WEEK IN REVIEW

PUBLIC SAFETY

UCI dispatcher on leave for alleged posts to porn sites

UCI police dispatcher Scott Cornelius was placed on administrative leave for 30 days after he was accused of posting photos of at least three Newport Harbor High School water polo players on gay pornographic websites, authorities said. UCI police say an investigation of the postings will be done by an outside department and law firm. Orange County prosecutors are also eyeing the case to see if any laws were broken.

BUSINESS

Biz profs discuss housing market at Irvine conference

Speakers from the UCI Paul Merage School of Business predicted a grim economic picture for Orange County in the next decade, although professor Kerry Vandell said the housing market should perk up by the end of the year.

The Irvine Marriott conference, put on Thursday by the Irvine Chamber of Commerce, featured addresses by Vandell and Merage Dean Andrew Policano. Before several hundred business leaders, Policano joked that the packed crowd reflected the anxiety many had about the economy.

“Whenever the economy goes down, attendance at this conference goes up,” he said.

Tennis courts may become condo site, pending approval

Staff and members at the Newport Beach Marriott Hotel and Spa’s tennis club remained on edge last week as a Florida-based housing developer sought final approval of a condominium project on the site.

The Lennar Corp., which got a green light for its project from the Newport Beach City Council in July, is waiting to have a development permit issued by the California Coastal Commission.

A spokeswoman from the consulting firm working with Lennar on the project said construction would probably not begin for another year.

In the meantime, the club is conducting business as usual and plans to go ahead with its annual summer camp for children.

NEWPORT BEACH

Concerned Citizens group files $250M suit against city

The drug and alcohol rehabilitation home activist group Concerned Citizens of Newport Beach filed a $250 million lawsuit against the city of Newport Beach and some of the city’s largest rehab home operators Tuesday just hours before the City Council gave final approval to a new ordinance to tighten regulations on the homes.

The group, made up of Newport Beach residents who said their neighborhoods are overrun by recovering drug addicts seeking treatment, alleges the city has been negligent in its enforcement of city codes that are supposed to regulate the homes.

The suit also alleges the city did not give the public enough opportunities to weigh in on the new ordinance. The council pushed through a hotly contested ordinance Tuesday on the homes that both rehabilitation home operators and residents have criticized.

Rehabilitation home owners claimed the rules are discriminatory, while residents said the new regulations don’t go far enough. The new rules will go into effect at the end of February.

 Newporters Vote No on B mailed to residents a full-color flier printed on glossy paper featuring the Daily Pilot’s logo and a quote supporting the group’s cause taken from a reader’s comment on the newspaper’s website. The newspaper prints a selected reader’s response to local issues every day in a “Web Threads” box on its front page.

An attorney representing the Daily Pilot characterized a local political group’s unauthorized use of the logo and a quote as “unfair.” A representative from the group said using excerpts from news articles and editorials is a common political campaign practice.

Attorney Nathan Siegel, an expert on media law for the Los Angeles-based firm Levine Sullivan Koch & Schultz, said whether either group can legally use content from the pages of the Daily Pilot depends on how much they use and how often they use it. To some extent, political campaigns can claim “fair use,” a legal principle that allows some uses of copyrighted material without permission, he said.

EDUCATION

Adams parents rise to defense of school’s scores

After weeks of back-and-forth comments on the Daily Pilot’s website, Adams Elementary School parents responded in person to school critics at the Newport-Mesa school board meeting Tuesday. More than half of the audience attended in support of Adams. Parents defended the school’s test scores and diversity with personal stories of their children’s successes.

Supporters were responding to a group of parents calling themselves the Mesa Verde Education Committee that complained about a number of things at Adams. From the test scores, administrators and the amount of English-learners on campus, the critics laid out their reasons for not allowing their kids to attend Adams. Parents on Tuesday challenged the critics to visit the school.

 Civil rights icon Julian Bond spoke to about 200 people in UCI’s Center Crystal Cove Auditorium Thursday night, discussing racial politics and his role in the 1960s civil rights era.

The lecture, part of the Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. Symposium series at UCI, was sponsored by the university’s cross-cultural center and the Black Student Union.

“Almost every social indicator — from birth to death — reflects black-white disparities,” Bond said. “Chances of imprisonment are much higher, lack of health insurance 45% more likely, and the average white American will live 5.5 years longer than a black American.”

Nevertheless, the 48-year veteran of progressive politics said the possibilities for change are greater than ever before, saying he often laughed at sympathetic students who complain to him that things are “the worst they’ve ever been.”

“I am an eternal optimist, because in my whole lifetime, I have seen a world radically different from the world I see now, [and realize] that many of the things we see now were unthinkable or unimaginable,” he said.

COSTA MESA

DeVore not running for senate, seeks another term

Assemblyman Chuck DeVore has decided to shelve a possible run for state senate and instead seek another term for the 70th district assembly seat.

DeVore made the announcement during an Orange County GOP monthly meeting this week, where he received the group’s 2007 Legislator of the Year award.

“We have a very large and difficult budget deficit that will be even more difficult to solve than the one that confronted former Gov. Gray Davis, and a lot of that work is going to be taking place in the middle of this year,” he said.

DeVore will have to leave his seat in 2010 due to term limits. He declined to rule out a possible state senate run in 2012.