Take Probation off probation

In slashing Riverside County budgets during the recession in the '90s, the County Probation Department was singled out. More than 70 employees were laid off one month. A probation officer who kept tabs on 100 adult offenders suddenly had to watch 500.

Since those dire days the county's budget crunch has eased. However, the work load of a probation officer assigned to supervise adult criminals on probation, most of them felons, hasn't. The ratio of officers to probationers is so high that court-ordered supervision is a free ride -- for criminals. Less than 20 percent of them get serious supervision.

In the annual budget fight for county money, the Probation Department's adult-offender staff has been a perennial orphan in the county's family of law enforcement: Where the overworked are rewarded with under pay. Many of them don't stick around. An experienced probation officer can easily make $7,000 more a year in a nearby county.

Again this year, the Riverside County Grand Jury -- the folks who give county operations the eagle-eye from a non-bureaucrat's point-of-view -- say the Probation Department is vastly understaffed and underpaid.

The report was scheduled to be reviewed by the Board of Supervisors today. It is nothing that the Grand Jury hasn't said before or that the board hasn't heard before, but this time the board should do more than put the Grand Jury's recommendations on a bowed, dusty shelf.

Over the years the supervisors have intensified their focus and money on juvenile crime (another division of the Probation Department). But previous requests for additional probation officers -- even just 10 -- for adult criminal supervision failed. The 2001-2002 budget, being discussed now, is a good place for the supervisors to begin rebuilding Probation's adult-supervision staff.

Just as the street-gang problem of the early '80s focused attention on juvenile justice for the next two decades, changes in law such as Prop. 36 that emphasize drug treatment over incarceration are going to force county probation departments to come to grips with increased work loads as criminal offenders stay on the streets, out of prison. Here's hoping there is someone around to watch them in Riverside County.

After the mayor's good speech

Riverside's mayor delivered a particularly good speech last week, partially a State of the City address and partially a re-election kickoff keynote. But his themes -- economic growth, parks and libraries -- are those that should be welcomed no matter how the rest of this civic election year goes, for they involve the items that other events, notably Tyisha Miller and related matters, have pushed to the side for the last two years.

That said, the city doesn't always get the luxury of dealing with one set of issues at a time. Before Riverside can really dig in on the substantive themes outlined in Ron Loveridge's address, it appears that he and the council may have to deal with hiring a new city manager -- or deciding what to do with the current one.

John Holmes is a finalist for the manager's post in Tempe, Ariz., a city that is considerably smaller in population than Riverside but perhaps a place more soothing to any city manager's nerves. The job-hunting has obviously reached this advanced stage because the Riverside council hasn't put a stop to it; only one member of the council, Terri Thompson, is publicly saying what a shame it'd be to lose the manager. Other council members have, off the record, been slighting of Mr. Holmes; some Riverside community leaders have been more blunt, circulating a private letter saying he should go. So, it's plausible that Mr. Holmes is thinking about jumping to Tempe before he is pushed.

Much of the Holmes unhappiness presumably stems from the Miller affair. There's no evidence that he did not do what Riverside's elected officials wanted him to do. Certainly he received no strong instructions to the contrary, strong enough to be made public. And certainly it passes understanding why the city manager should bear the brunt of that dissatisfaction while the city attorney, who counseled the city council so poorly on Miller matters, should walk away unscathed. If leave-taking is what this is all about, then it shouldn't stop with the city manager.

At minimum, Riverside is now in the position of having a city manager who wants to be elsewhere and a portion of the city structure, elected and otherwise, which shares that view. Unless Tempe is obliging, however, no one seems to know how to effect this end without having to fire a current manager -- and, once that's done, break in a new one. That's not the best way to get a fast start on the mayor's new list of priorities.

Accepting the unthinkable

Last week, 100 school administrators gathered in Ontario to hear the bad news, and they were not disappointed. A California Energy Commission expert told them that even the most aggressive cost-cutting isn't likely to save them from budget losses due to the state's energy crunch. They were told their energy bills may run as much as $8,000 a year more than expected, per school.

And they're the lucky ones -- the districts that hadn't struck an interruptible power deal with energy providers, back in the days when such a thing (at least as an ongoing crisis) was unthinkable.

The Public Utilities Commission has suspended the penalties for violating the terms of those deals, saving schools like A. B. Miller and Fontana High from having to pay penalties to put their kids through finals. But that doesn't feel like a stable fix. It's more like a Get Out of Jail Free card -- and as California begins another week of rolling crisis, no one seems to have a more secure lifeline.

What's different this week is that, in a lot of ways, the crisis has begun to hit home, economically, in most communities. What's different is that last week, some Californians still seemed inclined to say, "This can't really be happening." This week, even the diehards may join the consensus: Yes, it can.