An Uplifting Motive in Turning Down Raises

Hell, no, they won’t go . . . to the bank.

In bestowing raises of up to 34% on state elected officials and legislators, the Citizens Compensation Commission also automatically puffed up paychecks for seven commissioners whose plummy politically appointed jobs require them to meet twice a month for a few hours to approve Medi-Cal contracts to hospitals and HMOs. For this, each member of the California Medical Assistance Commission will now receive $99,000 a year.

However, the salaries of other state commissioners and board members did not go up. For example, the four part-time members of the state’s Fair Political Practices Commission who gather in Sacramento each month for an all-day meeting still get paid $100 plus mileage and meals, the same amount since Richard Nixon was president.

Only the Legislature--whose members have sometimes felt the FPPC’s displeasure--can raise that amount. Sen. Ken Maddy (R-Fresno) introduced legislation to boost commissioners’ pay to $25,000 a year.

But FPPC full-time Chairman James M. Hall asked Maddy to deep-six the new deal. As it turns out, the state Constitution links the pay of the FPPC to . . . that very generous Citizens Compensation Commission. A raise for the FPPC would mean a raise for the CCC, whose members receive expenses only.

Thus, the FPPC said no, no, no to the CCC.

*

Skin game: A source of eternal puzzlement is why the Bay Area seems to generate more public nakedness than do warmer climes of California. There’s San Francisco’s annual Bay to Breakers footrace this month, at least one of whose contestants feels compelled to compete sans garb.

And remember the Naked Guy on the UC Berkeley campus, a kind of slow-speed streaker with a political point to make? In Berkeley, two performance artists wearing only wings and ashes got themselves arrested to defy the city’s 1993 anti-nudity law, instituted after the Naked Guy showed up at a City Council meeting.

If violators Debbie Moore and Marty Kent had hoped for a titanic courtroom battle over the Nude Deal, they were thwarted; charges were dropped on a technicality. Instead of being charged with breaking the no-nudes law, they were inadvertently written up for traffic violations.

The no-nukes city may reconsider being no-nudes. Council member Betty Olds has said she doesn’t care about nudity per se, but suggests a design review akin to that for building permits, “which will exclude about 99% of the people.”

(BEGIN TEXT OF INFOBOX / INFOGRAPHIC)

Latino Population Growth

Here are Latino population figures in California counties for the last two censuses along with the most recent estimate, according to the state Department of Finance. The counties are ranked by the 1990 totals.

*--*

County 1980 1990 1996* Los Angeles 2.1 million 3.35 million 3.98 million Orange 286,339 564,828 720,692 San Diego 275,177 510,781 622,933 San Bernardino 165,863 378,582 473,091 Santa Clara 226,611 314,564 377,363 Riverside 124,417 307,514 394,242 Fresno 150,790 236,634 290,737 Alameda 129,962 181,805 217,720 Ventura 113,192 176,952 206,942 Kern 87,026 151,995 192,160 Statewide 4.5 million 7.7 million 9.3 million Total Statewide 23.7 million 29.7 million 32.4 million Population

*--*

*projections based on 1990 Census.

Sources: U.S. Census; California Department of Finance.

Researched by TRACY THOMAS/ Los Angeles Times

*

No palm: Three teenagers from Redwood Valley should make the acquaintance of the Navy . . . once they finish up a little matter that could take them to court.

The three boys face expulsion from school and possible criminal charges after they allegedly followed an Internet recipe for concocting napalm--the jellied gasoline made notorious during the Vietnam War--and one of them brought some to school.

Making it is easy. If the boys could master the trickier work of making it disappear, they could be in a fair way to bid on getting rid of the 23 million pounds of the stuff left over from the 1970s and stored in California. (It would have been 23 million pounds less 12,000 but you’ll remember that the Indiana firm that had contracted to get rid of the stuff changed its mind and sent back the initial six-ton delivery.)

*

One-offs: Creating a California cuisine loophole in a law banning the use of raw eggs in restaurants, the state Assembly unanimously exempted the informed use of Caesar salad dressing whipped up table side. . . . Dreamwerks, a San Francisco promoter of sci-fi conventions, can pursue a trademark infringement suit against Dreamworks, the Spielberg et. al. mega-production firm. . . . American Health for Women magazine ranked Bakersfield and Modesto as two of the five unhealthiest major cities for women, Bakersfield for unemployment, pedestrian and bicycle deaths and poor air quality, and Modesto for unemployment, crime and water quality.

EXIT LINE

“I’m going to bankrupt him 38 cents at a time.”

--GOP state Sen. Jim Brulte of Rancho Cucamonga. He, like thousands of other voters, received from Democratic gubernatorial candidate Al Checchi an application for a June 2 primary mail-in ballot, postage prepaid. Brulte figures each one sent in will cost Checchi 38 cents’ postage.

*

California Dateline appears every other Tuesday.