City leaders at Wednesday’s Rules and Open Government Committee meeting will talk about placing a measure on the November ballot that would give the city's retirement boards full autonomy.

The city wants to support a state bill that would require pharmaceutical companies to subsidize a drug take-back program to get rid of whatever medications are left over.

San Jose Councilman Xavier Campos has proposed a half-cent sales tax measure so the city can hire more police officers. “Ideally, no one would want to increase taxes,” he writes in a memo going before the Rules and Open Government Committee on Wednesday. “However, this council has worked before on making tough fiscal decisions to increase services to our citizens.”

As if San Jose Councilman Xavier Campos needed any more inquiries into his shoddy past campaign filings—the guy’s already being investigated by the District Attorney’s office and the Fair Political Practices Commission (FPPC).

The staff churn in Speaker pro Tem Nora Campos’ office is the talk of Sacramento, raising questions about the assemblymember’s ability to advocate for constituents who’ve been shortchanged by ineffective leadership.

Today was the deadline to file the first round of campaign finance forms for San Jose City Council and mayoral campaigns. Not all were uploaded online by the 5pm deadline, but here’s a look at the four mayoral candidates whose reports were available.

To catch the alleged serial arsonist who plagued downtown San Jose earlier this month, police relied on surveillance footage shared by residents to identify the suspect. Councilman Sam Liccardo is using that incident as a pitch to convince the public to submit their security camera footage to a central database monitored by law enforcement. Other items on the agenda include Councilman Xavier Campos’ half-cent sales tax proposal to restore police positions and Johnny Khamis asking for permission to kill more wild pigs in Almaden.

Reached 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.

San Jose Inside takes a look at some of the biggest stories to come in the year ahead.

The year 2013 will be remembered for its political turmoil, local and nationwide. A former county supervisor went to jail and the spotlight subsequently landed on his political buddy, a San Jose councilman. The Supreme Court ruled that same-sex couples have the right to get married, and the president lied to the nation about domestic spying. San Jose Inside runs down the list of stories that caught our attention this year.

San Jose Inside’s Josh Koehn sat down in late October with City Manager Debra Figone, who will retire at the end of next week, to discuss her 44-year career in public service. The free-flowing discussion, which has been edited for clarity, touches on topics such as the city’s adversarial relationship with the Police Officers Association, the validity of international travel for elected officials, the possibility of another sports franchise coming to San Jose if the Oakland A’s cannot relocate here, and how Figone views the media’s coverage of local politics.

The Fair Political Practices Commission (FPPC) confirmed Thursday that it has expanded its investigation into San Jose Councilman Xavier Campos’ 2010 campaign. Earlier this week, San Jose Inside reported that Campos and incarcerated former county Supervisor George Shirakawa Jr. created fictitious business filings with the county Recorder’s office under identical names as their campaigns. The unconventional finance practice could have allowed the two men to funnel campaign contributions into secret bank accounts.

The Santa Clara County District Attorney’s office seized documents in a Thanksgiving eve raid that implicate Xavier Campos’ campaign in funding the red-baiting political mailers that helped him win a seat on the San Jose City Council. Now, records obtained this week by Metro/San Jose Inside suggest that the District 5 councilmember engaged in a highly unconventional campaign finance practice—one used by the incarcerated former county supervisor—that would have allowed him to establish phony campaign bank accounts that could have gone undetected by agencies monitoring election spending.

A search of George Shirakawa Jr.‘s home the day before Thanksgiving turned up evidence that suggests Xavier Campos’ 2010 City Council campaign paid for materials to create a fraudulent political mailer that helped the San Jose city councilman get elected. The mailers portrayed Campos’ opponent, Magdalena Carrasco, as a communist to East San Jose’s Vietnamese voters, and Shirakawa’s DNA was found on a stamp affixed to one of the mailers. Campos ended up winning the primary election against Carrasco by 20 votes and later won the runoff.

Since his unsuccessful bid for a seat on the Santa Clara City Council last year, attorney John Mlnarik has been on the legal warpath. To date, Mlnarik has sued: a couple whose diminutive dog allegedly nipped him on the hand while he was campaigning; blogger and political operative James Rowen for defamation; and a former employee, attorney Elena Rivkin Franz, who supposedly misused company resources to start her own firm and steal clients. The last two targets on that list are fighting back, however, and the Fair Political Practices Commission (FPPC)—the state political watchdog—could have an interest in their allegations.

San Jose Councilman Xavier Campos will face a familiar opponent when he runs for re-election in the June 2014 primary. Magdalena Carrasco, who lost the 2010 race for the East Side council seat by a slim margin, quietly filed papers this week to give it another shot.