Last week I took Santa Cruz County to task for proposing a transportation sales tax that would fund roads and not rail. Unfortunately Monterey County has decided to follow in their footsteps with a truly reckless plan that would spend over $1 billion for roads but provides nothing for rail projects that have been in the works for a long time:

A Caltrain rail extension is no longer on a list of projects that Monterey County transportation officials hope a sales tax will help fund over the next quarter century.

On Wednesday, the Transportation Agency for Monterey County board approved a 25-year improvement package wish-list that boasts more than 20 road and transit projects at a cost of $1.8 billion.

TAMC is working to place a half-cent sales tax on the November 2008 ballot that would generate an estimated $980 million. The county would seek matching state and federal funding to pay for the rest of the work.

And why isn’t rail included? From yesterday’s Monterey Herald:

Over the summer, officials from the Monterey County Hospitality Association and the Monterey County Farm Bureau withheld their support from an earlier draft sales tax proposal, arguing there wasn’t enough focus on highway and roads projects that would benefit their industries. They also complained about proposed spending on a Caltrain rail project included in the earlier draft.

But after TAMC officials eliminated the rail spending, both groups sent a letter last month indicating they would back the sales tax effort.

This is madness. The TAMC proposal is reckless planning and poor public policy – locking Monterey County into a roads-only future for the next 25 years puts our economy at risk and will cause us to miss out on leveraged funding opportunities. We can become nationwide leaders in sustainable tourism and sustainable agriculture, but not if we believe against all available evidence that the 20th century dependence on roads can be continued for much longer.

image from TAMC

As I explained last week there are two fundamental reasons why rails, not roads, need to be emphasized in any new transportation plan: global warming and peak oil. Freeway widening projects produce significant amounts of carbon emissions, something that supposedly environmentally-conscious Monterey County residents should not be promoting. Peak oil is the name given to the end of cheap oil as supplies begin to shrink and demand continues to rise globally. The peak, which many researchers believe is either already here or just a few years away, is already manifesting itself in sky-high gas prices.

These phenomenon both suggest environmental, economic, and physical factors that should lead us to prioritize rail over roads. Even a “mixed” funding package with some road widening as the cost of a fully funded Caltrain extension and light rail on the Monterey spur line (a line TAMC owns) would be worth it, as Monterey County has a stronger need than most other places of alternatives to the car. 100 miles long, Monterey County would be crippled in the event of an oil shock, either in the form of supply disruption or even more dramatic price increases. In either event the ability of workers to get around, tourists to come to the region, and agricultural products to get to markets, would be negatively impacted.

On that basis alone, dropping rail funding is a truly reckless act. But it gets worse. The proposed sales tax would last for *25 years*. Not until 2033 would we be able to realistically return to voters with a new funding package. By that point it will be too late – peak oil and climate change are already unfolding. This specific package shackles us to our cars at the exact moment when alternatives must be developed.

Further, there is political movement at the regional, state and federal levels for rail. TAMC’s Caltrain plan has been in the works for many years. Caltrain is willing to provide service to Salinas, but only if TAMC can upgrade the track, secure trackage rights, provide new cars, and guarantee that Caltrain will not be financially exposed. The cost of meeting all these requirement has been put at $90 million – less than a tenth of the overall cost of the transportation package. Democrats in Sacramento have long been supportive of rail, and the Democratic Congress has moved to create a federal matching funds program for local rail, similar to that which has long existed for highways. To abandon rail now is to ensure that Monterey County will miss out on these new opportunities to help defray the cost of providing badly needed sustainable transportation.

And then there is the opposition of the Hospitality Association and the Farm Bureau. That TAMC would bow to the pressure of these two groups is itself a disturbing sign. But let’s question the sanity of these groups. By throwing a fit on rail, they are actually hurting their own industry quite significantly.

Monterey’s tourism industry owes its life to rail. In the first decades after the American conquest, Monterey was an isolated town, hard to reach (it took a day just to travel here from Hollister). That all changed in 1880 when the Del Monte Express began service to Monterey from San Francisco. The rail line enabled the rapid growth of the tourist industry here on the Monterey Peninsula. The Del Monte Hotel, the Pacific Grove Methodist retreat, and by the early 20th century, Pebble Beach were all products of rail.

The last Del Monte train ran in 1971, when Californians wrongly assumed that cheap oil would enable automobile-based transportation to meet our needs for many years to come. Now that we face the end of cheap oil, Monterey’s future as a viable tourist destination depends on rail. Without it, we WILL lose tourist dollars as the cost of getting here becomes too expensive for Northern California families and visitors from around the country.

And we would be missing out on a perfect opportunity to take the lead as an environmentally sustainable tourist destination. Much of Monterey’s value as a destination is based precisely on environmental preservation, from the Monterey Bay Aquarium and the Monterey Bay National Marine Sanctuary to the forests, coastline, and dramatic beauty of Big Sur. Rail would allow tourists to get here in a carbon-neutral, or even carbon-reducing manner, complementing the mission and values of our region. TAMC already owns the tracks from Castroville to downtown Monterey, so all that’s needed is investment to rehabilitate the tracks and buy the rail equipment. And it would take pressure off of Highway 1, which can get congested at rush hour.

It’s not as if the Hospitality Association hasn’t been told this. Just last week, Monterey hosted a conference on sustainable tourism. Speakers from around the nation met with local stakeholders and, from the reports, all agreed on the importance of sustainable tourism:

Many local businesses and agencies employ environmentally conscious practices, said John McMahon, president of the Monterey County Convention and Visitors Bureau.

“A lot of these things being discussed are already going on,” McMahon said. “This is a catalyst to solidify that and to bring together all the entities with an interest in sustainable tourism.”

McMahon said the Monterey area is viewed by potential visitors as a spiritual and environmentally friendly retreat.

“Now it’s being able to validate that viewpoint. We can easily be a capital for green tourism,” he said.

Emily Reilly, former Santa Cruz mayor and candidate for the Democratic nomination in AD-27, who has championed sustainable transportation planning, discussed the importance of collaboration:

“It seems there’s a knee-jerk reaction by cities and counties of ‘what’s in it for me’ when someone else decides to do something different,” said Santa Cruz Mayor Emily Reilly. “I think we’re really at a point here of getting over that.” [quoted in the Monterey Herald article linked above]

For the Hospitality Association to not have gotten this message is, to me, a stunning failure on their part to envision the future needs of our region and to grow their own business. Someone at the TAMC or on the Monterey County Board of Supervisors should have sat down with them and explained the vital role of rail in providing for a viable 21st century Monterey County.

The same holds true for the Farm Bureau. The Salinas Valley, salad bowl to the world, is well positioned to benefit from an improved rail corridor to the Bay Area. Agriculture is especially vulnerable to peak oil, as Cuba discovered in the early 1990s. As fuel costs soar and with the possibility of supply disruptions, every aspect of agriculture – from getting workers to the fields to powering the tractors to producing fertilizer to getting food to market – is imperiled.

The money spent rehabilitating the rail line between Salinas and San José would, even though initially intended for passenger rail, have obvious benefits for agriculture. With the massive population of the Bay Area needing a stable, local food source, as well as offering port facilities tying the region to a world market, expanded rail infrastructure would help secure local agriculture’s future.

Unfortunately, we the people are going to have to educate our leaders and civic groups about this. I wasn’t able to attend yesterday’s TAMC meeting, but there is another in January where the sales tax package will be finalized, and I plan to voice my concerns there.

We have other opportunities to help prevent this disaster. Each city in Monterey County must vote to approve the proposal, and then the Board of Supervisors must do so as well – those votes will take place later in 2008. The city of Monterey has signed the US Mayors Climate Protection Agreement and UN Urban Environmental Accords, which are a good starting point for reminding city leaders of the need for a more balanced plan. These votes could be used to push TAMC to restoring at minimum Caltrain funding.

There is, of course, the possibility of voting against the plan itself in November 2008 – the 2/3 rule for tax votes applies here, and a similar transportation plan in 2006 received 57% support, short of the 67% needed for passage. And while that may ultimately be the only way to stop this bad plan, it would be much more preferable to work with county residents and officials to educate them on the need to provide rail and then go to voters in November with full funding for rail.

It is long past time for California to abandon the 20th century fantasy that cars and roads alone can meet our transportation needs. Let’s get Monterey County moving in the right direction.

As anyone who’s had the misfortune to be stuck in a traffic jam on Highway 1 in Santa Cruz County knows, there’s a major traffic problem on the northern end of Monterey Bay. High housing costs in Santa Cruz have spurred growth over in Watsonville, where homes are (relatively) more affordable. When combined with the job engine of Silicon Valley just over the hill, this means there’s a LOT of traffic on Highway 1.

So what should be done? Widen the freeway? Take advantage of the rail line that connects Watsonville to Santa Cruz to provide commuter rail and take the pressure off of Highway 1?

Highway 1 widening has been very contentious – a 2004 plan to widen the freeway was shot down by voters – and so it is somewhat surprising to see that a Santa Cruz County transportation tax force has suggested trying again in November 2008, with another 1/2 cent sales tax that would largely go toward an additional freeway lane and only a pittance for rail.

Environmentalists and transit advocates, led by Friends of the Rail Trail and former Santa Cruz mayor and Democratic candidate for AD-27 (should Prop 93 fail) Emily Reilly, have denounced the proposal and vowed to fight for transportation alternatives.

What I want to do here is explain why they are right, why Santa Cruz needs to seize this opportunity to lead the state into a more sustainable and effective transportation future. Instead of trying in vain to keep the 20th century alive, we need to realize our limits and embrace a more sensible vision for the 21st century.

flickr photo by richardmasoner

In November 2004 a 1/2 cent sales tax was put to voters that would have provided some funding for public transit, but was largely about widening Highway 1 with an additional lane between Watsonville and Santa Cruz. The measure only got 43% support, as a combination of anti-tax, anti-development, and anti-roads voters rejected it. Although the county transportation commission believes voters will support this, it’s not clear this will fare any better now than it did in 2004.

This isn’t just bad politics. It’s an example of completely misplaced priorities. Santa Cruz has been trying to develop a commuter rail line to connect to Watsonville, paralleling Highway 1 and potentially clearing up the traffic problem without adding new freeway lanes. To do this, the county needs to buy out the Union Pacific line that runs alongside Highway 1, an effort that has been stalled in negotiations for several years, as the county believes UP is asking too high a price given the renovations that will be needed to make the route viable for passenger rail.

Supporters of the plan point out that Santa Cruz County is well positioned for rail:

“Half of the population in Santa Cruz County live within a mile of the rail corridor,” says Micah Posner, co-founder and board member of Friends of the Rail Trail.

“Two thirds of all trips in Santa Cruz are under five miles and one-third are under three miles,” Posner continues. “It’s amazing just in terms of global warming alone that a rail trail has the potential to solve all our problems.”

Friends of the Rail Trail have produced letters of support from private rail operators that suggest a passenger rail line would be profitable. One of them, Sierra Railroad Company, is led by Mike Hart, who further explained why Santa Cruz County is so well suited for rail:

Hart summed up Santa Cruz County’s readiness for public rail with three Cs: “concentration, combination and culture.”

He argued that the concentration of the county’s 250,000 residents around the rail corridor overcomes the overall population number, which is regarded by opponents of passenger service as too low for a viable service. “Combination” stood for his company’s proposal to continue freight service – mostly for the Cemex plant in Davenport – by creating a system that wouldn’t necessitate running freight only at night. “The overhead, logistics, insurance and planning all need one organization running it to be efficient enough,” Hart said.

Hart’s final key, culture, proved he knew his audience. Having already received applause for his statement that Sierra Railroad operates its trains only with biodiesel, he said, “The Santa Cruz County mindset is, if we can help the environment by using a train, we will. When you figure the overall cost benefit, you can’t just figure the people riding the train instead of their cars. You also need to take into account the thousands of people who will walk or ride their bikes to get where they need to go.”

Left unsaid is the historical connection. Both Monterey and Santa Cruz were products of passenger railroads. As anyone who’s been to the Santa Cruz Boardwalk knows, it is situated right alongside the rail line, which carried weekend visitors down from San Francisco and provided the transportation lifeline that made Santa Cruz viable. Same for us in Monterey – the Del Monte Express was critical in bringing visitors to one of the state’s first tourist destinations, as well as bringing supplies to town and providing regional business access to market.

For most Californians, rail stopped being a vital part of life after World War II, when cheap oil made us all believe that personal automobiles and freeways, not trains, would solve our needs. We let our excellent rail transportation network fall apart – from the Pacific Electric cars in SoCal to the end of the Del Monte Express in 1971. The 20th century California Dream emphasized cars and cars alone; the Beach Boys never sang about trains.

As I’ve explained before, that 20th century dream is dying, and it is time to redefine the California Dream for the 21st century. One reason that dream is dying is because the era of cheap oil that made the 20th century dream possible is drawing to a close. Peak oil and sky-high gas prices mean that driving will no longer be able to be the basis of our transportation system. Already Californians have started buying less gas, and Amtrak California ridership sets records every month.

Clearly the desire for new kinds of transportation is there. So is the awareness of climate change and the need to move away from global warming emissions that highway projects produce, as explained by Seattle’s Sightline Institute.

But roads supporters in Santa Cruz County prefer to ignore all of this. When the transportation task force approved the Highway 1 widening tax proposal, they also rejected a resolution that would have required an overall reduction in carbon emissions and that each project funded had to be carbon neutral – a rejection Emily Reilly rightly found to be “shocking.”

A small but vocal group of residents in Capitola and Aptos, which lie along the rail line, also oppose the passenger rail plan, concerned that it would hurt their property values. Friends of the Rail Trail believe that in fact, a combined rail line and bike/walk trail would help property values, as well as keeping local economies afloat and easing traffic congestion.

Ultimately, the opposition of these few homeowners and the transportation task force to a rail solution is a sign that they still believe, against all evidence, that the 20th century can continue. Maybe Highway 1 widening would have made sense in the 1980s or 1990s. Not now. With scarce public revenues, soaring gas prices, and the need to get serious about climate change, spending $300 million to widen a freeway is an insane waste of money. Santa Cruz County needs to instead embrace a more sensible future – a passenger rail future.

And in any case, the 1/2 cent sales tax for a freeway project is doomed to fail. Santa Cruz saw this in 2004. Earlier this month Seattle rejected a massive roads and transit project when anti-tax activists and those opposed to 180 miles of new roads combined to sink the plan. In 2004 Denver voters approved a massive rail and transit only plan, FasTracks, and this year Charlotte voters gave 70% approval to a light rail plan. Will Santa Cruz be left behind?

This article written by: Former Assemblymember Hannah- Beth Jackson of Speak Out California

For those of us who remember the 60’s (and yes, there are some of us who lived through them and still remember), it was a night to wax nostalgic and hopeful. Last evening, I had the pleasure of listening to Peter and Paul (two-thirds of the great Peter, Paul & Mary trio) talk and sing about what it has meant for them and still means for them, to sing about justice, freedom and a love between their brothers and sisters all over the land. They were in Santa Barbara, my home town, to receive the prestigious Nuclear Age Peace Foundation’s Distinguished Peace Leadership Award.

The award is presented annually to individuals who have “demonstrated courageous leadership in the cause of peace.” To put this award in context, some of its prior recipients include: Dr. Helen Caldicott, Dr. Carl Sagan, His Holiness, the Dalai Lama, Archbishop Desmond Tutu, Walter Cronkite, Anne and Paul Ehrilich and Daniel Elsberg (among others). Obviously, a pretty impressive group.

While Mary was, unfortunately, back home in Connecticut recovering from back surgery (having won her battle  against a virulent form of leukemia as well ), Peter and Paul sang gallantly (clearly missing that magnificent Mary Travers sound). They talked of their life-long commitment to peace, social justice and community well-being.

In addition to those of us who remember them with full heads of hair, there were 120 young people in the audience—primarily college students, but some high school students who were selected as the next best hope to restore a sense of commitment to the principles that moved so many of us during our college years back when the Vietnam War and Civil Rights battles were raging in this country.

In that earlier era,we sang and danced to the Movement for political and social justice, peace in our time, brotherly and sisterly love and respect. We hoped for a better world that was comprised of these things, not material things. We dreamed about justice and goodness and love and kindness. The notion of dreaming for Versace, BMW’s, 10,000 square foot mansions and diamonds were nowhere on our radar-screens or desires. We wanted peace, and a more just world for ourselves and all humankind.

It brought tears to the eyes of many of us as Peter Yarrow implored the youngsters in the audience to pursue these goals as our next generation of leaders. He and Paul (actually Noel Paul Stookey) spoke eloquently about these causes and their hopes that we can, yet again, regain our footing by pursuing a kinder, more peaceful planet.

Although partially immersed in  the music and nostalgia, I couldn’t help asking: “What has happened in our nation that we see our youngsters dancing to gangsta rap and other ‘music’ that glorifies killing and objectification of women? Why are our youngster’s heroes packing heat along with their ostentatious gold and diamond jewelry? How is it that the nation’s heroes today do not call for social justice or self-sacrifice or human kindness? Rather, they are admired and even worshiped for the number of cars, or girl-friends or houses they own.

Where are the young people crying out for social justice or marching against this illegal and hopelessly failed war? Why are we and they not calling for accountability by a White House that believes it is above the law? Why are we not challenging Bush and Chaney for their corrupt and destructive management of our environment, their criminal indifference to the poor who are living on the streets or in gang-infested communities where neither they nor their children are safe from violence? Where is the public outcry against corporate greed and irresponsibility in the pursuit of greater and greater wealth, to the detriment to our own workers?

Where are we on all this, Peter and Paul ask?  We of the so-called “peace generation’ demanding  social justice, peace and the freedom to think and be who we are and want to become. We HAVE the hammer, we ARE the hammer….of justice, of freedom of love between our brothers and our sisters……….  We are at a cross-roads in our nation’s history and in our own sense of purpose. There should be little doubt: It’s time to bring that hammer back.

One of the hardest things about being a California historian is watching the same tragedies repeating themselves, nearly every generation. Ever since the Anglo conquest in 1846, non-whites have faced the brunt of scapegoating during hard economic times. And in almost every case, this immigrant-bashing has turned violent.

California’s ugly history of racial terror spans all 150+ years of US ownership. It includes the attacks on Mexican miners (here legally under the terms of the Treaty of Guadalupe Hidalgo) in the Sierra goldfields in 1850, the state-sanctioned genocide of Native peoples in central and Northern California later in the 1850s, the forced disposession of Latinos’ land in the 1870s, the violent assaults on Chinese laborers and communities in the late 1870s and early 1880s, and the forcible deportation of 1 million Mexican residents of CA, including many US citizens in the early 1930s.

Now, in 2007, it is returning, with an ugly vengeance. Last Friday, day laborer Artemio Santiago Garcia was savagely beaten in Seaside, a majority-Latino city next to Monterey. Prosecutors are calling it a hate crime. We can call it the leading edge of outright terrorism, a predictable evolution in the already ugly immigration paranoia. And it’s spreading.

From today’s Monterey Herald (linked above):

Rather than cleaning houses or mowing lawns, what he got was a severe beating to the head and upper body that made him lose consciousness and could have ended tragically, he believes, had he not come to and found a pipe to scare his assailant….

  Santiago Garcia’s assailant entered an abandoned house, and they both began walking along a hallway, the man pointing out the rooms and telling him things he didn’t understand. When they reached the rear of the house, his assailant pulled out a flashlight and turned it on.

“I was then standing behind him, wondering what we would do, when he turned around and slammed me on the head,” he recalls. “I immediately fell and lost consciousness. Later I felt more blows, to my head and to my upper body. Then he dragged me outside the house.”…

“I ran away and then I hid under one of the houses. I was afraid that if he saw where I’d run to, he would come after me. I was hidden for a minute or two, then I walked into the street screaming and asking for help. I was bleeding through my nose and mouth.”

Santiago Garcia told the reporter that he wasn’t the first victim of such an attack – that last year an older man, also from Oaxaca, was also beaten – but that he did not feel safe in telling the police.

The article goes on to note that other Latinos – regardless of resident status – are feeling more vulnerable to this kind of hate:

A recent study by the Inter-American Development Bank found that Latino residents are feeling more discrimination than before. Pollsters attributed the results to failed immigration reform policies.

“All we want is a work permit,” worker Jose Perez said. “We don’t even want residency. All we want is to be able to work.”

If this isn’t chilling enough, the incomparable David Neiwert, a Seattle-based author who has studied racial hate and the far-right on the West Coast and the founder of Orcinus, has now come across a video apparently showing a group of white bigots shooting and killing a Mexican somewhere along the border. They may or may not be related to a San Diego offshoot of Jim Gilchrist’s notorious Minutemen organization – the San Diego group’s violent harassment of Latino day laborers was charted by Neiwert earlier in the week:

  Halloween or not, the San Diego Minutemen take year-round pleasure in scaring immigrants. On Saturday mornings, when they travel to the sleepy suburban gas stations where immigrant day laborers go to find work, they create scenes that would play well in a show called “Nativists Gone Wild.” They call immigrants “wetbacks” and “Julios.” They pull out Mace and threaten passing motorists who disagree with them. Calling those who hire day laborers “slavemasters,” they’ve been known to slap flashing amber police lights on their SUVs and chase the would-be employers down. When they’re not busy physically intimidating migrants, they take to the airwaves and the Internet to accuse them, without a shred of evidence, of running child prostitution rings and practicing “voodoo Santeria rituals.”

Unfortunately, it is not a great step to go from physically intimidating migrants, to beating them in an abandoned building along Monterey Bay, to shooting at them in hopes of killing them outright.

And how did this terror come about? Is it some ugly tangent to a more mainstream dialogue about immigration?

Sadly, that is far from the case. Ever since this current round of immigrant-bashing began around 2003, it has been driven by paranoia not about lost revenue or lost jobs, but about racial fears. Victor Davis Hanson’s 2003 book Mexifornia began the wave, stoking fears that California was somehow being “overrun” by Latinos who were going to undermine our civilization with their supposedly dirty, third world ways. From there these sentiments have taken off, with many immigrant bashers speaking of immigration as a kind of “invasion” or, in Michelle Malkin’s favored terminology, a “reconquista” to overturn the Anglo conquest of 1846-48.

An example comes from the comments on an article by Peter Schrag on the California Progress Report yesterday, where one “Steve” started off by citing poll numbers about border security but then threw in this telling item:

Also, it’s suggested that Californians don’t notice the ‘browning of our complexion’ anymore. Hmm. I wonder about that…. He [Schrag] then comes to the conclusion that Southerners and Midwesterners won’t mind handing their states over to the Latinos in the end, either.

While it is absolutely true that immigration reform is necessary and should be discussed sensibly, too much of the conversation is dominated by openly racist sentiments like this. And as we sit idly by while racism is spewed forth, it becomes easier for this hate to go mainstream, and for others to start acting on their violent xenophobia.

Why is it that the immigration debate stirs up this kind of terrorism? Precisely because of its origins in racist thought. Behind every moment of immigrant-bashing in California’s history is a belief that this state and its economic benefits are reserved for whites only. To adherents of this belief, the presence of people of color is to be tolerated at best and actively fought when they deem it necessary.

Some might argue that this violence against immigrants is the product of a fringe mentality, that the mainstream and “serious” anti-immigrant voices would never condone it. So why, then, are conservatives like Lou Dobbs and Debra J. Saunders campaigning to free two former Border Patrol officers who admitted to and were convicted of shooting a suspected drug smuggler?

Voices like these conflate smugglers and immigrants; they are all lumped in together as “lawbreakers” in their terminology. As long as they continue to cast immigration in terms of an “invasion,” condone the acts of the Minutemen, speak openly of racist fears, and call for the further intimidation of immigrants and Latinos by the Department of Homeland Security, they are not excused from their responsibilities either in the emerging anti-immigrant terrorism.

Just one of many actions around the state on the budget standoff.  This one targets Republican State Senator Jeff Denham, who ran as a moderate in his Democratic leaning district.

SEIU 521

MONTEREY COUNTY COMMUNITY MEMBERS, NONPROFIT PROVIDERS AND WORKERS WILL HOLD PRESS CONFERENCE DEMANDING SENATOR JEFF DENHAM END STATE BUDGET STALEMATE

SALINAS, Calif. – Monterey County community members, nonprofit providers and workers will hold a press conference outside State Senator Jeff Denham’s office at 369 Main Street, #208 on Monday, Aug. 13, at 12:00 noon.

The press conference will highlight the devastating impacts the state budget impasse is having on community social service and healthcare providers, educators, children, students, and seniors in Monterey County. 

More on the flip…
 

The state budget needs only one more vote in the State Senate to pass.  In previous years, Denham has been the swing vote on the budget.  Denham recently announced his candidacy for Lieutenant Governor in 2010, and has joined 13 other Republicans in the State Senate in hard-line demands on cuts to social service programs.  Denham has vowed not to vote for the budget until all the demands are met.

“Last week, our Republican Governor asked Republican members to vote for the budget. Denham has ignored the Governor’s pleas and he has refused to listen to the community. His actions are irresponsible. Denham needs to stop playing political games and act now before our children, elders, people with disabilities and others are hurt,” said Joe Keffer, SEIU Local 521 Community/Political Organizer.

Who:  Monterey County Community Members, Nonprofit Providers and Workers

What:  Press Conference Demanding Senator Jeff Denham Pass the State Budget

When:  Monday, Aug. 13, 2007, 12:00 noon

Where:  Outside of Senator Jeff Denham’s office, 369 Main St. #208, Salinas