<i> Snapshots of life in the Golden State.</i> : Latest Stab at the Budget Impasse: a Hunger Strike

Rick Jensen says the state’s lingering budget crisis “is such an incredibly unusual situation” that unconventional approaches are needed to solve it.

The Madera County supervisor isn’t kidding.

Jensen vows to continue the hunger strike he launched last Tuesday until the Legislature and Gov. Pete Wilson agree on a pact.

The “Starving Supe,” a cattleman’s son who had steak and eggs for his last meal, asserts that the Sacramento stalemate is paralyzing counties such as Madera, where 85% of the local budget goes for state-mandated services. Madera officials have been forced to postpone their budget negotiations three times in the past month, Jensen says, while awaiting completion of a state budget.

How long will Jensen, who is surviving on a liquid diet of iced tea and fruit juice, hold out? At least one more week.

“Hopefully it won’t still be going on then,” says the stocky supervisor. “But my friends think I’m an optimist, to be quite honest.”

MORE BUDGET BATTLES

Registered warrants: Meanwhile, a prison inmate has filed a lawsuit demanding that the state Supreme Court take over the budget process if the pols in Sacramento aren’t up to it.

Charles Tooma, serving an 11-year term in Mule Creek State Prison at Ione, contends that with the state out of cash, contractors are reluctant to deliver supplies to prison kitchens and canteens.

By not approving a budget on schedule, Tooma declares, the state’s top officials are guilty of “gross political irresponsibility” and illegal actions.

On that score, it apparently takes one to know one.

Tooma, a celebrated jailhouse lawyer, is imprisoned for armed robbery and has previously spent time behind bars for burglary, a prison escape and for wearing a T-shirt that read “Reagan for President of Jackasses” while in high school.

In the latter incident, at Woodrow Wilson High in Long Beach, Tooma, now 28, was accosted by a security guard after ignoring administrators’ orders to take off the garment. He bolted and was later locked up for eight hours on a charge of loitering on school property after a chase over room dividers, a wall and a school rooftop.

Drug Crimes and Prison

The largest group of people in California prisons continue to be those incarcerated for drug crimes, according to statistics kept by the state Department of Corrections. Below are male and female prisoners, ranked by the five largest offender groups , at the end of 1991.

OFFENSE MALES FEMALES TOTAL Drugs 22,281 2,363 24,644 Burglary 13,583 620 14,203 Robbery 12,842 431 13,273 Homicide 11,756 628 12,384 Assault 7,265 287 7,552

Source: Offender Information Services, Department of Corrections, Sacramento.

Compiled by Times researcher Tracy Thomas

MEDIA WATCH

If the shoe fits: How tough are things in California?

It has reached the point where residents of Michigan--long the sad sack of states because of the beleaguered auto industry--have started taking pity on Golden Staters.

“There was a time when Californians felt sorry for us,” writes journalist Jon Pepper in a recent Detroit News column. “Now, of course, the sandal is on the other foot.”

Pepper cites earthquakes, riots, stagnant real estate values and the budget debacle. “(But) maybe worst of all,” he adds, “the breast implant business has gone flat. That, no doubt has added dozens of surgeons to the unemployment rolls and sent thousands of would-be starlets back to Iowa.”

Positive periodicals: Yet if the front covers of national magazines are a guidepost, California still boasts two lures--scenery and sex.

Travel & Leisure waxes poetic this month about a pricey new cliff-side resort in practically pristine Big Sur. The Post Ranch Inn, a $245-a-night-and-up hostelry, “has conjured a minor miracle,” T & L reports, “by exploiting its jaw-dropping setting without rending the area’s fiercely defended environmental fabric.”

Sunset, for its part, weighs in with “Secrets of La Jolla Coast,” focusing on the joys of snorkeling, tide pools and a soon-to-open aquarium.

Playboy, too, believes that California still sells.

Attached to the cover of a summer issue featuring photos of unclad homemakers from across America, are stickers that read: “Inside: California Housewives.”

What’s shaking: From the “No Kidding” desk comes a study from leading universities offering conclusive new proof that college students experience nightmares after living through earthquakes.

As reported in a summer issue of the Journal of Abnormal Psychology, researchers at Stanford University and the University of Arizona asked undergraduates at San Jose State and their own schools to keep written records of nightmares suffered during a three-week period after the Loma Prieta temblor in 1989.

The dream logs reveal that San Jose students had twice as many nightmares, and Stanford students 1 2/3 as many nightmares, as the Arizona students.

And what were most of those nightmares about? Why, earthquakes.

EXIT LINE

“First they froze your extremities. Now they want to break your heart.”

--From an ad for a San Francisco Examiner contest asking readers to explain, in 25 words or less, the best reason that the baseball Giants should not flee breezy Candlestick Park for the warmer climes of St. Petersburg, Fla.