Democrat Consultant: Dems Gave Me $50K to Shut Up About Dem Gov, FBI Asked Me About Her

By Debbie Schlussel In the wake of the Monica Conyers bribery scandal in Detroit, several parties connected to Congressman Conyers' convicted felon wife are under the microscope. One of those is Sam Riddle, whom I know. Riddle, a political consultant, is a clever and colorful person. And he's a very likable guy, who, as a Black political advisor, was one of the few with the guts to speak out against the Williams sisters when they gave sanction to the United Arab Emirates' anti-Semitic apartheid policy during the recent Dubai Open tennis tournament. But, now, Riddle is embroiled in the federal investigations that are going on. And some of the things he's saying are very, very interesting. He says the Michigan Democratic Party paid him off to keep quiet about Michigan Governor Jennifer Granholm as she sought re-election. Sam Riddle: Dems Paid Me $50K to Keep Quiet, FBI Asked Me About Dem Gov As you read this, keep in mind that Michigan Republican Attorney General and all-around sleazebag candidate for Governor, Mike Cox, was also an ally and political crony of Michigan Governor Jennifer Granholm and deposed Detroit ex-Mayor Kwame Kilpatrick's father, Bernard, when they worked together for another sleazy Detroit political figure. Riddle said the Democrats paid him not to say negative things about Gov. Jennifer Granholm, who faced a challenge from Republican businessman Dick DeVos in the November election that year. FBI agents also questioned Riddle about connections between Granholm and business consultant Bernard N. Kilpatrick, the father of then-Detroit Mayor Kwame Kilpatrick, said Riddle, the former chief of staff to Councilwoman Monica Conyers. Granholm and Bernard Kilpatrick worked together in the administration of the late Wayne County Executive Edward H. McNamara in the 1990s. Federal agents have been investigating payments made to Bernard Kilpatrick's consulting firm, Maestro Associates LLC, by companies seeking contracts with the city of Detroit while his son was mayor. Mark Brewer, chairman of the Michigan Democratic Party, said the $50,000 contract with Riddle's Meridian Management Systems of Flint was for media consulting and was not specifically related to the gubernatorial campaign. Uh-huh. Sure. Liz Boyd, a spokeswoman for Granholm, said the governor had no comment on what Riddle said. . . . As for the FBI asking questions about ties between Granholm and Bernard Kilpatrick, "it is not unreasonable to assume that if the FBI is investigating someone, they might ask questions about someone they might have once worked with or known," Boyd said. Federal Election Commission records show the Democrats paid Riddle's company the money in five $10,000 installments on July 15, July 29, Sept. 6, Oct. 10 and Nov. 5. The election was Nov. 7. Granholm's links to Bernard Kilpatrick were also an issue last July, when . . . Granholm spoke to a top official in the U.S. Attorney's Office about whether it was possible to have a joint resolution of the ongoing federal investigation of Detroit city hall-- in which Bernard Kilpatrick was a major focus-- and her review of then-Mayor Kilpatrick's conduct in office, which was then pending. Shhhh . . . Sam. Be quiet. And, by the way, here's $50K for a "media consulting contract." Nod, nod, wink, wink.

View original story : city+hall Feed : Debbie Schlussel

Community feels pinch as Sacramento's parks, schools prepare to close

Blake Formanek, 17, above, stands watch over the swimmers at Glenn Hall Pool on Tuesday. Day camp counselors Maija Williams and Rob Creer corralled a group of summer camp kids out of the afternoon sun in Southside Park and into the community room to play board games. Williams, 19, and Creer, 30, are among 26 city recreation aides whose day camps the city decided to close because of budget deficits. The counselors will be out of work Monday. "I don't know what I'll do," Williams said. "You can't collect unemployment when you work a seasonal job for the city." The city announced this week deep cuts to youth programs, pool hours and park maintenance. The cuts will save the city nearly $4.5 million. That's not comforting to children whose summer camp programs will end mid-session, families whose neighborhood pools will close to the public just as the summer gets hot, and to summer lifeguards and camp counselors whose hours will be halved or cut completely. And there's little hope among city officials that programs and services will go back to normal levels next season. "For the foreseeable future, that's the level of services we're able to provide," said Dave Mitchell, operations manager for the city's parks and recreation department. In the cool shade of the Southside Park community room, groups of children huddled over magnetic building blocks, the foosball table, and a fierce game of Risk. Eight-year-old Kaylee Kazee frowned as one of her playmates invaded Alaska. Kaylee said she was disappointed when her mother said this was her last week at Southside Park at 6th and W streets. "This is the best one I ever came to," Kaylee said. "There are less kids, lots of activities, it also has a shelter. Land Park doesn't have a shelter." William Land Park's summer camp is among the 15 programs that survived the cuts. The majority of those remaining are outdoor sites with only shade to hide from the sun, a concern some parents are raising about the cuts. The city has told parents their children can attend a camp that isn't being cut. But Kaylee's mom, Cindy Kazee, said her choice was "based on amenities." She said she wanted her son and daughter to have access to both the outdoors and an indoor space. Kazee said the city should re-examine its fees, because parents would be willing to pay more. "I paid $100 for eight weeks of child care," Kazee said. "I'd be happy to pay twice that." The budget cuts also forced the department to close public swim hours at five municipal pools – Cabrillo, George Sim, Glenn Hall, Mangan and Natomas High School – though swimming lessons and swim team practices will continue as scheduled. All other pools will reduce their public swim hours by half, according to Greg Narramore, superintendent of Aquatics and Public Safety. "This is absolutely unprecedented," Narramore said. Two-year-old Madeleine Winchell paddled her first swimming strokes toward her mother, Jennifer Winchell, in River Park's Glenn Hall pool Monday afternoon. That evening, Winchell came home to news reports that her neighborhood pool was closing. Winchell said she comes to the pool nearly every weekday with her two young daughters, Madeleine and Olivia, 4. She's also worried about the city's decision to close bathrooms in virtually all the city parks. "They're just going to let the park smell like urine," Winchell said. Some neighborhood groups are rallying to keep their community pools open. Jeff Harris, president of the River Park Neighborhood Association, said it and other neighborhood groups are talking with District 3 Councilman Steve Cohn to see if the community can raise money to keep the pool open for general swimming. It costs $138 per hour to keep a small pool like Glenn Hall open, according to Dave Mitchell, operations manager. Larger pools cost about twice that amount. "That's a lot of money for neighbors to raise to keep swimming pools open," Harris said. "We really want to keep this pool open," Harris said. "Even if we got two hours, three days a week." Ben Billeci, 46, left, swims with his daughter, Isabel, 7, at Glenn Hall pool. The city plans to cut the hours at that pool, as well as all the other public pools, to help ease a budget deficit.

View original story : city+hall Feed : SacBee -- Sacramento City News

In S.F., thou shalt compost: It's the law

A Norcal Waste Systems truck filled with food scraps, yard trimmings and other compost ingredients tips its load at Jepson Prairie Organics' dumping yard in Vacaville. San Francisco, renowned for its civic will to save the planet, is now ordering residents and businesses to compost food scraps and biodegradables, or risk fines for not properly sorting their garbage. That's welcome news for Jepson Prairie Organics, a Dixon-based composting firm that already accepts delivery of 400 tons a day in plate scrapings, greasy cardboard and other sweet-stinking waste from San Francisco eateries and homes. It's also uplifting for Kathleen Inman, who uses the finished product to cultivate her pinot noir vines at Inman Family Wines in Sonoma County's Russian River Valley. For some 200 Northern California vineyards that use it, there is something about San Francisco compost and its unique, urban blend of crab shells from Fisherman's Wharf, pasta from North Beach, pupusas from the Mission District and dim sum from Chinatown that nourishes the soil like little else. Yet the question for San Francisco is whether the new city composting law signed by Mayor Gavin Newsom last month will nourish the city's ecological soul or merely irritate the populace. The new law gives the city authority to fine residents and small businesses $100 – and impose penalties up to $1,000 on big firms and apartment owners – if they refuse to segregate leftover fish bones, watermelon rinds and watercress salad into compost bins. Even in liberal San Francisco, which boasts of recycling 72 percent of its 2.1 million tons of waste a year, a few residents wonder if the law is a case of big compost meets Big Brother. "I think a fine is a little excessive, especially considering that it will probably be levied on the landlords," said David Baird, an interior designer for real estate sales who lives in the city's Castro District. "And if you have 200 units all dumping into the same compost bin, that's going to be pretty gross. "It's insane to sign a law without working out how to enforce it and regulate it." Newsom, a second-term mayor now running for governor, said the composting law is part of a "local global climate action plan" to reduce greenhouse gases, including methane from bloated landfills. The city, which has had a composting program since the mid-1990s, has achieved voluntary participation from 50 percent of restaurants, 40 percent of single-family homes and 20 percent of apartments. But the new law, designed to boost those rates by using the threat of citations, is drawing national media attention. San Francisco is the first major city to mandate that residents divvy up their trash – with green bins for compost, blue for recyclables and black for garbage – to salvage their food scraps. "All of a sudden, the headlines were 'Garbage Police: They're coming,' " Newsom mused in a signing ceremony for the law passed on a 9-2 vote by the Board of Supervisors. Newsom said the law "should be a model for every municipality … across the state of California and the country." But he said citations will be handed out rarely – and only to "egregious" offenders "blatantly violating the law." The city is hyping the composting law with instructive advertisements on pizza boxes across the city. If they're unspoiled cardboard, they go into the blue recyling bins. If they're kissed by anchovies, they're green bin compost. The city's efforts to boost composting are applauded by Damon Hall, the "chef de cuisine" at the upscale MoMo's restaurant, across the street from AT&T Park. After Giants baseball games, Hall says he fills three green bins with hundreds of pounds of compostables, from chicken skins and bones to onion cuttings and oyster shells. Hall considers himself both an environmentalist and a "small government libertarian." He says the city "just has to encourage people" to properly dispose their waste – not necessarily pass a law. But the recipients of San Francisco's gunky leftovers say they just can't get enough. Jepson Prairie Organics, which greets 18-wheel trucks carrying San Francisco compostables six days a week, bills its trademarked finished product as "Four Course Compost." Resembling dark roast coffee, it contains key soil-enriching ingredients: nitrogen, phosphorous, potassium and calcium. Bob Shaffer, a soil scientist from Glen Ellen who works with wineries and farms from Napa Valley to the Sierra Nevada, said San Francisco compostables produce more nutrients than suburban yard clippings or agricultural waste because of the food diversity. For example, he said, those crab shells produce calcium and chitin, "a very valuable protein in soil." That dim sum is a great source of nitrogen. And that North Beach pasta helps accelerate the decomposition of slimy scraps into a treasured compost. The process "is like feeding sugar to children and watching them run around," Schafer said. "That's what happens to my microbes." In Dixon, Nigel Walker, who runs Eat Well Farms, feeds his soil with a six-inch layer of San Francisco compost. He figures a fraction of the 15 tons of compost he used this year for his tomato, wheat, barley, lettuce and figs may have originated from crops he grew that were consumed and disposed of in San Francisco. "Every week our trucks go to the city full of vegetables. Then the trimmings come back," he said. "In a way, it's really recycling. We're using the waste from our vegetables to grow more vegetables." Inman, who produces organic wines, said using San Francisco's compost makes her feel she is "reducing my carbon imprint and returning the earth to the way I found it." Dave Stockdale, director of the Ferry Plaza Farmers Market on the San Francisco Bay, said he used to just "throw stuff in the nearest trash container, not really thinking where it will end up." The market now recycles or composts 90 percent of its garbage. "I found green ethics," he said. Robert Reed, public relations officer for Norcal and Jepson, shows off the product that's produced from all those scraps. A prep cook drops fish skin into a collection bin at MoMo's restaurant in San Francisco. The scraps are shipped out for composting.

View original story : city+hall Feed : SacBee -- Capitol and California

Help Guide the Future of Downtown Development

Larger sidewalks and two rows of trees on Second Street. Photo by Ed Fuentes. Want a say in how Downtown will be developed over the next decade? Wednesday night is the last day for input on the Central City Community Plan update with a public meeting to be held at California Hospital Medical Center. Though still early in the process, the Planning Department is seeking commentary on a range of development-related topics, including housing, urban form and transportation, jobs and industry, and sustainable design. The input given now will be worked into the next round of community meetings as the new Community Plan document takes shape. Not surprisingly, one of the most contentious topics at the first meeting was parking and whether developers should be building more, less, or using shared neighborhood lots. Also on the agenda are building heights; whether the community wants traffic calming measures; how buildings should meet the sidewalk; and how to encourage green space in Downtown. Last date for this round of Community Plan update meetings: Wednesday, July 1, 5:30 - 7:30pm / Leavey Hall, Keck Auditorium / California Hospital Medical Center / 320 W. 15th Street. Let us know what changes you want to see in Downtown's public and private development rules! By Rich Alossi.

View original story : city+hall Feed : blogdowntown

Carla Bruni Sarkozy at Radio City Music Hall- July 18th

Carla Bruni Sarkozy will be in concert in "live" on the stage for a duo with Dave Stewart (ex Eurythmics), for the 91st birthday of Nelson Mandela and for the first edition of the annual "Mandela Day". Aretha Franklin, Queen...

View original story : city+hall Feed : Paris In New York

Eye on City Hall: Latest updates on the resignation of Mayor Willie Herenton

Sources say Herenton will go through with his July 10 resignation. Herenton ally Sidney Chism had said earlier today that the mayor was reconsidering.

View original story : city+hall Feed : Memphis, Tennessee News

Civic Center Music Hall, Oklahoma - Jul 1st

Oklahoma Events, March 14. Oklahoma Events, March 6. Entertainment Calendra: 03/14/2008. Hanson coming to Blooimngtons Coliseum. Education Calendar: 03/11/2008. Oklahoma Events, February 29.

View original story : city+hall Feed : Oklahoma Recent News

Hymon working in City Hall again

Steve Hymon, who covered the city hall beat (and later transportation as the Bottleneck blogger) for the Los Angeles Times, is back again, at least virtually. This time, he's doing...

View original story : city+hall Feed : LA Observed

Former Clerk Charged In City Hall Fire

View original story : city+hall Feed : KCCI.com - Most Popular Stories

City attorney tries to quit, but Herenton won't accept resignation

View original story : city+hall Feed : Memphis, Tennessee News