Photo illustration of California justice showing a gavel in a courtroom. (Image: sirtravelalot, via Shutterstock)A spate of smash-and-grab robberies and a rising crime rate may have dampened their hopes early on, but criminal justice reformers say the recently ended legislative session brought a raft of significant improvements to the way California treats people caught up in the system.
The CalPERS' governing board during a meeting several years ago at the pension fund's headquarters. (Photo: CalPERS board)First CalPERS announced last year that it was cutting the eye-popping pension of a former city of Vernon official, Bruce Malkenhorst, from $551,688 a year to $115,848. Then yesterday the CalPERS board approved the recovery of a $3.5 million pension overpayment from Malkenhorst, 84, who retired in 2005 from the tiny industrial city south of downtown Los Angeles known for corruption.
One night in March 2014, state Senator Leland Yee stood before a fancy dinner thrown in San Francisco by the Society of Professional Journalists to receive the Public Official Award — for a second time. Yee, then a candidate for secretary of state, was saluted for “his courage to oppose his own Democratic Party leaders and the governor in 2013 with public criticism of efforts to weaken the California Public Records Act.” A week later, a handcuffed Yee appeared in federal court, accused of taking bribes, political racketeering and even running guns in the Philippines.
A physician on the night shift examining a CT scan. (Photo: Beerkoff, via Shutterstock)It’s all about coming up with a plan to hang onto the $1.1 billion in matching funds the feds ship to California each year to help finance MediCal, the immense program that provides health care to about 12.5 million of California’s poorest patients. MediCal is larger than ever now because of the Affordable Care Act, which added more than four million Californians to the millions already receiving MediCal coverage