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One of the more bitter ironies to emerge from Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger's administration is that his beloved California Performance Review now risks becoming a monument to what it was supposed to counter - bureaucratic inefficiency. Sacramento is home to many a needless commission, panels that publish reports that no one reads and that never amount to anything. Who would have guessed that the CPR commission and its 2,200-page treatise could become but one more exercise in futility? To be fair, the CPR does have some worthwhile accomplishments to its credit: shorter lines at the DMV and reorganization at the Department...

Cable Repair Workers Rescue 10-Year-Old Boy Who Fell to Bottom of Swimming Pool The Associated Press Published: Jun 17, 2005 DES MOINES, Wash. (AP) - Two cable repairmen who learned CPR in case their families ever needed help rescued a 10-year-old boy who fell into a swimming pool, sank to the bottom and stopped breathing. Without Todd Hickam and Ryan Thornhill, Jamario Covington "wouldn't be here right now," said his mother, Melody Covington. The boy remained hospitalized Friday in stable condition. Jamario was wearing swim trunks Monday when he fell into the pool at a townhouse development in this Seattle...

SAN QUENTIN – Maligning San Quentin State Prison as "an expensive mistake," two state politicians this week urged officials to shutter the aging facility to save cash-strapped California millions of dollars. They also urged the state to back away from a plan to spend $220 million to improve the prison's death row facility. The California Department of Corrections is scheduled to break ground on a new death row this fall on 40 acres west of the existing prison on the San Francisco Bay in scenic Marin County. The legislators support a bill set to go before the Assembly Appropriations Committee...

Abandoning one of his most far-reaching and controversial proposals since taking office, Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger has decided to withdraw his plan to eliminate 88 regulatory and policy-setting boards and commissions, sources close to the governor said Wednesday. In a letter the administration plans to deliver to the state's Little Hoover Commission today, Schwarzenegger concedes the proposal needs further review. Members of the commission, which has held hearings on Schwarzenegger's proposal and plans to release a highly critical assessment at its meeting next Thursday, have already recommended that the government reorganization be scaled back substantially. Included on Schwarzenegger's hit list were...

By THE ASSOCIATED PRESS Cardiopulmonary resuscitation is often inadequately performed by doctors, paramedics and nurses, two studies of resuscitation efforts during cardiac arrest have found. Two common problems are rescuers not pushing hard enough or frequently enough on the chest to restart the heart, and rescuers breathing air into the lungs too often, either mouth to mouth or through tubes. In a study that involved 67 adults at the University of Chicago, doctors and nurses failed to follow at least one CPR guideline 80 percent of the time. Failure to follow several guidelines was common. The other study involved 176...

Sometimes a cartoon says things better than thousands of words. So it was the other day when Bruce Tinsley's "Mallard Fillmore" spoof predictions for 2005 contained this zinger: "All agencies will be consolidated under the new 'agency of agencies,' which will oversee and coordinate the activities of the 'bureau of bureaus' and the 'department of departments.'" All, of course, would be ruled by the "czar of czars." Ordinarily a fan of California Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger, the Tinsley comic strip this time was perfectly timed to puncture a key part of Schwarzenegger's many-pronged plan for so-called reform in California government. For...

California has a long road ahead in fixing its $15 billion budget deficit. However, it can start by eliminating $12.9 billion in wasteful spending, says Citizens Against Government Waste. CAGW’s recently released California Piglet Book details numerous examples of how California’s bureaucrats have wasted millions of taxpayer dollars. Among the examples: The Los Angeles Unified School District is now the subject of a federal grand jury investigation over its $74.5 million purchase of a downtown high-rise building for its administrative headquarters; the charge alleges that it overpaid for the building to bail out investors. City officials in San Francisco preside...

The Little Hoover Commission published its much-anticipated report on the California Performance Review today. The 38-page document contains a mix of strong support for the concept of government reform and skepticism over the execution of proposed changes. The CPR report, a 2,500-page publication that was initiated by Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger in February, contains recommendations on how the state can become more efficient, responsive, streamlined, and effective. The final document, released in August after a spate of public hearings, proved controversial as members of the CPR commission recommended the elimination of numerous boards and commissions. Then there was the matter of...

SACRAMENTO -- Improving government services, not saving money, should be the priority of Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger's plan to streamline state government, a state advisory commission said in a report released Friday. The Little Hoover Commission's skeptical view of the potential savings that could be generated by the California Performance Review made it the second independent analysis to question the projected savings that Schwarzenegger touted when he accepted the CPR report in August. Schwarzenegger said the recommendations in the 2,500-page review would help the state save $32 billion over a five-year period. But the Legislature's chief budget analyst said later that...

SACRAMENTO (AP) - In stark contrast to the 2,500 pages of the California Performance Review, a commission's analysis and recommendation of the massive plan for reorganizing state government offered little help to Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger on which goals to pursue. The 12-page report from the governor's 21-member commission shied away from virtually all of the controversial aspects of the plan while making only general comments about the proposal. The California Performance Review, which the governor has hailed as a landmark analysis of state government, called for the consolidation of dozens of departments, reduction of the work force by 12,000 positions...

IRVINE, Calif. -- A proposal to reform California's government by privatizing some functions and eliminating others won a qualified endorsement Wednesday from the bipartisan commission charged with collecting public testimony on the massive overhaul. The California Performance Review Commission ended a series of public hearings with a draft report agreeing with "a significant number" of changes proposed by the team commissioned by Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger to find ways of eliminating government waste. But the 21-member commission also urged the governor to reject some proposals including elimination of the Air Resources Board, a requirement that public university students do volunteer service...

SACRAMENTO (AP) - Claims by Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger's California Performance Review that the state can save $32 billion over five years by reorganizing state government are overblown and the problems caused by such a massive shake-up have been largely overlooked, according to a report made Friday by the Legislative Analyst. Schwarzenegger launched the review in January to fulfill a campaign pledge to reinvigorate state government. The group issued a 2,700-page report earlier this month that offered more than 1,000 recommendations - including the slower growth of state jobs, merging dozens of departments and improving customer service. He also said the...

SACRAMENTO – Despite initial promises of saving billions by overhauling state government, it now appears likely that only a fraction of Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger's plan to "blow up the boxes" of California bureaucracy will see the light of day. Key Schwarzenegger advisers are said to be divided over whether to push politically unpopular proposals, such as eliminating regulators of the state's air quality. Members of the team that crafted the California Performance Review have come forward, saying many proposals were conceived by staff who knew little about what they worked on. And as a Schwarzenegger-appointed commission to take public comment...

"My relationship to power and authority is that I'm all for it... People need somebody to watch over them... Ninety-five percent of the people in the world need to be told what to do and how to behave." Arnold Schwarzenegger, U.S. News & World Report, November 26, 1990 In the eyes of many elected officials, America is no longer capable of self-government. Many Americans were stunned to learn that a small group of Congressmen have requested the United Nations to monitor our federal elections this November. Yet at the same time, other elected officials are working to ‘reinvent’ American government...

Those with vested interests in the status quo lined up the other day to denounce the reorganization of state government proposed by Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger's California Performance Review. Witnesses took turns declaring that this change or that would transfer too much power to the governor and/or wreak havoc on civilization. It was, if nothing else, a graphic display of why true government reform is almost impossible. Those who work in and around a current system, no matter how illogical and inefficient it may be, instinctively oppose any systemic change because change brings uncertainty. And those opposed to change join forces...

DAVIS - The largest proposed reform of California state government in 30 years received its sharpest criticism yet Monday as witnesses called it a worker-unfriendly, corporate-influenced power grab by Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger. After all the research, meetings and hearings, one witness said Schwarzenegger's ambitious California Performance Review may ultimately fail, just like two of every three attempts to reform government or private industry. While some testified Monday to support the 2,700-page plan to change government, many others chipped away at various ideas. Car dealers, ethnic activists, union leaders and educators said the proposed elimination of 117 boards and commissions would...

DAVIS, Calif. (AP) - Critics of the largest proposed reform of California state government in 30 years called the plan a a worker-unfriendly, corporate-influenced power grab by Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger. ........ Car dealers, ethnic activists, union leaders and educators said the proposed elimination of 117 boards and commissions would make it harder for citizens and businesses to reach state government. Killing one third of those groups and putting their functions under the governor's control is "basically shoving government into the dark under the control of a single person," said University of California, San Diego, law professor Robert Fellmeth.

Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger (news - web sites)'s ambitious plan to reorganize almost every aspect of state government was influenced significantly by oil and gas giant ChevronTexaco Corp., which managed to shape such key recommendations as the removal of restrictions on oil refineries. Many corporations and interest groups participated in the governor's reform plan — known as the California Performance Review — but state records and interviews with the participants show Chevron enjoyed immense success in influencing the report through its array of lobbyists, attorneys and trade organizations. And few corporations have spent so much political cash on the governor, either....

After helping create California's highly anticipated government reform plan, George Passantino now is spreading the word about the plan at the grassroots level. For Passantino, a Palmdale resident, that includes a stop Tuesday at the Palmdale Rotary Club meeting, where he will explain the recommendations of the California Performance Review, or CPR. Passantino was a director for the CPR, which was organized by Arnold Schwarzenegger, who promised to dramatically reform the state's government. The CPR proposed thousands of ways to streamline the state bureaucracy, including dissolving hundreds of boards and commissions with highly paid appointees. The plan could save the...

NOTICE OF MEETING OF THE CALIFORNIA PERFORMANCE REVIEW (CPR) COMMISSION HEALTH & HUMAN SERVICES AND EDUCATION, TRAINING AND VOLUNTEERISM AGENDA FRIDAY, August 20, 2004 10:00 a.m. to 4:00 p.m. Price Center, Ballroom AB UC San Diego UCSD 9500 Gilman Drive La Jolla, California 92093-0076 This is the second of six public hearings on the recommendations in the report generated by the CPR. It will focus on CPR recommendations to improve the efficiency and management of the State Health & Human Services and Education, Training and Volunteerism programs. I. Call to order - Welcome remarks by Co-Chairs II. Introduction of Commission...