Community Housing Conference This Friday

I've received information from the offices of both Senator Tom Harman and Assemblyman Van Tran about an upcoming "Community Housing Conference," so here it is for those who are interested:

Please Join Senator Tom Harman and Assemblyman Van Tran for a:

Community Housing Conference

The purpose of this Conference is to discuss the cost of housing, and how people can turn the dream of owning a home in Orange County into a reality. As you know, the median price for housing in Orange County is one of the highest in the nation, leaving many potential first-time buyers out of the market. Additionally, we want to help consumers that may be experiencing difficulty handling their current mortgage payment. It is our goal to equip our constituents with the tools and knowledge needed to fulfill this important component of the American dream.

When:	Friday, August 17, 2007, 8:30 a.m. — 12:00 p.m.   ( Check-In is 8:30 a.m.  -  9:00 a.m . )
Where:	Westminster Rose Center 14140 All American Way Westminster, CA 92683
Featured Speakers:	Rosario Marin, Secretary, State and Consumer Services Agency Lucy Dunn, President & CEO, Orange County Business Council Jeff Davi, Commissioner, Department of Real Estate
Cost:	There is no cost to attend this event thanks to the generosity of our sponsors.
Sponsors:	Michael Brandman Associates, California Association of Realtors, State Farm, Washington Mutual, Wells Fargo, Orange County Apartment Association and the Orange County Association of Realtors
Register:	To RSVP or for more information, please call (714) 957-4555  or visit http://republican.sen.ca.gov/CRS

Comments

Is Van Tran becoming a Liberal? Since when do Conservatives care about housing the poor?

[Patricia]

"Additionally, we want to help consumers that may be experiencing difficulty handling their current mortgage payment."

Uh oh. Are they trying to beat Hillary at her bailout game?

[cotoblogzz]

Do not Senator Tom Harman and Assemblyman Van Tran have anything better to do? - OC Sheriff Handcuffed with COPLinks?

Coming in on the heels of the Orange County Board of Supervisors vote to create an oversight board to keep an eye on the Sheriff, and then Supervisor Moorlach’s frontal assault on the 3-50 retirement plan, Sheriff Carona must feel ambushed with COPLinks at best and at worse handcuffed with COPLinks. The COPLINK system was initially developed by the University of Arizona Artificial Intelligence Lab with funding from the National Institute of Justice and the National Science Foundation since 1997. With additional venture funding and product development, Knowledge Computing Corporation (KCC) currently distributes, maintains, and updates the commercially available COPLINK Solution Suite.

We have long argued that the California Legislature has failed to deploy an important tool to fight terrorism by architecting and implementing a cross-jurisdictional information sharing, analysis, and research for the law enforcement and intelligence. Instead, the Legislature continues its partisan bickering and unable to deliver a balanced budget on time. “Senate Republicans in Sacramento have been roundly criticized for refusing to approve an irresponsible state budget. This week Governor Schwarzenegger has been traveling the state seeking to put pressure on us in our own districts. It won’t work” reads in part the California State Senate Republican Causus web site, and continues stating that: “The voice of the Senate Republicans resonates because we are holding firm against a budget that is out of balance, and contains numerous technical errors and implementation problems. Without a balanced budget, and fixes to the trailer bills associated with the spending plan, California is sure to see upwards of $5 billion in deficits next year. This is not a new mantra by the Senate Republicans, in fact it is supported by documents and statements issued by the non-partisan Legislative Analyst Office”

On the other hand, “Sheriff Mike Carona's department is one of the only police agencies in Southern California that hasn't joined forces with a large law enforcement database that allows police agencies to share crucial information” reads the introduction to a article by Peggy Lowe published Wednesday, August 15, 2007 and titled Sheriff's department opts out of crime database, then goes on to say that “As the Orange County Board of Supervisors on Tuesday approved spending $24,900 to allow District Attorney Tony Rackauckas' office and the Probation Department to join CopLink, Carona said he still has concerns about how much control he would have over the operational features of the system”. The article goes on to paint Sheriff Carona as intransigent.

We think Sheriff’s Carona position is responsible, albeit tame: As compared to other media outlets who only use the Sheriff’s blotter, we are consumers of the ACSD data gathering process. We know that slight operational changes create monstrous challenges to data consistency and coherency.

Consider that On Sep 24, 2002 a state agency permanently shut its doors due to a sunset clause in the legislation that created it. That agency was the Department of Information Technology (DOIT). DOIT, according to Government Technology, “ fell prey to the three P-forces: politics, performance and perception. The quirks of California politics may have played a significant role in DOIT's demise, but what happened to the agency offers a lesson for any jurisdiction on what not to do when creating a strong, centralized IT department. The final straw was a highly controversial contract between the state of California and Oracle Corp. for database software licenses. The deal generated a lot of heat for DOIT, and the state's Joint Legislative Audit Committee conducted a public inquiry into the huge enterprise licensing agreement.

The contract's seemingly hasty approval by several key state government officials sparked suspicion in the California Legislature, triggering the audit committee investigation. As a result of the probe, several key players in Gov. Gray Davis' administration were forced to resign or were fired, depending on one's point of view, including: Arun Baheti, Davis' director of electronic government; Barry Keene, director of the Department of General Services; and California CIO Elias Cortez.

Ironically, DOIT was created to stop technology disasters such as the Oracle contract.

In the 1990s, California was smarting over a string of high-profile IT fiascos - a botched State Lottery technology contract in 1992 that cost the state $52 million; a 1994 DMV database debacle where California paid $51 million for a system that was never used because it couldn't do what it was supposed to; and the failure in 1997 of a Statewide Automated Child Support System (SACSS) that cost taxpayers a whopping $111 million.

One factor in this series of failures was the lack of a central oversight organization to approve state IT project proposals. Instead, California employed a cumbersome approval process that scattered responsibility across a handful of separate agencies”

The Orange County Board of Supervisors, pushing COPLinks as a solution to a problem yet to be fully defined is reminiscent of the fiascos associated with DOIT. A better solution is for the California Governor and the Legislature to assume their respective responsibilities and architect a statewide cross-jurisdictional information sharing, analysis, and research for law enforcement and intelligence platform, rather than using the 10,000 flies eat crud, so it must be good argument.

[read between the lines]

I don't know Jeff Davies politics, but I doubt this will be tilting towrds liberalism with Lucy Dunn and Rosario Marin as speakers.

Also, the email address at the bottom is for the Senate Republican Caucus, which is a pretty pro-free market group.

[Lam Pho]

Well, Van's the man. If I can make it, I'd be there.
Anyone knows if the expected audience is the general population or is it targeted mainly for the Vietnamese audience, like most of Janet Nguyen's are.

[Staffer]

It is targeted for the general population.

[Lam Pho]

Staffer, thanks for the information.

[Re: Lam Pho]

Will you be there Lam Pho? What will you be wearing so I can stop by and shake your hand?

[Cao Dung]

Lam Pho is a hot Vietnamese woman wearing a yellow ao dai with three red stripes.

[dim sum]

Pho, are you Phu Nguyen? my friend send email me your post on here, there is a chain email going around about you. You got good support from a lot of people. Are you running for mayor?

No Quach is Running for Mayor...

Don't worry about the housing thing, last one was poorly attended. However this one has been better marketed. So who wants to pay people's mortgages for them? That's nice but then you lien their houses and get your money back later when it sells anyway. I wish I could attend, but I have something of grave importance to do that morning. Maybe I'll ask a friend to go collect information.

[Lam Pho]

I'm not Phu Nguyen. I don't know who he is. Also, I'm not running for Mayor. Thanks for the support though.