraternité, ou la mort!
The French Constitutional Council has approved a law that criminalizes the filming or broadcasting of acts of violence by people other than professional journalists. The law could lead to the imprisonment of eyewitnesses who film acts of police violence, or operators of Web sites publishing the images, one French civil liberties group warned on Tuesday. (via Instapundit)
Sounds like the French professional journalists have a pretty good union. Wonder if there are any job openings?
March 6, 2007
My column
No bias. No favor.
It’s a mantra we journalists try to live by. And around election time, the standard guides us as we decide which stories to publish before Election Day and which ones to publish afterward.
Every year in the weeks heading up to the day people vote, tips of skullduggery flood our phone lines: Candidates or their supporters misusing campaign contributions, lying about their accomplishments or other candidates’ histories and destroying lawn signs. These are just a few of the usual accusations.
When I was a reporter, I remember a school board candidate calling me one night to say he was following a truck that had run over his signs. The next day, he wanted me to write a story about the person he believed was responsible, though he never filed a police report and could not give any verifiable proof that the person was the vandal.
I called the other candidate anyway, and he denied doing anything and instead accused the candidate who called me of election shenanigans. I never wrote that story, though later I reported on how animosity between the two had stalled decisions on the board.
So we have learned to err on the side of caution during the election cycle.
This was our guiding principle after we did a brief on two teens being arrested for defacing campaign signs in Glendora two weeks ago.
We thought the story was worthy of a short story, but eventually found out one of the teens was the daughter of a former councilman who had been one of three recalled in 2002.
The signs that the teen was putting stickers on belonged to one of the men elected after the recall. The teens said they didn’t believe they were committing a crime because the signs were illegally posted, police said.
We briefed the arrests. Two Los Angeles television stations and a major downtown paper visited Glendora and took the pre-election bait, covering the event as a political free speech issue and glossing over the family connections and possible political motivations.
On Monday, the police department released additional information that seems to contradict accusations of abuse made by the teens, parents and supporters.
We review stories dealing with elections and candidates closely near elections. If a story rises to a level of verifiable corruption or abuse of power, it easily passes the hurdle, regardless of who is involved.
Obviously, regardless of our stance, once other media took note our responsibility was to re-evaluate our decision. We did.
But reviewing what I believe has been incomplete reporting by others, waiting until after Election Day was the right decision. The paper expects to be coming out with a story in the next few days about this controversy.
You may not agree with my reasoning, and that’s fine. I just wanted to let you know how we got there. I would rather be right than first. Though of course being right and first is even better.
The last thing a journalist wants to hear about himself: "NBC News anchor Tim Russert delivered devastating testimony" in the perjury trial of Vice President Cheney's former chief of staff Lewis "Scooter" Libby. Libby was found guilty today obstruction, perjury and lying to the FBI in an investigation into the leak of a CIA operative's identity.
Update: Russert says he ain't happy.
Hiring citizen journalists.
March 5, 2007
Glendora police now do issue a press release
Unlike before when the police didn't issue a press release, this is an actual press release from the Glendora police. Once again, this is the kind of weirdness that blows up right before an election. You don't have to agree with why we didn't think it rose to the level where we disregard that hurdle but at least here there is more context
Press Release: the City of Glendora has received a number of inquiries concerning the February 19th arrest of two 18-year-old women who allegedly vandalized political campaign signs belonging to candidates for Glendora City Council.
In response to those inquiries, these are facts that relate to the case which is being referred to the district attorney’s office for possible prosecution. On the night of Monday, February 19th, the Glendora Police Department received a call that two women had been observed vandalizing campaign signs in the vicinity of Foothill and Lone Hill. The responding officers stopped the vehicle and encountered Keleigh Marshall and Cristina Giammalva, each of whom readily admitted having vandalized the signs of the council candidates Gary Clifford, Ken Herman and Doug Tessitor. During the last several weeks, approximately 600 signs belonging to City Councilman Clifford, Herman, and Tessitor have been vandalized with similar stickers. None of the other candidates have reported their signs vandalized with these stickers.
Press Release: the City of Glendora has received a number of inquiries concerning the February 19th arrest of two 18-year-old women who allegedly vandalized political campaign signs belonging to candidates for Glendora City Council.
In response to those inquiries, these are facts that relate to the case which is being referred to the district attorney’s office for possible prosecution. On the night of Monday, February 19th, the Glendora Police Department received a call that two women had been observed vandalizing campaign signs in the vicinity of Foothill and Lone Hill. The responding officers stopped the vehicle and encountered Keleigh Marshall and Cristina Giammalva, each of whom readily admitted having vandalized the signs of the council candidates Gary Clifford, Ken Herman and Doug Tessitor. During the last several weeks, approximately 600 signs belonging to City Councilman Clifford, Herman, and Tessitor have been vandalized with similar stickers. None of the other candidates have reported their signs vandalized with these stickers.
The investigation revealed the two women singled out Clifford, Herman, and Tessitor signs in retaliation for their involvement in the recall of Marshall’s father five years ago. They stated they did not believe they were committing a crime because the signs were illegally posted. However, another candidate’s sign which was posted directly next to the three councilman’s signs, was intentionally not vandalized.
Marshall said her mother, Virginia, has been paying them an hourly wage of $10 an hour to place stickers on the signs.
After the investigation was conducted at the scene, the two women were placed under Citizen’s Arrest and transported to the Glendora Police Department at approximately 11:25 p.m. At the station, they were questioned further, booked, and then released on their own recognizance at 12:25 a.m. (approximately two hours after the initial contact was made).
Campaign sign vandalism has occurred in Glendora in the past, and the manner in which this incident has been handled was consistent with previous incidents of political sign vandalism. The fact that a campaign sign may be improperly posted does not mean that the sign can be vandalized with impunity.
#########
Giuliani * with Baca and gov
Former New York City Mayor and possible presidential candidate Rudy Giuliani, Los Angeles County Sheriff Lee Baca, Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger before this.
* I'm a native New Yorker and still can't spell Rudy's last name.
The Giuliani train slowed by son
AP: MONTEREY PARK - "Former New York City Mayor Rudy Giuliani asked for privacy Monday to deal with strained relationships within his family, and defended his wife as a "very loving and caring" mother and stepmother.
The Republican presidential candidate came to Southern California to speak with sheriffs about gang violence, but found himself answering questions about his family after his son, Andrew, publicly said their relationship had become distant after Giuliani's messy divorce from Andrew's mother, Donna Hanover, and his later marriage to Judith Nathan."
Considering that one of the things that softened Giuliani's tough prosecutorial image in New York was pictures of him with his son Andrew this isn't the best thing that could happen.
Update: Here's a NY Daily News article with more detail.
.
Police records audit prompts lawsuit
Dr. Dorodny
Health blogger critiques Board of Supervisors.
One more Glendora time.
Foothill Cities has a long blog on the Glendora teen arrest story, including a swipe at our 'lack' of coverage. I have already stated our reasons for holding off on this weird story here until after the election. People may not agree with it, but considering it's Glendora, we're not going to jump before we have to. I will clear up one inaccuracy in both the LA Times story and Foothill Cities blog. The police didn't release a statement, every morning we do a round of cop calls. That's when we found out about it. Police must give us the names of people arrested, they have discretion over the victims, which they rarely if ever do.
March 4, 2007
Glendora Mischief Redux
As I said earlier, the arrest of two teens caught defacing a politician's sign apparently hanging in a public right of way, which would make it illegal, was a minor story for us. Now I see on the local CBS news that there are people protesting the arrest. This on top of Saturday's L.A. Times oddly written story. Sheesh. Sometimes you never know what people are going to rally around. I'll post the video if I can find it.
The Richard McKee experiment
I've known Rich McKee for a few years now, and I still don't quite understand why he so zealously advocates the ideals of open-government.
He is a Pasadena City College chemistry professor, served as president of the California First Amendment Coalition and recently resigned from Californians Aware. For nearly 20 years, I think, he has challenged local municipalities and public agencies to follow the Ralph M. Brown Act and the Public Records Act. This includes filing lawsuits that he almost always won, forcing them to follow the law.
As part of our attempt to get more community voices in our paper, Rich, a La Verne resident, has become a columnist of late. It gives him a chance to spread the word about local open-government issues, and gives us unique opportunity to educate the public.
It's an experiment because Rich has to stay a chronicler and stay away from being a newsmaker. The transition so far has been smooth. But he becomes outraged quickly when he thinks someone has disregarded open-government laws, so it should be fun. Here's his latest column.
March 3, 2007
Don't look
Much ado Glendora political mischief
Roiled..er..not really. Unless of course you read the breathless prose of this LA Times story today.
"The 18-year-olds, Keleigh Marshall and Christina Giammalva, set out the night of Feb. 19 to engage in some mischief by putting stickers on the political signs of Glendora elected leaders. The stickers read, "This sign violates Glendora city ordinance," a reference to Glendora's law prohibiting campaign signs on public property.
Notwithstanding that law and an accompanying set of rules that regulate the placement of campaign material, the same council members who passed the regulations appeared to be violating them — and thus the protest by Marshall and Giammalva."
Notwithstanding that it's only later that you find out that Marshall is the daughter of a former council member, this reporter obviously accepted that the teens were just "protesting" the signs placement not the candidates themselves. Remember, when John Harrold, Paul Marshall and Richard Jacobs were recalled, Clifford was one of the people who replaced them and was supported by the group that was behind the recall effort.
We did a short story on the arrest, and after looking further into it decided it was a type of story that is blown out of proportion before it's near an election. There are many unanswerable questions and possible motivations. Politics as usual indeed.
Updated: put some added details in. Because we have a dumb pay wall for archives, I pasted two stories after the jump that gives some additional informatin on the recall, and other possible explanations for the "protest." Notice the attorney's name as well.
America's Newspapers
Paper: San Gabriel Valley Tribune (West Covina, CA)
Title: Election sets stage for Glendora's future
Date: April 10, 2002
GLENDORA -- In a historic night, three new leaders replaced recalled Mayor John Harrold and councilmen Richard Jacobs and Paul "Sonny" Marshall, capping months of debate over the future of the city.
Gary Clifford, Cliff Hamlow and Ken Herman, elected by close votes in the March 5 recall, were formally sworn in.
Herman told the packed audience the days of divisiveness in Glendora are over.
"We don't recognize north Glendora or south Glendora ... we recognize you, the people."
Councilman Marshall Mouw was voted mayor and Councilman Mike Conway mayor pro tem.
The mayoral position eluded Mouw ever since he was elected to the council 11 years ago.
"He is a man with a unique, historical perspective on Glendora. It's my privilege to name Marshall Mouw as mayor," Conway said.
While the choice of Mouw and Conway might appear to be rehearsed to their critics, Herman said they were the logical choices.
"You have three new guys on the block and one with one year's experience and one with 11 years experience. What else would you expect?"
In a narrow election, Glendora voters agreed Harrold, Jacobs and Marshall abused their powers as charged by a political action group.
Harrold lost by 212 votes, Jacobs by 429 votes and Marshall by 72 votes.
In parting shots Tuesday evening, Marshall said he may contest the race based on an expected report to be filed with the Los Angeles County Board of Supervisors.
The Registrar expects next week to submit the findings about voting discrepancies throughout the county on March 5.
Noting another election would begin in eight months, Marshall vowed he'd return if the new council interfered with several policies put into place by the outgoing men.
Those policies include street repairs, turning the newly proposed San Jose Park into a development, protecting the foothills and curbing council stipends.
"If the stipends are reversed, I'd have a problem," Marshall said.
Hamlow took issue with Marshall's words.
"I'm an independent member of this council who won't allow an agenda set by a previous council to (determine my decisions). I will look to the citizens for directions," he said.
Harrold said he promised Glendorans that no decisions he made as a councilman would be so negligent that they would cause a lawsuit.
"And I kept my word," he said.
When Harrold was on the council, he couldn't reveal the reasoning behind some of his decisions. As a private citizen, he said he would be talking about them.
Jacobs was not at the final council meeting because of a trip to Spain.
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Paper: San Gabriel Valley Tribune (West Covina, CA)
Title: 4 candidates in recall election report finances
Date: February 6, 2002
GLENDORA -- Of the four candidates running for City Council in the March 5 recall election, the dark-horse posted the largest war chest.
That's likely because Eugene Osko has to finance his own campaign, unlike the other three backed by a political action group with $127,000 in its bank account as of Jan. 19.
Glendora Citizens for Responsible Government want Mayor John Harrold and councilmen Richard Jacobs and Paul Marshall out of office.
They are backing Gary Clifford, Cliff Hamlow and Ken Herman.
Clifford, vice president of sales and marketing for Warner Media Services and adjunct professor of business and management at Azusa Pacific University, and Osko want Richard Jacobs' seat should the three-year councilman be recalled.
Clifford, 42, reported $297 in cash and no expenses.
Between Jan. 2 and 19, 2002, the contribution window opened for Osko, 60, but it was the retired judge himself who infused his campaign with a $3,955 contribution. He reports $2,500 spent on advertisement, a candidate filing fee and signs, leaving a cash balance of nearly $1,500.
Hamlow, 67, an educator with APU, is a candidate to succeed Paul Marshall should he be recalled. Marshall was elected in March 2001. Hamlow reports $2,155 in financial contributions until Jan. 19. Of that amount, $655 represents contributions under $100. His largest financial supporter is out-of-towner Thomas Nelson, a Ventura stockbroker who contributed $1,000. Four other Glendora donors made up the remaining contributions.
Hamlow's reported expense was $550 for a candidate filing fee.
Ken Herman, 55, who wants to grab the gavel from Harrold if he is recalled, shows a negative campaign balance of $139. The municipal finance banker with Bank of America loaned himself $600 through Jan. 19, 2002. He reports a $550 filing fee and nearly $200 in stationery supplies, postage and fliers.
Harrold's term expires March 2003.
Those wanting the trio removed said they abused their powers. But, the men say they were within their legal rights to replace the interim city attorney with a permanent one, ask all 45 city volunteers to reapply for their unexpired seats on commission, boards and committees and fire the city manager and replace him with an interim manager.
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March 2, 2007
Garcia pleads guilty gets life without parole
"Catch an Illegal Immigrant"
When "local news" is not really local news
Mother Jones:"The report found that locally owned television stations, on average, presented 5 1/2 minutes more local news per broadcast than stations owned by out-of-town conglomerates."
Our legislators looking out for us
Homeland Security committee: "Jefferson insists he has an honorable explanation, which he will provide when, and if, he's charged with a crime"
Lawsuits begin against the estate of the late Cory Lidle
AP:" A dentist to the rich and famous has filed a $7 million lawsuit against the estate of late New York Yankees pitcher Cory Lidle, claiming his home was destroyed when the ballplayer's small airplane crashed into his apartment building."
March 1, 2007
'Tis the season
This is the fun time for newspapers as we near Election Day next week. We get a slew of unconfirmed tips and one-sided complaints about council candidates and anything else on the ballot. Stolen and defaced signs. Campaign paraphernalia stuck in public right of ways (in violation of election code). Our task is to carefully walk the minefield and try to find the wheat from the chaff.