THE POLITICAL LANDSCAPE:Residents ask for group home moratorium

The third meeting of Newport Beach’s committee on group homes and drug and alcohol rehab houses is scheduled Thursday, but the real action may come at Tuesday’s City Council meeting.

People who are concerned about the homes will continue to press for a moratorium, said Lori Morris, one of several residents who’s been active on the issue. In five days, they collected 300 signatures from residents supporting a moratorium on the homes.

City Attorney Robin Clauson said last month she would look into whether the council could legally establish a moratorium. A number of state and federal laws protect drug recovery homes, and city officials have said that limits their ability to regulate the homes.

Morris said the signatures show city officials aren’t taking the issue seriously enough.

“They keep saying, ‘Oh, it’s just this small group,’” she said. “It’s not. It’s hundreds of people that are concerned about this.”

Thursday’s committee meeting is scheduled from 6 p.m. to 8 p.m. in the friends room of the Newport Beach Central Library, 1000 Avocado Ave. Representatives of the state Department of Alcohol and Drug Programs, which licenses and regulates some of the rehab facilities, will be speaking.

Immigration totals differ

Immigration detainers at the Costa Mesa jail are always of high interest to Daily Pilot readers, so here’s some more information to add to last week’s story about the March statistics.

Federal officials report a total of 43 detainers placed on people suspected of being illegal immigrants in March, rather than the 40 shown on Costa Mesa Police arrest logs. An immigration agent has been working at the Costa Mesa jail since December, and for three of those four months there have been slight discrepancies between city police numbers and federal numbers of detainers, but it’s not clear why.

Jim Hayes, Los Angeles field office director for Immigration and Customs Enforcement, said the detainers — down in February but back up in March — show the partnership with Costa Mesa is productive.

Countywide, federal officials placed immigration detainers on 680 people last month, which Hayes called “a significant increase over the prior month.” Until the federal government stepped up immigration screening efforts in October 2006, Hayes said, there were probably only about 85 to 90 detainers placed in Orange County each month.

“I think there’s a need for us to be in Costa Mesa. I’m glad that we’re there, and probably after a year we’ll look back and see if we can identify any trends,” he said.

Pressuring Republicans on immigration

When Colorado Rep. Tom Tancredo joined the ranks of 2008 GOP presidential contenders this week, Huntington Beach Rep. Dana Rohrabacher welcomed him to the race. But don’t take that as an endorsement.

The point of Tancredo’s candidacy is to get the front-runners to talk about immigration issues, Rohrabacher said Wednesday. Tancredo has supported more border security and slammed President Bush for proposing “amnesty for all.”

“Without Tom Tancredo or someone like him there insisting on discussing illegal immigration, the major candidates would ignore it,” he said. “If we have one major candidate who will make it his or her issue and pound on it, it will become the most important issue in the campaign because the public is fully aware of how important it is to them.”

But Tancredo won’t be that major candidate, Rohrabacher said — he doesn’t have the gravitas to be a serious contender. It could be Rudy Giuliani, who is still formulating a position on immigration, or actor and former Tennessee Sen. Fred Thompson, who could make immigration a national issue “and ride that wave all the way into the White House,” Rohrabacher said.

As much as Rohrabacher wants to see tougher illegal immigration policy, he said he won’t be endorsing Tancredo.

“I think he understands the role he’s playing. Tom Tancredo doesn’t go to bed at night dreaming that he’s going to be in the White House,” he said. “I think Tom Tancredo goes to bed simply satisfied that he’s going to have an impact on the national debate and the issues that he feels very strongly about.”

ASSEMBLYMAN POSITIVE ON BILL

Newport Beach Assemblyman Chuck DeVore is reporting success with his proposal to add 4,000 prison beds for nonviolent inmates whose crimes are related to substance abuse problems. It survived a vote last week in the Assembly’s public safety committee and will now go on to the appropriations committee.

The bill he co-wrote with Compton Assemblyman Mervyn Dymally would require serious study of the added prison beds and what programs would be needed for drug offenders.

The point of the bill was to address the problem with recidivism of drug offenders while also helping with the prison overcrowding problem, DeVore said.

“We have this ongoing, intractable problem in California that we have not been able to solve, and the whole attitude of locking people away in prison forever is not a viable alternative because most people in prison come out eventually,” he said.

If the bill passes, it could ease demand for neighborhood drug and alcohol rehabilitation homes, which are a major source of concern in Newport Beach.

Under Proposition 36, which was passed in 2000, some people convicted of drug possession offenses could receive treatment instead of jail time. But DeVore said because there’s little threat of punishment, some drug offenders don’t finish their treatment or even start it.

With new prison beds that would specifically serve drug offenders, “you may end up getting a higher compliance rate and a higher rate of success,” DeVore said.

‘OVERLOOKED’ TAX CREDIT

The earned income tax credit, created in 1975 to benefit low-income working people, is an “often overlooked” benefit, Costa Mesa Assemblyman Van Tran believes. So to call more attention to the tax credit, he and Rosario Marin, secretary of California’s state and consumer services agency, held a press event Friday in Santa Ana.

The credit is available to people with no children who earn less than $12,000 a year and families with annual incomes of less than $38,000. It entitles them to a tax refund of up to $4,500.

“We are an overtaxed state, and hardworking Californians deserve a break,” Tran said in a statement. He and other public officials toured the Legal Aid Society of Orange County, which helps people obtain benefits such as the earned income tax credit.

For information on the tax credit, go to www.ftb.ca.gov , or file taxes online at www.icanefile.org/myrefund .

MOVE TO BLOCK CERTAIN BILLS ANGERS STATE SENATOR

Huntington Beach state Sen. Tom Harman, who also represents Newport Beach and Costa Mesa, sounded off this week about a decision by Los Angeles Sen. Gloria Romero to hold up any bills that would lengthen prison sentences or create new categories of crime. As chairwoman of the Senate public safety committee, Romero wanted to stall the bills until January because of prison overcrowding.

“We all know — the Republicans, the Democrats, the citizens of California — that we have a prison crisis,” Harman said. “We need to do something, but that doesn’t mean in my mind that everything else has to stop.”

Of course, several of his own bills will be blocked by the tactic, including one that would make it a felony to transmit child pornography over the Internet and another to streamline death penalty appeals.

“To say that we’re not going to consider that because we have a prison crisis is bad policy,” Harman said.

COUNCILMAN Q AND A

Newport Beach City Councilman Michael Henn will answer questions and talk about city issues at the April meeting of Speak Up Newport.

The meeting is set for 6 p.m. on Wednesday, April 11, with a reception beginning at 5 p.m.

It’s in the commodores’ room at the Newport Beach Yacht Club at Bayside Drive and Jamboree Road. Call (949) 224-2266 for information.