INSIDE SCOOP

-- Compiled by the Daily Pilot staff

Next time Costa Mesa Councilman Chris Steel decides to immerse himself

in work at City Hall, he better check the clock and make sure he has an

escape route.

Steel was in City Hall last week, working late hours, when he realized

he was locked in the building. Just as was leaving his fifth floor office

to head home after five hours of catching up on city business, listening

to messages and reading letters, he realized the doors had been locked

and alarms had been set.

It was about 2 a.m. and Steel said the last thing he wanted to do was

set off an alarm. He tried to go back upstairs to call someone to let him

out but the elevators do not work after hours. For security purposes they

only go down, not up, he said.

Finally, Steel noticed a phone in the lobby. With no change in his

pockets, Steel dialed the only number he knew was a free call -- 9-1-1. A

very understanding dispatch operator picked up the phone and sent someone

next door to let the councilman out.

“I’ve got to get a cell phone,” Steel said jokingly.

A downward spiral of respectability

At a chamber of commerce breakfast meeting earlier this month,

Assemblyman John Campbell took a few shots at some of America’s less

well-respected professions.

As most know, the assemblyman started his career as an accountant, a

relatively well-respected job. Then, he pointed out, he switched to car

salesman -- and there went the respect.

But, as if that weren’t bad enough, he then got himself into politics,

just about the only profession further down the scale than car salesman.

But, as his wife noted to him, there’s a job with even less respect,

one he needs to segue into to continue his downward spiral: attorney.

Now, not that we want to second guess your wife, assemblyman, but you

could fall even further.

You could always become a journalist.