Of all the international hot spots where disaster assistance workers were needed last summer, Kyrgyzstan didn’t get a lot of attention. But that’s where one local volunteer spent most of July, working on rebuilding after a regime change and a spate of internal ethnic conflict.

 

Calls for greater transparency in the inner fiscal dealings of foundations based at California State University campuses are mounting, after some of those details became public.

State Senator Leland Yee (D-SF) has championed legislative action to apply the state’s Public Records Act to the CSU academic foundations and other auxiliary organizations. He says these latest revelations about their lax fiscal management only reinforces the need for such a measure.

California Faculty Association president Lillian Taiz, a history professor at Cal State Los Angeles, charges that the newly revealed CABO minutes make it clear that the CSU administration’s opposition to Senator Yee’s sunshine bill, SB 330, was driven not by principle, but protective self-interest.

At Sonoma State, there are four separate auxiliary organizations, explains Chief Financial Officer and Vice President for Administration & Finance, Laurence Furukawa-Schlereth. But the budget for the Academic Foundation is much larger than those of  the other three  combined.

Here's the link to the SSU tranparency webpage. You can also read the Executive Summary of the CFA report on the CABO minutes they found. To read the full report, go here. Scroll down for the links to the minutes themselves.

The basic building block for influencing local elected officials is the neighborhood, says organizer Jim Diers, because people tend to be most involved and active closest to their homes.

 What defines a neighborhood? Jim Diers, author of Neighbor Power, Building Community the Seattle Way, says there are some basic characteristics that tend to be self-selecting, and common almost everywhere.

Neighborhood Watch programs are among the best known and most widespread applications of the idea that neighbors can benefit from looking out for one another.  Diers sees that as a small step in the right direction, but advocates taking thing much further.

Jim Diers will be the keynote speaker at the Santa Rosa Neighbors Summit Friday evening in the Santa Rosa City Council chambers. Events begin with a free meeting and presentation by neighborhood organizer Jim Diers on Friday evening, Aug. 20, 7-8:30 pm, followed by the working Neighborhood Summit on Saturday  Aug. 21, 9:30 am to 2:30 in the Finley Community Center on West College at Stony Point.

The federal health care bill, passed earlier this year, will also boost the fiscal well-begin of community clinics in Sonoma County, as well as the patients they serve.

Mary Szecsey, Executive Director of the five West County Health Centers,  explains that the local clinics, and many of their counterparts across the county, have helped pioneer and refine the concept known as a “medical home” for patients.

This approach, developed in considerable part out of necessity, has proven to be both efficacious and cost-effective, Szecsey adds, which is why it is being more widely adopted.