April 26, 2012 – Daily Brief — The SCV Talk Archive

SCVTalk Exclusive: A Latino man is suing the City of Palmdale for violation of the California Voting Rights act. In the complaint, Juan Jauregui, represented by a Malibu law firm, says the City of Palmdale's "at-large method of election has resulted in vote dilution for Latino and African American residents and has denied them effective political participation in elections to the Palmdale City Council." Why does this matter? The City of Santa Clarita employs the same at-large system and has high minority populations (Latinos are somewhere between 27-33% of the SCV, Asians are around 10%) yet have no representation on the five member City Council. Santa Clarita is also just a bit larger than Palmdale (170,000 to 152,000 respectively). There's no indication the City of Santa Clarita is about to be sued but I've heard this particular law firm has been active up and down the state with similar actions. The complaint asks the court to require Palmdale to shift to a district-based City Council election system. In 2007 the California Supreme Court affirmed suing municipalities under the CVRA over unfair and unrepresentative at-large elections. COMPLAINT (PDF)

A coalition of environmental groups says Magic Mountain is polluting the Santa Clara river with highly polluted water as well as trash and other detritus. The groups, including Friends of Santa Clara River and Santa Monica Baykeeper, say Magic Mountain's practice of spraying down walkways at the end of the day results in water contaminated with mercury, zinc, alumimum and other elements flowing directly into the river. Magic Mountain says it hasn't had a chance to review the claims but has spent "hundreds of thousands of dollars to not only lower the amount of storm water discharge but to improve the quality of the storm water discharge." The three environmental groups say they will sue MM unless it cleans up its act. LA TIMES

Speaking of waste water, the Signal says SCV residents can look forward to a 7% rate increase for sewer service starting next year. Sewer connection fees for developments are also increasing. The Signal notes that you can go to a meeting to protest the increase if you want to drive to Whittier SIGNAL

Assembly District 38 News: Really Patricia blogger says Team McKeon is still trying to shut him down, take a look at McKeon's & Wilk's yard signage, Scott Wilk is winning the social media race, it's unclear whether Patricia and perhaps her husband Buck will participate in the April 30th joint televised discussion forum for Assembly and Congressional candidates, but Patricia McKeon is at least featured on the playbill for a May 7th Chamber discussion forum for Assembly candidates, so maybe she isn't abandoning the SCV after all.

First it was the extra fighter jet engine, now more tanks:An Army Times article says Buck McKeon is pushing to buy more Abrams tanks and Bradley Fighting vehicles against the wishes of the US Army. All part of his plan to roll-back agreed-upon sequestration of defense funds following last year's debt ceiling negotiations ARMY TIMES

Class 2 Bike lanes are coming to Orchard Village Road & Tourney road following Tuesday's City Council approval of several transportation plans. Also looks like ped-friendly improvements continue in Newhall with the approval of $85,000 to construct better foot crossings of railroad tracks there SIGNAL

Cougar News shows you how to spot one of those fake ATM/Credit Card skimming machines that crooks occasionally use in the SCV COUGAR NEWS

COC student recognized by USA Today as one of the top 20 community college students in the country SCV NEWS

Lynne Plambeck and SCOPE have signed up to support a proposition that would require food producers to label whether their foods are genetically modified. That's revealed toward the end of a column about corporate money in politics and Citizens United SIGNAL

Time Ranger this week is fascinating, and not just about the past. Big John Boston reveals that The Mighty Signal in 1942 posted an outrageous front-page editorial calling Jehovahs Witnesses "traitorous termites" and practically inciting violence against them after some local rednecks beat up a few JWs who were protesting US involvement in WW2. But it doesn't end there; in a column about SCV & WW2 Boston was working on, the modern Signal tried to get him to remove that story saying it might offend current JWs. Boston says he left the Signal after that. Also, before residents raised their pitchforks and lit their torches over the Benz Road Cut Through, they did it for the Valley Road cut through and Highway 99. WRB