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Just when this story couldn’t get any stranger, Councilmember Johnny Khamis offered a new timeline of events regarding his decision last week to abstain from voting on his own memo. And some of those new events don't add up.
Read More 10San Jose Inside (https://www.sanjoseinside.com)
The nearly two-year standoff between the city of San Jose and owners of Casino M8trix may finally be coming to an end. On Monday, owners of the Tetris-adorned tower and card club filed papers to pull their lawsuit over several disputes—mainly the city’s rejection of gaming on the top/eighth floor. Sean Kali-Rai, a lobbyist for the card club, said he met City Manager Ed Shikada last week for coffee and had his “first meaningful interaction” with a city official in six months.
Read More 0Chuck Reed spent much of his eighth and final State of the City speech thanking his predecessors while noting that a mayor’s work goes on long after he or she leaves office. Noting that he and past elected officials in San Jose have stood “on the shoulders of giants,” Reed said the work he and the council have carried out in recent years must be viewed outside the prism of four-year term limits. “We have to think in much longer timeframes,” he said.
Read More 14San Jose Mayor Chuck Reed eats, sleeps and positively spits pension reform. He slammed through PR in San Jose with the help of voters in 2012, and while Measure B hasn’t accomplished everything he wanted, Reed’s doubled down with a proposed statewide measure (also being challenged in court). Getting the money to put a PR initiative on the state ballot takes beaucoup bucks, which is part of the reason Reed’s been speaking at conferences across the country the last year while rallying support from hedge-fund billionaires like Paul Singer and venture capitalist Michael Moritz. But the topic of one meeting the mayor took last month would dramatically alter his state pension plan.
Read More 8The first political firefight of the San Jose mayor’s race has adopted the adage “everything old is new again.” Two weeks ago, the county Board of Supervisors took a bold vote to withhold $700,000 from the city of San Jose due to its fire department’s slow—and in some cases absent—emergency response times. Contracted by the county to arrive first on the scene for high-priority “lights and sirens” emergencies within eight minutes, 90 percent of the time, SJFD has routinely showed up late and misreported its response times in the last four years.
Read More 9Sam Liccardo’s campaign admitted Friday that a violation occurred in the councilman’s collection of contributions for the San Jose mayor’s race. Ragan Henninger told San Jose Inside that a supporter’s email announcing a fundraiser before the campaign window began is “totally a violation” and “we’re going to return the money.”
Read More 15Assemblymember Nora Campos is apparently that rare politician who just knows what the people want without asking. So, when she relinquishes half a million dollars to the state, rather than having a properly staffed office or conducting outreach services to her constituents, she’s bucking her budget allotments out of a noble sense of duty. That’s the message Campos’ communications director, Steve Harmon, trotted out during an interview with local radio station KLIV 1590 in response to a report Metro/San Jose Inside published last week. A closer inspection of Harmon’s comments, however, show that they don’t pass the smell test.
Read More 2Neil Struthers is out as CEO of the powerful Santa Clara & San Benito Counties Building & Construction Trades Council, a source tells San Jose Inside. The circumstances of his departure from the labor organization are unclear. The Building and Trades Council oversees the training and representation of 23 craft unions and more than 30,000 construction industry workers employed in Silicon Valley, according to the organization’s website.
Read More 0For nearly two months, San Jose Councilman Xavier Campos has repeatedly refused to talk with Metro/San Jose Inside about fictitious business filings he and incarcerated former county Supervisor George Shirakawa Jr. initiated for their past political campaigns. The business filings had identical names to their political committees. An experienced political consultant described the filings as “somewhere between suspicious and corrupt,” as they could have been used to cloak a duplicate, secret bank account. On Thursday, however, Campos finally addressed the unusual fictitious business filings, when Metro/San Jose Inside sent reporter Stephen Layton to the councilman’s public office hours at Mayfair Community Center. Registered for the event under his own name as a San Jose resident concerned about crime, Layton recorded the brief conversation, which took place in a public facility, with Campos and the councilman’s chief of staff, Nicole Willett.
Read More 1Pete Constant, the lone Republican contender in this year’s crowded field for mayor of San Jose, bowed out of the race Tuesday. His exit drops the number of San Jose councilmembers running to succeed Mayor Chuck Reed to four: Rose Herrera, Sam Liccardo, Madison Nguyen and Pierluigi Oliverio. County Supervisor Dave Cortese, who previously served on the council, is also considered a strong contender.
Read More 6Reached by phone, Rosa Campos, mother of San Jose Councilman Xavier Campos, said she had no recollection of fictitious business filings related to her son’s campaigns. The business filing for “Xavier Campos for School Board,” created in July 2004, lists her, Xavier Campos and incarcerated former county supervisor George Shirakawa Jr. as copartners. When asked why the filing was created—none of the dozen elected officials, campaign consultants and county and state election officials reached by San Jose Inside had heard of such a practice—Rosa Campos said she wasn’t sure. “I need to talk to my son,” she said. “He caught me off guard. I don’t even remember. Like I said, that was 2004.
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