Anti-tax group's support can come with a price

SACRAMENTO — Perhaps the most formidable opponent Gov. Jerry Brown faces in his crusade for tax hikes has been the Howard Jarvis Taxpayers Assn., the group that fought property taxes the first time he was governor and has since become famous as the voice of middle-class Californians beleaguered by costly big government.

But in addition to the group's battles against taxes of all kinds, the name of 1978's Proposition 13 author serves a variety of deep-pocketed interests in need of a populist sheen. Far from its humble activist roots, the organization renowned for its quest to protect pocketbooks and foil government waste has turned tax fighting into big business for a handful of political strategists who make their living on its name.

The nonprofit, which claims 200,000 donors and eight full-time employees in a small Sacramento office, has an annual budget of more than $5.7 million, according to 2010 tax records, the most recent available. Critics of the group say its imprimatur is often for sale to the highest bidder.

Chris Bertelli, a Republican education advocate, tangled with the association over a ballot-measure endorsement. "They sent us a letter saying they had not taken a position, but they could if we gave them enough money," he said.

The Jarvis group said it endorses only issues in line with its fiscal conservatism. But it is also the face of numerous campaigns bankrolled by less popular interests. In 2010 its longtime president, Jon Coupal, was the pitch man for a ballot initiative financed by $10 million from oil companies that would have rolled back key state environmental laws if it had passed.

"The polluters didn't want to be front and center in the campaign to repeal the state's clean air standards," said Steve Maviglio, a Democratic consultant who worked against the measure. "So they hid behind something that tested better in their polling: a 'tax-fighting' group."

Coupal said in an interview that such partnerships are entirely appropriate. "If there's an issue that fits within our sphere of concern, and it's also in the sphere of a major donor or interest, that's fine," he said. "Politics is all about alliances."

In 2004, the association backed a ballot measure to remove limits on the number of slot machines at California Indian casinos. The group's campaign fund was labeled a "project of the Howard Jarvis Taxpayers Assn.," but it was financed by the Agua Caliente Band of Cahuilla Indians.

The tribe supplied almost all of the fund's cash — more than $1.8 million, according to campaign records filed with the state. The fund then paid the Jarvis association's network of consultants and media firms for television and mail ads that featured Coupal's endorsement.

In 2000, a consultant for the Jarvis group sent a letter to leaders on both sides of the ballot measure Bertelli was advocating, which promoted private-school vouchers. The letter advised that the anti-tax group could go either way on the measure and gave the outlines of a mail campaign; $850,000 would be required of whichever side got the nod.

That turned out to be teachers' unions, which abhorred the voucher idea, put up the money and won the fight by defeating the measure. The consultant, Bill Lord-Butcher, earned $220,000 in fees that year from mail carrying the Jarvis name, according to campaign finance records

"They supported our position and, yes, there was a cost involved," said Gale Kaufman, who ran the No campaign for the teachers' unions.

Jarvis officials said that both groups offered to pay the money — a claim Bertelli denied — but that the endorsement was made strictly on the merits of the issue.

Coupal says the Jarvis group is not directly affiliated with a specific slate of endorsements, though he lends his name and commentary to every issue of the Save Prop. 13 Newsletter, produced by consultant James Lacy, a former director of the association. More than a million copies of the publication, which endorses candidates and causes, are mailed out each election season.

The publication features Howard Jarvis' picture, fist raised, on its cover. Though it has the appearance of a grass-roots newsletter, candidates and issue campaigns pay a premium to be included.

Lacy's company this month sued Republican U.S. Senate candidate Elizabeth Emken, accusing her of failing to pay more than half the $110,000 she was charged for one of the newsletter endorsements.

The complaint, filed in Orange County Superior Court, says Lacy's firm and its partners "gave up opportunities to enter into agreements with other candidates, including other U.S. Senate candidates, whose campaign advertisements could have and would have appeared on Plaintiff's slate mailer and who would have paid Plaintiff the sums due."

Lacy did not return calls, and Emken's campaign declined to comment.

In the last gubernatorial election, in 2010, Coupal appeared in television ads for candidate and Silicon Valley executive Meg Whitman. Her opponent in the Republican primary had once supported a state ballot measure that made it easier for voters to approve local school bonds. Whitman had made a $25,000 contribution to the Jarvis association. Coupal said the money was unrelated to its endorsement.

In the runup to next week's election, the Jarvis group has teamed with another organization, the Small Business Action Committee, one of whose goals is to raise millions from big donors to defeat Proposition 30, Brown's tax measure. Most of the money has come from Charles Munger Jr., son of the Berkshire Hathaway executive, who has given the group nearly $35 million, and an Arizona nonprofit that donated $11 million but whose contributors are anonymous.

In the past, the committee has received six-figure donations from tobacco giant Altria and Anheuser-Busch, the maker of Budweiser.

"Calling this a small business group is like calling Godzilla a small reptile," said Dan Newman, a spokesman for the Yes on 30 campaign.

Beth Miller, a spokeswoman for the committee, said: "The reality is that small businesses live on the edge and just don't have the resources to fund these campaigns. So we've made the decision to reach out to those who are willing to support our agenda for a business-friendly California."

The tax-fighting operations of Jarvis and the Small Business Action Committee go on year-round. Mail campaigns urge voters to keep pressure on lawmakers to hold the line on spending. Democrats say the influence of the groups over Republicans in the Legislature is one of the main sources of Capitol gridlock.

Coupal finds such criticism good for business.

"When they call me one of the four horsemen of the apocalypse, I just say, 'Thank you,' " he said. "That's the stuff that motivates our people."

anthony.york@latimes.com

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Sandy's U.S. death toll reaches 48; 8 million without power

BEACH HAVEN, N.J. — Hurricane Sandy's departure from the Northeast on Tuesday brought no hint of relief, revealing instead a terrible tableau of splintered trees, severed beaches and shuttered businesses, and the harsh reality that the storm will test even the most hardened resolve in the weeks to come.

The storm's U.S. death toll rose to least 48, including three children, and the property damage estimate rose to $20 billion. More than 8 million homes and businesses, from the tip of Maine to South Carolina, were without power, and some might not get it back for 10 days, officials said.

Inland, "thundersnow" blizzards buried more than half of West Virginia in as much as 2 feet of snow and the roofs of some houses began to collapse.

STATE BY STATE: Snow piles up, beaches wash away

In the tight-knit beach town of Breezy Point, N.Y., as many as 100 homes were destroyed in a ferocious electrical fire, injuring three people. Near Hackensack, N.J., authorities launched a frantic rescue effort after a flood spilled over a riverbank, rose to the bottom of stop signs in less than an hour and trapped scores of people.

Pockets of New York City, particularly Manhattan, remained crippled. The subway system, central to its role as an anchor of American finance and culture, was flooded and closed for a second day. The New York Stock Exchange was closed by weather for the second day in a row, for the first time since before the city was consolidated into five boroughs.

Authorities pledged a recovery and relief effort unprecedented in scope and cooperation. "No bureaucracy. No red tape," said President Obama, who called off a third day of campaigning for next week's election. "America is with you."

VIDEOS: East Coast hit by deadly storm

The spirit was bearing fruit. Obama, for instance, unlocked federal money for New York and New Jersey with a major-disaster declaration, skipping the typical post-storm assessments and signing the paperwork Tuesday even as the tail end of Sandy remained overhead. New Jersey Gov. Chris Christie said he asked Obama to speed up the declaration process "without all the normal FEMA mumbo-jumbo."

And U.S. Transportation Secretary Ray LaHood announced he had made $13 million in quick-release emergency funds available to New York and Rhode Island — the first two states that asked for it — to begin repairing damage to roads, bridges and tunnels.

Despite the unified front, however, some areas bordered on desperation.

"Oh, my God! Oh, my God!" wailed Diane Vanderhorn, 46, after hiking back to Beach Haven, N.J., to find that her rented bungalow had flooded and that seawater had filled her sedan to the dashboard. "What am I going to do now?"

PHOTOS: Massive U.S. storms 

In Berkleley Heights, N.J., the power was out all day, except for a narrow strip of roadway that included Benham's garage. The garage's gas pumps were running, but running low. A crush of cars and people, some toting red gasoline cans, lined up for the precious few remaining drops before Benham's ran dry.

"We're the only game in town, and we won't last much longer," said Bob Kaiser, a barrel-chested attendant clutching a wad of cash, as the last gasoline from one pump only half-filled a customer's gas can.

Those who managed to reach the gas station had negotiated around fallen trees, downed power lines and flooded roads. They left behind darkened homes, a few of them crushed by falling trees. Roads were a jumble of yellow police tape, massive tree trunks and instant lakes of churning brown water that cut some towns in half.

Hundreds of people were out in the streets, in cars and on foot, searching for food, ice, water or gasoline. Police had cordoned off stretches of road blocked by fallen trees or snaking power lines, but some people ducked under the tape to take shortcuts.

At Benham's garage, Kaiser said the station had 1,200 gallons of gasoline – more than two days' normal supply – at 10 a.m. Tuesday. By 2:30, almost all of it was gone.

Carlos Chavarriaga, who lives a few miles away in North Plainfield, maneuvered around road closings to the Stop & Shop supermarket in Berkeley Heights. He was desperate for ice to keep perishable foods fresh at home, where his electricity had been out since Sandy roared through with 80-mph winds Monday night.

"We stocked up on food and ice, but ice only lasts so long,"' Chavarriaga said, loading several heavy bags of ice into his car.

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Anti-sex-trafficking Proposition 35 is surprisingly controversial

Three years ago, on Valentine's Day weekend, a 34-year-old financial analyst happened upon a TV documentary series about sex trafficking in the United States.

Her friends were sound asleep in the next room, after a long day of snowboarding. Daphne Phung couldn't take her eyes off the screen and didn't sleep a wink that night. Echoing in her ear was the voice of one Ukrainian woman who was brought to the U.S. and forced into prostitution, telling the interviewer she never got justice for what was done to her.

Phung began researching the topic with like-minded friends, huddled around the kitchen table in her Fremont apartment. Two years in, she quit her job to work on the issue full time.

VOTER GUIDE: 2012 California Propositions

Now, Phung is the driving force behind a proposition on the November ballot that dramatically increases prison sentences and fines for traffickers and makes other sweeping changes to California's laws on human trafficking. Polls show voters favor it by a larger margin than any other proposition, and it is endorsed by a long list of prosecutors, law enforcement officials and politicians up and down the state. The campaign is backed by more than $2 million from Chris Kelly, Facebook's former privacy chief — while opponents have yet to raise a cent.

"I'm from Vietnam, a country where people don't trust the law to protect them," said Phung, who came to the U.S. as an 8-year-old and was naturalized when she was in college. The documentary, she said, "challenged my faith and my belief in America as the country that claims to provide freedom and equal protection for everyone."

If Proposition 35 passes, sex trafficking of a minor with force or fraud could be punished with up to a life term in prison — a crime currently punishable with a maximum eight-year sentence. It would also increase the fine for trafficking crimes to up to $1.5 million from the current cap of $100,000 and expand the definition of human trafficking to include creation and distribution of child pornography.

Its backers say the proposition brings the severity of punishments under state law up to par with federal cases, and will protect the public by requiring traffickers to register as sex offenders. They say the measure, known as the "Californians Against Sexual Exploitation Act," will also prevent re-victimization of those who are trafficked by prohibiting evidence of their commercial sex acts from being introduced in court.

Yet the proposition faces opposition from some veteran advocates and academics in the field of human trafficking who say the proposition, while bringing much-needed attention to the issue, is misguided and would probably have unintended consequences that could end up harming trafficking victims. They say the measure's approach of simply toughening penalties would do little to combat a multifaceted problem.

"At the core of their campaign is emotion and not fact, and not a true understanding of what's going on," said John Vanek, a retired lieutenant from the San Jose Police Department who works as a consultant on trafficking and has sat on state and federal committees on the issue.

Critics expressed concern that the hefty criminal fines that would be imposed under the proposition would hurt the chances of victims to be compensated in civil court — a process they said is a fundamental part of making a victim of human trafficking whole.

"The victims should be paid for their labor, whether their labor is picking fruit, cleaning someone's home or prostitution," Vanek said. "At the end of the day, one of the core processes in the path for a slave or a victim to regain their dignity is to be compensated for their work."

The proposition designates that the funds collected through the increased fines be doled out to law enforcement and victim service organizations. Even so, some organizations that would receive the funding said they were opposed.

"To take money from their victimization that would otherwise go to them directly is really not right," said Kay Buck, chief executive of Los Angeles-based Coalition to Abolish Slavery and Trafficking, one of the oldest groups working with human trafficking victims.

Kathleen Kim, a professor at Loyola Law School who coauthored California's current law, passed in 2005, said she found the Proposition 35's focus on sex trafficking problematic. She said the proposition's authors were conflating the problem of sexual exploitation through prostitution with the broader, more complex issue of trafficking.

Under the proposition, a labor trafficker would receive up to 12 years in prison, and the forced sex trafficking of an adult would garner sentences up to 20 years, and in the case of a minor, up to a life term.

The backers of Proposition 35 "represent a part of the anti-trafficking movement that wants a focus on sex trafficking crimes over labor trafficking," Kim said. "The sentencing hierarchy is not backed by any empirical evidence, and it sends the wrong message."

Such concerns are not reflected on the voter information guide, nor were they expressed at an informational hearing held before a joint Senate and Assembly committee in Sacramento. The official opposition on the Secretary of State's Voter Information Guide is signed by representatives of the Erotic Service Providers Legal, Education and Research Project, a sex workers group that advocates for decriminalization of prostitution, and Starchild, a libertarian activist who also works as a bisexual escort and exotic dancer.

Vanek said those within the human trafficking field with serious concerns about the proposition simply did not get organized in time. In late September, he launched a "No on Proposition 35" blog and posted criticisms from academics, victim service providers and an attorney from the California attorney general's office.

Sharmin Bock, an Alameda County prosecutor who helped draft the measure, said the proposition comes from her experiences working "in the trenches" going after traffickers. Bock said her office has prosecuted more than 250 sex traffickers in the six years since the state law went into effect and had secured 177 convictions as of April.

Phung, for her part, says the proposition is the beginning, not the end, of the fight.

After initially contacting numerous groups working on the issue to volunteer her services, she said she decided "if you're going to do anything, you've got to do it yourself." She formed her group, Californians Against Slavery, and began organizing rallies, knocking on doors in Sacramento and gathering signatures.

If the proposition passes, she says, she'll take a long-overdue vacation — after all, she's spent all her free time in the last three years lobbying in Sacramento. After that, she'll get a job, she says, probably in finance.

victoria.kim@latimes.com

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Ex-convict charged with capital murder in Downey slayings

Prosecutors charged a parolee Monday with multiple counts of capital murder, attempted murder, carjacking and kidnapping in connection with a Downey shooting rampage last week.

Jade Douglas Harris, 30, was arrested Thursday and booked into jail Friday after eyewitnesses and independent evidence gathered by Downey police linked Harris to last Wednesday's slayings, authorities said.

Harris could face the death penalty if convicted on the charges, which include three counts of murder, two counts of attempted murder, three counts of kidnapping for carjacking, three carjacking counts, two kidnapping counts and one count of possession of a firearm by a felon.

In a Downey courtroom Monday afternoon, Harris sat with his head bowed. He wore blue county-issued shirt and pants and did not enter a plea. His arraignment was postponed until Nov. 28.
The complaint also includes four special circumstance allegations--murder while lying in wait, murder in the commission of a kidnapping, murder in the commission of a carjacking and killing a witness to a crime.

Harris, a convicted felon and known gang member, allegedly went to a business on Cleta Street in response to a Craigslist ad for a 2010 Chevrolet Camaro.

At the business, he shot and killed Josimar Rojas, 26 and Irene Cardenas Reyes, 35, who were employees of United States Fire Protection Services. He shot another woman at the business, authorities said.

Harris then allegedly forced  Susana Perez Ruelas, 34, to drive him and her 13-year-old son to their nearby home, where the Camaro was parked. At the house, he shot and killed Perez Ruelas and wounded the boy, prosecutors said.

A press release from the Los Angeles County district attorney's office laid out the circumstances of the shooting, which matches the narrative given by family members to The Times.

Downey police still have not publicly confirmed that account.
"We are trying to make sense of these events," said Downey police Lt. Dean Milligan, adding that evidence allegedly shows Harris was the shooter.

According to law enforcement records reviewed by The Times, Harris, who lives in South Los Angeles, is unemployed and a member of the Rollin 40s Crips and on parole for second-degree robbery.

Harris has previously been convicted for robbery, attempted robbery and carrying a concealed weapon, the D.A.'s office said. According to records, he was released last summer and placed on parole.

 The district attorney's office will decide later whether to seek the death penalty. Because of the nature of the charges, prosecutors have asked Harris to be held without bail.

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Hurricane Sandy makes landfall; rains, waves hammer East Coast

Sandy is a huge storm that is impacting millions of people. Here's the latest information on this dangerous storm causing flooding, wind damage, widespread power outages, and even heavy snow for some.

Hurricane Sandy made landfall on Monday evening, arriving ahead of schedule with a punch as powerful as feared.

The storm, with winds and driving rains that have already caused flooding up and down the Eastern Seaboard, made its heralded landfall near Atlantic City, N.J., around 8 p.m. Eastern time. It arrived slightly earlier than forecasters had originally projected because it had picked up speed, moving at about 28 mph.

In many ways landfall was just a small mile-marker on what officials said  Monday would be a relatively long and hazardous road. The cost of the damage was already in the billions of dollars, and the tab was running because the largest waves will come later this evening as the tide becomes high.

PHOTOS: Hurricane Sandy approaches

More than 750,000 people were reported to have lost power across the region. Cities including Washington and Boston closed their mass-transit systems. Schools were shuttered and shelters began to fill with hundreds of thousands of people ordered to leave their homes and seek safety from a trio of storms: Sandy, a blast of cold air from Canada and another system blowing in from the West.

Wall Street trading was disrupted, as were political campaigns throughout the region just eight days before election day.

In a conference call with reporters, National Hurricane Center Director Rick Knabb on Monday said Sandy was both unique and similar to past storms. Other hurricanes and tropical storms have hit the Northeast, but Sandy, coming from the south, was unusual for this time of year. It was also physically larger, sending hurricane winds more than 200 miles from the center and tropical storm-sized winds of more than 60 mph as far away as 500 miles from its center. The storm was also more varied,  ranging from rain in the east to heavy snow, up to 3 feet, in West Virginia.

PHOTOS: Massive U.S. storms -- Frankenstorm, Snowpocalypse and more

Wind toppled power lines and sent waves crashing into waterfronts from New York to Chicago. A construction crane atop a luxury high-rise building in Manhattan toppled in the wind. Television images showed it dangling, but it did not fall and no injuries were reported.

Airlines canceled more than 10,000 flights, stranding passengers in airports around the world. And even the federal government in Washington effectively shut down on Monday and employees were told to stay home on Tuesday.

MAP: Hurricane Sandy barrels in

New Jersey reported receiving the brunt of early damage from the storm. Water flowed over seawalls and most of Atlantic City was soaked, crippling the casino industry in the tourist city.

Gov. Chris Christie said there was at least one death reported in Atlantic City, but it was not confirmed that it was due to the storm. It may have been an unrelated  heart attack on Sunday, he said.

During his evening briefing, Christie lashed out at Lorenzo Langford, the mayor of Atlantic City, who he said told people they could stay despite the threat of flooding.

"We now have a large number of people … that are in Atlantic City, and at this juncture there is no other way for us to go in and get them," Christie said during a televised news conference. "They're going to have to ride out the storm there." Christie accused the city's mayor of encouraging people to remain despite his orders.

michael.muskal@latimes.com

tina.susman@latimes.com

Muskal reported from Los Angeles, Susman from New York.

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Cyclone Sandy storms ashore in New Jersey, battering the East

 PLEASANTVILLE, N.J. – Cyclone Sandy roared ashore Monday night with 80 mph winds in southern New Jersey, battering the most populous region of the United States, paralyzing epicenters of power and commerce, and plunging smaller coastal communities into crisis.

After days of dire warnings and bustling preparations, the storm crashed ashore a little after 8 p.m. EDT, leaving more than 3 million people without power and at least two people dead. Although its winds reached low hurricane strength, officials called it a post-tropical cyclone. Cyclones, unlike hurricanes, are not defined by wind speed but how they find their energy, officials said.

Moving northwest at 23 mph, Sandy appeared to pass over land just south of Atlantic City, N.J.

PHOTOS: Hurricane Sandy approaches

But the precise location of landfall didn't matter. Sandy is a freak event — a late-season hurricane hemmed in by weather bands, gobbling up the energy of the Gulf Stream as it raked the coast while growing into a ragged, 1,000-mile-wide storm. As it grew, so did its power to push a wall of seawater onto shore — with such force that some rivers were expected to run backward.

The result was a plodding ogre of a storm, powerful more because of its scope than its strength. The metropolitan areas of Philadelphia, Baltimore and New York City were most immediately in the cross hairs, but Sandy cast tropical-storm-strength winds from the Carolinas to Maine. Hurricane-force winds stretched from Virginia to Massachussetts.

Because of its size, Sandy is more than a coastal event. Officials predicted a blizzard in the West Virginia mountains, 33-foot waves in Lake Michigan and high wind in Indiana. There were formal government warnings of one variety or another in 23 states, and 60 million people — nearly 1 in 5 Americans — might feel the storm before the end of the week.

MAP: Hurricane Sandy barrels in

Government officials implored the public to take precautions and heed evacuation orders.

 "Don't be stupid," New Jersey Gov. Chris Christie told his constituents.

 "There will be people who will die," said Maryland Gov. Martin O'Malley.

 The normally by-the-books National Weather Service delivered this message to those who were resisting calls to evacuate: "THINK ABOUT YOUR LOVED ONES. … THINK ABOUT THE RESCUE/RECOVERY TEAMS WHO WILL RESCUE YOU IF YOU ARE INJURED OR RECOVER YOUR REMAINS IF YOU DO NOT SURVIVE."

PHOTOS: Massive U.S. storms -- Frankenstorm, Snowpocalypse and more

 

Landfall came with darkness on the coast. The last flickers of daylight had revealed one ominous image after another: Firefighters in Long Island wading through 3 feet of water to get to a house engulfed in flames. Chunks of the fabled Atlantic City boardwalk, the oldest in America, floating past avenues whose names are on the Monopoly board — Pacific, Ventnor, Atlantic.

White-capped waves barked at the marble-stepped foot of the Jefferson Memorial in Washington, D.C., and splashed over park benches at Stuyvesant Cove Park near New York City's East Village. A portion of Wall Street was under water, and fire stations in New York and New Jersey were being evacuated — one, in Manhattan, by boat. The floor of the New York Stock Exchange, Times Square, the monuments on the National Mall in Washington — all were deserted.

Those snapshots portended a week of misery in the Northeast, federal authorities warned. After landfall, the storm was expected to stall near Philadelphia, then curl slowly toward the north and then the east — strafing Pennsylvania on Tuesday, New York state on Wednesday, New England and Canada on Friday and Saturday.

After a tidal surge as tall as 12 feet inundates coastal areas, freshwater flooding could plague other pockets of the Northeast for days. The tale of the next few days will likely be water, water everywhere — from the sky as  rain, hail and snow; from the ocean, surging in rivers and back bays with nowhere to go. Power outages could also linger for days.

"This is a long-duration event," said Rick Knabb, director of the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration.

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More than 7,000 flights canceled as major U.S. airports eye storm

Airline travelers could face a long wait as Hurricane Sandy triggers thousands of flight cancellations. (Emile Wamsteker / Bloomberg News / October 28, 2012)

By Chad Terhune

October 28, 2012, 3:06 p.m.

Airlines have canceled more than 7,400 flights as Hurricane Sandy nears major airports along the East Coast.

About 1,200 flights were scratched for Sunday and more than 5,500 were canceled for Monday as airlines scrambled to prepare for a potentially severe storm. An additional 640 flights were dropped for Tuesday, according to FlightAware.com, an airline information service.

Many of the cancellations involved flights coming or going to New York area airports, such as Newark Liberty International, LaGuardia and John F. Kennedy.

PHOTOS: Hurricane Sandy, en route to "Frankenstorm"

For Monday, United Airlines had canceled nearly 800 flights and Delta Air Lines had scrubbed more than 500 flights, according to FlightAware data.

Airlines were waiving fees so travelers could rebook their flights at no charge, primarily for travel from Sunday through Wednesday.

Last year, Hurricane Irene caused about 14,000 flights to be canceled during a four-day period in August.

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Some in Atlantic City roll the dice with Hurricane Sandy

ATLANTIC CITY, N.J. -- In his 39 years in this seaside gambling resort, Oscar Mollineaux has seen a lot of storms, and heard a lot of doomsday weather warnings that amounted to nothing. So he initially shrugged off reports that a monster storm was taking aim at New Jersey.

"I started looking at the news last night, and they said this is like nothing that anybody has ever seen before," said Mollineaux, a game supervisor at the Taj Mahal casino. "That's when I changed my mind."

Hurricane Sandy, which is expected to make landfall late Monday, looks destructive enough "to scare the hell out of you."

With forecasts showing little chance that the southern Jersey coastline will escape the giant storm's fury, Gov. Chris Christie ordered Atlantic City's casinos to close by midafternoon and set a 4 p.m. deadline for people to evacuate barrier islands from Cape May in the south to Sandy Hook near New York City.

PHOTOS: Hurricane Sandy, en route to "Frankenstorm"

Universities, schools and state offices announced closings, regional and commuter trains to New York and Washington began to shut down, and the National Guard began mobilizing troops for emergency response.

The Atlantic City boardwalk was mostly deserted other than sightseers gawking at the waves and workers rushing to board up pizza stands and shops. Locals traded speculation about whether Sandy -- where forecasters say a high storm surge will coincide with a full moon's tides -- will bring water as high as the nightmare storm of 1962, when a three-day nor'easter caused extensive flooding and killed 40 people across the region.

Tony Tabasso, fire chief in Margate, emerged from an emergency briefing in midafternoon with hopeful news, at least for residents here: The eye of the storm was shifting north, and government forecasters said the worst flooding was likely to occur even farther north as counterclockwise winds pushed more water onshore.

"Anything north of here is good for us," Tabasso said.

Steve Chapko, who lives in near-side Ventnor, decided to get out of town when he saw how high the tides rose on Sunday morning.

"We just don't know what to expect," he said. "We don't know what we're going to come back to, and we don't know how long it will be before we can even come back."

Chapko, 47, said he is staying with relatives in Philadelphia -- but he's not sure that will be much more comfortable, as city leaders warned of possible widespread power outages.

Others plan on staying put despite the mounting warnings of Sandy's power.

When Hurricane Irene approached in August 2011, "they scared everybody - 'Write your house number on your arm, so we can identify you,'" said Tom Morgan, who supervised a crew reinforcing a door at Resorts hotel casino. That storm was downgraded by the time it hit shore and did limited damage here.

"This time a lot of people aren't listening to the message," said Morgan. He plans to sit out the storm at his home in nearby Brigantine.

On the beach in Margate, next to the landmark Lucy the Elephant  building, a small crowd downed drinks at the Greenhouse Cafe and cheered news that the bar would stay open another hour.

Bob "Doggie" Law, an employee of the Margate water department, said he heeded an evacuation order during Irene and he ended up with bedbug bites from the ratty motel where he ended up. "I'm not going anywhere," he said.

Barbara Gigliotti said she too was staying -- and making lasagna.

"We have batteries, we have a generator, we have food," she said. "I know about this. It's like I say to my son, and he has it tattooed on him: 'Fear is a lack of faith.'"

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joseph.tanfani@latimes.com

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State strips 23 schools of API rankings for cheating

The third-grader had good news: She was doing great on her standardized tests, she proudly told a teacher at the school.

How did she know? the instructor asked.

"My teacher points out the answers that I need to correct," she said.

With that, the fate of Westside Elementary in Thermal was sealed.

State officials have stripped Westside and 22 other schools of a key state ranking for cheating, other misconduct or mistakes in administering the standardized tests given last spring. The offenses ranged from failing to cover bulletin boards to more overt improprieties, including helping students correct mistakes or preparing them with actual test questions. The details were included in school district reports obtained by the Times through a public records request filed with the California Department of Education.

The state defines such episodes as "adult irregularities," and if they affect at least 5% of students tested at a school, the campus loses its annual rating on California's Academic Performance Index, which was released this month.

The API is a scale by which schools are officially measured in California. Top rankings are celebrated and contribute to high property values. Low scores can label schools as failures and trigger penalties.

The number of schools with invalidated test scores remains relatively small: about two dozen each of the last three years in a state with more than 10,000 schools.

Some teachers may have thought they were within bounds when in fact they weren't.

A fifth-grade teacher at Short Avenue Elementary in the Del Rey neighborhood told her students in advance to jot down such helpful clues as multiplication tables, fraction-to-decimal conversions and number lines on scratch paper prior to starting the tests, according to a Los Angeles Unified report. On exam day, she allegedly walked around the classroom making encouraging remarks to make sure students followed through. That sort of test-day coaching is against the rules and cost Short Avenue its ranking. The teacher has since retired, according to the district.

Short Avenue also lost its API score last year for alleged testing mistakes, improper coaching or outright cheating by three popular teachers. All were pulled from campus and have since retired; at least two faced being fired if they didn't leave.

A teacher this year at Baldwin Lane Elementary in Big Bear City, stopped just short of handing out answers, but only just, a school report said.

She used "facial expressions" to cue students on right or wrong answers: "smiles, blank stares, etc.," the report said. She also allegedly would direct students to redo problems or place dots beside incorrect answers.

She even "corrected student tests and sent students back to their desk to fix incorrect responses" and "helped set up math problems where students couldn't themselves," the report said.

Later, the teacher, who also was the school's testing coordinator, "informed parents that their student had done well on portions of the test," which is something that, according to the rules, the teacher would have no knowledge of at that point, the report said.

Allegations of similarly aggressive coaching from a teacher invalidated eighth-grade geometry scores as well as sixth- and seventh-grade math tests at high-performing Adams Middle School in Redondo Beach, which otherwise would have recorded its best results.

There was no direct coaching, but a displayed cornucopia of reference material in a fifth-grade class at Global Family Elementary School in Oakland. During six days of testing, instructional material covered three walls and hung from light fixtures, including posters containing science vocabulary and directions for "adding and subtracting decimals, how to find the perimeter and volume of geometric figures … and conjugation of common English verbs," said a school report.

Teachers at six other schools were suspected of prepping students, at least in part, with actual test questions, including at Capistrano Elementary in the west San Fernando Valley and ICEF Inglewood Elementary Charter Academy.

A teacher in Camarillo displayed the test booklet with her "document camera and projector," a school report said.

Teachers in Garden Grove, Fresno and Sunnyvale allegedly read ahead in the test booklet while their students were taking the tests. Then they tried to go over questions or material about a test topic with students in advance, before they reached that section, according to school reports.

At Arroyo Valley High in San Bernardino, "slam the exam" review materials for biology were distributed among 11 teachers, including one who allegedly used the prep package with 141 students. The teacher who put together the review claimed all the sample problems came from appropriate sources, according to an investigation.

It turned out that 19 of 60 were exact matches with the state test.

howard.blume@latimes.com

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Take Hurricane Sandy seriously, East Coast residents are warned

The East Coast prepares as the storm approaches.

NEW YORK — East Coast residents prepared Saturday for the onslaught of Hurricane Sandy, which forecasters expect to make landfall as soon as Monday night and then merge with a sprawling winter storm to create weather havoc for tens of millions of people across one-third of the nation.

From Maine to the Carolinas, federal and state officials urged residents and businesses to prepare for the worst — drenching rain, flooding, high winds, highs seas, snow and widespread power outages. Federal officials said the impact would extend into the Ohio Valley.

Even though Sandy was still at least two days away, residents along the northeastern Atlantic Coast, mindful of possible transit shutdowns and bombarded by storm warnings, kicked into preparation mode.

PHOTOS: Hurricane Sandy

Battery-operated lanterns, batteries, flashlights, tape, plastic tarps and rope vanished from shelves at hardware stores like Brown's, on the Rockaway peninsula in the New York City borough of Queens.

But nothing was in as much demand as sandbags, said Brown's owner Noni Signoretti, as customers lined up at cash registers. "We got 1,000 in, and within an hour they were gone," she said. The shop was expecting to receive 4,400 additional sandbags, and it planned to open two hours earlier than normal Sunday to accommodate the expected rush.

Like some on the peninsula, which was under a mandatory evacuation order when Hurricane Irene hit last year, Signoretti blamed much of the rush for supplies on the media frenzy surrounding Sandy.

"It's very similar to what we had with Irene — the panic," she said. "And what's happening today is that the weather is so nice that people have the opportunity to walk around in a panic."

Indeed, the wind was relatively calm, the ocean waves were no bigger than normal, and the boardwalk was dotted with its usual Saturday array of joggers, dog walkers and residents sitting on benches staring out at the water.

Neither Signoretti nor one of her regular customers, Jeanette Bernstein, planned to leave if an evacuation order was issued. Bernstein heeded last year's order after preparing her home for flooding that never came.

"I saved the sandbags from the last time," said Bernstein, who planned to flood-proof her home this year with sandbags, plastic and boards hammered over the windows. But she said her days of fleeing storms were over.

"I've been here so many years, I remember the flood when we were in rowboats," Bernstein said. That was Hurricane Donna of 1960, which sent the ocean and the bay washing over the peninsula. "If I lived through that," she added, "I can live through anything."

In New Jersey, Gov. Chris Christie warned against such complacency even as he sympathized with skepticism about forecasters' predictions. "We have to be prepared for the worst here," he said. "I can be as cynical as any of you, but when the storm comes, if it's as bad as they're predicting it will be, you're going to wish you weren't as cynical."

Dozens were killed as Sandy passed through the Caribbean late last week. The storm weakened but was upgraded Saturday to a Category 1 hurricane and was expected to turn west and make landfall late Monday or early Tuesday, with forecasters suggesting Delaware or southern New Jersey as possible locations.

The storm is expected to merge with a cold front from Canada — creating a dangerous system that could reach 800 miles in diameter, affecting a third of the United States. Winds up to 75 mph were measured Saturday as far as 100 miles from the eye of the storm, which remained over the ocean.

Even before Sandy makes landfall, conditions are going to get worse, said Rick Knabb, director of the National Hurricane Center.

"There's no avoiding a significant storm surge event over a large area," Knabb told reporters. "We just can't pinpoint who's going to get the worst."

Flood warnings are in effect in four states. Storm surges up to 4 feet were expected in parts of Delaware, and more than 2 feet of snow could bury West Virginia. A vast area from Virginia to New York could see up to 8 inches of rain over the next week.

"Don't get lulled tomorrow when there's not a lot of rain and not a lot of wind," New York Mayor Michael R. Bloomberg said at a news conference Saturday. "This is a dangerous storm. I think we're going to be OK, but if it were to strengthen unexpectedly or change its expected path, it could do a lot of damage."

The storm may cause major disruptions for travelers going to and from the East Coast over the next several days. Airlines said they were closely monitoring the storm, and they urged travelers to regularly check the status of their flights.

Several major airlines waived fees for passengers wanting to change their reservations, subject to some restrictions. Delta Air Lines said travelers could change flights at no cost for travel to 15 states and Washington, D.C. United Airlines made a similar offer to reschedule flights for no fee for travel in and out of nearly 30 airports along the East Coast.

Hurricane Sandy had already forced President Obama's campaign to scuttle one of Vice President Joe Biden's two scheduled stops in Virginia on Saturday. Aides to Republican presidential nominee Mitt Romney say they are canceling their travel to make sure they don't get in the way of state and local officials bracing for the storm.

tina.susman@latimes.com

joseph.serna@latimes.com

Susman reported from New York and Serna from Los Angeles. Christi Parsons and Michael A. Memoli in the Washington bureau contributed to this report.

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Candidates joust over Romney's record as governor

KISSIMMEE, Fla. — Mitt Romney's record as governor of Massachusetts was the focal point of presidential campaign sparring on Saturday, with the GOP nominee boasting that he worked across the aisle to close a multibillion-dollar budget gap and President Obama arguing that his tenure benefited the wealthy at the expense of the middle class.

Romney, speaking to thousands in a plane hangar in Kissimmee, said Washington needed bipartisan collaboration to fix the nation's problems, and he pointed to his record in Massachusetts working with a legislature that was 85% Democratic.

"We didn't go to work fighting each other; we came to work to work together. We found a way to do that. So we cut spending, we actually reduced the amount of money government was spending. And then we cut taxes 19 times," Romney said. "We made our state more business-friendly."

The end result, he said, was that a $3-billion budget gap turned into a $2-billion rainy-day fund and the state's job growth improved.

"Those principles could work to get America together. We've got to do it. We can't do this without the help of the people across the aisle," he said.

While he made the case that his Massachusetts formula could be used to "get America together," Romney omitted key elements — including that he increased corporate taxes and state fees by $750 million a year, outstripping his tax cuts, and was reluctant to engage with legislators. (He also has embraced the GOP's stalwart objections in Congress to Democratic proposals.)

Obama, almost within shouting distance of the Bay State's border in Nashua, N.H., said Romney's record was instead proof that the GOP nominee's budget plan would squeeze the middle class.

Campaigning in front of thousands outside a school, Obama said Romney's promises of "big change" were only a "rerun" of failed policies.

Romney is "making a lot of last-minute promises lately," claiming he would "cut taxes for everybody and ask something from nobody," Obama said.

"But the problem is, we've heard those promises before," he said. "During Gov. Romney's campaign for governor down there, he promised the same thing he's promising now. … But once he took office, he pushed through a tax cut that overwhelmingly benefited 278 of the wealthiest families in the state, and then he raised taxes and fees on middle-class families to the tune of $750 million. Does that sound familiar to you?"

The president noted that Romney's revenue hikes covered everything from gas and milk to marriage and birth certificates. The latter "would have been expensive for me," Obama quipped, referring to the inaccurate claims about his birthplace that prompted him to release his long-form birth records.

With 10 days to go until election day and voters already hitting the polls in many states, the campaigns were also forced to scramble because of an October surprise from Mother Nature. Hurricane Sandy is hurtling toward an East Coast landfall early in the week, prompting Romney to cancel a Sunday swing through Virginia, after consulting with Gov. Bob McDonnell.

"He said, 'You know, the first responders really need to focus on preparation for the storm,' so we're not going to be able to be in Virginia tomorrow; we're going to Ohio instead," Romney told Floridians. "But I hope you'll keep the folks in Virginia and New Jersey and New York and all along the coast in your minds and in your hearts. You know how tough these hurricanes can be, and our hearts goes out to them."

Vice President Joe Biden also canceled an event because of the storm, and his son, Delaware's attorney general, had to cancel an appearance because his National Guard unit was activated to assist with that state's response.

Obama altered his travel plans because of the storm, which is expected to cause flooding and power outages. He began his Saturday with a briefing by his homeland security and emergency management teams, telling officials to make sure there were "no unmet needs" as states prepared for the storm. The federal government response to Sandy is likely to be heavily scrutinized as early voters make their decision.

But Obama and Romney both made it Saturday to key states in a race that is coming down to the wire.

Romney appeared in Florida on the first day of early voting, and urged his supporters to go to the polls.

"Today you can go vote. And it helps for you to vote now because the earlier you vote, the more help you can give us getting other people to the polls because we're going to have to turn out our people," he said. "We need to get people who care about America to go to the polls and vote."

And Obama's appearance in New Hampshire, the second in 10 days, coincided with the state's deadline for advance voter registration. Residents can also sign up to vote on election day.

New Hampshire has four electoral votes, the fewest among the most-contested states, but enough to warrant increasing attention from both campaigns, with Biden visiting on Monday and Romney on Tuesday.

"New Hampshire is going to be very important," Obama told union workers at a stop en route to the Nashua rally. "We don't know how this thing is going to play out, [and] these four electoral votes right here could make the difference."

seema.mehta@latimes.com

michael.memoli@latimes.com

Christi Parsons in the Washington bureau contributed to this report.

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7.7 quake rocks Canada's west coast

From the Associated Press

October 27, 2012, 9:36 p.m.

GOLDEN, Colorado—

A magnitude-7.7 earthquake has struck off the coast of western Canada and a tsunami warning has been issued. There are no immediate reports of damage.

The U.S. Geological Survey in Colorado says the quake hit the Queen Charlotte Islands at 11:14 p.m. Sunday local time (0314 GMT) and was centered 96 miles south of Masset, British Columbia.

A tsunami warning was issued for coastal areas of Alaska, Northern California, Oregon and Washington state. The U.S. Coast Guard warned everyone with a boat on the water off southern Alaska to take precautions.

The USGS said the 7.7-magnitude earthquake was followed by a 5.8-magnitude aftershock several minutes later.

Lt. Bernard Auth of the Juneau Command Center says the Coast Guard is also working with local authorities to alert people in coastal towns to take precautions

.

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Orange County's planned Great Park a victim of hard times

Ten years after Orange County residents voted to turn a shuttered military base into one of America's most ambitious municipal parks, most of the land remains fenced off, looking very much like the airfield the Marines left behind.

The city of Irvine has spent at least $203 million on the project, but only 200 acres of the promised 1,347-acre Great Park has been built, and half of that is leased out for commercial farming.

Most of the money has paid for plans, designs and consultants, with less than a fifth of it going toward actual park construction, according to a Times analysis of the spending.

Now, the money to build "the first great metropolitan park of the 21st century" — as the city calls it — has just about run out, leaving Irvine leaders to contemplate radical measures: Selling off public land to raise funds or asking private business to step in and build the park for them.

The park, by now, was supposed to be filled with scores of sports fields and eventually museums, cultural centers, botanical gardens, and maybe even a university — all tucked into a bucolic landscape of forests, lawns, a lake and 60-foot-deep canyon that would be scooped from the earth once the barracks and runways were demolished.

But there are no baseball diamonds or regulation soccer fields. No canyon, no forest, no sprawling museum complex.

As much as anything, the lofty plans for the park — an expanse intended to rival San Diego's Balboa Park or even Central Park in New York — collapsed under the weight of the sagging economy.

When the housing market started to dive, developer FivePoint Communities Inc. halted its plans for building the thousands of homes that were supposed to surround the park and generate tax money to fuel its growth.

The most crippling blow landed last spring when the state — in an effort to trim California's ballooning deficit — grabbed the project's main funding source: $1.4 billion in property tax funds.

The Great Park that exists today doesn't look anything like the colorful city brochures that landed in mailboxes years ago, promising to go "From Groundbreaking to Great Park in only 5 years."

Still, visitors pour into the lone corner of the base that has been developed with a tethered balloon that shuttles visitors 400 feet in the air, an arts complex dotted with palms, a carousel and a lawn popular with soccer players.

The city's final chunk of construction money will be spent by next year, when officials expect to finish a 30-acre complex of soccer fields, basketball courts, gardens, ponds and a permanent visitors center.

But most of the features that would transform the World War II-era base into a major destination exist only on paper. Most of the acreage remains undeveloped, largely off-limits to the public. Virtually all of the runways are intact, leased out to raise money.

Officials now say the Great Park will take decades or even generations to finish.

Critics, who have long questioned the project's fiscal discipline, doubt Orange County will ever get the park that was promised.

::

The idea for a Great Park was born during brighter economic times.

Voters in 2002 agreed to turn the raw landscape of Marine Corps Air Station El Toro into America's next great municipal park rather than an international airport as county supervisors wanted.

The military sold the land for $650 million to Lennar Corp., then one of the nation's largest home builders. As part of the deal, Lennar paid $200 million in development fees to Irvine and in 2005 transferred 1,347 acres to the city in exchange for the rights to surround it with thousands of homes and businesses.

Once in the city's hands, the money went quickly.

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Billboard firm wrote L.A. proposal on signs

The outdoor advertising company Clear Channel quietly wrote a controversial Los Angeles City Hall proposal that could help the company preserve hundreds of millions of dollars in electronic billboard business.

Two weeks ago, Councilmen Ed Reyes and Paul Krekorian called for new negotiations with digital billboard companies that could allow the cash-hungry city to capture a portion of sign revenues. In a motion approved by the council, the lawmakers also said it was "critical" for the city to act before a ruling is handed down in an ongoing billboard case.

The outcome of the case could force the elimination of 100 digital signs, four-fifths of them operated by Clear Channel.

The motion was loudly denounced by neighborhood activists, who accused Krekorian and Reyes of trying to head off a court decision detrimental to the interests of the two companies that operate the electronic billboards.

On Friday, Reyes spokeswoman Monica Valencia acknowledged that a Clear Channel lobbyist had drafted the initial motion. She defended the company's involvement, saying Reyes receives motions from private sources "all the time."

"It's not uncommon for us to collaborate with other stakeholders on a motion," Valencia said in an email. "We are most concerned with the context of the motion, not the person who wrote it, and its sensitivity to the needs of our constituents."

Clear Channel Vice President Jim Cullinan said that his company has been talking to council members for years and that the Reyes-Krekorian proposal was "discussed, debated and modified" during an open council meeting.

Dennis Hathaway, president of the Coalition to Ban Billboard Blight, said Reyes' handling of the matter shows that council members are trying to tip the scales in favor of Clear Channel, which regularly donates to election campaigns and has four lobbying firms assigned to City Hall.

"This puts the lie to the idea promoted by Krekorian, Reyes and other council members that all they want to do is get a dialogue going on digital billboards," he said. "When the motion is written by the billboard company lobbyist, it's obviously to put something in motion that the company wants."

The digital signs at issue were installed in Hollywood, Westwood, Venice and elsewhere under a deal reached in 2006 between the council and two companies: Clear Channel and CBS Outdoor. Another billboard firm, Summit Media, challenged the agreement, which was struck down by a Los Angeles County Superior Court judge in 2009. The City Council has allowed the signs to continue operating while the case is on appeal.

The Reyes-Krekorian motion did not mention Clear Channel by name or indicate that 100 signs are in jeopardy because of the lawsuit. Phil Recht, an attorney for Summit, said the motion gave a "terribly distorted picture" of the legal issues facing the city.

"We're not shocked to hear" that a Clear Channel lobbyist wrote the proposal, he said. "Summit has been saying it from Day One."

Valencia said Morrie Goldman, Clear Channel's lobbyist, drafted the digital billboard proposal last month after discussing the matter with a Reyes staffer. Goldman brought his two-page draft motion to a Sept. 27 meeting with Reyes. The councilman then recommended one change, she said: that a working group of city officials and billboard companies develop criteria that could legalize existing digital signs.

Goldman sent a slightly reworded proposal on Oct. 1, according to Valencia and documents obtained by The Times under a California Public Records Act request.

On Oct. 10, Krekorian's staff sent an email making more changes, suggesting that the proposed billboard talks include discussions on reducing the total number of signs citywide. The proposal was introduced jointly by Reyes and Krekorian that day and later approved on an 11 to 3 vote.

Krekorian said he was not troubled by the process used by Reyes. There would only be a problem, he said, if council members had failed to vet the proposal submitted to them.

"Who sends the first letter, who writes the first words, is not so significant as what the council does with it afterwards," he said.

david.zahniser@latimes.com

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Romney spends big on firms tied to aides

WASHINGTON — Mitt Romney's campaign has directed $134.2 million to political firms with business ties to his senior staff, spotlighting the tightknit nature of his second presidential bid and the staggering sums being spent in this election.

Nine firms that are run by, or recently employed, top Romney aides have received almost a third of the $435.8 million that Romney's campaign and a related fundraising committee have spent on operating expenses through Oct. 17, according to a Los Angeles Times analysis of federal election finance reports.

President Obama's reelection campaign and a joint fundraising committee have paid about $5.8 million in consulting fees to companies with business ties to senior strategists, according to the finance reports.

CHEAT SHEET: Follow the money

The campaign finance reports show that this year's presidential race has created a huge economic stimulus package for campaign operatives, whose total payday is often undisclosed.

Ryan Williams, a Romney spokesman, said payments to firms with connections to staff members were not only for consulting, but also were used to purchase a variety of services, including "polling, video production, political mail, get-out-the-vote phones, online advertising, website development, and budget and compliance management, among other things." He declined to break down the specific amounts.

It is unclear from the finance reports how much the firms may be earning on commissions for producing or buying Web ads, among other tasks.

In its analysis, The Times did not include millions that both campaigns have paid consultants to buy airtime for commercials, money which is largely passed on to television and radio stations.

Obama and his Republican challenger are on track to raise $1 billion each for their campaigns and political parties this election. The record-breaking totals stem from a decision by the candidates to reject public financing, which would have capped their general election spending at less than $92 million. Obama laid the groundwork for the financial escalation when he made history in 2008 by becoming the first presidential candidate to turn down the public funds.

"These guys are spending as much in two weeks as we were spending in two months," said Democratic consultant Tad Devine, who served as a senior strategist on the presidential bids of then-Vice President Al Gore in 2000 and Massachusetts Sen. John F. Kerry in 2004. "It's a whole different level."

An examination of finance reports shows that Romney and Obama both lean on trusted advisors to provide major services, such as media, polling and direct mail. But the Romney campaign has gone further, building its operations around a small group of companies that are either run by senior campaign aides or had employed them until they joined the campaign.

Two companies that Romney finance chair Spencer Zwick controls — SJZ and VG — have together been paid more than $22 million, which the campaign reported as payments for fundraising consulting.

VG, which stands for Victory Group 2012, was incorporated in April, the same month Romney secured the Republican presidential nomination. The company was registered by a corporate services agent, but campaign officials confirmed it belongs to Zwick. SJZ dates to 2005.

American Rambler, the company of top media strategists Stuart Stevens, Russ Schriefer and Eric Fehrnstrom, has been paid $23.6 million for services, including more than $6 million for strategy consulting and nearly $2.4 million for communication consulting.

The firm has also received $130 million to buy media time.

Its equivalent for the Obama campaign, GMMB, the Washington outfit of Obama's longtime media strategist Jim Margolis, received $306.5 million for media buys. It was paid $2.1 million for consulting and production.

Overall, the Obama campaign has relied more heavily on outside vendors. That is partly because many of its top officials joined the president's reelection effort from posts in the administration and do not have their own businesses.

Among the few staff-connected firms is Blue State Digital, the company of chief digital strategist Joe Rospars, which has received nearly $2.4 million for technology consulting and Web hosting. Senior strategist David Axelrod's firm, Axelrod Strategies, has received $166,000 for strategy consulting. And his former firm, AKPD Message and Media — where campaign strategist Larry Grisolano now serves as a partner — has received almost $1.1 million for media consulting and production.

The structure of Romney's campaign is largely a reaction to his consultant-heavy 2008 presidential bid, which aides said was plagued by turf wars between competing strategists. This time around, the infrastructure is centered on members of Romney's inner circle who have long histories with the candidate, such as Zwick and Fehrnstrom.

"Romney clearly made a decision after the 2008 campaign to put together a smaller and more cohesive brain trust," said Dan Schnur, a veteran GOP political strategist who now directs the Jesse M. Unruh Institute of Politics at USC. "The risk is that you may shut yourself off to outside perspective. But if you have a small group that you trust, it makes sense."

Mark Kennedy, a former GOP congressman from Minnesota who directs the George Washington University School of Political Management, noted that campaigns doing business with firms owned by senior staff must have safeguards to ensure that the candidate's best interests are being served.

"You make sure that key decisions are confirmed by people that don't have a conflict," he said.

The Romney campaign declined to answer questions about how it manages potential conflicts or whether senior advisors have a say over how much is allocated to their firms.

Several top officials oversee departments in which related firms provide services.

One of the campaign's top vendors is Targeted Victory, a 3-year-old digital consulting firm whose co-founder, Zac Moffatt, is the campaign's digital director. The Alexandria, Va.-based company has been paid more than $64 million for digital consulting and Web development.

A large share probably went to buy online ads, although those figures are not broken out in Federal Election Commission reports. Digital media consultants said commissions for such buys usually range from 10% to 15%, often not including fees for creative consulting.

Another official with business ties to a vendor is Rich Beeson, Romney's political director. Before joining the campaign, he was a partner at a Minnesota-based telemarketing firm called FLS Connect, which has been paid $16.5 million.

The company also has a tie to Targeted Victory: FLS Connect partner Tony Feather is listed as the original manager of the digital firm, according to corporate paperwork filed in Minnesota.

Three staff-run firms share an address.

American Rambler, which was registered in May 2011, is located in a suburban office building about 20 miles north of Romney's Boston headquarters.

Also there are two firms run by the campaign's chief financial officer, Bradley Crate: Red Curve Solutions, a financial management firm that the campaign has paid nearly $1.4 million for compliance consulting, and Easterly Capital, a private equity firm that has received almost $1.5 million for the use of its corporate jet.

CHEAT SHEET: Follow the money

matea.gold@latimes.com

maloy.moore@latimes.com

melanie.mason@latimes.com

Times staff writer Anthony Pesce contributed to this report.

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For patients warned in meningitis outbreak, waiting is agony

Patsy Bivins can't stop worrying about the warning letter she got from the hospital.

It came seven weeks after she received two steroid injections in her back to treat chronic pain. The steroid had been made at the New England Compounding Center and was from one of the three lots later discovered to be contaminated with a fungus. The notice informed Bivins, 68, that although she had tested negative for fungal meningitis, she was still at risk of developing the disease, which has so far sickened more than 300 people and killed 24 across the nation.

"It said, 'Go to the doctor if you have headaches,'" said Bivins, a retired waitress in Sturgis, Ky. "Well, I've had headaches for a few days now and I don't know if it's because of the shot or all the stress I'm feeling."

As state and federal health officials struggle to treat an extremely rare and little-understood form of meningitis, about 14,000 patients who were injected with the tainted painkiller face an uncertain — and often angst-filled — future.

Though medical authorities say patients are most vulnerable to stroke and death within the first 42 days of injection, it can still take up to three months for symptoms to become apparent.

Patients like Bivins say the wait has been excruciating.

"I don't really eat a whole lot and I don't sleep now because I'm worried sick," she said. "They say three months, but what if it's not? What if it goes on and on? I don't think they honestly know."

In the hardest-hit states east of the Mississippi River, officials acknowledge that the stress felt by patients and their families has been intense. Just this week, the Tennessee health commissioner started a mental health hotline to help patients cope with the anxiety and uncertainty.

"We're in this in-between state," said Carol Scott, a Los Angeles lawyer whose 89-year-old mother, Ruth, received a tainted shot in August. "I don't want to upset her, but I'm freaked out about this."

Reports of patients who received clean bills of health only to be diagnosed with meningitis weeks later have deepened anxieties.

On Wednesday, a Michigan man whose wife died from the disease last month announced that he too had been diagnosed with fungal meningitis after getting a shot to alleviate neck and back pain. Just a week earlier, George Cary told reporters that a spinal tap showed no indications of meningitis. Now the 65-year-old engineer is receiving powerful intravenous antifungal medicines in a hospital, more than five weeks after his injection.

"I was truly shocked," Cary's daughter, Jill Bloser, told the Detroit Free Press. "I really didn't think he was going to have it because of how much time has passed. ... I really thought he was in the clear."

Investigators from the Food and Drug Administration have traced the outbreak to three lots of methylprednisolone acetate packaged by the now-shuttered New England Compounding Center of Framingham, Mass. The company distributed the tainted drugs to medical facilities in 23 states, including California. All of the center's products have been recalled and are being examined by investigators.

A report this week by Massachusetts health authorities said investigators discovered numerous violations and unsanitary conditions at the compounding center. Black particles could be seen floating in some vials of recalled methylprednisolone, and autoclaves had not been properly tested. Mats designed to trap dirt, dust and other contaminants were visibly soiled, and a pool of water was observed near a leaking boiler.

The steroid medication is often used to ease back pain in older patients and is injected directly into a patient's spinal canal or in tissue alongside the spine. The doses from the compounding center somehow became contaminated with the fungus Exserohilum, a black mold that usually infects grass, and not people. A second type of fungus, Aspergillus, has been detected in one fatal case so far.

"This is a very unusual fungus, so unusual that its name doesn't even appear in any medical school texts," said Dr. William Schaffner, an infectious disease specialist at the Vanderbilt University School of Medicine in Nashville.

Unlike bacteria, which can reproduce every 20 minutes, the fungus involved in the outbreak takes days to reproduce. That slow reproduction is partly why the interval between exposure and the onset of symptoms can be so long.

In all but a few cases, the medication containing the fungus was injected in the back. While the steroid was intended to soothe inflammation of a pinched nerve, it also suppressed the body's immune response. As a result, instead of being destroyed by the body, the fungus began to multiply.

Schaffner said the growing fungus uses surrounding tissue as nourishment, destroying it in the process. Eventually, the fungus makes contact with the dura — the tough, protective sheath that surrounds the spinal cord — and "eats" through it. If the injection isn't done properly, the needle can pierce the dura and deposit the fungus directly.

Once the fungus breaches the dura, it invades the spinal fluid and causes inflammation in the thin membranes surrounding the spine and brain.

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Police detain four in fatal Downey shooting rampage

Four people have been detained for questioning in connection with Wednesday's shooting rampage in Downey, which left three members of a family dead and two others injured, Downey police said.

"We have detained four people for questioning. We have not made an arrest yet," Lt. Leslie Murray said in a brief interview at police headquarters.

No other details about the move were immediately available.

PHOTOS: Downey shooting rampage

Police initially said that they did not know the motive for the attack, but that it was "targeted" and "not a random act of violence."

One Downey city councilman told The Times it was a drug-related hit.

The violence unfolded Wednesday after 11 a.m. when, police say, a man entered United States Fire Protection Services on Cleta Street, where he shot and killed a man and a woman and wounded a second woman. The gunman then went to the home of the business owner, also on Cleta Street, police say; a woman there was shot and killed and her 13-year-old son wounded.

The gunman fled in a stolen black 2010 Camaro, which belonged to one of the shooting victims.

Witnesses described a bloody, chaotic scene.

The teenage boy who had been shot was screaming and wounded, said witness Grace Mendez, 33.

"He was screaming, 'Oh my God, oh my God!'" Mendez said. "And then I saw that he was shot in the shoulder blade and stomach."

Police tried to help him, Mendez said, adding: "He had gone into complete shock." Witnesses saw another woman with a gunshot wound to her head.

Blanca Parker, who owns a nearby business, said she was at a loss for words.

"Everyone figured nothing bad would ever happen over here," Parker said.

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As Syria cease-fire looms, so do the doubts

BEIRUT — The Syrian military said Thursday that its forces would observe a temporary holiday cease-fire starting today, signaling a potential new phase in international efforts to halt a conflict that has caused vast destruction and loss of life and threatened to destabilize the Middle East.

Brokering the truce was peace envoy Lakhdar Brahimi, a veteran Algerian diplomat who has been on a shuttle diplomacy mission aimed at selling the truce idea to the warring sides and to their international allies.

Brahimi has voiced optimism that a truce coinciding with the Muslim holiday of Eid al-Adha could expand into a more far-reaching peace initiative. How that might happen was unclear.

Both sides reacted cautiously to the announcement and there were no signs of a broader breakthrough in the 19-month-old conflict.

In a late-afternoon bulletin, Syria's state-run television reported that the armed forces command had agreed to a "cease of military operations" for four days beginning Friday, the first day of the holiday.

But authorities stressed that the truce was conditional and that the military reserved the right to respond to attacks or block any efforts to reinforce or resupply "terrorist groups," the government's label for the rebels fighting to oust President Bashar Assad.

Rebel commanders expressed skepticism about the truce, but some indicated that their forces would respect the initiative if the military suspended offensive operations.

Unlike an ill-fated cease-fire six months ago, this truce is not linked to any formal peace plan or call for negotiations. Nor are there any international observers inside Syria to monitor compliance.

At this point, any form of peace negotiations seems a long way off: The government says it will not talk with "terrorists" and rebels say Assad must step down before discussions begin.

Even a limited truce, however, provides some glimmer of hope, as well as the prospect of a respite, at least for the weekend, for the beleaguered residents of the northern city of Aleppo and other areas of Syria under government bombardment.

Still, many observers regard the chances of a broader peace, or even four days without an outbreak of violence, as slim.

"I don't believe the cease-fire will hold," Mustafa Sheik, who heads the military council of the Free Syrian Army, a rebel umbrella group, told the pan-Arab Al Jazeera satellite news station.

Some rebel factions have dismissed the truce outright and say they have no intention of laying down their arms, even for four days. Others have publicly backed the plan but insist the military must also not use a pause in fighting to rearm and resupply troops.

The opposition's fragmented nature poses a huge hurdle for any peace initiative. Without a central rebel command, no one can order the scores of brigades and militias fighting in Syria to stop shooting.

Syria's acceptance of the cease-fire was widely expected after intensive efforts by Brahimi, who serves as special peace envoy to Syria for the United Nations and the Arab League. Last weekend, he met in Damascus, the Syrian capital, with Assad, who apparently gave his go-ahead for the truce.

The deal was first announced by Brahimi in Cairo on Wednesday, but Assad's government waited until Thursday to give its official imprimatur.

Russia, a key Assad ally, has encouraged Damascus to go along with the truce. Moscow has used its position as a permanent member of the U.N. Security Council to head off any international action against the Syrian government.

Fierce battles have been playing out in many areas of the country, including Aleppo, the nation's commercial center; the central city of Homs, Syria's third-most populous; and around Damascus. Fighting has also raged in small towns and rural areas. The daily death toll averages about 150, according to opposition groups. The government provides no overall casualty figures.

Rebels control considerable swaths of territory, though many "liberated" zones suffer artillery bombardment and none are out of the reach of government warplanes and attack helicopters. Rebels also control a number of border crossings with neighboring Turkey, a key rebel logistics and resupply hub.

The latest truce carries none of the buildup or bureaucratic scaffolding that accompanied the April cease-fire, which was brokered by Brahimi's predecessor, Kofi Annan, the former U.N. secretary-general and Nobel laureate. That truce was part of Annan's six-point peace plan, which, among other things, called on Assad to withdraw forces and armor from populated areas. Both sides agreed to the plan. But the military never pulled back and fighting soon resumed.

Each side blamed the other for the collapse of the cease-fire. A frustrated Annan resigned the envoy post in August, labeling his job "mission impossible" and saying that Assad must step down for any kind of peace to take hold.

patrick.mcdonnell@latimes.com

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Suspect in Libya consulate attack killed in Cairo, reports say

By Jeffrey Fleishman and Reem Abdellatif

October 24, 2012, 3:50 p.m.

CAIRO -- A gunman reportedly linked to the militant attack last month on the U.S. mission in Libya was killed in a shootout with police in Cairo on Wednesday, according Egyptian state TV and independent news media.  

The Egypt Independent newspaper reported that the man, whom security officials identified only as Hazem, was described as a terrorist. The newspaper and the state TV website said the heavily armed suspect was killed after a long gun battle with police in the Nasr City section of Cairo.

The reports could not be independently confirmed, and there were conflicting reports over the incident.

"Security authorities said they had acquired information implicating the man of involvement in the attack on the U.S. Consulate in Benghazi," the newspaper reported. The attack on the consulate in September killed U.S. Ambassador J. Christopher Stevens and three other Americans.

State TV and the Egypt Independent reported that the suspect died in an apartment during the gunfight and a fire. Police reportedly seized bombs, rocket-propelled grenades and ammunition from the scene.

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Keep secret Arizona money out of California politics

SACRAMENTO — Let's see. Maybe: "Money Launderers for Campaign Finance Reform." No, that probably wouldn't sell.

Could try: "Tax Exempt Fat Cats Against Higher Taxes for School Kids." Nope. That one doesn't have the right ring, either.

There's always: "California Reformers Against Special Interests and Higher Taxes." That's more traditional and has much better voter appeal.

INTERACTIVE: California propositions guide

This is all facetious, of course, sort of.

The real name is the Small Business Action Committee PAC, No on 30/Yes on 32. Citizens for Reforming Sacramento.

I especially chuckle at that last part. Reforming with laundered money.

You may have gotten a campaign flier or two in the mail from this outfit. Like all political junk mail — from the right or the left — it should be immediately tossed. They're pretty much all full of distortions and lies, designed to tell you whatever public-opinion surveys indicate would capture your vote.

The Small Business Action Committee PAC — which gets its money much less from small businesses than gazillionaires — picked up $11 million last week from an obscure Arizona nonprofit, non-taxable group called Americans for Responsible Leadership.

Who finances this organization? Nobody seems to know, at least in California. And, as of this writing, the people advocating responsible leadership were refusing to identify their donors.

"The problem," says Republican analyst Tony Quinn, a former member of the watchdog Fair Political Practices Commission, is that "unless we know where the money came from people are free to allege it came from anywhere, including Al Qaeda or the ayatollahs in Iran."

That's a little far-fetched. But maybe Mexican drug lords, for all we know.

The $11 million apparently is the largest anonymous political donation in the history of California.

Here's what happened: The so-called Americans for Responsible Leadership gave the secret money to the Small Business Action Committee PAC, headed by longtime anti-tax activist Joel Fox.

Fox is spending the money on opposing Proposition 30 and supporting Prop. 32. Some of the funds have been shuffled off to the anti-30 Californians for Reforms and Jobs. Not Taxes.

Love those names.

Prop. 30 is Gov. Jerry Brown's measure to temporarily raise upper-income and sales taxes to help schools and balance the budget. Prop. 32 is billed as an initiative to "stop special interest money" but in reality would cripple just one special interest: labor, both public and private sector.

"It's complete money laundering," said Brown, referring to the $11-million donation.

Responded Fox in his blog "Fox & Hounds:" A "desperate and politically motivated attack."

Well, yes. No argument about that. We are nearing the climax of the political season.

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Scientists defend safety of genetically modified foods

To the naked eye, the white puffs of cotton growing on shrubs, the yellow flowers on canola plants and the towering tassels on cornstalks look just like those on any other plants. But inside their cells, where their DNA contains instructions for how these crops should grow, there are a few genes that were put there not by Mother Nature but by scientists in a lab.

Some of the genes are from a soil bacterium called Bacillus thuringiensis that makes proteins lethal to flies, moths and other insects. Others are from the soil bacterium Agrobacterium that programs plants to make a key enzyme that isn't vulnerable to a popular weed killer. These modifications allow farmers to grow crops with easier weed control and fewer pest-killing chemicals.

To an increasingly vocal group of consumers, this genetic tinkering is a major source of anxiety. They worry that eating engineered foods could be bad for their health or cause unanticipated environmental problems. At the very least, they insist, they deserve the right to know whether the foods they might buy contain genetically modified ingredients.

In California, this unease has culminated in Proposition 37. If approved on Nov. 6, the initiative would require many grocery store items containing genetically modified ingredients to carry labels.

But among scientists, there is widespread agreement that such crops aren't dangerous. The plants, they say, are as safe as those generated for centuries by conventional breeding and, in the 20th century, by irradiating plant material, exposing it to chemical mutagens or fusing cells together to produce plants with higher grain yields, resistance to frost and other desirable properties. Now they want to insert other genes into plants to make them more nutritious, resistant to drought or able to capture nitrogen from the air so they require less fertilizer, among other useful traits.

"There's no mystery here," said UCLA plant geneticist Bob Goldberg. "When you put a gene into a plant ... it behaves exactly like any other gene."

Genetically engineered crops have been extensively studied. Hundreds of papers in academic journals have scrutinized data on the health and environmental impacts of the plants. So have several in-depth analyses by independent panels convened by the National Academy of Sciences.

The reports have broadly concluded that genetically modified plants are not only safe but in many respects friendlier to the environment than nonengineered crops grown via conventional farming methods.

For instance, a review this year of 24 long-term or multigenerational studies found that genetically modified corn, soy, potato, rice and wheat had no ill effects on the rats, cows, mice, quails, chickens, pigs and sheep that ate them. Growth, development, blood, tissue structure, urine chemistry and organ and body weights were normal, according to the report in Food and Chemical Toxicology.

About 90% of the corn, soy and cotton now grown in the U.S. is genetically modified, and that has led to less use of pesticides, more targeted insect control, a shift to fewer toxic chemicals and less soil erosion compared with conventional farms, according to a 250-page analysis from the National Academies in 2010.

"There were hundreds and hundreds of peer-reviewed articles we combed through," said environmental economist David Ervin of Portland State University, who chaired the panel.

Though genetically modified crops are widespread, the alterations are quite limited.

The most common one makes crop plants tolerate the herbicide Roundup, allowing them to thrive while weeds die. Roundup kills weeds by disabling an enzyme called EPSPS that plants need to make amino acids. But crops are vulnerable too. So scientists at Monsanto Co. developed seeds with a resistant version of the EPSPS gene from Agrobacterium, splicing it into soy, alfalfa, corn, cotton, canola and sugar beets. The resulting crops have built-in protection to the herbicide; hence the brand name Roundup Ready.

It was such an easy way to control weeds that farmers flocked to it, said weed scientist Mike Owen of Iowa State University in Ames: "The siren song of simplicity and convenience was incredibly powerful."

Scientists used another strategy to make crops that can resist insect pests, such as the European corn borer and cotton bollworm.

For this job, the key genes are from Bacillus thuringiensis, known as Bt, which makes proteins that are toxic to insects but harmless to fish, birds, people and other vertebrates because they lack a receptor to which the proteins bind.

For decades, Bt proteins have been sprayed on organic crops to control insects. In the genetically modified version of the strategy, genes for Bt proteins are spliced into the plant's DNA so that it makes the protein itself.

Adoption of these crops has led to several documented benefits. American farmers cut back on their use of traditional insecticides that kill a broader array of bugs — including helpful ones — between 1996 and 2008, the National Academies review found.

China's broad adoption of Bt cotton led to a rise in numbers of beneficial ladybugs, lacewings and spiders and fewer aphids and other pests, according to an April study in the journal Nature. Benefits like these spill over to conventional crops as well, scientists have found.

In one famous case, genetic engineering saved a crop headed for extinction. Papaya plantations in Hawaii were under attack from the papaya ringspot virus; a new genetically altered papaya is resistant.

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L.A. city, county officials seek review of 911 dispatches

Los Angeles city and county lawmakers are calling for reviews of 911 dispatching procedures following a Times investigation that found significant delays in how long it takes rescuers to respond to emergencies near city borders.

On Tuesday, the Los Angeles County Board of Supervisors ordered county fire officials to report back on how their agency works with other departments in the region to dispatch rescuers to emergencies.

At the same time, City Councilman Mitchell Englander said he plans to introduce a similar motion at City Hall that calls for examining ways to improve cooperation between the two fire departments. Englander, who chairs the council's Public Safety Committee, said technological upgrades and clearer agreements may be needed to ensure that when someone dials 911, the closest rescue unit is sent.

"In this modern day of technology and being able to graphically map out not just where the city resources are but where the county resources are, it's shocking that those systems are not in place," Englander said. "We border a lot of cities. We've got to work seamlessly together."

The city and county agencies agreed to link their dispatching systems more than 30 years ago. That's what fire departments in other parts of the city and state do, ensuring that the closest rescue unit is automatically dispatched.

But a Times analysis of more than 1 million LAFD responses over the last five years found city dispatchers rarely reached across the border for county help.

The analysis found that 911 callers within a quarter mile of the city border are nearly 50% more likely to wait more than 10 minutes for help to arrive. Firefighters are supposed to arrive in less than six minutes to almost all medical emergencies, according to national standards embraced by the LAFD.

The analysis also found that in more than 70,000 medical responses, the LAFD sent rescuers to locations where county firehouses were closer.

If dispatchers want to summon county units, they must use telephones, a process they say takes too long.

Los Angeles Fire Chief Brian Cummings said last week that he wasn't familiar with the agreement with the county and could not comment on it. City Fire Commissioner Alan Skobin promised his panel would take up the issue, saying, "If there's a way to leverage technology to get another unit to the scene, we should be doing that."

kate.linthicum@latimes.com

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Reaching out to illegal immigrants a core strategy for LAPD chief

A decade ago, Charlie Beck watched as William J. Bratton arrived in Los Angeles and began rebuilding a department deeply tarnished by the Rodney King beating, riots and corruption scandals. Bratton made many changes as chief, but Beck was particularly taken by his aggressive effort to rebuild the LAPD's broken relationship with the African American community, which over and over Bratton said was a cornerstone to his success.

Beck carried the lesson with him when he replaced Bratton three years ago as chief of the nation's second-largest police force. With nearly half of the city's population Hispanic and the federal government's aggressive efforts to identify and deport illegal immigrants sowing fear in immigrant communities, Beck believed that his success or failure as chief rested heavily on whether he could replicate Bratton's success — but this time with Latinos.

His actions have made him a lightning rod for criticism, even from some of his own police officers. But they have also established Beck as a forceful national voice for a more restrained approach to illegal immigration, a high-profile counterpoint to hard-liners like Sheriff Joseph Arpaio in Arizona's Maricopa County.

His first move made it easier for unlicensed drivers — a group dominated by illegal immigrants — to avoid having their cars impounded. He then spoke in favor of issuing driver's licenses to illegal immigrants. Last month, he took that stance a large step further, announcing that suspected illegal immigrants arrested for low-level crimes would no longer be turned over to federal authorities for deportation.

In an interview, Beck said he was driven to act on some level by his sense that he can and should help level the playing field for illegal immigrants, whom he said have suffered unfairly from crude federal immigration laws. But Beck said those personal views were not as important as his more practical belief that extending an olive branch to immigrants in Los Angeles was vital to the LAPD's crime-fighting efforts.

"It's not so much that I am a dove on immigration," he said. "It's that I'm a realist. I recognize that this is the population that I police. If I can take steps — legal steps — to make them a better population to police then I will…. I do have sympathy for their plight, but my actions are not based mainly on that. It makes absolute law enforcement sense. Any one of these things I've done is directly tied to public safety."

Beck's shift has won wide support at City Hall and among immigration advocates. But he has also endured loud criticism that he is going soft on criminals and is out of line by picking and choosing the people who should be subject to the nation's immigration laws.

Some of the harshest attacks came on the issue of relaxing car impound rules. The L.A. police union accused Beck of overstepping his legal authority and filed suit to block the plan.

Others warned that the chief would have "blood on his hands" because the rules would allow unlicensed drivers back on the roads more quickly, where they could cause accidents.

His other initiatives have received similar blowback: The chief is encouraging lawbreakers by easing pressure on illegal immigrants and needlessly politicizing the Police Department in the process.

Beck strongly denies any political motives. In fact, he says his position as chief gives him a certain cover to address these hot-button issues outside the political arena.

"I will never run for elected office — I have a unique opportunity to do things that are right. I don't have to base my decision on what job I want next, because I don't want any job next. And I have a boss, the mayor, who didn't tell me to do this but certainly is supportive," he said.

The LAPD has long been a leader in dealing with illegal immigrants. It was Chief Daryl Gates, whose tenure was marked by tense relations with minority communities, who took the first major step.

Many of Beck's ideas and decisions regarding the city's roughly 400,000 illegal immigrants are rooted in Special Order 40 — a landmark policy put in place more than three decades ago that forbids LAPD officers from stopping a person for the sole purpose of determining his or her immigration status. Officials at the time believed that the new rule was needed to reassure illegal immigrants that they could report crimes and provide information about suspects without fear of being questioned about their immigration status.

Beck is one of only a few officers still active who joined the department before Special Order 40 was implemented. He recalled being a rookie and seeing his training officer take Latinos into custody simply because he believed they might be in the country illegally and then hand them over to federal immigration officials.

"I had no idea who or what or why we were doing it," Beck said. "But in retrospect you realize just how much fear that would put in the community — just to be able to randomly pick someone up like that."

The immigrant landscape that Beck oversees today has grown more complicated than the one of the 1970s and 1980s — and, in his eyes, has required him to take the steps beyond Special Order 40. Most notably, Beck must contend with Secure Communities, a controversial program through which local law enforcement agencies send the fingerprints of everyone arrested to federal immigration officials. In turn, federal officials use the prints to identify suspected illegal immigrants and frequently request police departments to keep them locked up for up to 48 hours until immigration officials can take custody of them and begin deportation proceedings.

The program, Beck said, and the federal government's failure to distinguish between serious, violent criminals and those who commit petty crimes, has given rise to widespread fear among immigrants of any encounter with police. He said his recent announcement that the LAPD would no longer honor these so-called detainer requests from federal officials in cases in which the suspect was arrested for a minor crime and has no violent criminal past was meant as a counterweight. He hopes that the move will persuade immigrants that the LAPD is not an arm of the federal Immigration and Customs Enforcement agency.

His first major foray into the immigration debate occurred in March 2011 when he announced that unlicensed drivers stopped at sobriety checkpoints would be allowed to call someone with a license to drive their vehicle away to avoid having it impounded. At the time, he said, the move was meant to assist illegal immigrants, who cannot receive driver's licenses in most states.

Near the end of the year, he broadened the impound rules to apply to regular traffic stops. And then, months later, he announced his support for issuing licenses to illegal immigrants in California. More recently, new battle lines were drawn around the Trust Act, a far-reaching piece of legislation approved by state lawmakers that forbids police departments from honoring detainer requests in many types of crimes. When the law, which Beck felt went too far, was vetoed by Gov. Jerry Brown, the chief took advantage of the vacuum to announce his more moderate version of the plan for the LAPD.

It's too early to tell what effect his immigration policies, if any, will have on L.A.'s crime rate, which has been in decline for more than a decade. But Beck sees the changes as part of his legacy as chief.

"At least once in our history, we tore a community apart here and I never want to do that again," Beck said, referring to the 1992 riots that followed the LAPD beating of King. "It has always been my belief that we can be more effective than we are at building community. There may be other things I'll do that I think will help build that community and keep people safer."

joel.rubin@latimes.com

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