State Assemblyman Jose “Anteater” Solorio doesn’t often make any important decisions in Sacramento, but Steven Greenhut has discovered that Solorio once again is going to be voting on an amended form of the Copley Bill. What is that bill, you ask? Here is an excerpt from Greenhut’s Orange Punch post that explains the importance of this bill:
“Last year, Assembly Public Safety Chairman Jose Solorio, D-Santa Ana, put the kibosh on a modest bill designed to restore some semblance of oversight to police agencies. The bill, SB 1019, by Sen. Gloria Romero of Los Angeles, would have overturned the California Supreme Court’s Copley decision limiting public access to information about the disciplinary hearings of deputies and officers. The end result of the Copley ruling: the public has no right to know about misbehaving cops.”
The result of Solorio’s vote last year was chilling – and it turned out that his no vote was not founded in fact. Again, here is an excerpt from Greenhut’s post that serves to illustrate this point,”The LA Times did a follow up and could find no instance of where any officer was harmed based on public information. It’s pretty scary, actually, that the state has embraced a police-state standard.”
Since Solorio sucked up to the police unions last year we have found right here in Orange County plenty of reasons to investigate bad cops and to make the results of those investigations available to the public. As Greenhut put it, “A lot has changed since last year. Perhaps Assemblyman Solorio has been paying attention to the Orange County Grand Jury, which found that deputies beat inmates, used shot callers to inflict discipline on other inmates, perjured themselves, tampered with witnesses, watched TV and ignored their duties while inmates beat a man to death.”
So how will Solorio vote this time? Well, I decided to take a look at who has been giving him money and here is what I found out – he has indeed been taking money from various police and related unions, as follows:
- $4,600 from the Assoc. for L.A. Deputy Sheriff’s PAC
- $4,600 from the L.A. County Probation Officers Union
- $2,000 from the L.A. Police Protective PAC
- $5,000 from the Peace Officers Research Assoc. of CA PAC
- $7,200 from the Assoc. of O.C. Deputy Sheriffs (Finally a donation from local cops!)
- $1,250 from the Anaheim Police Officers PAC
- $4,000 from the CA Assoc. of Highway Patrolmen
- $2,000 from the Corrections Corp. of America
- $2,000 from the Guard PAC
- $3,600 from the Santa Ana Police Officers PAC
- $1,000 from the Costa Mesa Police Assoc. PAC
- $3,600 from the Long Beach Police Officers PAC
- $7,200 from the State Affiliated Cops PAC
- $2,500 from the San Francisco Police Officers Assoc.
- $2,500 from the L.A. School Police Assoc.
- $1,000 from the San Jose Police Assoc. PAC
- $1,000 from the Safety Employees Benefit Assoc. PAC
- $1,351.86 from the Orange County Coalition of Police & Sheriffs PAC
So there you go. I think we know how Solorio is going to vote. You can look up the information above yourself by clicking here. It is too bad that Solorio sells his votes instead of doing what is right for the people of California. I don’t expect that his upcoming vote on the amended Copley bill will be much of a surprise. Solorio rarely votes contrary to how he is paid to vote…
Short and wild
Solorio is doing a good job of making himself out to be a self-serving little man.
Assemblyman McMidget will do what the police unions tell him to do. Expect no vote
golly, paul walters is only about 4’11, so what does that make so-low-rio?
Here. The larger problem has been solved by the free market.
I love this job. 🙂
SMS
Solorio’s reputation here in Sacramento is that of a lazy politician. He does have a few competant staff people here but the general perception stems from his behavior-not a bright light in a dark room.
Re: his district office, very poor constituent relations-just a mess. In all liklihood, an extension of the lack of leadership qualities for which he is known here in the building.
We can expect to see Jose joined by Harkey so that OC will be known as the County that produces two incompetant legislators (presuming that Harkey makes it to Sac). The problem here is that your reputation preceeds your swearing in. The rumors are already swirling about Harkey. Hard to recruit competant staff. Jose had/has the same problem. We knew all about his laziness and lack of leadership. With Harkey, the problem will be different: in short, a lack of ethics and a focus on personal elements. The recall information has already made the rounds so that it will be very problemmatic to recruit staff. In short, competant staff work insures productive and qualitative leadership (irrespective of politics)-good examples are Roger Niello (R) and Darrell Steinberg and Dave Jones (both Ds).
Rest assured you will see brilliant sound bits in committee hearings by Harkey:with Jose he just does what he is told by Caucus leadership-not viewed as a doer but a meek follower