FAST-TRACKER: Irvine Police Sgt. Brian Clifton was...

FAST-TRACKER: Irvine Police Sgt. Brian Clifton was talking with officials at the Foothill Tollway, which opens Oct. 16, about the electronic device that lets motorists avoid the toll’s coin booth. “Next thing I knew,” says Clifton, “they asked if I wanted to be the first one” to get one. . . . With his “FasTrak” device, he’ll be billed automatically by credit card when a scanner spots his car on the first leg of the new tollway in Lake Forest. The 3.2-mile stretch is free until Nov. 1. It’s 50 cents after that.

PAY FIRST? Assemblyman Gil Ferguson (R-Newport Beach) is irate that those who chained themselves to a bulldozer last week to stop the San Joaquin toll road construction were arrested only for trespassing. He’s asked Dist. Atty. Michael R. Capizzi to have them cough up the $7,000-plus in expenses it took to unchain them. . . . Capizzi says he’ll look into it to “determine what is appropriate.” But he’s got some serious doubts.

PROSECUTOR II? Assemblyman Tom Umberg (D-Garden Grove) is getting pretty serious about wanting to challenge Republican incumbent Dan Lungren for attorney general. He’s announcing today formation of a committee to “explore it.” That leaves the door open in case he decides later to run for reelection in the Assembly. . . . Umberg, once a federal prosecutor, will make his announcement at Fremont Elementary School in Santa Ana, scene of a recent drive-by shooting.

BOTH NAMES KNOWN: His readers knew him as MacDonald Harris, his pseudonym for 16 novels. But students and faculty at UC Irvine knew him as Donald Heiney, co-founder of its acclaimed graduate program in writing. . . . They’ll hold a public memorial service on campus at 4 p.m. today for Heiney, who died in July. Novelist Patricia Geary, one of his former students, will be among those to read from his works. . . . Heiney’s family has created the MacDonald Harris Prize in Fiction, to be awarded annually to a UCI student.