District Attorney

Supervisors Lean Toward Special Election

UPDATE: The Board of Supervisors voted unanimously (4-0) to call for a special election on June 4. A second reading of the matter will take place at next week’s BOS meeting.

County supervisors seem poised to call a special election Tuesday rather than appoint someone to fill the seat of George Shirakawa, who resigned from his supervisor post Friday just hours after being charged with five felonies and seven misdemeanors relating to his misuse of campaign and public funds.

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Shirakawa Holds On to Missing Funds, Misses Auditor’s Repayment Deadline

George Shirakawa has a reputation for missing important deadlines. It then comes as little surprise that the county supervisor under investigation for his misuse of county funds ignored Friday’s due date to reimburse roughly $12,500 in charges. If that wasn’t bad enough, Shirakawa also ignored an extension he was given to Monday, according to County Executive Jeff Smith.

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Increased Doctor Pay Cuts into VMC Budget

In the first five months of the fiscal year, Santa Clara Valley Medical Center’s on-call and overtime pay for doctors took a staggering leap, going from an average of less than $20,000 a month in 2011-12 to $967,000 this fiscal year. The Board of Supervisors will discuss the $1 billion health agency’s drastic uptick in costs—4,835-percent increase in per-month, on-call wages— as well as other issues at Tuesday’s meeting.

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Chavez Interested in Shirakawa’s Seat

Those sounds in the background are rumblings that the District Attorney’s Office and Fair Political Practices Commission will conclude their separate investigations into county Supervisor George Shirakawa’s spendy ways sometime in the second half of this month. That could be why one of his longtime closest allies, Cindy Chavez, has been voicing her interests in the not yet vacant supervisor’s job.

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Parent Accuses County Board of Education of Violating the Brown Act

County school board officials broke open meeting laws by coming to a decision on school boundaries through emails instead of a public discussion, according to one angry parent. Andrea Szabo is once again calling out the county Board of Education, alleging it broke the Brown Act in its email correspondence regarding a school district exemption. Other matters going before the board Tuesday night include a proposed study that would consider realigning the county’s 31 districts and new technological tools for students.

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On Gangs and Doing the Right Thing

The Mayor’s Gang Prevention Task Force held its fifth annual community summit Saturday, and more than a hundred San Jose residents were in attendance. For me, much of the information presented at the meeting served as an unfortunate reminder of the havoc gangs create in our communities.

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East Side Union High School District Education Foundation Decertified by IRS

Last November, a few hundred people donned their best suits and gowns and converged on San Jose’s historic Hayes Mansion to toast some of the East Side’s most accomplished alumni. The stars that night, honored in the East Side Union High School District Education Foundation’s Hall of Fame fundraiser, consisted of a 10-person class led by Khaled Hosseini, a 1984 graduate of Independence High School and author of The Kite Runner. But on Nov. 15, 2011, the IRS revoked the foundation’s nonprofit status. And yet almost no one outside of its board—including donors—knew about its lost certification when it threw a fundraiser a year later.

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Legal Counsel Gave Bad Advice on Darcie Green Appointment

My professional life has been filled with many ups and many downs. One big down moment came in a Jan. 9 email from District Attorney Jeff Rosen to Superintendent De La Torre, with a “cc” to the SCCOE Board of Education. In this email, Rosen said he had received a complaint that Darcie Green’s recent Board appointment was unlawful.

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County Updates P-Card Policies; Alvarado Moves to Shirakawa’s District

While the District Attorney’s Office and Fair Political Practices Commission continue their investigations into Supervisor George Shirakawa, the county has moved forward with updated policies on P-Cards and expenditures. Also, sources have confirmed with San Jose Inside that Teresa Alvarado, a potential candidate to replace Shirakawa if he is forced out of office, is moving to District 2.

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SJPD Officer Allegedly Lied on Time Sheet

San Jose police officers have been working around the clock to combat an uptick in crime as the numbers of officers diminish. But one officer worked enough that the hours just didn’t seem to add up. Officer Jeffery Enslen, 45, was booked for one count of felony grand theft Thursday.

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Story of the Week: DA Looks into Shirakawa’s Missing Campaign Forms

The District Attorney’s Office could soon be joining the Fair Political Practices Commission (FPPC) in investigating County Supervisor George Shirakawa for his failure to file campaign disclosure forms the last four years. This week the DA requested all correspondence between Shirakawa’s office and the county Registrar of Voters,  the Mercury News reports. The Merc has been following up on the story Metro broke last month, which found that Shirakawa chose not to file forms the last four years disclosing how he has raised money to pay off a $110,000 debt he incurred during his 2008 supervisor campaign.

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Evan Low Accosted for Sexual Orientation

Oktoberfest traditionally serves as Campbell’s annual reminder that people love an excuse to get wasted. But this year, Campbell Vice Mayor Evan Low experienced a whole new level of belligerence, and it’s not clear if alcohol had anything to with an incident that borders on being a hate crime.

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Herrera Pulls Page from Wrong Playbook

Two rules in this political life: 1. Never fight a land war in Asia; and 2. Never send out an attack ad saying police aren’t doing their jobs. San Jose Councilmember Rose Herrera apparently missed the memo on the latter maxim.

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